Sssss

I cracked another peanut between my index finger and thumb as I watched the status bar creep slowly across the screen. Peanuts are probably my favorite snack food in Burkina – they are (somewhat) healthy and are really easy to find. Plus cracking peanuts is a way to pass the time as I wait for the latest instillation to finish. And I have a lot of installing to do. After an unfortunate hard-drive malady incident, I found myself having to reinstall everything on all of my twenty computers. Good times.

The process had dragged on for the last couple weeks due to an abnormally high amount of power cuts. Watching an install that took several hours die at 90% as the power blinks out is a bit discouraging. Watching it happen several times in one day is extremely frustrating. But at least I was making progress; with about half of the computers done I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I stepped out through the door into what was becoming a bright sunny day, not unlike the day before and probably much like the next day. I had amassed quite the peanut shell collection just outside my door and I dutifully added another handful. As they were racing down toward the ground I heard a loud “HIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSS” down next to my sandal-clad right foot. I jumped back about a foot and half and looked down to see a coiled cobra – hood and all – staring at me. I ran.

Once I was what I considered to be a safe ten yards or so away I peered back. It was about a foot and a half long – certainly not among the biggest snakes I’ve seen – but what set this apart from every other snake I’d seen was the its hood. It sat coiled exactly as I’d expect, looking at me and waiting, moving slowly back and forth. As I peeked through the slits between my fingers (what if it was a spitting cobra?) I felt an urge to go in and get a better look – this creature was absolutely fascinating. However after a few moments hesitation and a glance down at the bare skin of my foot that could have been so easily pierced by two poison laden fangs, I decided that I didn’t want to risk getting bitten by a cobra in a small remote town in Burkina Faso. It was time to go get some reinforcements.

Burkinabe hate snakes with a passion. The mere mention of ‘serpent’ gets the attention of the whole room and they will kill any snake they can find. I’d never actually seen this process, but I figured this was my time to find out. I ran over to the nearest classroom and grabbed a few of the biggest students and ran back to my lab. When we arrived I started to pick up some of the pieces of an old desk, thinking that it would be an alright weapon, or at least a way to stop from being bitten. The students exchanged confused looks.

After quickly explaining the situation the group dynamics immediately changed. “A snake!” “Where is it?” “How big is it?” “When did you see it?” An uninterrupted string of questions assaulted me as each student threw down the piece of wood I had given them and started picking up rocks. As we cautiously made our way to the place I had last seen my soon-to-be-deceased friend, I felt a pang of regret. The snake had done nothing to me – in fact he probably has helped me out by killing a lot of the mice in and around my lab. But what if I had stepped one foot to the right and he had bitten my foot? I shuddered.

“THERE IT IS!” shouted one of the boys and a barrage of rocks sailed through the air. I was amazed that so few students could through so many rocks! Someone got a headshot in early and flattened the snake’s head into a pancake. They moved in to closer range then, hitting the snake’s dead body with sticks and rocks. I told them to stop. He was most certainly dead at this point.

We did a brief clean-up of the area, putting back the rocks and moving the pieces of the snake off into the bushes. Then I escorted the students back to class, thanking them for their help. On my way back to the lab I saw another snake slither off into the bushes. Good work, stay afraid of me and we’ll get along just fine.

My Spring Break 2010 – With selected highlights

Toma -> Pô -> Ouagadougou -> Bobo -> Sindou -> Ouagadougou -> Togo -> Ouagadougou -> Yako -> Toma

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Pô

“Hey kid, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Good well then come help me.”

Suddenly the task of cleaning the computer lab seemed a lot less daunting with six student helpers. The place was so full of dust and so poorly organized that I had really wanted to just clean everything out of it right away but I didn’t think I could do it alone and Neal was in a meeting for the next several hours. I knew that the students at my school would leap at the chance to work in our computer lab and evidently it was the same here.

The lab had all of the essentials of a lab, computers, fans, electricity, as well as some perks, windowed glass and an air conditioner. Unfortunately the air conditioner hadn’t been working for some time and the glass windows were pinned open by some computers, resulting in a nice pile-up of dust. I put my small army to work, taking first chairs and tables, followed by cables, monitors and towers. Then came the least fun part – sweeping.

The room was covered in almost a centimeter of dust in some places. Being in the room while it is being swept out is like getting a really bad seat on transport on a really dusty part of the road – you don’t quite end up as red as you do after transport but you feel like you do. I send three unhappy kids in armed with ‘village’ brooms – a bunch of grass or straw tied at the bottom with a cord. Sweeping the household is traditionally part of girls’ daily chores so I had chosen three boys to do the first round. I opened the windows and turned up the fans, hoping to get them some clean airflow and let them go to work. A giant dust-cloud and a few minutes later and the lab looked much better. One more thorough sweep and it almost looked like new.

By the next morning everything was back in the lab, sorted according to operability and I was madly dashing from computer to computer starting installs, entering details, testing CD drives and swapping hardware. Somehow the two days I had allotted myself to finish with the lab had slipped away under the mountain of small tasks and now I was working all out – something I really hadn’t done much of since my last big programming assignment was turned in two weeks before graduation. It was exhilarating and the teacher who came in and out the lab didn’t really know what to think of Neal and me running around crazily. And then it was time to go – I had a bus to catch.

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Ouagadougou

The next morning I was most definitely not catching the bus I promised myself I would wake up for. In fact I wasn’t doing much of anything besides feeling the effects of last night. Besides a massive hangover I had some scrapes from a late-night run in with the pavement on the way back. I struggled out of bed and forced down a liter of water before plopping right back down. I repeated this a couple times before I felt I up to the eight-hour bus ride to the other side of the country. By this time it was lunch, and after learning the next bus out of town left at 2pm, I decided to stay for delivery. After a delicious BLT and equally good grilled cheese with bacon and tomatoes I had my stuff packed out and was heading out the door. I had thirty minutes to get across town but I wasn’t too worried – buses down make a habit of leaving earlier than five minutes to five hours after they are supposed to.

Still I was quite happy to see the taxi pull up that was dropping off some other volunteers. After explaining that I was a little short for time the taxi driver was off on a shortcut to the station, only stopping once to pick up someone headed the same direction. We pulled at 2:00 on the nose. The bus was doing the ritual last minute get-on-the-bus-we’re-leaving honking and I jumped out the taxi waving them down.

Up until this point I’d never met someone running any sort of transport in Burkina that wouldn’t at least try and squeeze one more passenger on. As the bus pulled out of the station after some yelling for me to get out of the way I was shocked. Despite the two-hour wait for the next bus I was overall very impressed by the bus company, Rakieta. They stick to their schedules like clock-work, their buses were cleaner than most I’ve taken in the states, they were comfortable and best off all had air conditioning! These were all firsts for me.

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More to come later but I wanted to get this first part up because it’s been forever and a day since I posted something!