Sitting under a tree in Rallo, waiting for a man to arrive on a motorcycle, I watched a baby goat try to eat a dry leaf. First from the ground, then pushing it up on a wall, desperately trying to get a bite but not quite managing to.
And I thought: How on earth did I end up here?
And then I thought: No one who’s ever known me would be surprised, though.
Because, with the way I was raised, being somewhere else would actually be the surprising part. Me, sitting under a tree in the 36 degree heat watching a baby goat trying to eat, in a village of 600 people in northern Burkina Faso, waiting to get an answer for if I would be welcome to do research there, is more or less what every single part of my life has lead up to. One could say I didn’t have a choice. One could say I only do what I’ve been raised to do. Or one could also say I’ve always known what I wanted, at least on some level. Despite the doubts that I constantly carry around.
Be that as it may, sitting there, in that moment, watching the goat, I couldn’t imagine any other place where I’d rather be.
Later, in another village, waiting for another man, I watched the women coming back from the fields, making themselves comfortable under another tree and starting shelling newly dried beans. They put the pods in a big, high wooden bowl, quite like a butter tarn and then one of them used a long stick to kind of grind the beans in the bowl. Then, they emptied the wooden bowl into a basket, after which they poured the beans into a third basket, from a standing height to the ground. Using the wind to get rid of the dry and now peeled pods, while the heavier beans fell straight into the basket on the ground.
The ingenuity in using the wind and gravity to peel beans. And the beauty of the low-lying sun making the flying dry peels shine yellow, making the air around the women look like it glittered.
After having finished our business with the important man, we walked by the working women on our way to the car. They started shouting, and Desiré said they were disappointed that we were leaving, that they wanted me to stay, that they would take care of me. I asked them if I could take a photo of them, for my mother, and they laughed and I took it and when I showed it to them on the small camera display, they laughed even more and said ”Barka!” (which means ‘thankyou’ in Mori). I told them goodbye and said that I would be back in less than a week, and to that they laughed even more.
Oh, how I wanted to stay there.
Katja Malmborg 