urban poverty may be tougher than rural poverty

(this is an old post that didn't make it online on time)

Spent the night at Brian’s again on Saturday and saw even more shooting stars - broke my record again for best looking meteor. This time Brian saw it first and even as he was making noise to express his excitement I had already caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye. I turned to watch it and it lasted so long that we both had enough time to go “WOOOAAAHHHHH DUUUUDE” and it was still streaking across the sky. It must have lasted almost 2 full seconds, which doesn’t sound like a lot but considering most shooting stars are pretty quick blips in the sky, this one lasted forever. It had a pointed head and reminded me of a missile or a plane, had a grey body and a large plume of smoke coming off its tail. It left a bright red/orange streak of fire in its wake and I continue to say that it could not get any more impressive than that. I will probably have yet another record breaker next time I watch the sky. We saw several others that left streaks, some of which that were greenish in color.

Sunday I washed some clothes and after lunch I went to the Oxygen bar in town to meet up with the owner and DJ there for a “cultural exchange”. I basically burnt him some CD’s and he gave me some to copy. He is super happy and keeps telling me how good the American tunes (even though some aren’t American, he doesn’t care). I also got to see Ouahigouya’s “other side of the tracks”. Sector 7 was new to me, as no trainees live over there and it’s the other side of the main road, away from any locations I usually frequent. We went to this guys house to get more blank CD’s, and I got a chance to walk through a housing compound that could describe Burkina urban poverty.

You walk through the gate from the road into an area enclosed on all 4 sides. A hangar provided a covered area where pounded millet flour was being dried. To the right was a small space in the wall where a pathway about the width of my person led to a series of more pathways of equal width. It reminded me of being in a labyrinth; the walls were close together, made of mud bricks and rose higher than one’s head. At the end of the first pathway leading away from the main entrance, an intersection led to the latrines on the right and more pathways to the left. The smell coming from the latrine was atrocious, even at a reasonable distance. We took the left pathway and rounded a corner, passing one or two more paths to the left and right. At another 3 way intersecton we took a right and it opened up a bit into what could be the porch of a house. The house behind was two roomed and packed full of a random assortment of things. I saw old tin cans, bicycle parts, prayer beads, many tea pots, serving dishes, broken TV’s, and they were all just all over the place. Two older men were sitting on mats talking and greeted me as we walked by to grab a chair. We left the house the way we came in and I realized how close the wall of the next house was. The “porch” of this one was so close to the wall of the next house that sunlight would only shine in that courtyard for about an hour around noon when the sun was highest in the sky. It was so cramped that I had to take my bag off my back so that the three of us had an easier time walking back through the maze of passages. We passed the last intersection where we had taken a right, took one more right and then a left to enter what would be this guy’s courtyard and house. The courtyard was about the size of a small car, and his house was only a bit bigger. There were no windows, only a large open space with a hanging cloth for the door, and the high tin roof was the only reason it wasn’t unbearably hot inside.

It was shocking to see this guy living on top of all these other families, and I fully understood why he spent his waking life at the oxygen bar with his buddies. He goes home to bath and to sleep and that’s it. And if there was ever any kind of emergency that required a speedy evacuation of all residents on the premises, hell would break loose and people would be crawling on one another to get out the front gate. My family’s compound and those of the other host family’s in town are like mansions compared to what I saw today. Even being in village with much fewer amenities is still a step above how my buddy and his neighbors are living. I even think that a lot of useable space was wasted in building the labyrinth of pathways separating and leading to the individual houses.

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