So, when we landed, an hour late, our temperatures were checked as soon as we entered the airport, next to large signs informing us about the symptoms of Ebola. The lines to the passport/visa-check confused us, and we ended up standing last in three different lines until a border police took pity on us and our EU passports, looked at our nice visas, and just waved us into the hot, chaotic luggage waiting hall which became our first experience on Burkinabe soil. And people had so much luggage, it’s crazy, and all of them were standing so close to the luggage rolling thingy that it was almost impossible to see anything. Elli got her bag quite fast but mine took forever and I started thinking about what I would need to buy in case my bag took longer than a couple of days to find its way to me – but then it arrived and we could go out into the sunshine where Line, my supervisor, waved at us from behind all other waiting family members and friends of faraway travelers.

It was a nice afternoon, despite our exhaustion. After a short rest, Elli and I sat down on the porch of our guesthouse together with Line and talked about our projects and plans for field work and other practicalities while sharing a bottle of Burkinabe beer and enjoying the afternoon sun glimmering through the trees in the small guesthouse garden.

In the evening, we were invited to dinner at a reseacher’s house. He got his Ph.D. in Sweden, but is now back here, working with agroforestry and remote sensing. A really good contact to make for me, and I worked really hard on staying focused while he explained some of the particularities of remote sensing in a semi-arid region like Sahel for me. I’ll try to meet up with him again later on, when I’m not all fuzzy in the head from two days of airplane strain.

We slept like babies.

Wednesday, October 15th : On a plane from Stockholm to Addis Ababa

Mr. P and my last minute “tax-free” candy gift shopping for all the important gatekeeper people that we might need to make like us.

The last thing I see of Sweden: rain.

I’m exhausted. It’s like all the air is gone, all substance sucked out of me as soon as the plane left the ground. I was planning to do stuff, maybe read a bit, write a little, but I simply cant seem to focus.

The plane is small. We’re stopping in Vienna to refuel. That’s how small it is. I can’t think now. I’ll watch some Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince instead.

* * *

Thursday, October 16^{th :} At Bole International Airport

Our flight to Ouagadougou is delayed for almost an hour. Our flight from Stockholm/Vienna was early. There is a lot of time to kill. I didn’t sleep much on the flight, for the obvious reason that I was sitting in an airplane chair, but also because of the stop in Vienna and that they didn’t serve dinner until midnight. I watched some Harry Potter, and then I fell in and out of sleep.

The descent to Addis Ababa was incredible. So green, and mountaineous, with a patchwork of fields. Morning was coming in a pink sunrise.

Just a couple of days ago, I had a meeting with an old remote sensing teacher of mine about my project, and a very similar project that he was about to become part of with some researchers from the human geography and ecology departments. That project is in Ethiopia, and Marcus, the teacher, jokingly said that I should go to Ethiopia as well, while I’m at it, to do some groundtruthing for him too. I almost said I actually could, seeing as I’m already planning to stay in Ethiopia for a week or two on my way back home. Why not, right, when the plane is already stopping there. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t want to seem too eager.

From this vantage point, though, it seemed like a really appealing place to go groundtruthing in. All that greenery will probably have gotten brown around the edges in two months time when I get back, though.

Now, they’re saying we have to go confirm our seat at the gate. The plane is overbooked. Let’s see if we make it all the way to Ouagadougou.

The first half of October is a blur. I think I just rushed, without thought.

Jonas had a party. On the way there, we walked past a dry-cleaners with a pretty lady on the window. Odd and funny, thought we, pre-party peppy and tipsy. I asked Jessica to pose with her. I must say, there really is a resemblance.

Ads for a ski resort were put up in the tube. I wish I could have followed their advice. No snow had fallen yet, though, and the other thing was just impossible.

I did have the Christmas themed goodbye party. People brought lots of food and it turned out really nice. I didn’t really possess the presence of mind to actually sit down and talk with that many people, and once everyone had left (most people left at the same time, some kind of weird train timetable related phenomenon), I just wanted to cry. I had been feeling for days that I needed to say a proper goodbye to people, that it was important, that something might happen, three months is a long time. Be it premonition, or just pre-travel jitters (probably the latter), I felt like I had failed.

But the feeling passed, and at least I got to see most of my friends before I left, even if we didn’t have any deep conversations. Some of them I also saw a couple of times in school after the party, and in the end, I think I left Sweden on good terms. Nothing major unresolved, few regrets.

I think I wrote once that the only legacy most of us leave in the world, are the memories of us that stick with the people that we’ve met. This might sound a bit morbid, but I’m not only talking about what’s left of us after we die. I can be alive, and still leave a legacy behind in a person that I meet by being part of creating an important, maybe even life-changing memory. I’ve had encounters like that, both through random meetings on the road, but mostly with friends and family, of course. In the same way, I wish to have a positive impact on the people that I meet, even if it only is through inviting people to have a nice time at a party that will pass and probably not be remembered a couple of years from now. But still there is the feeling, something good.

So, to summarize, I think what I left with people when I stepped on that airplane on Arlanda, were mostly good things. And when I get back, there’ll be more important memories to share. But if, by the randomness of life, anyone of all those people that I said goodbye to won’t be around when I get back (many of them are international students, after all, an infamously unreliable bunch with a tendency to move back home when you least want them to), that is OK too. In the long scheme of things.

On Sunday evening, I put all the stuff I should pack in piles on my floor. And this time, unlike when going to Norway in June, I remembered Mr. P too.

As a nice conclusion to this hectic, chaotic fall of mine, I had a leisurely bikeride home from saying goodbye to aunt Kaarina and Anders on Tuesday evening. It was dark already, and it had rained quite a lot that day, but now it was only drizzling. It’s actually a really nice bikeride, the one I’ve taken to and from university, at least the stretch from my house to the Skanstull bridge, after which the extended city center starts. I bike through this residential area with low apartment buildings and villas built during the 1910’s, ’20’s and ’30’s. A really calm and sweet little neighborhood, with long, maple-lined streets. The last stretch even runs along the Forest Graveyard, a UNESCO world heritage site.

This particular night, in the darkness and the drizzle, there was the smell of fall in the air. The maples had started to loose their leaves, covering the bike lane in a red and yellow slippery carpet. And I thought: Maybe it was this biking that kept me just about above the surface druring this crazy fall. That, and the weirdly winding, burrowing, enlightening conversations I’ve had with some quite unexpected people. All this crazy has made me even more honest than otherwise, and open in a way that has made things spill over, on people that I haven’t really had that kind of relationship with. Mostly, though, it worked out. Sometimes, being unintentionally honest about yourself and vulnerable can make people get a feel for you so much faster. It isn’t always something that will scare people off, it can also be a way to connect.

And the biking. About an hour to university, and an hour back home. Rain or shine. A kind of mobile meditation, the monotonous activity of pedaling. It has been a way to ground me, and I think. To put me in contact with my body, when my entire world has been focused on my mind. When I think back on this period of my life, biking might be one of the things that I’ll remember most strongly.

And I will miss it. Both the conversations, and the biking. It was with a pang of melancholy, that I carried the bike up to the gazebo and locked it.

Oh well. I’ll be able to pick up the biking again once I get back. And I can always start writing weirdly honest e-mails to unexpecting people. Biking is like biking, after all, and I do have a weakness for the written word.

One day, someone had written this on the wall of the Skarpnäck tube station. It says: Who cares if the weather is getting worse if people refuse to remove the icicles from their hearts.

Interesting thought. Although, being a master student in sustainability science, I wouldn’t say I don’t care at all about the weather.

A weekend in the end of September, a group of friends and I packed our bags full of food and took the boat out to a cabin in the archipelago to have a late crayfish party.

It was nice, to get away, to get out, and to spend time with friends that I’ve known for a very long time. Speaking Swedish for a change. Talking about Swedish culture, not as the one who has to explain the oddities of my native country, but as someone who’s recently become quite out of touch with the goings-on in contemporary Swedish literature, film, music and politics and having things being explained to me by other, more up-to-date, even professional pop culture people.

Eating too much, singing Swedish schnapps songs and wearing silly hats. We even went for a midnight swim, me and the three boys. Kirke and Hanna didn’t dare. Later, when undressing for bed, I noticed that I had managed to scrape up an ugly row of scratches on my leg when climbing up out of the water in the starlit September darkness. The scars are still there, on my knee.

The sea is a beautiful thing. I spent big parts of my Sunday morning standing on a rock, looking at the small waves making the seagrass move with such incredible grace.

Leaving the island, it was very windy. Kirke wanted to capture my hair flying, but I can’t believe how tired I look. I don’t remember feeling tired. But I guess it was the whole fall, from August to now, I over-strained myself for many different reasons and that leaves a mark. At least I was happy, there on the wharf, waiting for the boat in the sunshine.

And so where the others.

The amazing three. I’ve known Hanna since I was seven, and Kirke since I was eight. There is a security in it that can’t really be explained. Something that circumstances can’t really touch anymore.

I had a walk with Elin and Ruth on the last really warm day of the season. I gave them the bag I was supposed to give them on Ruth’s Welcome-to-the-world-party, but that I hadn’t managed to finish. Babies are amazing. Especially Elin’s.

And that life can turn in so many different directions, you meet people when you happen to be in the same place and then things change but it is still possible to meet and talk and share about each other’s lives, still making sense for each other. Making life so much more rich.

I mentioned it before. My life during the weeks leading up to my departure to Burkina Faso were chaos. I ran from place to place and task to task and barely had time to sleep. And I probably didn’t do a good job with anything, not with research preparations nor with socializing with friends. I wasn’t completely present anywhere.

I took photographs, though, and some of them were even quite nice. Or they told a story. I had thoughts of what I should write about them, when I took them, but then I never had the time to actually compose any blog posts. So, I’ll do that now instead. While sitting on the porch of our Ouagadougou guesthouse, in the 30 + degree heat. While the motorbikes, people and chickens out on the street and someone listening to Angélique Kidjo (or someone very like her) in the house next door creates the Sunday noon soundtrack.

My mom had a party in the end of August, and Kirke’s dog Zorro was there. He quickly found a spot where he felt he fit in.

This was just before Natalia left for Scotland and her royal art school in Glasgow. Three years she’s going to be away. I should be used to us being in different places, ever since highschool graduation with her travels in Southeast Asia and Bolivia and mine in North America and studies in Uppsala. But still. Who am I going to watch TV shows with now? We didn’t even have time to finish the first season of Twin Peaks now before she left. I’ve heard of people watching films or TV shows while at the same time being connected via Skype. Maybe that’s what we should do, once I get back to better internet connections. Really embrace this globalized and digitalized world of ours.

I’ll definitely go visit her in Scotland too, though. Nothing can replace a real Natalia hug, or just lying on a couch, eating artichoke and drinking port together while watching something corny like Pushing Daisies or unnecessarily rich like True Blood or Game of Thrones. I like Scotland. I like Natalia even more.

* * *

One weekend, I went to Uppsala to have dinner with Hanna, the Ph.D. student whose work both me and Elli are going to build our work in here in Burkina. She’s on maternity leave now, but being the incredibly generous person that she is, she invited us for dinner in her and her Burkinabe husband’s home, so that we could talk about our work and ask any questions that we might have about Burkina Faso. Hanna’s baby was amazingly cute, as babies usually are, the Burkinabe food that her husband had prepared was delicious, and their general overwhelming positivity toward our work and our trip made some of our worries go away. It was really nice of her, to let us come.

I arrived a bit early to Uppsala, though, before the dinner, so I decided to take a walk though my old neighborhood, from my brief time as a Uppsala peace and conflict research student.

I biked though this park, down the hill from the Uppsala castle, every time I went to the city center, or choir practice at Västgöta nation (sorority?), or to the department. It was beautiful then, in the fall when the trees turned red and yellow and the birds in the pond were being fed by old people, while the water in the Fyris river leisurely flowed by under the Iceland bridge. It was just the same now.

There were still roses blooming in the botanical garden, situated just a couple of blocks from where I used to live, even though it was already the end of September. Fall was uncommonly mild this year.

This is the apple tree where I stole most of my apples that Uppsala fall. Oh, how much apple sauce I made. My whole kitchen was covered in apple rings drying on knitting needles balanced on cups. My apartment smelled of apples from September to November, I just couldn’t let them lie and rot there on the ground, it became an obsession of mine. Taking care of all the neighborhood apples. Night-time ventures into gardens, picking the fallen apples, filling endless bags with them, and then precariously transporting them home on my bike. Thinking back on it now, those apple adventures are among my fondest memories from my time in Uppsala.

Sadly, no one as apple crazy seems to be around now to take care of this season’s yield.

Stadsskogen, the city forest, situated just down the street from my house. Here, I ran together with Svante, the certified hiking guide and crossfit training fanatic who tried to get an outdoor training group started in our very big class. Most times, though, I was the only one who showed up. I guess political science students aren’t very outdoorsy people. And it couldn’t have been particularly rewarding for him, training with me, because compared to him I was incredibly unfit and also not particularly driven in my training. I just thought that it was nice to be outdoors, after all the studying.

Supposedly, it was a great mushroom year this fall. I wouldn’t know. I never had the time to find out for myself.

Uppsala has uncommonly little street art for being a university town. Except for this, I didn’t see any throughout my entire walk.

I spent the night on Hannes’ couch in Uppsala, and had an incredible Sunday brunch at V-Dala nation together with him, his girlfriend Olivia and a friend of hers. They served everything from scrambled eggs and sausages (that I didn’t eat), to a salad buffé and even chocolate pudding with whipped cream. There are few activities that are more enjoyable than spending three Sunday midday hours slowly eating a outlandishly decadent brunch in good company. I could barely move, though, once we had to leave. Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t live in Uppsala anymore. My combination of laziness and love for food wouldn’t fare well with the brunches.

In the afternoon, I went with Hannes and Olivia to have dinner with his family. Their beautiful ex-rectory home lies in the middle of the farmlands right inbetween Uppsala and Stockholm. The fields are being prepped for the winter.

Patterns of harvest.

 

In the garden, the fall flowers are still blooming.

 

And the house is such a beautiful, homey place. Hannes’ family so friendly and fun. All in all, it was a very nice weekend.

We landed. It was hot. We got confused about which passport check line to stand in. It was hot. My backpack wouldn’t come. It was hot. Finally it arrived. It was hot. My supervisor Line, who arrived yesterday, met us among all the people waiting for pilgrims returning from Mekka.

We got to the guesthouse, showered, had some Burkinabe beer, rested a bit, went for dinner at a researcher’s house, felt confused about the French. Came back to the guesthouse, made the bed, exhausted – finally the chance for a good night’s sleep.

Still hot.

I’ll update you more tomorrow. Possibly. Now: oblivion.

– – –

I had the most delicious papaya for dessert after dinner today.

Sitting on the plane, waiting for boarding to be done. Now, there’s no turning back.

I’ve had my last taste of Swedish water, in the dirty airport restroom. I’ve bought candy to cure homesickness. I’m done. I feel like all my parts are actually in the same place now. Sitting here, in the tiny airplane seat.

Now, I will watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the groundtruthing tablet, and get myself ready for the Sahel heat.

Today, Stockholm is rainy.

This is what I woke up to this morning.

Sometimes, what you need is just a little bit of sunshine and ocean. Some day-after-Prosecco sleepiness. And a small house full of friends and a dog.

I’m still running around blind, though.