Breaking for Chickens

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.