Fespaco

I don’t remember if I talked about SIAO back in December, but every 2 years Burkina Faso has a huge arts festival. Vendors come from all over Burkina, as well as other countries in Africa. I was able to go and even found a few great souvenirs. Also occurring every 2 years (but the opposite two of SIAO) is a film festival called Fespaco. Brittany and I were in Ouaga at the completion of Fespaco just before leaving for Kongoussi. We went to a film two different evenings. One film was a film from South Africa (so in English!) and the other- the winner of Fespaco- was from (not completely sure where) a northern African country. We sat in a cool outdoor theatre and experienced a great breeze under the African stars.

The other great part was that we got to go to the closing ceremony of Fespaco! It was in a huge outdoor stadium in Ouaga. We invited one of our kids from the orphanage to go with us (he goes to university in Ouaga). He was super excited, and with a huge smile, said about four times how this was his first time to the giant stadium and the first time to do anything like this. It really was so cute. And then the ceremony had a great opening with different groups- one reminded me of “STOMP” with drums and people using many common African objects to play music with, another was a sort of marimba type of music group, and the last was an incredible group of French firefighters who did acrobatic things- sounds crazy, I know. It really was crazy to watch, and fun to see the people around us reacting to it as well.

Some dancers on stilts at the ceremony- creepy masks, but crazy to see what they can do!

The "Stomp" group coming in with huge water storage metal bins used at drums and much more

The French acrobatic firefighters... I wonder if they actually fight fires?

Brittany and I with Etienne

The french firefighters