December Is Party Time in Burkina Faso

The intestines were heaped in a small pile on the plate in front of me. They were of narrow circumference and pale brown, with valves peeking out here and there. Until very recently, they had been a working part of a goat's digestive system, absorbing nutrients and transforming food into waste. Now, they were the centerpiece of the feast.

The occasion was Filiga, a traditional December holiday to celebrate the chief in Zogore, a village in northern Burkina Faso. The evening before, just as the light grew dim, the slightest sliver of a moon appeared low in the western sky. Someone fired off an old rifle, and the party began. I stayed up late with my friends Maurice, Abdulaye, and Albert the cowboy, drinking dolo, the local sorghum beer, to the point where I fell off my bicycle on the short ride back to my house.

Maurice told me to show up to his house early the next morning to share a big breakfast and prepare for a full day of drinking. I dragged my way over around 7:30 AM, not looking forward to cramming the standard millet paste and leaf sauce into my hungover body, but was pleasantly surprised when his wife brought out a big bowl of breakfast spaghetti to celebrate the holiday. After eating, and the obligatory morning calabash of dolo, we walked over to the chief's house to join the revelry.

The chief was a kindly, elderly man, gray and stooped with thick Coke-bottle glasses. He spoke French well. While his power had been mostly usurped decades ago by governmental appointees, he was still respected around the village, and still got his very own party. When we arrived, friends and neighbors were playing tom-toms and dancing in the courtyard.

Since I was a guest in the village, the chief invited me in to share a meal with him. His house was made of mud brick like everyone else's, but he did have a reception room with a raised concrete floor for entertaining visitors. I was excited to dig into whatever he was eating on his special day. Maybe pizza? Ice cream? When the young girl serving us removed the cover on the dish to reveal the rubbery intestines within, I shrugged. When in Zogore…

December is packed with parties in Burkina Faso. All summer, the villagers are busy working hard in the fields, but by the end of the fall the harvest is finally over. About 90 percent of the population are subsistence farmers, so most people eat what they grow—namely millet and sorghum—day in and day out. Things can get pretty lean by the spring if there isn't sufficient rainfall the previous summer, but at least for December, the larders are full, the livestock is (relatively) fat, and the men can relax. The women, of course, are the ones cooking all these meals, and still have to fetch water, collect firewood, clean, and care for the young, old, and infirm all day, but they do steal a few minutes here and there to enjoy the celebrations and traditional dances that come with the season.

To mark the holidays, families sell a sheep or goat or two for spending money, kill one to eat, and everybody fills their bellies with rice, spaghetti, meat, or potato ragout if someone's feeling really flush. The meat is much more exciting than what you buy in a supermarket—full of bones and fur, identifiable organs like the heart, liver, and intestines, and other more mysterious bits. In one of the least food-secure countries in the world, you take your protein where you can get it.

The population follows a mix of Christian, Muslim, and traditional beliefs, and the big parties all tend to happen around the same time. Before Filiga, we'd already had a Rasandaaga, which is a traditional dance to mark the end of the harvest. Hundreds of people lined up, 20 or so wide, and marched through the dusty village streets step by step, swinging their arms and wiggling their butts. Some men pounded on tom-toms while the crowd chanted a song that was translated to me as "the joy is not yet here, the joy is yet to come." The words apparently referred to a modern dance party that took place later that night at the town bar, where the youth writhed and shook to reggaeton and the latest West African hits, while the village bigwigs watched the spectacle over $1 beers chilled in a gas-powered refrigerator.

For Christmas, there was no jolly old St. Nick or presents under the tree, but more feasting and celebrating. It started on Christmas Eve with meat and spaghetti and dolo—so much dolo—then a trip to the Catholic church for an hour of preaching and singing while Albert the cowboy fired off his rifle outside. The next day Maurice and I went from one courtyard to the next to exchange greetings and gorge ourselves on more of the same fare.

Tabaski, the West African name for the Muslim sacrifice festival Eid al-Adha, fell on December 31 that year, so there wasn't much of a break from the Christmas celebrations. Maurice and I again made the rounds, touring the courtyards of Muslim friends and sharing fresh mutton to commemorate Abraham's willingness to slaughter his own son at God's command. Finally, on New Year's Day, we stuffed ourselves on yet more spaghetti and meat and local beer, and sat back, exhausted, to contemplate our own intestines. The feasting was done for the season, and there was little left to do but pray the year's millet supply would hold out until year's harvest came around.