petit compaore: January 2012

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

first days in ouaga

Isaac with a "friend" (uh oh, maybe I'm going to get in trouble for this one with Papa ;)). Well, you can't blame me. The first three days I was there, this was pretty much all I saw. I hung with these two guys a lot of the time.

A tree in their courtyard. The "seeds" inside apparently are used as a remedy for high blood pressure, if I remember correctly.

The "jib jib" (can't find it online). The round things are a little fruit. The texture is hard to describe. I feel like I've had it before, but can't put my finger on where.

Behind their house. Notice the shutters. This is what they had for a window in most of the houses - no glass/vinyl. It makes sense though, because you probably need ventilation more than anything. But, it does let the dust in. And let me tell you, the dust of Ouaga is a force to be reckoned with. We are still trying to chase it out of our clothes. It gets everywhere you wouldn't expect it to be, like inside the closed room with the dishes in it.

Here is a Burkinabe eggplant - "bassim".

And this is the top of it. You eat it raw. It's okay tasting. I might not eat it every day, but it was tolerable and interesting to try! Not super exciting, except how it looked.

And here are some videos of Isaac with kids (who really, truly are not related) at the only playground we chanced upon in Ouaga (not that we traveled a ton within the city).

They were a good first few days. We got adjusted to the time difference, met about six of Papa's brothers and sisters, and got somewhat adjusted to the climate difference before heading to... the village!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

a chunk

I was going to write about how sweet Isaac is all the time but now he's trying to crawl all over me and wrestle and harass me. This is his favorite thing lately and it's really really really annoying. Maybe he likes the negative attention?

So when he is good, Isaac likes to try on the new things I have been making for him. I've made two pairs of pink pajama pants, and today I finished a soft bathrobe. They might not be the prettiest to look at, but they are fine for a little guy who doesn't complain about how things look!

My little chunk is a good guy much of the time. He listened quietly the other night while I read him "The Lady of Shalott" (the poem by Tennyson), then partway through, he said, "She's a queen." So he was really listening! What more could you want in a man than one who will let you read him poetry before bedtime, gets mad if he can't help cook or clean, and is always willing to give soft kisses or nice hugs?

In other news, Isaac is in the stage of over-regularizing verbs. So instead of "went", it's "go-ed", instead of "does", it comes out as "dooz", etc. It's cute and probably pointless to correct at this point. He'll get past it.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

plane ride

I suppose it makes the most sense to tell the story of our trip starting from the very beginning.

We left from Portland....

...wheeling our luggage to the gate...

...and we had a chance to look at our plane before we got on it.

Isaac hadn't flown since he was 1 and we went to Wisconsin, so it was like an entirely new experience for him. Please excuse Isaac's messy hair. The days prior to departure were really crazy.

A mountain in Oregon. I'm not sure which one though. I'm terrible with recognizing mountains. Must have something to do with having grown up by a large body of water, not by the mountains. Or just sheer laziness or lack of motivation to learn the names. Something like that.

The SkyMall magazine lulls me to sleep every time too.

Utah. We had a stopover in Salt Lake City. I thought that was an interesting place to fly international from, but apparently Delta flies out of there... so it wasn't really that weird.

France, as seen from the plane. Someday we will have to visit.

Charles de Gaulle international airport. There was a nationwide strike of the airport security workers that day and it took forever to stand in line and go through security. We stood in line for an hour and a half before someone pulled us aside and let us go through the family line. Then the "security person" there gave us contradictory instructions... anyway, we got through, no problem. It was just a long wait and a good thing we had a 4 hour layover.

Charles de Gaulle is very visually appealing inside though! Really confusing airport layout, but there is lots of signage and it is manageable. I noticed that the writing on the runway was in English, not French. I guess that must be the case at all international airports? I'm not sure. Maybe not in Iran or North Korea. :)

Sunset seen from a plane

"Oh yay! More plane food!"

Our first glimpse of Ouagadougou (Ouaga for short), at night.

One thing I noticed immediately was how flat the landscape was and how much less light there was than a city of comparable size in the US. When I went to Tunisia I remember also thinking that Africa was really flat as we came up to it by boat. Next: first days in Ouaga.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

(not) having nyo (anymore)

I have a small dilemma - show Burkina without showing any of Papa's family. By request. It's okay - if you want to see pictures of them, I guess we will have to get together sometime. Anyway, we had many adventures that don't include family pictures.

First of all, here is a video from a site we visited with a bunch of rock sculptures. Artists come there to sculpt in the rock that already exists. It's really a neat idea. Even someone as young as Isaac could understand and appreciate some of the sculptures.

Papa's family thought that Isaac should have been weaned about a year ago. Probably a lot of people agree. Well, we had gone down to once per day before the trip because of me taking doxycycline and not wanting Isaac to get much of it (it ruins developing teeth). Then, during the trip, Isaac started skipping days, and since the 11th, with minimal redirection, I think we can say he has officially been weaned. Whenever he asks for "nyo" or "nyohi" we just redirect him and say, "Oh, you want milk?" which is what "nyohi" means anyway. He really hasn't complained. I'm glad I waited a little and did it gradually, because then at the end it wasn't all that hard. Definitely with the next one I will remember to go down to once a day for about a month before weaning completely. I think it helped him to stop thinking about it all the time.

It was cute tonight though - Isaac still has a special place in his heart for those moments together, I guess. We said our prayers before dinner, and we always say at the end "And all our friends and family living and dead, especially.."

This is how it went tonight:

Isaac: "Mama"

Me: " and Isaac"

Isaac: "and Papa"

Me: "and baby London"

Isaac: "and nyohi."

Um... last time I checked, neither the vero nyohi nor cow's milk counted as "friends and family". Silly precious Isaac.

Monday, January 16, 2012

la neige sur la plage

Snow on the beach

Isaac could easily be on Mt. Hood in this picture. Instead, he is on Agate Beach.

Snow on the beach - seems paradoxical, with all that warmer water right there.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

ABCs of Burkina Faso

In case you were wondering, we were in Burkina Faso for the last three weeks. We were visiting family for the first time (or first time in 9 years in Papa's case). It was wonderful and there are many pictures and videos to come.

But first, I want to clear some things up about Burkina Faso.

1. It is spelled Burkina Faso. Not BurkinO FasA or another variation on that theme. Burkina Faso means "Land of the Upright People."

2. Burkina Faso is not on the equator. It just isn't.
Location of Burkina Faso

For more info on Burkina: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uv.html

In case you forgot where the Equator is, here's a recap:

So, were we here?

Nope.

How about here?

Nope, not here either.

We were here, which is somewhere in the middle. Not as inspiring a landscape as either extreme, but also more mild weather-wise (at least right now). Mid-West anyone? This is what the Savanna looks like.

I have decided that the people are generally what make Burkina interesting and pleasant to visit. There are some beautiful landscapes too, but in the area around the capital city (Ouagadougou, pronounced "wah-gah-doo-goo"), the landscape awe factor is truly lacking. And the "dust" factor is really overpowering. That dust still hasn't washed out of our clothes.

3. When we went, it was "winter" in Burkina (not summer, remember which side of the Equator we are all on). They think it is cold. It is not, for someone coming from winter in the Pacific NW. The temperature lows must have been in the high 50s and the highs were probably in the low 90s. It was cute because they bundled the kids up at night to a level I have never even conceived of for Isaac in the dead of winter here. It would be like wearing ski pants and a coat to bed. Maybe a smart idea if you don't have heating in your house?

So now, dear readers of Isaac's blog, if indeed any do exist, now you have some background on Burkina, and are more fully prepared to enjoy the pictures and video that will follow in the coming days and weeks. Bonne nuit, and Wosso domirekam (God will let us see tomorrow).
"Blue" man of the desert