I am learning about polygamy through two channels: my host family, and my research. In the family, polygamy is weird in how not weird it is.
I didn’t really get the whole situation straight until recently, because it’s sort of hard to figure out who’s who in a Burkinabe family. Why? Well, in West Africa [...]
(anything written in English was obviously said in French.)
#1 – Setting: Avenue Kwame Nkrumah
Unattractive Rasta: Maybe you and I could get together.
Me: Uh… I have a fiancé.
Unattractive Rasta: That’s okay. When you are young in Africa, fidelity isn’t a virtue.
Me: Uh…
Unattractive Rasta: You need to taste Africa!
Me: Uh…
#2 – Setting: Zaka (a bar with live [...]
I am cancelling today’s scheduled complain-a-thon (the short version: it’s too hot in the desert and our bus back from Gorom-Gorom was practically flooded by rain) to write a more balanced list of “Things I Like and Things I don’t Like in Ouagadougou”
Things I Like
1. Street Vendors that aren’t Artisans. Selling anything from bananas to [...]
My brother left for Ghana this morning, so I now have to settle down to a month of work (work?!?) in Ouagadougou. To get this work started on the right foot, I spent most of today hiding from the rain in an internet cafe, catching up on missed episodes of America’s Next Top Model. Ah, [...]
It is weird to be so in love and so frustrated with a place at the same time. I love this country, but sometimes it drives me crazy. Not that I really blame anyone, but it does start to get wearying that all the sidewalk vendors see you as “walking cash dispensers” and that there [...]
Okay, so I’m going to skip back somewhat to our second week in Burkina Faso. As interns for the Fondation pour le Development Communautaire de Burkina Faso, we were ostensibly going to do research in community schools to compile a database of the organization’s 2500 students. It soon became apparent that “research” involved driving out [...]
These three kids might as well be called the Three Stooges. The boy on the left is five-year-old Tidi. The little one in the middle is his three-year-old sister Alindi. They are two of our neighbor Mme Ilboudo’s children. The girl on the right is four-year-old Aleah, the little sister of my friends Ruth and [...]
On Tuesday morning I received a message from a girl who is in Burkina Faso right now, working for the same organization as I did last summer. I had written her asking how all the kids are. “They’re good,” she said. “They talk about you all the time.” Upon reading this, I proceeded to burst [...]
I’m probably getting way ahead of myself here in the “epic memoir” department, but I don’t think I can write much about Sapone without outlining at least some of the people who populated the neighborhood I lived in. I’ve exchanged a few emails with Danielle since we’ve left Burkina Faso, but I remember one in [...]
I started writing this about a month ago when I spontaneously decided to write the “epic memoir” of my three months in Burkina Faso. I might post bits and pieces of it if, and when, it develops.
I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to write about my summer in Sapone. It’s been ten [...]
