Settling In...

[my new house in Fada N'Gourma]
[africa doughnuts! but more doughy!]
[My counterpart (on left) at his organizations land. Today I helped him fence those skinny trees in so that the sheep and goats cant get at them. They are a tree called Moringa, and they will give off lots of yummy leaves that are like a 'super-food' nutritionally. They will be sold in neighboring Niger at a nice profit for the group!]
[Me and my host family (from october to december) back in Ouahigouya.]

Hello there again. Ive now been in Fada for three weeks, and Im starting to settle into the flow here. Fada is a dusty and sleepy midsized town of about 40,000, that makes it Burkina's fifth biggest city. Its really just a highway town on the way to Niger, about two hours from the border. Ive included a picture of my new house here. Its nice, but a bit too big for just me, but Ill eventually fill it up i suppose with furniture and the likes. I have a gas cooker, four plastic chairs, two simple wooden tables, and a bed with a mosquito net over it for now. I ride my bike through the sand a few hundred yards to reach the main road where i buy my morning baguette and little fried dough balls that i take home to eat with coffee and fill with jam (see above pic!!). I have a crank radio/solar powered radio that i crank and listen to while eating breakfast on my little porch. Then, its off to work. That can mean a lot of things, but yesterday for instance I helped my counterpart, Yempabou, run around town and typed up some documents for a grant that our organization just received for facilitating a conference/workshop for those women who do seamstress work to learn how to do new sewing techniques and dying techniques. The day before we were digging fence post holes to build a fence around some of our organization's land to keep the sheep and goats out, and give some young trees a chance to grow without being grazed to death! It has not rained here since september, and will not again until June, when everybody works in their fields until september again. Its only in the 90's now, but the dry saharan winds are blowing every afternoon now, and by march it will push 110 easily...everyday. Until June, and the long awaited rains. I thought Id add a note about the soundscape here: its probably closest to what you'd imagine north africa/morocco sounding like, ie: mosque loudspeakers calling to prayer several times a day, donkey hoofs pounding the sandy soil as they pull a squeaky cart and its driver past your house, west africa music on the radio(repetitive cadence, twangy two stringed banjo-type instrument and fast hand drumming), the light patter of sheep wandering into your yard and then their bah-ing cry as they struggle to all find their way back out, and perhaps the steady murmur of passing voices speaking any of the five or six dialects spoken in this region.