The Big Five

The posting of random animal postcards continues.

The Big Five are the lion, the leopard, the rhino, the elephant and the cape buffalo, and it's a big deal to go to Africa and see them all in one trip. At least that's what people tell me, and it also says so on the back of the card. The term was coined by hunters, as these five are the most difficult animals to hunt on foot. And among the most dangerous.

The Big Five are not to be confused with the Big Four Central Pacific Railroad barons of California - Stanford, Huntington, Crocker and Hopkins - and the name of a restaurant honoring them on Nob Hill in San Francisco.

Elephants in Zimbabwe

One thing I've noticed about most postcards from Africa: they name a country, but the pictures are most often of animals. Not that I wouldn't want to see elephants, lions, rhinos, hippopotami, zebras, giraffes, etc. in the wild. But all these animal photos give the impression that Africa is one big savannah, with lots of animals all over the place. What about the people? The cities? The terrain? Mount Kilimanjaro? I know postcards exist with non-animal images, but most of the ones I've received seem to feature animals.

Evelyn in Morocco

My friend, Evelyn, moved to Morocco about 2-1/2 years ago. She didn't mean to. She was on her way to Turkey to teach English as a second language, but was going through Fez, Morocco on the way there to take a semester of Arabic at the Arabic language institute in Fez. Three months later she was teaching ESL at that same school, was married a Moroccan man 20+ years younger than her, and bought a 200 year old house in the Medina (walled city) which she is fixing up to be a B&B. Quite a change.

This postcard arrived yesterday, in a package she sent me. The package included some very cool shoes, and bracelets made of the buttons from a Berber burka.

Burkina Faso, Once Known as Upper Volta

One of my friends at graduate school was Mr. Adama Kabore, from Burkina Faso. He was one of the nicest people I ever met, tall and thin, with an incredible smile. A pilot for Upper Volta Airlines (the country was still known as Upper Volta at the time), he was studying at Thunderbird for his promotion into management. He visited us, once, in San Francisco, but somehow we've lost touch. I regret this, as he was a very nice man, and someday I would have liked to have visited him and his family in Burkina Faso. I think I should try a little harder to try and find him again.

I've been fascinated by Burkina Faso since I met Adama. It has one of the best capital names of any country in the world -Ouagadougou - a name to say over and over and just let roll around in your mouth. It's also among the poorest countries in Africa, if not the world.

It's hard to even find much information about the Domes of Banfora in the postcard - mostly a few pictures, some reviews of local hotels, and descriptions of other places to visit near there. I imagine if you were visiting this place, it would feel like you were on another planet.

Here is some more information about Burkina Faso, if you're interesed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso