For those of you who are not devotees of the genre, a feature found frequently on amateur mom-blogs is "Wordless Wednesday". Every mid-week post is just photos with no text.
I find it a bit dull, to be honest.
Instead, I've created "Taciturn Tuesday".

Here's a pic from the start of Sunday's desperate scramble down to the foot of the cliff.

This is my car. If you come to our corner of France, you can't miss it. I am the ONLY person in the Haute Savoie (possibly in all of France) with a NFP bumber sticker. (Thanks Art!)

This is my garden. I have been too ashamed to post a pic of it because it is so very tiny. I know that my constant complaining must have made it sound gigantic....but it is a dainty little thing. I don't know WHY it's such hard work!

And there you go.

I'm not sure I'll do this again.

But then, maybe I will.

Yesterday's post got cut off midway through because I had to run off to make a quick lunch for the crew. Then we headed up to a nearby landmark called the Saleve with a few friends who had proposed us a fun walk in the country. This is it:

I had told our pals that our kids weren't used to really long walks (and don't like them much) and maybe we should take it easy the first time out. We used to go walking sometimes back in Ouaga, but haven't done much since we got back to France. They had said this was no problem- we'd take the cable car to the top and hike down.

But it was only about an hour into the walk that I began to realise that we had radically different definitions of "fun". My idea of a fun afternoon is a gently sloping path through a wooded glade. Perhaps you observe some forest wildlife and occasionally stop to admire the view.

But their idea of fun seems to involve extreme danger and discomfort. Don't get me wrong: I CAN scramble down narrow, steep, rock-strewn paths that will throw you to a rocky death 100 meters below if you make one false move. In fact, I would willingly do it all day, if I were, for example, fleeing for my life before advancing Nazi troops.

It just wasn't any FUN. In fact, it was three solid hours of not fun.

I would SO rather have gone to a Renaissance Faire...or a museum...or the supermarket...or the dentist for a nice root canal.

But, as you can see, I lived to complain about it and that's what counts, right?

Here, for your edification, is the original Muse video of their song that's on the Twilight soundtrack (as mentioned in my previous post). This is NOT excerpts for Twilight. In fact, even though Twilight is a movie about blood sucking vampires, it is far less scary than this disturbing video.

After we listened to "Supermassive Black Hole" in the car on Saturday night, I turned to the kids and said "You know what? Actually, the original title of this song was "Stellar-mass Black Hole", but they didn't think it sounded cool enough. So they upgraded it to "Intermediate-mass", but that sounded even more underwhelming. So they ended up going with "Supermassive". True story."

They didn't believe me and even threatened to take away all my copies of "New Scientist"'.
I know it's hard on teens, having a Nerd Mom. That's why I didn't go on to tell them my thoughts on the lyrics of the song. For example: "Glaciers melting in the dead of night"?
Oooh! Scary! WAY scarier than "Glaciers melting in the daytime due to solar radiation, as glaciers tend to do".

« 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!

JP had seen flyers posted around town advertising a « nature walk » sponsored by a local French democratic association. He thought it would be a nice family activity. I carefully considered how to sell the concept to the kids. The lure of learning to identify local trees and shrubs would have limited appeal to my crew . The social attractions seemed like the best bet.
“I guess Marie and her family will be there?” I asked JP, thinking of her four kids that are the same age as ours.
“No! Definitely not. This is the Democratic walking group. All the Leftists will be there. Marie’s family is with the other walking group”
“Right. We better not have Socialists and Fascists looking at shrubs together.” I observed.
We are the odd ones. The only family that has friends in both camps and doesn’t see how walking is a politically charged activity. The Conservative group is made up of our friends from church and the Leftist group is mostly made up of teachers from the French school.
In the end, the primary selling point was that the event was happening in a park only a ten-minute walk away from our house. The twins were quite happy. The older two would have preferred to stay home and play Sims on my computer, but were pretty easily persuaded to put on their sunscreen and hats and come along.
We knew it would be hot and dusty. It’s the end of February, so that means there hasn’t been a drop of rain for about five months. The temperature was about 108°F. But JP wanted to learn about plants, I wanted some exercise and the kids were hoping to see some friends.

As we entered the park, I was reminded of the old Wendy’s commercial where the old lady asks plaintively “Where’s the Beef?”. We were saying “Where’s the leaves?” The majority of the trees had already lost all of their foliage. So, there were two problems right from the start: no shade and few intact leaves for identification.
We walked down the dusty path, the orange African sun blazing down on us and every few yards our park guide would stop in front of what he apparently thought was a promising specimen. Quite often, it was just a dried-looking stick poking up out of the hard earth.
“Bombax Costatum” he announced proudly. “Used for firewood and mask-carving. They grow very big.”
We all stood around and looked at the stick.
The guide leaned over and picked up a shrivelled, grey object off the ground. “Here’s a leaf.”
It crumbled.
“ They are usually green, of course. And when the tree is older, it looks much different than this.”
Hmm…I was beginning to suspect this tree-identification walk was not going to shape up as well as we’d hoped. The guide knew the names of the trees, but no idea how to tell other people how to identify them. And the conditions were…less than optimal.
Add to this the fact that there were few kids, just a couple very young ones in strollers and one very serious 9 year old with a notebook and pencil. Oddly, she seemed to be having a good time. She certainly didn’t complain the way my kids did. After the first hour, they had had absolutely had enough. The walk was taking much longer than we had thought. And then we ran out of water. Ooops. But we were closer to the exit by this time, so it made no sense to go back. The only way to go was forward, towards the snack bar and the promise of cold Cokes.
“I’m dying” Alexa announced for the 4000^th time.
“If you could die more quietly, that would be great. Otherwise, I suggest you keep walking. You are 15 short minutes from a drink .” I said briskly. I’m not sure that I’m a Bad Mom, but I am certainly not very sweet.
I could see no one was in danger of dehydration. The kids even stopped when the guide pointed out a small green plant with tiny seedpods on it. It looked so beautiful amid all the dust and dried leaves. We all leaned over the tiny thing, admiring it like it was carved in emerald.
That’s been one of the best lessons I have learned by living here for years. I’ve learned to appreciate whatever comes along. In this blog, I complain and criticise a lot. But that’s just because I find that’s the best way to extract the humour from situations. Appreciation just isn’t funny. But I do actually spend most of my days here enjoying whatever small, nice things happen to come my way, be it a new friend, a cold Coke or a small, green plant.
BTW: Nobody died, not even Alexa.