We were taken on a guided tour through Reko today with Madi, as an introduction to the landscape where we will be spending the coming seven weeks. It was hot, trying to handle tablet with maps in, GPS and camera at the same time was impossible, and there was so much variety in the landscape. I don’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t what we saw at least. This is going to be so interesting.

 

A field of white millet – the staple crop around here.

The newly harvested sesame crop drying in the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

Bissap. The seeds in the fruit are used as flavoring in sauces on festive occasions.

They also grow tomatoes.

Calabashes growing in the millet field.

The tree in the middle of the homestead. Children enjoying the excitement of visitors with fancy toys (read: GPSes and soil sampling equipment).

 

 

We all packed ourselves into the pickup truck together with the backpacks and shovels and infiltriometers and kitchen equipment and started the journey northward. Elli and I, the translator Desiré, a soil science PhD student, Maurice, who was coming to help Elli get started, and the driver of course. What felt like half the day was spent driving around Ouagadougou, though, looking for PVC pipes and gasoline for the gasoline cooker and then we stopped by one of the very few vegetarian restaurants in Ouaga. Elli was so happy. They even had grilled tofu on sticks, brochettes. A really rare treat in this meat obsessed country.

Once we got properly going, though, things went smoothly. The driver, Theo, drove fast but safely, the national road was in excellent condition and outside the window the landscape slowly became slightly less green, the trees slightly farther apart and the outside temperature slightly higher.

When we arrived in Ouahigouya, the third largest city in Burkina Faso, we just checked in at a guesthouse for governmental employees and researchers, and then we left again to go visit Reko, the village where Elli will be doing all her fieldwork.

Hanna, the SRC PhD student whose work we’re both building our studies on, worked a lot in Reko when she was here and has continued to be in contact with them. It’s as if the village has adopted her, so when we arrived, both me and Elli were welcomed like family by Madi, the CVD (the president of the Comité Villageois de Dévelopment). He had been measuring rainfall for Hanna, and he was so happy to see the photographs that I’d brought of Hanna and her baby and husband. He gave us a bag of newly harvested groundnuts.

 

It was very nice, being welcomed like that. Here, we had a village where they already liked us, where they were used to our weird scientist ways and where they cared about us, because of our connection to Hanna. I think things will go well here. I will not be working in Reko at all, but still. Visiting Reko the first time gave me a good feeling.

The first real day of fieldwork was spent going to Saria, an agricultural research station that INERA, our local partner and a governmental research institute, has run since the 1920s. We went there to pick up the toys that Elli will need for her sampling and measuring and weighing – basically when she plays with the dirt. (Paré, another researcher, who we met in Ouaga, told us about his father. The father was a farmer, and couldn’t understand why his son would want to go to university and study SOIL of all things. ”You’re like a child”, the father said, ”playing with dirt – and you call that science!”. And I guess that’s true, in a sense. Science is a meticulously well-structured game for adults.)

It was nice, getting out of Ouaga, seeing some of the real landscape. It was really green, which surprised me. But of course, it’s just in the end of the rainy season, why wouldn’t the trees be covered in leaves and the fields overflowing with high millet straws and small groundnut bushes.

At Saria, we did a lot of waiting. And photographing, to pass the time.

We got back to Ouaga late, way after dark, and ordered dinner to Chez Tess, trying take it easy one last night in the luxury of a cozy guesthouse, before we left for what would probably become some really strenuous field work.

It is weird, how life this close to the equator turns away from the modern age. The body adjusts to the sun. It has happened to me before, and it is happening now: the sun goes down around six. By seven, it’s pitch black. There are no street lights anywhere. Few houses have lamps strong enough to carry the light out to the street. By eight, my body tells me it’s time to go to sleep. It’s through sheer determination that I can stay awake until ten tonight to mend my straw hat and watch a little bit of Harry Potter.

In the morning, the reverse happens. I woke up at six-thirty this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. I spent more than an hour out on the porch visualizing geographical information (read: making digital maps) before Elli came out to have breakfast.

It’s a good thing, though, my body and the sun trumping the timelessness of the modern age. The midday heat is excruciating here. The best times to work are the hours just after sunrise and before sunset. Things are working out in favor of the thesis.

Me, on the other hand, will have to live with missing out on my night-cap-episode of Game of Thrones.

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And some photographs from today:

A street in central Ouagadougou.

 

The kids on our street. They ran after me, begging to be photographed.

Line, my supervisor, was only able to stay in Ouaga for a couple of days, so there was no time for us to land before we started going to meetings with collaborating researchers and translators. They were intense, those first days, and I was exhausted most of the time, from the heat and my brain having to work on overdrive constantly. But it was very good too, because what I realized at all these meetings was that there were a whole bunch of people here with an interest in our success and a great willingness to help with whatever we might need. It didn’t feel as scary anymore, knowing that Line would leave and me and Elli would have to make it on our own. Because, in the end, we are not alone. We’ll be an entire crew going out into the field, with ground support back in Ouaga should anything go wrong.

Before Line left, though, we managed to slip away to an artisan market, making sure that her stay in Ouaga wouldn’t consist of only meetings.

Burkinabe hand-woven cotton. It’s a thing. I’ll have to think of a use for it, because I would really like to buy some.

It was really an amazing place. Real quality stuff, with everything from traditional West African handicraft to really original art made out of recycled scrap metal. I didn’t buy anything, because I don’t want to carry it to our fieldwork site, but we’ll definitely come back. And if you’re a person who expects to get a belated Christmas present from me, expect to get something from this place.

Then Line left, and we were on our own. Not for long, though. In the evening, we were invited to dinner at Karin’s house. Karin is a former colleague of my mom’s who now works at the Swedish Embassy here. Her two small children were adorable, she and her husband really nice and she said that we’re welcome back anytime we feel like we need to visit a home in our quite rootless fieldwork life. Did I mention that people are so friendly and helpful here?