In which we ford a river

I decided to hop on the small van we call a taxi-brosse when the bus I was riding on decided to take an unexpected stop and made no signs of moving again. These stops are really the more frustrating parts of transport. You'll be going along making good time and you come upon a village. You stop as per normal to pick up some passengers, but then you notice that the driver has turned the bus off and vanished! Then you spend the next several hours grumbling and waiting in the hot sun, given absolutely nothing to know when or if they bus will be continuing.

In any case, today I said enough! I saw that the tax-brosse was passing by and I decided to hop on it. And off we went! I was one of two passengers, which was a little bit disconcerting at first (empty taxi-brosses have a tendency to stop in places for long periods of time, hoping that someone will decide they need to go somewhere) but as we continued a slow but steady pace forward I began to feel very good about my decision to abandon the bus.

On the road I'm traveling on there are two inverted bridges. This may sound pretty fancy, but really it's just a concrete half-pipe for cars, which allows the river to cross over a road without wiping it out. I had heard that these inverted bridges where in pretty bad condition (read: under feet of water) at times but I had never really experienced this before as I usually didn't take this road. Today that was about to change.

We came upon the first inverter bridge and my heart skipped a beat, there was about two and a half feet of water covering the bridge! I heard the driver and the passenger in front nervously talking about the battery. Looking down I see the car battery uncovered and very much ready to electrocute us all, sitting at my feet. Eeeek!

Before I have a chance to say I might want to sit this one out, the van plows into the river, trying to best it can to maintain speed. I glance nervously down at the door where the water is beginning to seep in through the bottom. It seems every time we slow down more water starts pouring it.

“GO FASTER GO FASTER GO FASTER”, I'm yelling inside my head as we start to catch up with a guy pushing his moto across. He's not making very good time and is right in the middle of the road.

“Tell him to move” the driver tells the front passenger. The passenger leans out the window and starts speaking softly to the guy.

I yell at him, “You must speak louder!”

It seems the guy pushing the moto isn't going to move and it doens't seem like our driver is keen on slowing down and I'm expected a mid bridge watery collision and possibly electrocution, but at the last moment the guy veers off the right and we're home free!

Safely on the other side the front passenger turns to me and says, “You were afraid?” I explained that I really didn't fancy getting electrocuted, to which he just smiled and says, “Oh, so you heard us talking about that did you?”

Ah, Burkina.

Portez un Copote!

I walk into the roomed and feel like I'm going to a meeting of the UN - high sealing, plush seats, large projector screen, signs for translation channels. I look around at all the people, there are probably about five hundred at the moment and there are supposed to be six hundred fifty before we start our speeches. Slightly intimidating given that I'll be speaking in French about a topic that I don't quite have the vocab for – health.

Rewind two days and I'm in Ouaga to celebrate my birthday and see Andrea's COS (close of service) conference. I'm making the rounds through the bureau saying hi to everyone when out of the blue I get asked to speak to a group of Burkinabe volunteers who will be serving for a year as teachers. Apparently they've asked Peace Corps to come do a presentation about how to live a healthy life during your service.

I've spent most of the day before writing and translating my speech, I'm going to have to go off my notes for a lot of it, which I'm not entirely happy about. If I had been ask to give an hour or two of how to use a computer I think I'd be pretty comfortable doing so, but I'll be talking about washing and preparing food, safe sex and STIs.

And then it's our turn, Country Director Shannon, Andrea and I walk up to the enormous stage and take a seat in one of the empty chairs at the long table. Shannon is up first, speaking about the philosophy of development. I'm looking at my speech, trying to come up with something to liven it up. Then I remember a song my host sister used to sing to me:

“Si tu aimes manger, tapes les main! clap, clap, clap
(If you like to eat, clap your hands!)
si tu aimes le soleil, tapes les main! clap, clap, clap
(If you like the sun, clap your hands!)”
etc...

And I thought I could change up my current delivery of my 'wear a condom' to fit to the song, which was at the end of my speech. After stumbling through the first part of my speech I made it to the end and was ready to go. I asked them if they knew the song that my sister taught me, and most of them said yes, then I launched into my modified version. It turned out a little something like this:

Si elle dit je t'aime, portez un capote! clap, clap, clap
(if she says she loves you, wear a condom!)
Si il dit je veux pas, portez un capote! clap, clap, clap
(if he says he doesn't want to, wear a condom!)
Si c'est un jour de la semaine, portez un capote! clap, clap, clap
(if it's a weekday, wear a condom!)
Si c'est un weekende, portez un capote! clap, clap, clap
(if it's a weekend, wear a condom!)
Si vous êtes fatigué, portez un capote! clap, clap, clap
(if you are tired, wear a condom!)
Même si vous êtes excité, portez un capote! clap, clap, clap
(even if you are horny, wear a condom!)

With the delivery of the last line the audience broke out cheering and laughing. Mission accomplished!? (not in the Bush aircraft carrier sense)

On a side note: it's really funny when English speakers are trying to say they are excited about something, often they end up telling everyone they are really horny (excité)

The Road

I wake up to my alarm and the scamping of little feet. My alarm (which, quiet fittingly is set to the song of time from Oceania of Time, I programmed it in myself) has scared Tyler and Jessi's two new kittens, Gingembre and Noname (which I've tenaciously been calling Meatkat for the past couple days, despite dirty looks from Jessi and Tyler - they want to name him another kind of spice) and they go darting for cover in their favorite hiding/sleeping spot – in the shelves on top of the pasta packages. They are both so cute and it has been a lot of fun playing with them the last couple days. Chris, Andrea and I snuck up to their house under instructions from Jessi to surprise Tyler for his birthday. He awoke to find a full breakfast spread (including bacon!) laid out with three of us and Jessi awaiting him. And he had no idea that any of it was coming. Good work Jessi!

But now all that is over - it's 6:30 am I have to get my butt in gear and get down to the road to catch the bus back to Toma. After saying goodbye to Jessi and Tyler I hop on my bike and get down to the road. Just in time to... wait for thirty minutes or so while the bus driver decides that he has enough passengers (or has finished his rousing round of morning banter) to leave. My wait is broken only by the occasional passing of bikes or motos on the road. Almost everyone says hello.

After about 10 minutes pass by a see a girl coming up the road with a chair on her head. As I'm wondering why in the world a young girl like her would be headed out of town with a chair on her head she stops in front of me, puts down there chair and says that her mom told her to bring this to you. I look down the road and sure enough her mother is about a hundred yards down the road, smiling and wave to me. I wave back and yell thank you in French and local language. She just waves back.

After a few more minutes the bus shows up, laden with its usual cargo of people, bags, boxes and animals. I wave the bus down, and tell them I'm headed to Toma. About a minute later my bike has been hoisted up to the roof and firmly tied down and we're on our way!

The road is bumpy, but not at its worst and at least by the light of day the driver can avoid or slow down for the bumps. And in case you get car sick there are very frequent stops to load on more passengers and cargo. At each of these stops the workers on the bus wait until the bus starts moving to hop on, partly because you're never really sure when the bus is actually going to move and partly because they want to look cool. I've always wondered if they ever got left behind on accident doing that.

Today the most exciting part of the trip is when one of the Guinea fowl got out of it's cage on top of the bus and made a break for it, flying off into the bush. Immediately a gang of maybe ten men and boys go running after it, yelling insults at the guy who put them in their cage as they run. They're back in less than five minutes, bird in hand and before everyone has a chance to calm down from all the excitement we're off again! But this time instead of his normal slow start the driver just steps on it and the gang of last minute bus jumpers is getting left behind! I start laughing as they thump the side of the bus, signaling the driver to stop. He eventually does stop and they clamber back on, looking only slightly abashed.

Before too long the 45 km to Toma is passed and I'm back home. Time for a shower and a nap!