Burkina By Bobby

During my Freshman year of college the Fighting Illini went to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. I went to this game and I learned a lot about life: Beer can be sold in 70 oz bottles, you can usually judge a guy’s creepiness by the amount of bead necklaces he has, and that losing in the least important BCS game is about the best the Illini will ever do.

In adition to these life lessons, I learned a little bit about the southern/Louisianan culture. Two nights during our trip we stayed with the grandmother of my friend Adam. She was a very nice and hospitable women who, in the spirit of Mardi Gras, baked us a cake. This cake was special because the baby Jesus was baked inside. I think the origin of this tradition is French and it worked its way into New Orleans/Mardi Gras culture via that lineage.

In any event, whoever gets the baby Jesus, wins! I am still a little unclear on happens when you win, but be sure that you do win. I don’t know how I feel about baking hard ceramic things into cakes, breads or other pastries- and the baking of the Christ child is another thing all together. Leave it to the French.

I bring this up because lately I have been wondering how pervasive the French influence of baking things into cakes and breads has been on her former colonies. In Burkina Faso, for example, they occasionally bake rocks and pebbles into their bread. This is somewhat disconcerting because one doesn’t expect there to be a rock baked into the baguette when he puts it into his mouth and begins to grind with his molars.

I have recently done exactly this, thus breaking one or my molars. I am only thankful that it wasn’t a ceramic Jesus.

I wish that I could say that this is the first time that I have ever eaten rocks in Burkina Faso, but unfortunately I have done a very similar thing only one year earlier, though that time it was a plate of rice. Finally my lifelong careless attitude of eating food without checking for rocks has caught up with me and landed me in the dentists office.

Which brings me to the title of this entry - I don’t want to propagate negative stereotypes of West Africa, but if you have the pre-conception that West African dental care might be less than stellar, this entry will do little to dissuade you. Let me preface - my account is probably prone to exaggeration as a fair amount of time has passed between my first traumatic visit to the dentist and writing this blog, but I proceed.

It was exactly like the Dentist’s office in the Little Shop of Horrors… No,no- in all seriousness, the actual dentist office, reminded me of a place I might go in the states. The chair was a bit aged and looked like it might have come from the 1980’s but this is only speculation as I am not abreast on the past or current fashions of dental equipment. It wasn’t the appearance of the office that was alarming, but the dentist’s assistant. The first thing that I noticed when he came to get me from the waiting room, was his dingy white apron splattered with a considerable amount of blood, seeing as he was a dental assistant and not a surgeon’s assistant.

I didn’t think too much about it, because this dentist was arranged by Peace Corps, and surely they will not have chosen an incapable person. I entered the room and sat down in the chair. After making small talk and my explaining my situation to the Burkinabé dentist, she went to work. She opened my mouth, looked around and began to ask me questions. This was the first time that I had ever done the awkward open mouth talking in French and I think that it might have compounded my problems. Eventually we were reduced to: “Does this hurt?” and “Aghhh”.

In the course of her questions she discovered that I cracked an old filling and some of the tooth on one of my molars. This would require drilling and then a new filling. I have done this before, and do not have an unusually low threshold for pain, so I had no reason to be concerned. She then tells me that she is going to shoot me with a local anesthetic. She prepares her needle and pricks my gum. She then pulls it out and said she didn’t do it correctly and makes several more goes at it before she injects the local anesthetic. That was a little unusual and painful, but in five minutes or so, it will set in and you wont be able to feel anything. “The worst part is over,” I thought to myself.

I thought wrong. Instead of waiting, she dove right in, picks, drills, dental gadgetry we probably outlawed at the end of the 19^th century. This would proceed in ten second spurts.

Drill, Drill, Drill

“Arghhh”

“Dose that hurt?’

“OUA HAA”

(three seconds elapse)

Drill, Drill, Drill

And so continued for 30 of the more trying minutes of my life.

The anesthesia eventually kicked in and it wasn’t so intolerable. After she finished she gave me a sucking candy. I wiped the tears away from my eyes and thanked her. When the anesthesia wore off I could feel that I had recently been to the dentist. I think it was during this period of feeling sorry for myself, I swore I would never eat rocks or visit the dentist in Burkina Faso again. Sadly, I failed at both.

Happily, my last dental visit in Burkina Faso has been scheduled for the August 30^th.