The last transect walks that I did in region Nord, where both Ouahigouya and Gourcy lies, was in a village called Minima. They had a big dam, but otherwise there wasn’t anything extraordinary about it.
After the first walk, we sat under a big mango tree and Desiré and the former CVD, who had been in the military, started talking about the sins of Blaise Compaoré. That same morning, it had been announced that Kafando had been appointed transition president, and I guess that instigated the discussion. They were speaking a mix of Mooré and French, so the only things I understood were the names of the countries where Compaoré had been militarily involved: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivore, Kongo. He has many sins on his conscience, that man, and all the people that I’ve met here seem to be happy that he’s gone.
Otherwise, it was an uneventful last day of fieldwork. I was introduced to the village chief, who was dressed in an amazingly orange and blue kaftan. All the other people (men) around me greeted him by taking his hand and basically bow-curtsying all the way to the ground. Seriously, the ceremonies surrounding greetings in this country. Coming from Sweden, I have trouble understanding the need for this extreme hierarchy, and I really don’t know how to behave in it. I just shook his hand and bowed my head a little bit. He smiled. Luckily, they’re very lenient with the ignorance of foreigners here, too.
That was it.
Katja Malmborg 