The hand is in idle mode. She painted a lot. The colors on the phalanges and the palm are the sediments of its activity. The work was intense judging by the layering and the fatigue that manifests in the position of smoking. She barely escapes the fall, held back by reflex more than by will. It's the break and the artist, after a first puff, goes back down to the common world. The hand registers the desire for inner calm and silence that follows the exhausting exhilaration of creation. She waits, welcoming the cigarette as she welcomes the brush. Hold between two fingers, the gesture seems simple, yet, with primates, only humans are able to do it. Even the child does not immediately master it. What about the handling of paintbrushes and brushes? This hand is taken at a time when its essence is best manifested: availability. Aristotle said that the human hand is the tool of all tools, it can do anything: hold, squeeze, stroke, twist, squeeze. The latter, the instant the photographer freezes her, is awaiting a decision, docile to the injunctions of the brain which leads her. She recharges herself by finding the pose that precedes all gestures, ready to open up to the infinite of possibilities.

Thirteen thousand shades of red. Our dances become yours. The higher dust to paint our bodies. Curious delights of sweat and boiling blood. Disturbing beauty of women avoiding our eyes. The dances to honor the big question asked of everyone: what to do with their desire not to die? Take a close look at the material goods: The metallic scrap metal that rolls around big new tires, the fifteen or twenty thousand minimum in the bank, repatriation insurance and plane tickets warm in your wallet, security, something to eat tomorrow and after tomorrow and the day after. Until what you think you know about yourself, until your fears, until your successes and your doubts, all these things are material goods. Small things, very small. Useful, okay, but don't bother for that little. Stop wanting things and dealing with numbers. Breathe without paying for your air. Pick up a well-chosen stone and keep it with you for years, it will be protection. Concentrate on the big question (in front of your eyes, the answer of the day of the Tambermas: we dance). On this, I insist: what to do with your desire not to die?

Philippe Aubert de Molay

 What are you looking for with your notebook and camera? What's your idea? What do you want to discover in this pink-mauve land? You came so far, why? For who ? You visit us, that's good. We wonder what you want. The family is talking. People guess, imagine, wonder. Why write stories and take photographs? Can you explain to us? Hey look bro, a wintry sun has come up caressing the pale sky and it's going to do all the work: flow the ink from your pen and trigger the click of your camera. You just have to be there, see, stand up in our magic. You just have to.Be a seer.
Dance is prayer, rejoicing, power and fidelity to ancestors. Everything shines beneath our feet, a ruby ​​glow given by the old presences from the depths of the earth, it is a gift. The world below hears his children dancing above and he loves the din of the living. The Bush ? Giant ballroom! Very simple: it's dancefloor!

It is very little to give back a little of the happiness that we have experienced and to bear witness to all that this country has given us. In the pages that follow, there are no dream landscapes, no elephants or giraffes. No sea of ​​sand, no forests with endless trees. All this exists in Burkina Faso, but it is not our journey, not our path. Ours is that of Sama who opens the doors of his country to us, who shows us, explains to us. We just devoured, suspended a few seconds of life from a pen, from a lens. What to thank. Mossi country is not considered a tourist area. Land of passage, land of transit to Mali and its Dogon cliffs. The land of the Fulani, to the north, only interests dune adventurers. We meant these lands of toil, of pain, exhausted by the heat, scorched by the sun of the Sahel.
It is in the depths of these countries crossed, the Mouhoun to Dédougou, the Sourou of Tougan, the Yatenga of Ouahigouya, the Soum of Djibo and Aribinda, the Bam of Kongoussi. It is in these regions, in these cities and these villages that we took a bite of life, like the hungry, and that we discovered a universe teeming with joy and beauty. No hypos, no lions, but faces, laughter and colors, signs like invitations to mystery, gestures, movements. The beauty of women, the joy of children, the water that we are going to tear from the earth, the animals and the shepherds and all those moments of life ... All of this impregnated, suffused with red earth. And all this punctuated by Sama's words, by the strength of his laughter and the humility of his thought. A journey of the heart. A tribute to a country, to a people.

 If there is a key word in this trip to Mossi land, it is indeed the land… These lines and these photos are dedicated to the land of Burkina, from Ouagadougou to Aribinda, from Toma Island to Djibo. Cruel land, wild land, generous land too. Of this country, we wanted to tell the story through those who write it every moment and the evidence has appeared to us, everything here is only earth ... Of course, there is the sky. There is the wind and the heat, but everything is concentrated in this barren soil, red as the setting sun, so fickle that it flees between the fingers, elusive like the mind of those who tread on it or work it. Burkina is a country without sea. It always dreams of it. The water is a blessing, but here it is only tolerated, awkward and hesitant.
The country belongs to immense expanses, to the rocks that pierce the savannah, to the dust that infiltrates bodies and marks spirits. Nothing in the lives of women and men escapes the earth, even in games, even in prayers, even in the grave. This reality has been our guide from village to village, from well to granary, from courtyard to market. We come to testify to this incessant work, to this constant desire to survive, with dignity in destitution and joy. Yes, we also testify to the happiness of people in living, to their joy in standing up in daily adversity. Mossi lands, Peul villages have marked us. For ever.

Mana Wana was printed on the Estimprim presses in France, in November 2009. Legal deposit October 2009 - ISBN 978-2-9510603-4-0 Photographs Yves Regaldi - Texts Armand Spiche r - Layout and layout Emmanuel Bellaton - TEXT'oh

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Dreaded, unknown, bearer of the mysteries of the world, of the forces of the invisible, of the power of chaos. No one will ever be able to tell the secrets of the Sahel. We can say his anger, his excesses, this constancy in destroying everything that is weak, in demanding total submission from life. We can tell its whims, but that's it. What else do we know? The magic of the Sahel stops in the gaze of the shepherds, in the sand that runs in the wind, in the trees dried by the sun. Beyond that is the unknown.
To read the Sahel, you have to dare to get lost, to get lost in the thousands of unknown noises that rise from the earth, that descend from the sky. Accept thirst, heat, nothingness. Learn to listen, to see. Melt, dry from the inside. A few have. A few have succeeded. The others, all the others try, seek, bump and fall. For white people, the Sahel is an enigma, a nonsense. Something incomprehensible and fascinating. It is a call to humility, a form of the absolute. It’s lucky.

First of all, it's a dream . Its name carries around insane delusions. Each letter that makes up his name burns, thirsts, tears. It is a hot iron pressed against the skin of Africa, an enormous echo that runs over the sand and the hills, speaks of the pain of life, the stubbornness of men, the intoxication of freedom. The Sahel has to be earned. He is a ruthless lord. Mercy cannot grow on these lands cracked by the wind. It is excess that reigns, the brute force of survival. Why does the Sahel make people dream? It’s an enigma. There's no answer. The only answer is the one that prompts you to go and see, to try to understand. The Sahel is the absence. It’s the nothing. You have to want this absolute emptiness of soul and body in order to meet it, to seek an answer to what does not have it. Long before he appears he is already here. In legends, in stories, in looks.