Burkina Faso and FESPACO

The past few weeks have been very busy (mostly because I was spending over 30 hours in a tiny van driving along a ridiculously bumpy road) yet very fun. I went with my documentary class to Burkina Faso, the country immediately north of Ghana, for the largest (and perhaps only) African film festival, FESPACO. We left at 5 am in a too small Ford van crammed with all out cameras and sound equipment and for the first few hours we drove without AC to spare the engine. By 6 pm we were safely in Bolgatanga, a town on the Ghanaian side of the border. Though at times we weren't sure if we would ever make it, the roads were so horrible and practically non existent. We set out at 5 am again on Saturday, passed through the delightfully dilapidated border crossing with little trouble, and arrived in Ouagadougou (the capital of Burkina) around noon. The first day was spent wandering aimlessly around the film festival, wondering if we were going to get passes or not and eating kebabs. All that was accomplished was discovering a good local street bar with delicious egg sandwiches on baguettes (one of the many examples of french influence). But luckily the next day we had complimentary passes and saw our first movie, a very long documentary about the current political of South Africa, which actually pretty interesting. The next day we were able to see my professor's movie about rastas in Ethiopia and several other interesting films in french with french subtitles. My four years of French were a little helpful but not much, and the movies were just downright weird (one was about an albino murder mystery in Mali involving sacrifice and theater... and the other was about a crazy family in South Africa, both fiction). We also saw a very cute documentary about child bus drivers in Egypt. Along the way we took a lot of footage of the festival and the people of Burkina (called Burkinabes) and had time to interview lots of other festivaliers (the official name of everyone attending). Everyone had an amazing time and our two TA's took us out to dinner and dance clubs and were constantly entertaining us. By Tuesday no one wanted to leave but as soon as we finished walking around the open air market we had to pack up the van again and head to Bolgatanga for the night. Wednesday we woke up again at 5 and headed on our way, though it took us longer to get home because right at the outskirts of Accra, where the road starts to get a little less bumpy, our tire blew out. Scaring all of us and the entire group of people selling food on the road side. By the time we finally got home it was almost 9 and all of us immediately went to bed and passed out (even though we had spent most of the car ride sleeping...). The rest of the that week and the next have been going by very slowly because I cannot wait to be on a plane to South Africa and Namibia. We fly down for spring break this Friday and will be kayaking, dune surfing, wine tasting (and maybe even skydiving)!