Some say that Tengrela is a village and some say it’s a town. I have no idea how they run it officially in the Burkinabe books. But if I am in my mind feeling particularly generous at granting Banfora the status of a town, then with allegedly just under four thousand inhabitants, Tengrela can only be a village for me. And it doesn’t look anywhere near like a town.
As for the lake itself, even if it’s not precisely what you may call a king size one, yes, it is a lake. Albeit pretty shallow in most of the area it covers. And it’s quite pretty. But I doubt people would be visiting it much were it not for the hippos congregating occasionally in one of its deeper corners. But according to what I heard, the chances to see hippos after five or six in the morning were very slim. By the time lazy western tourists arrive there, hippos have long retreated somewhere into the thick growth around the lake and don’t bother showing up in the slightest.
And that’s how it was when we got there. Tengrela lake is a part of a preserve, only some seven kilometres away from Banfora, that requires paying an admission and that’s what we did, of course. Next to the lake there’s quite a few old thick trees with dark green leaves and in the shade of one such group of trees some local guys set up a ticket booth and an outdoors café. Which basically consisted of few low wooden tables and several wooden chairs around them. You can’t claim that it was exactly crowded by the lake at the time of our arrival. I’m talking about tourists, of course. Unless you count two chipper Chinese guys as a crowd.
Entrance ticket fee included a boat ride, too. Oumar checked around for a boatman and then told us that he would be there „soon“. As we were in no hurry anyway, we could wait just fine. And while we were waiting, a 4x4 with French licence plates pulled in and two white guys came out. One of them looked at Oumar, Oumar looked back at him and then they both shouted for joy and surprise. They started hugging each other and blabbering in French no end. Then they hugged each other again and so on it went for several minutes. Everyone looked at them with a degree of interest. At one point the French guy turned to me and said something. I smiled:
„Sorry, I don’t speak French.“
But he spoke a solid English, even if with a strong French accent. So he just switched over effortlessly:
„Ah, OK. Sorry for interruption,“ he said. „Oumar’s an old friend and we’ve not seen each other for fifteen years.“
„Don’t worry,“ I answered. „We’re in no hurry.“
So they continued on their business of hugging each other and chattering for a while longer. And then the French guys got back into their 4x4 and lit out same way as they’d come. Well, Oumar did seem to be quite respected. It was pretty obvious. And from what little I knew about him, I could attest to it that it was thoroughly deserved.
After a whil,e a lanky local appeared and Oumar identified him as out boatman. So whenever we were ready, he could take us to the lake. And we were ready right away. He led us to the lake’s edge where his pirogue, a shallow boat, was moored. Probably the trickiest part of it all was how to get in without ending up in the water in the process. Being just ankle-deep at that particular spot, nobody would get drowned. However, it still didn’t mean we would have cherished an unscheduled wallowing in the swampy mud. All the more so as his pirogue didn’t come across as an epitome of stability. But we pulled it off, nevertheless. The problem was solved with the help of another, upturned boat, which was somehow fixed at the water bottom and perfectly stable. Our boatman got his pirogue next to it and across its flat upturned bottom we could safely cross into our pirogue and take our seats on the wooden planks inside.
A woman was washing her laundry in this same shallow, merely a step or two away from us and watched us with what at best could be termed as mild interest only. If she was there more often, and I bet that she was, then she’d seen ridiculous western tourists and such scenes more than once. Pretty much unfazed, she did her laundry and I was wondering if it would be any cleaner than before after this brown and murky water treatment.
As we were pulling out in the direction of the open water, another pirogue was coming in. That one had a lone Dutch guy in. We said hello to each other and I asked him if he’d seen any hippos. He said that he hadn’t as they were out of the lake already. In a way it was pity. But then again, even if locals believe that these particular hippos do not attack humans because they are sacred, maybe I was a bit relieved, as well. I mean, hippos aren’t exactly followed by reputation of being the friendliest animals on earth. Therefore, much as the Tengrela hippos may have the aura of sanctity about them, I am not entirely sure it would have kept them away from us if we had somehow stepped on their blister. Annette didn’t seem to mind that they were apparently out of the lake right now, either. So this boat ride looked quite OK for both of us, just as it was.
As in many places all over the world, when you deal with shallow waters, people use long poles to move their boats by pushing against the bottom. The same case was here. Our boatman was slowly working his way across the lake and after a while he even poled it over, close to the spot where hippos usually come when they take a dip. However, right now the greatest attraction was water vegetation. Big tulip-like flowers with thick and long stalks, some others looking like water lilies and flat, broad leaves, apparently floating on the lake surface, very much resembling Chinese lotus. Maybe they were all exactly that – tulips, lilies and lotus. Most likely not, though. Either way, our poleman suddenly started picking those lilies – I’ll call them lilies here – from the water and after some work braided their long stalks into a fancy flower necklace and a head crown for Annette. She was genuinely pleased and for her at least this flower necklace and the crown were more than making it up for the absence of hippos.
And that was it. After a while, this pleasure lake excursion came to its end. It was now time to go back to Banfora.
On our way back we passed through the Tengrela village. In terms of what it had on offer to show, there was not much to see. Or maybe I was gradually getting used to African villages by now. Be that as it may, the most interesting feature of this particular village were people. So I had an impression that finally we were dealing with a real, living village, not a settlement artificially kept and preserved in its form for the sake of odd foreigner’s euro or dollar. There were kids cavorting around at the sight of us, gesticulating in an agitated manner in our direction. There were adults going about their own business, albeit in a very leisurely pace. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone at this heat. Women were going places carrying stuff on their heads as is commonplace all over Burkina Faso, as I could see by now. And some of them were washing laundry in a roadside pond, not a single bit cleaner than the lake itself.
A thought came to my mind and I wondered what had got its name after what. Was it the lake after the village or the other way around? Not that it mattered any. I was just curious. But it was going to be one of those puzzles which would, at least for me, remain unresolved forever.
