Big L at Last!

So after 3 months of stage and the headache of Ouaga I am no officially at site. More appropriatly I'm writting this from Tougan, the local capital of my village because it will be a cold day in hell when the Big L (what I affectionatly call my home of 1000 people) gets internet. I must say again it's just wonderful here. My home is quite the palace by Burkinabé standards. Babet had the whole thing worked on in anticipation of my arrival- which was extreamly selfless on her part as she was on her way out of the country at they time. The whole house is cemented and has a wonderfully constructed hanger under which I can enjoy the cool breeze free from the opressive west african sun. I've also brought my coustom table and chair and a lit pico (basically a cot) which was constructed by a handicapped association in Ouahigouya. These pieces of furniture augment the already substantially fournished home that I inherited. One of the custom piece of furniture that Babet had constructed for here was a wonderful book shelf which i've already begun to fill with pilfered books from the Peace Corps and US Embasy libraries.

I've begun just doing the meet and greet thing with the neighbors. Everbody is extreamly nice here. The only downside is prolonged chats en route are obligatory. There can be no salutation from a distance, I always have to hop off my back shake hands and go through lengthy exchanges in Jula or Francais. Oh a little anectdote about Burkinabé salutations. The initial moments of any engagement are highly ritualized here. For instance there is an initial exchange back and forth between party A and party B. An english equivilent might look something like this:
A: hello how are you?
B: Hello! I am fine thank you. And you?
A:I am fine as well. Beautiful day isn't it?
B:Yes it is. I hope you have a good day.
A: I wish the same to you, Goodbye.
B: Goodbye.

Ok so maybe a little a little dramatic but there are equivalent conversations in Jula except they never vary. In fact these initial exchanges are so habitualized here that they be quite hilarious when one party (for example me, the nassara) doesn't really get how they go. In fact the knoledgable party will keep going on the same conversation path even if the other person doesn't really know what is going on. For instance, if the above conversation was a Jula chat and person B was a cracker like myself the conversation might go something like this:

A: hello how are you?
B: Hello! (oh shit what do I say next?) I am fi...
A:I am fine as well. Beautiful day isn't it?
B:Yes! The day wishes...
A: I wish the same to you, Goodbye.
B: ...

And at each point where it was my turn to contribute something the opposing party would wait 1-3 seconds and then continue with the next step in the conversation regardless of whether or not I had fufilled my role. At the end of the exchange, that's when the real discourse begins but these cultural exchanges are nessisary and must precede any other conversation. They sometimes don't even notice when iv'e jumped ship on a conversation path and will continue despite that until it's finished. The Burkinabé of course find this endlessly funny and I do too. The plus side to this is it gives me only a few opening dialogues to master and after that I can run away before the real conversation begins thus creating the illusion of fluency.

But for the most part the friends i've made at my site are all french speakers. One of the guys in Lanfiera is the owner of a fish grill (I may have discussed the benifits of being close to a barrage before) and goes by the name of Zachaaria. He took me the other day to go check out the barage (aka man made lake) and to see where he get's his fish from. The Big L is in general a lot greener than burkina in general and the closer you get to the barage the greener it gets. As we approached the lake the terrain began to resemble a mix between american heartland and east asia rice patty. A twisting path led Zachaaria and I through a corn fields that would rival southern illinois before dumping us into an marsh like rice patty with oldgrowth tree scattered amoung it. It truely was an experience after the sahelian city of Ouahigouya.

This was a pretty rushed blog post but so it goes. Hope to have more luck next time!