28 February
The first thing I see coming out of the hut today, are women and girls pounding the millet with long wooden sticks. As soon as I come out, a bowl is thrust into my hands:
- The chief of the village sends you 'masa'.
That is round greasy millet cakes which I share with the kids running around in front of the hut. At one of the morning stalls in the village I drink a bowl of 'bui' (a thick millet porridge). I go to say thank you and goodbye to the hospitable village chief and come back to get ready. Chief's brother helps me to fasten the backpack behind Tika's hump, and, accompanied by the crowd of kids, personally asists me and Tika out of Falagountu, to the road. There I order Tika to sit down, and to the delight of the excited crowd, I give a performance of a white woman getting on white camel, and slowly disappearing into the sun bathed horizon. It turns out that the road was going only as far as Falagountu. From here it is a dusty path, with tracks of donkey carts, bicyckles and footprints, often splitting into a couple alternative ones, when the main one gets too sandy. I try to keep to the larger one, in order not to get lost. It was too easy up until now - following one clear road. Now this path leads more or less straight to the Nigerian border. I'm not sure if I can call it a desert, but the surrounding landscape is full of thorny bushes growing out of the sand, and once in a while some thorny trees. And some flat top mountains appear on the horizon. I pass a cluster of simple round earth-brick huts, surrounded by smaller ones with no door, just a tiny window - these are millet storages. A group of colourfully dressed women with large silver coins in their hair and buckets of water on their heads wave to me as I pass them by. And some long robed, turbaned Tuaregs carrying long swords, on bicyckles and ocassionally motorcycles give me a surprized glance and 'Salam Aleikum' as they swish by. There's about 15 kilometers to the last Burkinabe village. Although I know it's an unacceptable behaviour, I let Tika stop and munch on some dried up grass or the leaves of a thorny bush. The heat becomes more and more intense. A man with a colourful dress and a donkey cart with two metal barrels says hello. It turns out he's coming from the same place as me, that is Gorom Gorom area. What is he doing here? He's going to fill the barrels with water and on the Nigerian side head into the desert to sell the water in the nomad settlements. That's the only way he can make some money. He asks wheather I have anything to eat.
"I only have things that require cooking." I say, "Rice, beans, pasta. When we make it to the village and find anything there, I invite you for a meal.
And... is it far still?
"No, no. We're almost there."
'Amost there' can mean anything here. Anyway, the donkeys are trotting at about the same speed as Tika's walking, so we're going together. The village of Sela isn't really a village, just a couple of scattered buildings. And a well, around which a local crowd together with some cattle is gathered. I come up with Tika and he quenches his thirst making funny faces. My friend with the donkeys is going to fill up his barrels here and tells me to head on - according to different sources, it's three to five kilometers to the first Nigerian village, and we'll meet there. So we walk on, crossing the dried up river - I guess - a border. With no passport control, with no stamps. Luckily - because I don't have neither a Burkina nor a Nigerian visa. Nor entry or exit stamps from the last couple of countries. So - on a camel back I enter a new African country. The first round huts that I pass here aren't even earth-brick ones, they're made just of straw matts. But the village is still far away, more like five rather than three kilometers. When the houses of Amarasinge finally appear, my friend with his donkey cart shows up as well. We stop just before the village. I take down the saddle and the luggage and put it in the shade of a tree, and a young Tuareg with adorned green robe and a sword agrees to look after the stuff and the camel for about fifty cents. My friend invites me to jump on his donkey cart, so this is how I enter the first Nigerian village. The sandy square in the village is taken by now empty market stalls. The weekly market here was yesterday. "Come to the marabu house" (Muslim spiritual leader), says my friend, " we can take a rest there." Marabu with long black robe, turban and a beard welcomes us enthusiastically. An elevated platform with a colourful matt - marabu's bed - stands in the middle of the dusty courtyard. And in the two opposite corners - two similar platforms, only with a little roof. Each one taken by one of marabu's wifes, surrounded by a group of half naked children. After a while of customary conversation with the marabu, my friend and I part to see if we can find anything to eat in the village. The only thing that they sell in front of one of the houses are the greesy millet cakes. But this is also a shop, so we agree that if I buy a kilo of rice and a kilo of beans, they'll cook it for us and bring it in an hour. We go back to the marabu's place where I get a comortable chair to sit down, and where a little crowd of locals gathers intrigued by my sight.
"Where are you from?" - asks one of the Tuaregs with sunglasses.
"From Poland."
"Poland? Is that on the Ivory Coast?"
"No. Let's see... how to explain that - that's quite the opposite direction than the Ivory Coast."
"I see."
After an hour a boy with a huge bowl of rice and beans shows up. The crowd leaves, while my friend and I sit down to the meal, inviting the marabu and his wives. The marabu only takes a few bites and goes back to studying a few pages with Arab writing - fragments of the Koran. But more than half of the bowl of food is left, and that goes to the wives and children. I feel I need to rest for a while. Marabu says there's no problem. My camel and I are welcome to stay here as long as we wish. We can continue tomorrow or whenever. He immediately sends some of his boys to bring the saddle and my backpack from under the tree, and to change the young Tuareg with guarding Tika. The youngest kids here run around naked. The older wear random pieces of garments. One boy only wears shorts. For another, maybe four year old one - a way too large jacket is his only piece of clothing, he doesn't seem to be bothered by the fact that he has neither shoes or underwear.
I spend the afternoon in the shade of the large tree, trying to concentrate on writing my diary. One of the wives is pounding millet. The other one sets out with a bucket on her head to fetch water. The boys are heading somewhere with a donkey, the marabu lies down in the middle of his kingdom, and a young goat takes a sip out of the bowl of water brought for me. My friend from Burkina says goodbye and heads on into the desert.
I give Mohammed, marabu's oldest son, a packet of tea and a handful of sugar from my supplies brought from Gorom Gorom. The youngest kids scrounge for some half burnt coal and Mohammed sets off to brew some tea on a traditional metal thing with coal. I realize the depth of their poverty when he asks me whether he should use the whole of just half of the packet of tea. I assure him half is more than enough. Everwhere else, in Mali and Burkina, one little packet was just for one brew - a brew of super strong, super sweet tea, served in tiny quantities, usually three rounds of it. Mohamed who has never been to school and can't read or write, speaks quite good French which he somehow picked up. Only two of his younger brothers attend school. It lookes like they have no habbit of sending girls to school.
It gets dark. I take out my last candle, the candle that broke into two halfs. When I lit up one half of it, Mohammed's numerous brothers and sisters run, sit around and stare at the flame.
"Maybe we could blow it off for now, until the water boils," suggests Mohammed.
"No, it's OK. It's nice with the light," I say, realizing at the same time that it might sound a little extravagantly, in the place where the half of my candle is the only light in the village during this moonless night.
"Mohammed, how many children does your father have?" I ask out of curiosity.
"Maybe... about fourteen, I guess." - says Mohammed hesitantly.
One of the wives appears out of the darkness carrying a huge bowl. The evening meal. It's the marabu, two wives, the oldest teenage daughter, and eighteen year old (looking more like fourteen) Mohammed, that sit around the bowl. I'm invited as well. The meal consists of rice. Plain boiled white rice, with a little bit of oil. The younger kids have to wait until the older finish. I decide to leave the marabu and his family most of my supplies tomorrow morning.  
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So this is just one day of my trip with Tika. This one's more about people than Tika. But... yes, I miss him badly, now that I said goodbye to him. Some people asked me how much I paid for my camel. It's no secret - I paid exactly 500 Euros. But - it turns out, I'm not the best camel dealer. I sold him in Niger for about two thirds of the price. So - next time you buy a camel - you should better get it in Niger and sell it in Burkina than other way round. Or maybe... maybe it doesn't matter anyway, because as a white person here you're gonna loose either way. That is loose if counting only money. But experiences, moments, lessons, laughter, surprises... are countless. And they'll stay forever. It's hard to describe it all. So I'm just sharing some of the random photos - as there was nobody really who could take photos of us together. For now - just the ones from the Burkina part of the trip. From the Nigerian, and the day I'm describing in the attached fragment, I hope to upload some photos tomorrow.