It's been far too long

So in my laziness I have neglected two compose a blog post for far too long. Quite a bit has happened since my last entry and I'll try to conjure up as many colourful anecdotes as I can to illustrate that.
First, I have had the pleasure of partaking in several totally awesome fetes over the past month. The first was thanksgiving which was just beyond everything. I decided to head over to Titao, a medium sized town about 45k from ohg where a glorious party was hosted by the Roses- the only married couple in our stage. About 10 other crackers where there from throughout the northern territories and a good time was had by all. While I suppose it was nice to chat in english and check up on the progress of my comrades, the real highlight was the food. On the day of thanksgiving proper I believe I tasted the suckling meats of beef, chicken and swine- In addition to seemingly endless supply of beer and sweet potatoes. On top of this, I actually got the chance to slaughter my own chicken and oversee all the meat preparation. I've whined about this before, but seeing the animal from living to prepared meats is somethings we don't do enough of in the states and I found it quite satisfying. Anyway all in all that fete was quite good.
The next party was Tabaski- the Muslim celebration in honor of Abraham. The deed that is honored in particular is when abraham was willing to slaughter his first born son because god commanded it, but in seeing his resolve, god granted abraham a goat to slaughter in place of his son. All the Muslims in my village take time on tabaski to slaughter goats and pass around the meat to the neighbors. I began the gorging in kassoum, a nearby village, where I tasted goat, cous-cous and fried plantains (the west african response to turky, mashed-potatoes and cranberry sauce). When I returned to the big L, I was greeted openly with the various component parts of goats and more rice than I could stomach. This was all fine and good but it turns out tabaski has somewhat of a price. For the next couple weeks I had about 6 groups of children coming to my house each week demanding "SANBAY-SANBAY" which literally means each year, but figuratively means give me something. After shelling out about 2000 cfa over the first week I ended up saying "feuille ti'n fe" to most of them (I have nothing). I also had to listen to one of my neighbors bitch and bitch about how I didn't give her anything the day of the party. I would take her remarks to heart except she also demands that every time I go to the marché i bring her back something. She's a wench.
After that was basically the wrap of the of the school year. I calculated the grades for the first trimester and most of my classes did tolerably well. 4ème did a little too hot, and 5ème didn't really preform to the Pasteur institute level that I demand from them. There will be a lot more experiments next semester so I hope my childs are ready to have their minds blown.
Finally, the most recent and most notable event I just finished. I am currently on my way back to site after a most amazing trip to Mali. I met up with a few of my northern comrades on Monday her in ouahigouya and picked up a couple of stray Benin peacecorps volunteers while we were at it. We decided to travel to Dogon Country which is the site of a absolutely magnificent spot to hike and a very interesting people- the dogon. Our guide named Oumar was a dogon that grew up in Endé , one of the towns we visited. The best way to see dogon country is decidedly on foot so with Oumars guidence we shaked our way through villages allong the dogon ridge, snaking our way up and down rocky terrain at about 15k per day. It was a much more touristy spot than most of BF (scratch that - any of BF) so we saw plenty of honkies along the way- which for us is a kind of attraction. It's bizar, but I and many other peace corps volunteers can be downright unwelcoming to European and American tourists. I don't really no why, after all I'm only about 6 months less green than they are, but we do like to be condescending towards fellow visiters. In any case the trip was amazing. The terrain and culture was just lovely and our guide was something of a carecter. He spoke english after a fashion, but it basically consisted of american idioms that he's picked up from previous tours. I don't think there was a morning that didn't start without Oumar belting out "it's fawking cowld!". He was also plenty knowlagable about the local traditions and magics. We toured many menstruation houses for women because at least according to him menstruation is like an extremely powerful antimagic, and shamans of yester year would sequester women to protect their magics. I think animism might be the opposite of empiricism.
The hiking was also really nice. I have to say at times the climbs rivaled the stairs of cirith ungol, and Oumar was quick to remind us of the visitors and even tour guides that had bought it on the dogon cliffs.
All told it was jut a great trip and the price of 150 us dollars is really hard to beat. I'll be heading to Ouaga pretty soon for a little bit of training after the final party of the season- newyears. Any way I'm running a little low on time so I guess I'll try to write again soon.