In Burkina Faso, life stops when it rains. The clouds gather, the drops start and suddenly the roads are empty of all bikes and mopeds. Off to the edges of the nearly empty streets, you see everyone huddled under whatever shelter they can find.

Maybe you see a few pedestrians, really desperate to get where they're going- nearly all of them slogging through the mud wearing a garbage bag as a poncho, or a small plastic bag as a hat.

The rain is noisy. It falls hard, pounding down on metal roofs and the hard-packed ground.

But other than that, everything is strangely quiet.

All the normal noises of the neighborhood are gone. The deafening hammering of the metal-smith's workshop down the street completely stops. The voices of the dozens of the children that play in the street just outside your front gate have vanished. The tailor's shop courtyard nearby, usually full of whirling pedal sewing machines and chatting, joking, arguing appprentices is silent.

It may rain for a few minutes.. or a few hours, but while it does, time stops. Nothing gets done, nobody goes anywhere. And that makes sense. The rains are usually hard and blinding, making it impossible to safely travel. Even in a car, visibility can be reduced to nearly nothing.

And most of life's daily activities in Burkina are carried out outdoors. Places like mechanics' garages, tailors' shops and carpenters' workshops might have a small shack or some kind of shelter, but certainly not enough covered space for everyone to work out of the rain.

Even in homes, not much can be done. A kitchen , for most Burkinabé people, is simply a corner outside with a fire and a branch or rock to sit on. No tables, no countertops, no cupboards, no roof.

Everyone rushes to shelter- maybe first pausing to get all the drying laundry and other vulnerable items gathered up and out of the wet. At our house, our guardians Salif and Rasmane would run to grab the patio furniture and pile it up next to the house, well under the terrace roof and out of the reach of the driving rain that would sometimes seem to fall nearly sideways.

People do what they have to do, then wait for it to pass.

And it always does.

It stops suddenly, like someone turing off a fire hose. Then the big West African sun pops out and everything seems to dry out in an instant. Cooking pots go back outside, the laundry is re-hung on walls and across shrubs, commuters get back on their bikes and mopeds and the smith's apprentices start hammering away again. The chairs are once more nicely arranged on the patio. And everything goes on like usual until tomorrow, when it will rain again.

The rain here in France is so...strange. It's hard for me to get used to gray and drizzly skies for days on end. I feel like everything should just stop. But it can't. This is Europe. If everyone stopped moving the minute rain fell, doom and disaster would result. At least, I guess so...

I took a "rain day" yesterday. I had decided that the rain wouldn't stop because it wasn't getting the respect it deserved. Maybe a moment of silence and stillness was all it wanted from us?

I didn't go anywhere. I didn't do any laundry. In fact, I didn't do anything terribly useful except for cook a couple of meals. I played games with the kids, read a novel, surfed the internet and watched tv on my computer. It was, in fact, a great day.

It did not, however, stop the rain.

So, today I'm back to rainy days, Euro-style. It's nearly noon and still pouring rain, but I've already been to the dump with a load of bad junk, the recycling center with my good junk, the public treasury to pay the water bill, the store to buy cat litter, etc. I guess that's how they do it here. But I miss the strange peacefullness of the Burkina rain...

One part of leaving Ouaga is finding homes for many of our pets. That's why Dawn the Goat HAD to get married.
We managed to find a place for her with some lovely friends that already have a goat at home. But theirs is a BOY goat and as one thing would certainly lead to another, Mallory decided that a wedding would have to take place before any change in living arrangements could take place. Who is more of a stickler for the rules of civilised life than a 10 year old Nice Catholic Girl?

So, last Saturday Yann and Dawn got married.
When a Canadian friend of mine came by that morning, I was sewing the dress. And yes, I should have been packing boxes, working on the house inventory or even blogging. But I was sewing up a white lace-trimmed goat dress. Custom designed by me. Goat-couture, if you will.
The wedding cake was sitting on the table. It was pretty obvious what it was. It was a two-tiered white cake topped with white flowers and a pair of small plastic animals: the goat bride and groom.
Sandy laughed at me a while and then pulled out her camera to take some pictures.
"There's always something crazy going on at your house, Beth" she said, shaking her head, which I took to be a high form of compliment.
But you see how I may have gotten a rep around here for being a bit of an odd bird.


The guests arrived soon after and the ceremony began. As Mallory was needed to wrestle to bride down the aisle, Alexa had to be the officiating priestess. She got right into the rôle , digging up a white vestements and various trappings.


In the end, JP had to intervene, as Yann got a bit over-wrought with the emotions of the moment. As you can see, it was clearly a love-match. At the end, when Alexa said "You may now lick the bride", they sort of nuzzled each other, making us all optimistic about their possibilities for a very happy future life together.

Aslan and Midnight (who got married last year) will, of course, stay together. They'll be going to live at a sort of urban farm owned by some friends of ours. There are no other goats there, but plenty of horses and monkeys for company.

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....

A few months ago, we replaced our elderly, troublesome Toyota Land Cruiser with a slightly less geriatric, supposedly less misery-provoking Toyota Corolla station wagon.

All I can say now is: I would rather eat a caterpillar sandwich with broken glass garnish than buy another Toyota anything.
Even if Toyota engineers suddenly designed comfortable, flattering pants that instantly made the wearer look 20 lbs thinner, I would shun them, knowing that they would malfunction in some horrible way. They’d probably fall off me in shreds the minute I went out into public and I’d be so traumatised I’d have to undergo very long, very costly therapy sessions for years afterwards, completely impoverishing my family.

That’s what the Toyota name has come to mean to me: total humiliation and a money haemorrhage to follow.

Yes, as a matter of fact, my car DID break down again.

How ever did you guess?

It was very exciting. It got stuck in third gear during Friday afternoon rush hour traffic in the middle of downtown Ouagadougou.

It was so exciting that I cannot describe how exciting it was. The part where we didn’t die was my favourite bit, of course.

I contemplated not getting it repaired – maybe just pouring gasoline over the whole thing and throwing a match on top of it? But I guess that’s pretty dangerous and a poor example for the children. Not to mention that it’s bad for the air quality.

The best solution is probably to just keep the car in the driveway as a very expensive Burkinabe-style status symbol (“Look! We own a car! ). Then I’ll buy a nice little donkey and cart.

But with my luck, I’d no doubt end up buying an unreliable used donkey. One suffering from severe ear mites and terminal cancer.

A certain Ms. Smarty-Pants (aka babzee) just sent me an e-mail:
You have been posting so much it's almost hard to keep it all straight! You went to an orphanage in order to collect sacrifices to the crocodile gods and thereby divert their attention from your pet goat. Adorable chickens wore hats in honor of the twins and your husband took notes and refused to pass judgment.


OK-maybe my posting lately IS a bit chaotic. If any readers are new to this blog, my best advice is to go back about two weeks and start from there.
As for the rest of you, my ever so loyal family and pals all over the world that have put up with so much lately- Today we get to the "good"stuff:


The Winyé Earth Shrine Ceremony at Nanou
All too soon, yet not soon enough somehow, we were called into the inner sanctum. Everyone but the girls had to bend to get through the doorway of the ancient mud brick hut. We entered a big room holding several of the huge clay pots used for making millet beer. At the far back, on the left side, there was an even smaller door. This was the portal to the Earth Shrine.


We all left our shoes in the outer room and squeezed into the smaller chamber. It only measured about 6 feet wide and 8 feet long. And, as in all old, traditional huts, there were no windows- just a couple of smoke-holes in the ceiling. These are covered by overturned jars on the roof during the rains.

So, it was very dim in there and very, very crowded. Mallory and A. were in the far back corner crouched on a tiny wooden bench. Alexa squeezed in between JP and I on a slightly bigger bench in front of them.
The rest of the chamber was filled up by Isseuf, the Earth Priest, the Earth Priest’s son/apprentice and the altar itself, which took up about one third of the whole chamber. It’s was a mass of hanging bundles, dried plants, wooden figures, piles of dried mud, old blood and animal skins. ( It was hard to get an image with no flash, but I did my best. You can see it in the posted picture. The other picture is the girls in front of the outer doorway to the Earth Shrine.)
I could hear Mallory and A. whispering furiously behind me as the Earth Priest began chanting. Alexa pressed against me and I reassured her “You can close your eyes when they kill the chickens. And remember, it’s their lunch! People kill chickens everyday and it’s no worse than this.”
She’s a pretty good sport, so when the apprentice brought in chicken number one, she gamely grabbed its legs and handed it over to the Earth Priest.


Then it hit me. We were doing a sacrifice at the Winyé Earth Shrine. The chickens would die, blood would be splattered and much chanting to the spirits of the bush would be done. And I had brought along the daughter of Protestant missionaries.


Oops.


I could see it all: A. would go home traumatised and weeping. She’d report to her parents how Mal and Al’s folks had brought her along to a horrible heathen ritual of animal sacrifice.
I would be forever disbarred from the missionary community in Burkina and possibly all of West Africa.
This kind of thing can get you a rep.


Well, it was too late to get her out without making a fuss and ruining the ceremony. Luckily, she was stuck in the back, with JP’s back obstructing her view of the shrine. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…

The Earth Priest cut the neck of Alexa’s chicken. He poured the blood onto several of the small piles of dried earth at the front of the shrine.
The chicken shuddered, flapped and pretty much refused to die. It wasn’t pretty.
Alexa buried her head in my lap. I told the other two behind me NOT to look.
“Don’t worry” Mal whispered “We don’t wanna look!”

The Earth Priest threw the not-very-dead chicken into the outer chamber, near our shoes.
Then it was time for chicken number two. Mallory had to climb over us and come forward to present her half of the sacrifice. She hesitated at the sight of a beautiful civet cat fur spread out on the floor in front of the shrine. I could tell that her animal-loving heart had had about as much as it could take, but she bravely handed over her chicken and then quickly retreated back to her place.


There was much chanting and waving of objects. The spirits were thanked for their attention to Alexa’s case and their efforts to improve her health.
Then millet beer was served. Nothing important in the village is done without dolo.

We left the shrine chamber and retrieved our shoes from their place near the small heap of still-twitching chickens.

I was thinking furiously. “Spin!” I told myself. “It’s all about damage control! As soon as we’re out of here, I can make a few well-chosen comments about how:
1). Traditional religion is NOT evil.
2. People in the Old Testament had to sacrifice animals all the time, because God liked it then. So, it’s not that strange that some folks still do it.
And, most importantly:
3). We are glad that Jesus saved us from having to kill animals for sacrifices. Lucky, lucky us.
It could work!”

I was planning all this and was just about out the door and into the sunshine again, when Isseuf told me “The Earth Priest says you can’t go yet. You have to go in there.” He indicated a very small, dark doorway just to the right of the exit. It was so low and dark that I hadn’t noticed it when we entered.
I thought he was kidding.

The Earth Priest ducked down and went through the small door.
Bats came POURING out. They were small bats, but there were many, many, many of them, sweeping past me just inches away, heading en masse for the Earth Shrine room at the back.

I clutched at A and Alexa, trying to shield them with my body. I didn’t say anything, but inside I was screaming “RABIES!” and mourning the fact that NO amount of damage control was going to get me past this one. A. might forget to give her parents the full details on the chicken sacrifice, but coupled with a massive bat attack?
It all spelled “scarred for life” with capital S and capital L.

I scurried into the doorway leading out as the bat flood lessened and the way cleared.
But Isseuf said “You have to go into the other shrine. Really! The Earth Priest has a special ceremony to do for you. And the bats are a good omen, you know? They are special Shrine Bats. If one of them clings to you as it passes, it’s a bad sign. It means that problems are hanging on you. But if they go past, it means you are ok!”

Yes it WAS a good sign that none of the millions of bats had “clung” to me, because I would have freaking LOST my mind and had to be committed to a special, very restful hospital somewhere in Switzerland for the rest of my life.


The Earth Priest called out something.
Isseuf translated: “He says the bats are all over at the Earth Shrine now, so you may as well go on in.”

My light-hearted, mostly violence-free blog BurkinaMom’s Life in Africa almost became BurkinaMom’s DEATH in Africa yesterday.

As I have previously noted many times before, the people here are mostly INSANE drivers and one of them nearly did us in on Tuesday afternoon.

I was in the car, with Mahama driving as we returned from some errands in the center of Ouaga. Sev was in the backseat, absorbed in a game of Risk on his Nintendo DS.

Now, Mahama was going pretty fast as we tooled down the Blvd Charles de G. It is one of the very few straight, paved, four-lane roads in the whole country. It has wide dividers between the opposing traffic, separate cycle lanes and it boasts many stoplights- these are functioning, large-sized, highly visible traffic signals that tell you when to go and when to STOP. One of these fine, useful devices is located at the Babanguida intersection. As my car approached this marvel of modern technology yesterday afternoon, it was green. Not yellow. Not just about to turn red. It was good and green and my driver didn’t slow down.

Then, just for the fun of it (I guess) a car shot through the intersection from the left. If it had come from the other direction, we would have been fully broadsided and smashed to bits. As it was, the car crossed in front of the two left-hand lanes before getting into our path of travel.

This is when we found out that Mahama is not from the “pump the brakes” school of emergency manouevering. Though he has been a driver for many years, he apparently adheres to the “smash the brakes down to the floorboard in a panic” technique. This has the advantage of being instinctual, but it doesn’t work real well. The tires squealed, rubber burned, and my car (no surprise here) spun around like it was on ice.

It all went in slow motion, as these things tend to do. I saw the Kleenex vendors and newspaper hawkers standing on the corner with jaws dropped. A little tomato-can boy covered his mouth, eyes opened huge. I almost felt like waving and telling him “Don’t worry! This will probably turn out ok. Or not.” as we swung by. It seemed to happen that slowly.

Mahama and I didn’t have on seatbelts. Severin was silent in the backseat. I knew he didn’t have one on, either.

The other vehicle shot past on my side of the car as we spun. It was close- a foot to spare, if that.

My car finally stopped safely at the edge of the street, far beyond the intersection.

I looked back and saw the other car stopped in front of the grocery shop on the south. Their vehicle was also untouched, but like us, I guess they were just sitting there, shaking for a while.

Severin said “Umm…what just happened?”

This story is turning out to be somewhat of an epic. The Bad Guest part of the tale will have to be told tomorrow. Today we have:

Part III in which Burkina Mom Totally Rocks Out. Not.
It was time to face the music, in every sense of the word. After shaking hands with several of the local bigwigs, I was ushered to a seat of honor in the front row, which happened to be right next to one of the giant speakers. The mega-loud (goes to 11!), crackling, fuzzy-toned sound system is the staple of any “modern” West African festivity. But very soon they turned off the deafening pop music and got the show started.
First off, there was a traditional Mossi dance troupe with blacksmith musicians drumming on goathide djembés. (Sorry, Aslan) The men wore fluffy cotton, fringed pompom belts. Very cute. It’s to emphasize the all-important hip area, where most of the action takes place. They were good and danced for quite a long time.
As the applause died down, Yann leaned over and took out his accordion from it’s old brown case. It was time for some squeezebox! All I can say is, when Yann went into development work, the world lost a great entertainer. He was amazing! ( I probably should not admit this, but as I already have the fact that I am a geek advertised in the name of the post, I won’t hesitate. I kind of like accordion music. It probably started when I was a little kid, watching The Lawrence Welk Show (Wunnerful, wunnerful!) with my beloved grandparents. I rejected it in adolescence, as befit a “cool” person of my generation. But I eventually realised that “cool” was way over-rated. So I liked it again, especially French accordion music-Gus Viseur, Emile Vacher, etc..)
Yann walked around the stage, really confident, working the crowd. And they LOVED it! This was the first time the villagers had ever seen or heard an accordion. They seemed to appreciate the lively tunes and Yann’s obvious skill, smiling and clapping along energetically. Then one of the young “bouncers” stationed at the edge of the stage came up and did a little accompanying dance, much to everyone’s delight
It was great fun, but all too soon, Yann put away his instrument and I was called up onto stage as well.
Sort of.
“Now” the announcer said “Monsieur will sing with his wife”.
This was ok with me. What a relief. I would stay sitting in my chair behind the speaker and Yann’s wife Frieda would go up and sing! My quick “prayer” in the car had been answered and what quick service! They actually forgot me! Thanks, God!
But no, Frieda stayed seated and Antoine ushered me onto the stage.
I stood there beside Yann , looking at the crowd. There weren’t thousands of people, but there were certainly hundreds. I thought I would feel really, really bad. But I didn’t. I love to sing and the pieces we had were easy ones that I knew well. The crowd was friendly. And as for my appearance, I realised: ”Hey-these people don’t even know what a baby shower is!”
My various insecurities calmed, I was ready to sing. I wouldn’t say it was flawless, but it was pretty darn good. Love’s Old Sweet Song is a schmaltzy ballad, which I , in all modesty, excel at. Avril Lavigne I am not. In fact, I am lacking in pop sensibilities of any kind. But if you want something performed that was composed prior to 1900, I’m your girl.
Anyway, we got lots of applause and everyone was very kind.
I did little introductions for each song, as we didn’t sing any in French and I thought I should explain them. But even French speakers were few in the audience. Most of them only spoke Mooré. So, it was all about the music. They seemed to like “Malaika”, as it is quite lively and expressive. And Yann really nailed the “day-oh”s on the last number. Just as good as the Harry Belafonte version, if not better!
We got lots of thunderous applause at the end and it was over. Time to sit down and enjoy the rest of the show.

The French farmers were then called onto stage. They didn’t have to sing or dance, just make a speech and accept some gifts. There was a big square box for Marie-Gabrielle and an ominous, wide, cone-shaped parcel for Gilles. To us old-timers here in Burkina, getting a cone-shaped gift can mean only one thing: you have just received your 30^th Mossi straw hat. If you are a reasonably kind-hearted expat person living in Burkina, you will receive at minimum one or two of these hats every year as a gift. The first few are a novelty and get hung up around the house. But after 7 or 8 years, the sheer volume gets kind of cumbersome.
The gift for Marie-Gabrielle was a three meters of very fine hand woven cloth strips. The traditional cotton cloth here is made on looms that are only about a foot wide. You buy cloth in strips from the weaver and then take them to a tailor to get it them sewn together. Then the tailor cuts up the cloth to make your clothes. Quite involved. Very lovely.
Next, our Dutch friends got called onto stage. Yann made a short speech commemorating the end of his time here in Burkina. Then he graciously received his hat. He’s only lived here three years, so he probably doesn’t have too many.
Then, to my utter surprised, JP and I were called onto the stage. I had seen that there were two more gifts onstage, but I had assumed there were some other guests of honor at the party and I just hadn’t been paying enough attention to the introductions when we arrived. But no, it was us. I nearly tripped on my way back onto the stage (told you I’m a geek) but made it with no real mishap. JP gave a nice speech. Then Antoine tried to give me the microphone. My mind went blank. But then Antoine suggested that I talk about…Papiers du Sahel! So, I grabbed the mike with some enthusiasm and chattered away about the paper project for a few minutes. It’s always fun to talk about it to people, as it’s kind of an unusual and inspiring story.
Then I received a box of lovely cloth.
I like to complain in my blog about all the crazy stuff that goes wrong in my life here and what bad luck I have, but it really is just for laughs. Here’s the truth: I am very lucky and people are usually much, much kinder to me than I deserve.

The final act of the evening. was another dance troupe with Fulani musicians playing gourd drums and flutes. They also had an excellent singer. And the dancers were 10 adorable, talented young girls of about 12. They looked very sweet in their hand woven white dresses and their dancing was phenomenal.
Finally, the show was over and it was time to eat. We were led through the back door of the compound. It was quite dark, but it was clearly….a garden!

Tomorrow: Burkina Mom is a Bad Guest. srsly.

Here's the truth:If you are a person possessing two X chromasomes and an even minimal sense of modesty, the first rule of travel by car in Burkina is: Don’t Drink Anything. Drinking leads to peeing and the highway rest area "facilities" consist of roadside shrubs. Small, scrawny, practically leafless shrubs that could not even provide Paris Hilton with sufficient cover.
And while the countryside may seem deserted and traffic minimal, I guarantee you that the minute you step out of your car to enjoy a moment alone, a couple of young boys herding cattle will appear as if by magic. Then an old guy on a bike will pedal past with almost painful slowness. Finally, a bus from Mali will trundle by, the roof covered in bikes, bags, chickens, baskets and young men who couldn't get a seat inside, but have a great vantage point for being entertained by the sight of half-dressed travellers lurching around out in the bush.

So, for shorter trips, it’s just less stressful to get into the car thirsty and stay that way. But it does make you extremely anxious to reach your destination and have a glass of water. Luckily JP drives pretty fast. Even more luckily, he has pretty good reflexes, which you certainly need for highway driving here. At various points on the way to Gourcy on Saturday, he had to swerve to avoid goats, sheep, and pigs as well as a small, very adorable donkey.
When we finally got to Gourcy, it was quite a surprise, Our pal Antoine calls it his “village” but it’s actually a good-sized population center. The urban area has electricity and even boasts a nightclub called “Le Titanic”! There are no two-story buildings, though, and most of the people live out in the “neighborhoods” of Gourcy. These neighbourhoods are actually small villages, but they are considered to be part of the town. Anyway, this means that the place is very dispersed. We had to drive around quite a bit to find the party site. I took the first photo while we were searching. You can see that I’m not exaggerating when I say “dispersed”.

Antoine runs the NGO that JP works for. Gourcy is his home village and he was very graciously hosting a goodbye party for our Dutch pal Yann at the hotel/conference center he has built. I was very surprised when we finally found it. I had kept my expectations low, but was delighted to find that he and his wife have built a lovely inn/conference center with 30 rooms. It was very charming, pristinely clean and landscaped with lots of flowers and greenery. The rooms were simple and small, but perfectly nice, in a West African kind of way. (You can see the front of our room in the second picture I posted).
As I was putting my bag on the small table beside the door, JP checked out the bathroom.
“You know,” he said “The way this is set up, I could brush my teeth, pee and shower, all at the same time. What a timesaver!”
I came over to have a look, which was easy because the room was tiny and the bathroom had no door on it. Not even a curtain. And the interior of the 1 meter by 1.5 meter bathroom was set up just like many “modern” ( indoor) bathrooms here in West Africa. The toilet was in the corner, with the sink right beside it. Between the two was a drain. And set in the wall right across from them was the showerhead, with the towel bar right below. So, turning on the shower resulted in the sink, toilet and towels all getting completely drenched. It’s not a very easy way to shower, but it is particularly unpleasant for any person that might want to use the facilities after you are done washing. And as a finishing touch, the drain had no cover, just a gaping portal leading directly to the sewer line. It gave me nightmarish visions of cockroaches boiling out of it in the middle of the night, taking the lack of even a symbolic covering as an open invitation to join us. I was imagining something like that scene in The Mummy when the flesh-eating scarabs attack. (Actually, "scarab" is Ancient Egyption for "roach". Not many people know that.)

But I wasn’t going to let that bother me! I was happy to be there, sitting in the shade, drinking a large glass of water. JP went around asking after our host. He was told that Antoine was in his “garden”. We weren’t quite sure what to make of that. We asked if it was nearby, like maybe he had a little potato patch behind the hotel. But no, the “garden” was “far”, so we settled in to wait.
The guests of honor arrived soon after that. Yann and Freida unpacked their baggage and joined us. They had news from Ouaga. None of the other guests were coming! Most of the people invited are development experts and spend much of their time travelling. Unfortunately, Air Burkina employees decided to strike on the weekend. People who had planned on making it to the party were trapped in various other African cities with no hope of arriving by Saturday night. So, suddenly the party went from modest to minuscule. So we thought……

Morning is the best part of the day in Ouaga. The sun is always up around 6:30 am all year long. (It's that equatorial thing. No long, dark winters for us!) The birds make a pleasant racket outside in our treetops. The guardians make a somewhat less pleasant racket with their transister radios as they listen to the news in Mooré.
This morning was pretty typical. JP was up, per usual , around 5:30am. He's an early bird, though I cannot say that he is particularly interested by worms. He usually likes to read in the early morning. The rest of us were up by 6. I got the breakfast ready. Not like it’s an intricate task - we tend to eat cereal, though I do try to make something nice at least once a week. This morning there were whole wheat pancakes- healthy pancakes, if there is such a creature. By 6:33 the sun was up and Mal was out in the backyard pampering her beloved goats. JP was still getting ready in the bedroom : exercise, shaving, shower, etc. Now, I consider the pre-bedtime shower indispensable to any hope of an organised morning. So, while JP goads me about my forgetfulness (or not-so-early-onset senility), I tease him about his drawn-out morning rituals. It takes him forever to get ready to go anywhere! But at least he doesn’t fit the stereotype of the hygiene-impaired French person, which, btw is not an entirely unfounded one , as we shall see.
As usual, Aslan found his way into the kitchen. He had to be coaxed out by Mal waving saltine crackers and brandishing her trusty herding stick.
Al needed a hairdressing services, as I had put curlers in her hair last night. Her hair is so long that they took ages to put in and even longer to take out. It turned out very impressive, though, trés Sleeping-Beauty. The envy of the 4^th grade class
As 7 am rolled around, I was afraid the twins would be late for school. Their carpool ride was behind schedule, not for the first time. Al remarked to me: “This morning it’s X’s dad- he’s always late. He takes a long time to get ready in the morning -kind of like Papa. But I don’t know why. He doesn’t smell very good.” Ouch. She said it in a nice way, just remarking casually. But still…ouch. I tried not to laugh and suggested that she not mention it to him, as it would hurt his feelings and probably have no effect on his aroma. She assured me, rather offended, that she wouldn’t dream of it and then added “It’s just bad now because it’s cold in the morning and he keeps the windows up. It will be better when there’s more air.” Ever the pragmatist, that child. I didn’t have the heart to point out that the hot season will arrive in March, which will doubtlessly mean more sweat from the Euro-Dad , plus closed windows with the air-con on!

Everything has been going well at the paper project. The college students have done lots to help and don’t seem that offended that I can’t really remember their names. As there is no real news on that front, I think I’ll finally write and tell you the end of the story about the wedding that I really didn’t want to go to. Part I is here.
And now: A Wedding in Bogodogo, Part II.
We drove south, following the long line of cars and scooters belonging to the wedding party and guests. That’s the tradition: you drive very slowly, horn blaring all the way to the reception site. The parade turned west, then north. And then we turned east and drove a bit more. We’re having some fun now! The cars slowed…we had arrived at the reception, finally! But the neighbourhood looked quite familiar. We had been driving for half and hour and ended up at a restaurant/bar about ONE BLOCK away from where the wedding had been held! It had the look of many local nightspots in Ouaga and seemed rather unwelcoming. A wedding planner had NOT selected this venue, that’s for sure. It was surrounded by a high cement wall that had “Defense d’uriner. (Don’t pee here) written on it in huge red letters. And they don’t write that because the dogs here can read.
I knew what it would be like inside. A bunch of sharp-edged metal chairs sitting outside in the gravel. Sticky plastic table coverings. Dim light bulbs dangling. Questionable kitchen hygiene. Latrines scary enough to send you scurrying back out the gate to pee in front of the Forbidden Wall and risk dire punishment.
I just couldn’t face it.

But JP REALLY wanted to go in. Just for a minute. Then we can leave. He promised. And I hadn’t had anything to drink for a few hours now, so I figured it would be ok. By the time I needed a proper bathroom, we’d be back home.
We can just slip out, I told myself. We can just drop our present onto the gift table, look around a bit and head on home. Right. The minute we walked in the gate, we were taken to the “Protocol”. He’s the man that makes your Burkinabé wedding reception happen. He decides where people sit, makes the schedule, recites the speeches. The Protocol always wears a very sharp suit and always takes himself very seriously. His job is to make sure it all goes well and looks good.

I looked around. All the tables in the open, gravelled area were gone. There was just row after row of grey metal chairs, all facing a raised area that had two long tables and 20 or so chairs. It was all decorated wth tableclothes and flowers and was obviously intended for the bride, groom, and guests of honor.
The other guests were taking their places like an audience getting ready to enjoy a good show. It looked like it was set up for a medieval feast. But the Protocol led us right past these rows of chairs. I looked longingly at two empty ones near the back, close to the gate. But no, we were being brought up to the front. Feelings of dread started to build. It's not possible, I thought to myself. I don't even know these people.
But it was true- we were being taken up to the head table. Jp and I were going to be part of the show that everyone was getting ready to enjoy.
I was shown to my place – Not only were we at the head table, I was given a seat one chair away from the bride and groom!!!! So much for slipping out discretely. JP and I were the only white people at the party, so we were already kind of not blending in. And now we were center stage, literally. This was going to be a long night.

I`ve been back in Burkina for over a week now. Posting to the blog or even answering an email is much harder here than it was in the middle of a forest in the USA. I didn`t have my internet connection reopened until this morning. I somehow couldn`t bear the thought of dial-up again...but the waiting list time for getting anything better here is over one month. So, I got hooked up again today to my old service... only to have a sudden rainshower knock out our phone line. I`m not sure why, but it happens frequently here. It wasn`t even a storm, I swear. I suspect that they make the cables out of sugar.
So, here I am, back at the internet cafe.
I have also been very, very busy, of course. I had to organize the kids for school, which involves buying and labeling hundreds of dollars worth of school supplies. Each thing down to the last pencil has to be tagged, god help me. Then I had to get back to work at Papiers du Sahel. And then the car was emitting alarming black smoke and the brakes went out, so that had to be dealt with.
And I also had to get the goat castrated.
I have had little time for frivolities around here.
NB:today`s pic is JP and the kids on Aug 31 in Paris waiting to get on the plane for Ouagadougou.

The census-taker passed by just around Christmastime. I forgot to mention it, what with all the other excitement around here. I found his arrival delightfully timed, lining up nicely with the Biblical account of the long journey of a carpenter and his spouse- a journey prompted by a census.

Fortunately, we were not required to trek back to JP’s place of birth in northern Lorraine. The census-taker came to us, clipboard in hand, I showed him into the living room and suggested that JP be the family representative. I thought I’d just go into my office and eavesdrop a bit from in front of my computer.

He first asked JP’s name, then:

“Are you married?”

“Yes”

“How many wives?”

“Beth!” JP shouted towards the office. “How many wives are there now?”

“I forget”. I answered. If I was a quick thinker, I would have said, “ Just the one now, since I poisoned that girl you brought home last week.” But that might have scared the census guy, so maybe it’s for the best.

The interview went on to enquire about the number and ages of our children and which of them, if any, go to school.

He then asked how many motorscooters our household owns.

“None”

“Automobiles?”

“One”

“Pirogues?” ( small fishing boats)

“None”

“How many camels?”

“Umm….none.”

Donkeys?

Horses?

Goats?

Sheep?

I heard Mallory whispering urgently to JP in English “Tell him we have guinea pigs! And two turtles!! And a rabbit!”

The census guy then asked about the house- whether we have electricity, running water, radio, etc.

He went on to end the interview by asking JP for a job, which was a bit of a surprise. But I guess census-taking is just a seasonal job. If he asked in every home he went to, maybe he ended up finding something.

I was never interviewed by a census-taker when I lived in the US. But I wager that it wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining as here in Burkina.

I'll call this entry : "Spoiled Expat Brats in Ouaga". Too bad they're mine. sigh.
We went out to dinner last night. It wasn't as easy as it sounds. The electricity was out in many areas of Ouaga last night. Our first choice restaurant, a crepe place owned by some friends, turned out to be in a dark zone, so we drove on. The girls clamoured for Chinese, but as I know Severin hates it, I suggested we try a new restaurant. I'd noticed a new "American-style" place in the center of town. It was called "Happy Donald Hamburger House. What's not to like? For some reason, though,the twins were not having any of it.
As we drove up, the clamour edged toward riot level. But as the other four people in the family were looking forward to a cheeseburger, and I don't give in to tantrums, we stayed the course.
The tables were all outside and a monster-screen tv was showing a popular soccer match. We ordered. Everyone but the twins. Alexa threatened to throw herself in front of oncoming traffic, so that her death would make me sorry, sorry, sorry that I ever made her come to such a place. I finally threatened them with a week of no Nintendo DS. Mallory glared at me and crossed her arms. "Donald may be happy, but I'm not happy." she grumbled.
Things settled down. The food came after about an hour. Fast food just isn't very speedy around here. But it was actually really very good. The best hamburger I've had in Ouagadougou. Ever. And the twins ate their hotdogs and french fries (crinkle cut!!) with enthusiasm.
Yesterday, you saw that I'm a bad mom. Today, we have evidence that I've got bad kids. I guess it all balances out.

As has been previously documented in this blog. I am a far from an ideal parent. I even edge over towards being frankly bad. Latest example: Valentine’s vaccines aren’t up to date. At our latest doctor visit (just a check-up), the medecin waved the Carnet de Santé at me and said that she should have had a booster over a year ago. Ooops. Big oops, even. In a country where polio is at high risk of reappearing, it’s nothing to get lax about.
So, the great treasure hunt began. Finding vaccines here is no simple matter. The most basic childhood vaccines are often not available for months at a time. The drug companies have a lot to answer for. I hunted all over the city and no DT Coq Polio shot was to be found. I snatched up the last DT Coq (diptheria, tetanus, whooping cough) at a pharmacy in the center of town. But it lacked the polio vaccine.
I took Valentine to the nurse at the health center, so she could have the stuff injected.
The nurse suggested that we track down some oral polio vaccine. We tried at the Burkinabé national health unit downtown where they give yellow fever shots for a dollar. No luck. They said to try the Dispensaire Urbain, one of the national health clinics downtown.
It took a bit of searching, but we eventually found the group of low, crumbling cement buildings. It was very crowded, of course. The government health services aren’t free, but they cost much less than at private clinics. Valentine and I wandered for a while and ended up behind one of the buildings, where a young woman was scrubbing out a huge cooking pot. I guess we looked just as clueless as we felt, as she abandoned her dirty pot for a moment and kindly led us around front to the main door of the pharmacy in a large hallway. There were four other doors, all with long lines of people waiting to consult a nurse or doctor. The pharmacy line was short, but there seemed to be a problem. A slight young woman with long braids was pounding on the door.
“Sylvie!! Sylvie!! I know you’re in there! Open up!”
She pounded some more. Then she opened up her cell phone and had a go at that. No answer. Then she started pounding and shouting again.
Valentine and I watched the show and speculated. Who was Sylvie? Why would she lock herself in the pharmacy? Her pal pounding on the door sounded mad enough to kill her. “I don’t think I’d open the door until that mad girl gave up and left” observed Valentine wisely.
Then, a Person in Authority arrived. You could tell by the markers of power: A hefty physique, a huge pale-colored boubou in stiff, shiny, crackling bazin and plenty of gold jewelry. She sized up the situation and asked “Are you sure she’s in there?”
“Yes” the girl in blue answered ferociously. “She’s turned off her phone and locked the door, but I KNOW she’s in there! And nobody else has a key!” It was 4:30 and the pharmacy had been closed since lunch.
The boss-lady took the young woman outside and they walked across to another building.
I turned to Valentine and said “Enough fun. Time to investigate.” I’d been reading Lord Peter Wimsey stories lately and was feeling inspired. We went outside and turned right. A little farther on was a window, partially open. Using my razor-sharp detecting skills, I figured out that had to be the pharmacy. We strolled over and had a look. We could easily see in.
“Well, unless Sylvie is crouched under the desk in the corner, I’d say she’s not in there”, said Valentine. And she was right. The room was quite bare. Just one desk and some shelves. No rogue pharmacist was barricaded within.
As is too often the case in Burkina, the shelves in the pharmacy were very empty. There were just a few sad, scattered boxes. No sign of a refrigerator for storing vaccines. We turned towards the front gate and started walking to the car.
Life here is many things, but never boring.

Happy New Year! It was a quiet celebration around here. Lots of people stayed home on the 31st, as the security situation is still not the best. The police are still not back in full force. In fact they are using the Gendarmes to direct traffic in the city.
On January 1st, we did go out in the afternoon, paying a visit to some old friends. M. is a big wheel in the Assemblé Generale (the Burkinabé equivalent of the Senate). His terrace was teeming with various local politicians downing impressive quantities of whiskey and very nice French champagne. Much nicer champagne than WE had at Christmas, I assure you. So, I took advantage and our hostess, D., regaled me with the story of how they experienced the pre-holiday CRS/Army clash. D and a friend had driven toward the center of town to join their husbands at a wine tasting, but then turned back when they saw soldiers “armed to the teeth” stopping cars and harassing drivers. Back at home, she phoned M., who told her to come anyway. “It’s nothing”, he assured her. She set out again and did get stopped this time. When the soldiers inspected her ID papers, I guess they saw she was someone not to mess with, but were not happy about it. They threw her papers at her and told her to move on. As soon as she and her friend reached the meeting place, they all left again for home. They got back with no major problems, but during the night the fighting was close to the home of the French couple. They got a round fired through the wall of their living room.
I found it interesting that M., as someone high-up in government circles, got no info or warning about what was going on. At least the US Embassy eventually got around to issuing a warning to citizens.

What I saw yesterday:
The guardian at the front gate of the ORSTOM (where JP works), wearing a crocheted scarf wrapped around his head like a turban. Multicolored. It looked like a Home Ec project gone very, very bad.
Our guardian, Salfo, bundled up in a long down jacket, with a ski hat pulled down nearly over his eyes.
Our other guardian, old Moussa, wearing something over his hands. “Are those mittens?!” I whispered to JP. No, they were socks. A pair of men's brown dress socks.
Next: A baby bundled onto his mom’s back in a bright red and purple cloth . The child was dressed in a pink winter coverall like I used to put on my kids during the snowy winters in the French Alps.
Everybody here is talking about the freezing weather! Yes, it’s Winter in Ouagadougou. The temperatures are below 90° F every day and plunge down to 60° at night. I guess you become accustomed to heat eventually, but even after seven and a half years here, I don’t find 84° “cold”. I am actually finding it very nice and wish it was like this all year long! I could do without the pervasive dust, though. The skies are a permanent yellow-grey haze. Out of curiosity, I googled to see what the world had to say about Ouaga’s weather. The BBC reports that visibility in Ouaga is “excellent”. I guess it is if you think visibility of about one city block is good.

Valentine has one more week to finish her art project for school: a patchwork quilt in the shape of a country. It’s about halfway done. I don’t know how people that don’t have a sewing machine at home are managing. I guess they have to take it to a tailor and have it sewn. Which sort of detracts from the learning aspect. I can’t imagine they mean for the kids to make them all by hand. That would take so long that they wouldn’t have time to do their other homework. Uh oh. I just overheard Valentine showing her quilt to Severin and his pal Daniel. “Umm….. It’s a chicken?” Danel ventured. It’s supposed to be the United States. I better go see if I can help her to get it looking less animal and more continental..

Here, at last, is a pic of the fabled Thanksgiving cake. Valentine's first comment upon seeing it was: "Well, as long as it's not turkey flavored, I'm ok with it."
I haven't been blogging the last few days because I knew that if I sat down to write, I would only rant about my car. This last month it has spent more time at the repair garage than at home. I am now beginning to suspect that is is possessed by demons. When I add oil,which is often, the car just kind of rinses its mouth with it and delicately spits it back out. Huge, expensive pieces of metal in the engine keep breaking off. It's grim. Add to this the fact that I keep getting stranded all over town and have to flag down "green taxis". These are unmetered, barely road-worthy taxis driven by men notorious for gouging tourists. This is a rather fatiguing, as it usually takes a while to make the driver understand that I am not going to pay 10 times the normal fare. It's sometimes hard to keep cool. "I'm not a tourist!" I want to shriek, "Look at me! Am I wearing brand-new safari clothes head to toe? Am I wearing socks with my sandals? A giant sunhat? Shorts? It should be obvious that I'm not going to pay 1500 cfa for a 150 cfa taxi ride!"
On the other hand, things at the VAO are going great. We are set up over there and starting to sell a bit. It's a bit slow, but the other vendors assure me that things pick up in December. That's tomorrow!

There was a full eclipse over the desert on the 29th of March. Mary Lynn saw it in eastern Niger. I had thought of getting her on here as a guest blogger, but she had so many emails to catch up on, I didn’t have the heart to ask her to do any more work.
So, you’re stuck with me.
She signed up for the trip over a year ago. A hard-working lawyer with a passion for travel, she knew she’d better stake out her claim to some quality vacation time. Perhaps March in the Teneré was not the ideal choice, as the temperatures are at a maximum then, but there was an interesting expedition being planned to get a good view of the full eclipse. She’d gotten a taste for the African desert two years ago on a visit to Burkina and decided to really experience it.
Chris, who was leading the expedition, is an experienced adventure traveler and had managed to gather a group of 12 from all over the world- South Africa, Italy, England, Poland, Mexico……..Mary Lynn was the only one from the United States.
This diverse group set out from Agadez in early March with their Tuareg driver/guides and 3 four wheel drive Toyotas. They spent 15 days making a big loop around the Teneré. They drove long distances frequently punctuated with stops for digging out a vehicle, changing a tire or making some other repair.
The photos Mary Lynn took show a surprisingly varied landscape: huge dunes of pale yellow sand, featureless plains, forests of eroded rock arches, hills of white marble streaked with blue, and rock formations covered with prehistoric paintings.
The eclipse itself was very dramatic--as the sky got darker, the temperature plummeted. Then one by one stars became visible and the moon became a black disk in the sky surrounded by the thin yellow rays of the solar corona.
About five days later, the desert phase of her trip was over, and Mary Lynn caught a bus down from Agadez to Niamey. After a night there, she got another bus to Ouagadougou.
Her stay here was pretty calm. It was a chance for her to unwind, and enjoy sand-free food. She was quite a good sport and very gracious about following me around as I took care of my daily stuff- Papiers du Sahel, school runs, grocery shopping, etc.
I also took Mary Lynn to visit Yvonne, a woman that I have known for a few years. She has had many trials in her life- crippled by polio at age three, orphaned shortly after and left to live in the streets alone at only eight years old. She now has twin babies, just born two months ago. You can see them in the picture with Mary Lynn. They are called Jacob and Elisabeth.