1. learned the moore for "i fell". I fell off my bike at the pump, in front of a lot of people. I didnt get hurt, but a lot of people laughed at me, and i lost the whole bidon of water i had just pumped as a casualty of the fall. I of course, was laughing harder than any of them, and when i got up, i gave everyone who was staring at me the two thumbs up sign to let them know i was ok, which they all promptly imitated back at me. For the whole week now, people have been telling me, "ilana! i heard you fell!". News travels at an incredibly fast rate.
2.realized that i can, if absolutely necessary, get myself unlost from deep in the bush. i went for a run and tried to take a route through the bush, where no one really lives at all, and since there's no way of having landmarks when the terrain has no direction, and there's no one to see for miles and miles, it's apparently quite easy to lose the road completely. i eventually got myself out of the brush and back onto a main road and then asked people who i saw how to get back to bissighin from there. it's commonly said that if you have a mouth in burkina, you can't get lost, cause you just ask people along the way if you are going in the right direction, but i guess this doesnt hold true if there is no one around for your mouth to talk to. luckily i got out of being en brusse right before it got really dark. i guess i'll take the bigger road when i run from now on.
Ok, here are a couple pictures from the huge, week long "man gets back from mecca" party in my village (actually in my quartier):
Disclaimer: i did not take these pictures, a girl in my village insisted upon taking them, so they are of whatever she thought was important to take pictures of. I think she did a fine job though. The first one is of people praying. There are, i believe 6 times per day when people are called to prayer. The call to prayer every morning at about 4:30 or 5:00 is the best. i can hear it very clearly from my warm cozy piece of foam. In all seriousness, i have actually begun to find the call to prayer quite comforting.
This picture on the right is of the school boys who sang as the mecca man made his grand entrance back into the village; although i think at this point they are in the midst of a procession accompanying him to the courtyard (my courtyard!)The next two are pictures of the traditional dancing that happens all day during fetes like this one. I usually try to dance for an hour or so, but the rest of the women dance all day and night, taking short breaks for food occasionally. As i think i've mentioned befor
e, for special events like weddings, funerals, or any big party, people get uniforms made out of the same pagne fabric. Everyone buys their fabric and then the tailor makes it into whatever they want out of it. I was just given a pagne to wear during this one because i didnt get fabric in time for the tailor to make anything out of it. Below; you can see the entrance to my quartier, which is called Ronsin, if you look straight back, behind all the people, to where that tree is.
From Zogore AIDS Day:
As i mentioned in a previous blog, I went to a friend's village one weekend to help him out with a big HIV/AIDS sensibilization and awareness day. The following are a few pictures from that weekend.
Below you can see the women getting ready for the all womens bike race held to kick off the day. This was pretty funny, as the bikes dont really have breaks, so as soon as the race started and they took off, many of them crashed into each other and fell. I'm allowed to say it was funny cause no one got hurt; they all laughed, got up, and kept going.
One of the dance troups (there were 6 there) doing a cool triple person move.
Aaron giving his discourse on HIV/AIDS (...written by ilana) and welcoming everyone to the day. He wore his nicest boubou for the special occasion.
The boys soccer teams from zogore and a different village nearby getting ready to play their match. I think the team in the green shirts and pink shorts won. These teams are really lucky that they have uniforms and a real ball. The kids play soccer in my village with rolled up cloth and they make the goal posts by putting large sticks in the ground opposite each other and tying a piece of string between them. It works pretty well, but still, i'm sure they'd love to have a real ball to play with.
The winners of the womens' bike race pose for a picture with the Haut Comissaire of the Yatenga Province.
These are all the pictures i have time to post right now (it takes for ev er on this computer), but hopefully i'll have more soon.
1 comments:
Even down here in Orodara I heard you fell...
But seriously, I loved the pictures in this post!
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