This Peace Corps thing is hard. Here's my bureau, GaMo Wigna. Terrible place to visit . . . totally lacking in lush greenery and fruit trees.  No place to linger in the shade and ponder the Kassim language and customs. Who wants to look at a charming mural and listen to song birds? Who has the patience to see the papayas growing larger each day? Someone should really plant some nice shruberies . . . maybe add a few benches on which to relax. Or . . . maybe someone should consider a new mural. Wait! Someone has! There's our local artist -- same nice gentlemen whom I hired to paint the inside of my humble hut.

So, just when I can't bear it any longer . . . when too many papayas and flowers take their toll, this is what I'm faced with -- the park just outside the gate of my bureau. I call it a park. There's constant shade, and the nice owners of the Pyramide restaurant and grocery bring out little tables and chairs each morning. Nice place to join the locals for a morning beer. Yes, that's right . . . should I choose, I can stop here for a beer or a soda on my way home for lunch and repose. I had some of my Kassim lessons here last week. Nassara speaking Kassim drew quite a crowd, including a number of the local military. I think I heard my Kassim instructor say to them, "Come see your new nassara . . . if she gets a phrase correct you can watch her hop up and down." Maybe not.

Let's step back into the bureau. What's this? Why, it's preparations for the new mural. This time, an image of the Nazinga nature preserve and the sites of GaMo Wigna's environmental work surrounding the park. Remember, got to keep those elephants happy; and the mural should be complete by the time the Canadians arrive for the bike tour this weekend. GaMo Wigna's Canadian NGO [CSI] has put together a bike tour here in Nahouri province. This means that Canadian tourists are paying plenty of money to ride their bikes in the heat, visit villages, and view lovely community gardens. From Quebec to Po . . . long way to come for a bike ride . . . lot of money to pay to see a garden; but God bless those generous Canadians. Wish I could take any measure of credit for this program, but alas. Sometimes I wonder why I'm here and what I can possibly do for my bureau. I'm confident that they often wonder the same thing.

Still inside the bureau, here's a fairly typical visitor to GaMo Wigna. A nice Kassim-speaking woman with two of her children. All young children in Burkina are carried on mom's back, wrapped in a pagne. The method by which they wrap-n-tote is astounding. Mom bends at the hip as the child is quickly slung-around onto mom's back. Almost too quickly it would seem, but even the infants seem to know how hang on while the pagne is employed. First, the bottom of the pange is slung under the baby bum and wrapped around mom's waist. Next step: the child is cradled in the pange sling while mom grabs the upper part of the pagne and wraps it around her waist, or sometimes over her breasts. The system is quite ingenious and keeps mom's hands free to sweep gravel or balance baskets of goods on her head. And this Burkinabe child-carrier isn't merely used occassionally. This is how children seem to live for the first several years of their life. They're toted like this while mom is on a moto, while mom is bent from the hip doing laundry, while mom is . . . doing everything. It's a constant. Little arms and legs are somehow scrunched-up in a pagne. I used to worry about the possibility of mishapen limbs, but the beautiful posture of the women in the country has put to rest my fears. 

Today I was spared yet another rough day at the office. I spent the day with the mayor. The mayor has a car and we went driving. I saw parts of Po that I'd never seen. We kicked around some ideas for a world map project and a biomass site. I visited our library. A real library! Le Case de Oncle Tom . . . you figure it out.

The world map project should be announced on International Women's Day, quickly approaching on March 8. That's huit Mars here, pronounced weet-mars. Is that as much fun for you to say as it is for me? Can I perhaps find a few other friends with big cars? With such a progressive village, does anyone here really need me? Or do these nice people simply like having a new pet nassara who occasionally hops? We can only speculate.