Tractors, house implosions, freaky bugs, grand markets, new kittens and chicklets, I've had a little taste of it all the last few weeks.
Life in my little village in Burkina has been suprisingly busy and I am very thankful for that! I began work with a new association, which is where the tractor comes in. Flipping through my journal, I appreciate my enthusiasm for feeling like a queen riding along on a big blue tractor for an hour, like a queen atop an elephant.
I've also had what I considered a rather comic event with my house unfold. The rain has been intense here what with it being rainy season and all. This is a blessing, I suppose, as it is now necessary to look up at everyone's millet and corn around town. It also has another rather unfortunate side effect--the destruction of houses made of very lovely absorbant bricks. I was very excited for the first day of the huge market on August 7th, as everyone had said there would be venders from all over, including Mali, Senegal, Cote D'Ivoire. I planned on buying all the most exciting things of course--a watering can and some watermelon seeds. Woohoo. Some had mentioned, passing, that it often rains on this day, as this market happens every three months and always falls in August. Ok. Lil rain. I won't melt. This was the most rain I have ever seen, for hours. I slipped into the market for only an hour, between showers and found the road a sloppy mess, my shoes and feet soon just as bad with a new coat of red slimy dirt from toe to ankle. And then it rained more that night. I noticed some little cracks on the wall and was told not to worry. In the night, I awoke to sounds of falling sand, or something, and it was either the ants and termites at it again, or else my new cat, Merlin, playing her sick game with innocent (albeit disgusting) cockroaches again. I finally dragged my self out of bad and saw mud chunks has fallen a little from the wall and did the responsible thing--crawled back into bed.
Then it cracked with a terrifying smoosh of wet brick on cement floor. In my panic, I considered getting back into bed again, but decided that it could be worse to wake up to goats and sheep nibbling on my millions notes of things to do, or worse, a Burkinabe peering down at me through my green mosquito net wondering how I had slept through such nonsense. The damage was done. A huge gaping hole, eight feet tall and 10 feet wide had appeared in my kitchen wall. A new door to the street behind where neighbors with flashlights soon gathered. However could this EVER happen to our Dear Toubab!!? Well, it did, and my shower and hangar too. So, at 4 a.m., after a lot of head shaking and comments on the size of new door, my sweet homologue, her sweet husband, and my sweet neighbor dejectedly carried all my sweet crap to a neighbors house for an hour so the goats and people couldn't get it.
I spent 3 days living awkwardly in the house of my neighbor, who was very gracious, although I am sure he was avoiding me as much as possible. His doorless shower had me in a panic everytime a chicken made their way into the house uninvited to ungraciously steal some millet grain. C'est la vie!
All's well now though and my house is all put back together with diligence of male members of my organization, Combimi.
In other news, I accidently got myself on a date with a toothless 40-year-old taxi driver from Bobo, who, turns out, wasn't kidding when he said he may come through my village. I have to work on my nodding and smiling tactic when I'm not sure what people are talking about. This made for a very awkward day that began with the giving of six loaves of bread and ended with many offers of a tour service for the Banfora area. I'm thinking not.
I also sampled a delectable platter of caterpillars courtesy of Micheline, my homologue's sister. What a good Peace Corps volunteer I am.
I also planted 25 moringa trees with my association, which are probably in the process of being eaten by goats as after many explanations, drawings, and not-so-quite anger on scence, we still lack a fence to protect them.
I witnessed the murder of a poor little pincushion, a tiny little thing found in the field, my first time I think to see a porcupine up close and personal.
I've been sweating it out in the millets fields with my ladies, much to their amusement and, usually, to mine. I'm just a toubab, what can I say? But they're all jealous of my garden with its sprawling pumpkin vines, okra, tomato, and multi-colored carrots. So I guess I can handle the jibes.
I found Ramadan, the end of days of fasting (not nights, may it be noted), a rather surprisingly prosperous holiday for myself. What I was given:
Milk
Tiga dege na (peanut butter sauce) Twice!
3 balls of shea butter for my lamp
Zame (rice dish)
Little fried dough balls
Two packages of spaghetti
3 mil (about $6)
One tomato
Three african eggplant
A handful of bubblegum
A packet of pineapple cookies
And a chicken, which I was expected to cook for dinner but have decided to spare for eggs.
After the eggplant, I realized this was like Christmas and Halloween in one, kids tricker treating and everyone giving presents. Very nice.
That's all I have time for for now! Thank you for reading!
