How They Make Shea Butter

You know it’s in all the finest lotions and creams, but what is it, and where does it come from?  Well, I have become somewhat knowledgeable on the subject of late, since shea butter comes from West Africa, the only place the slow-growing karité tree thrives.   The tree itself is valued for its wood, which is used for ceremonial musical instruments and building materials, but the greater wealth is in the oil contained in its nuts.  

Much like peanuts, the nuts can be roasted and transformed into many different products, but unlike peanuts, one does not use the entire nut.  A lengthy process is required to separate the oil from the rest of the nut meat and cook it down into butter.  The many steps in the process are strictly ‘women’s work,’ and they are performed manually.  With the growing appreciation ofshea butter as an additive in cosmetics and foodstuffs (the EU has approved the addition of up to 3% shea butter in chocolate), there is increased interest in modernizing the production process and mechanizing some of the steps.  Yes, I have an ulterior motive for telling you about this;  I am trying to help the women in this area set up a cooperative with a storage and processing center.  So please read on!

Shea nuts look like buckeyes!  The nut meats are about the size of nutmeg.

Karité trees are particularly abundant in the south west region of Burkina Faso.  If they didn’t take at least 30 years to start producing fruit, someone would probably be busy planting them throughout the tropics.  As it is, the forestry and agricultural services in BF are facing a challenge to maintain the karité population.  

The small-egg-sized fruit ripens at the beginning of the rainy season in June.  The quarter-inch or so of sweet pulp that covers the nut is delicious.  It can be used for jams and preserves, but this is not something the people here are interested in.  Those who have trees on their land gather the ripe fruit from the ground and remove the pulp so they can prepare the nuts for processing. People do eat some of the pulp, but much of it is fed to the pigs.

Most of the work is accomplished in 'the position.'

Through tedious manual labor performed by women and children, the nuts are boiled, shelled and roasted, interspersed with periods of being spread out on tarps to dry in the sun and quickly gathered in if rain threatens.The shells are used as fuel or composted for the gardens.  The nuts are then bagged and stored until time is available for further processing after all other crops have been harvested.  Lacking a means of storing their nuts, women are forced to sell them in July when prices are low.  Others who wish to process the nuts have to buy them in December when the price is at its highest.  The storage facility envisioned for the cooperative will benefit both the collectors and the processors among its members.

These nuts were ground in a mill, ready for processing in the tubs.

For want of a mill, women will pound and grind the nuts in large wooden mortars.  Two or three will pound away to the rhythm provided by others who sing and clap their encouragement and stand ready to take their turns with the heavy wooden pestles.

Teamwork

With the addition of warm water, the women are able to beat the ground nuts into a paste using their hands, their arms, their backs, well, just about every muscle available, urged along by the laughter, clapping and songs of their sisters.  (I tried beating the nuts, too, for about two minutes.  I longed desperately for my electric drill and its paint mixing attachment.  The effect of the oil on my hands and arms was better than a spa treatment, though!)  It’s a social event.  It’s fun!

The women then add cold water to the mix and pat the surface of the soupy paste to help the oil rise and solidify while the waste sediment sinks to the bottom of the tub.  Not even the waste is wasted.  It can be dried and pressed into briquettes for fuel, and the waste water is used in construction.  If I understood correctly, it strengthens concrete and/or serves as a sealant for mud-brick walls.

As the butter comes together on the surface, it is washed in a series of tepid-then-cold water baths until the water runs clear. 

In a final step, the butter is boiled and clarified.  Once cooled, it is pale yellowish white in color and has a smooth texture and not unpleasant odor.  In this state it is ready to be used in cooking or for skin care or soap making.  That would mean it’s ‘third choice’ on the BF quality scale.  Better controlled and more highly mechanized methods could help the women produce second and even first choice cosmetic quality shea butter with which they could compete in international markets.

What are the virtues of the karité tree and shea derivatives?  In addition to, or possibly repeating those mentioned above, the pulp is rich in sugar, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, calcium and potassium, and can be used to make jam, ice cream or vinegar.  The shells can be used as fuel or fertilizer.  The oil and butter of the nuts contain olein and stearin (sorry if that’s French).  The butter accelerates lactation and is used in the care of broken bones; they massage babies and new mothers with it.  The nut waste is used as fuel, fertilizer and pig fodder, and it can be burned to produce potash.  The waste water fights termites; it is used in the fabrication of bricks and terra cotta; pigs like to drink it.  The leaves of the karité contain essential oils for perfume; they are eaten as salad; they are used to treat wounds.  The flowers are sought out by bees (BF honey is yummy).  The roots have medicinal value as antibiotics.  The termite-resistant wood is prized by artisans.  The caterpillars (big fuzzy ones) that infest the trees after the fruit has fallen are a great protein-rich delicacy (so they say).  The trees themselves improve the soil and provide shade while beautifying the landscape. 

The nice uniformly round trees are mangos, but the rest are karité, including the young trees in the foreground.

There are more cultural, traditional, health/personal care, and nutritional uses, as you can imagine.  In one village I visited, families mix hair shaved from their babies’ heads with shea butter and deposit it in a small stoneware pot.  Each family has its own pot in the local baby hair/shea butter repository.  I’m not sure why they do this, but obviously they aren’t able to get their kids’ first shoes bronzed. 

Each family's pot has distinctive markings.  I worry about the broken ones.

If you are as fascinated by all of this as I am, or even if you’re not, please tune in again or watch fb and e-mail to see how you can help me get the storage and processing center up and running.  Shea butter will put a lot of kids through school!  Go karité!  …and I’ll be forever indebted to anyone who can give me an English name for this tree, other than the shea butter tree, which is what it’s called in German.

How They Harvest Peanuts and Make Peanut Butter

Peanuts are planted at the beginning of the rainy season, from mid-June to early July.  The fields are cultivated with the short-handled all-purpose tool called a daba, from its name in the Dioula language predominant in the western part of Burkina Faso.  It can be a hoe, a shovel or an axe, and it is most often employed in the bent-over (oh, my aching back!) position that is used for most jobs, from weeding to washing dishes, to be referred to hereafter in this blog as “the Position.”

A Burkinabe 'security system' (their words, not
mine) watches over the peanut field.  The innards
of a calabash are purported to ward off thieves. 

In early to mid-October the peanuts are ready to be harvested.  Women assume the Position to pull the peanut plants out of the ground, shake off the sandy red soil, and pile armloads of plants in the fields.  The kids then come out with bushel-sized or larger aluminum or plastic tubs, and fill them with the bundled plants to carry home on their heads. Often the filled tub is taller than the child.

This field is nearby, just behind our courtyard.

In our case, we harvested the peanuts of both families in our courtyard, along with those of two other families in the area.  Everyone (except the men and older boys, of course) gathered under the trees outside our courtyard to pull the peanuts off the plants.  Kids traded off carrying tubs of plants to dump at our feet and joining in the peanut-plucking. 

While tearing peanuts from the roots, you can eat as many as you want.  They aren’t all that tasty at this stage, though, and difficult to shell, but the kids consume quite a few.  I put in a good three hours under the trees, listening to the women gossip (I’m assuming that’s what they were doing), and laugh, and holler at the kids, and laugh some more.  They also rocked and breast fed the babies while plucking peanuts. The plucked plants went back in the tubs and onto kids’ heads to be dumped back out in the fields as fodder for the roving cattle and goats.  The peanuts themselves went home with their owners for the next step in the process:  drying.

It takes about a week of lying in a single layer in the hot sun for the peanuts to be dry enough to store.  The girls come out early in the morning to spread the peanuts on tarps or simply on the ground.  This has to be done after sweeping the courtyard with a handle-less broom, starting a fire, and hauling and heating water for the families’ bucket baths, and before washing, eating and leaving for school (which starts at 7 a.m. for high school and 7:30 a.m. for the younger kids).  In the evening, and any time there’s a threat of rain, all of the peanuts have to be swept up and piled into tubs and sacks and taken indoors.

During the harvest, people are very generous with their bounty.  Several of the kids I’ve been helping in small ways brought me sacks of peanuts, claiming they were “for you from my mom.”  On my way to school one morning, a family returning from the field with a donkey cart piled high with peanut plants shouted, "Nipela! Please take some peanuts!  We have plenty!"  If you see an acquaintance or are introduced to someone on the street, chances are he’ll pull several handfuls of peanuts out of his pockets and force them on you.  Walking, talking and eating raw peanuts.  It’s what you do.  The ground is littered with peanut shells wherever you look.  At least this is biodegradable litter.

Sometimes you’ll see a big mound of peanut shells, which indicates that someone is going to roast them and sell them in little 25 f bags at the market, or make peanut butter.  The shelling process calls for another communal, or at least family, gathering.  Each little shell is cracked and emptied by hand.  These are not your big ol’ ballpark peanuts; they are the size of Lesieur tiny peas, extra fine, and only rarely will you find three in one shell.

                   

Pretty in pink party dresses, perfect
for processing peanuts.

The next step is roasting.  You sit by a wood or charcoal fire, continually stirring the peanuts in a marmite, until the desired degree of roasting is attained, and then you turn them out onto a tarp to cool, and loosen the blackened papery skins.  Tossing the nuts and skins repeatedly in a shallow basket will separate the skins from the nuts.  At this point, I figured they would pound the nutmeats into a paste in a big mortar, but when I asked, lo and behold, the answer was, “No, we take them to the mill to be ground.”  Transport to and from the mill is, of course, on one of the girls’ heads, but there is at least this one mechanized step in the process. No oil or sugar is added.  This is the real thing.

There are several peanut butter vendors at the market.  They spoon their brown goo into small plastic bags.  It’s normally sold by the spoonful, but I have them fill my Bonne Maman jelly jar, and it costs 300 F, or about $.60.  The flavor varies from vendor to vendor, as some roast the nuts longer than others.  I’ve found a vendor whose peanut butter I like, in the shade of a colossal tree, so I’ll stick with her.  And I get a kick out of her traditional chair -- lashed together with blue string!
  

Patience

Patience was a dog.  He looked like every other dog in this part of the world:  pointy snout, shades of brown and white, slowly healing, scabby wounds at the tip of each triangular ear, oozing, fly-paper wound on the top of his head.  Maybe he was a little better nourished than most.  Patience belonged to one of the families in our courtyard, and therefore he belonged to all of us, since private property, and privacy, for that matter, are foreign concepts here.  Patience guarded the courtyard and barked loudly at strangers entering or simply appearing outside the gate.  He chased away other dogs and any pigs, goats, sheep or chickens that didn’t belong here. He accompanied us to the market or the library, bounding joyously through tall grass but never straying far, and growled at would-be aggressors, either human or canine.

I was probably the only person who actually touched Patience, petting him and applying Neosporin to his wounds.  He really started liking me after I let him eat the heads of my friture (small, whole fried fish), for which I was reprimanded because I was spoiling him.  His family did feed him, but kept him chained much of the day so he wouldn’t stick his nose in the corn flour spread on a tarp to bleach in the sun of the courtyard or the rain water so carefully collected in basins and buckets during a deluge.

[I probably should have eaten the fish heads myself (no way!), or at least left them for one of the kids.  No matter what I leave on my plate, be it half of the much too large serving of rice they offer me, or just the bones from a piece of fish, even if I’ve spit them out, someone will eat it.*  When the first riz gras (risotto) prepared in a new pot stuck badly, I added water and soaked my cooking spoons with the mess for a while.  Once I’d scraped the rice loose I offered the neighbor this brew to give to Patience.  The dog never had a chance; the girl ate it herself.  There’s no point trying to cook enough for more than one meal at a time, since there’s always someone wanting to ‘taste’ whatever I’ve concocted.  They are equally generous with the foods they prepare, though.]

Patience was only a dog.  Monday evening he accompanied (‘followed’) the other courtyard family (not his true owners) to the market.  When he was hit by a truck and badly lamed on the paved road, his owners contacted a Dagara family who administered the coup de grace and ate him. 

Muslims will not eat dog, but several other ethnic groups do.**

It was somewhat gratifying that the girl who fed Patience every day wept at his demise and at the fact that he had become someone’s much appreciated dinner.  During PST, one of our cultural awareness activities called for American and Burkinabe groups to illustrate their vision of family and friends in a graphic with concentric circles.  The Burkinabe chuckled when Americans included the family pet or pets in the inner circle.  For the HCNs (host country nationals), all animals, even Patience, belong ‘either way off the chart or in the freezer with the rest of the meat.’

Young dolo drinker. A calabash full, or about a liter, costs a dime.

As upsetting as the loss of Patience may be, I can’t help feeling some relief that the casualty was ‘only a dog,’ and not a child, or one of the many cripples who cross the pavement at a snail’s pace to get to the market.  The goudron is the main drag of the village.  It is lined with shops, cafés, cabarets (where people hang out enjoying a fermented millet beverage called dolo), repair shops, etc., and at any given time it is populated with pedestrians, bikes, scooters and the occasional automobile.   People socialize in the middle of this road.  Mechanics lie under vehicles with their legs sticking out into the road.  Children race along the road propelling hoops, bike tires or wheels with sticks.  Women with babies on their backs and loads of firewood on their heads make slow progress and lack the luxury of rear-view mirrors.

The big truck that hit Patience did not even slow down.  The trucks transporting goods to and from Ghana are the reason the road is paved at all.  Sometimes they blast their horns as they enter the village, but not always.  They own the road.  Why are there no speed bumps?  I’m told the village does not have the right to install gendarmes couchés (policemen lying in bed) on this international highway.  Without speed bumps or outright road blocks, the local police on their motorbikes are about as effective as the ‘slow down’ signs at either end of the village.  I’ve been advised to try writing a letter to the ministry of public works, and to have patience.

*/**  If you’re not tired of reading, here’s a description of traditional Dagara eating habits from Of Water and the Spirit by Malidoma Somé, a man between cultures:

“Indigenous life is a constant physical exercise.  From plowing the earth with your bare hands to running after an antelope during the hunt to carrying huge stacks of wood for the fireplace, the body is constantly involved in expending energy.  It is not surprising that my people don’t have weight problems.  The energy each person burns during the day is incalculable.  No wonder the amount of food available always seems insufficient.  My younger brothers always behaved as if they were starving.  They would gulp down an enormous dish and yet keep sniffing around as if they had not eaten anything at all.  Guillaume told me one day that he never knew what satiation felt like.  He said he stopped eating when there was no more to eat.

When my mother prepared meals, she always made two servings, one for the males and the other for the females.  Father presided over male meals and she presided over female meals.  We always sat in a circle around the dish.  The grown-ups sat on stools, and the young sat with their left legs folded under their butts as a seat.  The evening meal, about ten o’clock, was the most important of the day.  It gathered together the whole family, including visitors, since in the Dagara tradition no visitor can be denied food.

Dinner began with the hand-washing ceremony.  The male leader was first, followed by the next-oldest person and so on till the youngest had washed.  The first bit of food was always offered to the spirit of the earth shrine.  This is called a clearance bite.  My father always performed this ceremony.  He would take a bit of cake [corn or millet cake, akin to corn-meal mush] and dip it into the sauce, say something rapidly between his teeth, and then throw the thing away as if he did not want it.  The dog loved it – even though it was not destined for him but for the Spirit of the earth shrine.  Sometimes the dog would catch it in midair and swallow it at once as if he did not want to know what it tasted like.

To, or millet cake, and sorrel sauce.

Then my father, who pretended not to pay attention to the fate of the first bite, would prepare another for himself.  I noticed that his portion was larger.  He would stick the whole portion into his mouth, hold it in there for a few seconds, and then nod his head before swallowing it.  This was the signal that the dinner was safe to eat.  Seven hands assaulted the dishes, determined to empty them, and the meal was enjoyed in silence.  For the Dagara, there is no such thing as a plate for each person, because in the context of a real community, separate plates cultivate separateness.  The older people were supposed to stop eating first, allowing the youngest to finish it all up.  Anyone who burps is expected to stop eating immediately, as that indicates that he or she is full.

Eating with one’s hands is a fascinating art.  You are supposed to lick your fingers one by one after each swallow, starting with the front of each of the four fingers, then their backs, and finally the thumb.  Then the entire finger must be taken into the mouth and carefully sucked.  The person presiding over the meal is in charge of making sure that these rules are followed carefully.  Consequently, any voice you hear during a meal is the leader’s voice correcting bad eating habits mostly related to finger-licking.  Children who are very hungry don’t take the time to lick their fingers properly, so someone must be there to instruct them in good table manners.”

Malidoma Patrice Somé, Of Water and the Spirit, ISBN 0-14-019496-7:  tedious and at times downright freaky, but a fascinating look at the Dagara culture, spiritual initiation and rite of passage, the pain and damage wrought by colonization and missionaries, the ability to commune with ancestral spirits, and spiritual travel to other worlds.  Healers, diviners, ritual initiation….  A grain of salt wasn’t quite sufficient for me!  But there is going to be an initiation here in Dissin this year.  Nowadays they only perform the initiation every few years, when enough eligible young men are available.  Not everyone is suited for it, and it can be fatal.

Around Town

(This was written early in September)

The first few days at site were exciting and confusing, and an introduction to the art of WAITing, which came in handy at the bank!

The Bakery

Destination:  the Mairie, or mayor’s office, or city hall.  This lies at the western edge of the village, about a 20 minute walk from my house.  No one can understand why I’d rather walk than ride the bike, which, especially now, after 3 minor falls, is still a white-knuckle horror trip for me.  These people are engaged in physical labor 8 – 10 hours a day, but they consider walking a chore.  Florent was willing to make the trek with me, though, and we intended to stop at the electric company, just this side of the Mairie, to transfer the meter and account into my name.  En route we met the Chef de Terre and several of Florent’s relatives, and learned that the mayor was actually going to be present some time that morning (she does not live here in the village) and that the electric company was closed because they had no electricity.  There has been no electricity at the Mairie for quite some time; when I was here in July, city business was conducted at the Prefet’s office at the top of the hill.  Whereas the electric company relies on computers, forms are typed at city hall, and births, marriage and deaths are entered into the big état civil register by hand.  I was able to observe quite a few such entries, along with the issuing of stamps for school registration, while waiting in a blessedly drafty corridor and trying to understand a word or two of the conversations that buzzed around me in several languages.  The French spoken here is not ‘school French,’ and it travels at the speed of light.  La blanche / Nasara / Nipela were the distinguishable words that prevailed, as is usual in my presence.

Madame Mayor, however, a cheerful woman in her 50’s, I’m guessing, favored me with school French liberally laced with English.  She had lived in the Washington, D.C. area for some time.  After a short, pleasant chat in which she expressed the village’s gratitude for the past, present and future contributions of Peace Corps volunteers, Mme la Maire granted me ‘the road.’  That’s how you indicate your readiness to leave:  you ask for the road.  ‘Je demande la route.’    Normally it’s readily granted.  It’s also how you toss someone out, by giving him or her the road.  ‘Je te donne la route.’

On the subject of demands, they are constant.  People are continually asking for food, money, the clothes off your back…  I’m used to it now, but the first request came as a shock.  A kid outside the school superintendent’s office greeted me politely and then said, ‘Je demande ta casquette.’  I was wearing my credit union baseball cap, a gift from my host mother in Sapone, and I wasn’t about to part with it.  I try to be polite in my refusals, but I made an exception for the young man who wanted 25 fr (about a nickel) to buy a beignet because he was starving; his outstretched right hand was empty, but his left hand clutched a newly opened pack of cigarettes.

Next stop:  the hospital.  Like the schools, the hospital consists of a number of gray concrete buildings with gray concrete rooms strung together motel-style. All of the rooms open onto covered concrete walkways, and there are concrete benches built into or onto the walls outside each door.  There are no screens, just the louvered metal windows and doors that are the norm everywhere, but a fabric curtain hangs in each open door to discourage flies.  The Major, or head nurse, gave me a tour of the maternity building.  In addition to a delivery room with stirruped table and a second metal table, there is an 8-bed ward that’s almost as nice as the upper-class Tibetan dwelling in the Heifer Ranch Global Village II.  All of the babies had gone home that morning, and there was only one woman in labor at the time.  She sat outside on a low stone wall, wearing only a skirt.

While I sat outside the consultation room with Florent waiting to introduce myself to the doctor, I observed the row of rooms opposite.  Some visitors sat on the benches chatting with the patients inside.  A man led a strikingly beautiful woman towards the last room in the row.  She was slightly too buxom to be a super model, and she was staggering a bit.  It took me a moment to realize she was blind as well as very ill.  She groaned, squatted down and vomited into the sand.  The man dragged her on up to the concrete bench outside one of the rooms, and a visitor rose to kick sand over the vomit.  After a while a nurse came along with an IV pole and started a drip for the blind woman.  She was still there, outside on the bench, leaning on her companion who steadied the IV pole, when the doctor gave us the road.

On the way to the bus depot, we passed what had been the original Catholic mission.  It is now a complex that houses maybe a dozen families.  The Dagara people, native to this region, are Catholic, and there is a Catholic grade school and agricultural lycee, as well as an orphanage run by nuns.  There is also a sizeable Mossi population.  The Mossi, who make up much of the population of the rest of Burkina Faso, speak Moré and are Muslim.  At the same time, everyone is Animist, and everyone gets along.  Often there are both Catholics and Muslims in the same family.  One of the families in my courtyard is Catholic, and the other is Muslim.  I live close enough to the Mosque to hear the calls to prayer that start at 4:30 a.m., but not close enough to the church to hear the bells.  When I hear drums, I know someone has died.  More on funerals later.

The chef de gare at the bus station is a good man to know, since the bus companies serve as the informal postal service.  There are post offices, but no mail carriers or home delivery.  For that matter, there are no street names or house numbers.  I live in the courtyard with the yellow gate ‘over behind the gendarmerie and the credit union.’  Everybody just knows who lives where.  If you are looking for someone’s house, you ask the next person you meet, who will then point you or even lead you to the right courtyard.  In order to get mail you have to have a post office box or use someone else’s.   When the PC medical officer sent me my prescription meds from Ouagadougou, she sent me a text message telling me to expect the package at the TSR Gare sometime the next day.   What she didn’t tell me was that I should alert the chef de gare to expect the package.  As a result, he didn’t run out to ask the driver for it and it went on to Ghana, but it was still on the bus on the return trip the following day.  The ‘package’ was a brown paper lunch bag with my name and the name of the village on it in black marker, stapled closed at the top.  I now have the chef de gare’s phone number in my portable, or mobile phone.

Swearing-in and Transfer to Site

The U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg could never get away with serving Coke and Fanta at a big deal, recorded-for-tv-news event like the swearing-in of 46 new Peace Corps Volunteers, but in Burkina Faso, anything cold and wet is most welcome.  My next taste of champagne, in a couple of years, is bound to knock me for a loop. Somehow I don’t think I’ll mind.

Rain threatened but held off long enough for the requisite speeches, oaths, congratulations and photographs in the garden of the ambassador’s residence in Ouagadougou.  PCV at last!  Wet weather forced the ‘after’ party at the home of the new Peace Corps Country Director indoors, though, but it was a great time to meet present and former volunteers and chat with PC staff.  Lots of food!  And more Fanta!

The day before swearing-in had been our big shopping day.  Those who were starting a new site had to acquire gas stoves and propane tanks, covered trash cans to hold water and other necessities.  As the basics were already covered at my house, I just bought a cot, which is quite comfortable, especially when topped with my REI camp bed, and will surely be much cooler than the foam mattress in hot weather.  When it really gets hot, in April, I may have to do without the camp bed.  I also picked up some plastic basins, wooden spoons and groceries, but together with my suitcases, water filter, bike, mosquito net, boxes of books and old-lady sick-room toilet chair (for emergencies) my pile of things to be moved to site was quite impressive.

Thrilled not to have to take public transportation, I was ready to roll at the appointed hour of 7 a.m., but true to his reputation, my traveling companion was late, so we didn’t pull out in the PC Toyota till almost 8.  Sanfo, my favorite driver, is easy to talk to, and my companion slept part of the way.  The 5 hour trip was pleasant and I was able to see a lot more than I had on the first trip by bus.  Among the noteworthy sights were a pull-off place where people can park to watch elephants, although none have been spotted lately, and a billboard announcing the final resting place of the 28 victims of a two-bus crash in 2008.  Glad I missed that the first time around.  We made a couple of short pit stops and picked up snacks of popcorn, sesame cakes and bananas. 

Children descended on the van from all directions when we arrived outside the courtyard.  They grabbed things out of the van and out of my hands and carried them into the house.  My homologue (counterpart) was there, too, and he had arranged to have the water man deliver a tank of water.  We immediately started dragging trash out and cleaning.   Even the 3-year-old was helping.  The boys knocked down cobwebs and sorted through the trash.  The girls and I scrubbed out water containers, swept floors, washed floors, washed dishes…  I perspired.  To celebrate a job well done, we went to the market for a few more necessities and I bought everyone a juice or, in one case, a beer. 

The cleaning crew.

How they handle money, or Banking in Burkina

Cash only!!!  ATMs exist, but the system is down much of the time, I am told.  Francs CFA, the coin of the realm and of most of the former French colonies, come in 25, 50, 100, 200, 250 and 500 coins, and 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 10,000 bills.  Smaller denomination coins are said to exist, but I haven’t seen any.  Except in bigger stores in bigger cities, it’s hard to find anyone who can change anything bigger than a 2,000 F bill.  Sometimes market vendors even have to turn to their neighbors to be able to change a 200 F coin.  There are roughly 500 F to USD 1.  Roughly.  So 3-4 tomatoes cost 50 F, or a dime, at the market.

 

Market vendors don’t think or speak in Francs, though; they use the old sous system.  The French had 20 sous to a franc, so each sou was worth 5 centimes.  Here the amount of 100 F is referred to as 20.  If the tomato man says nouh-nouh (= five-five.  For some reason they always say the price twice.  Maybe this means ‘five each.’) he means 25 F, or five times five francs.  Piie-piie (ten-ten) means 50 francs each.  Piie-na-nouh – piie-na-nouh (fifteen-fifteen) is 75 F each, and lizer-lizer (twenty-twenty) is 100 F each.  Luxembourgers will understand. 

In stores, though, prices are marked in francs if they are marked at all.  You tell the shopkeeper what you want, he puts in on the counter and grabs his calculator, and you hope he’s not charging you Nasara / Nipela prices. White people are equated with the colonial powers and presumed to have scads of money, so why not double the prices?  Shopkeepers are supposed to have fixed prices, but at the market, for anything other than food, you need to, and are expected to bargain them down a bit.  The best way to avoid being charged Nipela prices is to have one of the kids wheel and deal for you.  The girls know the prices and can select the best vegetables.  Until I figured out the sous system, they also had to interpret prices for me.

The Peace Corps encourages ‘modest living standards’ and accordingly allocates a monthly allowance for ‘subsistence needs’  which is probably enough to live better than most Burkinabé counterparts.  In addition, newly-minted PCVs receive a settling-in allowance for purchasing items needed at site.  All monies are deposited in accounts opened for us with one of the bigger ‘Pan-African‘ banks, and our accounts actually had money in them when we got to  Ouaga before swear-in.

Armed with a check book (the ATM cards got lost, somehow), and in anticipation of the big shopping day provided in Ouagadougo, Diane and I marched down the road, or rather sloshed our way through the mire of grit and garbage resulting from a torrential downpour, to the bank.  A guard outside the door looked dubiously at his watch (it was 16.40 and the bank closes at 18.00) before handing us well-worn, almost felt-like rounds of construction paper with numbers written on them.  Hmmmm.  Inside, the bank resembled the old revenue office in Cabot, only much smaller.   Our general bonsoir! greeting (soir starts right after lunch) to the 12 – 15 faces that stared at us as we entered was probably inadequate, as subsequent arrivals, who were few in number before the cut-off time, went around shaking hands.  Constricting, tailored pinstriped suits distinguished the bank employees from the rest of the population of Burkina Faso.  Two of the three guichets were manned, as were a couple of cubicles off to the side.  While waiting for seats to become free, we realized each customer was taking a minimum of 10 minutes at the window.  The woman at guichet no. 1 was there for at least half an hour.  Since this bank is automated, i.e. has computers, we managed to get our hands on some cash and escape before closing time.

Caisse Populaire

The situation is somewhat different at the savings bank/credit union here at my site.  The pan part of pan-African does not extend to my village, so I had the bright idea of opening an account locally and having funds transferred to avoid having to take a bush taxi and spend an entire morning or more just to withdraw funds.  This establishment is not automated.  On my first visit (it took four in all) it was the end of the month and the benches were crowded.  Handshakes and even some crossed-arm curtseys were in order.  The woman behind the tiny window, which is so low that clients invariably leaned their elbows on the sill and stuck their rears out at the assembly (I made a feeble attempt not to do so when it was my turn), wore a t-shirt and round wire-rimmed glasses, and filled out savings books, deposit and withdrawal slips in triplicate, and various other forms in labored longhand.  She then pushed each completed form through the window for signature.  This extended the ordeal for an elderly man who had to be helped to and from the window for each step of the operation.  No numbers had been distributed, but when several people pointed at me, I rose to assume the position at the window.  I had realized that I was the only person in the room who was visibly perspiring, but I was still horrified to actually drip my way across the floor.  Why must I always counter the theory that ‘awkward’ doesn’t exist in BF?

My questions sent the teller off to consult with the director.  Uh-oh.   The director would see me.  Good!?  He was busy with another customer, but moved a defunct printer off a chair to make room for me and ignored the other person for the next 15 minutes.  Awkward!  What I wanted to do was probably possible, though it had never been done before, so it necessitated a number of phone calls to head office in Ouaga and to the pan-African institution, both in the nearest city and in Ouaga.  It was decided that I should go to the photographer down beyond the police station to have ID photos made, and come back in a few days (it would take that long to get the photos developed, anyway) to open an account, and by then the director would know what action to take.

Two visits and many forms later (most had to be done twice because the woman thought Susan was my last name), I was the proud owner of a savings book bearing the stapled-in and stamped-over likeness of a beet-faced, gray-haired woman who didn’t quite make the cut for a Bryl-cream ad.  By visit four I had decided to forget the monthly transfer idea, as it was proving far too complicated, and just write a check to be deposited to my account.  A couple more phone calls were required to determine whom the check should be made out to, but the funds, less a fee equivalent to the cost of the bush taxi, should be in my account in about 4 days!  Success!  Now I just have to go withdraw the cash!  Fortunately, the office is just around the corner from my house.  I’ve learned to go early and avoid the ‘rush.’

My personal shoppers and advisory committee

Keeping pace with the high-as-an-elephant’s-eye corn, the millet, gumbo and peanut fields have grown so much that the paths we walked last time around now lead through labyrinth upon labyrinth, and I’m having trouble finding landmarks if I stray too far from the paved artery of the village.  On my first solo foray I walked in circles like Pooh and Piglet, to the amusement of people who good-naturedly accepted my repeated greetings.  Two older boys came to my rescue and lead me to the office of the school inspector, which was closed.  I may write about my various encounters in the village in a later post. 

How They Live

Henning Mankell, my favorite Swedish crime fiction writer, also has connections to Africa, I’ve discovered.  His Eye of the Leopard takes place at the end of the colonial period, and in his Kennedy’s Brain (surely the Swedish title was better!) he writes: “…we know all about how Africans die, but hardly anything about how they live.”  Well, that’s what I intend to find out while I’m here, and what this blog will try to portray, especially after swearing-in and ‘affectation’ to my site.  You see plenty of famine, drought, AIDS, starving children, refugee camps, war and destruction on the evening news. If you have questions about how Africans live, let me know!  I’m happy to do the research.

I’m surrounded by beautiful, happy faces!

Your book suggestions are also welcome! Some of the best I’ve read lately are The House on Sugar Beach, Things Fall Apart, and The Poisonwood Bible

The end of PST (Pre-Service Training) is finally in sight!  While the cross-cultural sessions have been intriguing and the language sessions vital, the rest has been more or less one interminable professional development workshop, including the inevitable small group work, colored markers and butcher paper.  Fellow teachers, pity me!  We’re even doing our student teaching in a ‘model school’ for which local kids have been enlisted for a month of morning summer school sessions.  So far, everyone who’s observed my classes has been happy with my work.   I hope I don’t slip up in the next few days!  I’d really like to wear my new African outfit and swear in as a PCV on August 23!

From my vantage point as an observer at model school.  6^th grade math.