Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Do you think it could rain dear?

5:13 pm | Edit Post
When we jumped into bed there was no real hint of rain. The previous few nights we had seen distant lightning flashes, but this night was calm though rather humid. Just before nodding off to sleep once again there appeared the distant flashes reflecting off the inky blackness of the night complimenting the stars quite well. Now my wife doesn't usually spit on me in bed but two hours later I was woken up buy little spatterings of water on my skin. Now you need to be aware that most of the year we sleep outside under mosquito nets, and this is where we were when the wind started to pick up and I finally came around from my slumber and realising it wasn't my wife's spit but drops of rain. At this point I sprang into action, jumped out of bed and proceeded to wheel the family under the shelter as the rain slowly intensified.
Just as I had got everybody in the inevitable happened, the rain began to die off and eventually stopped. Now if you have ever lived in a place like Djibo where folk often seem to be robbed of a good rainfall, you get a little frustrated when the rains stop as suddenly as they began. Believe it or not, I was fuming. After moving all the beds and all that trouble the rain decides to stop. After all, what does the rain think it is doing. I was so annoyed I decided to move our bed out, back into the night air both as an act of defiance as well as getting the benefit of any breeze that might pass by that we may benefit from. And so there we were, both of us under the clouds with the lightning still flashing away in the distance and the odd faint rumble of thunder. I attempted to fall back to sleep.
Half an hour later I was aware that I was being spat on again, and as mentioned before, Cheryl doesn't tend to spit, I could only assume it was more pitiful attempts at raining. Defiantly I decided to keep us outside. Once again the wind began to pick up whipping the dust up as it went. The drops of rain seemed to get a little bigger and I began to think to myself as the thunder got more pronounced, maybe we weren't in the best place at that moment. So out of bed I leapt, slipped on my damp sandals and dutifully wheeled our bed back under with my sleeping bride still inside. It was at this point that I felt I had made the right decision as the rain continued to intensify and the wind continued to pick up sending the nearby trees into a frenzy. By this time the rain was pouring off the corrugated iron shelter and the wind was now sending the rain in and sprinkling my wife who still lay motionless underneath the dust covered sheet. We'll be safe and dry under here I thought (well, Cheryl may get a bit wet but that's okay).
How wrong can one be! As the lightning flashed all around and the wind bellowed our nets, I noticed a small figure sitting up in the bed next to us. Turning on my torch I noticed he was looking rather moist. So, being the kind father that I am, I jumped out of bed (once again) for a closer inspection only to discover that the shelter was not really sheltering Joshua as well as it could have been. In fact I think he had as much water in his bed as our ducks have in their pond, and his pillow was just a soggy thing that sat next to our rather soggy son. "Would you like to jump in our bed Josh?" I asked. Within seconds he was there.
Back to bed, I thought as I climbed back under the net. Now we could finally try and get some sleep despite the thunder rain and dust in the bed. But not so. Within a few minuets I felt a persistent trickle on my leg, wetting the mattress beneath me. Now this didn't resemble spit in any way. It was more like... well, something else.
Now there are certain moments when you have to say enough is enough. It was now 2am, I was wet and getting wetter by the second and now all the family, apart from Samuel, were awake and sometimes the head of the house needs to make some pretty serious decisions. And so I gave the order, "RUN FOR YOUR LIVES". A few minutes later we were all inside, our beds outside covered and the children as high as kites in all the excitement (apart from Sam who had curled himself up into a corner to escape the growing wet patch in his cot). There is only one thing an Englishman can really say in time like these; "do you fancy a cup of tea dear?". Cheryl declined so I drank alone.
In the morning the lake behind our house that was empty the previous day is now full, and the water gauge indicated a rainfall of 47mm.
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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Rain!

4:32 pm | Edit Post
As with most years the population of Djibo is just hanging out for the rains to arrive.  For much of the county now, people have already started planting and other places have had so much rain they are starting to be concerned.  But this corner of Burkina remains very dry.  Many of the people who come to our gate are looking very tired and the requests for help continue to rise each week. 
Today in Djibo we have clear blue skies ... again.  Not what one wants to see when the family is hungry, your animals are starving and you have no money in your pocket.
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Monday, June 11, 2007

Waiting to Happen

9:49 pm | Edit Post

You often see them leaving Djibo, heading off to Bouro fully loaded up for the  market that takes place there every three days.  To be generous these lorries to tend to look a little tired and often the tyres look a little more so.  I'm not quite sure what the weight limit is for HGVs out here if there actually is any but it seem the rule that if you can fit it on without falling off then it's good to go.  Now seating capacity in the UK is often restricted to three persons in a cab.  Here in the north of Burkina where public transport out to the three day markets is somewhat sparse and people just tend to take whatever transport they can and often it will be on top of these more than fully ladened vehicles. 

 

Now I don't know whether you can picture the sight of one of these trucks swaying from side to side under the enormous weight they have to haul (the more you fit on the more money you make), anything between 10 & 30 people on top risking all to get to market.  You may think this is just an accident waiting to happen.  Well, the week before last it did.  Just 1 km from its destination a lorry fully ladened with grain, oil and other goods, including passengers, blew a tyre and over it went.  I was told that three people died at the scene and another two died of their injuries on their way to hospital. 

 

You may have thought that this would have been a pretty severe wakeup call to the way people risk their lives just to get to market, and yet three days later, on the same road, heading to the same market, trucks where loaded up to the hilt once again along with the days regular quota of passengers.

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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Oh no, I've scratched the car!

10:09 pm | Edit Post
It didn't take long to get out of Djibo and soon my Fulani companion and I were heading in the direction of the Mali border. As we sped along at about 20 kph we found the road deteriorating rapidly, well, the word track may be more of an appropriate description looking at it from a western perspective. As we drove on, most of the landscape appeared rather baron with the odd areas of vegetation following the paths of the dry river beds and from time to time we made our way through the trees winding this way and that as the branches melodically moved over the paintwork of our new vehicle making a sound like fingernails being scraped down a blackboard. As I thought about this I passed comment to my Fulani friend saying, "if this happened to a car where I come from it would need to be repainted". He let out a sigh and then said "Na hayni de" which reads in English "wow, amazing". He then went on to describe how some previous missionaries had got their vehicles seriously stuck in mud in one of these river beds when they weren't so dry.
Now the aim of our trip was to survey Fulani villages in the area north east of Djibo and one Fulani camp we visited (and they are probably not alone in their experience) had to travel over 10 km to get to the nearest water pump, and that is a long way to carry water on your head in temperatures of 50 oC +. One of the more major settlements of that region we passed through did have a pump, but it was broken, and as soon as we stepped out of the car one of the first comments that was made was; "Min dumdi" (we are thirsty). They too would probably need to travel some distance for water or resort to hand dug wells where the water would be far from clean. Most of us take something as basic as water for granted, and yet for many in this part of Burkina clean water is not easy to come by.
As my friend and I got back in to the car he pointed to a small cluster of clouds that had began to form and related it back to the time when his missionary friends got stuck in the mud. "the clouds were just like those ones when the rains came suddenly and swamped us" he said. On hearing this I suddenly felt an urge to return to Djibo as I didn't have a winch to get me out of muddy situations, neither do I posses one.
On our return I reflected on our trip and felt we succeeded on what we set out to do with our survey work. Although it may be a while until we can raise the funds for sinking wells a number of the villages we visited certainly met the criteria. It was certainly worth scratching the car for.
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