I found a video on youtube of a music evening at Hotel-Resto ZION; the hotel where we normally stay during our stay in Bobo Dioulasso. It’s lovely to see and so reminiscent of the workshops we’ve already been after there. For any ex-Balafon-Burkina traveller, it must bring back something of the honour of being there.

From the title and the names there, it looks like Hadry has apparently organised it in 2019. I run into him every year. This young Swiss man is often in Bobo for extended periods and felt at home in ZION when it was really a hotel-Resto with gigs a fine pair of managers (Adama and Odille). Since then, things have changed and he has also created his own B&B.

On the Video we see, among others, Innocent Kimpe, a talented balafon player who now sometimes travels to Europe for gigs.

He belongs to Bobo’s young generation of balafon heroes. When we are there, invariably some of them do come to watch and play a little on Youssouf Keita’s beautiful balafons; a godsend!

You can also clearly see the mangoes hanging in the video. There are some big mango trees in ZION’s courtyard that give us a cool stay. When we are there (and also in late February, when this video was taken), the mango ripeness is not yet at its peak. Which is a shame, because eating mangoes where they grow in Africa is really much tastier than the imported mangoes we get in Europe.