Tuesday, June 17, 2008

This is a pretty crazy time right now. Boxes are getting packed and furniture is going out. And it's not enough that we are moving to a whole new continent. Nope. We are also hosting, in four short days, a party for over 100 people. Right here in this house that is quickly filling up with moving cartons.
I've rented some marquis tents for out in the garden, in case of rain, along with plates, glasses, forks, tables, linens, other oddments plus 120 chairs. And yesterday I ordered 25 grilled chickens from the top chicken grilling kiosque in Burkina. It's over by the Moro Naaba's palace and it's where all the cool people go. Cool being a relative term, bien sûr.


In short, this has all been keeping me busy- along with the yard sale I did all day Sunday. Much cash was made, but it was a hot, long day.
Plus there was a goat wedding on Saturday afternoon - but more about that later.
I'm a bit short on time right now. I mostly felt compelled to post this morning because I wanted to follow up on my last post. It garnered a couple of good, interesting remarks in the comments section, btw -things written by people living here and/or obviously familiar with the problem.


My last post was about my driver's neighbour , a marabout that drove off his five young students because they'd lost his donkey. Well, this weekend, three of the boys returned to the house and begged for shelter. One of them had gotten very ill- not surprising after living two weeks in the streets in rainy season on food begged or scrounged out of trash heaps.
Nobody knows what has become of the other two. They got separated and didn't manage to find each other again. Ouaga is a big, sprawling city.
The marabout took them in again, mostly because of social pressure, from what Mahama tells me. He says his whole neighbourhood has been talking about the man, not in a good way.
"Ils parlent mal de lui" - They speak ill of him, as they should

1 comment:

Momma Bee said...

That fact that "the whole neighborhood is talking about him" and will share their feelings is the most reassuring part of these posts. It may not mean anything here but public revulsion and a focussed gestalt can be more powerful than the law. I weep for these little boys, for their forlorn parents, and still manage to weep, for a moment, for a million others.