Fortune was on our side that night. The insect from hell didn't quite get around to stinging us. Maybe in part because we drenched it in a dense fog of Rambo bug spray.

It had just gotten dark and Tana and I heard a loud racket approaching our courtyard. All varieties of pots and pans and bottles being beaten as percussion instruments. Fifty kids from all across our village had formed a marching band drumline and were parading through every courtyard.

Like an ever-expanding conga line, more and more kids dropped their dinners, grabbed the nearest kitchen utensil, and joined in the noise-making rabble. The lady and I stood on our bed to see over the courtyard wall, confused as always about what was going on. Were they celebrating the end of the school year? No way, these kids weren't just having some fun. They were saving the world...



According to Burkina lore, the sun is a cat (jakmani in Jula) and the moon is like a mouse who is forever chased around our planet. But sometimes the moon wanders off the path, loses her way, and the cat catches her! Whenever jakmani catches her, you can observe the moon slowly being devoured. This is a lunar eclipse. So once the moon begins to be devoured, it's the duty of all village children to scare the cat into releasing the lost moon.

A villager about our age named Ibrahim told some elderly women that the story is not true. He said it was announced on the radio that morning that there would be a lunar eclipse. He went on to say that scientists can predict these phenomena years in advance. The old ladies were skeptical to believe this hogwash but realized Ibrahim was a huge liar when he said that it even happens to the sun sometimes.

Anyway, it was a close one this time. We trembled in fear, watching the cat swallow the moon. Then apparently after an hour jakmani was too much a scaredy cat to digest the moon, so he regurgitated her. All the while the village youth chanted and raised a ruckus. I don't know how they did it, but they pulled it off. Here's to you, kids. You saviors of the world, you.

Pilfered Poultry Sounds the Alarm on Slumbering Smuggler

Sunday, May 29, 2011

An unsuspecting wife and mother in a quiet village in Banfora, Burkina Faso experienced the surprise of her life Monday morning when she heard the crowing of a rooster. This was not just any rooster, but one of several fowl cleverly removed from the courtyards of their owners during the wee hours of the night by a robber. Not so cleverly however, the robber, after his momentous effort to gather his loot, was exhausted and lay down for a quick nap in a cashew tree grove. It just so happens that this cashew tree grove is right beside the well where our heroine fetches water every morning. Upon seeing the guilty party surrounded by chickens and roosters that she recognized as belonging to her neighbors, she accosted him, but he fled the scene, startled. The chickens have since been successfully returned to their rightful owners. The perpertrator remains on the loose, but is considered unarmed and not dangerous.

Humanity Harrows Humble Hound Hunt Heroes

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

At 14:00, the able-bodied men of a small village in Banfora, Burkina Faso embarked on a hunt that would last five minutes. Taking up any arms they could find, including rakes, hoes, and long sticks, they took off running after what appeared to be a possessed canine. The chase continued along the edge of the paved road to the southern end of the village until it culminated in the eventual slaughter of the rabid animal in a large field just out of sight of the courtyard of the village chief. "I heard all of the noise and thought at first that people were chasing the chicken robber," reports local Peace Corps Volunteer and resident, McCoulibaly Tene. "But then I saw that the men were chasing a dog that was chasing a goat which made me think it was an animal sacrifice but then my neighbor said it was just a dog with rabies." Sources confirm that no humans or other animals were harmed by the maniacal mongrel, although it did scare many sheep and goats along its path of attempted destruction.

Village Leaders Come Together to Discuss Project Goals, End Up Discussing Philosophy

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

A meeting that began with the compilation of a report on the farmers' union's activities took a deep turn when one man claimed to be a sociologist and a philosopher. Having finished writing the report, the group that had assembled to accomplish a simple assignment became faced with the daunting task of explaining the source of true human happiness and whether man can be happy in the midst of persistent problems and poverty. Adama, self-proclaimed socio-philosopher, offered the idea that surface happiness comes and goes throughout the day but that true happiness cannot be the same for any two people nor can it ever be fully achieved as long as a person lives, as new problems arrive whenever old problems are resolved. Playwright and film director Omar posited that happiness results from the achievement of objectives as well as the resolution of problems, adding that complete happiness would require a "lack of problems." A health-sector Peace Corps Volunteer suggested that perhaps happiness means accepting problems while working to overcome or diminish them. The village chief and union president withheld commentary but listened attentively. The group concluded that for a person to be happy, his or her problems must be of lesser importance than his or her sources of joy. The group also considered ways to help villagers experience peace despite their problems, including writing a play in which a person with a terminal illness is able to accept her quality of life and inspire others.

It's your wedding day. You've waited sixteen long years for this day. Your family has been watching you twenty-four hours a day for the past week to make sure you don't run off with your ex-lover. But you've waited this long and you're ready to surrender your independence to a strapping older man who is also your first cousin. You spend hours getting ready, meanwhile all of the women in your extended family are buzzing around preparing mammoth proportions of rice for the hundreds of guests.

When you step out of your mudbrick hut, you see that half of your guests are dressed in the same fabric as your bridesmaids. People that you don't even know show up, and kids from all over the area are there for the free meal. They spend the whole time blowing on noisemakers and climbing on the walls. Let's not forget that all three town drunks have shown up for the locally brewed beer. Your hired entertainment (the town crier) is harassing your guests for money with his megaphone.



The hot dance of the moment is a slow shuffling in a circle while shaking your booty. When you do this dance, make sure your booty oscillates four times the rate of your feet. All the single ladies over forty try to catch the eyes of musicians as they inch past them.

After all that dancing, you're hungry.


Sometimes, your wedding band will strike up an African instrumental remix of "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands."

A couple months ago, Tana awoke with a mystical vision haunting her slumber. In her dream, the clouds parted and the angels trumpeted as an unearthly voice bellowed: “If you build it, they won’t come.” We deciphered this cryptic prophecy to mean: if we were to construct a walled-in courtyard, we would be ridded of those free-roaming courtyard goats. And free from the daily toil of sweeping their droppings off our porch. Not only that, a courtyard would allow us to stargaze in our pajamas, plant a vegetable garden, and host the closest approximation to an all-American Super Bowl cookout. I just knew there was a reason I packed that “kiss the cook” apron. Anyway, we don’t get good ideas very often, so we ran with it. We figured having a wall between us and the elements would be a good investment in our future sanity.

Thus began a project so chockfull of production delays and miscommunications that it could have just as well come out of a modern-day bureaucracy, the IRS for instance. If a book existed on how not to get something accomplished, our courtyard fiasco would qualify as the feature chapter. For example, take the bricks themselves. First, the brick-maker dude ran out of water to convert clay into blocks. Then, in transit the bricks crumbled apart like cake. Then those demonic goats somehow scaled our five-foot brick pile and performed the Riverdance each night until daybreak. This was mere feet from our bedroom window. It’s some sort of in-built personality disorder of all goats to want to climb on everything—apparently you can take the goat out of the mountain, but you can’t take mountain out of the goat. After that ordeal, it rained and the clay dissolved into a sludge-like consistency. By the time the wall was fully realized a month and a half later, one hundred bricks had fallen by the wayside. What began as a simple commission had become a runaway train, though thankfully the end result wasn’t a train wreck. The finished wall and door looks amazing- see?

Despite the project’s general run-amokery, there were plenty of golden moments. To transport sand for cement, I accompanied Siaka on a wagon towed by his two prized bulls. Being the anglophile that he is, Siaka calls each of his pets Big Boy, which sounds kind of like “Beeg Bwy” in his French accent. Whenever a bull would become flustered, he would soothe it by yelling “Beeeeeg!” Talking the bulls down turned out to be important. From the moment I hopped on the wagon, both Big Boys decided to go full-speed ahead into the brush. They plowed over a helpless papaya tree and might have trampled a hut full of beer-drinking villagers had Siaka not chased down the wagon and halted them. After this little skirmish, our bull-drawn carriage floated elegantly through the village commons where I waved like Prince William at my neighbors. We stopped near Salif’s house and shoveled sand into the wagon, then back home. I got our adventures on video, but the camerawork is so Blair Witch Project-y that I hope it doesn’t activate anyone’s epilepsy.