In my last post, I added 'Ebay' in the label section and then went on to write only about extinct mammals. I meant to add that part of what is keeping me busy, besides HGTV and numerous trips to Walmart ( I am so ashamed, but am helpless to resist the siren call of 'low prices..always') is that I am posting numerous items on Ebay. It's all stuff I brought over from Africa. One item gathering lots of interest is the five foot long Tuareg bag that's in the pic at right. The curious among you can search out all six items for sale by nebraskacc.

I hope to get more items up this week, but time is running out. JP arrives on Saturday (Yay!). By Tuesday, we will be on the road, starting our mega-fun (we hope, fervently) camping adventure across the western USA.

Nebraska boasts the largest mounted mammoth skeleton in the world. His name is 'Archie'
Here is a re-enactment of the mammoth's possible reponse to being given a lame nickname.
(Run away! Run away some more!)

Last summer I had a blog hiatus due to the fact that getting online in France involved, in my case, driving to another town and going to the area's only internet cafe. Now here I am in the USA with all the computing power of my tech-savy parents at my disposal and my posts are few and far between. My vacation has somehow expanded to fill all available time, which is fun, but not conducive to blogging.
What have we been doing? Museums, shopping, and movies, mainly. Though my parents and I did manage to intall no less than 12 new window blinds in their home (only four more to go). I'm also getting several African items ready to post on Ebay. So, I do feel productive, in a non-blog kind of way.
We are getting very excited about our upcoming camping trip in two weeks. My parents just bought us a huge new tent, which has built up a positive frenzy among the kids. I am just hoping they will like it just as much after three or four weeks of actually living in it.

Today's missions? Clearing up a huge bank-generated problem with my savings account, going to the used bookstore to buy enormous amounts of books to send back to Ouaga, posting items on Ebay and catching up on my emails. Not good photo ops. I'll no doubt have some good pics this week though, as we are going to a couple of good museums.

We had a great 4th of July. The only injuries were a scraped toe (Alexa) and two singed fingers (Severin). Considering the amount of fireworks that the kids lit, we got off lightly.

The last time I came to Lincoln, I was amazed at the amount of tattoo/piercing places that seem to have opened since my last visit. This time, I am struck by all the coffee shops. There's no Starbucks, but lots of fun little independant places. Tattoos scare me, but I am rather fond of fancy coffee, so it was a nice surprise.

We called JP today. He talked to each of the kids (except for Valentine, who is in Minnesota visiting the mega-mall up there) and asked each which he preferred: USA or Burkina. Mallory and Severin said USA, no hesitation. Alexa voted for Burkina. She misses her posse.


OMG! American Idol Rewind is on! I did not even know there was such a thing!! VERY exciting!!!!

I feel like I'm on the deck of the starship Enterprise. My mom's nice Dell PC is charging up Valentine's new Nano as I'm blogging and checking emails on her even nicer Mac. To my left, my laptop is busy doing all the downloading/upgrading that I never get to do in Africa. As I switch back and forth between the three machines, I get a very Uhura vibe, minus the mini skirt, of course.

Vacation. What can I say? The kids are having a great time- playing with my parents's dog, eating fast food, shopping, rolling in the uber-green grass, going to movies, etc.
We went to the Farmers' Market this morning for sweetcorn and other good stuff. There was someone there selling goatcheese and Mallory got a bit lonely for Aslan, her precious goatling. But mostly she is more than satisfied by the splendors of Bridget, my folks' Wheaten terrier.

Alexa has just dicovered the Beatles. She came up to me, headphones hanging down "I am the eggman'?? What's that all about? " she asked, completely mystified. Alas, I could not tell her.
"What do you think it means?" I cleverly asked.
"That he's weird?"

I can't believe we made it! Here I am, typing a blog entry on my mom's Mac. As I am so unused to USA-style keyboards, it's a real hunt-and-peck fiesta of frustration, but that is more than made up for by the sheer speed of the connection. My blog page loads in two seconds instead of five minutes. What a concept!
Our trip here was quite interesting. When we boarded in Burkina, security was good but not over the top. They open bags and wave the wand and on you go. Paris was another matter. They were in full pat-down mode. Not a sort of desultory, symbolic tap about the ribs and ankles, but a top to botttom touchy-feely that was frankly not nice. As I stood in line and watched a nice elderly lady get 'the treatment' I thought: 'The terrorists won. Thanks George. We are all doomed." I guess I knew that already, but this really drove it home.
At least they weren't subjecting the children to it, thank God for small favors.
Anyway, we flew from Ouaga to Niamey and then sat on the runway there for two and a half hours, waiting for lightening storms to abate.
Then on to Paris, where we rode their delightful little shuttle buses around and around and around. We left about an hour late and were worried about our connection in Detroit. There are only a couple of flights per week between Detroit and Lincoln. But the security in Detroit, despite being strict, went really, really quickly. They processed a huge amount of people in a fraction of the time it took in Paris. They were saving time by not feeling people up, which was nice.
But the connection ended up being a non-issue. Thunderstorms kept us on the ground and the flight left late. We easily amused ourselves visiting the airport shops and being amazed by all the stuff. We bought a People magazine (Special Wedding Edition) and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. God Bless America!
Now here we are, in the Heartland of America. (I wonder which state is the Bileductland of America? They sure keep quiet about it.)

More soon, hopefully with pictures!

Not like I have a lot of spare time these days, but I somehow recently found myself sitting on the terrace leafing through a collection of old (« classic » as they term it these days. Nothing is just old anymore) Doonesbury cartoons. I vaguely remember reading the strip back in the 1970’s and finally understanding about 30% of the humor by the end of the decade.
This time around, it struck a nerve, as you could just replace the word “Vietnam” with Iraq and have a completely 21^st century twist on all the black humor.

What also struck me was the house plants. Yeah, Zonker and his talking plants. What a 70’s thing. In the 1960’s, plants grew outside. The yard was their natural habitat and they pretty much stayed there. With the notable exception of Christmas, when you got to kill a tree, drag it indoors to give off that delicious piney fragrance and create a major fire hazard that could turn your joyous holiday home into a tragic inferno. But I digress.

I distinctly remember that until 1970, I grew up in an entirely houseplant-free home. Then, suddenly, everybody was lugging big pots of dirt into their living rooms. You’d have ferns and possibly philodendrons. These were the aspidistra of the era. They'd sit in a place of honor. A wrought iron plant stand was considered nice, but the style benchmark was, of course, the macramé plant hanger. For those of you young enough and lucky enough to have missed that whole macramé thing, think knotted rope and wooden beads. The macramé aspect is logical, of course, as the entire houseplant movement was a complete hippie conspiracy. They were known as very dirt-oriented persons. Woodstock was not talked about for decades afterwards because of the clean restrooms and excellent shower facilities. So, it was definitely the hippie movement that was behind the “lets bring large quantities of dirt into our homes” concept.

I am an adult now and have my very own houseplant-free home. The idea of having containers of dirt sitting around in my clean house is distinctly disturbing. My attitude towards this issue is no doubt somewhat influenced by an incident from the spring of 1978, when my junior high Spanish teacher invited the class over to her home for dinner. I went into the bathroom to wash my hands pre-paella, and was confronted by one million (possibly more, I didn’t count) tiny baby crickets bursting out of the dirt around the “attractive” houseplant sitting on the vanity. Since that night, I have hated both crickets and houseplants. And I’m not all that keen on paella, either.

I don’t know why I wrote all that. I should be packing, for pete’s sake.
I guess it’s been festering. All these years, I have been wondering: What’s the deal with houseplants? The 70’s are over. Throw the damn things out, people. They’re just havens for bacteria and cricket eggs. Ish.

Maybe some of you have been concerned that the long blog-silence was caused by my kidnapping and subsequent murder at the hands of Sofitex agents? Ok, Norbert Zongo, I am not. It would have made for an exciting story, though. But the explanation is far more banal.

The 13th through the 16th, I spent any free time I had editing another short film. ( It’s alarmingly addictive) Then on Saturday night, there was a rainstorm, as happens so frequently in the rainy season and it knocked out the phone lines in our neighbourhood. Now, this “rainy season” happens every year, at exactly the same time. And every year the phones go down several times because of it. And the phone company seemingly is oblivious to the fact. You’d think that, even if they couldn’t improve the equipment ( by not making the cables out of cystallized sugar, for example), they would at least hire extra repair techs for the period. It took four days of near-constant begging to get somebody to come and fix our line.
Then, when phone service was finally back on, the internet server was having trouble, kicking me off every five minutes. So, I found other, non-internet things to keep busy with.

The weekend was also occupied by guiding Severin through the intricacies of Powerpoint so that he could do a presentation at school. He chose “garbage”, which is kind of cool, in a strange way. Here are some of the pictures we took . I thought I’d share them. How many people know much about trash in Ouagadougou?

Most of the trash in Ouaga is collected by women that drive donkey carts. It is supposed to go to intermediate collection sites like the one above. But it often ends up dumped elsewhere.

The sign reads: "It is forbidden by law to dump trash on this site, punishable by fines." I'd say most of the trash in Ouaga ends up at places like this.

Now you know.

I can’t promise good blogging in the near-future. Or even bad blogging, full of pictures of trash. We are heading to the USA, people! We leave on Tuesday.

Mallory’s thoughts on the subject, as confided to me recently: “When I talk to Grampy on the phone , he asks me if I’m excited to come see them and I say “yes” like this, all calm. But I really want to yell like this “YES! YES! YES!” because I’m so happy!!! But I might scare him.”

I am excited, too. But hopefully not in a scary way.

Cotton is what makes Burkina go. It is the country's main source of foreign currency and contributes 5-10 per cent to the gross domestic product. More importantly, over two million people depend on it as their primary cash crop. People here can grow their own food, weave their own cloth and do without luxuries like motorbikes. But without cash in hand you can’t buy tires for your bicycle, send your children to school or pay for medical care.
Since 2004, the price of cotton has been going steadily down. In 2003, a farmer could get 210 fcfa (about 42 cents) for a kilo of cotton. Right now, it has reached a low of 145 fcfa. It’s a 31% drop that affects more than two million people in a country with a total population of under 14, 000, 000 ! Just imagine if 15% of all Americans, for example, had to accept a 31% drop in wages this year. That would affect about 45 million people! Needless to say, this is going to have a major affect on the quality of life of the average Burkinabé person. We’ll see even fewer kids in school in the fall, less food on the tables and even more deaths due to preventable and curable diseases.

They just had an article on the subject of cotton in my favourite newspaper, “l’Evenement”; It documents the unrest of the desperate farmers, plans for a possible boycott and searches for alternative buyers. And the answer to the problems, according to Sofitex, the main buyer of Burkinabé cotton? In a brilliant move, they have dispatched agents to the villages to “encourage” the farmers. Yes, they have sent out guys to tell the farmers to cheer up! Very helpful, I’m sure. “Gee, we never thought of it that way” the farmers will say to themselves. “We just need to brighten our days with a smile and all will be well. Thanks, Sofitex!“
Funny how the Sofitex, that had to be recently bailed out financially by the government, has plenty of money to pay for the salaries, vehicles and gasoline to make this silliness possible, but very little to pay the farmers.

Here is a helpful hint that I will share with all my blog-land friends out there: Don't try to download a six minute film onto YouTube using dial-up in Africa.
I worked for hours yesterday editing my first-ever video, but have spent a long, frustrating Wednesday trying to get it downloaded. My only hope now is to find an internet café that has adsl.

Hopefully tomorrow will bring success and a new video posted to my blog!!
This one is guaranteed 100% goat-free.

Here's the reason why Valentine was recently condemned to "Nun Boot Camp": The Profession of Faith ceremony at our church on Sunday morning. Valentine's class had to prepare for this special ceremony where the young people get up in front of the congregation to commit to Christ and to "renounce the works of Satan". The latter being, I feel, always a good policy.

It was a reasonably nice day for the ceremony. It was only about 100°F and a bit breezy. Valentine was lovely in her long white robe and seed pearl headband. We'd had to have the robe sewn specially for her, as the church didn't have any that were long enough.

Here's the big moment: Valentine makes her speech. Beside her is Abbé Anicet. He's the third priest we've had in eight years. Some of the other Catechism teachers complain that he is too authoritarian, but they haven't been around as long as I have. Father Anicet is a beacon of democracy compared to past incumbents.
Crowd of pals all there to support Valentine. I'm there in the purple shirt.

I hope to have a short film of the ceremony up soon!!

Here are a few pictures from the Talent show on Saturday night. I will post more in the Photobucket album soon.
Here are the girls all ready to go dance. Are they cute, or what?
Opening moves

Alexa's solo

One more, just because they are so freaking adorable.

I have been getting emails from concerned Burkinamom fans. They all say pretty much the same thing, ie: “Hey B- What’s the matter? The film is great, but I’ve watched it about 20 times now. WRITE something, dammit!”
It’s true that I have been resting on the cinematic laurels of FAVL. Which was not a good idea, as they are comfy, but not my own. Michael K at FAVL did all the work and all I did was paste in a link. But I was VERY happy that all my family and pals could finally see Aslan, Midnight and all the gang.
What have I been doing? Well, last week was spent getting ready for the weekend. Mallory, Alexa and their twin pals E and S were in serious training for a show. We had the dance teacher at the house every afternoon, the furniture all pushed against one wall. Alexandra is Russian and trained as a dancer back when it was called the Soviet Union and they did not kid around. She had to train for hours every day, she tells the kids, and if her posture was less than perfect, her mattress was confiscated, forcing her to sleep on the wooden bed frame. Ah, the good old days.
Anyway, the girls worked a lot with her, getting ready to perform at the ISO Talent show. And I have to say that they were wonderful on Saturday night! I will have pics to post soon. Sorry, no film.
Sunday night was the concert for the small choral group I sing with, so there were a few extra rehearsals for that, as well. One of the highlights was two piano pieces played by Valentine. She has only had four lessons and has mostly just been teaching herself. She played a couple of minuets and sounded great.
There was also the Saint Ex school fun fair on Saturday morning. And there was also the rehearsal for the “Profession de foi” ceremony for Valentine that is happening on the 3 of June. Along with teaching catechism, going to the gym daily and working at Papiers du Sahel, I managed to be too busy to turn on my computer for several days.
This week promises to be a bit calmer. I am working a lot at Papiers, though. Some of the women are taking an accounting course, so I am filling in for them, running the shop from 8am to 2pm each day. I mostly keep very busy, but do take a short break at about noon. I drink a diet Coke and read a bit. Or try to. This morning, I grabbed a paperback on my way out the door. When I settled down to read it a few hours later, I knew I was in trouble from the first page. The writing was pedestrian, but I can live with that. All I ask for is a decent story that will make me forget how hot I am for a little while. But the stupid details were killing me. For example, the main character is supposed to be a hard-hitting criminal lawyer. Her name? Betsy Korn. Her name is actually Elizabeth, but she thinks it’s too dignified for a “frazzled” scatter-brain like herself. (It’s common knowledge how those high-class lawyers hate to have a dignified image.) That’s really the best name he could come up with? Sounds like she’s going to cook food with possums in it and then marry her first cousin.
Also, within the first twenty pages we already had two lawyers named “Alfred”. You’ll be surprised to know that they were not called “Alfie” or even “Al”. I guess guy lawyers don’t mind being dignified.
I will restrain myself from further ranting. Just be assured that it was all really stupid. If you are tempted to read something by Phillip Margolin, don’t. I’m saying this as a friend.

Late breaking news!!!! Yesterday afternoon, Al and Mal polled their money and bought a air of little “mange-mil” birds. They are cute, tiny, little yellow things. Well, they were. The girls have just discovered the bamboo and wire cage laying on the tile out on the terrace. The bars are all bent and nothing left of the birds but tiny yellow and grey tufts of feathers. The cat is sitting nearby, looking pleased with herself. This looks pretty incriminating….

I got a very entertaining free sample at the supermarket recently. It was instant coffee packaged in Singapore. I'm not in advertising, but I just can't think that making your ad look like a sticky old piece of paper that has been used as an impromptu coaster is the way to go.
Worst of all, the manufacturer makes the rather alarming promise that it “leaves you drooling”. Perhaps it contains a mild neurotoxin that makes you salivate excessively and loose facial muscle control? Kind of scary.

So, not surprisingly, on Sunday morning I drank my usual, non drool-inducing coffee and went on to have a great day. The highlight was almost certainly the goat racing. You can have your Kentucky Derby and Ascot - the Ouagadougou Goat Races have them all beat.
Of course, the only way to get the goats to run is to have their owners run in front of them all the way. If horse racing operated on the same principle, I’m guessing it would be way less popular. But for goat racing, it works pretty well.
Of course, this meant that usually the fastest child, rather than the fastest goat, won. But it was still very good fun.
We all got together over at the house of my Friends of African Village Libraries pals: Leslie and Michael, plus their two children who are the keepers of Minnie. Gina (the goat wedding photographer) and her husband were there with their twin girls and Midnight. Our neighbours Tony and Kirsten came by with their two kids as well, so it was a good crowd. None of the other neighbours came out to watch, though. It was 4pm and still very, very hot. Mad dogs, Englishmen and crazy American goat racers, I guess…..
When the kids and pets got tired of running down the road, we all went in for a rest. There were snacks and drinks provided by our gracious hosts. There was no champagne like at Ascot, but we didn’t have to wear silly hats, so I considered it a fair trade. I noticed that Mallory just grabbed a handful of cookies and headed right back out into the heat, though. I peeked out the door and saw her feeding Goaty(aka Aslan) the treats and making much of him. She does love that goat.
After the break, a couple of the kids hopped on behind Leslie’s motor scooter. So then we got more of a high-speed thrill ambiance going. She raced down the dirt road, the goats in hot pursuit. It was one of the more unusual things I have ever seen in Burkina.
The winner? Well, it was kind of like the Special Olympics for goats. We wanted them all to go home with good self-esteem. They each won a few races and then after that, I don’t think we really kept track. As no money was changing hands and there was plenty of beer, the process seemed more important than the results.
Stay tuned for the film!!

The Queen of Sweden visited a travel agency recently with her dog.
Well, it was actually Mallory, dressed up in a long white robe. Did you know that Swedish aristocrats dress remarkably like Galadriel in Lord of the Rings? I didn’t either.
As for the dog, that was Alexa on all fours, panting daintily and looking vaguely like an afghan hound, if you squinted.
Valentine was the travel agent, seated at the coffee table in the middle of our living room. She helped Her Majesty plan an exciting trip to Switzerland.

Today’s dress-up involved some friends, as Valentine is away at “nun-boot camp”. (More on that later. ). Here’s a picture of the girls dressed up for a game. You can see that Goaty is not left out of the fun.
The forces of good are clearly represented on the left by a fairy and an elf. The two on the right are evil witches. Apparently some witches are far more fashion-savvy than others.

Now for the bad news. My jaunty comment yesterday that the chickens are all well must have jinxed the bunnies. The first thing I heard this morning was Mallory shouting “Mom! Alexa’s bunny is GONE!” I ran outside and found that indeed, one was missing. The driver was nearby, waiting to take Valentine to the convent (Nun boot camp, right?) so I asked him if he knew anything about the matter. Mahama told me that the guardian had found that the little guy had managed to get out of the cage and had gotten caught by the cat. Yes, the same cat that was the cause of so much misery not too long ago. At that point, Old Moussa came walking up “I’ve got it, boss!” he said, dangling the little fluffy head by the ears. The body was hanging quite a bit lower, swinging on a long, red thread. I put my hands over Mallory’s eyes and explained to Moussa that we REALLY didn’t need to examine the poor little guy.
There have been a few tears and nobody is talking to the cat today.

As for Valentine, no, she is not taking the veil. Her catechism class is having a retreat at a convent down at Koubri, one hour to the south of Ouaga. She wasn't really keen to go (hence the "nun boot camp" comment) as it is very hot right now. Also, she would have liked to be home to see her dad. JP was scheduled to come home today after ten days out doing research. But she packed her Bible, mosquito repellant, etc and took off this morning at about 7:30. The kids were supposed to all go on a chartered bus. But when the bus showed up at the rendezvous point, a problem became evident. It was a nine seat bus, not a 19 seater, as the organizers had understood. I guess somebody messed up. Anyway, I was asked to volunteer the use of our Land Cruiser, as it has nine places. I was very nervous that it wouldn’t make the trip, but the driver said that it went fine. And hopefully it will do as well on the trip tomorrow night to fetch them back.

We have started a trend, it seems. Goats are the new "in" pet for the fashionable expat home in Ouaga. Our friends that run the Friends of African Village Libraries organization also bought a little goat for their children. Minnie was a little skittish at first, so our friends asked my girls to come over a few times and help out with the goat-taming. The twins brought Goaty over and a good time was had by all, mostly. The twins have determined that Goaty loves Midnight but she's not too keen on him. Considering that they've only been married a few weeks, it's rather sad. And Minnie thinks Goaty is All That, but he's not terribly interested in her. It's kind of like "Days of Our Lives", but with goats.
Minnie has calmed down over the last two weeks and has become a very fine pet, if a little demanding. Yesterday, I was walking down the road when I heard an urgent flurry of bleating from across the intersection. I looked over towards my friends' house and saw that Minnie had stuck her head under the gap beneath their gate. She recognized me and was calling me over! I went over and scratched her head a bit. No one was at home with her and she was lonely, poor thing. She's used to lots of attention.
I haven't mentioned our chickens in a while. They are all fine, all four of them. Yes, Jaguar and Snowball have been joined by two little chicks. The twins are having lots of fun with the babies. Their favorite activity is turning over rocks and letting the chicks loose on the bugs.