Bike Tour, Truncated

Well, bike tour is over and I am proud to say that I biked every single Kilometer of our 1,500 km route across the surprisingly diverse country of Burkina Faso. It was an incredible experience in so many ways. I’ve never undertaken something this physically demanding and I surprised myself at what my body can accomplish. I watched the landscape change; the idyllically open savannah of the Sourou Valley; the desolate sands of the north; the square, red mountains of the mid-west moving to the lush, humid forests of the south. I saw the true diversity of life here, from the smallest village to the capital city, from the largest ethnic group to those on the fringe. I saw a range of volunteer projects which expanded my idea of what Peace Corps is and does. We made neem cream, had dance competitions, organized mosquito net races, cheered on women’s bike races, conducted malaria sensibilizations, watched plays on HIV/AIDS, played soccer, read books to kids, and much more. Most importantly, my view of development and my place in it has changed, or rather solidified out of the grey blur of what it was before, into something real, something I can say with the authority of experience (see the post below).

Too much happened on bike tour for me to put into words. If you’d like a play-by-play of our exact schedule and all the activities we did, check out the GAD blog at www.burkinabiketour.blogspot.com. What I can offer is this journal entry from the first day of the tour. Hopefully it will give you taste of what each day of the tour was like. Enjoy!

August 29^th, 2012

We spent a forebodingly overcast morning in Dedougou setting up a tent for the notable invitees and waiting around for them to show up for the kick-off ceremony. Around 8:00 the Naba and the representative of the governor arrived and 31 Dedougou women lined up with their bikes to race for glory (and 10,000 FCFA). We placed our bets. At the sound of “Zero!” these women FLEW. The 1^st back raced over the line, threw her bike to the ground, and fell into the waiting arms of the waiting paramedics. I have often overtaken, on foot, Burkinabé riding bicycles. This goes to show how unaccustomed these women were to riding this fast, to what they call, “sport.” The prizes were awarded and we eight starting volunteer riders quickly lined up for the ceremonial start just as the first few drops began to fall. We too raced the course, through the ever-intensifying rain and then hurried to find shelter in a local volunteer’s house. We all listened to the drumming on the roof and decided to make the most of it by talking, planning the day’s route, and playing darts and dorm-room HORSE basketball.

Even without the rain there were a few complications with starting the tour. First of all, the Peace Corps car, inexplicable, had been stuck in 5^th gear the day before and needed to stay in Dedougou for repairs. Additionally, due to the Malian refugee situation in Northern Burkina, a rumored Al-Qaida threat, and the fact that we had posted our bike schedule online, we were to be accompanied by two armed National Police. We waited for this to be arranged.

Finally, with the remains of the drizzle, mud caked on everything, and the resolute click of a bullet sliding into the chamber of an AK-47, we pushed off. The mud and cold were cut through by the sheer joy of the beginning, the start. We splashed through puddles, singing and talking, enjoying the movement after so much inertia. The country flashed by, clear and fresh, the startlingly light green of newly-grown Savannah grass waving in the breeze. This was a different world here, biking up into the Sourou Valley. This was almost the Africa of myth, of popular consciousness. It was all around us and it was all alive. The moments when I suddenly remember that I’m in Africa have become few and far between, but now when they do com they’re surreal experiences, all in an instant composed of my old visions layered with the new pieces of understanding I’ve gathered.

These thoughts faded as my eyes searched for my companions receding in the distance ahead of me. I realized then that I’m a slow biker. Persistent, but slow. The novelty of the landscape was replaced in my mind by a growing consciousness of my calves and thighs. The sun broke through the white sky and the drip of rain gave way to the drip of sweat. Somewhere along the way my rear derailer decided not to move anymore and stuck me in 1^st gear. The police and some other riders stopped to help and managed to move my chain to 4^th gear which at least got me moving again.

We caught up with everyone at a fork, the well-labeled north road of which would lead us to Sono, our first site of the tour. We crossed a bridge over the brown, swollen waters of the Mouhoun and spent the last 10 km stretch on an amazingly consistent and smooth dirt road. We met Sami, the resident volunteer, who guided us to her small mud-brick duplex through the spacious, pastoral streets of her village. We were met at her door by her strangely young chef du village and her two homologues vying for first handshakes with each of us. A crowd of children, teenagers and interested adults began to surround Sami’s courtyard as we cooled off and sat around.

Since our stuff was still in Dedougou waiting to be picked up by a new PC car from Ouaga (meaning no showers or clean clothes), we decided to take a walk around Sono. We crossed a few courtyards greeting notables and friends, picking up more followers with each step. We passed many half-acreish gardens surrounded by interesting woven wood fences. I considered the possibility of doing this in Titao, but realized that we simply don’t have enough trees to make it feasible (or legal). And our gardens are huge. In any case, it was interesting to see this new, compact technique. We were allowed in the Mosque with our shoes on. It was beautifully laid out, with a half-covered inner courtyard, the moss-green stones and worn architecture suggesting an enduring tradition. We exited through the small back room reserved for women onto a small tree-covered square serving as a small marché.

We paraded over to the primary school with hundreds of children in tow where Sami had planned to do a mosquito net race. These races are very fun and demonstrate the correct method of putting up a mosquito net. We split the crowd into two teams of eight and ran through an example of the race to thunderous applause and laughter. Then the two teams lined up, someone counted down to zero, and the first pair of each team shot off with a mosquito net. They each tied a corner of their net to the waiting line and then ran back to tag the next pair who tied the other corners. These in turn tagged the pair with the sleeping mat who, after slipping the mat under the net, ran back and tagged the last pair. One from each pair dove under the net to sleep while the other tucked the favric under the mat for the win. This is what should have happened. These being kids, there were some ridiculous variations. In one case, a participant tied their corner on the wrong side, resulting in the net getting all twisted. This however did not prevent three kids from diving under it at the same time. At least they were all laughing and having a good time and seemed to get the main idea.

The clouds shifted and deepened in color as we walked through rolling green hills back to Sami’s house. In time with our arrival came the new Peace Corps car, amid much rejoicing. Dinner (rice, sauce, and huge fried catfish) came shortly after and we took turns eating and showering in the cooling, quietly descending evening. Here there were no streetlights, no chugging generators, no sudden blasts of music; just the mechanical hum of frogs, a slight wind, and the occasional approach and fade of a distant motorcycle. In that moment I knew peace.

We moved our things to the school where we’d be sleeping and set up our eight bug huts in a single class room. The National Police set up outside, preparing to spend the night in chairs, guarding our rest. Drifting easily into sleep but wary of the early wakeup call and the 45 km ride of tomorrow, we closed our eyes to the strangely comforting click of a rifle.

Full Circle

I opened my eyes to a blank white sky and the Harmattan winds blowing the memory of a feeling into my sleepy mind. I raised myself and blinked around, gazing at the drying weeds, the sorghum and millet stalks towering above my house, the yellowing bean leaves, hearing the crackle of it all shake together, smelling the almost subconscious fluttering of decay. And then it hit me; nostalgia. This day had the same quality as every other October I’d ever experienced, including that of last year when I first arrived in Burkina Faso. It’s a feeling tinged with sadness, of the beginning of the end, but carried forward with the anticipation of the harvest, of holidays, of familial warmth.

I got up and stretched and considered how odd it was that I should have such a familiar feeling in such an unfamiliar place. Had a year living in this country truly allowed me to feel the full cycle of things, to feel reminiscent? It seemed so. It took me all the way back to Sapone when Kellynn and I rode home for the first time to our host family’s house, dodging animals and ducking through the sagging sorghum fields. I remembered watching with delight the last rain of the season, at the time being my first encounter with the violence of African rain. How different things were then. How different a person I was. I cannot now venture to enter the mind that was mine a year ago. Certain things have become more certain, certain things less. What can I say?

After breakfast I headed over to Philippe’s house. The mother of the proprietor of my house had passed away two nights ago and we went together to pay our respects. On the way back we passed another courtyard with a group of people sitting outside on nats, the customary way to wait to see someone. We stopped, took off our shoes, sat down and greeted everyone. We learned that someone in the Chef de Village’s family had passed away the night before and that the interment would be this morning. The Chef of a nearby village had also died in the night. Shocked by the concurrence of these three deaths, we expressed our condolences with dismay. Philippe told me he planned to go to the burial and asked if I’d like to go. As it was something I’d never seen before and pushed by the sentiment of the day, I said yes.

Titao’s cemetery lies around the base of a small, desolate hill on the outskirts of town. I had never ventured here before and was awed by the sheer number of dirt mounds stretched to the foot of the small, red rise. We made our way among these towards a large gathering of men and boys surrounding a hole. In typical Mossi fashion, three boys tirelessly dug while the crowd around them informed them of what they were doing wrong. I looked inside and saw a common grave, except the workers were in the process of excavating a small trench along one side of the hole. They soon finished and Philippe and I went to sit and wait for the body to arrive.

Cooled by the wind and delivered from the heat by the ever-overcast sky, we sat and waited. We talked of death and poverty and the difficulties of escaping them. I could hear the anger undercutting Philippe’s voice. Anger at what, I don’t know. Death? Frustration? Apathy? Tiredness? It became too much and we fell silent. Nudged by the fall breeze and these thoughts, the thread of remembrance began to unravel and I looked upon the last year as from on top of a mountain. Here is what I saw:

I had wanted so much to do something, to help, to learn. I came here full of hope, discouraged and cynical of the American life I saw around me. Everything was new and I devoured each new experience eagerly, knowing that it would nourish the person I wanted to become. Then Kellynn was forced to leave and I realized that this was never something I had wanted to do on my own. And yet there were still experiences here for the taking; still I had not done any actual work that I could be proud of; still there was so much to learn. I made a promise to myself that I would see this through for at least a year. I threw myself into work, starting projects left and right. I buried my loneliness in activity, and when that lulled, into the company of other volunteers and alcohol. I came out of each project with a new understanding of how things are done here and began to see patterns emerge. Speaking with other volunteers and seeing how they live helped me create a clearer, more comprehensive idea of what life here is and what we as volunteers can do within it.

I believe that the majority of volunteers are placed with organizations at the village level to ameliorate the larger, entrenched problems that the higher levels in the ministry do not care to deal with. For example, formal education volunteers take the role of teachers to address the problem of overcrowded classrooms. However, there are plenty of qualified Burkinabé eager to teach. The real problem is that the government will not pay the salaries of more teachers. So in effect, the Peace Corps is supporting this bad policy and volunteers are left to manage, as free labor taking jobs away from locals, classes of 100 students and more. I know less about the medical system in Burkina but have heard health volunteers complain that their job is to make sure that their Burkinabé counterparts do their jobs and that there is not enough oversight or support from the ministry. This goes for the Agriculture sector as well. We are placed with host associations, the majority of which are financed by American or Burkinabé aid organizations such as USADF, USAID and FAIJ, purportedly to be some kind of on-the-ground auditor. We are unwitting good-will ambassadors banging our heads against bureaucratic walls, filing quarterly reports for the benefit of our associations’ benevolent donors. This is not what I imagined service to be.

Besides our primary projects, I’ve seen the biggest impediment to getting anything done here as being the half-a-century-long culture of post-colonialism. For decades, motivated by institutionalized guilt, foreign organizations have come to poor communities, done on-the-fly community assessments, thrust large sums of money into a small number of hands, and left. The carcasses of these projects lay strewn everywhere, evinced by faded signs, crumbling buildings and silent, unmoving machinery. Where does the money go? With little to no follow-up and oversight, the funds for the new mill could just as easily become someone’s new motorcycle. Then here comes the Peace Corps volunteer, yelling, “Sustainable community development!” and what’s the first thing people do? Ask us for money. I am tired of hearing about someone’s “lack of means” to accomplish their dream project. But who can blame them? This is all their history has led them to expect; that nothing can be accomplished without outside aid. This is not the land of the self-made man. Goals are not to be reached for, but to be begged for. This view is probably shaped in part by the fact that I’m currently reading Atlas Shrugged. Nevertheless, I feel that if I am to truly accomplish anything here, it will be to convince someone, anyone, that they have the power to change their own life. To refuse to give someone money is one of the most important things I can do.

Dust rose in the distance and broke through my melancholic reverie. Everyone stood up as one. A truck with a covered bed backed up to the edge of the cemetery. Men began filing out and the last took hold of a stretcher within and brought it over to the grave. The body was wrapped in a straw mat and tied to the stretcher with a white cord. Two men started mixing water with some dirt to make a mortar. I was awed by the silence around me. Never had I heard a group of Burkinabé so large be completely quiet. That is to say that there is usually a lot of quiet joking that goes on or a phone ringing at least, but not today. The cord was untied and the body was lifted from the stretcher. An intricate, vibrantly red rug was pulled over the grave, held by about 20 men. Men inside the grave took down the shrouded figure and lay him in the shallow trench. Bricks were handed down one by one to cover the small opening. The last brick disappeared and the rug was taken away as the two men began delivering shovels of mortar to those in the grave. When the tomb was sealed and the grave vacated, everyone took turns heaving dirt into the hole. The wind threw dust towards where we were standing and we shifted around. With the hole filled and the mound created, there followed a slight pause and then suddenly everyone fell to a crouch, which I followed. Someone close by the grave said a few words aloud and then a profound silence fell once again. A minute or so passed. And then, in a dizzy contrast to the waiting that had preceded it, everyone got up and left.

I walked back with Philippe, immersed in my own thoughts. I asked a few questions about the burial, but was thinking of it in my own terms. I have been here a year. I have come full circle. What more do I want out of this? How much more can I endure by myself, without the support and presence of my best friend and wife? I feel that the hopes I came to this country with have been buried in the sand of the past year. Are there new ones to replace them? Are there new seeds to be planted in the next year? Honestly, I don’t know.