Arrival in the Mossi country

1975, at the door of my new office within the Saria’s agricultural station. I have just landed in the Mossi country, in the heart of Burkina Faso, to study sahelian grasshoppers who just caused extensive damage throughout West Africa. If the Desert locust or the Migratory locust were well known at the time, the other species were very little studied. The few existing data were scattered and often contradictory. Almost everything was to be done.

This was not my first time in Africa. I had already spent almost 4 years in Madagascar, and had the privilege in 1974 to carry out a broad mission throughout West Africa, on behalf of FAO, with Georges B. Popov, a prominent connoisseur of locusts and grasshoppers. At Saria, I had with me important human resources: 10 workers to collect grasshoppers, 1 driver and 3 assistants trained by myself, one to determine the densities of hoppers and adults, a second to take care of 2 light traps and sort out the abundant entomological material collected every night (often several kilos), and the third to study the evolution of local ecological conditions (rainfall, vegetation, soil moisture, wind... ). It was exceptional resources within the framework of a project funded by the French Ministry of Cooperation.

In three years I was able to analyse the population dynamics of more than a hundred species of grasshoppers, to study their seasonal migrations in relation to the movement of the inter-tropical convergence front, to better understand their adaptation to the Sahelian environment as well as the determinism of their outbreaks... Then, I wrote a scientific paper of around one hundred pages. I sent it to the Annales de la Société Entomologique de France. I was probably a bit naive. It seemed inconceivable to publish such a large document with so many illustrations, photos, detailed graphics... However, it was possible thanks to the support of Michel Verdier, a professor at Paris University, that I had as a teacher during my studies. He was a reviewer for the Annals and immediately saw the value of my manuscript who finally appeared in 2 issues, in 1978 and 1980. Today - almost 40 years later - I still have the weakness to believe that this is a reference document that will not be exceeded before a long time. Not necessarily because of my merits, but thanks to the considerable resources that had been devoted to the subject and that it is difficult to find today.

Lecoq M., 1978. Biologie et dynamique d'un peuplement acridien de zone soudanienne en Afrique de l'Ouest (Orthoptera, Acrididae). Annls Soc. ent. Fr. (N.S.), 14(4) : 603-681.

Lecoq M., 1980. Biologie et dynamique d'un peuplement acridien de zone soudanienne en Afrique de l'Ouest (Orthopt., Acrididae). Note complémentaire. Annls Soc. ent. Fr. (N.S.), 16(1) : 49-73.

Photos (from left to right and up to bottom) :

- In front of my office (at that time I belonged to the Groupement d’étude et de recherche pour le développement de l’agronomie tropicale – GERDAT- which subsequently gave rise to CIRAD).

- My staff in front of my Land Rover car.

- Some elements of the local fauna: Sabou's caimans, Po's elephants, Bobo-Dioulasso's hippos .... and my little red monkey Wamba (Mossi name for monkeys), recovered from a hunter as a baby, and who had adopted us.