Denmisenw/ Kids

Denmisenw means kids or children in Dioulla and it's a word I use a lot as pretty much everyone has at least 5 in Burkina.  Kids here have blown my good moods to smithereens plenty of times and have made my day just as many.  They have the luck here to have a whole village in which to run amuck, a village full of mango trees to climb, crumbly mud brick walls warm from the sun to scale, lizards to catch, animals to chase with sticks and roars, other hooligan kids to wreak havoc with, and, lucky for the kids in my village, a toubab to watch and pester at their leisure.  They have the unforunate luck of getting the last pick of meat, the worst hand-me-downs, the fewest baths, the most wacks across the butt with skinny stinging switches, and a disproportianate share of the most grueling housework.

They are shockingly obedient to their parents and their teachers, as they know the serious consequences of anything but perfect behaviour. They tie their baby brother's and sister's on their backs and go mango hunting while mom pounds the corn to make flour for 'to', and dad fixes shoes, drinks tea, or wanders unhelpfully through village.  They steal from each other greedily and give selflessly in a ten minute span.  They play dress-up with rice-sacks, tumble and wrestle in sandpiles, braid each other's hair, make bizarre rhythyms with recycled instruments, help the toubab with her 6th and still pitifull garden, ride bikes 10 times too big for them, collect bottle caps and make games with them, create cars with boxes and card board wheels, and generally look for anything at all to do.

They are usually totally gross with all this fun, full of sand and dirt and snotty noses and sticky mango finger and gaping holes in their clothes until their mom finally dumps  a bucket of water on them and scrubs it all away. They tranform for holidays and weddings into little adults, in matching out fits with their brothers and sisters, shiny with shea butter on their skin, eyebrows drawn in arching lines that sometimes make them look angry or surprised, much to my amusement.  They are darling devils!

you can see my pictures of some of my favorite kids at  https://picasaweb.google.com/102639843968564284925/DenmisenwKids

Famine

FAMINE is a word that brings up images of biblical scenes involving locusts and first sons as well as little African babies (from the country of Africa) with scrappy clothes and fly covered faces.  Before coming to first Mali and then Burkina Faso in West Africa with the Peace Corps, I imagined that hungry babies would haunt my dreams; that people would just be miserably hungry all the time.  As it turns out, those scrappy clothes are a point of practicality on the part of parents who do not want to change their children's clothes fifteen times a day for no reason (an advancement over some germaphobe American parents I've seen).  I can attest to the fact that it is HARD to stay clean here, impossible if you are a drooly two year old who thinks dirt is the most brillant food item since breast milk.  And those flies harass everyone, regardless of race, creed, gender, nationality, or hunger level and everyone gets sick of batting them away at some point.  I don't mean to imply that there are not malnourished kids here--that's part of my job--but like most illnesses and diseases, it probably doesn't look or work like you think it would.

Thus, I have become somewhat desensitized to the intensity of the hunt for food here in West Africa.  I sort of forgot about this word Famine until my French tutor, Mr. Dakio, brought it up last Satuday during our lesson.  He'd prepared a little comprehension paragraph, which I read aloud, fumbling over the words and trying to dig out the meaning.  At the end, he asked me very seriously "Have you ever seen a famine?""Nooo," I replied hesitatingly, "but I almost did before I left Mali," as if it were a CBS special I intended to watch but missed due to another engagement. "Have you?,"I asked, mentally preparing for the deluge that was always Mr. Dakio's long-winded response to questions, wondering what he would think of grocery stores..  He told me that the first famine he experienced happened in the 60s, when he was still a kid.  That year the rains  didn't start in May or June like they usually do after the hot, dry season that proceeds them (the hot season, incidentally, being the beginnings of the hurricanes that later tear across North America).  All the way to October, they barely managed to squeeze out a few drops, choking even the drought-resistant millet and sorghum.  The functionaires (government employees whose salaries, though still pretty measily, by far surmount what most villagers make in 20 years), including Mr. Dakio's family, simply bought grain to make to, the grain blobs everyone eats here.  He told me that for kilometers around the village, not a green leaf could be found.  People ate leaves they'd never looked twice at before, boiling it two and three times to get rid of the bitter taste.  Some people eat clay, just to fill their bellies.  The elderly passed away quickly, as only a day or two with no food was more than an already frail body could handle.  The protestant church came to the Upper Volta, as it was not yet Burkina Faso, with bags of red sorghum, the stuff we (Americans) usually use as animal feed.  This was available in tiny amounts for huge families, offered with the stipulation that the family would join the church (being catholic didn't count).  This red sorghum became famous and the words American and Protestant were tied with it.  To this day, when Burkinabe find out that I am American and not French, they are almost instantly friendly and pour out doting words on Americans.  People tried for a while to keep to local beliefs, sacrificing animals, dances, masks, even some particularly devout who ran around to all the old places of worship naked, arms flailing--the whole shebang.  Unfortunately, this method didn't seem to work and many soon switched to Christianity, not surprisingly. 

This place is always just a harvest away from famine.  It's like living month to month with your paycheck, versus having a sound savings that could stand sometime of no income.  I think at worst in America we could live on spam and twinkies, which are sure to survive a nuclear fallout, for at least a year or two.  When I try to think of why these two countries are so different and really think about what the problem is, my thoughts start running at a hundred miles an hour and I come to 10 minutes later with a sigh, pulling on the uneven parts of my hair and staring at the wall.  It's not called a "developing country" for no reason--infrastructure (roads, buildings, water pumps, storage, factories, public bathrooms, transportation), education (an old system of memorization, catered to boys, poorly managed and run, the idea of savings and investment), illness/disease (malaria, meningitis, and diarrhea are rampant and misunderstood, poor and distant medical facilities, lasting effects of childhood illness, vaccinations, free medicines that exacerbate problems like HIV as people seem asymptomatic, unwanted pregnancies, the list goes on) and the job market/economy (no real buyers, instability <coups happen!>, no jobs for even the educated, economy worldwide) for starters.  All of these factors line up like dominoes, both individually and nationally, and with no external forces they seem good enough, their fragility forgotten.  But one little push, one little breeze, and one breaks on another, wreaking havoc and starting everything back on square one....again.  Say what you will about America's imperfect system, but I don't think our economic brinks even comes close to the one Burkina Faso has been tip-toeing for a while.  Throwing money at these big problems, as a lot of development has been doing for some time, is also clearly not working.  Throwing money at Africa, as far as I can see, has only made things worse!  Just asking for some jerk to gobble it all up for motorcycles, fancy cars, and mad parties.  A lot of villages and people here are also now spoiled for money and especially projects, a word that makes most people here's eyes sparkle as if it is a free present--which it has been.  Not a simple problem, not a simple solution. 

Lil' village gangster gossip

October 14th, 2012--Lil' village gangster gossip

This morning I found myself barreling down a bumpy dirt road, gripping the front passenger's seat of a shiny blue SUV with pink and purple silk ribbons streaming from the bumpers.  I asked our driver if that wasn't his wife in the car that we had just paused to talk to and he replied shortly, "Yes. The fifth."  I was, and still am this afternoon, exhausted from this man's marriage extravaganza to his latet wife, which has broughht his total to six (Rumor has it tht one of his wives left due to some intermarital trouble; wonder what it could have been?).  And what an extravaganza this marriage was.  You would think having done this five (or six) times already would make him les inclined to really throw down, that maybe he would rather have a quiet ceremony with only friends, family, and of course the other five wives and fifteen children. But oh no, not this one.  Apparently this wasn't just a marriage--it was a political power move as well.  Bum bum bum!

Our man of many wives, who I shall call Amadou, is brown, tall, and has hair that is mostly salt and a little pepper.  Attractive, but not enough to convince me to be his seventh wife (that man doesn't exist).  Amadou started out in the cotton business, smalltime, like many Burkinabe farmers looking to make a buck.  Amadou apparently started to really make it big, thus calling in the vultures to descend upon his good fortune.  This fortune was also sought by shady means, however, including the distillation and distribution of what I'd have to call moonshine (oh man does it burn!).  This, like in the states, is NOT legal, and thus brought Amadou several days behind bars in Dedugu.  These bars could not contain such gangster power as was manifested in this one, however, and through a bit of palm greasing in the strategically powerful and right palms he was free in a conspicuously short time.  This little success deserved nothing more than magnificient moonshine party, an excellent opportunity to make all kinds of friends all over town, though not the police that arrested him, although they were invited too. 

His other jail term  was far less amiable, however.  After making big bucks in cotton and moonshine, he decided to move on to bigger and better things, namely the selling of quality seeds to the government of Burkina Faso, and he felt that everyone else should also jump on this money boat.  "No" was not an option in response to his business proposition, and allegations soon started to pop up that he was responsible for the burning and destruction of cotton fields all the way down to Banfora.  Not a good way to make friends; but, a good way to make money and gain, most importantly, power.  This little battle between his majesty of the seeds and six wives and the cotton growers has chilled, but is by no means over, as evidenced by this most extravagant wedding to luck lady number six (or seven, depending how you look at it). 

Walking into this wedding, I was scorching under a midday sun in a new outfit of handmade cloth, black cotton with lizards and animals crocheted into the weave.  I felt I had walked into some medieval African games.  Regional music with balaphones and drums burst from the speakers inside a huge concession of packed earth, hemmed in by huge two story houses, factory style (one for each wife and her children, and one for his lordship Amadou).  A dance troup flocked in the center, decorated in handmade clothes, furs, hats with mohawk shaped fringe, and jingly attachments, perfectly choreographed, sinewy muscles shiny black under the sun.  At the end of the concession, his majesty sat in an uplifted stand, covered in purple and white fake silks, ribbons, and roses.  At a long table, the mayor and all the other officials of the municipality accompanied him to his right, while his wives sat decked in shiny purple dresses, hair twisted and kohl arching over their eyes, to his left.  Thousands of villagers camped out in the shade next to the houses, watching the spectacle in the center, like spectators in an arena.  This was only a distraction until huge bowls of rice teetered out of somewhere on dozen's of ladies heads.  Men with heavy plastic crates followed, with Brakina and Beaufort (local mediocre beers), and Fanta. He, incredibly, fed and watered everyone. No moonshine, (fortunately or things probably would have gotten really out of hand), but wine, dolo (millet beer), brakina, and whiskey streamed in constantly, and soon the dance party was ON.  I am happy to say that the people of my village are still talking about my dance moves. I'm sure that's a Peace Corps goal somewhere.  I only made it until about 10pm, however, until I had danced myself away and puddled on chair fast asleep under the stars.  We eventually moved inside, though that couldn't stop the bass, which raged until 7 am with plenty of party people, from entering my ears andd head and dreams  all night.

The next morning the whiskey, wine, and beer came out with breakfast and was tucked away quick as a wink.  Who would have known Burkinabe could be such party animals?  So, many thanks to Monseigner of many wives and his power play.  I think it was successful, if sexist.

An old man's funeral

September 29^th—

Victorine's father, the man with the feather in his ear, died last night.  I remember thinking the other day that he would probably die while I was here.  They took him to the doctor yesterday because his stomach was bothering him.  He told Victorine and I before that that he wasn't feeling well, hurting all over, in his joints especially.  He had lost weight,  so that his skin hung on his shoulders, shiny and taut from the weight of all the rest of his skin pulling down on itself.  They told me yesterday that he was sick but that it wasn't serious—just an IV drip.  

I went over to their house by myself this morning, as everyone with whom I would normally go to such an event is part of that family and was already there. Justine, Victorine's sister, this old man's daughter, was despondent and bleary eyed, lost.  Deni, Victorine's brother, was digging the huge grave with a dozen other men, burying big tree pillars in the ground to make a hangar.  I saw Micheline first, Victorine's sister, and wished I had more words to tell her how sorry I was.  I kicked off my sandals and went into the house where he laid on a gaudy green plastic mat, a hand woven blanket covering his long form, and the smell of parfum hanging on the air to cover up another smell. 

I could see the shape of his nose through the blanket, which made me think of his droopy eyes above it, sagging with age, and his ears being tickled methodically with a feather shaft, much to my amusement.  His wife sat beside him, her ethnic scars, normally visible all over her face, now hidden in the dim light of the room. She emitted sighs as if trying to figure out how to deal with this.  I wondered how long they had been married

—it could easily have been over 50 years, beginning before Burkina Faso was even Burkina Faso.  I already felt teary eyed and choked up before going in their house, but as soon as I saw Victorine, I started to shake uncontrollably and only barely got out a “Fo” and “Alla ka heneyala” (Sorry and May Alla give him a cool grave), before I couldn’t speak.  I felt my face twisting and twitching in the deluge of tears and I felt acutely embarrassed and somehow presumptious to cry here, as if I, as an outsider, could be “in” enough to feel such real remorse over the death of this old man whose name I don’t even know. 

I remembered the old man in Mali who told me that the death of a really old person is a loss to the whole community, a wealth of knowledge like a library, suddenly gone.  I thought of a huge old tree with thousands of rings in its trunk, cracking as its sinews and fibers snapped apart brittley, and crashing with a rumble on the forest floor.

Follow-up

Who knew what a rockin’ party this funeral would turn out to be?! The first two days were solemn with lots of tears and blessings.  Hundreds of people streamed in from all over Burkina Faso to pay their respects and give blessings to Victorine’s family.  But that doesn’t mean they didn’t also throw down.  Dozens of animals must have been slaughtered this week, a hundred of kilos of rice consumed, thousands of blobs of to.  Victorine’s family bought beer, fanta, dolo (local made millet beer), sopal (a really gross liquor that’s like fire going down your throat). 

 I think I drank my weight in dolo this week, really.  I kept accidently getting drunk.  I was waiting for lunch to be ready, so I was of course taking up all the offers of a free calabash of dolo to entertain myself (and others, admittedly).  Three calabashes into waiting on Wednesday, and I found myself chasing the headcook with a stick, telling her to get to work, "Everyone's hungry!" I hollered, to peals of laughter all around.  It didn’t take long for her to snatch that stick out of my hand and start pointing it in my direction (don’t worry, all in good fun, no battle wounds to speak of). 

I would take a little sieste to sleep of the dolo effects at 3pm after finally eating some riz gras (kind of like Spanish rice) and then not waking up until 5pm—by then the day is almost done!  So, I walked down to give my blessings and say hi at the funeral, only to be offered another calabash of dolo.  Drunk again! Damnit! How does this keep happening?! But who can say no at a funeral?! Not me.  Clearly.

The idea behind all the merriment is that this old man lived a full long life, something that deserves celebration.  In the states, the big expenses of a funeral (I believe) are buying a place for the departed in the soil, a box to set inside that place, a stone to mark the place, and a reception for friends and family.  Here—it’s the reception that costs all the money.  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for hundreds of people for over a week.  Whew.

Anyway, I’m hoping for a more sober week. But only sort of.

Some little tid bits!

Magical realism is a genre of literature of which I’m a big fan.  These authors take normal people, places, and objects and cleverly spin them into characters, settings, and symbols in a way that leaves the reader wondering whether the writer is telling fiction or reality, a fantasy or just a fantastic event. 

Here are some I found in my adventures for your reading pleasure!

-My arms and hands and thighs and neck and face ached from pulling weeds away from the roots of the millet in my association’s field, and my women had been warmly giving me grief about my lacking work skills for some minutes.   I sat fuming in the shade of a shea tree, scouting the ground for its little green, sweet, and avocado-esque fruits.  A little girl in a torn dress, the roses on it barely visible through the embedded dirt and grime, stood transfixed just outside the shade, staring at what appeared to be nothing.  Other little girls and boys crowded over soon too, myself included.  Little silver wings rose like bubbles from a hole in the ground, an endless stream floating out in a fan, one after another after another.  The kids all started to reach little dirty hands out to catch them, jumping and skipping in the shimmering cloud.  An old fula lady (an ethnic group whose people have paler skin and more narrow features) grabbed at one too, and caught the skinny flying insect’s silver double wings between thumb and pointerfinger, pushing them back to expose a fat rear.  And then she bit it right in half and told me through the mouthful that they were termites, of course inviting me to dine.  I let her enjoy the bounty on her own.

-Late at night with a big, shining crescent moon, I heard noises outside my house.  I figured it was either Merlin, my cat, who would begin mewing raucously if I didn’t open the door, or a neighborhood hooligan, who could also begin mewing raucously if I didn’t open the door.  I opened my screen door, letting the light from little Malian oil lamp spill outside, and my visitor stared up at me, with a croak for a greeting—a little transparent tree frog, sitting perfectly attentive and waiting for my attention on my doorstep.  Or to get stepped on.

-I found a friend from a nearby town on a voyage from my village to Bobo, my final destination Ouagadugu.  On arrival at the station in Bobo, however, I realized with a sinking feeling that this was not the right bus station for going to Ouaga, and sat annoyed thinking about paying for a taxcab.  Not to worry, my new galant friend, 70 years old, rusty bike in tow, offered to show me the way on foot.  All concern about arriving there late and missing the bus quickly dissapated as this little old man zoomed out of the station, taking me through parts of Bobo I never would have found on my own.  Red dust billowed up from the feet of lanky soccer players on a battered field ; we jumped gullies of stagnant green water and plastic bags, hopping out of the way of motos darting down the barely paved roads ; four lines bore the weight of a hundred huge lengths of purple, red, orange, yellow, and blue  freshly died fabrics between the limbs of mango trees ; a little hill showed us the the sun drenched city’s battered buildings and roads clogged with donkey carts and women with big bowls of cakes for sale on their heads ; faster and faster this little man flew, and all the suddenly we arrived, and he was gone .

-I rode in line down a skinny dirt path with four ladies from my association, making the short trek out to our fields to plant soy bean seeds under a sun already toasting my skin at 8 :30 in the morning.  We passed the gnarled baobob wedged between the two paths, fabled, as all baobobs are, to capture the souls of harmless victims into their vast water-holding trunks.  A kapok tree’s roots stood out house-high further on, looking as if years of rain had washed down them and dug out long pits and rills that descended down below the earth.  A forest of eucalyptus met us next, with trunks bone white, narrow, and tall enough to touch the sky, their long leaves wispy and faded green (a former government program here in Burkina supported the mass plantation of eucalyptus, later finding out how detrimental they are to all other trees around them).  We were welcomed at the field by a little creature with a human face, a child’s hands, little pointed ears and a tail, tied around the waist to a juvenile tree—a monkey, knee-high, and rearing to escape.  Up the tree, down the tree, smashing down plants with little howls, eyes roaming the scene as if its humanoide friends might be in seeing-distance.  My attempts to entreat him with little noises and leaves were met with cold shoulders and very obvious avoidance of eye contact, much to my dismay. 

Just a little taste of my encounters ! Hope you enjoyed--

As I side note, I'll just add that I now find myself a business manager in the cosmetics industries. Sort of.  The women's association I am working with and I have started making a mosquito repellent cream.  It uses the leaves of very wide spread tree here called the neem tree, shea butter, and soap.  It has been selling like crazy! I have been finding myself suddenly a traveling vendor, walking through the market with a big basket of little plastic bags full of the taupe colored cream, explaining its benefits in mosquito, and thus malaria, prevention, as well how lovely it is for your skin as well with shea butter! I coupled selling the cream with a presentation on Malaria at the maternity in town (where babies are born) with slightly overwhelming effects--I feared being squished under the press of mamas and babies trying all buy cream at the same time before we sold out.  Everybody wins! The village is healthier, the association makes money, and people will learn that malaria comes from mosquitos, not mangos and corn like so many think (an interesting affect as these fruits veggies coincide with the beginning of rainy season which is when the mosquito population also swells). Wish me luck!

A new door and a montage

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!

Ferocious storms and neat bugs

As I am currently unable to sleep due to the clatter of raindrops on my tinroof and the loud, deep grumbles of thunder rattling my cot, I'll share how I spend my days and some neat discoveries instead.

My new house in Burkina has the tell-tale blue walls of a Peace Corps home.  The blue is broken up by brown, mud termite trails and hollows that go straight through to the outside where hundreds of large, industrious ants work all night scooping sand out of the wall and dump it unceremoniously onto my floor and belongings.  The sound of dry mud falling grain by grain on plastic is a bit of a strange one to wake up to in the night. Equally strange are the tings of the colony of grasshoppers which have invaded my house bouncing off every possible surface, including the metal pots and pans and little gas stove  that sits in my cooking room.  I much prefer the hum of the grasshoppers legs, usually a dozen working in chorus on the melody.  I've woken more than once with my ears ringing from the din.

I've been making my rounds around my new town, visiting everyone.  I think my favorite was meeting my homologue's father one morning, who was decked out in an old faded rain coat and a knitted hat.  He has to be 85 years old, and has enough wrinkles under his eyes to prove it.  His eyes themselves are yellow with age and move slowly, and he looked at me slowly as if trying to figure how I had possibly come to be in his village and house.  He greeted me in Jula as if he had cotton under his tonge, slow and muffled.  After a short struggle with small talk, he slowly pushed himself up and hobbled over to a certain wooden beam and very intentionally pulled out what appeared to be the shaft of a feather.  He wetted the end of it this with his mouth and then meticulously scraped out his right ear with it. He then commenced the same ceremony again, back in the ear, then carefully put back the feather exactly where he had gotten it.  I laughed a lot.  He didn't seem to mind.

I've come across two interesting bugs.  The first I thought was a moving fruit.  I was sure it was a migrating strawberry. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was some kind of amazing spider, all red, with a furry butt that is an exact replica of a wild strawberry with legs that can fold  in like a hermit crab. Don't worry, I took pictures.  The other bug discovery happened at night, in the dark.  I was putting away my mat before going to bed when I saw a glowing streak on the floor.  The same glow had also contaminated the underside of my rug I soon saw.  On closer inspection, I realized I had accidently killed a centipede of some kind and, turns out, their guts are glowy.  Gross, but cool.

I think the storm is drawing to a close. They are so violent here when they start.  I saw one in Ouagadugu that seemed to turn the whole sky red with dust.

A la prochaine...