Potato Festival

Sorry for the long absense, we've been in village (without internet) for the last 7 weeks or so. We're pretty excited to get away for a few days. The only drawback to leaving village is taking transport. We still have a hate-hate relationship with our local transport. We hate that they are normally anywhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours late because the bus has broken down; but we also hate that sometimes the bus arrives 30 minutes early and leaves without you. Today was an early day. We arrived at 8:25 for the 8:30 bus to find that it had already come through town 30 minutes ago. The next bus doesn't come for another 7 hours and we didn't feel like waiting, so we stayed on the side of the road until we found a nice construction truck to take us. The ride was actually more comfortable (and perhaps safer) that the bus.

There's a lot to catch up on from the last 2 months, so let's start with the safari...

Like Aaron said, we went to visit the southeast of Burkina during our spring congé and went on a safari with some other volunteers. While it is true that our safari driver did drive kamakaze-style straight at a herd of running elephants with no escape plan, I would say that I was pleasantly surprised with our overall safari experience. I had visions of the car breaking down before we even reached the park, the driver demanding extra money or just not showing up at all, but everything actually worked out really well (except, of course, for the part where we almost died).

We arrived home to Titao just in time for the annual fête de la pomme de terre, or potato festival. That's correct: Titao's big claim to fame is the annual potato festival that happens every spring. Why a potato festival? From what I can tell, it is part of a bigger effort to fight hunger in Burkina and find plants that people can cultivate in the north where water is scarce (plus, we just like to party). If you are thinking that a potato festival can't possibly be that exciting, think again. This thing is a big deal. They sell t-shirts. There was a ceremony in the morning with the usual three hours of speeches and dance troops followed by prizes of farming equipment for the top cultivators this year and then they opened up the potato marché. This was the funniest thing I've seen in a while: rows and rows of vendors standing next to huge piles of seemingly identical potatos with signs that let the anxious customer know which village these particular potatos hail from. We wanted to take a picture at each stand, but realized it would take too long.

No small town potato festival would be complete without the election of Miss Pomme de Terre. The festival ended at night with a competition between 10 girls for the honor of being Miss Pomme de Terre. I wanted this so bad and spent all day securing votes, but it turns out the competition was already closed. Next year. Each girl had a tailored dress made and took turns walking out on stage, showing off their outfits, and striking their best poses. For the second round, each girl had to explain why they wanted to be Miss Pomme de Terre. Trying to pick the winner was tough; I felt like Tyra Banks. (That girl was fierce.) Of course, in the end I wasn't actually a judge and the real judges didn't care what I thought. One of my students was competing, so I was cheering for her, but she blew it on the Q & A so they gave it to another girl. The winner wasn't announced until 2am, so by that time I was too tired to be truly disappointed.