Hello 2007

Happy 2007 to everyone!
New Year’s Eve started off great. I went running early and then helped prepare the food for the day. New Year’s Eve was also shared with the Muslim holiday Tabaski this year. Tabaski involves the killing of a goat in the morning, which is then cut up and cooked and shared for everyone’s enjoyment. My compound neighbors spared me from having to watch the actual killing, but I watched a little of the skinning and cleaning and cooking. Apparently the head is the best part, and I watched with one eye closed and often looking away as the son removed and cooked the head. I got some good pictures, but cannot bring myself to take a bite. Mdm O asked me what I wanted to eat for New Year’s and I told her cake. There is always plenty of goat, salad, rice, but no cake around these parts. This is very unlike my host family back in training, because my host mom made cakes and sold them in her boutique. Oh, the good ol’ days. Anywho, we made cakes together and they were goooood.
I got the crayons out today and all the kids drew pictures for my house. I haven’t noticed any of the kids, at least in my courtyard, having toys here. Not one toy. They play with sticks and run around without shoes on waving knives or whatever they find laying around. Every part of my upbringing makes me want to take the sharp objects from them and tell them they aren’t toys, but here apparently they are. Little 4-yr olds cut up their own fruit and run around with the knife afterwards, and it’s fine. I have yet to see the notorious “accident” that I was always warned would happen if I ran around with sharp objects when I was little, but I’m sure it happens. My point in all this is that the kids here don’t have toys, yet they play just the same and get along fantastically. It’s really a phenomenon to me: Here, there are no toys, yet all the kids play and get along; Back home, there are millions of toys, and I have never seen kids just get along like they do here. Interesting. Even when I got the crayons out, they all colored and shared the different colors around the table of 4 boys and 1 girl. After completion of each masterpiece, each child would run up to me to give me the picture and request a new piece of paper for the next one. We wrote everybody’s names and spelled each one out loud. Maybe next week we’ll work on numbers. Then, one of the boys saw my high-bounce ball and it was over. I was hoping to bring that out on a different day so as not to overwhelm with all the toys at once, but it was discovered, so the games began. We bounced it high and then everyone scrambled to get it. It was so fun watching them crash into each other just as the little ball scrambled in another direction, all the while they were exploding with laughter. This went on until after sunset when it got really hard to see the ball. Everyone in the courtyard had fun with it.
So the other day I was in my house cleaning and cooking and doing stuff. Usually when I’m in my house I lock my screen door mostly to keep it closed so the wind doesn’t blow it open (sometimes it blows that hard!) allowing mosquitoes and insects and chickens to wander in, but also to keep anyone (namely my problem child) from being tempted to enter without permission. Today I forgot to lock it and my little angel was on my front porch hanging around and doing nothing. When I looked up and he was taking his second step into the forbidden territory, and before I could say anything I heard his mother scream at him to stop. He did and she came after him and gave him a harsher beating then was probably deserved just for stepping in my house (which is common here - the punishment doesn't always fit the crime by my american standards). I can’t say I really ever enjoy seeing someone be hurt or cry, but he is a professional at pushing the limit and hopefully won’t venture to no-man’s land anymore.
One thing I love about this culture is that I can ask anyone younger than me to do something for me and they do it! Usually they do it happily. This has come in handy on many occasions. Back with my host family during training my host brother would wash my bicycle, my tennis shoes and my backpack – every week. He actually told me he would be doing this and that weekly I needed to give him these things for cleaning. No problem whatsoever. This hasn’t happened here in Bobo, so needless to say, my bicycle, running shoes and backpack have not been cleaned in a month. But I have sent one of the little 8-yr old girls to get things for me – bread, bananas, sugar, peanut butter. It is such an ordeal even to go to the boutique around the corner for something that I find it easier to just send Massoura, and she’s back in a flash with my correct change. So I give her some candy, and everyone is happy. It’s really a no-brainer. And it’s not me being lazy – it’s a strategic plan to save my sanity. I might work up to sending her to the market for the big stuff. I will of course have to increase her pay, but it’s well worth it to me.
It has been really cold here lately. My thermometer read 72F in my room this morning and I was shivering! After I went running I told Mdm O that I wanted to wash my clothes and she looked at me like I was crazy! (This is a look I get almost daily, so I’m used to it. I get it when I go running in the morning. I get it when I refuse warm water for my showers at night. I get it when I tell them I can wash my own dishes and sweep my own house. I get it all the time. Crazy American.) She told me it was way too cold to be washing clothes. I told her that was ridiculous, that it is snowing where I’m from right now and that would be too cold to wash clothes outside, but this is beautiful weather and I went about my washing. I’m sure they sit around and talk about how crazy I am in their local language. I have caught them doing it a couple of times because they slip up and say toubabou or nasara and then I look up and give them the you-know-I-don’t-like-to-be-referred-to-as-that look. They just smile and look embarrassed because they know I know they are talking about me.
The people I live around don’t drink tea here like my host family did. I miss that. I had to buy some from some guy in the grand market last week because I miss it. It was good, but not like having it every Monday, Thursday and Saturday evening, like clockwork, with all the friends at the house. Maybe I should start the trend here.