Burkina Faso sounds like a girl's name--and maybe somewhere it is--but it's also the Land of the Upright People, a small country in West Africa. Nestled snugly amid such better-known neighbors as Ghana, Cote d'ivoire, Mali, Togo, Niger, and Benin, Burkina Faso is home to the Burkinabe people and, for the last two years, Shannon Wachter. A glance at the World Almanac could tell you much about the country's people, history, and land, but all it offers are statistics. As any traveler can tell you, to truly know a place, you have to live there.
