In another Gourcy village called Ridimbo, the CVD was a youngish, joking, laughing man. He spoke mooré to me, and had a very expressive body language, managing to make jokes despite us not having any languages in common.
It was also a village where many other men did the same thing. It was a happy village, and the men seemed to enjoy our mere presence.
At lunchtime, the CVD half jokingly asked me to join him for lunch, and when I said that I would, everyone seemed to think it was the best of jokes. Until I actually started eating. That was an even better joke. I have no idea where all that happiness can come from.
The meal consisted of tó, a kind of very hard millet porrige, eaten with sauce, and maize couscous with a sauce of aubergine leaves. We ate with our hands, and first I almost made the mistake of taking the food with my left hand. Luckily, Desiré was there to stop me before I did. Because, as I had already been told, here you eat with your right hand. The left is used for washing yourself after you’ve been to the bathroom. Using your left hand when being offered food is a grave insult, like saying ”the food you’re giving me is as good as shit”. Oh, it’s a maze, navigating foreign cultures.
To be honest, the tó was discusting. A texture kind of like old oatmeal porrige, sour and starchy. I had to work on keeping a straight face while chewing it down, to the delight of the men around me. The maize couscous, though, had a very neutral taste, and the sauce was quite nice too, despite the aubergine leaves being very bitter. So, now I can at least say that I’ve tasted the real local cuisine.
In Ridimbo, they were also delighted with my and Elli’s fascination with animals. There were donkeys, cows and sheep, goats and chickens, as everywhere, but also pigs, horses with foals, ginnyfowl, ducks, puppies and bunnies. A man even more or less dragged me with him to his ponies and wordlessly showed me very clearly that he wanted me to take a photograph of him sitting on the little thing.
We were also shown the place where they made brick for the houses, and in the shadow of a big mango tree two boys were sitting, braiding mofaogo grass into a roof.
And when it was time for us to leave, the CVD said we should take a group picture. When I took up the camera, he said no no, they wanted me in the picture too. Elli took on the role as photographer. And when we were setting it up, more and more men and children gathered around the car and I ended up with this:
I felt like the event of the week here, and it wasn’t at all as unpleasant as it might sound. Actually, I didn’t want to leave.
And I was given another chicken, this time a small black-and-white one, nervously sitting in Elli’s lap all the way back to Gourcy.
(The driver gave it to a man with a BBQ stand close to our hotel in Gourcy, and the next day just before we left to go back to Ouaga, I was given a newspaper pack filled with barbequed chicken and onion pieces. It must have been marinated with herbs and pig grease, because it tasted like bacon. It, too, was delicious.)
I don’t want to pick favorites, but if I had to, I would pick Ridimbo, tied on first place with Teonsogo.
Katja Malmborg 