Sure, I could have entered the workforce full-time and tried to be an adult. But why do that when I could go to Africa and be a kid again? I'm not a kid in every sense of the word, since I don't need training wheels or potty training. But besides my biking and bathrooming skills, I'm pretty helpless. Not only do I have to re-learn to speak (French and probably a local dialect), I have to re-learn how to do laundry, eat, bathe, and the list keeps growing.

In my last life as an American named Chad, I never bothered at high school dances to learn how to dance. That has come back to bite me in the butt in my new life as a nassara (foreigner) whose name is usually pronounced Chah.

I'm just glad I'm not the only goofy dancer in the lot. On our first night in Koudougou a local band played beautiful rhythmic music while all of us nerdy Peace Corps trainees flailed around awkwardly. We also went to an urban dance club one night and flooded the floor when the DJ queued up that Shakira Olympics song and that Romanian "Numa Numa" song. We were kind of like circus clowns, but the locals danced beside us like we were family. The club was in an open courtyard and a stinkbug flew into my eye.

There are other things I failed to learn in the States that have come back to haunt me. Once upon a time on a schoolbus in Virginia, I remember some cool kids trying to teach me a multi-step handshake involving fingersnaps. They repeatedly demonstrated, but after my failed attempts they always shook their heads in disappointment. This was a technique I was too uncool to master. Well, as it turns out, in Burkina Faso, grown men do this elaborate handshake thing too. All the time. And on this continent as well, I'm a pitiful disappointment. It's not really something I can practice on my own, though, so I don't anticipate any improvement in the handshake department.