Katja Malmborg

domes and waterfalls (December 6th)

Being further south, and therefore having a climate that is more strongly affected by the Intertropical Convergence Zone, Banfora was obviously a lot greener than Ouahigouya or Kaya. But there was also a difference in topography. In Banfora, there are actual mountains and valleys.

In the valleys, there are vast sugar cane fields being irrigated with huge machines. Driving on the muddy road through the field, there was a slight smell of something sweet and rotting.

In the small mountains, there are outcrops with bedrock where interesting rock formations have developed. The most striking are the domes of Fabedougou.

The guide claimed they were formed by wave erosion when this area was by the sea, but I was skeptical. I didn’t tell him, because he was a macho rasta man and they are so easily offended.

He was a real jerk, that guide, and ignorant as hell – but I’ll tell you more about that later. Basically the only good thing that he did, was to take this nice picture of the three of us on top of one of the rocks.

In my opinion, these rock formations looked too young to have been around since the time before Pangea. I might be wrong, of course, but to me, this looked like an excellent example of chemical weathering of soft sandstone with caps of harder sedimentary rock on top from rain and tropical heat. A kind of hoodoo, one could say. That’s my theory. [The photo below taken by Elli.]

The second interesting landscape feature in the vicinity of Banfora were the Karfiguela Falls. They even made such a strong impression on the French that they named the entire region after them: Les Cascades.

Compared to water falls that I’ve seen in Bolivia, British Columbia and Oregon, heck, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, these were not anything special. But it made for a nice place to spend an afternoon.

We found a pool that was deep enough to swim in. It was a hot day, and the water was amazingly cool. We ate pineapple and the guide gave us sugar cane to chew on. I lay down on the rock in the shade and drifted in and out of a light slumber, listening to the rushing water and Elli and Helena talking.

On the way back to the car in the early evening, we walked along this tree-lined path. Lennart, a Swedish man and one of Helena’s contacts in Burkina, had said that there are few positive things that one could say about the French and their actions during the colonial times in Burkina Faso. However, one good thing that they did was to plant trees. All along the major roads. Now, that’s one way to recognize the old French roads – the enormous trees lining them. Here, they were mangoes. Gigantic. The largest mongo trees I’ve ever seen. Possibly even a hundred years old. Oh, trees.

the fickle public transport in Burkina Faso (December 5th)

As a nice ending to our Burkina Faso stay, Elli and I decided to take our last weekend in the country and be tourists. And as tourists in Burkina Faso, there is really only one place to go: south, to Banfora.

Having had both a driver and a rented pick-up truck during most of our stay in Burkina, Elli and I hadn’t gotten any experience of the Burkinabe public transportation. And I don’t know if the trip that we made together with Helena, the other Swedish student, down to Banfora was in any way representative of the state of public transport in the country in general, but it sure wasn’t an easy ride.

We were told that the TCV bus was the most comfortable one, and to begin with it seemed really nice. Air conditioned, clean. It was really early, so there wasn’t even that much traffic getting out of Ouaga, only the bright morning sun.

But then they put the movies on, probably Malian, loud, taking over the entire soundspace. I was still feeling weird from the wasp bites from the day before. There were six of them, I had counted, on my temple, scalp, behind my ear, in my ear, on my neck. I just wanted to sleep, but it was impossible.

Then someone puked on Helena’s arm. And the woman in front of me handed over her baby to the man sitting next to me, just like that, without them knowing each other. And he sat there, the stranger, playing with the baby while the woman took a nap and the lingering feeling in me from the wasp bites made the whole thing seem surreal.

We stopped at a rest stop where they sold chicken, grilled meat, bananas, groundnuts, drinks. I bought a coke and after drinking that, I felt a little bit better.

Until the bus broke down. Suddenly, the engine just started smoking and the driver stopped by the side of the road and everyone rushed out, as if the bus might explode. And there we stood, in the shade by the road, just waiting for something to happen. I had brought a bag of unpeeled groundnuts with me, so we started peeling those. Which was a smart move, I think, because it kept our shared frustration at bay.

Eventually, a substitute bus arrived and took us the last half-hour to Bobo-Dioulasso. The bus ride that should have taken five hours took eight, and there was no time for us to sight-see in Bobo because the last bus to Banfora was just about to leave.

This last stretch of transportation, however, the ninety minutes from Bobo to Banfora, turned out to be really beautiful. Elli and I, who had gotten used to the dry, flat landscape of northern Burkina, marveled at the greenness, and the hills and valleys that gave perspective to the landscape. There were mango trees everywhere, big, round, and beautiful, and patches of cotton fields being harvested, as well as huge expanses of sugar cane.

It was just about to get dark when we arrived at the hotel in Banfora. It was moldy and run down, as most hotels in provincial Burkina, but painted in a bright turquoise color and the bed was both comfortable and had a mosquito net. We went to sleep early. Public transportation in Burkina Faso is not a relaxing affair, I can at least tell you that.

the last two days of fieldwork (December 4th)

I think I alluded to it in an earlier post, but the day before I was set to go for my two last days of fieldwork, things just turned upside down with Elli’s laboratory things and our payments and everything worked out in the end, but not without me being half a day late to my first feedback session, and then it just kind of continued in the same manner from there. The feedback sessions went well enough, but I felt so stressed all the time that I couldn’t be properly present.

We spent the night at a moldy, overpriced hotel in Kaya, Elli and I playing around with fruit and laughing a bit in our exhaustion. But then, neither of us could settle down and it became a sleepless night for both of us.

So, next morning, possible due to tiredness, we got behind schedule already in the first village and the feeling of stress took over me again. Coming back to Zanzi was lovely, talking to the old man and his fellow villagers, and maybe I was about to find my way back to the ground again, calming down despite still being behind schedule – but then, suddenly, there was a buzzing noise, and the women under the tree picked up their children and ran away.

And then they were over me. The wasps. An entire swarm. One in each ear, in my hair, on my face. I don’t know what came first, if the wasps were already there when I stood up and started running, or if my running attracted more of them. It was just so chaotic around me, people scattering everywhere, running, and I had a wasp in each ear, it was disorienting and I tried to get them out, panic, thinking: what if they sting and it turns me deaf. I couldn’t keep my balance, I fell and ripped up my knee and then a young man grabbed my hand and pulled me with him into a hut, where he started arguing with a woman who was sitting on the floor with a baby in her lap, while at the same time helping me to get wasps out of my hair. There were at least three.

He then quickly took me to the car and almost pushed me into it, slamming the door shut behind me. I wasn’t aware of what was happening, until we were already driving away from there. Without a proper goodbye, or my pen. I found a last wasp in my hair, though, at the base of my braid still crawling around. I killed it.

Luckily, Elli had managed to pick up my notebook, which I had dropped when I fell. The feedback session had also basically been done, and we were only sharing pleasantries when the wasps attacked, but still. I would have liked to shake their hands one last time, especially with the old man, and not leave in a rush of panic.

However, that was not something I thought about right then. My head was throbbing and the adrenaline made everything seem jumbled up, incoherent. Elli said I was bleeding a little from my ear. I felt like my entire head would explode. Desiré turned around and said I shouldn’t have run, that when a wasp comes close one should just sit still and wait for it to leave, and that it probably was the perfume that I was wearing that had attracted them. I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, but somehow I managed to control myself enough to say that I wasn’t wearing any perfume, I hadn’t washed my hair for almost a week and it’s not that easy to sit still when there is a wasp crawling around inside both of your ears.

Then I took a painkiller, and fell asleep.

My father is very allergic to insect bites, so much so that he has to carry around an epinephrine shot wherever he goes during the summer months. I, on the other hand, had only been stung once, just the summer before, and had therefore no idea of I was allergic too. That was something that was running through my throbbing head when I was slipping in and out of a foggy slumber on the bumpy road to the last village.

As it turns out, though, I have not inherited that particular trait from my father. We arrived in Firka, without me looking like a balloon in the face, only with a headache like I’ve never had before. Somehow, I managed to do the feedback session, even though I don’t really have a clear memory of how it went, and then it was time to head back to Ouagadougou. It felt kind of anticlimactic, not feeling the finality, only being off from adrenaline withdrawal, numb from painkillers and still stressed about it being so late.

That was the end of my fieldwork.

Despite adrenaline withdrawal, though, I was still present enough to feel the tinge of frustration from the fact that people throw plastic bags and other trash straight on the ground. If nothing else, don’t they think it’s aesthetically displeasing?

Oh, I wish my fieldwork could have ended on a better note than this. I’ll just have to remember that the rest of my fieldwork, at least to the most part, was a nice and exciting experience. Even if the end turned into a disaster.

eating wild things (December 4th)

It is kind of hard to avoid, really, when that’s what most of my questions have been about. Food. What do people eat to sustain themselves. They tell me: That wild bush has leaves that can be used to spice tô (millet porridge). And they pick the leaves and start nibbling on them, offering me a piece too.

I’ve been invited to share many meals, and most of the things that they have cultivated aren’t that bad. The tô is definitely edible, even though I wouldn’t call it delicious, the spinach-like aubergine leaf sauce is decent and the maize couscous and jollof rice is even good. But the other things, mostly the wild. So bitter! Sour, sometimes even putrid. I thought I wasn’t picky with food, but here I’ve had to learn that there are many things that I just can’t eat. Not because I find them disgusting, but because they don’t taste like food at all. Like eating grass. My mouth rejects them.

Like the kegla berries of the keglega tree. They can be used to make soap, but can also be eaten. My guides always stop to pick the ripe orange ones and nibble on them like they were wonderful little treats. For me, the tinge of sweetness can’t hide the overwhelming bitterness and my nose instinctively wrinkles. They always laugh at me, my villager guides.

Or the guila fruit, that grows at the base of white water lilies. I must admit, it looks quite tempting, but eating it, it only tastes like starch and muddy water.

The bagandré bush is used as an indicator for the state of a fallow, and its fruits are dried and grinded into a nutritious powder for the animals to eat during the dry season. But the young leaves are also used spice tô. I don’t understand why. They are really bitter. The taste is quite similar to spruce needle shoots, you know, the small bright green tufts at the end of the spruce branches in late spring. To be honest, I quite like eating them, the baby spruce needles I mean, but only a nibble here and there. I wouldn’t spice an entire meal with it. That’s way too much bitterness for my pallet.

And the gumbo, which actually is a cultivated crop, but that I would like to include in the category “weird foods that I’ve tried”. The taste is actually quite nice, something not quite unlike cucumber, but after the first bite the whole thing turns into slime in your mouth. Like, the consistency we’ve been programmed through movies about supernatural things to associate with anything yucky and disgusting.

I think the conclusion here is that I would not survive out in the wild. My taste buds are way too domesticated.

There was one delicious wild thing that they introduced me to, though. The yellow or orange berry of the mugunuga bush.

Mostly, they’re made up of a big seed, but around it there’s a thin layer of berry. Sweet, without a hint of bitterness. They had many of the bushes in Zanzi and Nakombogo, and I ripped up tiny holes in my shirt trying to get hold of the berries on the thorny branches. The taste was quite unique, but if I have to describe it, I’d say it was a mix of cloudberry and apricot. It was amazing.

the long road back home (present day)

Dear reader. I stopped uploading anything here in the beginning of December, due to lack of time and internet access and tiredness. But I made notes, of varying degrees of readability. About fifteen pages of notes, covering my journey from the last two days of fieldwork, a visit to Banfora, arriving in Ghana and what happened over Christmas there, and finally the long journey back home again. Now, I’ve been in Stockholm for a week. I’ve slept, eaten, spent days not getting out of my pajamas, hung out with friends. Now, it’s time to go through all those notes, turn them into something coherent, and share them with you. Maybe you’ll find it somewhat interesting, but most of all: I need closure. I don’t handle letting things slip away well. I want my documentation of my West Africa travels to be complete.

So, this is where we start. A month and a day ago, in the town of Kaya.

a brief pop cultural summary of my 2014

I’ve barely landed. The darkness is disorienting. I’m not completely sure of where I am at present, emotionally – as if the three months spent in West Africa have a too strong hold on my mind yet. Everything is just surreal.

But I’m about to leave for a New Year’s dinner, I have painted my nails and am wearing a pair of Burkinabe earrings. I haven’t done much, culturewise, this year, so I don’t really know what to summarize, but there’s always something.

Like, the best song was probably Stay High with Tove Lo. Which is so unoriginal of me, because it’s even become an international hit now, but, I guess I’m not that original. I was addicted to it in the spring, needed it to wake up in the mornings. There’s also been some really great album releases of old favorites, First Aid Kit, Hello Saferide and Damien Rice. Amazing music, all of it.

The best book was, without question, The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. I read it over Christmas in Elmina, and it’s one of the finest examples of fiction that I’ve ever encountered. She really did deserve her Nobel prize in literature, Lessing. Otherwise, I haven’t read much at all this year. Like, not even 20 books. It’s embarrassing.

As to movies, I have no idea. I saw Wish I was here in the theater together with dad just two days before I left to Burkina Faso. It was a really nice movie, and I like Zach Braff. So, I’ll pick that.

And with the photographs, I haven’t had time to go through all the Africa ones yet, which means I don’t have a comprehensive idea of what good photos I’ve taken this year. Therefore, I think it’s best if I wait with picking one. I’ll get back to you about it in a week or so, when I’ve landed and I know what I’m doing and where I am and have had time to go through the huge mess that is my files from my three months in West Africa.

So, happy New Year (I think)!

season greetings to you all

We’re staying at an ecolodge by the beach outside Elmina, Ghana, mother and I. It is so organic, it doesn’t even have electricity, only solar-powered lights in the clay huts. But the food is good, and the cocktails are cheap. There are plenty of places to sit and read, and the ocean is lukewarm. We wanted somewhere to relax, and that’s what we got. We’re happy.

But now, I’m stealing the neighboring luxury beach resort’s electricity and wifi to send you all a little Xmas postcard. I’ll tell you about the end of my Burkina Faso visit and all of my Ghana adventures when I’m back in Stockholm again! So, for now, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

pause

And I wish I had more time to write. We’re in Kumasi now, in a super cozy B&B, and my brain is still a Swiss cheese. A melting Swiss cheese.

I wish I was less petty. I watched a video clip of the Lucia choir that was put together last minute at the SRC, something that me and Matilda organized last year and that now has become a tradition, I guess. And it looked so nice, and they did perfectly well without me, and I feel both happy and sad. Because I am here, and it’s great that they put it together anyway – but it got me thinking. Things are ending. Next year, I will not be able to sing with Kate and Matilda and Vivi and Elli either, because at least half of them will probably have left the country. And as for myself, I have no idea of where I’ll be either. Honestly. No Idea.

Terrifying thought.

But we’re going to West Africa’s largest marketplace tomorrow. So. At least there’s that.

(hopefully) the last night in Ouaga

What has happened since I wrote last? Tons. Can I write about it now? No. That will have to be for a later date. Possibly already tomorrow afternoon, if things go as I hope.

Elli left yesterday morning. Helena left yesterday night. I feel abandoned – although, still not quite. I’m staying with Christina, a wonderfully generous woman working at the Swedish embassy. She has a whole flock of cats that keep me company while she’s at work.

They cancelled the bus I was supposed to catch tomorrow. Also, apparently, the buses quite often get robbed at night on the highway between Tamale and Kumasi. Or break down. And take at least 24 hours to get all the way to Accra. The whole thing seems like a nightmare. Therefore, I have decided I’ll try to catch the plane tomorrow morning. No airline offices were open today, since it’s the Burkinabe independence day, so I’ll just have to believe in my luck and be there at the airport when the offices open at five in the morning.

This might be my last night in Burkina Faso. Or it might not. We’ll simply have to see.

the last dinner at Chez Tess

Yesterday: Yet another chock-realization that the cultures of Burkina Faso and Sweden are vastly different. Misunderstandings regarding laboratories and payments and bookings and how to get things done. Sometimes, just getting someone to answer the phone can be a whole-day mission. But now, hopefully, things have gotten solved and we’ll be able to finish the work here on a good note.

For dinner, we ordered in, because that was the only thing we had time for.

– – –

A last morning of internet. At 11, we’ll (hopefully) be picked up, go to Kaya for my last feedback sessions – and then the fieldwork is done for real.

I’m sure I’ll have loads to say once all impressions have had a chance to settled a little bit. For now, though, I just want to make sure everything gets done. Say what you may about Burkina Faso, it’s definitely not boring, at least. The suspense is having me hold my breath until the last possible moment.