Is it time to see a doctor, perhaps, when the cracking sound of bones snapping does not really disturb you? Just a thought that crossed my mind after visiting Bazoulè, a village nearby Ouaga, where the big attraction is to see crocodiles eat live chickens.
I had already seen a doctor a few days before, when I was visiting Banfora. Whether it was food poisoning or something else, I don’t know, but it felt like a little monster had occupied my stomach and was fervently throwing back any food or liquid that I tried to put in there. It made me live through one of the most horrible nights ever, and exposed me to a serious risk of dehydration. When the vomiting started again next morning after an eight hour break, I gave up, went to the hotel reception desk, and broke down in tears while asking the hotel staff to help me get to a doctor.
But let me start where I should start: with my friend Linda arriving in Ouaga. Linda had decided to come and visit me, so I took a week off from work and went to collect her on the airport in the middle of the night. I was a bit worried, because she was coming with Royal Air Maroc, and I had had a 2,5 days delay when arriving with RAM, but we were lucky this time: she was only an hour late. This gave me the opportunity to wonder around ‘Ouagadougou International Airport’ a bit: the arrivals hall is non-existant, the departure hall resembles a carton box. Someone has hand-written ‘embarquement’ on a wall to indicate where to board. The detection machine for bags is used as an uncomfortable bed by bored staff.
After a day of relaxation in Ouaga, we left for Bobo on Monday by bus. Our favourite fellow-passenger by far was the guy who had a picture of himself and, presumably, his mother on his laptop’s desktop. Their portraits had been cut and pasted into a background of snow, atmospheric lights and Christmas trees (think Disney).
At Bobo, we did all the touristy things that one can do there, including admiring both the big cathedral, which looks like a hangar with a cross on top of it, and the big mosque, which is a mud building with lots of sticks sticking out of it (‘Sudanese style architecture’). We also took a stroll around the ancient part of town, where appearantly one can find sacred fish in the river. Later, a friend told me that some of them are made to wear earrings. When I told him I thought that that was rather cruel and wondered what would be the use of earrings to a fish, he simply answered ‘they’re sacred’. He himself thought that that answered it all.
The day after, we went a little more west even, to Banfora. When we arrived at the busstation, and I saw a goat amidst the luggage, I started to suspect what was going to happen, but I could hardly believe it. But yes: the goat was put into the dark cargo hold, together with the other luggage, and transported to Banfora that way. Upon arrival, he seemed quite relaxed, although he might also just have been in shock.
The road from Bobo to Banfora is lovely. Most of Burkina is flat, dry, brownish and covered in dust for most part of the year. In the west, however, there are some hills, the temperatures are much lower and nature is lush and green. Banfora itself proved to be quite uninteresting, but the surroundings make up for that. We decided to get a guide who could take us around. In retrospect, I think choosing the first little rasta guy we met on the street was perhaps not the best of ideas, but he managed to organise transport, find a friend to drive the other moped, and show us everything we wanted to see. I was not too happy with him taking a small longdrink glass of liquor at 11 in the morning to kickstart the day, but he assured me that that would not pose any problem, since he was used to that. ‘This is nothing for me’, he said in an attempt to reassure me. Normally, he drinks much more.
We started off by visiting the 1.8 billion year old rocks. They have been shaped by the wind and the sea, many, many years ago. It’s fascinating to find sea sand in the middle of a country where, nowadays, there is not a sea in sight. After this, we went to the famous waterfall of Banfora, where I took a pleasant shower under the stream of water, before heading to the hippo lake. There, a fisherman took us with him in his small boat. Hippo’s are dangerous, because they are strong and aggressive. They won’t eat you, but they might hurt you, and if they ruin your boat, you will be splashing around in a lake filled with crocodiles… Fortunately, we only saw the hippo’s from great distance.
By then, however, I had started to feel unwell. I had enjoyed the day very much, especially driving around the countryside on the back of the moped. The other guide was a rasta too, and smoked almost non-stop. The smell of sigarettes and sweat made me think of all those agreable moments I have spent in pubs and clubs, although that wasn’t really what I was expecting to experience when I decided to take a trip into nature. He did manage to get me back to the hotel safe, though, where I went to bed immediately.
After my plea for help at the reception desk, I was put on the back of a moped and driven to the local pharmacie by someone called Amadou. There, there was a doctor, who was willing to see me, although he was chatting to some friends in his office, so I was made to wait for at least half an hour. Nausseated and dehydrated, I hung in a chair with my eyes closed. When the doctor was finally available, he prescriped me an anti-vomiting medication, with the air of someone who has just found a permanent cure against AIDS and is handing it out freely. The medicine wasn’t free, of course, but payed for by Amadou, who refused to take money for it afterwards. It was kindness all over once more, and I was finally able to retain some water in my body.
Since our hotel was fully booked, and I was unable to travel, we went to another hotel, where I slept for some hours, before going out to look for food with Linda. We ate in a relaxed restaurant, where they had an unusually strict anti-smoking policy, and where they severed good food. I enjoyed the food, the first in 30 hours, much. The next day, I felt a bit better, and we took a bus back to Ouaga. With Linda not feeling too well as well, we took it easy the next days, although we had one more wish: to see the crocodiles of Bazoulè.
Sunday morning, we got up early, and drove to Bazoulè with my friend Adama. The village, off the road to Bobo, was dusty, dry, and very hot, even at 10 in the morning. At the reception desk, we had to pay a small entry fee, and we had to buy the chickens. We bought two, which were held upside down by the legs by our guide, who took us for a little walk, before stepping into the green. There, we saw a crocodile.
The first chicken was now bound to a stick by its legs, and in that way used by our guide to attract the attention of the crocodile, who, slowly and lazy, started to creep out of his shelter. I took a few steps back. The chicken was flung around in order to make the crocodile stand on his two legs, and then put aside, to give us the opportunity to caress (!) the croc. After that, the chicken was released, and snap, that was the end of the chicken. The sounds that followed were, respectively, ‘crack, crack, crack, gulp’.
We then walked to the side of the lake, where about seven crocs were hanging around. Chicken number 2 was bound to a stick too, abused to get the crocs to move, and then released, to end in a similar manner as chicken number 1. Meanwhile, other tourist had arrived, giving us the opportunity to see it all once more. I was captured by three children from the village, who were excited and without fear when watching all this happen from (too) small a distance.
Bazoulè has another attraction too: big turtles. After seeing all the violence and murder, it was comforting to see a fellow-vegetarian nibble on a leaf of lettuce.
Linda left that night, and Monday, holidays were over and I had to get back to work at the embassy again. The illness had not left my body yet, making me feel quivery and weird, and together with the interrupted night of sleep, and a slight nausea whenever I thought about the crocs in Bazoulè, I arrived at work more dead than alive. But well, when it comes to facing death, I guess the chickens of Bazoulè have a somewhat more impressive story to tell.
For the gruesome pictures to accompany this blog, please go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=342289&id=669020293&l=4dbc6bbf9a.
I had already seen a doctor a few days before, when I was visiting Banfora. Whether it was food poisoning or something else, I don’t know, but it felt like a little monster had occupied my stomach and was fervently throwing back any food or liquid that I tried to put in there. It made me live through one of the most horrible nights ever, and exposed me to a serious risk of dehydration. When the vomiting started again next morning after an eight hour break, I gave up, went to the hotel reception desk, and broke down in tears while asking the hotel staff to help me get to a doctor.
But let me start where I should start: with my friend Linda arriving in Ouaga. Linda had decided to come and visit me, so I took a week off from work and went to collect her on the airport in the middle of the night. I was a bit worried, because she was coming with Royal Air Maroc, and I had had a 2,5 days delay when arriving with RAM, but we were lucky this time: she was only an hour late. This gave me the opportunity to wonder around ‘Ouagadougou International Airport’ a bit: the arrivals hall is non-existant, the departure hall resembles a carton box. Someone has hand-written ‘embarquement’ on a wall to indicate where to board. The detection machine for bags is used as an uncomfortable bed by bored staff.
After a day of relaxation in Ouaga, we left for Bobo on Monday by bus. Our favourite fellow-passenger by far was the guy who had a picture of himself and, presumably, his mother on his laptop’s desktop. Their portraits had been cut and pasted into a background of snow, atmospheric lights and Christmas trees (think Disney).
At Bobo, we did all the touristy things that one can do there, including admiring both the big cathedral, which looks like a hangar with a cross on top of it, and the big mosque, which is a mud building with lots of sticks sticking out of it (‘Sudanese style architecture’). We also took a stroll around the ancient part of town, where appearantly one can find sacred fish in the river. Later, a friend told me that some of them are made to wear earrings. When I told him I thought that that was rather cruel and wondered what would be the use of earrings to a fish, he simply answered ‘they’re sacred’. He himself thought that that answered it all.
The day after, we went a little more west even, to Banfora. When we arrived at the busstation, and I saw a goat amidst the luggage, I started to suspect what was going to happen, but I could hardly believe it. But yes: the goat was put into the dark cargo hold, together with the other luggage, and transported to Banfora that way. Upon arrival, he seemed quite relaxed, although he might also just have been in shock.
The road from Bobo to Banfora is lovely. Most of Burkina is flat, dry, brownish and covered in dust for most part of the year. In the west, however, there are some hills, the temperatures are much lower and nature is lush and green. Banfora itself proved to be quite uninteresting, but the surroundings make up for that. We decided to get a guide who could take us around. In retrospect, I think choosing the first little rasta guy we met on the street was perhaps not the best of ideas, but he managed to organise transport, find a friend to drive the other moped, and show us everything we wanted to see. I was not too happy with him taking a small longdrink glass of liquor at 11 in the morning to kickstart the day, but he assured me that that would not pose any problem, since he was used to that. ‘This is nothing for me’, he said in an attempt to reassure me. Normally, he drinks much more.
We started off by visiting the 1.8 billion year old rocks. They have been shaped by the wind and the sea, many, many years ago. It’s fascinating to find sea sand in the middle of a country where, nowadays, there is not a sea in sight. After this, we went to the famous waterfall of Banfora, where I took a pleasant shower under the stream of water, before heading to the hippo lake. There, a fisherman took us with him in his small boat. Hippo’s are dangerous, because they are strong and aggressive. They won’t eat you, but they might hurt you, and if they ruin your boat, you will be splashing around in a lake filled with crocodiles… Fortunately, we only saw the hippo’s from great distance.
By then, however, I had started to feel unwell. I had enjoyed the day very much, especially driving around the countryside on the back of the moped. The other guide was a rasta too, and smoked almost non-stop. The smell of sigarettes and sweat made me think of all those agreable moments I have spent in pubs and clubs, although that wasn’t really what I was expecting to experience when I decided to take a trip into nature. He did manage to get me back to the hotel safe, though, where I went to bed immediately.
After my plea for help at the reception desk, I was put on the back of a moped and driven to the local pharmacie by someone called Amadou. There, there was a doctor, who was willing to see me, although he was chatting to some friends in his office, so I was made to wait for at least half an hour. Nausseated and dehydrated, I hung in a chair with my eyes closed. When the doctor was finally available, he prescriped me an anti-vomiting medication, with the air of someone who has just found a permanent cure against AIDS and is handing it out freely. The medicine wasn’t free, of course, but payed for by Amadou, who refused to take money for it afterwards. It was kindness all over once more, and I was finally able to retain some water in my body.
Since our hotel was fully booked, and I was unable to travel, we went to another hotel, where I slept for some hours, before going out to look for food with Linda. We ate in a relaxed restaurant, where they had an unusually strict anti-smoking policy, and where they severed good food. I enjoyed the food, the first in 30 hours, much. The next day, I felt a bit better, and we took a bus back to Ouaga. With Linda not feeling too well as well, we took it easy the next days, although we had one more wish: to see the crocodiles of Bazoulè.
Sunday morning, we got up early, and drove to Bazoulè with my friend Adama. The village, off the road to Bobo, was dusty, dry, and very hot, even at 10 in the morning. At the reception desk, we had to pay a small entry fee, and we had to buy the chickens. We bought two, which were held upside down by the legs by our guide, who took us for a little walk, before stepping into the green. There, we saw a crocodile.
The first chicken was now bound to a stick by its legs, and in that way used by our guide to attract the attention of the crocodile, who, slowly and lazy, started to creep out of his shelter. I took a few steps back. The chicken was flung around in order to make the crocodile stand on his two legs, and then put aside, to give us the opportunity to caress (!) the croc. After that, the chicken was released, and snap, that was the end of the chicken. The sounds that followed were, respectively, ‘crack, crack, crack, gulp’.
We then walked to the side of the lake, where about seven crocs were hanging around. Chicken number 2 was bound to a stick too, abused to get the crocs to move, and then released, to end in a similar manner as chicken number 1. Meanwhile, other tourist had arrived, giving us the opportunity to see it all once more. I was captured by three children from the village, who were excited and without fear when watching all this happen from (too) small a distance.
Bazoulè has another attraction too: big turtles. After seeing all the violence and murder, it was comforting to see a fellow-vegetarian nibble on a leaf of lettuce.
Linda left that night, and Monday, holidays were over and I had to get back to work at the embassy again. The illness had not left my body yet, making me feel quivery and weird, and together with the interrupted night of sleep, and a slight nausea whenever I thought about the crocs in Bazoulè, I arrived at work more dead than alive. But well, when it comes to facing death, I guess the chickens of Bazoulè have a somewhat more impressive story to tell.
For the gruesome pictures to accompany this blog, please go to http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=342289&id=669020293&l=4dbc6bbf9a.
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