January 28, 2013

"From medieval times until the end of the 19th century, the region of Burkina Faso was ruled by the empire-building Mossi people..."

"... who are believed to have come up to their present location from northern Ghana, where the ethnically-related Dagomba people still live. For several centuries, Mossi peasants were both farmers and soldiers; as the Mossi Kingdoms successfully defended their territory, indigenous religious beliefs, and social structure against forcible attempts to conquer or convert them to Islam by Muslim peoples from the northwest."

Burkina Faso is today's "History of" country.


More recently, children of the 1983-1987 revolution: 

13 comments:

Tim said...

How many more clues does one need than a red star on the uniforms of a children's paramilitary group to know a nation isn't worth knowing much more about?

Chef Mojo said...

Hey, cool! Boy Scouts! I wonder if they're down with the ghey?

YoungHegelian said...

Well, I knew Burkina Faso when it was just Upper Volta!

Craig said...

My mother-in-law's live-in caregiver is from BF. She's fluent in French, Spanish and now English, along with a few African tribal languages, and also plays guitar and is quite adept with a computer. She's done wonders with Captain Bligh, who would otherwise have caused havoc in a care facility for the past three years.

McTriumph said...

Those kids all look like lawn jockeys.

Anonymous said...

A native of Burkina Faso is known as a Burkinabe.

kentuckyliz said...

When I was in grad school in Iowa, one of my classmates married a man from Burkina Faso. Interesting wedding, and wedding reception. First time I ever had plantains.

kentuckyliz said...

Those kids are rednecks.

edutcher said...

Oh, Upper Volta.

Now, I know where it is.

(The Blonde can't keep track of all the new names for old countries; I keep going back to the old colonial maps)

PS Maybe now Choom will create his own version of the Yellow Berets.

That's about right.

Balfegor said...

The only thing I know about Burkina Faso is its capital, Ouagadougou. Because it's fun to say (though I'm probably mispronouncing it).

I thought I knew that Mansa Musa, who crashed the international gold market when he went on the Hajj, came from Burkina Faso, but I was wrong -- he came from Mali, next door.

SarcastiCarrie said...

Post needs a boys in shorts tag.

James Pawlak said...

How happy they look!

Mitch H. said...

Are they still consistently the poorest state per-capita in the world? Hmm, nope. Looks like all sorts of hard-luck cases have lapped them in the "boy, don't life suck" sweepstakes since I was a kid. Rwanda, really? They spent most of a decade looting the Congo, and now they're behind modest-mouse Burkina Faso in GDP?