Remember when I missed the baby christening because I thought it was a party for a big lake? In my defense, who'd suspect a christening in a Muslim family. Well, in any event, these days I’ve learned to ask questions, often repeating what has been said to me. Here’s a typical conversation, English version:

Yaya: I received a call from one of your fellow PCVs regarding the cost of some seeds.
Kathy: We’re having a meeting next week regarding financing at the office?
Yaya: No, Andrew called me about moringa seeds.
Kathy: You want me to call André about the tofu demonstration?
Yaya: No, Andrew!
Kathy: Ah, Andrew called you about the tree planting tour planned for next summer?
Yaya: No, Andrew wants to buy 10,000 seeds.
Kathy: OH! Now I understand. Andrew bought some seeds and needs your expertise in planting 'em.
Yaya: No. I’m still waiting on tree seed prices to give to Andrew.
Kathy: Ah-ha. You and Andrew will be talking in the future and I won’t need to get involved at all?
Yaya: Exactly!

Regrettably, this was an actual conversation this morning. However, with that said, I had an amazing day and on my personal 1-10 scale, my French comprehension today was about an 8. Any normal French-speaker would rate me at a 3 or 4, but this was actually a good day for me, as evidenced by the fact that I ultimately did understand Yaya.

Good day, indeed. For instance, I clearly understood that the refrigerator technician might arrive at my home before noon, which implies that he might not arrive before noon (and indeed he did not) and, in fact, might not arrive at all today. Welcome to The B.F.

On a more serious note, I somehow actually do accomplish projects here in Burkina. This is primarily due to the wonderful people of Pô. It is absolutely due to the patience and determination of Yaya. I rarely talk about projects on this blog, but today I will. Here’s what’s going on:

The world map project should be finished in the next two weeks. Not my fault that it’s taken months. Truly. Clarice had a baby, which delayed the beginning. But the delay has actually worked to my advantage. Yaya and the Maison de Femme have obtained some radio time to invite the young women of Pô to participate in the painting, and I developed a colorful ad to promote the project, and Yaya said that I even got the grammar correct.

The chicken coup is complete. Sixty hens have arrived, and we are simply awaiting financing for little items such as an incubator and a refrigerator. Why a refrigerator? For hen medication. Really.

We’ll begin fabrication of trash cans and hand-washing stations in the next two weeks. Then the fun part: I get to paint them with colorful slogans and the PC logo. What kind of slogans?
Nos ancêtres nous ont legue cette terre. Nous la pretons a nos enfants. Ensemble donnons un coup de main a la planete. And I think I got the spelling correct.

We built a new boutique for my shea butter ladies. I painted a bee. I've got a large mural planned for World AIDS day. I'm also working on a new computer center with Education Sans Frontiers, though I've had very little to do with this and can take almost no credit. Then, of course, there's tofu. Thanks for the mandolin, Deeders. It arrived today and will make tofu-sandwich-making very easy.

New water well planned near the chicken farm, together with a pond for fish-farming and a rain-water collection system. If I can pull this off, I’ll finally feel like a real-live Peace Corps volunteer.

But the most important project of this week occurs tonight. It’s the annual carving of a watermelon into a Jack-O-Lantern for Halloween. Rusty donated a ring-toss game and loads o' prizes. But no Jack for me; Evan donated the bottle of Johnny Walker Black. Nothing says Halloween like a 12-year old.

Do you suppose those children are focusing on their afternoon school-work, or are their minds occupied with thoughts of tonight's Halloween fête? I have more photos for this posting, and perhaps the Internet will be fast enough tomorrow to upload them, but we can only speculate.

I wonder whether there are things that the PC doesn’t want you to know. For instance, here in The B.F. we get drugs that wouldn’t be available to you in the States. I perceive this as a good thing . . . a very good thing.

I’m back in Pô, and nothing is going to drag me away from here for at least the next two weeks. Yesterday I returned just in time to plan tonight's Halloween party with my quartier kids. This after working stage for a week in Saponé. Yes, I pooped in a hole. So in case anyone had any doubt, I can poop in a hole for a whole week when called upon to do so.

Anyway, I took Sunday afternoon to unpack. This included the full unpacking from my lengthy stay away from Pô in late September through mid-October. I had a gallon ziplock full of drugs, including my malaria refill. A plethora of prescriptions was provided to me last month, both for my knee injury and for my tummy troubles. I resolved at the time not to forget what each push-out-pack was for . . . but of course I did forget.

Speaking of forgetting, during the past week on a number of occasions (I’ve forgotten how many), my fellow PCVs looked at me as if to say, Kathy, have you lost your mind . . . why don’t you remember this significant event? I was beginning to think I’d developed Alzheimer’s. So yesterday as I was stowing away drugs into my med kit, I realized that some needed labeling. Off to the internet to determine what I had. And what did I have? Our ol’ pal Scopolamine. Ah ha! Side effects? Memory loss whose chemical effect on the brain is almost identical to Alzheimer’s. I care not . . . it relieved my nausea. I remember using the Scopolamine patch while sailing back in the days when one could get it in the U.S. The fact that I can remember this surely means that there are no long term side effects.

I’ve also got almost a full box of Daflon™. If you really need to know what this is for, try Google. The important thing to me is, I wouldn’t have had this wonder drug had I experienced the same symptoms (there’s a nice euphemism) in the U.S. God love the Peace Corps.

Wasn’t there some type of Scopolamine cocktail in some Nelson Demille book, or in the old version of The Manchurian Candidate, or maybe some James Bond film? Wonder what happened to the Texas Rangers? What’s my name and why am I in The B.F.? We can only speculate.

Ah, the innocent days of my youth. The days when I thought that a satellite phone/internet would be necessary here in The B.F. The days when I thought I’d use the $1200-plus worth of Erno Lazlo and Amore Pacific cosmetics. These days I can wash pots and pans with sand, and wash my face with a bar of soap that I've found on the ground. Perhaps this explains why The B.F. is aging me so. Good bye, Neiman Marcus.

I own a broom. Several, actually. But I do own a regular, USA-type broom with a long handle. Or I did, until recently. The other day I snapped the broom handle as I diligently tried to bring down the business-end of the broom on a chicken’s head. The chicken won. Scoffed at me. And the broom handle snapped. Can you picture that? When did I develop this intense hatred of hens?

So I have a mouse problem, it’s true. But before we delve into the mouse (or mice), picture this:
Several months ago I found a tooth (or teeth) in my courtyard. Imagine your back molar, roots and all. Now imagine the tiny molar (and roots) of some tiny creature. Now imagine three tiny molars fused together (some bizarre plan of Mother Nature), still attached to the roots. The molars are each about the size of a lentil, but the roots are about a half-inch long; so at some point in this tiny, unknown animal’s life, some serious roots extended up into its jaw. Got the picture?

I was so fascinated by this treasure that I brought the teeth (tooth?) inside and proudly displayed it atop my $48 wooden box from Williams Sonoma. The treasure was snowy white, so clearly the petite animal had little time to use these tiny teeth before they fell from its head. What animal has teeth like this?

You’ve seen the floorplan of my little hut. You know I’ve got this unknown room, which I use as a storage area. It was in this area that I first spied the mouse. Children were called to eliminate the mouse. It was quite hilarious as they tried to guard the entrance to the bedroom so that the mouse wouldn’t flee under the bed. They assured me that the mouse ran out the front door. So, clearly the children were mistaken . . . and/or, clearly there is never just one mouse.

So when I returned from my lengthy sojourn in Ouaga and began to stow my bags in the closet area, I spied something scurrying around a box. OK. Everything out of the closet. Time to remove all mouse refuge areas. With everything out of the closet, I spied a hole near the floor with a large amount of dirt. I mean a large amount of dirt. As I swept out the dirt with the broom (which was still intact at that time), I created a pile about the size of a sheet of copy paper, and about five inches tall. That was one determined and busy mouse. But wait.

Also in the pile of dirt was a tooth. The tooth! Some mouse had climbed to the top of my bookcase, had the gall to boldly walk on my $48 Williams Sonoma box, take the tooth, and try to flee the area with the tooth. Why would a mouse do that? Shouldn't a hungy mouse have been more interested in the hundreds of tiny roaches? Are mice not carnivores? We can only speculate.

If you can't remember when you last washed your hair, what does it mean? Time to go home? Maybe. Maybe not.

I’ve got internet this morning. Right here in my hut in little Pô. This, after weeks of just a little bit of internet. What does that mean? Shouldn’t it be the same as You can’t get a little bit pregnant? Either you’ve got internet, or you don’t. Well, not here in Pô. I’ve been able to log-on to see that I’ve got eMail, but I don’t have enough internet to open and read an eMail. I can log on to a blog, but cannot post. And with so much to say.

I’m leaving in about four hours for the bus to Ouaga. Going to Saponé to work Stage. The new PC trainees arrived last week, and I’m off to help them become good little volunteers . . . just like me. Right. What does that mean?

It’s supposedly an honor to work stage. An honor? What does that mean? It doesn’t feel like an honor. It feels like I’ve got to leave the hut, then leave the courtyard, then get to the gare, then find a taxi in Ouaga, go to a grocer, spend the night at the Transit House, get on the PC bus tomorrow, find a bed in Saponé, and dress and act appropriately for a week. A week! Lucky me (I’m so honored) . . . and I get to repeat this for a few weeks in November.

So school has begun and Martin and Louis are absent from the courtyard most afternoons. What does that mean? It means that I miss Martin. Martin has borrowed my Dutch oven and thermometer so that he can make a chocolate cake for his friend who lives in Ghana. It’s going to be a birthday present. I won’t be here to help because I’m honored by working stage. The fact that Martin can bake a cake by himself may be my greatest contribution as a PC volunteer. Maybe not, but it felt like it as I advised Martin to keep his dry team separate from his wet team. Thanks, Alton Brown . . . helping young bakers half-way across the globe.

Yaya’s wife is busy making tofu brochettes. What does this mean? It means that she performs the daily routine of making tofu, cutting the tofu into cubes, skewering them with veggies, and selling them from her courtyard. Silly me. I envisioned Satia walking around the marché selling kebabs from a container atop her head. Nope. The world comes to her. In fact, orders are placed the day before, and Satia has the orders ready to go when the clients arrive at her home. She’s brilliant. This is my kind of work – stay at home and the world comes to you. In truth, this may be my greatest contribution as a PCV. Satia is making money and my village is getting protein at half the cost of meat.

School has started, right along with mini hot season. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that it's just a tad hot. It means that an average afternoon high is 106, which is entirely too hot for me to even remotely consider biking to lycée to begin a business club. I need a Plan B. The world needs to come to me. I’m ready for business club, but this year I think I’ll hold sessions in my courtyard.

I have a bug and mouse issue. What does this mean? It means that the 20-plus members of the bike tour left food in my house (unbeknownst to me) after we all left Pô to participate in the PC’s 50th anniversary fair in Ouagadougou. I took Yaya and my shea butter ladies to the fair. I got sick during the fair. That was weeks ago. Drank the water in Ouaga. Whoops. What does that mean? It means that my PC Medical Officer wasn’t happy. My little illness kept me in Ouaga for a week after the fair. What does that mean? It means that I didn’t get to return to Pô before I had to leave for a week of training on how to become a trainer. TOT - training of trainers . . . only in the Peace Corps. When I finally returned to Pô, I had mice and thousands of tiny roaches. No joke. One couldn’t sit in my salon without having to smash a dozen tiny roaches crawling all over you. There’s a nice image, right? And it’s all true.

If it’s done in one’s courtyard, is it considered holding court? Wasn't I going to bring protein to my village with eggs? Will the bugs be gone when I return from stage? We can only speculate.

Tofu has come to Pô. And I thought soy beans were just for Aveno® skin-care products. Heretofore my sole use for tofu was in a bowl of delicious Hot & Sour soup. Who knew? But hang on, it’s not merely tofu. Golly, what can’t be done with soy beans? Candles? Detergent? Add it to hard soap? Why, even the by-products can be used to feed someone . . . or some thing. Nothing goes to waste here in The B.F.

OK, so hang on, kids . . . get out your Kitchen-Aid® with the meat grinder attachment, and let’s begin . . .    Tofu 101.

Start with about two kilos of dried soy beans. Sort well (this takes forever) to eliminate any bad or dark beans or tiny stones. Stones aren't good. Soak the beans overnight in a 10-liter bucket and watch them swell. I was in Leo last week for a formation on the transformation of soy (that’s soja, here). The girls told me that we were working with two kilos of soy. Really? Then why can’t I lift the bucket? Ah, because those two kilos swell to about 15 kilos, plus the weight of the water, and that’s before they’ve gone through the mill.

Next, tote your bucket of wet, well-picked-through beans to the mill (the moulin). But not just any moulin. You need the wet moulin. Move over, you silly nassara. You can’t use the same mill that’s used to grind dry corn for meal, for goodness sake! So at the wet mill, you’ll pour-in your beans and add a lot more water.  Out comes this wet, extraordinarily heavy paste. I can tote a 20 kilo suitcase on one arm; but I couldn’t budge the bucket full of milled soy paste. It took two of us to tote it from the mill to my bicycle, whereupon it was mounted on the back of the Barbie back to be walked back to the laboratoire.


For every kilo of dried beans (and we began with two), you’re going to add 10-15 liters of water. Do the math. That’s 20 liters of water (imagine what that weighs) . . . and that's just for round-one. Someone's going to need a very large pot. Use your hands, it’s fun. Not you, nassara. Your hands aren't big enough. Move over. Mix the water with the soy mush and you’ll get the consistency of thin oatmeal. Here's Satia, Yaya's wife. How she does this in her best complet without getting splashed is absolutely beyond me. 

Now take some fine linen or muslin (cheese cloth is too hole-y), tie it to a rope strung between two tall wooden stakes in the ground, and make a hammock-type cradle. What, you don't have two stakes in your yard? Well you're going to want at least four strong gals to hold the cloth. Have I mentioned that this stuff is heavy? Using a bowl, start pouring the mush into the linen filter. About three liters at a time is the max. Fills up quickly, doesn’t it? And it’s so thick that it won’t filter any longer, right? Wrong. Move-over, nassara! The Burkinabe can squeeze out another two liters of liquid from what I believed to be a fully dry paste. OK, so now what?


Let the professionals continue wringing the linen filter until no more liquid will come out. Remove and save the paste residue in a clean basin. Continue until all 20-plus liters of mush have been strained. Then add more water to the saved paste (at least another 10 liters) and repeat the entire process. Yes, we do it all again to glean more soy-rich liquid. As you can see, one batch is going to fill-up both of these large basins with liquid. These basins are also used to bathe children. Well, not these specific basins, but basins of this grand size.

Just imagine . . . earlier in the day it was merely a bunch of raw beans, and now it's soy paste inside that cloth. What happens to the dry paste at the end of phase two? Just stay with me.

OK, so now you’ve got a frothy, milky liquid, ready to make soy milk. Gallons and gallons of it! No, nasarra, move over -- you can't make froth since you can't lift a full bucket of liquid this high. This is a Burkinabe art form, and I should have known from the same art used to prepare a frothy, sweet tea. Aeration and height are the keys to the froth. At this point, simply boil the liquid for about 45 minutes, and voila! Move over Silk®! This is really good soy milk. But we’re not aiming for milk. The people want tofu . . . though they don't know it. Important note: Never say tofu in The B.F. It's called viande du soja, or soy meat. And oddly enough, no one asks what animal produces soja meat. Is it just me, or is this odd? Me, I like to know where my meat comes from.

OK, so while your soy milk is boiling in a giant pot (called a marmite), grab about two kilos of crushed tamarind. OK you folks in Texas, don't tell me you don't have tamarind. Add water to cover, and let it sit. After about 30 minutes, strain the tamarind (new linen cloth, please) and toss it from a bowl by handfuls into the boiling soy milk pot. Move over, nasarra. You can't even scoop-up a handful of liquid. So true, and the girls laughed and laughed at me. Soon, before your eyes curds will form. It’s astounding! Don’t have any tamarind handy? Use vinegar or lemon/lime juice.

When all the curds have formed, use a slotted spoon (a really, really big spoon) and scoop out the curds into another linen cloth. Start wringing, again. Wring it dry . . . and then, move over, nasarra and let the pros do their work. Twist, turn, push, mash. You’re aiming for something the size of a very large round of Gouda. Now, while all those curds are still smashed together inside the linen cloth, place a heavy slab of wood on top to flatten the product. In fact, the product under that press is almost the size of that slab of wood, and about half as thick.   Don’t have a six-inch thick slab cut from a baobab tree? Use a cutting board and sit on it. Yes, it will take that much weight. Now you have tofu, . . . excuse me, viande du soja. Set the slab aside, still in linen, in a bucket, or even in the frigo. We’ll deal with it tomorrow.

As for what’s left in the pot . . .the whey, if you will? Well strain it (yes, in a new linen cloth), add a bit of sugar and/or some flavoring (like vanilla or rum) and you’ve got a delicious, nutritious drink ready to be placed in plastic sachets and sold . . . though it's best after refrigeration.

Day two. Remove your tofu from its cloth and place it in a bucket of water to wash off the outside. Then start cutting it into large slabs, about an inch thick . . . maybe a little thicker. From there, you want to continue cutting until you have hundreds of cubes, about one-inch in size. Here, uniformity is the name of the game. OK, nassara, you can cut a cube.

Now make a delicious tomato/onion/garlic marinade and toss those cubes in it. No, you can’t stir-in the marinade or you’ll destroy the cubes, which are a bit delicate until they're fried in oil. Rather, the basin must be tossed to coat the cubes. Picture Bobby Flay in the Iron Chef kitchen. Move over, nassara, because we've got to toss ‘em high to coat well. This image of Satia drizzling marinade shows only about 1/8 of the total product. Then, in several batches, into hot oil for about five minutes. Now stab the fried, extremely hot cubes on skewers with onions, tomatoes, peppers, or whatever you like . . . just like making kebabs. This stuff is amazing! It’s tastier than a chicken-breast kebab; and no, it’s not merely that I’ve not had any decent food in months. This stuff is amazing.

What else can you do with these wonder beans? Well, if you keep cooking the milk for another hour or so, you can put it in the frigo for a day or two and you’ll have yoghurt. Again, before selling, add some sugar and flavor. You can also ferment the beans into a yummy drink. Mmmm. No kidding. The fermented beans can also be used whole, like soumbala here in Burkina, which, I realize, means nothing to you in the States.


So let’s talk numbers. Five kilos of dried soy beans costs about 1800 cfa, or about $4.00 U.S. So for less than $2 U.S., you’ll make over 100 kebabs, which are sold for 50 cfa each. That’s 5000 cfa, just from the kebabs . . . and that doesn’t include the sales of soy juice, yoghurt, and soy milk. And this is an every-day business. That’s a profit of no less than $7.00 U.S. per day . . . and that’s after you’ve paid for the mill and purchased the veggies and wooden kebab sticks. One month of sales will pay for eight (8) young women to attend school for a year. Another month of sales will pay for their healthcare. Imagine the possibilities. Move over, Starbucks.

How can something that is so easy (once learned) be so cost effective and such an excellent income generating activity for the Burkinabe? And that dry, pasty by-product? Chicken feed for the maisonette? Wanna guess what size that giant marmite pot is? Here’s a hint – move over, Burkinabe, because I think I could take a bath that . . . but we can only speculate.