travelrama!

So, Christmas! Was wonderful. If I couldn't be home for christmas, this was the absolute next best thing. I went to my lovely, dear friend Leah's house (with a number of other volunteers and some of her village friends) for the holiday, in Orodara, which is really far southwest in the country. We had a traditional... Ukranian? Christmas eve meal, which was really meaningful and it was nice to celebrate with her family traditions. And we went caroling around her neighborhood (some of us very reluctantly, but it turned out to be really cute and fun,)and did stockings, and a white elephant gift exchange (Yankee swap!) Then, in a Christmas miracle, we had pizza and salad for our Christmas day lunch.



After Christmas, seven of us went on a bike tour of the area as our winter break vacation. We biked to Banfora, where there are waterfalls and "the domes," which are very cool natural rock formations. Okay. Honestly, Burkina's not the most beautiful country. It's not lush, it's not mountainous, it's not along the water. Like, it's the Sahel. It's kind of scrubby and dusty. But the southwest region of the country is more tropical than the rest, and the difference between the Orodara-Banfora area and my site was pretty remarkable. There were trees everywhere, tall trees, that made it feel forested. There were also rice fields (okay, I have those) and sugar cane fields and tons of fruit trees. It was a seriously beautiful bike trip. I'm really glad I got to experience a much different Burkina than I'm used to. Except for the fact that we camped out a lot, and I about froze to death. Not used to that.



And the last super-exciting and potentially life-threatening activity of our trip was the visit to the hippo lake! I believe I mentioned this. Well, we (seven of us and two guides) went out in a charming, small, slightly leaky wooden canoe onto a lake (Tangrila, like Shangri-la) in which there were a number of alleged hippos. As we approached the area where they were supposed to be, one of the guides started knocking the side of the boat with the wooden paddle, making a lovely resonant thudding noise, to scare the hippos out of the water.
I wish typing could convey the tone of my voice right now. I'm trying to express some intense horror and "this is a terrible, terrible idea"-ness regarding this idea. Let's try again. They were hitting the side of the boat, to scare. the hippos. really dangerous hippos. out of the water. so they would come up and look at us. When there were five hippos (including a mother and baby) with their heads out of the water, STARING AT US, I got slightly nervous. One of those moments where you joke to everybody about what a bad idea it is, and how cool it would be to be killed by hippos, but also kind of thinking that it could potentially really happen and that you're in the middle of a really stupid life choice. But it turned out perfectly fine, and very cool, and we saw hippos and got waterlily crowns and had a lovely time overall. I took pictures, but the hippos are mostly underwater.

and... hippo!