Things We Hate Until We Love Them

In Burkina, a lot of time things seem impossible to get done. Things are hard to find. People are hard to talk to or hard to understand. A lot of times, they see a white person (or other clearly non-Burkinabe) and assume they can take advantage of us because we don’t know anything (a lot of times true…). It doesn’t help that if someone is difficult or rude or blatantly not doing their job, there is little we can do about it. We can’t call their supervisor or someone nicer to help us. Basically, things can be difficult.

But sometimes, this works in the opposite direction. Someone recognizes you or knows someone who knows you or came from the village where you live and they help you out. And when I say “help you out” I don’t just mean they’ll point you to the stand that sells what you need to find. They will bring you to the place you need to go, tell people what you need and then bargain for you. Sometimes, they won’t bring you. They’ll sit you down in the shade and say, “Wait right here.” Ten minutes later, they come back with what you need.

An example of this occurred a couple of days ago. It wasn’t to the extent I just described, but I still really appreciated it. I headed to a place to get a Togo/Benin visa for an upcoming vacation. I had been warned that to be VERY prepared because the people are grouchy and not helpful. We walked in and stood around awkwardly trying to figure out where to go and who was supposed to help us. People who seemed to work there just glanced over at us and then went back to their work (or more often, talking to the person next to them). Great, it seemed like the rumors were true and the service would be awful. We bumbled around to a man in the corner who suddenly looked up at us and said to me, “You’re Peace Corps? What village are you in?” I told him the name of my village and he said “I used to be there! I was one of the police who worked at the border check!” He continued to talk about the village, the previous volunteer (of whom he had a picture of on his camera), found out I was neighbors with his friend, and that I (and the other people I was with) spoke Jula. Suddenly (in concurrence with one of the other volunteers giving him her pen), he was our best friend. He was smiley and friendly and VERY helpful. We had so much fun talking to this guy and left the visa place smiling and feeling like the experience was kind of fun and not at all frustrating.

It’s all about who you know and where you’re from. And sometimes what language you can speak. A pain in the butt until it’s really helpful.