Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me about our family pets. Probably a big mistake, as she ended up with a loong email to read and WTMI about our two cats who were recently transplanted from Ouagadougou to the French Alps.
My answer went, more or less, as follows:

We have our two cats and that's trouble enough for any one family. Not that Cleo is a bother (except for her rare genetic illness that requires daily meds for the rest of her life, but I digress) She's the little muticolored cat that we found as a starved mom-cat, sitting out on our terrace in Ouaga one day, scrawny kitten in tow. I think the rest of the litter was eaten by a snake. At least, that is the family consensus, based on how Cleo hates and fears the vacuum cleaner. She hisses and attcks the hose bit of the machine like a lioness. Our other cat, a big tomcat who is usually Mr. Macho but also hates the vacuum, cowers behind Cleo for protection. It looks pretty comical, but it's quite an astonishing role switch for them.

The male is called Mr. Darcy. Gaspar Darcy, actually, but he is pretty dignified, so we mostly don't use his first name. He doesn't like it and it's best not to anger him. Unfortunately, moving to France made him very, very angry. Drugged and stuffed into a cramped Air France cat carrier bag, our normally laid back dude turned into Demon Cat. Srsly. He was scaring people, not least of all us. He growled, shorted, scratched and ripped the interior of the bag to shreds. And then he got REALLY angry. It was a race against time to get home before the bag fell to bits and the Hell Beast emerged to tear us all to bits.

Valentine found Mr. Darcy years ago as an abandoned kitten and bottle-fed him into a healthy, swaggering guy-cat adulthood. He was the King of Zogona back in Ouaga. However, here in the French countryside, he has fallen several rungs down the social ladder. His first night out, the neighborhood farmcats beat him up so badly that he has refused to go outside since. So much for the warm and simple hospitality of the rural folk. ..
So, he contents himself with terrorising me and the children here at home. We rush to do his bidding so that he doesn't pee on all our worldly belongings and/or bite us.
Not that it's easy to do what he wants. He doesn mew or gesture in any way. He just stares at us, sending telepathic messages about what his commands are. Sadly, the kids and I are NOT psychically gifted and he finds it very frustrating. That means I've been bitten on the calf twice and cleaned up mucho cat pee. He seems to have calmed down rece,tly, but just when I thought the worst was over, he managed to pee on top of a large box that I was using as a table. I'd placed some very important documents on it, including the forms and papers for the kids' bus passes for school. I scrambled around like a mad thing, blotting and cursing. Not that either did much good.
Then I got the idea of turning the hairdryer on them full blast. Now it smelled like hot cat pee. Great.
In desperation, I got out the lavender scented Febreeze and had at them. But to be honest, it didn't even make a dent in the stench.
Finally, I jammed them into an envelope and send them off. I had to or I'd never get the kids' bus passes in time for school.
Until quite recently, I was convinvced that the transport office had thrown our papers away, thinking they were a particularly disgusting practical joke.
But the cards arrived in the mail Thursday, so my kids will be able to go to school..

So, that's it, All about our cats- the only pets so far. We have no plans for dogs, rabbits, chickens or the like. Though we plan to "borrow" a small flock of sheep for half of each year. They'll keep down the grass in the back half of our property and provide a little fun for the twins, especially Mal who misses Aslan the Wonder Goat.
He is doing well, btw. Mallory talks often with his new owner (a friend of hers back in Ouaga). He wanders around the mini-farm, where there are horses, turtles, cattle and monkeys. There are also dogs, who scare poor Midnight a bit, but Aslan defends her valiantly, so we are told.

Finally: I guess it's about time to leave this blog and start a new one without the word "Africa" in the title. Any suggestions?

The men in our family are holding out against the African Doom Virus. The girls and I, on the other hand, are hacking away and the house sounds like a TB ward on a particularly bad day.

Yes, I know that people the world over get colds and flu. But at least if I have a bad cold in the US of A, I have the choice between several fluffy and soft brands of tissue, some with soothing lotions. Here in Burkina we only have what is apparently very thin sandpaper , cut to size, shoved in a box and marketed as a Kleenex-substitute.

And of course, there aren’t all the great medications to keep you up and running and then put you to sleep. I know that I always say DON’T bring medications to Burkina when you come, but I lied. There’s an exception: DO bring Nyquil or whatever brand of cold remedy that you swear by. There is only one kind of cold medicine sold here (Fervex) and it is as nothing compared to the might of Nyquil.

Also, there’s the fact that it’s just so darn NOT comfy here. Burkina is a nice enough place, in it’s way…but it is NOT a place of comfort and rest for a body, especially a sick body. The heat and dust wear you down. And even if you are wealthy enough to have a home with glass windows and electricity, you will be foiled in your efforts at comfort by the constant power cuts.
And those of you arriving soon don’t have any improvements to look forward to. On the contrary, far from getting better, the power cuts will be a fact of life. The official word is that Sonabel has scheduled rolling blackouts daily into 2009. Yup. They even have a published schedule so you can know which neighbourhoods will get cut if the city demand for power gets too high on a given day.

Anyway, this cold has four out of six of us down. Not like we’re really able to rest. Yesterday we were forced to drag ourselves out bright and early to get ready for the big ISO Garage Sale. We were onsite by 6/30 am, organizing the mountain of junk I wanted to sell. Hey, like they say- “one person’s cumbersome eyesore is another person’s bliss”, and I was betting a 25 dollar table rental fee that this was true.

It took us over an hour to get even half the stuff out on the six tables. There wasn’t even nearly enough room for all the old Barbies, baby board books, half-use bottles of perfume, old clothes, etc. The crowd surged in at 8am and we stood, coughing and astounded, watching the wave engulf the ISO basketball court. The Garage Sale is an annual event, well-known in the Burkinabé community. American expats, in particular, are known for having amazing amounts of stuff for low prices. I was no exception (even though I’m French, too).

The crowd was huge. I’m so lucky that I had all four of my kids helping out. There’s no way I could have managed otherwise, because of course, even though the prices were clearly marked in magic marker on masking tape labels, haggling was inevitable. Even the little toys in the basket marked “100 fcfa each”(25 cents) were not exempt, as people would ask if we couldn’t sell them for 50 cfa each instead.

It was more than a little crazy-making, as no transaction with a Burkinabé was ever a simple “look at the price tag and hand over the money” type of thing. I can usually face this fact of life here, but my fever of 4O° C and miserable cough made me feel unusually unable to deal.

But deal I did- we sold a mountain of stuff and made quite a bit of cash. On the other hand, it was hard-earned, as we sold no big-ticket items. The most expensive thing sold was for 10,000 fcfa. Most of the money we made was in increments of 500 cfa or less- so it was many, many transactions and tough, tough going.

I let the kids keep the money from any of their own toys they sold, so they’re all feeling quite wealthy. And JP and I made some money and got rid of a bunch of stuff that did not need an all-expenses paid trip to France.

After the sale, Valentine and I came home and slept a few hours. The twins, apparently made of sterner stuff, were quite perky. Mallory even persuaded her Papa to take her and her beloved pet goat Aslan for a walk in the park. Report has it that a good time was had by all.

But while Aslan has a fun day yesterday, today was another story. There was a particularly bad dust storm at lunchtime today. Rain threatened and there was some thunder and all three goats were terrified. Mallory and I had to go back and talk to them. They were so relieved to see us and quieted right down. But, of course, they didn’t want to stay outside and made it clear that they thought the kitchen would be the best place for them to ride out the spell of inclement weather.

But the storm died down and right now it is relatively cool and pleasant outside!!

Here I am, back from amazing adventures in Nanou. We returned at six last night, somewhat sunburned and tired, and very happy to be back. It was a great trip and I’m glad we got to do it. It almost got cancelled. It’s a long story:

Eldest Daughter went to a birthday party Friday night, which was nice. Nice for her, I mean. I had the unenviable task of staying up until midnight to go fetch her. And my days of staying up late for fun are long past, thank you very much.

Sev and I put on a new Film Crew movie that we just got from the USA (Thanks, Mom and Dad!), but even that wasn’t enough to keep me awake.
By 10:30, I quit fighting it and went to lay down in bed. I set the alarm and drifted off for an hour. At 11:30, I jumped into the station wagon, feeling much better. But soon, I felt a lot worse. The car, bought at so much expense and with such great hopes only a few months back, was making a noise. A weird noise. A bad, weird noise that was VERY unwelcome, as I had a busy day ahead on Saturday and a big trip to the bush planned for Sunday.

I listened intently as I drove, trying to figure out what it could be. It wasn’t an engine-y thing. It was definitely a sound from underneath the car. A steering-y thing? I soon gave up, as I am completely useless with cars. May as well ask Aslan the Wonder Goat what was wrong with it.

I was pretty concerned, but kept driving. I figured that if it broke down completely, I could use my cell phone and call for a rescue.
Luckily, it wasn’t very far to the party. Eldest Daughter was glad to see me and expressed amazement that I hadn’t gotten lost trying to find the place in the dark - which (sadly) would not have been beyond the realm of possibility, but I had had that all covered. I’d cleverly brought along the invitation, which had the phone number written on it, so that I could call for further directions if I went astray. Well, it would have been a clever plan…but as my daughter spoke, I realised that I’d left my cell phone at home. Typical. It certainly made the drive home more stressful, as getting help would be quite complicated. There are no phone booths in Burkina Faso.

As we drove, she told me all about the party. She also told me about the huge porn movie scare at her school! Short version: some 6^th grade boys(11-12 years old) were joking around a couple of weeks ago and said that they were going to make a pornographic film. Which is very scary. I don’t know what kind of lives they have that, at their age, they 1. know what a porn film is and 2. think it sounds funny. Anyway, some of the girls heard about it and apparently thought it was for real. Rumours flew around the school. Finally, it ended with upset parents calling the school. One parent reported that she’d heard the boys had made up a list of girls that were going to be in the film. The already huge scandal swelled and became gigantic.
The boys were called in and said it was “just a joke”. They have been suspended from school for a few days. And I guess they had a good talking to.
The Superintendent (Proviseur) had the teachers read a letter to every class in the school about “respect for human dignity, the psychological health of children, etc”.

So, Eldest Daughter told me all this, then she also mentioned that they’d be having a “sex education” talk at the school at the end of the year.
“I heard about it. They show you how to put a condom on a banana;” she said. “I didn’t know fresh fruits were so dangerous that you need protection. I’m going to be more careful at breakfast from now on!”
She’s a funny girl, even at midnight, long after my brain has shut down.

The car got us home just fine, but I knew I’d have to get someone to look at it right away if I wanted to be ready for the trip to Nanou early Sunday morning. I woke up early and got the twins ready for school. Yes, they had to be at school on Saturday morning- it was the day of the big Carnival show!. Like usual, I had volunteered to be one of the “helper moms”- getting kids into their costumes and makeup. As I’m lucky enough to have a driver, I had him drop us off at the school and then he continued on to the mechanic. I was really hoping that the weird noise would turn out to be a simple, inexpensive weird noise. If the car couldn’t be fixed quickly, Sunday’s village trip would have to be cancelled. And there would be no re-scheduling. This was the last weekend that JP would have free, as he would be travelling and wouldn’t be back in Burkina until May 3. By then, it would be too late, as contacting the sprits is a dry season activity. May is too late.

Anyway, the car went off and I went into Mal’s class, where the kids were getting dressed like painters and as the subjects of Great Paintings. Well, I guess they were Great Paintings. I hadn’t heard of any of them, and I am an art fan. Not like I regularly haul out big piles of art and stand around admiring it, but I have been to the Louvre, like, five times. (NB- If my blog were associated with the AFN, I'd make that "The French Louvre", so you wouldn't get it mixed up with the Louvre of, say, Northern Indiana). I didn’t recognise the paintings.

So, there were kids with big white shirts on, straw hats and lots of paint stains- that was the artists. The others were dressed like card players, cyclists, African women carrying gourds, baskets, babies, etc. and one girl wore a white plastic rice sack. Whatever.

I would have liked to be taking pictures already- lots of candids of the kids getting ready, but as I wrote in my last post, all our cameras were out with JP in the field. However, our kind neighbour Tony was supposed to come to the show and he’s quite a good photographer. So, I was counting on him for pictures of my girls performing.

Soon the kids were all dressed and it was time for me to go out and find a seat, which is always a big deal. The nice parents tend to stay nice, but the merely tolerable ones become horrible- pushing, shoving, blocking, and acting, in general, like they are the only people on earth that count. And the mean parents become absolute monsters. The seemingly benign world of school pageants brings out the worst in many. Scary.

Tomorrow: On With The Show!

(This is what they call a “cliff-hanger”- a cheap device to get you to come back tomorrow. Will the car get repaired in time for the trip? Will Beth get a good seat at the school program? Will Tony show up and take pictures? Stay tuned…)

Aslan the Wonder Goat was in the kitchen again early this morning, but not alone. He’d brought along Cougar, our small hen that keeps the twins supplied with breakfast in the form of tiny white eggs. The only explanation is that the goats have been talking, stirring up discontent out in the backyard. Why else would Cougar, normally a mild-mannered, even timid, chicken, suddenly be bold enough to stroll into the kitchen and have a leisurely look around? I suspect that Midnight and Aslan have been expounding daily on the unfairness of the fact that the humans live indoors, where they no doubt enjoy unlimited treats of crackers and dried bread, while the animals stay outside and eat millet with wheat germ. Completely unfair!
In the end, Aslan was content to leave after I scratched his head a bit. Maybe he’s an ideologue, but a he’s also a hedonist. But getting Cougar out was more of a challenge. She’d really settled in and I had to do a lot of broom-waving to persuade her to follow her pal outside. I just hope that the goats haven’t also been distributing subversive literature. I could be in trouble if they get a hold of a copy of “Animal Farm”.

And finally, here you will find the end of the Gourcy trip story. srsly.

Kindly overlooking the fact that I’d just trodden on his grandfather’s grave, Antoine was willing to let me go along and have a look at the village market gardens, of which he was quite proud. Using water from the nearby reservoir, the villagers can grow vegetables and fruits to sell for a good price in the big town a few miles down the road. The locals don’t eat much besides tô, millet-based dumplings with varied, often leaf-based, sauces. Lettuce, for example, is strictly for export to the city, as it never figures on the village menus.
There were several large, well-tended gardens scattered around to the south. Besides lettuce, they grew tomatoes, green beans, onions and cabbages. There were also zucchini, potatoes and lots of papaya trees. We all duly admired the tidy plots and healthy-looking plants as we stood around chatting with one of the gardeners. We all had a few polite questions, but one visitor wanted to get “helpful”.
Why don’t you grow radishes?”
The gardener explained that they don’t sell well in the town.

“Why don’t you grow cauliflower?
The gardener patiently explained that it doesn’t grow well in the region.

“Why don’t you grow broccoli?”
The gardener didn’t know what that was. (NB: Burkinabé people rarely eat broccoli, or even see it. It's a food only grown near Ouaga to be bought and consumed by expats.)

“Why don’t you grow beets? You should really get different seeds” she pronounced helpfully, “and try new things.”
She went on quite a while on the subject...
I think she deserved an answer along the lines of : Gee! Thanks, Smart White Person! I never would have thought of that! We’re all such dolts around here! I’ll just run over to the garden-supply shop right now and choose from the huge array of affordable seeds there! And then I ‘ll invest a whole season growing a crop of plants that may or may not sell! Freaking brilliant! Thanks again White Person!
That’s what I would have said, but Burkinabé people are generally very polite- much more so than I am. The gardener just gave a little “What can you do?” kind of shrug.
(-Just so you all know, it’s very hard to buy garden seeds in Burkina Faso, even in Ouagadougou. There are no garden-supply shops. At all. Just a little thought on the part of our brilliant interlocutor above would have quickly revealed that the local gardeners must get all their seeds from each other and have no easy access to new varieties. And it makes complete sense for the growers not to take risks, as market gardens are hard work. If your radishes don’t sell, there you are, stuck with a pile of food that your family doesn't really want to eat. It’s logical to grow common staples so that the family can easily eat any excess production. It's not like Ouahiagouya is a huge marketplace and transport costs here are skyrocketing, so any vague ideas that trucking stuff to Ouagadougou will make anyone good money are completely stupid.........Ok, end of rant.)

Next, Antoine took us to visit his family. He took us to the house of his “Petite Mama”- one of his father’s many wives. She greeted us kindly and berated Antoine for not giving her more warning of our visit. We looked around a bit. I took a picture of the kitchen, so you can get an idea of a typical village home cooking area. The other picture is JP in front of the home of the Oldest Person in Gourcy. They told us she was 120 - I'm not really sure that's true (um...probably not) but she definitely looked like she was at least 120. Maybe1200. She was tiny, shriveled, blind, all of her fingers had been amputated and she was very angry. I greeted her politely in Mooré and she promptly told me what a complete creep Antoine was for not informing her that company was coming, so she could make some snacks for us. I don't that think she could actually cook because, well, she was blind, had no hands and I think that she couldn't actually walk. But the thought was very, very kind.
After the visit, Pascal drove us all back to the site of last night's party, out behind Antoine’s own garden. The idea was to have a small picnic lunch. Well, I had understood it to be small. But more and more people kept showing up, until finally there was a huge delegation of elders sitting on metal chairs off to one side. They had chosen that day for presenting their “New Year’s Wishes” to Antoine. The Muslims drank Coke and Fanta. The Animists and many Christians had bottled beer- very fancy! JP had dolo (traditional millet beer), so I knew then that I’d be driving us home. A band of griots sang and played while we ate chicken and potatoes from the ubiquitous gardens of Gourcy.

It was time to go home. We packed up and headed south. The drive back was pretty uneventful. I just made a quick stop in one small village along the way- one well known for it’s “wild yams”. They are long, thin black roots that taste very much like potatoes. A girl by the side of the road sold me an armful and we continued on to Ouaga. I was making good time and figured we’d be home before five pm. In fact, we ended up getting home closer to six. We had the misfortune to get stuck in a huge traffic jam on the north western entrance road into the city. Traffic didn’t even crawl, it just sat there and vegetated. Which is very rare. We don’t really get traffic jams in Ouaga, except on major holidays. But this was strange for another reason: it was so completely calm! People seemed almost happily trapped in the heat and pollution. Then, JP remarked that many of the passengers in the crowed vehicles were wearing paper sun visors- the kind sold here at special events. I vainly tried to read the printing on one, but couldn’t. But then I noticed that many of the people were wearing dresses and shirts sporting big prints featuring Saint Mary and other folks popular with the Catholic crowd. It finally fit together. A traffic jam with no honking or even cross looks, paper sun visors and holy-themed clothing could mean only one thing: this was Yagma Pilgrimage Day. How could I have missed it? The last Sunday before Lent is ALWAYS the day when many Catholics go out to the shrine at Yagma for a special, day-long mass. Mystery solved.
We rolled into our driveway to less than thunderous applause. Actually, there was no applause. I don’t think the kids really noticed we were gone. They seemed to be having a great time. Valentine had a bad cold, but other than that, everyone was fine.

I had a big glass of water (yeah!) and went to bed early.

The End

« My daughter doesn’t have a dog.” I told the woman at the park entrance. The Burkinabé tend to be patient and to enjoy a good story, so segued into my request gradually -gave her some back story. “She would have liked a dog, but we got her this goat instead. It’s a nice goat and she has it all trained. It even takes walks on a leash. I wonder if it would be possible for her to bring her goat? Here to the park? To walk? Like a dog?” My weird question got a laugh out of her and she said “Sure! Bring him!” I think she would have said the same even if I had proposed bringing in a pet grizzly bear. She just wanted to see what would happen. ( I later told JP: “I like to think that the entertainment our outlandish antics provide for the locals is our way of ‘giving back’”)
That was Saturday. And Sunday afternoon found me again at the park, with the goat in the back of the station wagon. Aslan travels pretty well, though he’s never quite sure how things are going to end up. Usually, a car trip ends in a play date with his little goat friends, but occasionally it ends in a session at the veterinarian. And as the last time he went to the vet, there was a painful incident involving his privates and a pair of pliers, a person wouldn’t blame him for being a tad skittish. But when we pulled up I front of the park, I think he realized that fun was in store, because he scrambled out quite willingly and trotted along right behind Mal.

Now, JP had promised the twins that they could visit the small menagerie at the park. So, we went up to the woman that had helped us yesterday. She was still in the same spot, a small table set up in the dirt in a shaded corner. She’s in charge of selling the park entrance tickets: 100 cfa for adults and half that for kids. (100cfa is about 20 cents US). It’s a bit more to see the animals. The guide in charge of the menagerie told us not to bring the goat on our visit, as it might excite the jackals and hyenas in a “Yay! Lunch is early!” kind of way. So, Mal tied up Aslan in a shady spot with lots of dried leaves to munch on. But when she tried to leave, he started to cry. And by the time she was out of sight beyond the gate, he was screaming his head off. We kind of figured that he would eventually get distracted by the tasty food and calm down. But here’s my theory: Aslan is so well fed and pampered, that his mind is elevated to a higher plane that that of his brethren, who are concerned about where their next meal is coming from. As a result, our goat has an unusually rich emotional life. Dried leaves are as nothing to him compared to his beloved Mal, light of his goat life.
In the end, I had to go back for him. When he saw me, the intensity of his cries died down a bit, but didn’t stop. I untied him and then he quieted right down. He was a now a Goat with a Mission: Find Mal! He took off trotting towards the gate. He didn’t exactly drag on the leash, but made his wishes known. We quickly found JP and the girls, who were checking out a monkey and her funny little baby. Mom Monkey didn’t mind us humans looking at her little one, but Aslan kind of creeped her out. So, we cut our visit short and went on our walk through the park. It’s a small wilderness area that is the only untouched green space in Ouagadougou. (If you are interested in more description, check out this blog entry about the place.) It is a very popular site on the weekends, lots of people showing up to exercise pets, kids and/or themselves.
Before we arrived, JP had been sceptical, suspecting that the goat would idle, lollygag and just generally be a goat-type slacker. Instead, he cast all those other, more banal pets in the shade! He walked tirelessly right alongside Mal, completely undistracted by leaves , grasses and any other items of potential interest to goats. He was happy just to be out in the fresh air, having a nice walk with the Goddess of his little goat existence. Most people we passed mistook him for a dog and the few that did realise did double takes. He'll definitely get to go on lots more outings to the park!

I woke up this morning to three goats in the kitchen. When Midnight saw me coming, she shot Aslan a look of pure panic "See!?! I TOLD you this was a BAD idea!! She's HERE!". Then Midnight and Dawn (her similarly skittish kid) scrambled on out of there like they were being pursued by the minions of Satan. But it was just me. And Aslan, at least, knows that I'm not a goat-eating demon. (although I have been known to occassionally chase livestock out of the kitchen with a broom, so he WAS being pretty brave)
Well, he settled right in and had a look around, scouting the area for tasty snacks. He checked out the fridge door for a while, but had to eventually admit that you can't open a refrigerator with hooves. He then moved on to the trash bin as a more likely spot. At this point I had to intervene. "Mallory! Come fetch your goat!" I yelled and she came right along, with her little goat-herding stick in one hand and a bucket of millet in the other. Aslan followed her out, just as sweet as you please.
If anyone out there is filming a remake of that classic tale of the Alpine goat-herding lifestyle "Heidi", I have three likely young goats to propose as cast members and one adorable little blonde girl that would be perfect in the title role!