3 day madness

It has been rather quiet here. Sorry for that. I've just been a bit too busy, being on missions throughout Burkina - and ... and ... lots of stuff. 

This post is only about the 'Journée de la communauté Burkinabè', a yearly event, organized to gather all mayors of Burkina Faso and to discuss relevant topics in regard to the decentralization process. 3 Days, and every year a different city that hosts the event. This time the location was Gaoua, a city in the far west of Burkina Faso.  

In this post only the 'light' version of these days. A report on the contents - insights, challenges and problems regarding to decentralization in Burkina Faso - is still in progress and will be published - sometime. 

Assisting Nicole, secretary of the association in fidgeting some last details for a presentation. 

The mayor of Comin-Yanga

Don't know which municipality this major is from (picture taken while tag half out of frame), but he's definitely from the Sahel-region. Travelled about 600km to get to this convention.

Pretty filled up - university campus of Gaoua 

Everybody knows Simon. Mayor of the city of Ouagadougou, and president of the association I work for. 

Yep, there are female mayors in this country. But only 22 out of 351, so there's room for improvement.

Preparing for the procession and clearly happy. 3 Mayors posing.

Clarisse, protocol for the city of Ouagadougou. She works like 5 men! Made her happy by buying a beer.

Boniface, Sécretaire Executif of the AMBF. We share a desk and work well together. Note: look at his eyes. He's soooo tired.

Behind the scenes of an event like this. Trying to get a glimpse of what's happening.

Seeking shelter while waiting for start of procession - and rain pouring out of the sky. Which is a good omen in this country.

On the left the mayor of Koudougou and Secretaire General of the AMBF - nice guy.  On the right, the mayor of Banfora. Also nice guy.

The most pretty one. Looking round for mutinying soldiers.

The mayor of ... uhm ...

Don't know who that is, but I liked this shot. And the hat of course.

Aha ... the procession. Starts with music. 

Followed by soldiers marching. Never seen em so publicly while not using their firearms.

This image stands for the next 30 minutes of the procession. A sign for each province, followed by a sign for each region, listing the number of rural and urban municipalities - and a colored sign for every municipality in that region. Bonus on this picture: the village idiot marching aside. 

Never figured out what this should represent, but am afraid it is the white skinned folks amongst us. Everybody had a good laugh tho.

Every local association is also allowed to take place in the procession. Marching and marching. 

Luckily, nobody got hurt in this part of the procession. It came a bit as a surprise.

Mayor of Kindi - good friend. Wearing again his lucky hat. 

The prime minister of Burkina Faso. Ok. Time for a bit a confession. He just came round to express sympathy, making similar promises made at the meeting in may. Everybody was cheering again. Sigh.  

A bit of a group photo of people working for the association, taken at the ruins of Loropeni, Unesco world heritage. As you can see, not all noses are pointed in the same direction. There's still work to do.