It takes me several days to arrive and stay in the region of the triple border between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger living with the Fulanis. At no time do I feel in danger, actually quite the opposite, but it is time for me to return to civilisation. I've spent quite a lot of time eating very badly, on a diet based on sorghum and baobab leaves' sauce, and I'm already feeling very weak. Now I need to find the way to get out of here and reappear somewhere on the main road that connects Dori with Djibo. I am very off-road and my only alternative is to be guided by the instructions that the Fulani give me.
What drives me now is the need to feel some flavour on my papillae and energy in my body again. The mere idea of eating baobab sauce one more day already makes me gag, so I intend to start early to get to the main road that same day. It's hard to think about it and not feel bad at the same time because of the guilt it generates in me. I feel like a capricious and spoiled little child rejecting that flavour after such a short time when this is what many Fulanis feed on each and every day of their lives. Unlike my internal feeling, I have never heard them complain or lamenting about anything. On the contrary, they live in serenity and stoicism, and from that, I learn lessons that I never want to forget.
As I move forward trying to guide myself by the time, the position of the sun and some protuberance of the earth here and there, the Sahel continues to give me those encounters that make me feel that I am in a separate world. A man of the Fulani Bela ethnic group materialises in the middle of nowhere. I don't know where he comes from or where he is going, but I decide to stop to talk with him and try to get directions. His gaze is peaceful, his walk is calm and he takes several seconds to respond with a leisurely and deliberate talk. He doesn't speak anything other than his own dialect, that's why I only communicate through gestures and signs. Before saying goodbye, I ask him for permission to take some pictures of him to which he agrees with a serene smile. Like a professional model, he gazes at the horizon, watching the sunset. He simply remains there as if he had his mind exclusively in the present moment. When I show him his portraits on the rear LCD screen of my camera, he looks at me with a soft smile and tells me again and again in the same slow tone: “barka…. barka …… barka ”. Hours later I would learn that "barka" means "thank you."
Further away, I stop to ask for water from a group of women gathered together with their donkeys around a hole in the mud. They are wrapped in colourful dresses, bracelets and necklaces loading in buckets pulled by ropes the water they will drink in the village. Local people are always my reference when choosing the water that I drink. That means that in most cases, my policy is to drink the same water they drink. In this case, however, the precariousness is so great that there are no water pumps, and the water extracted from a shallow well dug by hand is so murky and full of mud that I prefer to refuse in order to avoid the slightest risk of getting sick here.
Here and there, people appear and reappear as loose ghosts, wandering the grey horizon of the Sahel. One part of me needs to respond to my most sophisticated needs, but the other wants to stay here longer because these people make me present. These people reconnect me a little more every day with the beauty of simplicity. Now, at this point, I can no longer idealise either. I have also seen another face, that of the suffering that brings life beyond simplicity. Life in precariousness and in the lack of the most basic needs. It is not an ideal life, let alone easy. It is a hard and harsh life in all of its forms. It is present, and it is true that it has a lot of magic, but here it also represents challenges that few could face without going crazy. Only them with their stoicism.
I spend the last night in the Sahel completely alone when I experience a show as extraordinary as it was unexpected. As soon as I finish eating, I lie down on the ground to look at the stars as usual and I see in the dark of the night a sky covered with shooting stars everywhere as I have never seen before in my life. Weeks later I would find out that what I had above me was effectively what is known as a meteor shower. And let me tell you that I was stunned. If the sky were an ocean, now the stars moved like schools of fish inside it. Instead of trying to rationalise what is happening, I stay there, lying on the ground, enjoying one of the best shows I've seen in my movie theatre since I travel by bicycle. Beyond simplicity
Little by little I end up arriving at the main road, where I appear somewhere between Dori and Djibo. My body and my bicycle cannot hide the joy of cycling on tarmac once again. Everything is easy now but the comfort of the new surface and the fastest pace, come into direct conflict with the beautiful Sahelian slowness that my spirit brings. The road from here to Ouagadougou takes me some days in which I have time to start processing everything I experienced in the previous weeks. Simplicity but also scarcity, lead me to think about the importance of finding a fair balance in life that assures us the conditions to be genuinely happy. It's been a long time since I know that excess of comfort and material things do not ensure happiness, but today I also see with the same clarity that simplicity forced by absolute scarcity doesn't ensure it either.
During the days in which I reflect on this, I find a reality much harsher than what I saw so far in the Sahel, and perhaps in my entire life, that of the Talibe. While I am sitting in a precarious food stall on the periphery of a town on a hot day at noon, a group of poorly dressed, dirty and very skinny children come running. I don't know if they are playing or what, but they carry empty tin cans hanging from their necks. When they arrive, they stand at a distance watching those of us who are eating. I can see the longing in their eyes, almost like that of animals that have not eaten for days. Like hungry dogs, they stare at us. Nobody gives them a penny or even looks at them and it is when one of the people next to me finishes eating and gets up to leave, that I see a show that I had never seen in my life. The children throw themselves like wild animals on the leftovers left on the plate. I see them bite and suck the same chicken bones already previously salivated by the person who had been eating them. When one kid leaves the bones aside, another one takes them, and then another, as if trying to chew off up to the last thread of meat with which to nourish themselves and perhaps obtain some flavour with which to stimulate their papillae. It is a heartbreaking scene that dissolves my heart, squeezes my stomach and steals my appetite. It is impossible to digest this image. It is impossible to be indifferent and at the same time, the inability to make a difference in them, at least right there, is paralyzing. I've seen a lot of material poverty throughout life, but never anything like this. Undoubtedly, it is one of those things that I do not want to allow myself to forget and continue my life ignoring that they exist.
The Talibe are children who are given by their families to the daara (the equivalent in West Africa to a Madrassa, that is, a Koranic school) where they live and study the Quran. The daaras are led by a marabout who is the teacher in charge of all the children. Originally, the daaras were supplied by the produce of the crops that belong to them and when these were not enough to support everyone, it was common practice to send the children to beg for money and provisions. In our times, this has gone from being a religious practice to one of the most brutal forms of exploitation. The streets of many cities and towns throughout West Africa abound with hundreds but thousands of hungry Talibes who are forced by the marabouts to go out to beg before returning to the with the daily quota imposed on them. In this way they spend all day begging instead of studying the Quran which is what they are supposed to be there for in the first place. What I've seen that day is the closest I've been to the most horrible feeling of unease. Similar images would continue to repeat along my way during the following months across different countries.
Say Ouadagoudou!
Finally, a few days later I roll into Ouagadougou but this time by bicycle. The capital of Burkina Faso that sports , at first sight, an unpronounceable name. Making my way through a chaos of Mercedes-Benz 300 taxis from the 90s falling apart, motorcycles, goats, vans and bicycles, I arrive at the house of my friend Emna and her partner, with whom I will spend Christmas.
I am tired, filthy, full of dirt and all I want is to bathe, eat and sleep. I do that while I wait for Christmas, a holiday that has no relevance in my life but serves as a good excuse to spend it accompanied by beautiful people. There I stay with them. I am very satisfied, I am content; I already had more gifts than I would have imagined for these holidays. I carry the Sahel's gift inside me. It was not brought to me by some marketing invention dressed in red and wearing a fake white beard, instead, I went to look for it myself, and I brought it with me, as it should be.
Burkina Faso in the heart
Shortly after my rest days in Ouagadougou at Emna's house, the weeks I spent in Burkina Faso come to an end. I'm leaving this country dazzled. I have spent some of the most incredible weeks of my life. I have fulfilled the dream of living with the Fulanis in the heart of the Sahel and seeing and learning lessons that I will never forget. However, the magic of Burkina Faso is not limited to the incredible life of the Fulani in the Sahel but extends to the love and generosity of all other ethnic groups in the country starting with the very Burkinabé. I take away from this country the beauty of simplicity and humility of life, but also the expanded vision for having seen the painful horizon that lies a step beyond simplicity. In that regard, Burkina Faso proved to be an excellent down-to-earth experience so as not to get caught in the fantasy of an idealised world. For all this, and much more, I would return to Burkina Faso and the Sahel at any time in my life. * Only 2 weeks after my departure from the country, 30 foreigners were killed in a terrorist attack in a restaurant in Ouagadougou whose owner was Italian. A week later a couple of two Australians with 25 years of residence in Djibo were kidnapped on one of the main routes in the country. Although, without a doubt, this could have happened to me also if I had been in the wrong place and moment, the truth is that both situations occurred in places known to be frequented by foreigners. This is the reason why all my journey was based on being in remote regions and avoiding precisely such places. It is not infallible but without a doubt, I feel it contributed to my greater security.
