Lessons in ebullience

I'm winding down on the home stretch (mixed metaphors what?) of my first year here in Burkina Faso and while once again I find myself unable to articulate much of my experience here, suffice it to say that I still find the world around me worthy of the highest, most poetic adulation, even if I am incapable of expressing it.

We here in the Big L just celebrated quite the Fete- but this time it was a Christian one. As I may have mentioned before the Big L is approximately 4000 percent mulsim, so I ended up going to a nearby village to party the Paques (or easter as it is called in cracker speak). It ended up hitting two catholic masses- one on the eve, the other the morning of- both of which were entirely in Djulakan. While my Djula definitely has come a long way since my arrival, I still have a very hard time sorting through the content of things like sermons or other complex topics. I was quite reticent at the event as I didn't want to draw too much attention to myself (being the single white person there made this nigh impossible but I still tried). I don't like being scolded for not going to church every Sunday and Christians in general and burkinabé-christians in particular are quick to do that. It should be noted that Burkina is the kind of place where a Muslim will fulminate a christian for not going to church, not because he's doing some disservice to god, but rather because he is withdrawing from the community. I, who am a total misanthrope and hermit by burkinabé standards, try in vain to set aside a good chunk of each day to doing things by myself. Anyways, attempting to obviate being sucked into another time demanding community was my reason for being reserved at the fete. I realize that I sound quite asocial, and I am, but I do spend about 90 percent of my waking hours either working or chatting with people. It's pretty clear that if I want to preserve what time I have left to myself I have to be quite aggressive in pursuing it.
Any way besides the masses were quite fun. I learned a couple new djula phrases and rather enjoyed the periodic paeans of the the melodically challenged but rhythmically godlike church musical group. Listening to the sermon and getting about every 5th word reminded me of the fact that all Islamic prayer gatherings are exclusively in Arabic (god's language) which very few villagers speak. On top of that, music is strictly forbidden anywhere near mosques. All in all, I think being Muslim is a pretty tough job.
In the post mass, me and my fellow teachers had quite a feast of spaghetti and fish along with a never-ending supply of dolo. Quite good.
I gave my fellow teacher a lesson in greek phrases including those used around Easter and got an equivalent lecture in Djula.

Shortly after Easter, I negotiated another party. We recently got another addition to the crack squad of savy, motivated functionaries at the Big L CEG. He's supposedly here to manage the funds of our school but as far as i'm concerned he's really just a narc sent by the government to spy on us. First of all, if you're educated and you are pro government in burkina that you are obviously on their pay role. None of my fellow frontier teachers have much love for the burkinabé government- its wanton prodigality and hypocritical rehtoric is quite the turn off. And as for myself, I am quickly becoming a supernova of disenchantment fueled populist political outrage, and due to that, I have know love of governments, foreign or domestic.
Despite all of this, in the traditional burkinabé fashion he was given a hearty welcome. And I, grasping for any reason at all to have a party, found out that his birthday was fast approaching and procured hearty cuts of lamb and 2 bottles of wine with all deliberate dispatch. Like any party that Nick Rossi is behind, this one knew not dearth nor want. Everyone left feeling quite satisfied.

The end of my first school year and my trip to France are both coming up very quickly. I'm so excited so see the home of Camus (ok maybe not algeria) and Sartre. Not to mention, to be in a country where you can find cheese outside the capital.