All my life I’ve heard the expression, mad as a wet hen. Well let me tell you, a wet hen isn’t all that mad. In fact, drench a hen in a morning thunderstorm, and she’s still not particularly angry. Go figure. Hens have better things to do than waste energy on wrath. But here’s another myth busted: in a warm country such as Burkina Faso, it doesn’t take all that much sittin’ gettin’ chicks to hatch. I know. I know lots of hens. These hens spend a lot of time pecking, scratching, and eating plants. My garden will be in serious jeopardy unless I can accomplish some hen-proofing. And I've got to get ready for my garden, because . . . .

Tomorrow is the big day: swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Embassy. Lots of VIPs, the First-Lady of Burkina Faso, you can well imagine. And just a few days after that, we leave the lovely capital of Burkina Faso for our permanent sites. And the title of my blog will change. It'll say "Peace Corps Volunteer" instead of PC Trainee.

My site is going to be on the southern frontier of Burkina Faso, in a town near Ghana called Po. Po Kathy. Po, po Kathy. Some Po dog came and ate my dinner. The Po chicken lost its feathers. You can imagine the possibilities. The Po market didn’t have any spinach today.

So Po is supposed to be a small village or town . . . not so small as the solitary mud-brick and thatch villages, but not as large as the small regional capitals, despite its location on the route to Ghana. Here’s an exciting part: one must travel through a national park in order to get to Po in which (wait for it) there are elephants! I’m told that sightings are extremely rare. My primary project will be working with an organization called GaMoWiga doing environmental work. I have no idea what that means but I’m hoping for plants, animals, marketing and public relations. I do know that I'll work with groups to reforest Burkina Faso. I'm planting trees. What a fabulous job . . . can you imagine? Getting paid (in a sense) to spend 27 months planting trees. My secondary projects will be mine-all-mine; and I’m told that resources are mine for the taking. This refers to my sparkling personality and not to some sum of available funds. Right. We’ll see.

Here’s what I know about my house. It’s purportedly on a hill (one of the few hills in the entire country) with a fantastic view. I’m expecting three rooms and a small closet with 10-foot ceilings, electricity, and ceiling fans. Is that unbelievable? However, Po has no internet access (no Cyber), so I’m not exactly in the lap of luxury (but close enough to see the color of its eyes). Of course, I’ve got a satellite phone for internet use. So with that said, the site seems perfect for me. Don’t know whether I’ll have a thatch patio and thatch-fenced jardin; but if there’s not one waiting for me, I’ll have one in a week. And the toilet facility? I’m told that it’s one of the worst in Burkina Faso. Seriously. So I’ll need to get right to work on having the friendly host country nationals construct a new, private toilet.

My local language is Kassin. So I’m presently learning yet another language. First French, then Moore, and now Kassin.

Po is supposed to be one of the first areas to receive rain in the rainy season and allegedly is green with lots of trees. I’ll be the judge of that! I think that my Po trees will surely need rain, but we can only speculate.

Our little lamb, in the meantime, is right there at mom’s side . . . or rear. That’s when it happened. Mommy’s scent is dribbled (for lack of a better word) onto little lamb. Let the confusion begin. Monsieur ram can’t tell fertile mom from virginal daughter. To make things worse, the other four females were laughing. Seriously, they stood in the corner laughing. Whether they laughed at the ram or the lamb remains a topic of debate; but they were definitely laughing. Mom, on the other hand, was merely relieved to shirk her duty. Headache? . . . maybe.
This is where I got involved. I had to announce to my host family that the ram was after the young lamb. Time to rescue the lamb. No, I wasn’t sent into the pen. My job was merely to carry the crying lamb back to its original pen with the other youngsters whereupon . . . yes, you guessed it, all the young lambs escaped. So I was put in charge of herding three lambs. Most importantly, I was put in charge of running to close the courtyard gate lest the lambs escape into the village. Lambs are returned; and the young lamb forgets about mommy, so relieved is she that the attempted rape has ended. Thus, with the gorgeous hunk of ram in front of her and sans youngster . . . nature proceeds as nature always will. How long does it take to make a baby lamb? We can only speculate.

The Burkinabe. So they have goats, and they eat yoghourt. They have cows, and they drink milk . . . but only powdered (milk, not cows). And they eat cheese, if you can call it cheese . . . the no-need-for-refrigeration version called Laughing Cow. Here in Burkina Faso, it's called VQR. Or maybe that's a typique PC acronym. In any event, it stands for Vache Que Rire (cow who laughs). No complicated French needed there: Rirer is the French infinitive verb meaning to laugh. So they eat and enjoy cheese – the Burkinabe, not the laughing cows. And when it comes to this yoghourt, actually, they drink it, even when it's served in little American-type yoghourt cups.   So let's do the math on this one: we have female goats, and we have baby goats, thus we have goat milk. And we have a nation with a healthy appreciation for dairy. What's missing in this equation? Wait for it. It's goat milk! Why isn't someone milking these cute animals? Would a little bit of milk loss now and then ruin the health of the baby goats? Is that how it works? Answers needed here. At the Disneyland/Marina Market in Ouaga there is chevre cheese, and it's mild and delicious. Again, my daily boggle. Where are all of the goat-milk produits? Details to follow.   I've been sick, with too much time to ponder. Too much time, that is, when I've not been sleeping in a drugged stupor. Evidently some bacteria caused severe flu-like symptoms. Don't get excited, no GI symptoms. God, I love the PCMOs. They take no chances. You look a bit pale? They'll toss you in bed and begin treatment with their plethora of miracle cures. And after that happens, it doesn't take long. Another PC miracle. It's such a beautiful machine that it's enough to make you want to be sick. OK, obviously that's an overstatement. In fact, I felt so poorly that I cried for hours. Anyone who knows me appreciates that the sight of Kathy Davis crying for hours is a rare occasion. Probably didn't help with the dehydration, either; but weeping surely felt good. Did I mention that the PCMO makes house calls? That's right . . . home-delivered drugs. Gotta love that, right Alan?! We can only speculate?

Let's talks movies, TV, screen images. The other day in French class we played a game with lots of hypothetical questions. One of the questions was: If Raquel Welch was a stagiere, what would you say to her? OK. That tells you how long they've been using these questions. Remember, the PC is 50 years old . . . and obviously, no one knew who she was. Until . . . I explained that she was the ex-wife of the murder victim in Legally Blonde II. And that put everything in perspective, naturally, right? The bizarrely funny part is that, in French, I explained that she also was in an old moved called Fantastic Voyage where a team of doctors is miniaturized and injected into a patient to save his life. Remember? The leukocytes attached to poor Rachel's chesticles? Yes, I explained this as best I could in French. Wait for it: Our host country national LCF (Language & Cultural Facilitator) actually knew this movie. We laughed and laughed. I think that makes it a pretty small world, indeed.   Here in Burkina Faso, images from films pop into my head often: Painted Veil: Walter in the cholera ward . . . . 'nough said. French Kiss: Kate so bored that she's cleaning her computer keyboard with a Q-tip. Out of Africa: Farad says, When God is happy he plays with us. Fiddler on the Roof: We suffer in silence. True? Of course true. Willow: Giselle, the fairy queen (or whatever she is) in the form of a lamb saying, Willow, you iddddiiiot. The white lambs in my courtyard repeat this about a zillion times daily. Seriously, they say, Willow. Sometimes they say Mom or Noooo. Other times they say Waaaait. Sheep are funny that way. Legally Blonde: Asian manicurist says, She'll never get him back with those cuticles. That's how I feel . . . I'll never get a man with my terrible cuticles. How terrible? Well last night I washed dishes for an hour in two buckets of cool and tepid water with a bar of mushy soap and something that may have once had aspirations of being a loose piece of plastic mesh. Started to go grab my latex gloves (you know I brought some) but decided to woman-up and go with the culture. But now . . . ?   In fact, I'll never get a man – not with these cuticles. Well, that's not exactly true; but my fate has been foretold and my future is sealed. A few weeks ago while on demyst in Fada, we visited an ancient seer. Tuareg, possibly. He spreads out the sand, holds your hand, and presses your fingers into the sand. Fingers removed (from the sand, not your hand), he then patiently creates myriad designs in the sand. It's beautiful – like a sand painting. With the assistance of a translator, my fortune was told. What did I learn? That I've left at home a man who wasn't thrilled at the idea that I've come to Africa (he didn't mention the unhappy Lakeland Terrier that I left behind). That I could find a Burkinabe, or possibly some other man who might take me, but only after I sacrifice a large animal. Well define large. Are we talking rabbit, or camel? Dove, or water buffalo?   Didn't realize that I was so desperate for a man. But Tuareg seers don't lie, right? From his lips to God's ears, right? True? Of course true. But we can only speculate.

PC lesson number one finally hits home: Host nationals must want change for change to be effectual. I could not convey why my mud/cow-poop stove would save time, wood, and smoke/soot-filled eyes. My poor language skills failed me; but moreover, no one wants a new stove because the old stove is just fine for their purposes. Silly me – lost their attention in less than 10 minutes. All that time trying to describe and then illustrate a better stove.   So tell the Inuit people that they need a better mouse trap. Hey, they don't have much of a mouse problem, so why would they need a better mouse trap? Moose trap? Maybe. But trying to sell a better mouse trap to someone who hardly has a mouse problem and you're going to encounter some cultural obstacles. Thus it was with my better stove. Not an easy sell. And thus I returned to making dinner with the girls.   Tonight's fare? Something that I believe is called (or at least phonetically pronounced) benyadoh. Here's how it's made.   Take a large scoop of leave from any bean plant. Not the beans, just the leaves. Pound the heck out of 'em in my favorite Burkinabe device, the old mortier and pilon. Make a green, liquidy pulp. Mmmmy, right? Toss the watery pulp into a gigantic bowl and add about a pint of finely sifted millet grain. Then put some raw peanuts into the mortier. Again, pound the living daylights out of the poor little nuts, sift the powder, and add another pint of peanut powder to that gummy green leaf mix. To this, disolve in water about a golf-ball sized piece of potass (I think it's potassium). Mix, mix, mix, but only with your right hand. Add water as needed to make a fairly soft paste that just barely holds together. Then form (right hand only) into golf ball sized balls. This isn't difficult. It's not even difficult to get fairly uniform little balls. But the girls laughed and laughed at me. FQR. Filles qui rivent. I saw at least 40 balls in the pot, and for the life of me I could not distinguish their balls from my balls. Finally, one of the girls remarked, about my ball, tres jolie. Very pretty. This escapes me. I thought my balls were fine.   To conclude this tall ball tale, the raw balls are placed atop of the raw greens from the peanut plant (roots and all, peanuts removed, however), which rest on a devise like a steamer inside a large marmite over a flame. So I suppose the leave-nut-balls are steamed. They don't taste bad . . . like a vegetarian meat substitute. I can actually image that, with tomato sauce, they be great as meatballs or even lasagna filler for Italian food. Maybe meatloaf. With lots of lettuce and mustard, possibly even a burger.   Wouldn't things would go so much quicker here if we could use our left hands? We can only speculate.