african beehive

lunch is served

Food is a big concern when getting ready to spend 3 weeks in an African village. Even living in town I eat quite differently that I did in my former American life. Everything is done from scratch and there are a lot of things that just aren't available here. In the village there is much less available, but the real issue is that I was to eat what I was served. Thankfully the food was much better than I had expected! I was expecting to eat a lot of "to" the very thick dish resembling a big glob of cream of wheat but made of millet and often accompanied with a slimy green sauce. But they never gave me "to", I guess they had heard that Tubabu's (white foreigners) don't like it. So the food was pretty good, but I think anything gets old after you eat the same thing everyday.
Everyday for breakfast was millet porridge. Not my favorite, but not bad. Everyday for lunch was rice with some kind of sauce. In the picture the sauce has a lot of cabbage in it. It usually included one or two dried fish which they always generously shoved over to my side of the communal bowl. Thanks. Everyday for dinner was spaghetti au gras, which is spaghetti that has been cooked as follows: Start by frying a bit of chopped onion and tomato in a bunch of oil, when thats soft add a bunch of water and then some spaghetti noodles. Keep cooking until the noodles have absorbed all of the greasy water. You end up with squishy greasy orange colored pasta.
So actually the evening meal was the one that I got tired of first.
I somehow lost 5 pounds during my 3 weeks in the village. And at every meal I was urged to "eat more, eat more!"

me and the chief

This is me and the village chief of Finzankoro. He seemed welcoming and friendly when we went to visit him. I asked if his son will be the next chief, but it doesn't work like that. It will be the next oldest man in the village.
What am I holding? In the chief's courtyard there were women spinning cotton into thread, and so they gave me a demonstration and even had me try to spin a bit. I think they had me try just so they could laugh at me. I am holding a gourd bowl with cotton, the seeds have to be picked out by hand, and then it is combed on the other thing I am holding so it gets all clean and fluffy and ready to spin.

weavers

A couple of times while I was in the village I just happened upon weavers at work. Cotton is the important cash crop here. So they grow the cotton and women work to spin it into threads which are then woven into strips of fabric. The strips of fabic are connected together to make traditional shirts or blankets.
I took a weaving class in college, I minored in Art, and it was really interesting for me to see these primative homemade looms. A bit different from the looms in that college class! Also interesting that weaving seems to be men's work, spinning cotton thread is women's work. I wonder how this gets decided.

blue sheep

One of the oddest things I saw during my village stay: they think it is necessary to wash their sheep each week. It supposedly makes it grow better. This sheep was then treated to a blue dye treatment which is supposed to make him look cleaner longer. What about washing their filthy looking dog? Of course not, everybody knows that its only necessary to wash sheep! (silly white girl)

the lucky ones

I got to visit the village elementary school. Actually all they have is an elementary school, 1st-6th grades. To continue after that the kids would need to do a long walk or bike ride to a neighboring village (the closest one is 5 miles away) or go to stay in a town with relatives or something. This class is the 4th grade. There are 63 students, and it was pretty evenly split between boys and girls. As you can see, the classroom itself and the supplies leave a lot to be desired. The teacher has a text book that he copies on to the blackboard and then the kids copy that into their notebooks. Classwork is done on slates with chalk. These are the lucky ones because there are lots of kids here who never get the chance to go to school at all.

in the village

Here are 2 round grain storage huts, or jiginew, that many village people have in their courtyards for keeping the harvest of millet or corn. They are made out of mud bricks and then coated with more of the mud so that it looks smooth and you don't see the bricks. The one little window up high is the only door, that keeps rats out pretty well. I'm glad I didn't have to climb in and try to get some grain though! I was told that the roof could last up to 5 years if they did a good job with it. In the photo there are also some sheep, these get eaten on special holidays, and a lady sweeping her courtyard with a hand broom of wispy sticks. Behind her is a donkey cart with a barrel on it, but I don't know what thats about. Here is JP (with the helmet and orange shirt) and Serge (the other helmeted fellow) with the family I stayed with when they came to visit. They made the hour long trip on motorcycle over a very rough road and then stayed for lunch. The visit was very much appreciated!