So I’ve been doing some traveling. Tiebele with its 16th century painted houses, Gaoua with its Lobbi culture, Brusssels with its airport-closing snowfall, and Grand Prairie with my dog . . . you know, just a quick trip here and there.

About a month ago I harvested the first of my Pô cantaloupe. Very, very large . . . the mother of all cantaloupe. Perfectly ripe. Smelled oh-so cantaloupey even through the rind . . . and also through the hole in the rind where a mouse had gnawed. But hey, I’ve eaten after a hen, so no mouse was going to stop me (us) from enjoying a melon. I took it home to be refrigerated and returned it to my bureau the following morning. Everyone seemed to really enjoy their first cold cantaloupe; but perhaps the Burkinabe are simply too polite to say that they prefer watermelon.

The five second rule doesn’t apply in this country. Drop it on the floor -- eat it. Drop it in mud -- wash it in amoeba-filled water and eat it. Mouse gnaws on your fruit . . . cut-away the mousy bits and eat it. Evidently Burkinabe mouse mothers teach their children well. Despite Hassan’s liberal application, no amount of mouse poison halted the mouse consumption of cantaloupe. After my recent travels, I returned to Pô to find that my cantaloupe garden had been excavated and replaced with cool season onions and cabbage. When rainy season returns, me and some mouse mothers are going to go round and round. I will have cantaloupe this summer.

Shortly after the cantaloupe harvest in early December I boarded a bus for Burkina’s southwest . . . plan being to visit a friend in Gaoua, stop in Bobo-Dioulasso to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the nation’s independence, and then go on south to Banfora to see the Cascades. I was also on a mission for bamboo. Gaoua is fantastic. I had lunch at The Four Seasons. Then I visited a museum dedicated to the Lobbi people. The Lobbi women pierce their upper and lower lips and fill the holes with two thimble-size wooden pegs. Holy Mother! Ouch! When the women are angry with their husbands the two pegs are replaced with a single long peg that seals their mouth. This gives the men the ol’ silent treatment.

Returning from Gaoua’s Lobbi museum, I didn’t feel terrific. Dehydration, I thought. By the evening I had a high fever. The next morning I caught the bus for Bobo, and when I arrived I had a temperature of 103. I was quickly returned to Ouagadougou where I spent a week in the Med Unit. Why? Dengue Fever, also known as break-bone fever. So the ol' malaria mosquito takes the night shift. She only bites from dusk til dawn. But the mosquito that carries dengue works days carrying the dengue virus. The bitch! There is no protection, no prophylaxis. And this mother of a mosquito is always out there . . . waiting.

Finally, on the day that I was released from Med Unit to return home to Pô, I received word that my own mother was hospitalized in the U.S. Long story short: I was returned to the U.S. for two weeks . . . from just before Christmas until a few days after New Year’s. Not altogether a bad thing. Thanks, mother; and I’m glad you’re better now.

So between my Dengue and my mother’s illness, I was away from Pô for just over four weeks. How will I ever reintegrate? Is my APCD correct . . . does Dengue Fever really sound more exotic than malaria? Is there really a Four Seasons in Gaoua? Do you really think that those Lobbi husbands mind the silent treatment? We can only speculate.