Kouka’s aunt reminds me of one of the figures in Gauguin’s paintings. She has smooth, gleaming skin, though she is quite fat. Her movements are languid. Every minute or so her arms find another graceful way to tangle with each other – across the top of her head; over to one side or other, allowing one hand to gracefully pend from the wrist. She does not seem restricted in her movements by any rigidity in her bones or stiffness in her muscles. Her skin, flesh, and bones seem to work together without any glitch.

The Agriculture school director, who Omar has asked to care of Kouka and me, leaves behind a scooter for our use. This is fantastic. A scooter permits us to go anywhere, for everywhere in the brush there are paths that in this season (not in the monsoon apparently) are easily navigable by scooter. The director invites us out to lunch at 12:30. We accept. Kouka is shaky about taking me on a scooter. I ride with Denis. A friend turns up and takes her. We eat at the same restaurant we ate at yesterday with the woman who is in charge of the women’s projects at Six-S (we treated her). I order the same thing – rice and sauce legume and they order the same thing Beatrice and Kouka ordered yesterday – pommes frites and brioches (meat kabobs). We walk back – Denis apologizes for not picking us up – he didn’t think we would have finished yet. Kouka does a trial round on the scooter. She used to have her own scooter here but she doesn’t know what has happened to it. Last year when she visited here right after the U.S. it wasn’t here. She is very proficient. We decide to proceed slowly. I mount behind her holding on to her waist and off we go to Kuri, her village. There is almost no traffic, so it feels very safe.

My heart lifts immediately on seeing the countryside – wide open, untouched, red clay and sand, a few courtyards here and there. It feels wonderful to be independent, two women off an adventure.

Most of her family is away in Ouagadougou. Her cousin (father’s brother’s son) got married in Dec. (20? 26?) and they stayed on. They received a message that she was arriving and so stayed some more waiting for her.
Her village has 5-6 courtyards (I think). Each courtyard seems to have an uncle. When we arrive at her father’s young brother’s place there is a huge crowd of kids (15-20). As soon as they see me (at first I was concealed by Kouka) there is quite a commotion – the boys (5-10 years old) scatter in various directions in a mixture of agitation and merriment. The younger ones start to howl. Some of them are clearly terrified and cry piteously clinging to whoever is around. I try to back off a little and that helps. We then enter Kouka’s uncle’s room where the gang of boys (apparently there are far more boys then girls in the family) crowd outside the entryway wanting to pose for me to take photos/film. They favor heroic stances and keep overtaking each other to be in the front row of the group. They are alternately quiet and observing, and full of hilarity and bravado. They are all dressed in tattered Western clothes at the end of the line. I am sorry once again that I didn’t bring along more kid-hand-me-downs.

Kouka’s father was rejected from this family when at age 17 (or 18 or 19?) he decided to convert to Christianity and join the Protestant missionaries. Later, one uncle came to make amends, then another, then an aunt, and so there was a reconciliation. Kouka’s father, being the oldest, was expected to continue the family traditions (they were animist). I wonder who, if anyone, took his place.

The uncle we first spoke to has fine features, long eyelashes, a high-pitched voice, and the common glistening skin and beautifully toned but relaxed musculature. I filmed him some and watched the interaction between him and Kouka (it is not a joking relationship, Kouka told me later, and this reminded me of Aborigine society. Here you have a joking relationship with grandparents and cousins and everyone on your mother’s side; you have a serious relationship with parents and everyone on your father’s side.) After a while I wandered out with my two cameras followed by the group of boys and asked about the granary, the goat house, the grinding stones, etc. Kouka came out and we wandered past the well to her other uncles, paid our respects (the old men sitting outside the courtyards or in their rooms are the key to the villages), and entered. One very old man with a cataract bad enough he enquired of Kouka if I was a male partner, was preparing leaves from a plant to make string. Two old men (one with a missing covered over eye who had fought for De Gaulle in Marseille) mistook Kouka for someone else (one of her cousins from Ouaga) and had to re-greet her when they placed her correctly (it seemed to me the first greeting was more enthusiastic, but the second one might have been damped a little by the confusion). We ended up leaving the village with two hens and a cock,. They said they were so happy I had come all the way; they want me to eat well before I leave; they have nothing to give to me so they are giving the chickens. When we left the village I spent quite some time and film with some young women and girls grinding material for a beverage. At the end they presented me a container wrapped with a piece of cloth with the beverage powder. We stranded the chickens (their feet were tied with strips of cloth) across the handle bar (2+1) and waved bye-bye and thanks.

That brings me to Friday morning. Kouka left early (picked up by the director at 6 AM) because she has to send a fax from Ouaga (why this couldn’t be done in the days she was there I will never understand). I wrote notes in the AM and then proceeded to the Service Naam (Six-S) to look for a map of the region. (I’m forgetting Denis took me out of town and taught me in a short 20 minutes how to be an ace driver of the moto-damme the director lent us). At the radio bureau there a young fellow named Abramane accompanied me to the nearby Centre Hydraulique where he knew they have good maps of the area. This meant letting him drive me on the moto (I didn’t feel ready to take passengers and he, like everyone here, drives easily and well.) Sure enough, they had good geographic maps and they were willing to copy a section of one for me onto a large sheet of paper. I had the plan to return to Gouri perhaps, since Kouka’s relatives recognize me now. Abdramane convinced me to let him accompany me to a number of villages (he knew about the bone-setters in Rikon that I heard about from Denis; he also knew of a traditional practitioner of herbal medicine in town, a herbalist for children in Oufrey, and potters in Kondologo).
I was surprised (but not very) at how easily he got out of his job. Apparently he is apprenticing at the radio station without pay in the hope of obtaining the job some day. This is typical, apparently. He is 27 and doesn’t like the situation. He also doesn’t like that le patron keeps secrets so that you can never break out on your own. I have met with his pals (one of whom speaks English and rubs me the wrong way – he seems a little slimy and complaining). They clearly spend most of their time hanging out and having discussions (I think here the African and French cultures have an additive effect. People don’t seem to do much; they talk). We visited a lot of villages – first Rikou to the healers, then Kodologo, then Oufrey with stops along the way.

In Rikou we learned that the old healer had died and his two sons have take up his practice. The elder son, Tidianye, examined my neck where I have had some nagging discomfort for six months. He has very sensitive fingers and his approach is very gentle. He told me I don’t have a problem with my bones – it’s in the nerves (this appears to include muscles). It was very clear that he was not accustomed to seeing or working on chronically tensed muscle. He kept calling it “Dingnee,’ and everyone standing around seemed to find this condition very interesting. He works in the morning and asked me to return the next morning (he starts at 7:30 AM) with Neophrine. He did a little work on my neck anyway since I was happy (in fact, happier) for him to use karite [shea] butter. He inspires confidence. I especially liked his modesty, his sweet expression, and his recognition of his limits (he only does bone-setting, only uses beurre de karite, etc.) A man from Gabon who broke his tibia three months ago and was still having trouble with it, is at the end of a 2-3 week visit here (In patient service is available and there is a sign on the porch requesting 25f/day from in-patients to cover expenses.) Three years ago he broke his femur and found help here, so he decided to come here this time too. I remarked that this is a long way to come (he took 2 or 3 flights). He said yes, but health comes before everything – if you can’t walk, that won’t do. The younger brother brought a registry of patients they have seen since ’93. Before this registry, they had another one. They said that in all, they have had 37,000 patients. I noticed that there were gaps in the registry (for example a recent three month gap). They told me they only write down the serious cases. The registry had lots of fractures, “accidents”, entorses, deplacements. The most frequent breaks they see are in the forearm and lower leg. They also see cases where the skin is broken. They seem to be confident about being able to fix all sorts of things. They use bark splints and knitted bandages tied with pieces of string or fastened with a safety pin.

At Oufrey the child specialist / herbalist was out praying at the mosque. After waiting around a bit and gabbing with Abramane’s buddies we went down to town and ate lunch at the Caiman Restaurant. I had my usual riz-sauce legumes (which sometimes is a sauce arachide) and he had a soupe bouef and coke. Then we went to Kodologo. An elder has died and all the women are at the funeral (we saw a procession of them). Also since it is Karen (and almost everyone around this region in Muslim) people are fasting and therefore not doing their usual work, including pottery. I hung out a bit and someone located a woman who was doing pottery anyway. She had a baby on her back and let me film as she molded the attachments on a clay cooking stand she was making. She makes seven a day, collects the clay herself. It is more tiring to do it with a baby on her back she says. She learnt from her brother. The pots need to dry – she could sell me one in two days. She sells them in town normally. By the time we get home it is dusk, but I have to drop Abramane home at the other side of town. I am apprehensive about having to drive my moto after dark. I manage fine though, not going into the 3rd gear at all.

On Sunday, Abdramane [my guide] had to attend a marriage in two villages (this seems to be common. They go from one spouse’s village to the other) and I hung out in Rikou by myself. First, I got a massage from the post-delivery masseuse (I must remember to give her a present at the end) – it was as usual brief, brusque, cleansing, and emollient (since it is done with hot water and karite butter). The water was not quite hot enough (even though she returned to her house for a while to let our water heat up.) Before my massage, I watched and filmed her massaging the baby boy. This is one thorough procedure. At one point the baby dangles from one arm, then the other, then the two legs. The rub over the spine is quite brusque. The arms are stretched across the body and in the front and in the back. The baby’s head and face are washed (I wondered about this as a sanitary practice). Every orifice is cleaned. I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on when she made a sucking or blowing noise around the baby’s ears. I was surprised that the baby cried hardly at all and in fact seemed to enjoy most of it though this was his first bath.