griffin in ghana: BURKINA FASO - Country of Honest Men

Driving through Ghana, whether on long road trips or just in a short ride on the tro tro is just so magnificent. Unlike in American, where everyone is indoors in the A/C, people live their lives on their streets. Every time I’m in car and drive by villages or little markets, I feel like I get a peek into these peoples’ lives. People live and actually live outdoors. I get to see children dancing, boys playing soccer, women cooking, men doing their crafts, their hanging laundry… essentially, their everyday life. It’s just so unbelievable. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. Just seeing the happy babies and the working adults just makes me so happy every time I see it. So driving to Burkina Faso, although I was sleeping for about seventy five percent of the car trip, I got to see so much of people’s lives.

Each way, the trip was twenty hours total. Fifteen hours to Bolgatanga, a city in northern Ghana, then five hours the next day to cross the border to get to Ouagadougou (waga-doo-goo). The trip was mostly all of us sleeping, a little bit of filming by our TA Yao for his documentary on our trip to FESPACO (mostly while we were sleepy or just groggy because of lack of sleep or just waking from sleep), and occasionally stopping for food. The soundtrack for our trip: Christian Pop, Bob Marley, and Celine Dion. Thank you Immanuel and George (our drivers).

The drive up through Ghana was so gorgeous. Just seeing the change in scenery from dense rainforest close to Accra and the coast, but as we moved north, it got drier and drier and we saw more desert. The humidity literally disappears and all the trees are gone. I don’t know if its less humid because there are fewer trees or if there are fewer trees because its less humid, but either way – as we went north, there were fewer trees and it was less humid. There was a lot of wildlife too. No.. no elephants or tigers or anything. Mostly livestock. Lots of cows, pigs, goats – mostly animals that the families have to live off of. The architecture too changed as we got more north. In the north, it has much more of an Islamic influence and a lot of the architecture revealed that. I’m not really sure how to explain how except for the architecture of the mosques was so beautiful. And a lot of the houses were circular and painted with really cool designs. We could also tell the difference because of the way of transportation. Many more people ride bikes and motos in Burkina – it’s so cute, and way more eco-friendly.

Driving into Ouaga was captivating. I loved it. We saw hundreds of people on bikes and motos. Many of which were beautiful Burkinabe (Burkina-bay) women fully clothed in their traditional fabrics, carrying pounds of goods on their heads, with babies wrapped to their backs. African women, from what I can tell from Ghana and Burkina, are SO coordinated and postured, its beautiful. It was also SO dry. It was just like home. Being in a desert was just what I needed. I’ve been so suffocated by the humidity here in Ghana, and being in Burkina was heavenly. Everything in Burkina was just so clean too. In Ghana there is a lot of trash (and no I’m not trash talking it, its just a reality), but Burkina, and I don’t know if it was just for FESPACO or what, but it was SO clean. The food in Ouaga was so delicious also. We had baguettes for almost every meal with eggs or avocados and this wonderful spicy pepper stuff that I ended buying a bottle of because it was so so good. Ouaga also had STRAWBERRIES! Strawberries in Ghana can cost around 20 cedi for a little crate, whereas in Burkina its 1000 CFA (Francophone West African money) for a kilo of strawberries. Yeah – get our your conversion chart because that means nothing to me either. It was a lot of strawberries though and they were so ripe and so delicious. One of my only complaints about Burkina was… my BIGGEST PET PEAVE EVER. Smoking. Being a Francophone country, most of the country smoked. And they didn’t just smoke, they literally had cigarettes in their mouths most of the time and it just killed me. But that was its only flaw. I loved Ouaga – it was so relaxing, even though a huge film festival was ensuing and everyone was quite nice… as far as I was concerned, not knowing French, almost at all.

Not speaking French was quite frustrating for me. I really understand now how difficult it is for people who come to the US or really anywhere not knowing a language. Its hard to find your way around. It hard to know what anything is. Its hard to order food. Its hard to shop. Its hard to have any sort of relationship with the people. Its just plain hard. Thank goodness Andrea and Katja had taken French in high school because without them I literally think I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Andrea helped me get my new ring and my FESPACO shirt for a good price. Really Andrea just helped me with everything. I was so thankful for Andrea and Katja on this trip and realized how essential it is to be with a French speaker if I go to Togo, another Francophone country neighboring Ghana.

Okay so the reason I was in Burkina Faso: FESPACO! It’s the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou – guess that acronym is FESPACO is French? So being in a Francophone country means - most of the films are going to be in French. This was a problem for me because I don’t speak French. Even though that was a little frustrating, I did see a few great movies in the short time we were at FESPACO. I saw a really great short documentary on the public transportation in Algeria – it was about the corruption in the system and how there are children drivers/operators and it was just really good – AND IN ENGLISH! I saw another South African film which was in… English some of it and then in Afrikaans – with all French subtitles. So I could half understand that film, what I did see and understand I liked though. Unfortunately the name is escaping me right now. Most of the other films, being in French, I slept through. I guess that’s not too surprising because that’s what I do in most movies haha. The best movie though was Parine Jaddo’s. Parine is my documenting professor and her movie was in the festival. It was so good and I was so proud of her! It was called Rasta’s Paradise and it was all about the Rastafarian culture in Ethiopia where Rasta life is huge. She interviewed so many Rastas about their life, their views, their habits, and showed a really in depth and sincere side of Rastafarian culture. I love Parine. She is so amazing, so nice, and has our best interest always in mind. She’s an awesome professor.

Our last day in Ouaga, we filmed a lot of our group documentaries on FESPACO. We interviewed some locals, some filmmakers, some other NYU students, and just the festival in general. Hopefully we’ll be able to make something wonderful from our footage.. and if not, the experience was still well worth the forty hours of travel.

Twice in one day I know. I’m going to try to make this a routine. Like I take malarone everyday, I’ll try to update every….more. I still have to talk about my homestay, learning to play some traditional Ghanaian instruments, and how to make Kente cloth, a traditional Ghanaian fabric! And everything else going on. I wish I didn’t procrastinate always.

more love and peace because there’s never too much!

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For you Daddy... just a taste =)
Out of order assortment of pictures from FESPACO and Green Turtle