First of all- hope you all had a nice day yesterday. Ours was great- we were at church in the morning, then had a nice meal with friends that night.

Now here it is- Easter Monday. The kids have the day off from school. And, as is typical on the weekends and holidays- my email is down. So, all messages for me today should be left for me on the comments section of the blog.

Now, how about a little more of the story of how I tried to pay our taxes here in Burkina? It was quite a challenge..
(If you just got here and missed it, go back to the March 19 post to begin the epic tale)

So, there I was, wandering around this huge building, without a clue as to what to do next. In my defence, I saw lots of Burkinabe folks in similar straits, looking just as miserable and confused as I did. So, it wasn’t just me being exceptionally clueless. It looked like no outsiders (also known as “taxpayers”) were being allowed any information that might actually help them to pay their taxes.

I randomly knocked on the door of an office. I played my role of the completely baffled foreigner to the hilt - a very sweet and vaguely stupid creature from a foreign land. Loosing your temper avails you nothing. Charm and calm carry the day. As a result, the fellow there took pity on me, left his mountain of dusty papers and actually guided me all the way to another big office and introduced me to the three people there.
I explained what I needed for the NINTH time.
They were very kind.
Of course, everyone until now had been kind- but they’d had no freaking clue how to really help me and had sent me all over town on a morning-long wild guinea fowl chase. (That's a wild goose chase, Burkina-style.)

But this crew seemed pretty convincing. They told me that Mme D- was no longer taking care of expat taxes (rats!) and that that function had been transferred to a building in Passpanga.

Right.

I went back down the stairs, alert for stray aliens carrying advanced weaponry (didn’t want to startle one and get accidentally disintegrated).

Back at the car, Mahama (our driver) had news: he’d gotten a phone call that said Valentine needed to be picked up at school right away. They’d been trying to contact me, but as I’d brilliantly left my cell phone at home, no one could get in touch with me. The message had just been to come and get my daughter. I had no idea if she was ill, injured , or perhaps expelled for excessive niceness, cuteness and brilliance. (She’s too wonderful to get expelled for any bad reason, of course!)

I couldn’t call easily or quickly, as Mahama had no calling credits in his phone.

Now, the strolling phone card vendors here in Ouaga are usually very present and very persistent. At almost every street corner they descend upon you en masse, waving their little wooden boards covered with the brightly-colored cards. Even after you have rejected the first one, and the second and the third, they keep coming- as though after rejecting five different vendors selling the exact same thing, you’d suddenly have some kind of streetside-shopping epiphany. As though the 20^th person to wave his cards in your face in the last two minutes would open your stingy little heart and you’d say: I know I just mercilessly and without hesitation rejected every one of your card-selling buddies, but I like your looks! I’m going to buy one from YOU!

Of course, now that I actually really did desperately need to buy a card, there was only a scattering of vendors in sight - none of them selling the brand I needed. I didn’t waste time hunting around - we took off for the school, back at the city center.

That's all I have time for now. I'll try to wrap this up tomorrow.
It has a happy ending! Really!

I could say that yesterday morning was « taxing », but that would mean I was making a very cheap pun. I’ll instead tell you that my efforts trying to pay our Burkinabe income tax were frustrating and insanity-provoking.

Taxes usually aren’t my thing. JP has always taken care of this stuff. But this year, he told me that it had to be paid before the end of March and then got on a plane for Switzerland.

“Talk to Mme. D- at the tax office. She’ll help you. See you in two months” he said.

And there I was.

After the bitterness died down (just kidding. haha. sort of) , I decided to go take care of it. That was yesterday.

I got in my car with Mahama, our driver, and headed off to the Tanghin neighbourhood, in the northern part of Ouaga. We hadn’t gone far when I realized that’d I’d forgotten my cell phone, but I didn’t go back for it. Big mistake, but more on that much later.

We continued on and in about 20 minutes had arrived. I recognised the building, as I’d been there once before to drop off some papers in years past. But it looked different now - really different - as in completely abandoned and about to be levelled by bulldozers.

I quickly asked some neighbourhood guys hanging around where the office had moved to. They told me it was all in a big new building in Tampouey, on the Ouahiagouya road.

OK

That’s a neighbourhood in the extreme northwest of Ouaga. It’s certainly not one I hang out in often, so I had no clue where to go. I never would have found it without Mahama, who knows the city really well.

The new tax building was absolutely huge by Ouaga standards- five stories, the exterior entirely covered by white ceramic tiles. It looked like the world’s largest public restroom facility.

It was so big, it was impossible to know where to enter. I randomly chose an entrance. I went up to a window and asked the man behind it where I could find Mme. D- and take care of an expat tax matter. He had no clue, but sent me over to a colleague at another window.

He had no clue either, but sent me across the way to an office. I explained to the man at the desk what my problem was. He had no idea, but was sure that a fellow on the other side of the building would know.

So, I trudged around the maze of offices until I found this fourth fellow. And I explained for the FOURTH time what my problem was.

He seemed to know something. He told me that this was not at all the building I needed to be in. (What a surprise!) In fact, I would need to go to the other new tax office, over in Gounghin. There I would find someone that could take care of my problem.

OK.

I got back in the car and we headed south.

We’d been told that this new place was near a certain truck repair garage. Luckily, my driver knew it because he was a truck driver before coming to work for us. If I’d had to find all these places on my own, it would have taken me two days, not just a single morning!

This new building was only three stories high and much smaller. I thought it would be much easier to find my way. I was completely deluded, of course. Once I got inside, I was sent to three different people on the ground floor. The last one informed me that I actually needed to go outside, around the back of the building and take the stairs there up to the second floor.

Fine.

I went around and up.

It was a brand new building, but built in that Burkinabe way that is very strange, unattractive and uncomfortable. None of the corners are square, lots of wiring is exposed, and the stairs are not designed for the use of humans. I think that aliens from outer space must pay their taxes here in Burkina, because we have their stairs. Each step is a different height, either too high or too low. The handrails are too high and made out of sharp-edged metal. (the aliens apparently have tough protective plates on their appendages.) The windows on the landing are tiny and set at human knee-level. The elements combine into a very weird, difficult to use whole.

Because of the step irregularities, you feel like you’re going to fall, but if you use the handrail, you cut yourself. And the small, low windows mean it’s very dim inside, adding to the creepiness. (note to general public: Appreciate your stairs! You never notice them until they are gone and replaced by constructions from distant planets.)

I lurched up to the second floor, nicking my hand in the process. Up there, I found yet another maze of offices. As in all these places, the doors were either unmarked or were labelled with a piece of paper bearing some mystifying notation like “Sec./Tr. 1- 56RTRX”. Looking back now, I now believe these papers denoted the rank of the alien Pod Leaders within.

As this is getting really long, I'll write and post the rest of the story tomorrow. It goes on and on and on....

The weekend involved much activity, not much of it associated with blogging. Mostly, I was helping my kids with their homework. Besides their assigned work from school, I try to give them extra help in French, because unlike most other languages, French was actually invented by sadistic insect-like aliens from a distant galaxy. Not many people know that.

We have to spend lots of time doing "dictées", which are like spelling tests, only more hellish. I read out a long text in French and the kids have to write it down, perfectly. Maybe it doesn't sound hard to you non-French speakers out there, but consider this: the verb "aller" (to go) is pronounced 'al-ày'. That's the infinitive. But there is also "allait", "allaient", "allé", "allée" "allés" and "allées" and they are all pronounced exactly the same!!! (See?! This system could only have been invented by extraterrestrial fiends.) You can only tell which spelling to use by looking at the context of the sentence. It's true of many, many French words and it's sick! And even a single, tiny missing accent mark makes the teacher count the whole word as incorrectly spelled.
As we worked, Alexa wished fervently that she went to "English" school, rather than French school, but I assured her that English would be just as hard. You just have to memorize a few things! I told her. But the fact is, I lied! It's evil and difficult. Cool. But evil and difficult.
Anyway, not much blogging went on, so here it is today: yet another installment of the Gourcy saga. It's still not done!

Part V: The Magic Pumpkins of Death
Sunday morning found the seven us crammed into Antoine’s SUV. Pascal was at the wheel, Antoine riding shotgun. Frieda and JP sat with Nicodemus, Antoine’s son. I was in the third row with Yann, fiddling vainly with the rear air-con controls. It was nearing midday and it was getting pretty toasty outside.
Antoine was taking us on a tour of his village, where he grew up until he went away to school at age 12. He was full of nostalgic memories and waxed eloquent about what he clearly remembered as the “good old days”. “Good old days” is definitely case specific, as it involved old ladies threatening small children with immediate, hideous, pumpkin-induced death.
In the village, Antoine explained, the elderly women too old for any other work were charged with keeping the children out of trouble. This mainly involved keeping the kids out of the pumpkin patches. This normally didn’t entail a lot of strenuous effort, as the pumpkins are always grown right up against the huts. Grandma just had to sit under a nearby shady tree and yell occasionally. But the flaw in the system was that the kids love to play outside in the rain and elderly ladies don’t, for the most part, equally enjoy sitting outside in the rain. And the wide green leaves and bright orange balls of the pumpkin patch look even more tempting when all shiny and wet…So, Antoine’s old granny solved the problem by telling the kids that when it rains, each pumpkin opens up to take in water. It’s how they get so big and juicy. BUT, it is INSTANT DEATH to gaze upon the pumpkins while they undergo this mystical process. Yes, witnessing the pumpkin rain magic would mean an immediate, painful demise, even for small, cute children. Not surprisingly, the kids avoided the pumpkin patch like…well…death.
Antoine chuckled. “She sure had us believing! We were all convinced that we would die! Really! It took me years to realise it wasn’t true. Ha, Ha!”
(Cucurbitphobia = fear of pumpkins. I just looked it up online for Antoine, in case he ever needs to seek professional help.)
Antoine’s entertaining tale ended just as we pulled up in front of the village reservoir. He was very proud of it, as it was the first big project ever funded in Gourcy and has provided water to the town for over 20 years. We all duly admired it and Antoine pointed out the many crocodiles sunbathing on the shores. There were four, anyway, which seemed like a lot to me. But we were told that in the evenings at least 50 of the creatures could be found lolling in the mud, snapping up the occasional unwary dog. But not to worry. They don’t attack full-grown cattle or adult humans! Mostly. (You can see the reservoir in the pic I posted. It’s quite big. Plenty of room for hundreds of canine-starved crocs. As you can see, there are no reptiles in the photo- just Frieda, JP, Nicodemus, Antoine and Yann the Accordionist)

By now it was time to visit Antoine’s actual home village/neighbourhood. It looked just like a typical, fairly isolated Mossi village. There were many low, round mud huts thatched with straw. Near the central clearing, a woman pounded millet while a big group of men sat in the shade of some straw mats laid across a framework of sticks. Right in the center was a tiny tree with shreds of filthy cloth hanging off it. Other, more mysterious objects were laid in the branches and underneath it were several broken clay pots. As we got out of the car, Antoine told us this was the “fetish” of his village. It’s a huge deal, as the earth shrine is the ‘heart’ of the village- where sacrifices are done and ceremonies completed. I didn’t quite dare to ask to take a photo. I circled around it at a respectful (so I hoped!) distance and stumbled over a rock. It was a fairly big, red volcanic rock, sticking up in a very inconvenient way. As I looked around, I noticed that there were many, many of these rocks, each about the size of a soccer ball, scattered all over the central clearing of the village. Why the heck didn’t they just move them? Somebody was going to break a leg or a neck!
“Oh- that’s Grandpa” Antoine said to me. He called over his son. “Look, Nico! Your Grandpa is buried right there.” And he pointed right at the rock I was standing on.
I was standing on his Grandpa. First, I spit out his tô and then I go and stomp on the man’s ancestor. And yes, every single rock was the burial site of an important tribal elder...
I began to think it was time to go home….But wait! We hadn't visited the village gardens yet, or Antoine's family. Plus, he wanted to have lunch with him. I was pretty much ready for that one, as I had heard early morning mass chicken death happening in the kitchen at the hotel. (Fancy Burkinabé parties nearly always mean mourning in the chicken coop.) So, this day's adventures would not be ending anytime soon.

Coming soon: Part 6-The End (I think)

I'm spending this afternoon printing out a hard copy of my blog. What if the Blogspot servers were consumed in a tragic fire? Engulfed by a tsunami? Attacked by blog-hostile aliens getting crazy with the EMPs? Living in Africa really drives home the absolute knowledge that Something is Going To Go Wrong. Disaster isn't just around the corner. Disaster is already at your house, sitting in the best TV watching chair, eating all the cashews out of the mixed nuts.
So, being very closely acquainted with all that can go wrong in life, I have decided that I really need a tree-based, plastic-encased version of Burkinamom's Life in Africa. That way I can reread it when I get back to France. I'll be sitting on a blanket in the green grass, admiring our view of the Alps and Burkina will seem very, very far away.
I've got 100 posts printed. Only about 85 more to go!
I couldn't print anything at all this morning, as there was no electricity. It goes off most mornings, as does the water.