BIlamperga Library

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The Art of Doing Nothing -or- Taking Tea in Burkina

In the States life is always on the go. Even an event like having a cup of coffee or tea has been turned into a moving event with the invention of paper cups, sleeves, travel mugs and drive-thru Starbucks. It has become harder and harder to just sit and enjoy your drink. When those times do arise we shun converstation and turn to our books, our laptops, our homework. Please don't expect me to be social while I sip my grande non-fat 2 pump peppermint mocha with whip cream.
But then there is Burkina. As usual life here is a little different, even drinking, or as we say here, taking tea. Taking tea is a process. It is not something you simply drink and move on with life. Taking tea is an event that can last more than five hours. When you take tea you sit together with people (shock number one) and you spend hours without books, music or other diversions (shock number two). You just sit, talk and watch as one of the guys makes the tea.
Okay, I know what you're thinking. How on earth can making and drinking tea take so long. You just put the tea in hot water let it seep for a few minutes and you're ready to go, right? Not so here. Let me see if I can paint you a picture. First you get some charcol going (no hot plates here). Then you start boiling water in a little tiny tea pot. Added to this is loose leaf China Green Gunpowder Tea. The boils for upwards of 10-20 mins. Then the tea is poured into a glass, wait not done yet. Then it it's poured back into the teapot, then back in the glass, and on and on. Ending in the teapot, it is put bqck on the charcol to boil again. After 5-10 minutes you fill the glass half full with sugar and do the pour into glass, pour into teapot thing again for a while trying to get a nice foam on top. Once the foam is formed the foam, not the tea is put into two or three shot glasses. The tea goes back on the charcol to boil again. Finally after another 5-10 minutes the tea is poured into a shot glass and everyone has a shot of tea. But wait, we're not done yet. We don't want to waste those tea leaves, so we do the whole process at least two more times, with the tea getting a little weaker and a lot sweeter each time.
So, wait, we have one guy sitting there making tea for hours, what happens to the rest of us. We sit. Just sit and chat. Five hours of just sitting, no laptop, no books, no driving the car to work. Just sitting there, honestly watching the pot boil. I'll admit it, the first couple times I 'took' tea I didn't make it. I couldn't last. I would pass by, maybe stop for a half hour, take one of the shots, and then continue on my way. Honestly, how is anyone supposed to do nothing for five hours, just be social? But then something happened. Not really sure what. But I started to gte the hang of this whole sitting thing. I found out it was okay to just sit and do nothing. Just sit and listen to the conversation (hey, it's mostly in Gulmancema, speaking might be pushing it for me). And, you know what, I think they have it right here. It's great to just sit, do nothing, and watch the pot boil.
(But don't get me wrong. I would still kill for a grande non-fat 2 pump peppermint mocha with whip cream.)

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Fine line between courage and stupidity

Once again Burkina has given me the opportunity to test my limits and hey I survived so this is a good story.

Transport is always an adventure in Burkina. From over crowded buses, to sheep that bite while they're sitting under you, to bush taxis that breakdown every 100 meters are fixed by replacing the filter with a bic pen, you never know what you're going to get (if you get a ride at all). By and far the most reliable transportation is my own two legs via biking, at least usually.

Last week I decided to make the trek up to see another volunteer who lives a little more than 30km away. Since we are in the rainy season it's not too hot, so I figured I would make a nice bike ride out of it and probably beat any bush taxi anyway. The rainy season has other effects besides giving a little break from the heat and since it decided to rain for 16 hours the day before my trip I was expecting some mud, but hey I can handle that. As I was leaving my house a concerned neighbor stopped to tell me I wouldn't be able to bike because there was a lot of water in the dam, but he hadn't left village in a week so what did he know. I said thanks and that I would be fine, turned my ipod on and I was off.

So, once again, I was reminded that when a Burkinabe tells you something about the weather or effects of the weather he probably knows more than you do. I had a nice not too hard bike ride of 15 km and then as I was arriving at the dam I noticed a good amount of people just standing on around on both sides of the dam talking and messing with bikes and motos. So I stopped to see what was up and recognized a guy from village who was motoing a friend north. We said hi and he proceeded to tell me me that the water was really strong. I once again said thanks and that I'd be okay and started to walk my bike across (hey I was smart enough to know riding my bike was not an option). The water was flowing over the dam really fast and was about knee deep. I got about 10 feet across when my bike started being lifted horizontally and dragged away from me. There was no way me and my bike were going to make it across like this. Somehow I managed to turn me and my bike around and made it back to the edge. Of course on arriving all the locals were smiling and telling me that I had given it a good try. But I was going to get across this dam, somehow. My friend from village told me he wasn't going any further because he didn't want to loose his moto, and then suggest we tie his friends stuff on my bike and the other guy would walk the bikes and I just had to walk by the side and hold onto the bike rack. Sounded like a good idea to me. So I put my helmet back on (hey there were big rocks on the other side of the dam) and put my flip flops on my wrist and we were off. Once again we made it about 10 feet and started to loose the bike. This was not good, if that bike went over I would be stuck in the middle of nowhere and would also loose all my stuff that was in my bag. So we stopped. The wonderfully nice guy who I had never met and still don't know his name, said he would just carry my bike the rest of the way and all I would have to do is walk myself. This I could do, and we were off again. About half way across I noticed the bags starting to slip off the back of the bike and tried to hurry up and catch the guy with the bike. Before I got there, plop, there went my nalgene, over the side of the dam. Did I try to grab it? Nope. Not that stupid. But I did get to the bike before the bags fell off. And thus we stopped again in the middle of the dam to take the bags off and strap them on my back. We made the last half of the dam without too much more drama and we were back on at least semi dry land. I was soaked from head to toe but still standing so it was a good morning. I hopped on my bike and rode the last 15 km in relative ease. So courageous for deciding to cross or stupid for doing it. I'm still not really sure, but hey it's one more story.

This a picture of a dam we crossed in a car when it was only about ankle deep.