Day 12: The road from Kaya to Boulsa (Just over half way through the tour)!

By Jon

Kaya to Boulsa: 78 Kilometers

It was a hot, over 100 degree day (like most days here)! We started out early and packed our bags in the dark using our head lamps . We left town at first light. Even here in the dry-Sahelian north of Burkina Faso there is a lot of green in the landscape during the short rainy season. It was a very cool morning and we passed several little mud brick mosques that were framed with beautiful reds and pinks in the sky from the rising sun.

We had stopped for breakfast at a volunteer's village 20 kilometers outside of Kaya. Soon after leaving the village, it began to get very hot. The best thing in the world for the Bike Tour is a good rain storm at night (however, this makes it hard to sleep outside in our bug huts). Things cool off and the sky stays cloudy all morning. Those are the best days to ride.

However, today the sky was clear and blue. It had not rained in this area for several days. It seemed to get hotter by the minute. We were on a good dirt road with some long but not too steep hills. Over the course of the day the group of riders slowly spread out to one or two riders at 10 or 15 minute intervals from each other.

I covered my head and helmet with a white scarf to keep the sun off. But the heat got worse and I kept biking slower and feeling weaker. I drank at least 6 liters of water on the bike ride but it wasn't enough. In the USA we often say that the sun is hot, but here in Burkina the sun HURTS!
Finally, I could see cell phone towers in the distance, which means a village or town was near. A few kilometers outside of town, I came across a truck full of friendly police officers waiting to welcome the Bike Tour to Boulsa.

In the past few days, the bike tour has been getting a lot of honorary escorts from local police. It makes you feel a bit like a celebrity. Guys in uniforms cruising in front of us on their motorcycles. They often block traffic for us and escort us all the way into town.

Here in Burkina Faso, protocal is very important! Local officials, including the village chief, the mayor, the prefecture, and the local head of police all expect to be informed of events going on in their communities.

In Boulsa, the director of the regional nutrition center forgot to tell her boss that she was hosting a nutrition training with our group of Peace Corps Volunteers and a local womens' group. So we made sure to visit her surpivisor after the training and present him with a certificate of appreciation from the Bike Tour. We also stopped by and presented the local police with certificates of appreciation to thank them for the honorary escorts that they gave us on the road. Certificates and awards are really appreciated in this country.

But, while protocal is important, my favorite part of the Bike Tour is its emphasis on doing some kind of training or activity with the local population in the communities where we stay. In Boulsa, we did a training with a group of 20 widows on the nutritional benefits of the leafs of the moringa tree. We had little books printed in the local language Moore. However, most of the women in the group are illiterate, which is why our books also includes descriptive drawings for those who cannot read the text.

The women were very interested in the moringa tree. They were especially excited to learn how to plant the moringa tree. At the end of the training we gave out small amounts of moringa seeds so that the women could plant them in their family courtyards.

Organizing a meeting in Burkina can be a very difficult task. We had been told before the meeting that there might be as few as seven or as many as fifty women present. But the twenty was perfect, it allowed all the riders and women to sit together in a big circle and have more individual interaction between the volunteers and the women.

After the training, we had dinner and and went to bed by 8pm.

And that is the life of the tour: get up before sunrise, bike a lot, meet with local officials, do trainings with a local group, and then eat, sleep and get up and do it all over again the next day!