A frog, a cat, & a snake

Last week I saw my 1st snake - there are heaps around, I just haven't gone looking for them. I was a bit disappointed when I saw this one cos it was only about 30cm long. But then I found out it was a viper so size doesn't matter! The snake was dead because the cat, Tui, is awesome at killing snakes. (Big ones, small ones - no worries). Then we saw the frog a metre or so away, & so we think that the snake was attacking the frog when Tui saw him and took his chance! Unfortunately the frog wasn't quite dead, so I put him out of his misery. (Cats don't usually attack frogs because they spit poisonous stuff at them). Frog: 0 points. Snake: 0 points. Em: 2 points. Tui: 10 points. I don't usually like cats that much, but Tui has shot up in my estimation. Makes me even want to get a cat for myself.

The rainy season is nearing its end, which is a good thing because in several places there has been flooding due to unusually heavy rains. Actually quite a few people have lost their entire maize crops this year, and if it rains much more in the next week or so everybody's millet will rot. Heavy rains also means that lots of houses have collapsed (most houses are made from mud bricks, which although cheap aren't sturdy). The other problem affecting nearly everybody in the country is the fact that there's no gas. The price of charcoal went up so much that it was cheaper to cook by gas, so demand went up and then supply ran out. A couple of lots have recently come into Ouagadougou (the capital city) but fighting ensued as demand far exceeded supply. In the meantime my supply is OK, but if the gas crisis lasts much longer we'll have to buy charcoal (which has gone up by at least 300%) and cook over that. It's alright for me, I can afford to buy the charcoal but many many others can't. Think about running a restaurant without gas to cook with, or how hospitals will cope without gas for the gas fridges.

Someone recently asked me about what I eat, & I figured others of you would be interested in that too, so here's the deal. Guinea fowl is pretty common (think of a small and skinny chicken) and that's nice, although sometimes they can be very tough. Meat is very dear, but in Gaoua (where I'm living) you can get pork, goat, beef, chicken & fish so that's a good variety. However, the meat market is open to flies and every other type of insect so yeah, that can be a bit off-putting. Whenever one of us missionaries go to 1 or other of the 2 main cities, it's usually with a shopping list for the others too. Pretty much all the fruit & veges are seasonal. At the moment there is cabbage, yam (kind of like a HUGE potato), cucumber, onions, guava (very nice stewed), okra (slimy if boiled but pretty good when chopped & fried), bananas, oranges whose skins are green and whose taste is rather tangy, and even apples (1 variety). There's also things called custard apples, so named because of the texture of the flesh I think. They're nice, very sweet, and not to be eaten when in a hurry because they're filled with big black pips. In the market I've also seen big green leaves for sale, which are used to make a sauce to go with the staple diet of tô (this is kind of like a solid porridge made from ground maize or millet). I don't know if I'll ever like tô, but if I can get to the point where I can eat enough of it so as not to offend those who have generously shared it with me, I'll be happy. My tolerance is improving though: the first time I managed only 1 mouthful, the 2nd time I probably had 2 or 3 mouthfuls, and the 3rd time I had what I would call a good helping, but was still probably only 1/3 of what they'd eat. If I keep increasing the amounts like that though I'll be rather overweight in a year! If ever someone's hungry while travelling, apart from being able to buy hard boiled eggs from the road side, you can also buy roasted maize - pretty healthy takeaways eh?

While staying with Alice, a Swiss missionary, I asked her to pass me the purple bucket - at least I meant to. I said: "Tu peux me passer le peau pourpre?" instead of "...le seau pourpre?" So what I asked for was the purple skin! I'm sure there are many language mistakes awaiting me... I start studying Dioula next week with a friend of a friend. I'm looking forward to it though! (As long as she's got a good sense of humour). I'll keep you posted.

Some of the sights from Burkina Faso

Yay, I made it safely to Burkina Faso!! I'm enjoying it and so far am settling in very well. Some of the new things I've eaten in the past few weeks = yams (about 200mm long X 200mm diameter) - these are much nicer than NZ yams; goat - very nice too; okra - a vege with green skin, it's gross & slimy if it's boiled but pretty nice if fried; "custard apple" with bumpy green skin & an off white flesh. It's sweet and soft, lots of pips to spit out but a very tasty way to finish dinner. And finally plantain - it looks like a fat banana but is starchier and not sweet. It's nice fried and goes well with fried eggs.

I'm slowly going to work my way around the rest of the team here, & stay with each of them for a week or so to find out what they do. First up I went to Legmoin to stay with Ana, who is Dutch. It's only about 40km away from where I'm based in Gaoua, so not far. I've learned to ride a motorbike since being here so we took them down which made a nice ride. The road is dirt, & since it's the rainy season the roads can be very muddy but fortunately they were dry. Potholes can be HUGE so I'm glad I didn't have to contend with mud as well.

One night some of the youth from the church came round & made us tea. It's quite a ritual - the whole process can take 2 or 3 hours! The first cup of tea is VERY strong & VERY sweet, and the 2nd cup is strong & very sweet. I was pretty pleased that the cups are small so it wasn't too hard to down it all!

We also visited a house, which is built in the traditional way. This shot is of the roof, where they sleep in the hot season because it's the coolest place.

I've met lots of friendly people and am coping well with the weather. They all tell me how cold it is but I don't agree! It's in the 20s every day... and every night too. It's pretty humid - 85% or over. So I'm glad I arrived at this time of year & not the hot season! Everybody says that I'm very pale, & nobody can pronounce my surname; something they think is very funny. They've got a great sense of humour, even the kiwi sarcasm is appreciated. My biggest problem is remembering who I've met because to me they look similar!

Au revoir, France

The good news is that the exams are over, & the great news is that I passed! The songs we'd been practising for graduation went well (I played the guitar so didn't have to memorise all the words) and there was a good feed afterwards too. Our class also had a farewell for our teacher, who is pregnant with her 3rd child.

Since then I've been cruising & it's been awesome :) Last week I went to a conference which was really good; as well as being beneficial to my French! It was in this really old town (by old I mean from the 1st century) and some of the streets were really narrow & cobble-stoned.

The weather has been fantastic, most days it's in the early 30s & not much wind. Which is another great thing about me going from France's summer to Burkina Faso's wet season...

This month a few extras are here for a summer course. They've all learned French before & just need a refresher. 2 American ladies, Ruth & Vanessa who are now missionaries in Paris, moved in. At about 3 in the morning I heard a heck of a racket going on & I figured maybe 1 of them was sleep walking or something. Well no. Vanessa had locked her door before she went to bed, but needed to get up to go to the toilet. The key WOULD NOT move. Ruth & I got up to help, perhaps due to rather selfish motives at least on my part. First up we tried whacking the key out from our side of the door. No go. We're on the 2nd floor, but there's no fire escape (dodgy eh) so then we thought about taking the door off. I got my screwdriver, but unfortunately it was the type of hinge you need to lever out the pin & we didn't have a hammer or anything else suitable. After some time Ruth asked me if there was a ladder. Good thought!! So I went down to the basement & came across an extendable ladder. It wasn't really heavy, just awkward to manouver. The lights, which are on timers in the basement, turned off when I was 1/2 way up the stairs... Anyway I made it safely out and Ruth & I managed to extend the ladder to the required length & propped it against the wall. I decided to climb up have a look. I managed to wriggle, pull & yank all at the right time & in the right way & the key came out! So the early morning adventure was over & it was back to bed. And after a while sleep returned.

Tomorrow my travels begin... I'm going to stay in Tours (an hour or so south-west of Paris) with a kiwi couple who studied here last year. Apart from watching the All Blacks beat South Africa and visiting an old castle I'm not sure what else is planned. On Monday I'm catching the high speed train to Paris (320km/h) and stay overnight. On Tuesday morning I'm flying out to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso!!! It's been 19 years since I knew I wanted to go so bring it on!

More on life in the French Alps

The last 6 weeks have gone very quickly! May in France is a good month: 4 public holidays! Labour Day, Armistice Day, Ascension, & Pentecost Monday. Unfortunately the first 2 fell on Saturdays, but we still scored 2 short weeks. The bad news is that my computer died :(

But the good news is that the hard drive is OK, whi

ch means I can retrieve all my info from it :)

A few other students & I have been continuing to go to the retirement home, which has been good. Only 2 of us could go on Wednesday, but that turned out fine because only 1 of the residents was keen for a chat. She's pretty hard case; she told us that the important thing isn't just to talk French, it's to talk French well! So we tried to talk French well...

My 45 min presentation went well, thanks to the loan of a computer and a big screen TV on which to show it. One thing I learned while fact-finding about Burkina Faso is that 46% of its population are aged 15 or less. This week I also checked out the weather in the south-west of Burkina: it's the rainy season, which means that temperatures have dropped to somewh

ere in the 30s; I reckon I can handle that.

It's hard to believe, but there are just 3 weeks left of school, with exams from the 18th-22nd June. It looks like I'll be leaving France mid-July, after having a few weeks off for R&R. I posted the application for my visa, & 6 days later received my passport back good to go. No hassles at all. And this week I got all of the anti-malarials that I need: 12 boxes!

I'd better go because somebody made brownies & I don't want to miss out!

Kiwi visitors

It's been a fabulous 5 weeks or so since I wrote: all traces of winter have gone and spring is definitely here! At the tail end of winter I joined about 15 others from church & we went to a nearby ski station. It's HUGE!! Had a great time despite the cold, and even went on the mechanical luge.
In the past few weeks of class we've been learning how to construct a written or verbal argument in French. The style isn't so very different from how we do it, so the hard bit was memorising all the vocab; words such as nevertheless, conversely, furthermore..... We also began reading a new book together, & this one is a lot harder. It's the autobiography of a famous French author & it's good - funny at times too which is a bonus. Term 2 ended so a few students have left, some for other parts of France & others for various countries in Africa.
So that means it's holiday time again, & I feel like I've been writing that phrase quite often! And I have been priviledged enough to have 2 lots of visitors all the way from NZ! This meant I scored some vegemite which is a bonus :) The first 2 visitors were 2 ladies from the mission organisation I'm part of, & we had a blast. I really enjoyed showing them around and hearing a "normal" accent again! However, their travels were disrupted slightly due to some parts of the national train company striking. Anyway, they did manage to go on from me to the north of Spain as planned so it all worked out well.
My 2nd lot of visitors are John & Katherine Bennett, family friends. They came to me from spending a few days with his bro in Tuscany, and from here hope to go on to England and then Africa where John will attend a conference. Unfortunately it's not just the train strike that has disrupted their plans, it's also the cloud of volcanic ash and the fact that John lost his passport. From a selfish point of view it's worked out very well as we've had 5 extra days together and they've spoiled me rotten! We had 1 night in Lyon, then went on from there 100km south to a gorgeous city called Valence. It was very enjoyable sitting in the sun eating ice cream, walking around the massive park, and trying the local fare. (I couldn't however persuade them to try some snails with me.) They leave today or tomorrow from Geneva (when the passport arrives!) so then it'll be back to normal for me. Oh yeah, I've got some homework to do for Monday.... I think I'll try and ignore that for a little bit longer though. This awesome weather begs to be enjoyed!!

Baking with experts

My project through the holidays went well; it was actually fun finding out how people celebrate different events here. One thing I found out was that not only is there a special cake for Christmas, but there's also a special cake at Easter. Must remember to try that when Easter rolls around, all part of learning the culture right? One lady I interviewed couldn't celebrate birthdays as a child because her dad had died, which left no money for extras like birthdays and Christmas. When she was 6 she and her little sister began working for the school teacher, cleaning his house. They started work at 6am! Puts a bit of perspective on things eh. It was no surprise to find out that this lady loves baking today; she's got hundreds of cake recipes! She's one of the people I've met at the rest home, where a few of us go every week. We talk to them & help out with their activities, which is often baking cakes. Not much of a hardship! This week we made 1 apple pie & 1 with blackberries & apple. Ohh la la! It's fun talking to them and they're patient with our broken French :)
Things got pretty serious this week: exams week. We had 8 again, but some were very short so don't feel too sorry for me! We had listening comprehension & production, written comprehension & production, a dicatation, a Biblical vocab test, reading aloud to the teacher, & the grammar test. I think most of us found the oral comprehension hard, it was pretty fast! For the oral production we had 10 mins to prepare for 1 topic, and the other 2 were spontaneous but we did the spontaneous ones first so it was a bit hard to remember what I'd prepared for the last one! We get our results back on Monday which is good cos I don't like waiting for things like that!
So I got my interviews done over the holidays for our assignment, but we haven't had to present them yet due to exams. That joy is delayed until next week. I've done mine on power point which will hopefully take the pressure of me a bit. As long as all the technology works! I found out some French Easter games. In one everybody rolls an egg down a hill and the surviving egg is the winner. Their egg apparently represents the stone that rolled away from the front of Jesus' tomb. But the one we're going to play in class is where contestants each have an egg which they have to throw up and catch. The first egg to break yields the loser. I'm not sure what the point is of the game but I reckon it'll stretch out my presentation to the desired 30 mins!
The lounge on our floor is looking great, thanks to some team work during the last few weeks getting it painted. Some of us have been selling snacks & stationery as a fund raiser to pay for the paint & the DVD player we got a while back. So it's a lot more cosy than when we arrived in September.

Raclette again and more tenses to learn

The winter continues but the end is in sight, the days are getting longer and slightly warmer. However, this week we had more snow & a high one day of -3 but yesterday it got up to 2! Unfortunately the weather was too bad for us to be able to go skiing, so we've postponed it until March. Everything looks beautiful, especially when the sky's clear blue. Our weekly shared dinners are lots of fun. Jemima made us a Swiss raclette: lots of melted cheese boiled spuds. Dessert rounded things off nicely: a chocolate mousse.
We've had just 6 weeks back in class after the Christmas holidays but it's been pretty busy. This week we learned 3 new tenses!! The simple past, anterior past, and the composed past. The simple & anterior past are only found in old literature, like the Bible, and the composed past is only spoken. So yeah, a bit to get my head around but the good thing is that they're all made up of bits & pieces from other tenses we know. (Potentially confusing!) We have holidays now for 2 weeks then after 1 week back we have exams, so it's not all fun & games. In class the other day we watched a DVD called Little Nicholas. It's life as viewed through the eyes of a 10 year old and very funny. It was encouraging to understand more this time than last year when we watched a film in class.

I've been going to the physio 3 x a week and it's helping! At last my shoulder's getting better; I swept my room last weekend using both arms and it didn't hurt! She's friendly and knows her stuff, plus she's a trained massage therapist which is very great! I've practised the subjunctive tense on her a few times, apparently we do have it in English but because the meaning changes depending on the verbs used, it's a bit hard to understand. Our class has got a project to do in the holidays: interview at least 5 locals on any theme to do with French society.

After the holidays we all have to do a 30 minute presentation to the class on our findings. I've decided to interview people on their traditions around birthdays and public holidays. I've discovered that public speaking in French is very different!! It's so much harder and takes a lot more effort... but slowly it's improving. It's time for me to sign off now... I've got to get ready for a soirée!