Language Loligags

*note* I know you will probably want to tar and feather me for putting off the next installment of village pictures. Read this anyway, you'll like it.

As I was walking home from work today I was swarmed by children. They are all, as near as I can tell, members of the same family which lives in a shack right behind where I work. Technically they are squatters on our property, but we don't really care. Anyway... I have been getting to "know" some of them, mainly the oldest girl (6ish years old) for the past several months. Our deep relationship consists of "hello" and "what is your name?," since that is all the French that they know. I should really greet them in their own language, but theirs is not one of the four local languages in which I have learned the typical greetings.

Tonight though, six of them came to greet me and shake my hand. They tried speaking to me in their language, and I tried to repeat what they said so as to at least pretend to have a conversation. And I just kept shaking hands. The girl switched into the trade language, which I am supposedly learning, and she said something that included either the word "money" or the word "friend." They sound similar and I am always getting them confused. So she was either professing her friendship or asking me for money. By that time I had shaken each hand at least three times so I bid them farewell and continued on my way. The girl followed me for a while and then eventually went back home. I trundled onward, wondering what all had just transpired.

When I got home I swung by the boutique downstairs before going up to my apartment. There I had an interesting conversation with my friend M, who runs the place. He speaks the trade language fluently and he also speaks some French, so we get by (despite both having heavy accents in French) and I am hoping to pick up more of the trade language from him. As I was hanging around, another of his friends came in and they started discussing wrestling in the trade language (I knew what they were talking about because I recognized the names of the wrestlers). The friend asked M something and he said to wait 10 minutes. The friend something else and M said, "okay, 5 minutes."

After that guy left M and I chatted a bit more and then I told him my initial purpose for coming; I needed to buy an egg. Unfortunately I have a very hard time pronouncing the word for egg in French (oeuf) and he didn't seem to understand me. He told me to come back in 5 minutes. I asked him to repeat himself and he told me to go up to my apartment and come back in 5 minutes. I figured he must have missunderstood me entirely and was inviting me to go do something in 5 minutes with him and his other friend. Several customers walked in just then so I left, not knowing what else to do.

I got back to my apartment and discussed the interchange with my roommate, who explained to me that when you ask for an egg in the boutique, it means that you want a hard-boiled egg. That is why he had told me to come back in 5 minutes. In order to buy a regular egg, you need to ask for "un oeuf non préparé." (a non-prepared egg).

I was very tempted to not go back down. I was feeling kind of tired of not being understood and I would rather just escape to Facebook where people speak English. But I went back down to the boutique and bought the hardboiled egg, since I had technically asked him to make it, and then I bought a regular egg as well. Whew! One language dilemma solved anyway! Now I just need to decide what to do with these eggs.

Village Stay

I have just completed my two week village stay! Of course I took a fair number of photos, but sadly I'm not in many of them. Funny how that works. At any rate, I have uploaded a vast majority of them to the usual purgatory, my dropbox account. You can browse them at your leisure here. They will not, however, have any colorful commentary. Therefore I have chosen a selection of particularly interesting pictures to launch what will probably become multiple blog posts about my experiences in the village. On y va!

 This is the "Baobob" quartier of town. It is entirely made up of one family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) This is where I lived for two weeks. It is beautifully green right now because we are in the rainy season.  All around the town are fields, though between the hill from which I took the picture and the town it is mainly pasture land. You can see the church. Nearly the entire family is Catholic. However, a majority of the town is Muslim so there is a mosque just across from the church (behind some other buildings there so you can't see it).

It is hard to explain where these buildings are in the first picture, but at any rate I slept in the room with the open door farthest to the right. It is the room of the man who was hosting me. He slept with his younger brother while I was there. To the left, with the door closed, is the room of another of his brothers. That brother is currently in the capital but his wife lives there with their baby daughter. To the left of that, mostly hidden behind the tree, is the hut of the mother and father of the family. Behind that is turkish toilet/shower, which you really can't see. And the building on the left is where the cooking is done. There is also a water reservoir in there. Each morning the girls bring the water up to the reservoir from the one tap in the quartier. Fortunately it is only about 150 yards away.

 Here is the tap for the quartier. From here the girls bring the water to different reservoirs (one for each family).

The bigger the girl, the bigger the bucket. I caught RC just as some of the water splashed into her eyes. I must have distracted her too much!

While we are on the subject of RC, here is what she looks like when she isn't carrying a bucket of water or trying to terrorize you. It took her a little while to get used to me, but once she did she followed me everywhere I went. She and J became my permanent shadows.

I never did get a good picture of J. Here he is being carried by his uncle N. N is the life of the party, always ready to start singing and dancing. He loves all of the songs from church and will often start singing them alone until others join in. Part way through my stay a friend loaned me his guitar. From that point on N was constantly asking me to take it out and play.

I did play fairly often. I think I got quite a bit better at playing by ear, particularly in the key of D. I realized most hymns are written in the key of D and you can fake them with just the G, A, and D chords, tossing in an F#m if it sounds high or a Bm if that doesn't work.
There were also some other musicians who wandered through once they heard that there was a guitar in town. They provided several evenings of entertainment.

I also used the guitar at a little gathering that was held each Sunday evening under a tree in the village. My friend A (on the drum) is the one who hosted me. The guy to my right is his younger brother G and the guy on the far right side of the picture is their cousin E.

 Here are some more folks at the gathering.

And a carpet load of kids!

We even did a little dancing!

And that's all for now, it is half an hour past my bedtime. My next post will probably focus on how I spent my time while in the village.

p.s. It would really be a shame to not include a picture of the bathroom. This is the neighbor's, which is pretty much identical. A "Turkish toilet" is a porcelain hole in the ground. Once you get the squat down it works pretty well. Because there is no running water, these are also pit toilets. They do a good job of ventilation so it normally isn't too bad, a good thing since it also serves as the shower room. You fill a pail with water and then bath in the little space between the toilet and the door. A drain hole in the corner allows the water to drain off outside the room.

Off to the village

Hi! Sorry I haven't written in a very long time. It hasn't been for lack of material, that's for sure! I have at least a month worth of photos sitting on my hard drive, most of them even edited and scaled so they can be posted here, but I haven't had enough time to actually do so. And now, in about 15 minutes, I am headed off for a 2 week village stay (no internet. Not even electricity.) I hope you can hang on to your hat for another two weeks! Here are two pictures from a recent trip to a wildlife reserve to hold you over.