Celebrating Easter

The standard operating procedure for a Burkinabe holiday:

1) Find a big shady tree
2) Invite all your friends.
3) Get the women cooking.  They are only to approach the men with prepared food or questions about how the men would like their food prepared.  (I'm being a little harsh here, it's not a strict rule, it's just the accepted rule)
4) Crank up the music so conversation is nearly impossible
5) Leap frog the chairs in time with the movement of the sun. So the receding edge of the shade is always moving to the leading edge.
6) Leap frog, eat, drink, nap, repeat (10am to 10pm)

Usual fare includes rice with various sauces, popcorn and these fishy tasting chip things, palm wine, sodas and maybe some meat of some mysterious species.

 That big yellow jug in the center is full of palm wine (banjii).  Straight out of the palm tree it is a sweet juice.  Left alone for a few hours it ferments into a beer level alcohol strength.  Left over night and out in the sun all afternoon it's about as strong as moonshine.

 Look out!!!  The sun is touching him!  Get that man some shade!  But seriously, a square inch of sun hits you and the whole group is clucking about moving out of the heat.

These festivities are fun for an hour or two.  Like American holidays, you get bored if there's not a football game on.

Mango's are back

My last mango season.  I doubt I'll ever be able to match the one's from the tree by my house anywhere in USA.  I'm comforted by the fact that I'll be trading mangos for burritos in August.

I still like to eat mangos with a knife.  Most volunteers eat them like apples the village way.  I haven't gone that native.  My village friends think it's really funny the way I cut up the mango halves into squares:

I still haven't found a translation for fancy in Jula.

The doors are always open at the Bobo office

 Whenever I want to spend a couple of nights away from the simple life in village, I can come to the PC office in Bobo Dioullasso.  It's a small regional office that supports volunteers who are in the southwest of the country and a little more distant from the capital.  It's a magical place.

 Sometimes our work requires access to a computer or internet that we just can't get in site or even in cities near site:  quarterly reports, looking up information for a project or looking at opportunities for after service has finished.  There's a small library with all kinds of information on languages, project ideas, lesson plans and even novels left behind by years of previous volunteers. 

There's a kitchen complete with fridge and stove for cooking.  A bathroom with a toilet.  A room with AC!  It's practically America.  

 

 There are mango trees everywhere in Burkina, but we have one within the walls of the office compound, so they don't all get poached by wandering packs of elementary school kids. 

Sometimes you have one of those days where you have giardia.  I had a couple of those days last August.  If a volunteer is sick, they can go all the way to Ouagadougou to visit the main office medical unit, but that's such a hassle.  Buses are slow and not always air conditioned.  It can take 6 hours from Bobo to Ouaga.  Luckily, there is a private medical room that you can only use if you're sick that has it's own bed and AC and privacy from the rest of the house.  If you're sick, but not too sick, a couple days here is just what the doctor ordered.

 It might not look like much, but its our little slice of heaven

 I can't imagine what life would be like without this getaway in Bobo.  I love being in my village,  but I've experienced a strange phenomenon that I know has affected other volunteers.  After a couple of years in your village, you get to the point where being around other languages makes you uncomfortable.  Even going from my region of Gouin/Jula speakers to Mossi country in Ouagadougou is unsettling.  Sometimes you need to get back into a city to keep from immersing too far.

 

And sometimes you just want to read a book on a porch surrounded by walls next to a pretty pink tree where people can't walk by and yell "hey whitey" at you.

Sugar Cane Harvesting

I haven't been able to get a good explanation of why they burn the sugar before harvesting.  But they do and then a bunch of squirrels and snakes and stuff run out from the fire and there is a line of guys with their dogs to kill the snakes.  Maybe its the snake hazard that makes them burn it or the burning helps harvesting.  All I know is that it is still delicious despite the burning.  See previous post for eating sugar cane.

The Importance of Headphones

Notice anything missing in this picture?

The pot handle fell off.  I was wondering what to do with it and decided to keep it in case I needed it someday.  My engineering education makes me see everything as a piece with which to solve a problem, so I hold on to a lot of junk.

Then, a couple of days later, my headphones snap.  The wire wasn't damaged, but if I wanted to listen to music I would need to hold the left headphone on my head and who wants to do that?  When I get bored in village, music is a big pick me up.  It's essential for bush taxi rides into town, it's no fun riding along with a cow in the back seat and a villager next to you asking if they can have your bike.  No one bothers you when you're in the zone and nothing says "the zone" like a pair of over the ear headphones.  As a side note, I doubt I'll ever go back to ear buds.  The sound quality is lower, the ear damage seems like it would be worse and I don't mind the big headphones sitting on my head in public, I already had a big head to begin with.

I had to fix my headphones and I needed a piece of metal, slightly rounded like a head, that I could use as a splint.  Now where was that pot handle...

                                                       

I took about an hour, but these kind of repair jobs are fun for me.  I enjoy the distraction, it takes me back to my K'nex days.  I had a bunch of old wire laying around from when I made an extendable light switch so that I could sleep outside in the hot season and still control the lights with my door locked.  I took of the insulation and tore up my fingers tying it real tight around the handle, but I got it on there nice and tightlike.

Now I can rock again.

And my headphones have a handle now that I can also wrap the cord around during travel.

Parking

Parking spot outside of my bank in Banfora.  Donkeys and motorcycles only.  Sorry, no camels.

Making Tomato Sauce in a 3rd World Country

Ingredients:

Village                                                      

4-5 tomatos and one 70g packet tomato sauce

2 cloves garlic

1 medium onion

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper

Pasta
Palm Oil
Powdered Spicy Pepper

City
Basil
Oregano


Tomatos
Cut out the center by stabbing a square into both ends.  Boil them for 30 seconds and, when they've cooled, the skins will peel right off.  If you are really fancy, like me, you can scoop the seeds out.  Cut them up into chunks.

Sauce
Heat up some palm oil in the sauce pot, then simmer the garlic and onions for a minute.  Add 2 or 3 cups of water (adding too much just means that you wait a little longer for it to boil off).  Add the tomato paste, a dash each of basil and oregano, salt and pepper (I don't have measuring spoons, I just imagine I'm salting and peppering a plate of fries and stop when I think it's enough).  Drop in the bay leaf and the cut up tomatos.  I also like to spice it up with some peppers.  There are powdered habanero-esque peppers available here.

Cover the sauce and let simmer for 15 minutes, so the flavors can mix up.  Uncover the sauce and let it boil down to desired consistency, it can take 15 more minutes for me sometimes.

If you are in a city instead of a village, you can even add some mozzarella cheese.