I don’t only want to do sight-seeing when I’m a tourist. I also want to try the local foods and drinks. The traditional drink in southern Burkina Faso is called bandji. It’s a kind of palm wine, made by tapping sap from a certain kind of palm tree. And that’s it. The sap gets tapped in the morning, and if you drink it then, it’ll be a slightly sweet drink with an aftertaste of coconut. And if you let the liquid sit for a day or two, it starts fermenting and becomes slightly alcoholic.
So, on the way back to town from the waterfalls, we stopped in a village and had some of the fermented stuff, shared in a calabash bowl. It, also, tasted slightly sweet, but the fermented taste was quite dominant, and for some reason I thought there was an aftertaste of bacon. I wouldn’t say it was disgusting, but it wasn’t a drink I would choose if there was something else on the menu too.
Instead of taking us to the hotel, we asked the guide to drop us off at a roadside bar, and there we had some Burkinabe beer while the sun went down. A drink more to my taste.
We had dinner with a former local parliament member, a contact of Helena’s supervisor. He was nice and all, and the fish was delicious, but I was just too exhausted to follow in the conversation. The weeks of field work, topped by the wasp stings, still hadn’t released its hold of me. I hope the Very Important Man wasn’t too offended by my empty stare. Luckily, Helena kept him quite busy. Yet another good thing about being more than one person while traveling. You can take turns being stupid.
Katja Malmborg 