Yel Kaye – Travel Blog, Writing and Photography

These three kids might as well be called the Three Stooges. The boy on the left is five-year-old Tidi. The little one in the middle is his three-year-old sister Alindi. They are two of our neighbor Mme Ilboudo’s children. The girl on the right is four-year-old Aleah, the little sister of my friends Ruth and Zaki. Tidi, Alindi and Aleah were always together, getting into trouble. Although all the kids knew that the boss at FDC didn’t let kids on the compound, they would always sneak in anyways. Usually they’d be lingering by the side of our house, and we’d be clued in to their presence from all the giggling.

These kids loved empty water bottles. Well, the kids loved any objects we could give them, because they’d make toys out of anything. But water bottles seemed to be the material of choice, because they could make shovels, wheely-things on sticks, rattles, and more. So when they saw us, they’d usually make the following request: “Nasara, je demande bidon!” (White person, we ask for a water bottle.) One of the few things they could say in French, really.

When I think of kids in Burkina Faso, I will forever think of these three first. Like kids should be, they were cheerful, impish, energetic and friendly. I got so used to walking to the market with their repeated catch phrases “Nasara bon-jou!” (“Hello white people!”) trailing me as I went, that when I left everything felt so quiet.

I’m ashamed to say, I don’t think we ever knew this man’s name, even though we saw him almost ever day. Everyone basically knew him as “le guardien.” Of the three security guards for the FDC compound, he was there most often and definitely the only one who looked like he could really kick ass. During our first week in Sapone, when the other two girls seemed to be going through some substantial culture shock, I was content as could be and not really scared of anything. Except this guy. He terrified me. He had what seemed like big, sharp teeth, and he patrolled the property armed with a slingshot and an intense glare.

Two months later, it made me laugh to remember that I once felt this way. The guard was the father of two adorable children, Leo and Alidi. When we saw him out working the fields on his “days off,” he’d laugh and wave at us with his wife. He didn’t speak a word of French, but would always be happy to listen to us try and speak Moore. When I gave him a photograph of Leo that my mother had printed and mailed me, he was overjoyed and asked me to take this portrait.

This is one of my favourite photographs that I have ever taken. For the first month and a half of the summer, it was still the dry season and all of the other village men were off working in Ouagadougou or Cote d’Ivoire. Until the rain started an farming began, the guard was pretty much the only “local” man we knew. This photograph captures the generalized “essence” of the farming men in the village of Sapone: quiet, strong, somewhat fierce, proud, and gentle.