They call it the welcome to Africa.

Remember the time I held the bucket for you? Green jack-o-lantern face with a plastic handle. It was a halloween pail. Was it autumn?
Now I am the one sick, and my comforters stand and watch. Dirt, no bucket. Hands and knees, no couch. Puking and thinking of you.

That was almost week ago. I am well, have been since Tuesday. My host family knows what to feed me. The beans that upset my stomach were not offered to me; I insisted on trying them. I waned to eat all the same things as my family. I wanted no special treatment. Clearly, this was somewhat of a mistake. I'm more special here than I thought.

My host family is amazing. My host mother sells peanuts, but much of the time she is busy in the courtyard outside our home (a yard we share with several other conjoined housed) where she washes dishes, washes clothes, and prepares food. My host father is a librarian. Their oldest son, Arsene, 25, speaks fairly good English, and has acted as my guide in the neighborhood. He is pursuing a degree in journalism, and is also a bit of a carpenter. He made the table in his home, the door to his parent's home (where I'm staying), and he also helped make the benches used in the church we attend. Arsene also plays guitar for a band from church. This afternoon I get to hear them perform in a competition.
The two younger brothers, David and Peter (or maybe Pierre?) are also fairly close in age to myself. David doesn't speak much English and often isn't around, so I don't yet know him as well as I know Arsene. Peter has been out of town since the day I arrived here. I know nothing about him.
I also have a 6-year old little sister, Nema. Nema loves to dance, enjoys abusing the cat, and is still fascinated with my hair. We practice the French alphabet together.

My French, which I'd never studied before coming to Bukina Faso, is progressing, slowly. My teacher has told me to focus on verbs. I've compiled/been given huges lists of verbs, 217 in all. I know most of their meanings now. I'm working on learning their conjugations, and on being able to recognize them when I hear them in every day conversation. It's tricky. Right now I comprehend far more from reading French than when I listen to people speak. My speech is slow and unnatural. There are only a few phrases I can now say fluently, phases I've had occasion to use again and again.
-Je ne comprend pas. Je ne sais pas. Je suis Americain. Je m'appelle Blake.
-I don't understand. I don't know. I am an American. My name is Blake.

Help

I've never had a blog before. Any ideas people have would be appreciated.

The main thing I need to know is what to post. I would guess that anyone reading this blog (Mom) is doing so because they're interested in me (nobody else would know about it), but I would like the blog to be more about Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, and MCC, than about me. So what do you want to hear about? What are you most curious about? If I don't know the answer, I'll take the question as an opportunity for myself to learn more about the spectacular place I now live in.

Feedback, please. Thanks!

The... he... if...

Television. An interviewee is speaking in what is, to my ears, extremely rapid French. I wait for the occasional word I am able to recognize. I wait some more.
There!
"... je-dee..."
I grasp onto these familiar syllables, nearly lost amid the flow of ideas and idioms. Aha! THIS I understand! A hint as to what is being communicated.

It means "...I say..."

Or it means "...Thursday..."

... depending on the context.


I arrived in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, a week ago, armed with a handful of words and two or three phrases in what has proven to be, to my relief, the dominant language in my host family's neighborhood. Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, is a relatively westernized city, but native languages, especially Mooré, are widely used. In the secteur of Burkina Faso that Tara, another SALTer working for MCC, lives in, Mooré is the premier language. The children don't learn French until they attend school.

I'm grateful for having a host family who speaks French in the house. If my new little sister, Nima, who has six years, did not speak French fluently, I'd be missing out on a bright and supremely patient tutor.