Somebody send me some Rit Dye! Please . . . and no, I'm not joking!

Pô's electrical situation remains a mystery to me. Just when I've grown accustomed to lengthy power outages, the kind that last for long hours or even days, electricity returns for a whoppin' two full days. And it seems that we're out of the woods, just in time for full-blown hot season. Ah, but no.

For the past several days, we've lost electricity multiple times daily; and I find myself holding my breath each time the current snaps off . . . believing that I'm about to be without a computer, and more importantly, without a fan to sleep. Happily, it's returned each time in a matter of minutes. OK, sometimes it's out only for 20 minutes, and certainly that beats 20 hours! But why does this happen? What am I missing? And why have I been told, repeatedly, that the loss of water occurs when we lose electricity? There's virtually no connection, or at least none apparent to me.

Friday night, in the dark, I decided to prepare a chart of when the current comes and goes. Obviously, I need to get a life. But remember, this is the gal who's spent the better part of half a century wondering why cows stand facing the same direction. Our government devotes billions of dollars to the study of some mighty bizarre things. Who, I ask you, has studied why cows always stand in the same direction? You know that someone knows. Is it some secret form of communication not previously thought attributable to domestic cattle? Is it the wind? No, I can tell you, it has nothing to do with the wind. So what am I missing?

Now it does make sense to me that if Pô has water running through pipes (just as you have in The States), then if our electricity is out there's no way to pump the water through the pipes. OK, this doesn't actually make sense since water moves via pressure; but I've come to accept it as a Pô truth. So I've learned to keep buckets filled with water at all times. Lots of buckets . . . especially in hot season when the only way to cool-down is to get wet. I've been told that after an electrical outage, it takes three hours to get enough water pumped back into the pipes to have running water (or into the water tower, which is definitely not a water tower as you know it). Ah, but this isn't so. Three hours?! Pwah-yo-yo! Otherwise, why would we sometimes have running water for the entire three-day period when we're without electricity? What am I missing here?

So let's talk about customer service. Customer service is always the name of the game, even in The B.F. . . . especially with this volunteer. Not happy with the way you've dyed your pagne? Well bring it on down to my house on Saturday and we'll add some colors. If the customer isn't happy (in this case, the host country nationals [HCN]), then this volunteer isn't happy. So Friday night, in anticipation of God-knows-what-outage, I filled every bucket and basin I had in anticipation of dying fabric on Saturday. Saturday morning, I'm heating water on the stove when . . . the tank of propane gas is empty. Well, if it's not one utility, it's another. Pwah-yo-yo! But other than not being able to cook anything all weekend, not even popcorn, this isn't a catastrophe. I've got Burkinabe women who can build a fire in the blink of an eye; so we can heat water over a wood and black-sachet fire. Let the tintage formation begin.

I've joked, somewhat, about my chemical burns from caustic soda. After the weekend, it's not all that funny. We dyed pagnes and my old t-shirts a gorgeous eggplant. Rich. Beautiful. We rinsed 'em well in all those buckets of water that I'd collected. The water ran clear. But when hung in the air to dry, the shirts turned a neon chartreuse. Not the pagne, only the t-shirts. What the ? Moreover, when worn, evidently residual grains of soude caustique decided to adhere to my every pore, and now I'm burned with fairly severe open sores. Fight Club, I tell you. So what went wrong on Saturday that had previously worked without a hitch? And why do Yassine and Bibatta argue about every little thing? What am I missing here?

But one good thing did come from Saturday's fabric-dying fiasco. First, I should note that Elizabeth was at home doing dishes in the courtyard with water that she'd also been wise enough to collect on Friday. Why does Elizabeth do her own dishes when she has a house girl? What am I missing? Anyway, the beautiful eggplant bezzin pagne was for Elizabeth; and when Biba and Yassine really got into some words, Elizabeth stepped in . . . in Kassim. I didn't understand everything, but I did understand Elizabeth putting young Yassine in her place. Now I'm very fond of young Yassine; but I've also had to remove her from Biba's presence by brute force. Pwah-yo-yo! 

But the best news is . . . I learned a new phrase in Kassim. We'd been speaking in French about how bizarre the dye's color change was . . . and also how ugly. I asked for the Kassim word for bizarre. Evidently, there's no equivalent. However, the phrase to describe such a situation is pwah-yo-yo, which means, in essence, that is totally f---ked up! Elizabeth and her song-like laughter could not be contained upon hearing me repeat this phrase. I was warned that, while this is not exactly a cursing phrase in Kassim (though close), I should not repeat it around men in the village. Good plan.

So this afternoon I'm awaiting the delivery of a new propane tank. Will it arrive at 14h30, as I asked? And with no way to even boil water this weekend, what did I eat? Brownies! Cooked (actually, a tad overcooked) in my dutch oven over a wood fire. What?! You didn't expect me to bike the two-minutes down the hill to buy some peanuts or Pringles? On a weekend? Not gonna happen. My stage is presently getting ready for our Close Of Service (COS) conference and party, which occurs months before we actually conclude our service. Anyway, they're searching for superlatives to describe our stage members. Me? I should be pretty easy -- Mostly likely not to leave the hut for 11 days!

As to my burns and open wounds? Pwah-yo-yo! This morning every woman in Pô had to see their nasarra's red-nee-white skin; and I was dragged into several back rooms so that my tummy could be observed away from the eyes of any men. Won't someone just bring me a giant marmite to use as a tub? Couldn't I just sit in it and soak-out all of that pwah-yo-yo chemical? And how is it that we have a version of Pringles in Burkina Faso but they're called Kracks?! Why Kracks? What am I missing here? We can only speculate.