I hadn't played with Blogger's templates in quite some time. They've got some nice ones! This one seemed like a good fit. I also removed the striking of "Peace Corps" in the title. As the current Country Director mentioned to me, just because I returned (for a given value of "returned") doesn't mean I'm not part of the Peace Corps family anymore.

Fair point, and it's a good lead in to today's post, which is the story of an event that happened during my service that came up in discussion last night. The discussion was about resistance to change.

One day, I visited my neighbor Pete in Boulsa, his site and my provincial capital. I went there every couple months to get supplies like mayonnaise and margarine - things I couldn't get in my own village. Pete was always a great host, and with few exceptions I generally spent a night or two there when I went. We often ended up cooking something that I wouldn't have the ingredients for in village and he wouldn't have the energy to do alone (I think we can all agree, cooking for one is really a hassle). This particular day, we decided we wanted hamburgers. That wouldn't have been possible weeks earlier, but one of the kiosk restaurants in town had recently purchased a meat grinder and was selling sandwiches. I headed over to bargain over the price of ground meat.

When I get there, it's some guy I'd never seen before. I roll up, we go through the usual salutations, and I ask him if they have meat today*.

"Yes," he says, "we've got some today."

"Great!" I reply. "I'd like to buy some."

"How many sandwiches do you want?"

"No, sorry, that's not what I meant. I just want to buy some meat. How much would it cost for the amount of meat you'd put into two sandwiches?"

He gives me a panicked look. "We don't sell meat. We sell sandwiches."

"I know," I respond gently, "but you could just sell me the meat too, right?"

"No. We sell sandwiches."

"Listen," I say, "You sell coffee here. With the coffee you use bread. So it's not like you won't use the bread I'm not buying. You'll still make your profit. You don't have to sell me the meat at cost, mark it up the same way you would for a sandwich**, and in fact you even make a little more because I don't want you to cook it!"

"Not ... cook ... no ... br - no, sorry, we don't do that."

"Please? It's really easy to do."

"Ok, I'll go ask the owner, I guess, but I think he'll say no."

"Thank you!"

He disappears around a corner, and reappears a few minutes later.

"No, sorry," he says, "I can't sell you the meat like that. I can only sell sandwiches.***"

I'm pretty frustrated by now. And hungry. "Well, that doesn't make any sense, but since I can't change your mind and I need to eat, I guess I'll buy two sandwiches. How much?"

"Sorry," he says, "but I can't sell you a sandwhich."

"WHY THE HELL NOT?"

"We're out of bread."

*Note to anyone thinking about living in West Africa: this is ALWAYS the first step when ordering something at a restaurant. It drove my brother nuts when I visited home and at nearly every restaurant we went to, he'd ask me what I wanted and I'd tell him my first choice and my three backup plans in case they didn't have that. "David," he'd sigh, "yet again, I assure you, they have it."

**With a bit more understanding of the inner workings of business here, I realize how hopelessly unlikely it was that the server would have any understanding of the kiosk's pricing model. In fact, there's a 90% chance the owner himself didn't really track it; he probably set the prices based on what someone somewhere else was charging and assumed that at some point he'd realize his profit. This is a typical amount of bookkeeping for many of the illiterate/mostly innumerate entrepreneurs here, and is one of the biggest constraints on small-scale economic growth. If I joined the Peace Corps again, it would probably be as a Small Enterprise Development volunteer.

***I also realize in retrospect that there's a very good chance the owner was nowhere around, and the guy just went around the corner for appearance's sake. Third partying me when no third party was available. Ah, l'Afrique.

Nothing much to report from me. Work is going well, having fun with friends but haven't done anything spectacular (though my birthday dinner was yummy and my birthday presents very nice), looking forward to spending the holidays with family. So instead, this update I will give you two stories from other people.A Tuareg in Canada

I recently met a Nigerien (note: "Nigerien" means from Niger, "Nigerian" means from Nigeria. An important distinction should you meet someone from one or the other, as they are very different countries) Tuareg who has spent the last several years in Canada. For his first couple years he worked at a nature reserve filling a function somewhat similar to a forest ranger - just patrolling the park, making sure the people visiting and camping were accounted for, nothing illegal happening, that sort of stuff. His colleagues were a few Canadians and another African immigrant.

Well, a few weeks go by, and winter has fully struck. It's some number of degrees below zero, and someone is getting lazy. The manager calls all the rangers in and says, "Look, I know you're cold, but someone is crapping behind the office without going to the toilets and that's just not gonna work. Who is it?" He's looking kind of pointedly at my friend and the other African. My friend says, "Look, I know why you think it might be us, growing up without plumbing, but if you think after living my whole life in Niger I'm going to go outside and take off any one of the five layers I'm wearing in this insane weather and let my balls get within 20 inches of that snow, you're out of your damn mind." At that point, one of his Canadian colleagues 'fessed up.An American in Burkina

This one could have happened to me, but it didn't. So, a PCV I know is walking along in his village when he spies a little girl selling ... something. He asks her what it is, and she says it's samsa, which is a fried bean dish that is very common here. He doesn't think it looks like samsa, but she insists that it is, and anyway he likes trying new and interesting foods, so he buys 50CFA worth (about 10 cents, which doesn't put it in perspective, so instead I'll say about the normal cost of one full meal in village). He's sure it's not samsa, but he's excited about trying a new food and brings it to his Burkinabé friend to find out what it is and how he should cook it. His friend laughs and tells him that he's just bought 50CFA worth of mud! The little girl had just been sitting by the road playing, pretending to be a food vendor, and when the weird white guy came around asking what she was selling, she told him. How was she supposed to know he'd actually buy some?! White people ARE crazy. Sure enough, that evening, her dad came by his house to give back the 50CFA and apologize.

Today I spent the morning filling out forms for a federal background investigation. Then I spent the afternoon in meetings. Until 7pm. Not the sort of day to make you glad to be leaving work so late, though I've had worse. Then I get outside and I have a flat.

It's difficult to describe how that made me feel. I've been sick for over a month, nothing serious but constant low-grade unpleasantness. I'm tired. It's been a long, long day. Work has been extra demanding, extra draining, extra futile it seems sometimes, and here I have a flat, and thanks to my friend buying me a full-size tire for a half-size spare, I have nothing to replace it with. I have already turned down two dinner invitations tonight because I want nothing more than to go to bed, and now this. Ugh.

And then two guys, Ousmane and Ibrahim, offer to help me out. Before moving here if that had happened (and let's face it, in the U.S. it wouldn't have) - I'd have said no. I'd have felt weird...less of a man I suppose*...accepting help for such a thing. I should be able to change my own tire. Heck, I help OTHER people when they need their tire changed.

That's not still the case, and I don't know if that's more because I live here or because I wear a suit to work now, but now if someone offers to help my response is more along the lines of, "Hell yeah, that sounds GREAT!" So I said yes.

But the real turning point in the evening was when I made a conscious effort to enjoy what was happening. One of the great things about this country, something that sets it way apart from the U.S. and even apart from the rest of West Africa, is the "on est ensemble" culture. These guys were helping, not because I seemed helpless, not because they expected a return on it, but because hey, we're all people with problems, and if I can help you out I will and if someone else can help me out in turn, they will. So rather than just doing the typical American thing of either chasing them off (see previous two paragraphs) or just accepting their help and maybe throwing them a few cents, I decided to buy the guys a beer and sit with them. Sure, I was tired and just wanted to be home, but the culture here is all about recognizing other people and I've been losing sight of how important that is too often lately.

So a night that started with an inconvenient flat tire ended with two new buddies, Ousmane and Ibrahim; I know where they live, I know where they come from, I know about their kids, I know about their dreams. They know about my work, they know about my love life, they know about my history.

What a good night.

*I also only thought "gender roles" were a consideration when casting a play, but that's a post for another time, I suppose.

In my last post I told you about my new car. She now has a name, Edamame. For those who might not know what that is, it's a Japanese preparation of soy beans. The idea was to play off of both her country of origin and other things Volunteer friends might be jealous of. I was kind of partial to Unagi, but I got outvoted.

So far, she's mostly been in Ouaga, excepting trips to my girfriend*'s site, which is on a main road and an easy drive. Yesterday we took her up to a friend's site to the north for a 4th of July party. Roasted pig with barbecue sauce, macaroni salad, and copious amounts of beer - a good time was had by all.

The adventure part came on the ride back. We had just gotten in to the outskirts of Ouaga when we came upon buses and trucks lined up along the road. And then in the driving lane. Being a proper Ouaga driver, I didn't let this dissuade me, and we began driving in the oncoming lane to get a better look at what was going on. We eventually discovered that the road had been barricaded.

Now, when we first came up to the barricade, small cars were still going around on a dirt strip to the side of the road (less a frontage road and more the seating area of restaurants, but whatever). But for all my bragging above about being a proper Ouaga driver, I was loathe to drive us through a mob of people when I didn't know what was going on, especially given the protests over the last 5 months, so I had turned around to find a place to stop and ask around. Apparently, the folks in the neighborhood got fed up with the condition of the road, and as a resident explained to us, decided to "help" the government see the importance of repairs. He encouraged us to take the road around, that we would be fine, and to "n'hesitez pas." Unfortunately, we already had hesitated, and by the time we got back that side strip had also been barricaded.

So we went back to find our friend who had said there was another but worse way around. He pointed out the road, and we started. We didn't get far. The condition of the road was terrible, and it's entirely possible I left a bit of Edamame's paint on a wall when I had to come up the side of the road as close as I dared to avoid a mud hole. We asked a guy a couple blocks in where we could turn to get to Ouaga, and he told us that there wasn't a road our car could take. So we turned around to find our friend again.

We didn't find him, but someone else had pointed out a different road on the other side of the highway that we might try. Except by "road" I really mean "alley with a ditch running down the middle." And by "ditch" I really mean "place where running flood water has carved out a randomly meandering path." I saw that as ... not a great option. We asked some guys if they could show us how to get around, and while some claimed there was no way, one of them said he knew how we could get out of this, and he'd show us if we followed him on his moto. We agreed. The drive started out on roads that were clearly not intended for routine car use, but weren't so bad for all that. After a while, we started catching glimpses of other cars and 4x4s trying to find their way, but our guy never brought us quite the same way as them - he was better, and got us ahead of them. But it wasn't all coming up roses for us even so. The road got bad. More mud holes. Twice I had all my passengers get out and waited for the stretch of "road" (this time more like "pond") to clear out so that I could get some momentum and minimize my chances of getting stuck in the mud (like a 4x4 in front of me on the other side of the road we saw). We made it through the neighborhood and eventually ended up in an area that was neither being cultivated nor lived on, because it was all uneven rock. I finally did get stuck in a mudhole, but at this point there was no traffic, because we weren't anywhere remotely resembling a road, so at least it wasn't too stressful. And my passengers + guide pushed me out in no time anyway.

As it turned out, the scariest part of the drive wasn't mud, nor traffic, nor mobs, nor worrying about bottoming out on uneven terrain. It was the last part of this rocky formation we were crossing, where we had to cross a narrow strip between two gorges**. Just wide enough for the car and either side sloping off and gravel-covered. I was a little worried we'd end up sliding off. But not worried enough to balk, and we made it.

I hear the demonstration didn't last long, and we probably could have waited it out and possibly even done so without losing any time (our detour to get around this 500m stretch of road took over an hour). But hey, it's a heck of a story.

*The first time I've used that word on this blog. It should at least explain the "outvoted" comment above.

**Ok, "gorge" is a bit much. But we're talking a good 5- or 6-foot drop onto rock; these weren't just drainage ditches.

An old beater, but it's nice to feel less exposed when I'm driving around at night. I still use the moto during the day because I'm much more comfortable on it in traffic...and I've been wondering what that says about my approach to driving. Of course, the fact that the car is a manual transmission - as they all are here - doesn't help; I've never had a manual as my main mode of transportation other than a couple days when my car was broken down and my brother-in-law loaned me his. Interestingly enough, that was in Atlanta, and the traffic here reminds me of Buckhead around the mall - a mass of people ignoring traffic laws in the hopes of getting one car-length ahead, with the aggregate result of slowing everyone down, even those who have gotten ahead.

A friend asked me yesterday if I got it for the same reason she did - that she didn't feel safe on a moto. I said yes and no. Like I said, I'm totally comfortable on the moto in traffic, so no. But should I happen across soldiers who have decided to take to the streets shooting in the air, I'd feel much safer in a car, so yes.

It's funny the way my friend E brags to people back home about the car. Imagine, in the U.S., your friend in high school getting the first car of any of you. And it's a lamborghini. And it fights crime. That's the level of excitement we're talking about here. For a 1987 Nissan Sunny, a car which my friend Carson was kind enough to research on Wikipedia: "In 1996, Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear fame) declared the Nissan Sunny to be the 'worst car in the world, ever' and destroyed one by flinging it from a trebuchet pulled by a tractor." Thanks, Carson! People here LOVE the car. I bought it from the consular, and embassy employees have particular guidelines about things like this, one being that they can't make money on the transaction. So he sold it to me for what he paid for it a couple years ago. The reader is at this point unimpressed; he or she is thinking "So what? You should have paid LESS, not more!" But gentle reader, to fully understand, you must take into account two more facts: 1-here, an old car means a car that has proven it can survive, and 2-the car is an import from a country where they are sold much cheaper. I bought the car for about half of what most used cars go for here, and it's in much better shape. All of the local hires at the embassy, knowing the price rule, hounded the consular to sell them the car, and when he sold it to me instead (another guideline - Americans get first shot at your stuff when you're leaving) they fell over themselves letting me know that the moment I wanted to sell it they were available. Anyway, being in the gray area of a consultant for the embassy rather than a direct hire, I'm not bound by the same guidelines, so this car can easily be thought of as an investment, not just a ride.

All that said, immediately after getting the car I had a problem with the battery. The previous owner drove the car every day, but after getting it I let it sit several days; like I said, I still prefer my moto. And then found the battery had died. The experience of getting it started again is definitely worth recounting here:

I drive my moto to my friend's bar to ask where I might find a mechanic in the neighborhood. She isn't there, but her 14-year-old helper is, so I give her my helmet (she gets a huge kick out of that) and she hops on the back of the bike to show me where to go. We get to the garage, they say they'll call the mechanic, and I bring 14yo back to the bar where she works (just had to emphasize that again). By the time I get back to the garage, an available mechanic has been found, and I tell him that my car won't start and that I'm pretty sure it's the battery, so he finds another battery and hops on the back of my moto. I take him to my house. He tests the old battery by putting a wrench on each node and touching them together. No spark. He takes it out, hooks up the new one, and does the same thing. Huge sparks. I note that he is not wearing gloves. He seems unconcerned. He has me start the car. It works. He expresses his opinion that the old battery is out of acid, and unscrews the tops to several cells to show me. It is not out. He proposes a second hypothesis: the acid is "weak." To test this theory, he DIPS HIS FINGER IN THE BATTERY ACID AND THEN HE TASTES IT. I hurriedly point out the tap in the courtyard so he can rinse off, and privately note that I now understand why his fingers seem slightly stubby. He tells me that he was right; I choose to believe him without replicating his experiment. He puts the old battery back in, connects the nodes between the new and the old by holding two wrenches across them, and tells me to start the car. I express concern again (he must think I'm one heck of a namby-pamby) that the resulting shock might ruin my screened-in porch as he is hurled through it, but he assures me that he is "ready." I start the car. It works. I drive him back to the garage, where they tell me I should drive around now to recharge the battery and replace it soon. I ask the owner of the garage how much I owe. He tells me to just give the mechanic whatever I feel like. I give him about two dollars, which is more than I would normally pay for 20 minutes worth of work with no new equipment being installed (similar work on my moto would cost about 40 cents), but I feel like it's worth building goodwill with the neighborhood mechanic. Though I'm walking a fine line between "goodwill" and becoming "that white guy that we can charge three times what we would everyone else." Both the mechanic and the owner express amazement at how good a shape the car is in, given its age. Then the owner turns to me and says, "Did a white guy own it?" I say yes, and both give the universal grin, nod and sigh of a mystery explained.

So, I mentioned above the soldiers. They're still at it. And everyone is tired of it. Really our threshold has gone way up; you don't hear people expressing fear anymore, just irritation. I won't go on a rant here, tempting as it is because it won't solve anything. I'll just leave it at this: it is still the case that foreigners are not being targeted for the most part, and there is definitely not an anti-Western sentiment. In fact, for the first time ever, last night a Burkinabé expressed concern to me that the riots may prevent foreign investors from funding development in Burkina. So don't worry too much.

Yesterday morning my computer decided it no longer felt the need to access any site that uses https. Upshot: No gmail, no facebook, pretty much no access to anything requiring a login. So I've been able to follow what's going on but not able to comment. Today I finally remembered that I still had Kait's old computer. It's on its last legs, but I got it running long enough to catch up on messages.

And now my computer is randomly working again. So I'll try to update while I have a chance.

Yesterday

Today

The news wires are making a big deal out of Blaise "dissolving" the government, but that's less of a big deal than it seems to westerners. After every presidential election, the government is dissolved and new ministers are appointed; rather, most of the ministers are re-appointed, but those who didn't perform to the President's satisfaction are replaced. In other words, this dissolution is a sign that heads WILL roll, but it's not quite the drastic move it may seem.

This is an ugly situation. But I am ok. So far my neighborhood has remained calm. And in case any family of current volunteers are reading this, as usual Peace Corps is taking excellent care of them, and anyway none of this has spread outside of Ouaga.

If anyone wants to get in touch with me, let's assume email won't work since I don't know what caused my connection problem nor do I know what fixed it. Facebook should be reliable since I changed my connection settings, but as always the only sure bet is to give me a call. +226.75.90.71.83

Du courage to all of us.

All has been calm since Tuesday, and what actually happened on Tuesday remains unclear. The students gathered in Zogona/Zone du Bois, but the military made it very clear that renewed demonstrations were not welcome. That there were injuries is certain, and I have a first-hand report of shots fired in the area...but the extent of casualties isn't being reported anywhere. Not too surprising given the treatment of journalists during the Friday march (Anglophones: I think that bit only showed up in one of the French articles I linked. At least one journalist says police struck him and took his camera; others have claimed they were chased away).

For some reason, all the news outlets seem to think that the University closure is the biggest part of the story, but while that's a big deal (though I recently read that the universities haven't been functioning for a year anyway because of unofficial professorial striking; frustratingly, I can't find that link again), it overlooks the equally important closure of ALL schools. This is ... indescribably unfair.

The life of a student in Burkina Faso is HARD. I had students who biked 15km every morning to come to class. Some of them didn't really have any family in our village, so their options at lunch were to bike home or go hungry - they certainly didn't have the money to buy food. In theory, the school had a canteen to serve lunch to just that population; in practice, said canteen was open for about a week and a half of the school year. Many of the students had no one to speak French with at home, so they barely spoke the language they were being taught in. Above the homework we professors gave, they have penurious chores, like hauling water 2 km or more in calabashes on their heads, or in certain seasons getting up at 3 in the morning to work the harvest. Often sick from malnutrition or contaminated water, students who miss class face more than just the loss of points for whatever assignments happened to be due that day - they will likely also receive a penalty deduction of more points. That can be avoided by going to the doctor and getting a note - but when you're sick, biking 15km is not an attractive option. And on top of all of that, many of the students aren't getting any support at home - a sad fact is many students are not only not encouraged to attend school, they are forced by their families to drop out so that they have more time to plant the fields, or work in their father's shops, or help their mothers cook for the passel of young children in the courtyard.

That's not all the challenges. Just some of the major ones, enough to make my point. Which is this: if you see a student in your class, they REALLY WANT TO BE THERE. And now every student in the country is being told, "No, there's a danger you might stand up and demand that police officers not beat you to death, so we're just going to nullify all the sacrifices you made this year to get to get an education. After all, it's not like an educated populace is good for the country, anyway!"

Apologies. In the next post I'll take a step back from the editorializing and get back to letting my friends and family know what's going on.

An impressively thorough report on Friday's protests. Even for you non-francophones, check out the video at bottom to get some idea of the scale of the march.

It's hard to know what will happen tomorrow. The report above says there will be a meeting at the university. The professor I met yesterday said the teachers would demonstrate. Various expats I've talked to have said that they've heard the students will try to march again, specifically to take the road that they were prevented from taking Friday (which would have led to the police headquarters). Some say it's calm today because they're all regrouping.

Updates as events warrant.

Friday was quite a day. We had an interesting moment in the office as I and two of my coworkers compared our reactions. Without revealing who was who, as we watched smoke rise in the not-distant distance, one of us expressed annoyance at the logistical problems being caused by road shutdowns, another nervousness at the prospect of widespread violence, and the third excitement for the Burkinabé people asserting their rights.

The short version.

The long version (fair warning, some of these links are in French):

Despite my assurances in my last post, all has not been quiet in Burkina.

As I mentioned there, it all started on Feb. 22 with the death of a student in police custody in Koudougou. The police claim it was illness, the students claim it was brutality. I have no independent information to confirm or deny either cause; I can only say that either is entirely credible.

From there, protests quickly spread, many following the Koudougou example of violence and the burning of government buildings. The word on the street here is that in at least 20 towns buildings have burned. I sat down with a Burkinabé friend, and between the two of us we could list 13 of which we'd heard news reports or first-hand accounts:

Koudougou, Kongoussi, Kaya, Ouahigouya, Léo, Boura, Koupela, Pouytenga, Diapaga, Gourcy, Dori, Yako, and one I can't remember.

Above that number, I can name several more where I know there were protests or riots, but I don't know whether there were injuries or damages: Tougan, Sabou, Bogandé, Boulsa, Fada, Bobo, Tenkodogo, Gaoua, and Po.

In short, this thing is big. In response, university students in Ouaga planned a massive "peaceful" march for last Wednesday. However, other groups wished to join in (unfortunately, I've lost the link to that story), so the march got moved to Friday. There was also some disagreement about the route to be taken.

Yesterday, the roads were lined with police. The students marched, peacefully as planned, up until the intersection where the two routes (one proposed by the protesters, the other by the mayor) diverged; at that point, the students that tried to take their chosen route were teargassed. The smoke we saw from my office was the result of tire fires, which the students lit along their entire route - driving from work last night and back in this morning, I noticed at least a dozen charred spots along the roads (one exactly 2 blocks from my house!). From friends scattered around Ouaga, I heard about similar fires in Zone du Bois, Zogona, Zad, and possibly Pissy.

Other than that, I didn't hear about any injuries until this morning, when I stopped by my aforementioned friend's kiosk. In my neighborhood at least one kid was injured when another selling drinks hit him with a bottle. The news reports say there was at least one death yesterday, and that protests continue around the country, though I saw nothing driving into town.

There will be more Monday. While sitting with my friend, a fellow who works at the University joined the conversation and expressed in no uncertain terms his and his colleagues' anger with the government, both in general and specifically with their handling of this situation.

Last week was the students. Next week, the teachers. It's not over.

I admit it. Of the three of us in the office Friday, I was the nervous one.

In the news:

Egypt is awesome. Gaddafi (or whatever spelling is currently in vogue) is a terrible human being. Cote d'Ivoire is on the brink of civil war. And in a surprise move, the New York Times has actually chosen to give Burkina a bit of coverage. Naturally about violent protests. I hasten to add that they are a) far from here, b) not related (directly) to the unrest in other countries, and c) demonstrably not in great danger of spreading (there was already a sympathy protest here in Ouaga that was entirely peaceful in nature).

In other news, I have a new address. I can finally stop using my Volunteer friend as my mule (for all the good that's done; my brother sent me something a month ago and she still hasn't gotten it).

David Duckworth

06 BP 10539

Ouagadougou 06

Burkina Faso

I now have about 10 minutes left to actually talk about my life. Fortunately, I have little enough to say...

The job goes on. Soon I will be entering negotiations for a second year. Both my boss and I will make a good faith effort to come up with something, I think - I like the job and she likes how I'm doing at it - but it is entirely possible she won't be able to come up with enough money for staying here to be the right career move for me. So we'll see, and that's all I can say on the matter at this point.

Two weeks ago I played poker with a mixed crowd of embassy and missionary types. I lost. Depressingly quickly. The next game is tonight, so hopefully I'll perform to a somewhat higher standard. That was pretty much the first time I'd hung out with anyone other than PCVs. Which is neither here nor there, just the way things are.

I now have a pool table at my house. I've had a Wii for a while. I'm on the brink of getting internet. Soon all the Volunteers will love me! I'm not above buying friends, don't judge me.

And now I'm out of time. I'll close with one of my new favorite quotes; it's great for both its cynicism and its perverse vanity:

"I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." - by Johnson, Samuel

Apologies to the parents, who requested I do this, well, actually on New Year's.

Further apologies to any reader who may already have seen my description below of New Year festivities, since I've used variations of it in a couple emails.

Happy New Year! My best wishes! May God grand you lots of prosperity, health, and all the good things in life!

Saying something resembling the above is more or less mandatory in this country the first time you see someone after Jan 1. Until at least about March. It is also typical-almost-to-the-point-of-being-rude-if-you-don't to send text messages with something like that to anyone you may not see in that time frame. My favorite this year came from my best student last year, one of the few I had who moved on to high school this year:

Je vous envoi un chèque de 100 ans qui je serai payé à la banque de santé,situé sur l'avenue prospérité,rue de la paix,porte du bonheur,guichet 2011.Bonne fète.

(For what it's worth, I didn't teach his French class. Don't blame me.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself...Spent Christmas in Bobo. Two years ago I spent New Year's there. This time we didn't go out to a fancy dinner and show, though; we cooked. We also each introduced everyone in the group to one of our Christmas traditions. I hope my mom will forgive me for the one I chose: I made peanut butter balls. I think she will, considering that there were almost nothing like the ones we make at home. The peanut butter was the local stuff (no sugar, preservatives, emulsifiers...just ground peanut and oil), and the chocolate was melted candy bars - no semi-sweet baker's chocolate to be found here! Nothing I could use to temper it! Which meant I had to keep them in the fridge. But they tasted yummy all the same. We also did Secret Santa pagne stockings. I received a new cap that I love (the attentive reader will notice that I got a hat last time I was there, too...new tradition?), in a stocking my mom would love - it says "Jesus est né" all over.Did little during the lull between the holidays, and loved every minute of it. I went to work for a couple days and taught myself a bit about MS Excel pivot tables, but mostly I just goofed off. For several days, my friend E stayed in Kait's* room (yep, that's still how I refer to it. I've even heard some of my friends refer to my place as "Kait's house"!), so it was a lovely week of good company and no responsibilities.Then New Year's itself rolled around. And in all honesty, I was considering skipping it. It's not at all my favorite holiday, staying up that late seems more like a chore than anything else these days. But I'm glad I didn't, we ended up having a crazy good time. Every time we hit a snag in the plan, it turned out to make the evening EVEN BETTER:

BAD: We couldn't find a cab.

GOOD: But the bus stopped for us even though we weren't at a stop.

BAD: But the bus wasn't going where we planned on going.

GOOD: But It was going to a different nice restaurant.

BAD: But it's a restaurant usually very full of tourists and with a snooty yet inefficient staff.

GOOD: But even though there were very full, the staff was on the ball, seated us right away, and was on top of our orders the whole night.

So from there we decided to go to our favorite bar, a little place run by a French guy who loves Americans and always has jazz or motown playing.

BAD: It was 1130 and they don't open 'til 1 AM.

GOOD: But he served us anyway, and we rang in the New Year shooting tequila with the owner.

Then, we decided to go dancing, by which I mean the pretty girls decided to go dancing and we guys decided that following them was better than drinking with each other.

BAD: They picked my absolute least favorite club.

GOOD: But there were no hookers in sight (seriously, that's why I hate that club, it's just depressing, I tell anyone who will listen that the hallway to the bathroom reeks of cheap perfume and broken dreams), the music was higher quality than usual, I danced with a very attractive non-hooker (um...probably, anyway), and there was a group of French guys who were hilarious and wearing crazy wigs. One kept insisting on unbuttoning my shirt.So that was my holiday. It was a good one. Sorry, no photos - I still haven't visited my old village (shame on me), and my camera is still packed away in one of my trunks. Er, I hope.

*Wondering why in this case I broke my no-name rule? Because Kait is back in the States now, sad face, which means no discussion of her time here is likely to lead to badness. Miss you, Kait!

That's my world these days. Never mind what it means, though in fact in MCC/MCA-speak it's a perfectly cromulent sentence.

For the last two weeks, I've been neck deep in the contract that controls 9/10 of our entire diversified agriculture project. No, scratch neck deep. I've been in way over my head. But, with the necessary parties finally mostly signing off, it looks like I can stop having nightmares* soon. Until the next fire that needs putting out, anyway.

Other than that...well, there isn't much other than that. I've worked every day since Tabaski, though on Thanksgiving I was able to get off a couple hours early. It's been pretty intense. Hopefully, in 4 years we'll look back on the project and see that yes, it was all worth it. Not that I'm currently in the habit of looking four years ahead. It's a good morning when I have an idea of what meetings I'll have after lunch that day.

But things are going well for all that. On the nights I don't have to work late, there's usually a Volunteer friend or two in town I can spend time with. I've gained weight thanks to the much better variety of food in Ouaga, which should thrill my mom no end. Though I need to get a gym membership so I don't gain any more - enough's enough! Finding time to actually use such a membership will be its own challenge, but ça va aller.

Anyway, the short version of all this is that I don't have much to say, I've been too busy working to do much that would spark a reader's interest. Just wanted to update so everyone knows I'm still here.

*Literally. I had a dream in which a friend asked me to join her for lunch. I explained to her that the four-page document she'd submitted to me describing said lunch really needed a lot of work on its timelines and deliverables before I could accept.

Early this week, my APCD from Peace Corps, Sebraogo Kiendrebeogo, passed away after fighting cancer for several months. He was 40 years old. He leaves behind his wife and two young children.

I don't think I ever really talked about Seb here. I mostly talked about my fieldwork. Oh heck, let's be honest: I mostly talked about myself. But let me tell you about my boss, Seb, who was one of the greatest bosses I've ever had - and I've been fortunate enough in my career to work for some pretty amazing people.

Seb had been a teacher here in Burkina himself before working with the Peace Corps. He then worked with the Peace Corps for several years, first as a technical coordinator for stagiares for both Secondary Education and Girls' Education and Empowerment, and finally as the APCD for Secondary Education. But that's just his resumé. It tells you that he had the knowledge, but it doesn't begin to convey how he used it, how devoted he was to his colleagues, how ardent he was about helping people.

I chose that last adjective with care; I'd originally written "...how serious he was about helping people." Not that he didn't take his work seriously, but it's hard to use the word "serious" to describe someone whose smile and whose laugh were so infectious. And who did both so very, very often. You couldn't stay in a bad mood when Seb was in the room.

Peace Corps is a tough job, and how much a Volunteer enjoys it, and how successful she or he is, depends in no small part on the support he or she receives from the main office. The Peace Corps Burkina office is an incredibly supportive group of people. Everyone there goes out of his or her way to help the Volunteers, often working long hours and well outside of their written job descriptions to do whatever it takes. And even among such a group of supportive, wonderful people, Seb stood out.

Goodbye, Seb. The world's a better place for your having been in it.

D'accord.

Ce weekend passé, moi et ma co-locataire, K, nous sommes allés à Kaya pour rendre visite des amis. Plus précisement, des anciens voisins. Il y a je ne sais quoi de ce province-là qui m'inspire à trop boire...

Quand même, le voyage s'est passé très bien. Nous avions programmé d'aller à la piscine, mais malheureusement ceci était trop sale puisque l'appareil de filtrer était tombé en panne. Et alors, contre le chaleur il n'y restait qu'une seule option : la bière. Dont nous buvions beaucoup. Et puis du vin. Et vu que nous ayons apporté notre narguilé, il nous semblait très ridicule de le laisser inutilisé!

Au travail, ça va. Comme on dit en Mooré, bilf-bilfu, qui veut dire petit à petit. Il y a toujours des petits problèmes informatiques, et on pourrait bien dire qu'il y a toujours des crises de toutes sortes, mais rien d'impossible à maîtriser. Au moins, ce n'est jamais ennuyeux...

Et en parlant du travail, il faut que j'y aille. À tout à l'heure, chers amis.

I'm posting this from my computer. The work computer that I couldn't get to work on Blogger before. The problem, it turns out, is IE's unreasonable assumption that if it can't load a page in 30 seconds, it can't be loaded. Not that it's entirely appropriate to use my work computer to blog in any case, but hey, I'm on my lunch break. And since no one in this country has administrative privileges to this computer anyway, were I to log off no one else would be able to log on.

I won't be paid for September until mid-October. This would be much less frustrating (which is not to say it would be ENTIRELY without frustration) if I'd had some advanced warning. It has to do with the end of the fiscal year, and the way my contract works...and the fact that I live 4 timezones away from my employer's headquarters. Which is, incidentally, another reason why no one else could use this computer if I weren't - the embassy closes at 1230, so my MCC (remember, that's the American side of the organization) coworkers have left. But MCA (the Burkina side) doesn't shut down, and there's a weekly phone call with the Washington folks at noon their time. 1600 our time...but then, I should save my complaining until early November, when you clever folks in the US (most of you, anyway) go on Daylight Savings and I don't. By the way, did you know, dear reader, that while both the US and most European countries use Daylight Savings, we don't switch on the same day? There will be a couple weeks in late October when I'm only an hour off from Paris time (instead of the two I have been), but am still at the same time difference with respect to home. Sheesh.

The inspiration of the title of this post is the phone call I just had with the lending institution to which I owe rather more money than is prudent thanks to a desire whilst in grad school to be able to pay for things like gas and groceries. Ah yes, our higher education and student loan system is a clever one. Anyway, they called me (actually, my parents) a couple weeks after I closed my Peace Corps service to let me know that my loans would go back into repayment. By the way, kudos to you Citibank for giving me a grace month. It's not enough for many freshly returning PCVs, but it's frankly one month more than I expected. Since, upon answering, my parents very modestly admitted to not being me, the loan officer gave them a rather cryptic message for me (have him call this number, then use this code. Very cloak and dagger sounding, no?). I called the number and gave them the code (which was just a string of letters and numbers; I don't see any fundamental reason why it couldn't be something like, "The raven calls at midnight when the full moon is in view," but then I guess romantics make lousy loan officers. At least from the point of view of the bank), and during the conversation mentioned to them that to avoid such back-and-forth in the future, they should just call my phone here (I might have also made this suggestion because since I'm already paying them so much, I feel no need to pay fifty cents a minute to call them when they have a message for me). They agreed. Hooray, problem solved, pack it in, let's go home.

Or not.

I've been trying for two days to log onto their site and pay. The above-mentioned internet problem reared its head - their site is clearly not optimized for speed - so today I brought my personal computer to work. Because, you know, it's nice having a computer that I can adjust basic things on, like how long my browser will try to load a site before timing out. Or adding printers. (**Side rant. Look, USG, I appreciate good security. I'd even go so far as to say I'm more aware of it than many of your employees. Make me change my password because you know I won't otherwise, that's fine. Restrict my access, that's fine I guess, as long as we're both on the same page that it's a little bit insulting to my intelligence, because if you honestly believe I have evil intent then you know that physical access is everything and after spending 20 minutes of googling I could own this machine even though I know nothing about hacking currently, so you have to either be worried that I'm susceptible to social engineering hacks, or worse, you simply think I'm too dumb to be allowed full access because I'd break something. Whoops, that was a side rant to the side rant. Backing up, what I'm getting at is that it's just silly to run an overseas post where EXACTLY ZERO PEOPLE have administrative access to my computer. I'm not irritated [much] that I can't add the office printer to my laptop myself. I'm THOROUGHLY frustrated that NO ONE here can do it and I have to call someone in Washington so they can remotely access my machine to do something so trivial.**) So I finally manage to load up the page...and I can't see my account info because, it says, I need to update my phone number. Whisky Tango et cetera. I call (more money being spent just so I can be allowed to pay them), and find out - after many, many minutes on hold (yet more money I'm spending just to convince Citibank to let me pay them...hm, do they own stock in my cell phone provider?) - that the problem is my new phone number. It's not in the US. Their system can't handle that.

Seriously.

So, long story short, sorry Mom and Dad, you're going to continue to get phone calls about my loans, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to pay them. Which would leave me getting the phone calls, not you, but they'd be much less pleasant ones.

Here's irony: I'm sitting at one of a handful of restaurants in Ouaga

with wireless internet, I have a computer with me, and yet I'm still

updating from my phone. The computer, you see, is work-issued, and

blocks most social networking sites.

WORK

Where to begin? Though I have held real jobs before, my new one is

like nothing I've done in the past. I've been in jobs where meetings

were a success if they stimulated discussion and new trains of

thought. I've been in jobs where meetings were a success if necessary

administrative information was delivered. I'm not sure I've ever been

in a job where a meeting is a success if the sole result is the plan

to have another meeting.

Which is not to say I don't enjoy my job. It's fascinating. And

sometimes surreal, especially for someone a month out of Peace Corps.

Imagine this: two months ago, to get anywhere for work I would either

bike or take a 15-year-old van with the original shocks, crammed with

twenty people, going down a dirt road to get to the next slightly

bigger village. Now if I need to get somewhere for work, I only take

my moto if for some reason the embassy driver is busy. Surreal.

And high pressure. When you've got 5 years to turn half a BILLION

American dollars into structures and systems that will still be

helping an economy develop 15 years in the future, deadlines are

tight. Hence why I have a work computer at my Sunday lunch.

To be fair, said lunch is grilled carp with a savory Senegalese sauce.

Not just rice cooked with beans and oil. Having a paycheck and not

just a volunteer stipend has its advantages.

So, as you can see from the new(ish) title and the changes to the sidebar, I've finished my service with the Peace Corps. Joining the Peace Corps is one of the best decisions I've ever made, and both because it is so recent an experience and because it is so profound an experience, you'll find I still reference it a great deal. But that's no longer what this blog is about. Basically what I'm saying is I'm too lazy to make a new blog just because I have a new job title. Which is, by the way, "Development Specialist Assistant." I'm pretty sure that's NGO-speak for "newbie." While my contract in that position doesn't technically start for another couple days, I've just spent the last two in meetings getting a whirlwind orientation to the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington, D.C., and what sort of stuff they do in Burkina Faso. So it's reasonable to go ahead and refer to this post as my first as a development worker for the U.S. government.

I was both excited and nervous about this job already. My orientation has intensified both of those feelings. The MCC does REALLY cool stuff! That's the excitement part. The nervous part is wondering how well I'll do - because the learning curve is steep, the responsibilities many, the time short. But at least I'll never be bored.

Walk a mile in my shoe

When I arrived in Largo (which is a nice area, but very far from DC center), I asked at the front desk about a shuttle to a nearby shopping center. For whatever reason, their every-half-hour shuttle wasn't running that half hour, and since I like walking anyway I decided not to wait to start the mile-and-a-half walk to the area. After about a half mile, the sole of my right shoe peeled away from the leather of the shoe. Fun! Of course, I could have turned around and halved my time walking half-shoeless, but that's just not my style. I eventually made it to a grocery store where I found Krazy glue and fixed my shoe. After putting it back on, I shopped a bit in the area. As I was checking out at a nearby pharmacy, an older lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me, weren't you walking around with one shoe earlier?" I responded in the affirmative and explained the situation. She said, "Oh, I'm glad I ran into you, because I saw you on the street and I wondered what on earth that crazy guy was doing!"

Fair enough. My blisters wonder the same thing - apparently a month back in the US is enough to lose some of the hard-earned callouses I built up in BF.

On being old

Picture me in a suit and tie, sitting at a Starbucks sipping a soy latté and reading government contracts to prepare for a meeting. I felt so urban and professional! I felt like a real, for true adult!

Then a young woman walked in. She was dressed much as you'd expect a young professional to be. But she looked about 13! I thought to myself, "Surely I'm not so old that someone in her early 20s looks that young. How depressing." A few minutes later I overheard her telling her coffee companion about how 7th grade was going. Whew! I'm NOT so old!

I hate running

Did it in grad school. I lost weight and quit smoking. Running is good for you. But I don't enjoy it. Not at all. That said, there's a really large number of good-looking women in DC who jog. So, if I ever find I just have to take it up for some reason, I'll have to consider moving here to increase my motivation.

Don't jaywalk in DC

Not because you'll get a ticket. Just because you're likely to get hit. Traffic here is merciless. Don't worry, I neither got a ticket nor hit. But I almost got hit by a turning vehicle...a Segway, to be precise. Which made me wonder: since the Segway is supposed to replace walking, which of us had the right-of-way? As always, of course, the answer is the one that would have better survived the collision. Win: Segway.

My favorite tie and my favorite...

It's bright orange. It's kind of shiny. And it always gets compliments. I wore it to my first day of meetings. My favorite comment I got that day was that I displayed "sartorial derring-do." Sartorial is such a fun word!

I am currently in the US getting fat. I've just received a rather scathing email from my mother informing me that this is no excuse not to update my blog; I can play the passive aggressive game too, so rather than walking into the other room to respond to her, I'll acknowledge that here instead. Just kidding, mom! But as noted in the title, while this may be a reply to her, it is not really the response she was requesting.

Anyway, this post is administrative in nature, which is to say that it's not about my life, it's about this blog. I've updated the "About Me" sidebar to reflect my new employment, and as said sidebar links to an old post including contact info, I've updated that post appropriately.

Du courage a tout le monde, vous qui je ne peux pas retrouver lorsque je suis lá, vous me manquez quand même.

Maybe. I COS soon, and my last week will be filled with paperwork and travel. So this may very well be it. But I had to choose my words carefully - because it almost certainly isn't my last post from Burkina.

In September, I'll start my new job with the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Ouagadougou. This is development work at the other end of the spectrum - big money, large projects, high-level government involvement. It's really exciting work, and a jumping-off point for a real career in international development. My focus will be on agriculture development (mostly with irrigation), though I'll almost certainly interact with the other projects as well: land management laws, road paving, and primary school construction.

Note that while the Peace Corps actively encourages volunteers to blog about their work, as a contractor for the MCC it will be somewhat inappropriate for me to discuss the details of my job. That's not to say they're secretive about what they do; quite the opposite, the way you're money is being spent and how the decisions are made is a reasonably transparent process, as you'll see if you go to their website. But since I'll be working at the interface of two governments, discussing any particulars would just be a bad idea. This is all a long-winded way of saying that if you're interested in what the MCC does, read their website. If you're interested in my personal life outside of work, continue reading this blog. Stalker.

As for my impending COS, what to say? My last two agriculture projects fizzled, due to a bout with dengue fever followed by a schedule of meetings that forced me to miss prime planting time. So I have no projects to wrap up; all that's left for me to do is go home, pack what I want and give away what I don't, and come back to the capital to finish up my paperwork. The sting of leaving is considerably less, since I'll still be in country and able to visit - and able to visit much more easily to boot, since my second order of business (first will be getting an apartment) will be to get a moto.

Of course, I'm excited to get the chance to visit home, though the trip isn't nearly long enough. Still, I should get to visit with a large number of friends and family before coming back. We'll just have to squeeze in as much fun as possible. Part of that fun will be shopping for a couple suits to bring back with me - the dress code for a government job is a far cry from that for a volunteer!

He says, but that was yesterday. And anyway. It wasn't here, it was in

a village 7km away. I'm irritated. But then, wednesday, there IS

something - African Children's Day, a fête that most regions here

don't recognize, but in our province the NGO PLAN International is

very active in children's education, and they host a celebration. This

year, in my village. Great...except that almost noone knew it was

happening. Rumor has it they donated 1.5 million CFA for the event, of

which about 300,000 was actually spent (none on publicity,

apparently); the rest was skimmed. Even that number seems high

considering what materials were used - two speakers, two tents, and

some milk cans* - but for all that, at least some masks did come back

out for it, so I got some better pictures. Also worth mentioning is

the traditional music they played on those two speakers, which at one

point aired a local stringed instrument playing the unmistakable tones

of "If You're Happy and You Know It."

*Carny games again. Milk can ball toss described previously, though

this one wasn't rigged. Other games: kick a soccer ball through a

tire, grab bags (black sachets, naturally), and walk a wavy line using

a mirror to look at your feet. The kids had fun, I concede that.

I haven't been idle. As I said, these parties interrupted (not a

complaint!) my work. I'm planting my own little field of sorghum and

peanuts, using a soil-preparation technique called "half-moons". I

haven't led any formal classes on it, but seeing the white guy hard at

work is enough to make most passers-by stop and stare, so I take the

opportunity to explain it. So if it works, several farmers will know

how to do it. If it doesn't, well, only the rich white guy wasted his

time and money. Plus this has given me the opportunity to appreciate

just how hard people work here - I'm working a tiny plot, a tenth of a

hectare, and it's exhausting. Mais ça va aller, en tout cas!

When school ended last year, I was ready to get out of dodge. Most of

my projects last summer were in other cities and villages. Combined

with the vacation I took, I spent around three weeks total in village

between May and October, usually only a few days at a time.

This summer, with so little time left, I'm spending as much of it as

possible without leaving. I begrudge the fact that I'll have to spend

a few days in Ouaga for paperwork and language tests even. Long story

short, this is the first time I've really gotten to hang out and do

projects without the specter of school constantly over my head. And

while I've said for two years that I'm best suited to be an education

volunteer, having a day-to-day job rather than unprogrammed, hazy

ideas of what to do like other volunteers, I'm loving this freedom.

This week, I was working my demo field and 3 times someone came by and

told me about a celebration somewhere. And I did what I could never do

with classes - I dropped what I was doing and went and celebrated with

my community.

The first was a Catholic baptism. Several dozen, actually, of many

ages. The next, two days later, was a Muslim "baptism" - I doubt

that's really the proper word, but that's what people call it. These

happen 7 days after birth (or some other multiple of 7 if the family

can't scrape the money together the first week), in this case a

Tuesday. I wore my boubou, with a muslim cap even. And just to

underline the enviable religious tolerance here, the (Catholic) girl

who presented the infant to the imam was wearing her Sunday best - a

complet with "Christ Is Risen" all over it. The third was ... but

first, a flashback.

Saturday, I commented to a friend how sorry I was not to have gotten

good pictures of the masks at the recent fête. He said not to worry,

the mayor had just announced a second, smaller fête. It would be in 4

days, and some masks would be back. Monday, I mention to another

friend that I'm excited about the fête on Wednesday. Tbc...

So, getting chased, even getting hit (indeed, to properly greet a

mask, you bow to it three times, putting your hand on the part over

the head in what is nominally a gesture of respect but I suspect has

more to do with helping them not fall when they bow back, then allow

it to hit you), is all part of the fun. Usually.

But this year they were in a bad mood. They hit hard. They spent more

time chasing people than they did dancing, and they chased more

earnestly than usual, too. Some carried knives. It was a bad vibe.

They even hit a couple people hard enough to send them to the local

medical clinic.

We still had fun, don't get me wrong. We went out the morning after

the masks arrived. There were a dozen or so, the number growing all

morning to about thirty by the time we left. Fun, but it was a lot

more intense than usual, and we were pretty much constantly on our

toes to avoid getting hit (with 67% success), not just from the ones

in the dancing circle but from the others arriving from all

directions. So I didn't get any good photos - I tried to take some on

the sly, but only from a healthy distance; I also arranged with one

guy to have one mask he knew meet us for a photo, but my friends were

tired of the heat and the tension at that point and didn't want to

wait. The guy was pretty mad when he found me later.

After my friends left, I went back out in the evening, not even

bothering to bring my camera this time (night shots are harder even

under good conditions; dust being kicked up from dancing and running

and constantly worrying when you'll have to run yourself are not good

conditions). By this time there were 40 or 50 out, and one chased me

hard enough that I lost a flip flop. (That would normally slow me down

on our rocky terrain, but not with that thing coming after me!)

Despite knowing there would be even more before the night ended, after

finding my shoe, I decided I'd had enough fun; by now it was full

night and visibility was low. I'd gotten both my adrenaline fix and my

exercise. What else do you need?

They're always kind of mean. That's just part of it. I think I've

discussed this tradition before, but just in case...

When a person puts on the mask (and it's not JUST a mask, it's a whole

outfit), they are no longer that person, they ARE the mask. These

beings are neither ancestors nor gods, nor do they have specific

magical powers. All the same, they are supernatural entities, and as

such are sacrosanct. They can do anything and get away with it. No one

will question a mask. And the person inside can't be held responsible,

remember - they aren't in control. In fact, the kids are even led to

believe that there IS no person inside. You can't talk about that

aspect in front of them; it's a lot like Santa Claus. Even most adults

believe the masks are real entities - they refer to them as "living"

in a nearby sacred hill - but they are aware that there are people

inside. And though that person may not be in control, you'll find that

the person's friends never seem to get hurt by his mask. As to who can

be a mask, I've heard two stories - one, that it suffices to know the

person currently inside and offer to take their place (the outfit is

hot and heavy, and when I expressed an interest in trying it out

everyone said I'd just fall over - the point is, wearing it is hard

work, and doing it in shifts is believable, especially since they

often stay out for 24 hours or longer); the second, that it's a role

handed down within a family. Since family ties and close friendships

so often go hand in hand here, these two are not so mutually exclusive

as it might appear at first blush.

So, however it's decided who wears one, the masks come out of their

hill for certain occasions. Whatever the occasion, their actions are

invariably the same: they dance, they greet people, and they hit

people. Everyone will gather around to watch them dance, but they're

always ready to scatter when the masks start running after them,

usually with a stick or knotted rope.

Tbc...

to keep goats from using my hangar as shelter when it rains and peeing

and pooping all over my porch. Nice thought, but two years ago - or

better, four, for the volunteer before me - would have made more

sense.

The mistiming gets better. They build the whole wall before installing

the gate. That doesn't seem like a problem, does it? Except that the

gate is a wood and tin affair affixed to the walls with mud. Which

means that in order to have any chance at all for it to hang true, it

needs to be well supported and HELD SHUT WHILE THE MUD DRIES. I spent

a whole day having to jump the (brand-new!) wall in order to get to my

own house. By the way, the gate still doesn't hang properly.

But wait, there's more! A week after my forced gymnastics, my hangar

finally gave in to years of dry rot and termites. My porch no longer

has a roof. So it no longer offers shelter to goats when it rains.

LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF MASKS

Finally we get to the vizards, and just so you know, I scanned through

the "V" section of my American Heritage just to find a word to make my

alliteration work. The masks are definitely "lively" (though in truth

the word vivacious to me calls up more the image of teenager going on

her first date than of scary masked men looking for people to hit.

Still and all, they are "full of animation and spirit," that last

quite literally if you believe the tradition), and they do come out

"in the evening," though since they stay out all the next day,

vespertine was a bit of a stretch.

Anyway. I've seen them before, of course. I've talked about them here,

and a long time ago even posted pictures. But this fête is a big one.

I didn't get to go last year because of a meeting, so I was really

enthusiastic about getting to go this year. In fact, I was so enthused

I inspired a couple friends to make the trek to join me.

The two things that stood out at this fête as opposed to the other

times I've seen masks come out (for smaller festivals and funerals):

1-there were a LOT of them, 50 or more; and 2-they were MEAN.(tbc)

RETURN TO BURKINA

A few times while in Europe, I caught myself feeling suprised by how

young kids acted. For instance, at that last mall I remember thinking,

"Wow, if my six year old were still sucking his thumb, I'd be a little

worried." Before that, on the Paris metro I remember thinking a mom

was being awfully indulgent to let her 4 year old use baby talk. It's

not until I get back that I realize how silly I was being (leaving

aside that it's silly of me to be that judgmental anyway) - that

little boy wasn't 6, that little girl wasn't 4. They were probably 3

and 2 respectively - they grew up eating well and thus were twice as

big as what I'm accustomed to seeing here!

While still in Ouaga, a friend asks me to go with her to an artisan's

shop, which it turns out is run by Jeanne, our CD's housekeeper, thus

the woman who took care of Pat the mornings we were in Ouaga. She asks

how he is, then tells me a funny story from his last day, when I was

in Paris. After he got up, she tried to tell him that the RPCV wife of

one of our APCD's had stopped by, but he was still asleep, so she'd be

back soon. But Pat doesn't speak French, nor Jeanne English, so all

she can do is watch helplessly as he leaves.

As an aside, I owe Jeanne a really nice present. As if it wasn't

enough how hard she worked to make Pat's stay a pleasant one, when I

visited her shop she gave me a scarf - her specialty is high quality

traditional fabrics. It's a beautiful pattern, named in Mooré after

the Guinea fowl, as it looks a bit like their feathers.

RETURN TO VILLAGE

Finally! I got back on the 2nd, and don't want to have to leave again

until my COS. But I will - ending Peace Corps service involves a lot

of paperwork, so I'll need to go to Ouaga soon to work on that.

For the last two years, my courtyard has only had a wall around half

of it. Animals have been free to roam through, which is sometimes

obnoxious. Now, with two months left and no new volunteer coming in,

my landlord decides to finish the wall and install a gate, (to be

continued)

DAY 6 - CONT

and make it at least a LESS painful experience to try to navigate the

station and the trains.

We get to the bus station. Our bus is late, and when it does arrive

the ticket guy can't be bothered to announce it, so we almost miss it.

We don't though, which means we get to experience sitting for an hour

at the Paris peage while the police search a few peoples' luggage

quite thoroughly. Whoever they're looking for, it's not Americans -

mine and Pat's passports get only the most cursory of glances. Lucky,

since I'm travelling on my peace corps passport, which features me

sporting no hair and 50 more pounds than I currently carry (even

taking into account the hair I've allowed to grow back).

The combination of delays puts us back in Paris too late to do

anything other than check into our hotel, catch a cheap (but still

yummy!) dinner at a kebab place, feel sorry for ourselves to see

posters for Les Mis, because how cool would it be to see it IN

Paris?!?, and hit the sack.

I will now be moving away from the day-by-day format, as the rest of

the story has some gaps of uninteresting time spent on a flight, then

in Ouaga, then in village. But I haven't forgotten that I still owe

you the vizards. And then I can finally drop this silly title.

So...since while in country I keep my journal notes on this same phone

that I'm using to update that same journal, you'll have to put up with

another "to be continued" while I transfer them to paper...

DAY 6 - A DISMAL DECISION

For the second time, I make a bad bus choice. I'd booked us tickets to

leave to go back to Paris around 3, having misunderstood Pat's

expressed wish to ARRIVE around 3. But I chose not to change the time,

telling Pat that the 5 hours at the Louvre he planned that evening

would only make me angry. We agree instead to have a relaxed morning

in Brussels, walk by and maybe through the botanical gardens on our

way to the bus, then when we get back to Paris catch the boat tour

we'd missed the other night.

Silly me, I'd forgotten we were no longer in a country where the rain

is completely predictable, and when it does rain you've no need to go

anywhere because everything shuts down anyway. The morning of day 6 is

cold and wet, and I have nothing to wear against the rain.

To slightly change a bad quote from an unmemorable movie, "I'm a Peace

Corps Volunteer. We don't plan, we improvise." Pat has the suit he

bought in Ouaga. That means he has a suit bag. A couple quick slits of

a knife for armholes, and voila, not only do I have rainwear, but it's

Armani. The most stylish piece of plastic I've ever worn.

While I'm no longer getting wet, our bags still are, so the rain blows

the botanical garden plan. Instead, we step into a mall, meaning both

the things I set out to do on day 1 without Pat I also ended up doing

with him (the other was McDonald's, remember?). We browse an

electronics store looking for a tip to a car charger he'd given me. No

luck.

We take a train again, figuring going one station over shouldn't be

that hard. It's not, though we've probably done it illegally: there

are no turnstyles there, so we just hang onto the undated tickets we'd

bought two days ago. I guess it works on an honors system? There are

machines to destroy used tickets, reinforcing that theory, but not too

many people seem to use them. Generally I'm an honest guy, and I

considered paying for another ticket, but in the end I decide that if

they want my money they're going to have to meet me halfway (to be

continued)

DAY 5 - CONT

From there we go on to St. Katherine's. You'd think we'd be tired of

cathedrals by now but first, you'd be wrong anyway, and second, this

one has a feature we just have to see for ourselves - a urinal on one

side. Not a Port-a-Potty, this is just two half walls and water

running down the walk of the cathedral itself to allow people to

relieve themselves and show exactly what they think of Mother Church

in the same go. Or perhaps a kinder interpretation would be that they

can get physical relief outside and spiritual relief inside. In either

case, neither Pat nor I use the facilities, on my part less out of a

sense of propriety for the church and more of one for myself - those

walls aren't that high, and it's right next to a high traffic road.

From there, we go get the first two things people associate with

Belgium - chocolate and beer. This time we go for the much more widely

famed trappist ales. We see the Mannekin Pis, which is exactly as

interesting as you'd expect it to be, but since it's on pretty much

every postcard I got for my Burkinabé friends, I figured I ought to

see it. Research the stories about why it's there, though, reading

them is much more fun than actually being on a street corner looking

at a sight I see on a daily basis in Burkina. Though to be fair, in BF

the streets usually aren't paved.

We find another local tradition, fries. I mean, I knew Europeans take

their fries with mayo - I love it myself - but if the tradition wasn't

started here, don't tell the Belgians. Toward the close of the day we

find the hat Pat's been looking for, pick up a couple of Cuban cigars,

and head back to the hostel. Tonight we find our room being shared

with an animated, opinionated Nigerian who lived for a few months in

Nashville and is now based in England. We chit chat about what's

ailing West Africa and I find myself for the most part in agreement.

Pat and I hit a nearby outdoor pub to enjoy our last on-site Belgian

beers and smoke our cigars - mine a Romeo y Julieta, his an H. Upmann.

DAY 4 - CONT

The hostel we're staying at has a map/guide to the city which mentions

a type of beer I'd never heard of - gueze, apparently only found

locally. We head to a place that has it on tap. The menu refers to

this type of beer as "self-fermenting." I don't know what that's

supposed to mean, but the beer is yummy - though it doesn't taste like

any beer I've had before. It's so sour, it tastes more like lemonade.

They do a cherry kind that is even better.

DAY 5 -COFFEE, CATHEDRALS, PALACES AND PARKING

We start the morning finally getting that coffee we've been talking

about all trip. It's instant, a freebie in our hostel's lobby. Then we

go and get the third thing everyone thinks of when they think of

Belgium - waffles! This would not even have occured to me were it not

for the frozen waffles they sell at the front desk to shut up the

wise-asses. We go to a place in the galleries that does them up right

- I get mine with ice cream and chocolate sauce, Pat gets a cherry

concoction. We head out and hit the highlights - the flea market, the

palace of justice (which does not disappoint. Seems like the sort of

place that would be impressive, right? Here it is. Paris, not so

much.), the museum area (though the only one we're ardently interested

in going in, which has underground 15th century ruins, is closed), the

royal palace and gardens (pretty enough, but no Jardin du Luxembourg),

and St. Michael's Cathedral. Along our walk I notice that the city

planners have used the perverse strategy I hated so much in Atlanta of

giving one street many names, depending on which block you happen to

be on. We go down four different streets without once turning to get

to our next destination - a parking garage. Its view from 11 stories

up is recommended as one of the nicest in town, and it's free. We see

much of town, including in the distance the Atomium, which we didn't

visit (it's touted as Brussel's Eiffel Tower, and like the Tower it's

expensive to go up and not particularly close to anything else we were

interested in.

Anyway, we've chosen this particular one because there's a statue

surrounded by a prism of fluorescent lights on it, and we figure

that'd be worth seeing at night. But we'll never know, as the lights,

which had been on all day, turned off as the sun went down. We head

back to the hotel.

As we're sitting in the lobby, with it's two chairs, we make the

acquaintance of two very attractive young American women, one of whom

had actually been to Burkina the year before planting Jatropha. She

was in a village not far from my own and doing work very similar to

what I've done with Peace Corps, so in other circumstances I'm sure we

could have had a lot to talk about, but the hotel lobby was simply not

conducive to socializing, nor was it in a part of town where we could

easily go out and find a place to hang out. Oh well, she was too young

for me anyway.

DAY 4 - BUS TO BRUSSELS

And the return of alliteration...

We stop at the front desk on our way out to see about reserving a room

on our return trip, but weirdly, it costs MORE to reserve the room

while there than it would to do it online through a hostel aggregator

website. We tell them nevermind - as you can tell from yesterday's

entry, we weren't particularly enamored with the hotel; it just would

have been easier to be able to leave Pat's big bag there.

We have surprisingly good hotdogs and surprisingly bad doughnuts at

the bus station, then head out to Brussels. We mostly ignore Get Smart

along the way. Anne Hathaway is quite pretty, but so is the European

countryside, with its sparkling new windfarms next to ancient

churches.

We get there and find the Brussels metro to be extraordinarily

user-unfriendly. Hostile, even. A typical sign at an info booth: NO

TOURIST INFORMATION HERE. And for whatever reason, while all of the

pamphlets on the buses are available in 5 or 6 languages (Russian,

even!), the one on the trains is only in Dutch. After one train ride

we decide to walk. We find our hostel, which is right downtown. No

metro needed - we can finally stay out late!

Perhaps less grand than Notre Dame, Sacré Coeur feels more sincere.

And the mural in the cupola is breathtaking. Before I left my CD had

told me she found the latter more beautiful; I entirely agree.

We head out, making our way back downhil through le Square St

Louise-Michel, a pleasant little park that looks more like a cliff

from a distance. We decide now is a good time to plan the next days of

our trip, if we can find an internet connection. We walk to a cafe

district in hopes of finding one with wifi. Many do, but Pat's iPod

can't connect to them. We need internet to get internet! Because if we

had a connection, we could pull up a map of all the hotspots in Paris.

Finally we find a shop that offers a free 20 minutes that P can

actually connect to, enough time to pull up a map...and find that the

nearest McDonald's, where we know we can get a connection, isn't near

at all. Still, there are worse fates than to be forced to walk around

the prettiest city I've ever been in. On our walk, I realize that it's

not only the architecture that's beautiful. Of course, in a city of

millions, there's bound to be a large number of beautiful

people...still and all, the number in Paris seems disproportionately

high.

In the evening, we wander the art district near the Louvre, and it's

just as well that the galleries are mostly closed, as judging by what

they have in the windows we couldn't even afford to walk through the

doors. We head back to Pont Neuf, near Notre Dame, where we'd planned

on catching a boat down the Seine, but we're a bit late. There's

another in a half hour, but we worry that we'd get back too late to

catch the last train to our hotel at 11, and the night buses don't

start running until 1. So instead we decide to watch the sunset from

the bridge. When I go back someday, I'd like to walk all of the

bridges in the city. If it's a long trip, maybe even watch sunset from

each. (to be continued)

PARIS DAY 3

We start out the morning by going to check out where the Bastille

stood. Tours of the opera house that now stands there don't interest

us, but P was born on Bastille Day, so we're kind of obligated. We

luck out - turns out on the weekends there's a big open air market. If

Pat hadn't just picked up souvenirs in Burkina, he could have

believably faked it shopping here. He stops at a hat stand. And I

encourage him to buy a Panama Jack - EVERYONE looks good in a Panama

Jack - but he's in the market (no pun intended) for a black felt

fedora. To try to state things the right way around this time, I

observe that in retrospect I can see the influence of this market

tradition on NOLA, and even more so Charleston, SC. Not to mention

chez moi, of course, though even in Ouaga the fish never looked this

fresh.

We mosey up the Blvd Magenta, where I kick myself for having just

bought a suit in Ouaga (they have them here for 35€!) to our next

stop, the one place every single person I talked to recommended we

visit: Montmartre and Sacré Coeur. It turns out to be a steep walk,

but well worth it - our direction of approach has allowed us to bypass

the majority of tourists and end up smack in the neighborhood itself.

Which is beautiful and wonderful and I completely understand why

everyone told us to go there. We stop at a small cafe and have

tartines and wine. Mine has bacon, plum, and one of the dizzying array

of cheeses available in France. Since we're on Rue Lamarck, I spend

all of lunch humming one of Enjolras's solos from Les Mis.

Afterward, we make our way around the backside of Sacré Coeur, where

we find all the tourists we'd temporarily shaken. We also find ice

cream! When I go back someday, I'll want to try the popcorn flavor,

but for now I stay a bit more conservative and get peanut butter. We

walk past what I am convinced is the single water fountain in the

whole city (silly me, I didn't think to pack a Nalgene to go to

Paris!) and finally arrive in front of the cathedral and enter. (to be

continued)

to get to the top of the bell tower. And it was worth it. We got into

the room to see the bells just before it closed to tourists because it

was about to start tolling. Which meant we were right on top of them

when the evening carillion started. The view up there is one of the

best we had the whole trip, and FEELING the bells as much as hearing

them only added to the experience. I joked with Patrick that it was

too bad we didn't get the chance to climb the Washington Monument

during our vacation to DC in 08, but this was an ok 2nd best.

Before calling it an evening, we hung out in the literary district. I

had fun window shopping at the bookstores, though I don't suppose it

meant much to Pat. Again I was struck by the influence of Paris on New

Orleans; we could have been walking through the Quarter.

We took the opportunity to have a nice beer with dinner, chuckled over

the fact that while Pat did get carded every time when we got him

reduced prices on tickets for being under 26, no one once questioned

his right to enjoy a drink.

Despite our observation on the way back that the subway brakes screech

like a thousand condemned souls, after a day of walking the city we

have no trouble falling asleep.(to be continued)

I wouldn't have it any other way - I'm pretty sure if I get on a bus

or train I'll never find my way back. We manage to find each other and

get the metro to our hotel. We leave our bags, make it back to the

metro...and realize we've left our malaria medicine behind and have to

go back to get it. This will also turn out to be a theme of the trip:

every evening we'll plan to get out early and have some coffee, then

when the morning arrives we'll forget something, or end up somewhere

other than we planned, or find we need a wifi hotspot, and by the time

we're ready for coffee it's practically lunchtime!

First stop - the catacombs. Which it turns out are flooded. Since

we're nearby, we walk over to Montparnasse cemetery, where several

famous people are buried. The tombs are neat. I mention to Pat that it

reminds me of New Orleans; he very reasonably points out that it's

really the other way 'round: New Orleans is reminiscent of Paris. We

move on.

The garden in front to Luxembourg Palace is possibly the prettiest

green space I've ever seen. When I live in Paris, I'll go there every

weekend. You know, with my supermodel Nobel-Prize-in-Physics-winning

wife, right after we hit the biggest lotto jackpot in history.

We wander over to the Pantheon, an impressive structure from the

outside, which is all we see since you can do that withOUT paying 9€.

From there we head up to Notre Dame, stopping along the way in a

smaller but also impressive church whose name I've forgotten. The

inside of Notre Dame is...certainly impressive, but to me all the

statuary has a vibe of High Church at its worst - lauding the Church

rather than the Faith. I'd bet money that many of those statues of

"saints" look an awful lot like whichever archbishop commissioned

them. But still, it's an experience not to be missed. After touring

inside and being possibly the only two people to respect the no flash

photography rule, we wait a really long time and pay a not small

amount of euro for the privilege of climbing way too many stairs (to

be continued)

PARIS - DAY 1

Discovery number 1: despite being on almost the same longitude as

where I live, Paris is TWO hours ahead. Good to know - never mind the

nap I had planned! This means I need to get used to sunset after 9pm.

Since I have this day to myself, plus since I'm staying near the

airport rather than in town, it seems to make sense to do all of those

things that a Peace Corps volunteer would do after 2 years in Africa,

rather than the things a typical American tourist would do in Paris -

I'll rate those to do with Pat. I walk around the Roissy area, which

is basically in industrial park, but a much nicer one than you'd find

in, say, Atlanta. Certainly nicer than Ouaga. I walk. I enjoy the

cold. I buy a jacket, and wish I had more money for clothes - even the

discount stuff is really nice. I stroll through an Ikea, then a

shopping mall, stopping for lunch at McDonald's. I have dinner at what

I take to be the French version of Appleby's (the name translates to

Shortstraw). None of it stuff Pat would have been interested in, but

every PCV reading this is jealous. On a side note, in what will prove

to gold true throughout the trip, I notice that people do NOT switch

to English with me, despite the Parisians' reputation. Not that they

can't tell my French is not theirs...but I suspect that my African

accent is so strong that it masks any American accent, and they're

just not sure where the hell I'm from.

DAY 2 - TEAM DUCK REUNITED

It's weird to see a sunrise with no dust. Equally weird to see birds I

recognize from Africa in trees I recognize from the US.

Poor Pat will never agree to meet me at an airport again. I'm a bit

late getting there; while the 20 minutes I was told it would take to

get to the airport was not wrong, it was misleading - CDG is BIG. To

actually get to the terminal I want takes another 15 minutes, and when

I get there I find that his arrival gate has changed. The lady at the

info desk is very apologetic when telling me that the only way to get

to the new gate is to walk, but (to be continued)

THAT was atypical. I just found out (though we'd already suspected

given the frequency of the word "nasara" in the preceding argument)

that they'd been talking about us. The kickee had been insulting us.

The kicker decided to defend our honor. More than any other time in my

service, I wish now that I'd focused more on Mooré so I could have

defused that situation. Anyway, as I said, that was unlike anything

I've ever seen here, and I hope it's not what Pat walks away

remembering.

A WEEK IN...WHOOPS!

On Wednesday we discover Pat is leaving as planned on Friday, but MY

ticket is for Thursday! Uh-oh! We spend the evening frantically

calling Air France, Delta, and Orbitz, and eventually find that to

change one of the flights will cost about $700. The cheaped solution:

find me a hotel room online and thank the lord I've got good friends

in Ouaga who can take care of my brother for the soon-to-pass weird

situation of 24 hours in which *I*'m in Europe and my brother is in

Africa.

LAST DAY IN OUAGA...FOR ME, ANYWAY

We run around being tourists, with a side trip to the embassy, which

was holding BOTH my passports. Can I describe how much stress I was

under knowing I was flying out that week and having no passport to do

it with? Not adequately. You see, I'd submitted my PC passport with my

application for a personal one. No big deal, except for a string of

events which prevented me from getting there to pick them up until the

day of my flight, several weeks after receiving a phone call telling

me my PERSONAL passport had arrived, but the photo wasn't quite right,

and in response to my query, oh yes, my PC passport "should" be there

too. Finally, the day I'm leaving, I get there and all is well - the

photo's contrast is not great, but it's passable, and my PC passport

is indeed there (though I spent an ugly couple of minutes before they

figured out that a friend of a friend had put it in the safe for me to

ensure it wasn't lost). With a much lighter heart, I accompany my

brother on a souvenir-hunting trip before leaving.

change your mind twice about whether that was really a good idea.

We get to Bani late and tired, but Pat gets to meet my best friend

here, and dinner is grilled chicken with ranch dressing and sweet

potato fries, so all's well that ends well.DAY 3 - MOSQUES AND METAL

I hope you appreciate how hard I'm working on this alliteration. It

probably won't continue.

We spend the morning exploring the Bani mosques, which belong to a

cult whose story I'm fairly certain I've recounted elsewhere on this

blog.

The plan is for 6 of us to mount 4 camels that afternoon to visit a

gold mine. Thanks to a heavy dust storm and light rain, it ends up

being twilight before we can start. We name our four camels to an

Aladdin theme: Jafar, Abu, Jasmine, and Raja. Though we did this early

on, it turns out we got their personalities pretty well - Jafar is

mean as a snake, Abu really overexcitable, Jasmine nice, Raja

implacable (except when it came to anything on two wheels...whenever

Emma and I saw a bike coming, we knew our shared mount was about to

leave the road). 7km takes two and a half hours. We're sore and tired,

and our guide is dying to tell jokes and riddles. The jokes were

terrible, but the riddles clever.

DAY 4 - WE HAVE TO RIDE *BACK* ON THOSE THINGS?!

We check out the gold mine, which was bigger and more interesting than

I expected (the last time someone offered to show me mines, in Fada,

it turned out just to be deep holes in the ground). We chat with

people in the mining camp about the process, then head back into town

to catch a bus then a bush taxi to get to my place. Transport is

typical (read here "unpleasant") and uneventful.

DAYS 5 AND 6 - HOME SWEET HOVEL

I exaggerate, my place isn't that bad. Anyway, Pat gets to see what

life for me here is like. He even helps me calculate grades for my

class! Since for me this was just everyday stuff, you'd do better to

ask him what was the standout moment of this part of the trip. Not

counting the old guy kicking the other old guy in the jaw, (to be

continued)

As I've already crowed about here, my brother planned a visit. Well,

he's come and gone, and I hope he had as much fun as I did. Which was

a lot! Though the trip wasn't without its bumps...DAY 1 - ARRIVAL

I get to the airport right around the same time Pat's flight did. So

I'm expecting a wait. What I'm not expecting is to spend 2 hours

watching ALL the other passengers leave with no sight of my brother.

Finally, I ask permission to enter the (restricted) arrivals gate,

where I finally find him at wit's end because his luggage isn't there,

and he can't leave to find me because he's afraid they won't let him

back in! English may be the international language of aviation, but

that's a pretty loose standard at the Ouaga airport, so it's not 'til

I find him that he learns his luggage has been left in Niamey (where

the flight stops for an hour. Get that? It's not a transfer, just a

stop. They had absolutely no business taking his luggage off the plane

there), but it will come in on the next flight tomorrow evening. Too

bad tomorrow evening we'll be exploring the Sahel.

After arranging for another volunteer to come get the luggage, our

Country Director, who has already graciously allowed Pat to stay at

her place (he had nicer accomodations than I did!), invites us to

dinner, assuring that Pat's initial African repast is a lovely one.DAY 2 - BUREAU AND BANI

Today we begin exploring the damage a daily regimen of French has done

to my English. I refer all morning to taking my brother to the

"bureau" rather than the office. By either name, we get there, I

introduce him to my better-paid colleagues, and we head to the bus

station (which I insist on calling the "gare") to get to the start of

the real adventure - camel riding in the Sahel! After assuring Pat

that I've chosen the most reliable bus company on our route, naturally

our bus is 2 hrs late leaving. Which is only to be expected when you

load lead pipes too long to put anywhere other than the main aisle of

the bus, then load the passengers, then (to be continued)

But I'll tough it out, because when I do go, it will be to get my

brother at the airport! And from there, we'll...well, I don't rightly

know. Not entirely. It would be handy to know when our mask festival

will be. But then, getting advanced notice of events is a luxury my

colleagues & neighbors have been training me to do without for 2

years.

SCHOUETTE

My good old friend John of God hooked me up with an outfit to go with

the sandals he gave me a couple months ago. It is so money. Literally:

the design is based on the picture that appears on the West African

CFA. As if my skin color alone wasn't enough to convince everyone here

I'm rich. I kid because I love - it's my favorite outfit, and not in a

hey-look-at-the-goofy-stuff-I-can-wear way.

BIKES ON A BUS

Not as scary as snakes on a plane, maybe, but when parts of the bike

are thrown willy-nilly on top of the looming pile of crap behind your

seat, by the time you get off the bus you have a serious crick in your

neck from turning after every bump to see if the Tire Rim of Damocles

is coming your way.

MORE MOORE STUDIES

Our Mooré manual includes cultural tips in each chapter. I feel

compelled to quote my most recent knowledge acquisition: "...cooking

utensils are not used for other purposes like taking showers or to

physically attack someone." Unfortunately, I haven't yet found out

which utensils ARE culturally appropriate for beating someone

senseless. Inquiring minds want to know!

FRENCH LESSON OF THE WEEK

distraire = distract

extraire = extract

soustraire = subtract

therefore

traire = ... to milk a cow, naturally.

KEEP TRYING

Some students were showing off their knowledge of world history. They

were doing pretty well until we started talking about 1929. They went

on about the measures taken by President ... I wasn't sure what they

were saying, but it wasn't Roosevelt. I had them write it. It turns

out President Krach Wallstreet was really on the ball. Bien entendu, I

could easily make a similar mistake in Mooré, so my amusement is

tinged with empathy.

As witnessed by the fact that the first things on my list happened at

our last conseil de classe, which was a month ago!

CONSEIL DE CLASSE

That's the meeting we have every trimester to discuss what went & what

didn't (mostly the latter). Highlights of the last one: a 15 minute

argument about whether the word "refusal" is appropriate when a

request is denied due to lack of funds; an exposition on one

professor's lack of need for a doctor, EVER, because he once spent 3

months caring for his sick uncle and therefore has learned all that

need be learned in the field of medicine; and a 3 hour wait for

chicken because our organizer didn't think to let the grill guy know

we wanted any until the meeting was over, even though it had been

scheduled for two weeks (and keep in mind that while in the states,

when a restaurant takes a long time with an order, we joke that they

had to go catch the chicken first, here that is exactly the case!).

FÊTE DE DAGARA

Last weekend I and some neighbors headed south to spend time at a good

friend's site and see the annual festival for the main ethnic group in

her region, the Dagara. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of pictures,

because in a clever subconscious scheme to keep my bag light, I

neglected to pack batteries for my camera. But the dances were fun to

watch. No masks. Fingers crossed that the masks in my site come out

while my brother is here!

Apologies for that, but COS conference is both hectic and

overwhelming. Basically, they sit you down on Tuesday and say, "We

know you've been out of the loop. We know you only have vague notions

of what you might plan to do after Peace Corps. We know that, since

you're miles from internet access most of the time, you have no way of

knowing yet what employers may be interested in you. But you need to

start thinking about it. Because we need to nail down what day you

will no longer be a volunteer. We need to know by Thursday."

The upshot is I more or less arbitrarily chose August 5th. Where I'll

be on August 6th I haven't a clue...

IS IT A BOY OR A GIRL?

This is a question I ask from time to time when I'm not sure about the

gender of a noun in French. On the other hand, it's a question I've

always avoided asking when referring to names, for fear of offending

someone (would YOU know that Pamoussa is a boy but Lamoussa is a

girl?) But I guess it must not be TOO insulting...when my volunteer

neighbors, a married couple, came to visit last, the husband came with

me to pump water; while there, the old ladies asked me if he was a man

or a woman. Really, I'd have thought the full beard a dead giveaway,

but then maybe that's why so few men grow facial hair here...

A TEACHER STRICTER THAN ME?!?

A disciplinary measure I heard a teacher claim to use after having

caught a cheater: first, they get a -5 to their class score because

they cheated. Then I take their paper and throw it away, because I

won't grade a cheater's paper. So then they get a zero, because they

didn't turn in the assignment.

I bow to that teacher's superior vengefulness!

Given my Irish descent and the Peace Corps's goal of educating people

about American culture, if I'd been clever I could probably have

hosted a party and claimed it as a secondary project. However, that

was not an option because...

I AM A BIG FAT LIAR

I didn't give up alcohol for Lent. Recalcitrant recidivist that I am,

I didn't give up ANYTHING for Lent. But, you see, Lent overlaps with

funeral season. And funeral season means drinking. Lots of drinking,

at all hours. About the only way I can function throughout the day

without repeatedly insulting my neighbors' "hospitality" is by coming

up with a much better reason not to drink than things like "I have to

go to work," or "I try not to drink before breakfast." These are

simply not acceptable reasons here. Lent is. So no drinking at site

until Easter. And by then the funerals will mostly be over as people

get ready to start the planting season.

SPEAKING OF PARTIES

For reasons noone bothered to share with me, the Catholics hosted a

carnival last Sunday. Carnie games are the same here in their most

important aspect - they're rigged - but it was fun to see the

variations. We didn't throw softballs at milk bottles; we threw

rag-stuffed plastic bags at condensed milk cans. The ring toss offered

prizes such as soap and packages of spaghetti.

HAIL MARY, FULL OF GRACE, THE LORD SAYS WRITE 24 COPIES OF THIS

MESSAGE AND PASS IT ON

I got a chain letter from a student today. I think the last time I got

a non-electronic one I was 10, and that one didn't resort to threats

(it was supposedly some academic project, and while at 10 I was too

naive to ask "What possible gap in human knowledge could be filled via

chain letter?", I was also much too lazy to copy any letter 7 times,

or whatever it was). This one claims to be a missive from the Virgin

Mary and come from Bosnia-Herzogevenya, 1894. Aside from spreading the

Good News of the chain letter, you must also pray to get your good

luck...and prevent your family from dying, of course. That Holy

Virgin, she's feisty!

You know how when you move someplace new it takes some time to get

used to the sounds. Well, I've been here awhile. I'm used to the

animal noises - the pig squeals, the guinea fowl cluck, the bat

squeak. But a couple nights ago, I heard something that sounded like

nothing other than a zombie groaning straight out of a movie. I still

don't know what the hell it was, but it's not a sound that is easy to

fall asleep to - especially when the dog-barking sound emanating from

the same general area suddenly gets cut short. Happily, the dog

started barking again just as I was starting to consider sleeping

inside, and heat be damned. That sound was spooky.

INSULT TO INJURY

Folks here had a SECOND party yesterday (13 March) to celebrate

International Women's Day (8 March), and AGAIN no one thought to let

me know. Although the hilarious argument I was lucky enough to catch

today about whether women should be "allowed" a 2nd day almost made up

for it. One side maintained that the 13th is not the 8th, 1 + 3 is

only 4. To which I responded fine, 4 is half of 8 so give them half

the day - noon to midnight. But my friend Christophe had an even

better observation: put a 1 next to a 3 and you close the two loops.

It's an 8 again!

ICE!!!

I had ice today in village, and no matter how sick that unfiltered

water makes me, it was worth it. I asked Christophe why he doesn't

always have it, and he said it doesn't sell. Well, demanded our friend

(having lost the 8 March argument and happy to join another) do people

know you have it? Do you advertise? No, said C, I just sell it if they

ask. I told C that if he promised to carry some every day, I'd

personally make him a poster so it would sell. So my new project: find

out how to say "Ice for sale here" in every language spoken here. I

want that ice!

I figured out the solution to that little problem. Which is not to say

I won't still throw in crazy subject lines in emails, actually. I just

no longer have as good of an excuse.

8 MARS

The 8th of March is International Woman's Day. Last year my village

did nothing special that day except close school - no surprise, that's

generally how things work on any non-religious holiday outside of the

cities. So last weekend I went to my provincial capital (see next

section). Monday morning, as I'm waiting for transport back to site,

people start telling me that I'm missing the party there! Apparently

our provincial celebration was being held in my village this year.

Now, this must have taken MONTHS of planning - there were women's

groups from all over, representatives from the UN office in Ouaga,

chiefs of all the villages, the freakin' Minister of Agriculture, they

even made tshirts with my village's name...and through all of that

planning, it never occured to one single person that hey, maybe this

is something our Peace Corps volunteer might like to know about!

I didn't end up missing that much, but if I'd had some warning I'd

have done something to participate. As it was, the only contribution I

made was during lunch, when I made it a point to take over the serving

job from the women, who had naturally assumed that role because that's

how things are done here. Which speaks much louder than imported

orators as to how seriously people take women's empowerment here.

WE DON'T NEED NO WATER, LET THE MILLET STALKS BURN

Other than grocery shopping and relaxing with friends who happen to

have things like ice and fans, I got to help said friends experiment

with a project they've set up to make charcoal from millet stalks. I

don't know if I've ever said it directly here, but you've probably

picked up on the fact that the theme of my service, outside of

teaching, has been fighting desertification. This charcoal project is

a cheap, clever way to discourage tree-cutting. Lesson one - wear old

clothes.

A newly discovered quirk of my phone: in gmail, no matter whether I am

composing a new missive or replying to an existing conversation, the

subject line is filled by whatever the subject was of the last message

I sent in Facebook! I've tried sending Facebook messages with blank

subjects, but it just retains the older subject in that case. Nor does

clearing the cache work. So I've taken to filling the line with quotes

from favorite movies, since I'll be forced to read it so often.

CRAVING

Grits aren't the only thing I miss here. I miss potatoes! They are

grown in this country, but for reasons that escape me the people in my

particular village have no interest in them. So I occasionally crave

fries. Since one thing I can get in Ouaga is instant mashed potatoes,

I brought some back to site, prepared some, let it cool, then formed

it into balls and fried it. I got something that tasted almost, but

not quite, completely unlike french fries. But it killed the craving

anyway.

LANGUAGE STUDIES

Whoever put together our Mooré manual chose to translate "to shit."

Not in some scatological section. They just thought it was a verb we

might need. I couldn't agree more.

VISITORS

I have finally, after a year and a half, convinced a small number of

students that if they don't understand something in their classes,

it's worth their time to stop by my house and ask for help. Recently,

I noticed one student writing his numbers right to left. I can't help

but wonder if that's a signal of a fundamentally different way of

thinking about our decimal system. Without question there's a

disconnect between how I think, and therefore teach, and how my

students think, and therefore learn. But I've yet to bridge that gap.

TIE-DYE

I tried to use bleach to make a fun tie-dye pattern on some pants that

already had a faded spot. Against all expectations, there is fabric

here of high enough quality to resist bleach! All I managed to do was

make the pants look old and sun-faded, subtly enough that it doesn't

look at all intentional. FAIL.

Is a lie I tell myself. It WILL be fun speaking Mooré, but let's be

real, the first couple months in a new tongue are just painful. At

least I'm finally, after 21 months, trying.

STARBUCKS

Special thanks to brad, who made the brilliant discovery that Nutella

+ coffee = hazelnut mocha. For those mornings when regular just isn't

enough.

HISTORY/GEOGRAPHY TEST QUESTION

"Name 3 characteristics of the North American population." I'd really

like to see some of those answers. I bet "rich" made the list on

several students' papers.

RESPECT THE WRITTEN WORD

I've taken to laying books gently on the floor, rather than just

tossing them down as I once did. Not because I'm worried about hurting

them. It's because seeing the plume of dust rise when I they hit the

floor is just a depressing reminder that it's been 24 hours since I

swept.

IN THE NEWS

-Somali pirates involved in "land attack"

My more serious thought: anyone who hijacks food aid deserves to burn

in the 9th circle of hell. My more flippant thought: if it's on land,

are they still pirates?

-GM sales rise due to Toyota recalls

But wait. 2 headlines down...

-GM recalls 1.3 million cars

Ironic enough? NO! In this one, we find that the supplier of faulty

parts is "partially owned by Toyota." Sounds like the fix is in!

-Ice found in lunar north pole

How freakin' cool is that?!? Can we revisit that NASA budget decision Mr. Prez?

In short, I deeply appreciate being in touch with the wider world

again. Thanks, BBC News!

This is the 2nd post for Sunday, 28 Feb, & the 3rd for the weekend. So

scroll down to read them in order!

MORE NERDING

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary

& those who don't. Of course, there are limitless ways to divide

people into two opposing groups - unless you're a destructivist of the

Kronecker school. One of relevance to my current station: those who

feel it NEVER hurts to ask for something, & those who won't ask unless

they're reasonably sure the answer will be yes. Without ever making a

conscious decision, I've always been firmly in the latter group-it's

embarrassing to make someone refuse a request! Everyone here is in the

other camp. Which means I'm constantly being asked for gifts, money,

quoi que ce soit. It gets really old. For instance, a guy recently

harassed me to give him a shirt since I had a new one. The one I was

wearing WASN'T new, in fact, but I don't wear it often because I want

it to last. I explained this...then the next time I ran into him he

harassed me again as if we hadn't had that conversation. Which to be

fair (if such the following may be called) may have been true d'après

lui-I've never seen him sober. Even more frustrating are the people

who tell me that "now I know what it's like here" so when I get back

will I set up an association to send them money? To them, it's just a

philosophy of ask, because the answer might be yes. Though I recognize

that intellectually, it still feels more like "hey, you haven't helped

enough. What else have you got?"

RATIONING

No matter how strict I was with myself, I knew you couldn't last

forever. The day I dreaded has finally come, and you are gone. You

picked me up when I was down. You satisfied a craving both physical

and emotional. Grits, you will be missed!

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPMENT WORK

Mossi proverb: Better underwear today than pants tomorrow.

HOUSEWORK

I need to slap some fresh cement on my door, and it'll be good as new.

Literally. Exactly as good as when first built!

Hence my rather abrupt need to split this post into parts. Please note

that,as I've mentioned, the reason I'm using email to update is that

Blogger loads very slowly on my phone. So if you comment here, I won't

see it for a while. I'm not discouraging comments, I'm just saying

talk amongst yourselves. If you want to talk to ME, email is the way

to go.

MEN OF MATHEMATICS

That's the name of a book by E.T. Bell in 1936 I just finished, and I

highly recommend it to anyone teaching a math curriculum based on the

French model. It highlights the major advances in math from Zeno up to

Cantor, and it's fascinating to find how strong a historical (if not

pedagogical) basis our curriculum has.

I AM A NERD

Not just because I've read the book. Not even because it makes me want

to study advanced math. I'm a nerd because I've spent several

delightful mornings trying to independently prove Fermat's Theorem*,

as well as solve one or two geometric puzzlers.

*Not Fermat's LAST Theorem (x^n + y^n = z^n has no integer solutions

for n>2), which I suspect requires something akin to algebraic

numbers, well beyond my capabilities. Fermat's Theorem** is for any

whole number n and any prime p, the result of (n^p - n) is divisible

by p.

**Please don't tell me the solution, I'm wholly aware that Leibniz

solved it centuries ago. The point is that it requires no advanced

mathematical knowledge, and I want to see if I can do it.

Character limit again. Obviously I need to either update even more

frequently or learn to be more concise. That's not true. I CAN be more

concise-if college teaches you how to turn a one page concept into a

10 page essay, grad school teaches the much more difficult skill of

reducing 10 pages of work into a 1 page summary. But that's not really

the point of a journal, is it?

To be continued...again...

I did so want to post This Is YOUR Life, dear reader, but try as I

might, I couldn't contact your 3rd grade teacher, and she was frankly

the lynchpin of the whole piece. Without her, our producers just

couldn't find sponsors.

LORD OF THE RINGS

While standing in front of my class whilst administering a test, it

seemed like I could almost see a wave of heads ducking as my gaze

swept over the room. I felt like the Eye of Sauron in a room full of

Frodos.

I NEVER THOUGHT I'D BE GRATEFUL TO MICHAEL BAY

But while he may have prostituted my beloved Transformers to

big-budget Hollywood, he at least pulled them into the mainstream.

Which means many more of you will appreciate what I'm about to tell

you: I met the guy who killed Optimus Prime! A gentleman from this

really cool NGO called Trees For The Future came to chat with our Food

Security Committee about partnership opportunities. He later revealed

that his uncle was the creator of the Transformers comic in the early

eighties, and he decided to name the main human character after his

favorite nephew. Ethan Zachary was the Autobots' programmer, who

eventually introduced an experimental program into OP that killed him.

And I met the real Ethan Zachary!

SOMETIMES I THINK BAD THOUGHTS

There is a group of kids who come by daily asking for chalk. I gave it

out freely a first, but they've become really rude now; for instance,

when they see me napping they will yell to wake me, just so they can

ask for chalk. So for about two weeks I've refused to give any. They

still come every day. And now the bad thought: I really want an

airsoft gun.

I'M NOT THE ONLY NAUGHTY ONE

Let's face it. If you've ever studied a foreign language, chances are

that even though they were never taught in class, you went out of your

way to learn how to curse in it. I can still swear in Russian 10 years

after I last spoke it. It's sometimes fun to see the little ways

people are the same everywhere. Seen on a blackboard at my school:

"You want to fok your mother?"

To be continued tomorrow...

I noticed on the last one that via email my double line breaks were

treated as singles. So i'll test another couple ideas before posting.

Blogger takes entirely too long to load for me to consider posting

directly. First, a TRIPLE line break:

ok, check. Two empty lines in this email...we'll see how that looks.

Next, html? How about my favorite, the horizontal rule, for this one

no line breaks.<hr>if it works it will be between this sentence and

the preceding. I vaguely remember testing all this two years ago, but

don't remember what worked. Real post to follow, hopefully prettier

than the last. Though i don't know what i'm telling you for, reader,

you're still in bed!