Katja Malmborg

called to the military (October 26)

We were called to the gendarmerie in Ouahigouya. We had already been there once, to inform them that we were in the area doing research. We had been told to do it, as a safety precaution. And during the first meeting, everything went smoothly, we gave them copies of our passports and our phone numbers and that was it.

Now, though, we were called to another office, where another man sat with a serious face and explained that the person we had spoken to last was not the right one, that we needed to come back because we were foreign researchers and that was his responsibility. He wanted to hear about our projects, when and where we would be going, and then he asked if we had any papers. Quickly we got out the copies of our INERA, Stockholm Resilience Centre and SIDA/MFS certificates full of logos and signatures and stamps. I was happy we followed the advice we got of having tons of official looking papers on us, because we might need to prove without a doubt that we were here on legitimate business one day.

He agreed to let us go eventually, without anything more serious than the instruction to call if we ran into any trouble. I wonder, though, if that was all that it was. I got the feeling that they wanted to keep an eye on us. And what would have happened if we didn’t have all those documents on us? Would he have told us to leave?

I’ve heard many stories of the military and police doing strange and terrible things, but being a white, middle class and Swedish, I’ve never had to experience it myself. Now, it was only a faint, unspoken threat.

– – –

I call this piece: Lost in a millet field

the goat herding photo models

While walking around in a fallow/shrubland, I ran into these goats and their herders. The children started shouting for me to photograph them.

Later, I ran into them again, in another shrubland. It turned into even more photographs.

And finally, they had found Elli by one of her soil sample sites. There was no end to the hunger these boys had for being photographed.

I only wish I would be able to print the photos and give them to the boys. I always feel a little bit like I’m stealing from someone when I photograph them. I want to give something back too. I’ll have to look around some in Ouahigouya.

in Elli’s footsteps (October 26)

Most of the day today, I followed after Elli and her search for good places to dig for her samples. I collected GPS points for interesting landscape features. And photographed.

Not UFO activity, but a soil improvement strategy. They have dug down organic matter in the bare soil, hoping that it might make the land cultivatable.

underneath another tree (October 26)

I’m sitting under a tree by a homestead in Reko, next to a well. Two women are washing clothes under another tree. I’ve been walking around, trying to get to know the relationship between my satellite image based landcover classification and the real world.

Mostly, my map is wrong. The good thing is, I can understand why. I’ve interpreted the satellite image right, I just didn’t know the landscape. Now, I need to figure out how to fix it. I only have vague ideas this far. But I also have all spring to come up with something brilliant. So, I still have hope.

There are so many sounds here. Birds singing different tunes, hens clucking, roosters cuckooing, goats braying and donkeys screaming like it was the end of the world. There is also a low rattling sound that I think are the lizards. Wind in the trees. Grasshoppers. Or in the afternoon: the call to prayer from the village mosque.

And smells. Dry soil, smoke, the slightly sweet smell of drying, newly harvested millet. And sometimes: a whiff of wild thyme, or something very similar.

And the butterflies. Everywhere. Fluttering around the puddles by the well. The children, who have sat down to look at me in the shadow of the next tree, laughed at me when I chased the butterflies with my camera.

Things move slowly here. People are always doing something, but there doesn’t seem to be a rush. It’s an attitude, I think, but maybe even more the heat.

the angry feminist in me (October 25)

In a moment of weakness, I thought: If the men of this country don’t stop referring to ”a good woman”, as if there were mostly bad ones, and if they don’t swallow their pride and start helping out with the ”women’s chores” such as carrying grocery bags and preparing dinner, this country will never get anywhere.

I don’t know if this was Swedish bigotry from my part. I was too exhausted from heat and field work. It was just a very pure, desperate thought.

moments of waiting (October 25)

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.

first contact (October 25)

Today, after dropping Elli off in Reko, me, Desiré and Theo drove around all day visiting the three potential transect villages that I had picked out in the vicinity of Ouahigouya. There was a lot of time spent, sitting in the shadow under a tree, waiting for the right person to come back from a neighboring village or the fields. Other men somehow suddenly seemed to have nothing better to do but to also sit down to rest under the same tree, and the children gathered in clusters at a respectful distance but with curiousity shining through their eyes. Every new man that arrived wanted to greet us, and with Desiré there was a whole sequence of words and hand movements involved. For me though, being an ignorant white woman, they settled with just shaking my hand, saying some words in Mori that I didn’t understand and bowing slightly and then touching their chest with their right hand.

I quickly adopted the same gesture. I like the symbology of it. Shaking someones hand and then touching your chest. I imagine it means inviting someone into your heart.

I might be interpreting it completely wrong, but I think that’s my perogative. I am an ignorant white woman, after all.

Be that as it may, if they invited me into their hearts or not, all three village leaders agreed to take me on guided tours in their villages during next week. People here are really generous and I feel priviledged to be allowed to work here.

trials of traveling (October 24)

Sometimes, I don’t recongnize myself when I’m traveling. My moods really go to the extremes, things are amazing, and then horrible, it is fast and I can’t really keep track. At times, I just want to go home. At others, I feel I am in exactly where I should be.

I think I recognize the signs, though. It’s the getting used to being away, out of my comfort zone, in something wild and unknown. That’s when I need the small things that keep me grounded, the small safe zones in the middle of all this novelty.

My blue traveling silk sheets. I’ve had them ever since Bolivia in 2009. As long as I have them closest to my skin, sleeping feels okay.

Listening to podcasts in Swedish. This was something I started doing while in Canada in 2012, and it became such a comfort for me, hearing news from home when I lived in places where I had no one to speak Swedish to.

Writing. Writing always makes me find my way back to myself.

the culinary arts of a fieldworker (October 23)

After searching, without success, for a restaurant that served vegetarian food the first night in Ouahigouya, we realized we would have to cook our own food. So, we got permission to use the gasoline kitchen that we had brought with us, bought a bunch of vegetables, and started cooking in an unfurnished corner of our enormous room that we share, me, Elli, Desiré and Maurice (he will be leaving on Sunday, though).

It turned out really good, actually. There are plenty of nice vegetables here. Let’s see, though, how we feel about stir-fry and rice after tree weeks of fieldworking.