Fun in Africa

Rice and Sauce (that chipped Adam's tooth)... 150 francs
Goat Meat (that gave Kelly E. Coli)... 300 francs
Fried Caterpillars (that Stephanie couldn't keep down)... 200 francs
Care Package from Home (full of food guaranteed not to make me sick)... Priceless

Thanks Mom and Dad.

That's right- with a little help from those packages you've all been good enough to send me, I've managed to stay relatively healthy for the past couple of months. No matter what else happens, any day that I'm not physically ill is a good day in my book.

I've tried to take advantage of this run of good health by doing a bit of traveling. I've visited Burkina Faso's Second City, Bobo Dioulasso, a couple of times. Bobo is a neat city known for its talented artisans and musicians as well as for its Grand Mosque- a magnificent structure built entirely from wood and dried mud. More importantly, Bobo's got great ice cream and a decent Internet connection.

South of Bobo is the city of Banfora. If anything in Burkina Faso can be considered a tourist attraction, it would have to be the waterfalls in Banfora. The hike up along the falls was nice, and the view once we got to the top was alright. The deep greens of all the trees and plant life around the falls were definitely a nice change of pace from the browns of the mud and sand typical to much of the country. I have to say, though, my favorite part of Banfora was a burger joint name "McDonald's." In a creative mixing of American icons, the restaurant has a big painting of Donald Duck on the wall near the entrance. Copyright laws aside, this McDonald's has the best burgers in Burkina Faso.


Nearer to my village is the town of Dedougou. The last time I was in Dedougou, I was in the market picking up some sugar. The wind started to pick up and the dark clouds started moving in, so I knew I had to book it if I was going to beat the rain back to the house. I grabbed my sugar and took off. Now, one of the staples of a market here are booths selling second-hand clothes that different charity groups sent over from the US. As I was running past one of these booths, I saw something hanging up that I knew I just had to buy:

A bright pink shirt with large white letters which read: "Maine, The Way Life Should Be".


My new favorite shirt (though a little small and a lot pink) only cost me 60 cents. Not bad.

The only problem with traveling away from my village is that when I return to my house, I'm always scared to see what creatures have decided to move in while I was away. I can deal with the heat and the bad food and the hole-in-the-ground toilet, but bugs and critters living in my house are something else entirely. Trivia time:

Which of the following creatures are NOT among my roommates in my house here in Bomborokuy? (Rooming with Rob, Matthew, and Bryan doesn't seem so bad anymore...)

(a) Crickets (loud ones)
(b) Cockroaches (big ones)
(c) Lizards (fast ones)
(d) Mice (fat ones)
(e) Bats (scary ones, but aren't they all)

Until a few weeks ago, I would have been happy to report that there were two correct answers to this trivia. Alas, recently I have discovered that I share my house with the object of my second-greatest fear (after needles)- bats.


Chauves-souris (literally "bald mice") in French, bats have stayed out of my way most of my life. Two notable exceptions:

Encounter 1 - Five Years Ago, Night of my High School Senior Prom. I bring my date home to say hi to the folks before heading off to a party. Enter: bat. Lots of screaming, lots of running around. We finally get it confined to my sister's second-story room. In a thinly-veiled effort to impress my date while at the same time ensuring a safe distance between me and the bat, I volunteer to climb out onto the roof, open my sister's window, and get the bat to fly out of the house through the window. Of course, that didn't come close to working. At that point, all the commotion had woken my father, and he went into the room and smacked the bat out the open window with a tennis racquet. Shortly after, my date and I are leaving the house en route to the party, and I open the back door- There is the bat, still barely alive, writhing on the back steps. My date screams. Ok, maybe I do, too.

Bat 1, Josh 0

Encounter 2 - 2 Years Ago. I'm home on break from college, and it's just Mom and me in the house. Enter: bat. Cue: screaming, running. We barricade ourselves in a room and call the neighbor. Our neighbor comes over equipped with a big, circular net attached to a wooden pole- something you'd use to fish or catch butterflies. But by the time our neighbor had arrived, the bat had stopped flying around and had perched himself somewhere in the house. We ran around yelling and making a lot of noise to try to bring the bat out of hiding, but to no avail. After a while, our neighbor left, leaving us the net. A couple hours later, the bat emerged, and, after getting myself sufficiently psyched up, I grabbed the net. Seven or eight ugly-looking swings later, the bat was dead and on his way to being tossed outside.

Bat 1, Josh 1

And so it appears that the rubber match will take place at a neutral site, here in Bomborokuy. For now, I have ceded my bedroom to the little beasts in order to maintain the peace. But that will only last so long...

I'm working on posting some pictures online so any who is interested can get a glimpse of Bomborokuy, my house, and my new favorite shirt. I'll be sure to send a quick email out with the link once it's ready. I moved my trip to Ghana to December, so I might be able to use this time before school starts (in October) to get some pictures up there.

I miss all of you. Good luck to everyone who starts school this month, be it kindergarten or graduate school.

God Bless,
josh

Oh, right, and there are no (d) Mice in my house. But what does it matter? Didn't you hear me?! There are bats!