My original
intent was to make a short, glib Face Book post about my having been in Africa
long enough to discover why the chicken crossed the road with the answer being
for the sole purpose to make me jam on the brakes. African chickens in these parts dawdle and
often stop to peck at something in the middle of the road just as a car comes
barreling along. And even “barreling
along” takes on a different connotation when one “barrels” at 2 or 3 Kph or one
risks leaving an abundance of car parts laying behind in the cratered road for
the plethora of Burkinabé entrepreneurs to harvest. Today’s road collectables are tomorrow’s part
sale or repair at any of the countless roadside garagiste’s. But I digress.
The hoped
for glib remark about the chicken’s pause du café causing me to push the brake
pedal until it leaves a mirrored impression on the underside of the floor
boards morphed into a two-day odyssey that left me even more enamored of Burkinabé
culture and lessons learned from or about the jaywalking African chicken.
My growing
expertise in the near panicked reliance upon the brake pedal led to a new
adventure on the somewhat notorious Fada Road where enough motos to carry all
of Father Abraham’s promised descendants fill the street like a never ending
swarm of salmon single-mindedly seeking their to-die-for destination. Driving on Fada Road involves all five senses
plus those of any passengers daring enough to come along for the ride. Except that of the driver, unconsciousness
makes the experience infinitely more enjoyable.
The
three-pointer in driving on the Fada Road is dodging the errant truck or
steroidal SUV dropping itself directly in front of me as I drive past a signal
that must have looked very red to the driver whose behemoth fades into the dust
as my brake pedal carves a groove into the blacktop and the moto driver behind
me tries to make a very good impression by making a very good impression on my
rear bumper. He wasn’t driving too close;
he just was trying to see what station we were listening to on the car radio.
My French
isn’t all that bad, especially if I had been trying to order “deux plates du
jour avec une bouteille d’eau gaseous” rather than trying to explain my intense
interest in calling the police while trying to engage him in a sufficiently
interesting repartee long enough for Janet to take a photo of his moto and
license plate in the event he leaves before the police can part the sea of
motos and arrive at the scene. As he was
leaving I was trying to order dinner from the policeman on the other end of the
phone call and would have been overjoyed had the Burkinabé version of Pizza Hut
arrived two hours later rather than two very personable policemen.
My new boss
of the job I had held for all of two-and-a-half weeks arrived in the nick to
enthrall Janet and me with a fluency and panache that made me suspect that he
was really a full-blooded Burkinabé with one very evident gene mutation that
made him appear to be a dyed-in-the-wool Kanuk.
The police took their measurements and measured me up and had pity on my
left coronary artery by deciding that Mr. Moto was a fault—evidently his good impression
on my bumper made a good impression on the police as well. After my boss made me suspect with a high level
of certainty that he really was Burkinabé the way he chatted effortlessly and
sincerely with the police and a few passers-by, I learned that we had to go to
the prefecture de police to make a statement the next afternoon. I wondered if any of the statements I had
made right after the accident would suffice, but discretion overruled that
thought.
The next
afternoon, our very capable Burkinabé guide and sometime babysitter, Janet who
I hoped would moan and cry like a professional mourner at the first sight of
handcuffs moving in my direction, and I still memorizing the best French phrases
with absolutely nothing to do with ordering dinner headed down the dreaded Fada
Road past the exact point where my day had taken a left-hand turn 24-hours
before.
The three
of us sat in plastic chairs in a very small room with a very personable police
official and a desk that occupied at least half of the room. The overhead fan was covered in a spider’s
net that long ago provided a big enough catch to feed the spider for its entire
life which appeared to have ended sometime just before the first Bush
administration. The most visible
not-paper object on the desk was the ubiquitous “tampon”—French for rubber
stamp.
After a
conversation in which I participated but soon assumed an inferior position as I
listened to our Burkinabé handler deftly explain much too fast for me to follow
his understanding of the previous day’s events.
Janet and I compared notes to see if we caught enough between us to
figure if I would not be sleeping at home that night. The official smiled often enough for me to
breathe again. He asked me more
questions, he wrote at length, he took the copies of the photos Janet had taken
of the moto, he wrote some more, and our handler stood up and began wishing the
official a bon journee as did Janet and I,
repeatedly and with great sincerity.
We were home free or at least heading out the door of his cabine and
onto the dreaded Fada Road once more.
Not quite
home free. We now had to go to the
assurance office to pick up a statement that declared the moto driver at fault
so the police could make him pay for the very good impression he had made. Not only on the Fada Road once more, but
heading downtown, during rush hour. To
make a long story less long, we all left about 45-minutes later with the
necessary paperwork. We will wait for a
call from the police to tell us when we will head down once again to the
prefecture to meet with the official and Mr. Moto to arrange for restitution or
at least (as is Janet’s and my wish, for him take responsibility for a bad good
impression) and we call it a day.
My lesson
of the day is that if you have an accident in Burkina Faso, you must stop the
car at the exact spot where the accident occurred so the police can take measurements. As for a jaywalking African chicken in the
middle of the road, next time I will lay off the brakes and just make a good
impression-- on the chicken.
