Tiebelè (for Dree!)

After a smooth few bus changes (I do miss TCV) we made it back to Ouaga, the capital, in one day and decided to take our time and relax that evening before heading down south to a cool village that Dree had spoken about near Po on the Ghana border. There is an on-running joke with us that Dree loves visiting villages. Not particularly sure where it came from, but it's stuck - "village friend". The break in Ouaga also meant that we could stop off at the Supermarket for supplies (nice toilet roll priority number one, hahaha) and have another great meal on the streets. Really did love those brochette stands.

The next morning we set off on a STMB bus (imagine what a coach looks like after 20 years in service) for Po. We had a bad feeling about Po as soon as we got off the bus - hassle from people wanting to change money or get us taxi's here, there and everywhere. The market wasn't on in either Po or Tiebelè which made travel a bit of a pain.

We got some more bandages etc for Dree's ankle - an infected blister had now spread to a mozzie bite; nice - and haggled with a driver to get to Tiebelè. Apparently the road was awful and he needed 10 litres of fuel to get there. Turns out the road wasn't that bad (he flew along it) and he only bought 6 litres. Sign of things to come, because when we arrived at the main crossroads for the village he refused to take us to a guesthouse because he said he didn't know where it was. But everyone did, it had been there for years. Shame we had to part with 8,000 CFA to get us there, but the markets fell on the wrong days for local buses.

After a very sweaty 15 minute hike avec luggage, we turned up at the campement. The only guy there was a very high Rasta man who found us a couple of little huts, and we then spoke with one of the many guides inhabiting Tiebelè. In the guide book it says that there is an association of 8 guides who split all the money between them. We had encountered at least twenty on our walk, including a 13 year-old kid on a bike, who had a home-made guide badge. Cute, but still annoying. We organised a meeting to be shown around the Royal Court in the village - where we needed a guide - but had heard good things.

The whole reason for coming to Tiebelè was to see the 'geometrically painted houses'; ancient mud huts that are still being kept in the traditional way, decorated in red, white and black patterns. We thought that there would eb plenty of these cool huts around, but only saw one wall which looked like it had zig-zag lines drawn on in permanent marker! Quite disappointing really. Took a walk around the village after some riz gras but couldn't find anything else. It was just like dozens of normal villages we had seen across Africa.

At three o'clock we met our guide and were shown the Royal Court of Tiebelè, which turned out to be a good tour with a really good guide. He spoke broken English, but tried really hard and got us to ask lots of questions. The Royal Court was a separate entity to the rest of the village; although some families still lived there. The mud huts were impressively decorated and were pretty detailed. The guide explained all the patterns including the broken pottery shards from calabashes to signify the spirit of women, the different lines and curves for fish, grain and other foods, and also the drawings of bats. The bats were apparently well revered in the village culture as they not only kept mosquitoes at bay in the huts, they also were held as good luck symbols. Maybe as they killed all the mozzies! The traditions are being kept up (obviously only in the Royal Court) and every three years the mud walls are repacked and repainted.

We were able to go into a house, horribly named in the guide as a 'living museum', but had a wee bit of difficulty getting in! The huts had very low entrances to protect themselves from wild animals and also from invaders. As the attacker bows to enter the house, the person in side has the advantage and can just behead them! Also there was an internal wall, higher than the door frame, so that arrows could not be fired through. Quite ingenious really but was a bit of a pain trying to get in - cannot have looked stylish.

Inside the hut, which was pretty dark, we saw how the Kassena people in the area lived. There were different rooms for cooking and two sleeping rooms. The grandmother of the women would sleep in the entrance to the second sleeping room, so that no girls could sneak out or boys could sneak in! Pretty smart these Kassena! Had a bit of a fright in the pitch black kitchen when a bat flew around for a minute. Think I may have let out a high-pitched scream! After we left the hut, we were taken to the usual tat stalls, where villagers sold pipes, t shirts, caps, bracelets etc. Bit of a shame. Over the border to Ghana tomorrow! Country number six!