01/26/2013
Always being reminded of my Mother, which I love, whom I love dearly! For everything.
Last night, like so many nights, I am reminded of my mother. In the black of the night, with no electricity, no cars, no big screen TV's, no computers, not even a cold Coca-cola the kids have each other and their imaginations and their own energy. I hear a group of about 10 to 20 young little girls, I would imagine by the pitch of their voice, all chanting in unison, all clapping in unison, all singing in unison. That is what the women do, they all get together in a big group and they sing of chant. It is amazing.
I saw the same thing in the last village I lived in, but that time it was grown women, the women of the village chanting or singing together to make entertainment. It is amazing the wonderful things that are produced when you do not have alcohol on every corner to aid as a crutch for your amazing boredom. Where you are actually encouraged by society to go and drink because society has lost all imagination and therefore any fun and enjoyment there is. The only enjoyment comes from going to a bar with "your friends" and getting drunk. I speak like this, and actually can speak like this because I have lived this exact life I speak of. I lived it for 25 years of my life. And I was pretty good at that fake life of fake fun. It is fake because everything produced by alcohol disappears when your blood becomes less saturated by the drug. And again, with a disclaimer I write this. I am not trying to say alcohol is good or bad or otherwise, all I am doing is explaining the reality of the situation, and based on your personal prefrences, or your particular lifestyle and how my words lend credibility to it, you can make up your own mind.
But all I know is that it is so amazing listening to women or girls all together, screaming, clapping, chanting, or singing in the middle of somewhere in the pitch black. You can hear the energy and the joy in their voices. It is such an amazing picture you get in your mind trying to imagine this group of females all gathered together in someones court, or in a public area all making this beautiful sound together. I love it so.
I have also seen the same thing in the daytime, as I pass the school and the boys and the girls are seperated on the playground. The boys usually doing something physical, like some form of futbol, with whatever they can find for a ball. The girls are usually gathered together, with their arms around each other and they are all singing or chanting in unison, moving toward each other and then away from each other. I suppose it is like a little game, one group v. the other group where they sing in unison and move toghether while the other group backs up in unison until it is their turn to sing.
Everytime I see this it reminds me of my Mother because she is so special and so innocent like these beautiful little girls who will maybe never be overtaked by the love of money or the love of alcohol. They may never grow cold, callous, and bored.
Another thing that amuzes me everytime I see it would be 12 year old children driving around on a moped or even a motorcycle, depending on size I suppose. I saw this all the time in the city I trained in, and now I see it all the time in the village I live in. It is wild to me, but it is just accepted here. It is a reality here in Burkina Faso.
As I said, it is amusing until you get into a van/taxi to be driven two hours by a guy who looks to be about 13 or 14 years old. I had just got into Banfora, the regional capital, after a 2.5 hour brusse taxi ride through unpaved, uneven, ununiform roads/trails through the country of Africa. Many times there are holes in the road, so many times the taxi/van drives on the complete opposite side of the road for 10 or 15 minutes, as we are the only car on the road. An occasional motorcycle will pass us or pass by in the opposite direction, and the occasional person biking or walking gets passed by.
As we get into Banfora there is a 9 year-old telling me that the big Rakieta bus leaves at 12 noon and it is 10 am right now. He tells me that the "petit Rakieta" bus is leaving now. I decide I will leave now rather than wait for two hours to take the big bus to Bobo, where I have to board another bus for a 6 hour trip to Ouagadougou. I let them put my bike on top of the van/taxi and get in the car to go. There is about 10 women who were from another country as I could tell by their hair, their dress, and their distinct scarring and tattoos. I later found out it was a group of women from Niger who came to Burkina for some kind of medical treatment. Burkina is a very very poor country, one of the poorest in the world, and Niger is even more poor than Burkina.
There is also another man in the van who is around 55 years old. He is a very friendly man who talks in limited to no French to me and we converse and smile back and forth. Then I look at the driver, and OHHHHHHHHHH! It is the 13 of 14 year old kid, at the helm with the van running. I think, "WOOOW, Wow, wow, this was funny before, kind of cute. But now this is just strange. This is not good. Is this little kid going to be driving us to Bobo for my next bus?"
I looked at the women and the man, all of whom were African and a bit more experienced in African travel than I. Noone seemed to mind, noone thought anything of it. I just watched and waited, in a state of shock. I thought we were going to switch drivers and leave. All of a sudden the little boy puts the van in drive and starts driving down the crowded road. WHOA. Ok, everyone else seems fine with it, I guess it is ok. He makes he was through town, and we are on the way out of town and all of a sudden he pulls over, in jumps a man of about 30 years old and we take off for my next bus. Disaster averted. Wow, that was a close one.
01/12/3013
No refrigerator, No problem
No electricity, No problem
No transport, No problem
No market or stores, I will make do.
No sleep, BIG PROBLEMS!
Last night I could not get any sleep. I woke up crabby, groggy, and just very unmotivated and unproductive the whole day.
About a week ago, as I was studying Julakan, the local language of the village I am assigned to, the language that 100% of the people speak, while maybe about 10% to 20% speak Frech, I hear rustling in my bags. I flash my flashlight to no avail. I cannot see what it is making the noise. I am not sure if it is a lizard, a snake, a rat, some other African creature foreign to me, or just a mouse.
As I try to fall asleep on my cot, I keep hearing the creature rustle around in my bedroom. I live in a two room house, the first room when you enter the house is a kitchen, and the other room is my bedroom, both of equal size. It works perfectly. I still hear the noises and am concerned, but try to block it out and go to bed. I already searched, opened bags, moved bags around, nothing.
As I can't really sleep as I hear the noises constantly, I lie there tired and longing for sleep, hoping the noises stop. Then as I am about to fall asleep I feel something on my shoulder. Half-awake I put my hand on my shoulder to make sure it is just an illusion of a dream. That is when I feel a body with fur in my hand. I freak out and toss it off onto the ground. I reach for my flashlight and turn it on, nothing.
The next morning I awake and go to my neighbor Abu, a good Muslim who prays 5 times a day and is a father of three beautiful children whom I love. I ask him if he has a mouse trap I can use and he gets me one and comes into my house. I tell him that it was on my shoulder last night and show him a bunch of poop next to the wall behind my bed, as evidence that I have a mouse. I will explain that later. He explains to me that no mouse can sneak in, that it had to come the open front door.
We shake the bags a little bit, where I heard the mouse last night, and lo and behold a little mouse runs out, and into the kitchen. Abu gets on the ground to seal the room off and prevent entry into my bedroom again. He tells his brother, who is visiting from the Cote d'Ivoire to search for the mouse. I saw where it went so I go over to where it is hiding and move some things around and it starts to run wild again. It is running towards Saliya, he is a city boy from Abidjan and misses the mouse. It runs toward Abu, and I look at Abu and he smiles at me. He has the little mouse in his hands, with the mousetrap next to his leg. HE CAUGHT THE MOUSE IN HIS HANDS. The Human Mousetrap! He took the mouse outside and threw it on the ground twice and killed it.
I thought, Oh Yes! The end of my problems. The end of my sleepless nights. Even though I did sleep just fine after I threw it off my shoulder. And it was just a mouse, and did not bother me, until it was crawling on top of me. Little did I know.
The many droplings of poop I found behind my bed were not actually mouse droppings as I suspected. Actually I am sure that some of them were, but not all. The pooper actually happened to be above me. The mysterious poop had come from bats.
I did not find this out until 01.12.13 when I am trying to sleep and I hear poop fall and hit the little cardboard nightstand next to my bed. I turned on my flashlight and looked up and I could not tell if I was seeing a mouse or a bat. It had squeezed through the little gap between roof and a wooden plank that supported the roof, nailed to the inside wall of the house. I got up to make get a brighter flashlight, one that I had just put new batteries in, so that I could be sure of what I was seeing. At that juncture I was 99% sure it was a bat, although I couldn't see the wings and it looked like a mouse, but I thought to myself again and deduced it was a bat.
So I laid back down again to go to sleep. At this time I hear some rumbling in the kitchen where I have my food stored. Out in the open next to the stove. Not very much food, and nothing left open. I get up to make sure that what I suspect is happening is actually happening, and as I shine my flashlight I see a mouse right on the table trying to get in the food. So I try to grab it, but it is too quick for me and scatters away. Now I have identified all the noises that are going on and am put more at ease that no iminent danger exists.
I lay back down to try to fall asleep so that I can sleep that night, because I do not do well with no sleep. Not anymore. I used to be able to see it the dark, I used to be able to almost float, I used to be able to function with no sleep for days. But I no longer have that ability. C'est la vie!
As I lay back down I cannot fall asleep as all I can hear is poop falling, little squeaks from the bat and the mouse, and I hear the mouse enter my room and is now climbing on the desk that I write this journal on. As I am listening to these noises I hear, whaaa wha wha wha wha wha wha. That is when I knew it was a bat. The bat flew from one side of the room to the other. I took my flashlight to try to find it and then I heard it in flight again. Back to the other side of the room. Then as I lay there I swear I hear the mouse trying to crawl up the metal posts of my cot to crawl on me. Is it just my mind playing tricks on me, or am I under siege?
Needless to say, I did not sleep very well at all and the next day I was useless and felt bad for being so unproductive and crabby. Abu came into my room and filled the little space bewteen the roof and the wooden plank in with paper and a stick. Now there is no way that the bats will be flying in my room or pooping on my pillow as I sleep.
I am safe again(haha), at the sure and trusty hands of Abu.
And as I wrote this two days ago, I awake this morning, 01.14.13 to watching a little mouse run all over the chair that I had the carpenter of the village make me. Like it is a jungle jim for mice. And after I just wrote you what my typical day would be like, I got up to brush my teeth in a bucket in my kitchen and lo and behold I see a little mouse playing around, then it takes off and right into my room. One rule only, no climbing on me as I sleep!
And an important update. I am definitely not as ruff and tuff as I made myself out to be. All I did was hear mice stream through my door last nite, and therefore could not sleep. I know that they are not dangerous to me, but the thought of having mice crawl all over me as I sleep really just freaks me out. I am not sure what I am going to do about that problem. I am going to get some dried calabass shells, to hang up so that they cannot look at any food, as I am the only one in the whole community that has food in their house. Everyone else cooks outside, and they keep the food and the pots and pans outside. And besides, the people of the community do not eat what I eat. They eat either Inyams, To, made of corn, or rice every single day, for every meal. The mice are not interested in their food, and it is all outside anyway. I have to figure out how to aliviate this problem, as I do have to sleep.
