Friday-The visit with the King in Burkina

The King of fada and I. Note the laundry. Even the king has laundry.

The girls and I. My favorite picture of the whole trip.

Delilah and another cousin serving food. The tray was cut out of the picture, (Thanks Rakieta) but she is carrying a large tray with meat.

After the dinner and celebration, we toured the compound. D and S's uncle made a recording studio in one of the huts. The picture does not show things well, but it is pretty cool. In many places you could see the evidence of the original hut, but yet it also was completely redone to look and handle sound for recording. Looked like something you would see in the US. He is doing a lot of recordings for up and coming Burkinabe musicians.

Grandma and Rakieta

You say "This ought to be good!" It was. Delilah and Stephanie's grandfather is the king of the Fada people. After a very quiet day, we were all whisked off to see the king. We all piled into a jeep of some sort. Picture the commercials where as many people as possible piled into a Volkswagen as humanly possible. I have no idea of the head count but we made it. The grandchildren did not want to go. I thought "Why on earth wouldn't the kids want to see their grandpa?" Well I found out. In Africa, having a king for a grandpa isn't such a good deal. You don't get kisses and hugs and treats like from a normal grandpa. No, it's prostrating-yes really- and serving. Being a royal grandchild means you play the servant role.
So after much complaining from the grandkids, they were told they were going and we all jumped into the vehicle and off we went. We drove only a short distance to the King's home in Ouagadougou. It wasn't anything very fancy. Just a normal compound. The pictures will tell the rest of the story. All in all it was a pleasant day and because of the rain it only was about 70* that day so a very nice break after all my excitement on Thursday.