Istanbul

Alright, forget about Burkina Faso, Istanbul is where it's at. An absolutely amazing city with tons to see and do, great food and a lively atmosphere. This city is worth your time, no question.

So what makes Istanbul cool? Well, let's take a short tour...

OK, so first off, I have to say that the Hagia Sophia (as seen from my hostel rooftop) is one of the most amazing churches you're ever likely to visit. It looks a bit drab on the outside...

 But inside is absolutely stunning!

When you come here, you feel completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place.

And the inside is done up in amazing mosaic tile work. Check out my namesake, looks pretty good.

And the place looks fantastic at night.

Across the street is the equally stunning Blue Mosque, well worth a visit, but somehow less impressive than the Hagia I thought.

Underneath it all is a giant cistern, which is kind of neat, but really only amounts to a big empty room underground.

More impressive, I thought, was the huge aqueduct which fed the cistern. Somehow this isn't a huge tourist attraction, but it's still pretty neat.

A bit further afield is the Dolmabahce Palace, an incredible place, the grand hall alone was worth the price of admission (no pictures inside, unfortunately). What sets it apart is that all the old furniture and decorations are still around, making it feel like the real deal. I had also visited the more famous Topkapi Palace, but to be honest, I didn't think it was all that great.

Dolmabahce Palace from the water.

The 'real' part of Istanbul is a lot of fun. Shops, people, trams, people, ice cream and views. The north side of the Golden Horn is definitely worth a visit, just to see a bit more of the true Istanbul and get away from the thousands of tourists for a while.

Plus, I found the headquarters of:

Crazy story, in my hostel I met this girl Ashley, who is teaching in Cairo, but whose parents are living in Fairview(!) For those of you who don't know northern Alberta, Fairview is more or less right next door to my hometown of Grande Prairie. Anyway, we hung out for a while and had a great time exploring the city together.

And that's it! What are you waiting for? Go book your flight to Turkey, you won't regret it! I'm really looking forward to going back someday to visit more of this amazing country, graduation won't come soon enough...

Last day in Burkina

Just a quick follow up on my last day in Africa. There are definitely some things I miss, like having no schedule. It's been rough coming back to Germany and having places to be at certain times - it's been a brutal transition and I nearly died of fatigue over the past week. And it's damn cold here, like the coldest-spring-in-120-years cold, if you can believe it. Is it better than +45C, still debating that.

Since I have real internet again, I thought I'd throw up a couple a photos of Burkina's underwhelming capital city, Ouagadougou:

Ok, so there's some alright buildings and a big mosque, nothing to write home about. And the city center is actually pretty barren: there's a market and a bunch of banks and hotels. Really, even the big city isn't much more than a large village with an out-of-place financial center.

Which brings me to my conclusion: Burkina Faso is an amazing place to work, but a terrible place to visit. If you want to live here for a few months doing aid work or something, it's a great place with friendly people and a less westernized culture. Just be prepared to eat a lot of rice.

Out of Africa

So, a lot of people have asked me to describe life in Africa, but it's hard. Photos don't really capture anything, because you inevitably end up with the same old pictures of dusty roads filled with mopeds. And the lifestyle is pretty mundane, since most people can't afford to eat anything other than rice even if they wanted to.

No, Africa is more about the interesting moments which make you stop in your tracks and go "huh?" For instance, yesterday I'm walking down a really busy street (one those pray-as-you-cross it streets) when I see 2 guys coming towards me on old fashioned roller skates - RIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOTORCYCLE LANE! People are honking and swerving to avoid them, and these guys don't know how to skate: they're stumbling all over the place and going slower than molasses. But they've got huge smiles on their faces like this is the best day of their lives. Incredible.

Switch views to Dakoro, out of the big city and into the small village. Here, women and men have such distinct roles that they hardly even speak to each other. I don't know how this works, but nearly every day some women would stop by the place where I was staying to help out: cook dinner, sweep the floor, do my laundry or refill my basin with well water so I could cook and take a shower. Basically, women do everything. Men, well, they just kinda hang around all day... I know, utopia right? But seriously, it all felt pretty regressive, but it's also their culture, so who am I to judge?

One day, I went to move my chair from one shady spot to a more shady spot. A woman came up to do it for me, but I told her, no, it's OK. But she grabs the chair out of my hands and moves it for me. OK....

Here's another strange thing: it's not uncommon for men to have more than one wife. But it's more of a social status than anything. One guy I talked to said he would get another wife if he made more money, so she could help out at home. On that note, men are in charge of money, if a woman wants to buy something, she has to ask her husband for money. And she makes any money, it goes straight to the husband....I guess that means less shoes ling around.

I mean, life here is incredible, and weird, and just so bizarre. How many places have you seen a live cow strapped to the roof of a van? Or a herd of sheep hanging out on the roof of a bus, driving down the highway?

Food here leaves something to be desired. Basically, you have rice and.... rice with sauce. They make a decent peanut sauce here and you can usually get some questionable fish or chicken with your rice, if you're feeling brave. Every restaurant serves the exact same thing, even fancy places don't move far from rice & chicken. I started cooking for myself a little, just for variety, and people are shocked that I eat "so many" vegetables. Oh, but they do have a surprisingly good yogurt industry and good local bakeries (although they only bake french loafs, at least they're fresh daily). For fruit, avocados here are cheap and delicious, I'm just missing the mango season (boo!), and you can sometimes find bananas and oranges. When I get back to Germany, first thing I'm going to do is buy 3 McDonalds cheeseburgers (shocking, I know).

For entertainment, well, they host Fespaco (the Oscars of Africa) in Ouaga, but unfortunately I was out in the bush for the entirety. You can always go out for a less-than-stellar and hopefully-cold beer. And there's some good live music, but I do find that balofon music, though incredible, does feel a bit repetitive after a while. And there's no western music to speak of! People always want to listen to my ipod, then just stare at me blankly because they have no idea what to make of Mark Knopfler.

I mentioned it's hot here, basically the whole country goes on siesta from 12:00 - 15:00 every day. But at least stores are open on Sundays (take note Germany). Right now, we get rotating power outages, which really sucks when it's 40 degrees out and your A/C switches off. It is crucial to have a laptop, since you get at least one outage a day (I feel sorry for desktop users, how frustrating). What is neat is that everyone comes out at night, and Burkina is one of the least threatening places I've ever been, so it's cool to wander around, maybe grab a beer. They say that during the day, it's hot as hell, and at night, it's hot as heaven.

I do like how non-touristy Burkina is: People don't try to sell you stuff (and hardly even acknowledge your presence) for the most part. Really, the only Europeans who come here work for NGOs or development companies, and a (very) few tourists.

So, it's a pretty relaxed lifestyle. Nothing outstanding, but I can't complain too much. Living here is comfortable, I really enjoy the work I'm doing, and I'll probably come back for a few months in September for my Master Thesis project.

Well, that's gone on long enough. Now let's have Toto play us out...

Fear the Sun

Fuck me it's been hot the past few days. Just look at this forecast - I can't even step outside during the day! Is this better than the -25C Grande Prairie's sitting at? I'm not even sure anymore.

On the plus side, I got to go on a roadtrip to visit a soon-to-be-built solar kitchen.

 

 Also went to an Improved Cook Stoves project and got to sample some of the local Dolo Beer.

 

 It's actually a pretty tasty sweet, warm drink. But Germans might call it sacrilege.

Saw a cool abandoned mosque. For anyone who's followed this blog, you might have gathered that I love ruined buildings, not sure why.

And that's all I have to say for now. Heading to Istanbul (not Constantinople) next week, looking forward to some good food and reasonable weather.

Well, it's been awhile since my last post, but with good reason. Out in Dakoro, internet is SLOW, so slow that I could barely check my e-mail, and loading my blog was right out of the question. Even now, back in the big city of Ouagadougou things aren't a whole lot better, but hopefully I can manage to get a few pictures up.

Anyway, 5 weeks in the middle of nowhere, with no running water and limited electricity, is quite and experience. And not all bad in fact, I had good food (although variety was a little lacking) and my work was really interesting (thank God). My host, Abou, was a really fantastic guy who took great care of me, and in some ways I almost miss Dakoro. Almost. By the end, it was getting so hot (over 40 degrees during the day) that I couldn't sleep or read or do anything. In fact, I started getting heat stroke just sitting in the shade. Needless to say, I'm really enjoying A/C right now.

So, what did I actually do out in Dakoro? Well, for starters I helped get the gasifier up and running again. I also recommended some new design and operational changes to make future gasifiers easier to use (and hopefully mores successful). Then I did a "feasibility" study, looking at gasifier economics. Basically, gasifier's are an awesome technology, and probably worth investing in if you have a reliable fuel source (eg. cashew shells in Dakoro). Free, carbon-neutral energy is always a good thing, and gasification has many other benefits as well (which I won't go into here, if you're interested I can send you a copy of my reports). All in all, this was a really cool project and I'm glad I got to work on it.

And now what you've all been waiting for, some cool sights from around Dakoro:

Me and Abou, visiting Les Domes.

 Weird rock formations? We've got that.

And waterfall showers? No problem.

Not the most epic waterfall ever, but nice.

Really cool old mosque in Bobo.

Swearing in the new Mayor, quite the celebration.

Ah! Tiger! Where did I put those lemons!?!

The advantages of life without distraction.

Beautiful sunsets (and stars) out there.

And then there's camels, who knew?

Anyway, that's all for now. It's hard to capture life in Africa using pictures, but it is a cool experience, worth checking out.

Why Africa?

So you may be asking yourself, 'Where is Ouagadougou and why is Christian there?' Valid question. As you probably know, I'm doing my masters in renewable energy and I have to do a 2 month internship. I got on with the SNV, a Dutch rural development agency working around the world. I'm working on a pilot project involving the gasification of cashew shells on a cashew plantation in the middle of nowhere. The idea is to take these cashew shells which are normally just thrown away, and get some useful energy out of them. In this case, we make syngas out of the shells which is then burned to power a boiler. The steam from the boiler is then used to soften the cashews so their shells can be cracked. These shells are then gasified and thus the cycle continues. Since this is a sustainable plantation run by Wisions, the whole process is more or less carbon neutral.

So what do they need me for? Well, right now there are some problems (social, financial, technical) and the gasifier isn't being used. My job is to help address these issues and establish a system which actually works. It's a lot to do in only 2 months, so we'll see how things go. That said, I'm really excited to be working on this project and could definitely see myself doing more of the same in the future.

Some notes on Burkina Faso:
1) Tout le monde parle français. And I thought 12 years of French Immersion would be totally useless...
2) Burkina Faso is in the finals for the African Cup of Nations (that's a soccer title for you North Americans)
3) Chickens are the most annoying animal in recorded history and insist on waking you up at 6:00 in the morning.

Arrived in Ouagadougou at 1:00 AM on Tuesday, Feb 5th. After nearly 24 hours of travel I was pretty exhausted, but getting a visa was relatively painless and my airport pickup got me to my guesthouse without any problems. Got to my room, threw down my belongings, went to the bathroom, locked the door and the key snaps off in my hand. Fantastic. My first instinct is to try to McGuyver my way out of this situation, but after about 10 minutes without any progress I decide I’m better off just to yell for help. But it’s 2:30 in the morning and it takes a while to get someone’s attention. Eventually I wake someone up and am rescued, and then immediately go to sleep, hardly worse for wear.

Spent a few days reading up on gasifiers and generally preparing for my grand adventure in off-grid bush. Today I bought a solar system, so that's pretty cool, and Monday morning I leave civilization behind to start my real work.

I'll try to update this thing if I can, but no guarantees I'll have internet access, so don't expect too much. And I promise to get some better pictures up soon, but to be honest nothing here looks all that cool, it's more of an experience.