So I've suggested to the Peace Corps that the next time circumstances arise necessitating consolidation (e.g., the move to Tiebele), that they make every effort to do so only during hot season. Here's Idress, the PCV in Tiebele, with his homologue and moi-meme. Idress was kind enough to introduce me to the mayor, various chiefs, and to his lovely friends, including Emmanuel. I stayed with Idress for two nights, then sought-out cooler accommodations. Ah, we PCVs . . . ever-resourceful, even under conditions of hardship.

I don't really know the French word for air-condition. Does climatisée mean "air-conditioned". . . is climatisseur an "air-conditioner"? It really doesn't matter because when this nassara begins a word, struggling with the sound of climatiss--something, every Burkinabe knows that I want air-conditioned air with an air-conditioner creating air-conditioning. So, yes, that air-condition(ing/er) in Tiebele was great, but I had to leave the room from time-to-time, if only to appreciate the cold when I returned. So what did I do for two weeks? Well, Mr. Rooney, you'll be proud: I only read one book.

I did, however, make some liquid soap with a group of ladies who didn't know how to make liquid soap. I grilled them about whether they would use and/or sell liquid soap . . . having been forewarned that women in smaller villages prefer hard soap. They assured me that they'd use the liquid soap; and after the two-day formation, I believed them. What fun, although I had to send Emmanuel to my Pô hut for the soap-making products. Lesson learned: don't leave home without lye-gel. Can I just travel the globe making liquid soap and teaching people to teach soap-making? Is that job-description somewhere on The Ladders? And if so, does it include air-conditioned accommodations?

By the second week I was giving lessons in restaurant and hotel management. I also gave instructions on making toad-in-the-hole. This I did for Jean Claude, who is arguably the best-trained, most unrecognized, brilliant chef in all of West Africa. But he didn't know toad-in-the-hole (go figure), which I translated to grenouille-souterrain (frog underground).
In all due respect to the Brits, toad-in-the-hole in no way resembles a toad, nay, nor any type of frog . . . in or out of a hole. The best I could do was to laugh with Jean Claude about such a silly name for a brunch dish. Jean Claude! What a chef! Makes a sauce arrachide that actually makes me want to eat sauce arrachide . . . drink it, in fact. Soup, maybe. His kitchen is immaculate, and I was invited to use it anytime. See that oven? A real oven! I made chocolate cake for Jean Claude and I thought he was going to cry. The cake mix? Yes, Emmanuel and the Pô-run (don't leave home without it).

So who remembers this man? Anyone? You've seen him on this blog. I recognized him immediately as I spied him drinking a Guinness at 8:33 a.m. one morning in the bar area of my Tiebele auberge. Told him that I had his photograph and ran upstairs to bring down the laptop (don't leave home without it). He's wonderful, a chief, great taste in beverages, and knows about bamboo . . . or so he said. Bamboo won't grow in Pô because there's too much salt in the soil and water. Really?! We'll see what Yaya says about that. Still, the Chef loved the fact that my Kassim had improved . . . or so he said. I was so enchanted by the compliment that I prepared dinner for him: Fettuccine Alfredo and corn-black-bean salad. Boy, nothing satisfies a Burkinabe like an Italian/Mexican dinner. But from whence cometh the black beans? Thanks, again, to Emmanuel, who made the Pô-run to my kitchen for black beans (don't leave home without 'em).

Just a few other fun events in Tiebele. I helped Idress with his elementary school children who are just learning English. We learned body parts and simple prepositions like in, out, about, and around. And how was this feat accomplished? How else? With the Hokey-Pokey song. You put your booty in, you put your booty out, you put your booty in and your shake it all about. Elementary school children went wild with laughter at the nasarra shaking a booty all about?

Indeed, Tiebele was fun, and not just the air-conditioned part -- I made so many friends. I feel as bien integree in Tiebele as I do in Pô. Why, I feel like Becky: everywhere I turned I encountered someone that I already knew, albeit often by at least two degrees of separation.

Still, it's good to be home in Pô. I finally broke-down and spent a few CFA for some fencing here in my courtyard. I sit outside and laugh at the hens who cannot get to my seedlings. The seedlings aren't planted. They're merely in their little peat pots behind the fencing. I could have easily left them on my table to keep hens at bay, but where's the fun in that? No, it's much more fun to frustrate a hen with delectable seedlings just out of reach.
So, you think the Peace Corps will speak with Burkina's military to ensure that I'll be nicely cool next year during hot season? We can only speculate.

So one afternoon you’re conducting a tie-dye formation with some students and the neighborhood boys, and six hours later you’re under shell fire. Hey! The color-wheel experts might not condone our tint selection, but was it bad enough to merit gun fire through the night and until dusk the following day? I seriously envisioned Elizabeth marching out of the courtyard, grabbing someone’s mortar launcher, and saying “Does your mother know what you’re doing?!” I'd have probably gone with her.

I suppose you want to know about the military, its RPGs, its automatics and semi-automatics, and rifles, right? Well, there’s actually not that much to tell, except that they sport cute red berets. Perhaps that cute beret emboldened the group to send message about tie-dye color. Regardless, I never felt endangered, ever . . . only excluded . . . excluded from the cute-red-beret club.

The military in Pô was merely demonstrating solidarity for the other military groups around the country. So why were they so up-in-arms? Probably myriad reasons, but the theory most frequently propounded was insufficient housing allowances. Hey, I feel their pain; I want a dishwasher and air-conditioning, but I didn’t bring my Tikka 300 WinMag to make my point.

So the day after the military exhibition and cute beret demo, I was forced to temporarily leave my quiet village. I spent two weeks in the neighboring village of Tiebele . . . about 30 klicks away, to use the military term . . . in an air-conditioned room in an auberge, or little motel/hotel. On the second floor of a small building were two rooms upstairs with a nice little balcony outside the rooms, and a bar and a kitchen below the upstairs rooms. Charming? Oui.

As you see (above), the balcony has two tiny metal chairs so one may sit and overlook this lovely landscaping in the courtyard. In the courtyard are several round huts (the un-air-conditioned rooms), all painted to resemble the beautiful painted royal houses here in Tiebele.

And my room, itself? Double bed (no box springs) on a little wooden frame that elevates the mattress just inches off the floor. One sheet. ONE SHEET!?! Night stand and a two-self stand was the only furniture, all made with unfinished 2x4s. Seriously, 2x4s. Someone’s old piece of chewing gum was stuck to the two-shelf stand.

The floor is beige 12x12 tile. The very same tile you’ll find in so many beach homes or hotels from the Mediterranean to the South Pacific. It’s perfectly fine tile, but not here . . . not in Burkina. Because here isn’t really a hotel room . . . it’s a luxury retreat. But, yet . . . it’s not. It’s a Twilight Zone paradox, because the palate remembers . . . and somewhere in my past memory I know that this isn’t the luxury suite that I believe it is. The tile appeared as fine as any luxury villa’s of St. Barts; and at the same time, the tile was oh-so typical Burkinabe. It's like the baklava at Cafe Istanbul . . . seems great at the time, but the palate remembers what is truly great bakalava. And my palate for great hotels remembers, too.

How are the mighty fallen? From Eze’s Chateau du Chevre d’Or to some auberge whose name I know not. From the luxury bath suites of Jack’s Camp to a tiled room with a toilet and sink but no running water. Buckets of water were delivered by the staff, or at least they were for the first few days that a nassara was in residence. Should I design a flag (such as the Scots have) reflecting when the nassara queen is in residence?  I ask because by the second week I seemed to haul lots of buckets to the upstairs room from the water-tower pump across the courtyard . . . though I didn’t mind because there was air-conditioning in said room. The thermostat said 16̊. I can’t accurately convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, but I think that 16̊ equals deliciously freezing.

So the room with no running water, whose toilet seat was broken and slid about like a sled on ice, whose toilet was also broken requiring three buckets of water to effectively flush, the room that gave-off an untraceable foul odor daily from 16h00 to 19h00 . . . this very room was the most luxurious room in which I’ve ever resided, ever! To say I was sad to leave the air-condition is a gross understatement. To say that I’m simply too embarrassed to order an a/c unit for the bedroom of my own hut is quite accurate. Way too embarrassed. Or am I? We can only speculate.

There’s so much that I don’t understand. So very much. For instance:

I don’t understand why it rained, hard, for about six hours yesterday; yet the cool wind never made it inside, past my screens and open doorway. Actually, I don’t even understand why it rained at all in April. It’s hot season. No rain until May, at the earliest. And this so-called mango rain was supposed to have occurred in March; yet there was no rain in March. I don’t understand. It’s like the cold-season that I was promised . . . don’t understand which hour of my PC service that occupied. Maybe I slept through it.

I don't understand why this man isn't a Follower of my blog. Do you understand that? Me, neither.

And, Becky, sorry if I'm the first to tell you . . .  this is the new J.D. But you understand everything . . . so you already knew, right?

I don’t understand why I don’t have the authority to remove a Facebook photo that’s been posted on my wall by someone else, even if it’s clearly the worst photo ever taken. Especially because it’s the worst photo ever taken. I don’t understand why FB doesn’t have the destroy-all-evidence-that-this-photo-ever-existed button.

I don’t understand why the three sutures in my head required twine so thick that you could truss a turkey.  And why can't I remove them myself? It's not brain surgery.

I don’t understand how much warmer it must be before chicks hatch without the need for mother hens. In a closet at GaMoWigna, we have either eggs waiting to hatch, or baby chicks. The sign says Do Not Enter, and the cord running under the door is for a heater. But perhaps I've failed to understand Yaya's French and it’s not an incubator at all. In this heat? Perhaps it’s a rotisserie!


I don’t understand why my French isn’t improving at a faster pace . . . unless it’s the amount of time that I spend reading novels in English.

So, do Jake and Lady Brett ever live happily ever after? Is Ms. Kate Mayfield ever going sky-diving again? And is it possible to read Atonement without picturing, deliciously-so, James McAvoy? Isn't it pretty to think so? We can only speculate.

As with so many incidents of unrest, it starts small and quickly escalates; so you may want to sit-down for this one.

One day the courtyard is peaceful and quiet. Then in creep the interlopers. A goat. Others follow. All too soon there are three goats. Then come sheep and a lamb. Finally, burros and cattle. Mooing and braying animals who don't know how to tell time. Two in the morning? Time to bray. That braying sound . . . the same sound that I once paid money to hear from the South African JackAss penguin . . . well it isn't quite so charming here in my own courtyard.

Hot season . . . and my first night sleeping outdoors; but not merely to avoid the oven that has become my hut. Nay, my flight to the outdoor hammock was prompted by riotous unrest . . . a true invasion. With le chauleur here and temps rising, I keep my door open almost at all times. The entrance of Rex and Dora was inevitable, and, as it happens, not altogether undesirable. The courtyard canines nap for hours on my concrete floors, acting as dust mops. Wherever Rex and Dora nap, upon their return to the courtyard there are nicely dusted spots on the floor. Jill the Pill could do no better.

But alas, with the open-door invitation, also entered a mouse. And a lizard. Now I'm not particularly unraveled by a mouse, nor by a lizard; however, the idea of a mouse running across my bed in the night isn't appealing in the slightest. And a lizard? Hey, remember the ol' Dragon Hotel . . . first night in-country . . . size of a kitten . . . PTSD! Enough said.

So now what? Well, I'm a PCV and thus resourcefulness is second nature. Or not.  But it's the age of the world wide web, and thus, I cheated. Before ever leaving Dallas I had read the blog of another volunteer (Morocco, I believe) who truly invented a better mouse trap. I followed her brilliant example. In truth, I'd been waiting for the opportunity to try-out her wickedly evil scheme.  A scheme so simple and yet so brilliant. Here's how it goes, step by step.

1. Empty PC water filter bucket.
2. Duct-tape a pencil onto the very tip-end of a ruler.
3. Insert pencil into the empty cardboard roll from toilet paper. Yes, toilet paper is so precious here that I even keep the cardboard tubes.
4. Place raspberry jam onto the distal end of the toilet paper core. You're catching-on now, right? That cardboard tube is going to roll right over the moment anything steps onto it.
5. Create a mouse ramp from the kitchen shelf using ruler/pencil/T.P.core.
6. Exit hut to comfortable hammock. Wait for mouse to step onto the cardboard roll in its attempt to eat my overpriced raspberry jam.
7. Run into hut when the cardboard tube rolls-over under the weight of the mouse.
8. Laugh at mouse now trapped in the empty water filter.

Worked like a charm. The next morning children were beckoned and instructed to remove the mouse and end its mouse life. Face facts, kids . . . there's never just one mouse. It had to go.

The lizard-removal, however, created a greater challenge. Mats were removed from the floor and placed vertically to block any entrance to the bedroom and closet (OK, you know it's not really a closet). Children were called to assist. They brought their straw brooms and sticks. Instinctively they knew to be gentle with the lizard. I was very impressed. Impressed as I waited outside . . . way outside . . . ready with an empty tin of butter cookies in order to capture & contain the lizard. Remember the first rule of the PC: Do no harm. OK, that may not be the first rule, but there was no need to harm a lizard.

Lizard contained and urged to find other accommodations, calm returned to Po's best courtyard. If Rex or Dora had even an ounce of terrier in their eclectic heritage, this would have never occurred. So I think that the PC's Do No Harm rule requires some clarification. Surely it does not apply not to mice. So how can I leave-open my door and still keep-out these unwanted rodents and reptiles? We can only speculate.

This post is not about poop . . . or at least not about my poop. There! I heard it . . . your big sigh of relief. It is, however, about dehydration.

James says he saw a large water rat in my latrine one night. I have no reason to doubt him, though I've never seen even a mouse. Still, it's a bit off-putting when I think about a rat during a quick dash to the latrine on a night with no moonlight. So what's the obvious answer? Fewer trips to the latrine. How is this accomplished? Simple, unhealthy, life-threatening dehydration. Or maybe not.

It's hot season. Think of what room temperature means in the States. Now imagine a glass of room-temp water when it’s 115 outside and probably hotter inside. Hardly thirst-quenching. Happily, I have a small freezer; and when the electricity is working, I have unlimited icy cold water . . . or Crystal Light (thanks, friends!). This means that I'm not in a constant state of dehydration. And that's a good thing . . . something that my PCMOs love. It's a healthy thing. Right? Or is it?

Living on the stipend of a PC volunteer isn't easy, but neither is it impossible. It's all a matter of priorities. Food isn't costly, especially when it's difficult to contemplate cooking during hot season. I sometimes make a bowl of popcorn in the mornings when it's cool (meaning about 95), and this serves as lunch and dinner. So spending money on food and chilled, expensive sodas isn't a high priority. However, toilet paper is . . . and it's not cheap here. In fact, a roll of toilet paper is somewhat of a luxury for most Burkinabe. Guess why.

And thus the toilet paper dilemma. Well-hydrated means more trips to the latrine . . . or to the large jar in the house if I'm feeling particularly intimidated in the dark by rodents-of-unusual-size. In any event, well-hydrated means more toilet paper usage. Swoooosh. Hear my thirty-dollars-a-week literally going down the toilet?

The paper money here is often very old, very tattered and, yes, I'll say it, soft! I could probably use old 1000 cfa notes in lieu of toilet paper, and the cost would be about the same. Well, maybe not . . . not to mention the sanitary conditions of paper money in Burkina. But you clearly see the dilemma. Hydrated = high T.P. usage.  Dehydrated = low T.P. usage . . . and savings.

Now it is universally acknowledged that I had/have the best PC Recruiter in the world. After all, I'm the Burkina PCV with the red PC book bag and the PC patches sewn on to my bucket hat. And, on the subject of toilet issues, I'm the PCV whose recruiter sent this video. I rarely do, but if called upon to do so, I absolutely can Poop In A Hole.

So, after seeing the Poop video, you think you want to join the Peace Corps? Have I found a way to reuse, reduce, recycle my T.P. usage? Does anyone even want to ponder that? Are some luxuries worth any price? We can only speculate.