prices for salad

Here is a photo to show you how much lettuce you can buy here right now for 30 cents, and the cucumbers are at 10 cents each. Not bad, and that is why we are eating lots of salad. We have to soak all of our fruits and vegetables in bleach water and then wash it well before eating it. (this hopefully prevents scary things like Typhoid)
One other thing while I'm on the subject of salad and veggies: I cut in to a normal looking tomato the other day and found the insides crawling with little white worms. Ick.

our kitty

I think it likes the computer because its warm there, and somehow the furry cat is cold here in Africa! I really don't want her on the computer, but she goes on it when we aren't looking.

the couches are here!

We got our couches from Bamako finally! Here is a picture of Jean-Patrick making sure that they work alright for taking naps.

Update - progress made

Sometimes it seems like things move so much slower here than I would like, but as I look back over the last few weeks I can see that there has actually been a lot of progress made. 

We now have a fantastic wooden armoire to contain all of our clothes in our bedroom. And we have a big wood kitchen table to eat and work off of. We are still waiting on the bed frame. Our carpenter does a nice job, but he takes a long time to finish things.

We have a stove and a fridge in our kitchen. We bought living room furniture and it is waiting in Bamako. Someone that we didn’t even know before, a friend of a friend, is going to be bringing it to us soon. He also transported the fridge for us – and free of charge.

We were given the rare opportunity to buy some used furniture at great prices from someone who is leaving town. Our house isn’t so empty now. J I was so blessed by this because it seemed to me like we wouldn’t have much furniture for a long time, I couldn’t find a solution to not having enough money to buy enough furniture. But instead of having more money, we found things to buy at a lower price – its like the money was multiplied! 

All of these things that seemed overwhelming or impossible to me before have worked out – and not because of my efforts. I am very blessed and so thankful.

Getting to Bamako

Jean-Patrick was part of a concert tour here – a musician came from Switzerland to do concerts in 7 different towns in Mali and JP was on the team of singers. The last concert was in Bamako, so I took the bus to meet him there. I got to be at the last concert and then we stayed a few days after that to do our shopping.

The bus I took left at 7am. It usually takes around 7 hot uncomfortable hours to get to Bamako. People in their private air conditioned cars can get there in 5 hours. (I hope to be one of those people one day!) So I should have been getting into Bamako around 2pm. That would have given me time to wash the layer of dust off myself and get some clean clothes on before going to the concert at 4. But the bus broke down. We were about and hour and a half out of Bamako. I sat with everyone else on the side of the road in a tiny village town. 2 hours later it didn’t seem like the bus would be going anywhere anytime soon, so I hitched a ride (along with several passengers) on another bus that was going by. They asked 1000cfa for the 1 ½ hour trip. That’s about 2 dollars, so I think it was money well spent to get off the side of the road. I arrived in Bamako at about 4 and grabbed a taxi to go straight to the concert. The taxi got flagged down by the police (a man standing on a street corner waving his arm and blowing a whistle) and the taximan had to pull over and discuss his car registration or something (or probably give a bribe) for about 20 minutes while I sat in the taxi. Finally I got to the concert and it was fine because there were still some opening acts playing.

Buying our big ticket items

The first morning we were in Bamako we were going to go in town with a friend who has a truck. The friend was going to show us some shops that sell fridges so that we could do some comparison shopping. As often is the case here, things were running late. I was ready to go pretty early, but it was after 10 by the time we climbed into the truck. But it wouldn’t start. I sat there for awhile and the guys tried different things to make it start, but it still wouldn’t start. They decided to call a mechanic, and we should think about preparing some lunch in the mean time. The truck did get fixed in the afternoon, but a lot of shops close early, so it was decided to wait until the next day to go shopping. I felt a bit frustrated by this “wasted day”, but I tried to stay calm about it. That night we got a phone call from someone to tell us that they just learned about a used stove for sale. If we had gone shopping we would have already spent about $500 to buy a new stove. Because of the inconvenience of the truck not starting we were able to buy a used stove for $120. 

So we bought the stove and then went to several shops to find a fridge. The fridge we had already picked out last May still seemed the best, so we went to that shop to look at that one again. Last May it was marked at $750. Now it was marked to $700. And then JP used his bargaining skills (this is expected here) and got it way down to $600.

AND THE COUCHES

The next day we went to a place that someone had recommended to look at living room furniture sets. They sell bamboo or cane furniture, which seems like the best option for us in finding a suitable couch here. The other options would be to have the carpenter build a wood frame and then we could cut up a foam matress and upholster it for a couch, or it is possible to buy a couch that looks more like a regular couch - but those are made with wood frames and very little padding and are not at all comfortable. The place isn’t really a store, its just a spot on the side of a road with no building. There are always several men there working on building new furniture, and there are some couches and chairs on display ready to be sold. They have a photo album of different furniture they have made in the past that can be special ordered as well. A friend of ours has a beautiful bamboo/cane living room set and so I had in mind to get something similar to that. When we arrived at the place there were about 4 sets on display ready to go, a set consists of a 3 place couch, a 2 place couch, and 2 chairs, with a little coffee table. One of the sets really caught my eye, and Jean-Patrick noticed it too. We went and sat on it. The fabric on the cushions was so pretty compared to some of the others with hideous prints. We asked the price and the guy said $250 for the set. Jean-Patrick did some bargaining and we were able to take the set that day, but without the rickety little coffee table, for $200. We loaded the frames on top of a taxi and tied them down well. The cushions were stuffed into the taxi so that there was hardly room for us. The couches have been waiting in Bamako a few weeks because none of the bus companies would agree to transport them for us. But we should finally have them this next week because someone is going to bring them in their truck for us. I am really pleased, we found a set that we are happy with at a price lower than I imagined.

September 3, 2010 - N'Djamena, Chad

How things are now

I can’t believe its been so many months since I’ve posted. That is mostly because I have hardly had any chances to use the internet, but also because I have been super busy since we’ve been back. There have been so many things that have needed to get done that to think of just sitting around and writing has been an impossible luxury. Finally I feel a bit caught up so I am finally trying to write some things concerning the past few months as well as whats happening now.

To sum things up: In July we left for Chad and spent 2 months there: I got to know Jean-Patrick’s family and friends there, and we had our wedding! Then we made the trip back, we got back the last day of September. October was exhausting with too much to do and so I am glad that its November now and we have that behind us. I was so happy to come “home”, but it has been a bit overwhelming since then.

We moved straight away into the house that we are able to rent. I am so thankful for this blessing. I have almost always lived at my place of work, and last year I lived on the base – like living in dorms. So now to have our own house to live in is amazing!

When we moved in it was almost totally empty. The base had loaned us a mattress to sleep on, so it was great that we didn’t have to sleep on the floor the night we got back. And a friend loaned us a couple of plastic chairs and a little low table, so we didn’t have to sit on the the floor and eat off the ground. They even left us a meal for that night. The house, as most houses here, doesn’t have any built in shelves or closets or cupboards. None. It also doesn’t come with a fridge or stove in the kitchen. Up until now we still have all of our stuff on the floor. Its hard to keep stuff organized when there isn’t anywhere to put it but the floor. And the one kitchen counter is overwhelmed with dishes and food. We have ordered a few things from a woodworker (an armoire for clothes, a kitchen table, and a frame for our bed that is now on the floor) but we have to wait a few weeks for these things to be made. Hopefully we will be able to order some wooden chairs and some kind of shelves soon, too.

We had to retrieve all of our things out of storage and bring them to the house. Then there was lots of cleaning to do. Then trying to organize as best as possible. And trying to keep the house clean and rake all the leaves in the yard from time to time. All of this on top of the work it is just to live here. It is a lot of effort to have to get food at the open market, cooking with no modern conveniences, doing laundry by hand, and trying to deal with what has been some terribly sweltering weather lately.

So things are feeling a bit more settled now. There aren’t any more boxes to unpack (though I wish I had places to put all the things I unpacked) and I have a lady that is going to be coming every Friday morning to wash clothes for us. Meanwhile we are back into our “work” with me helping at the school and Jean-Patrick has been back at the baby malnutrition center and working with the kids' club group. I am looking forward to starting Bambara lessons soon. Thanks to wedding presents we have enough money to get a fridge and a stove, and even a couch. We will be going to to capital soon to find these things. And once I can find someone to drill holes in the cement walls to put some nails in I will be able to hang a few things and it will really feel more like home.

going to Chad

Its finally here! Tomorrow we leave to start our trip to Chad where I will meet my future in-laws, file papers at city hall, wait awhile, and then... get married!!!

I am very excited and a bit nervous, but most important - I'm ready.

We will leave and travel all day by bus to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. We'll stay there a couple days before taking another all day bus trip down to Lome, Togo. From there we'll take a plane to N'Djamena, Chad - Jean-Patrick's hometown.

We plan to spend 2 months in Chad and hopefully the wedding will be early in September, but we have to wait until the papers are filed there until we will know the definate date.

Too Cute

last day of school

It was a couple of weeks ago now, but we had our last day of school with an all-day celebration. Here is a picture of the lunch that many women worked on all morning to prepare for more than 500 students and teachers. Everyone was instructed to get into circles of 6 people, then a bowl of food is brought and placed in the middle (on the ground) and everyone eats from it together with their hands. Oh, in the bowls was rice with cabbage, fried yam slices, and beef - which brings us to the next picture...

This obviously is a photo of a cow's head and feet. These were sitting like this for awhile just off to the side of where lots of kids were hanging out and walking by. I may be the only one who found this unusual or disturbing. The day before I saw these pieces still attached on the cow being lead by rope into the school yard awaiting its fate. Not long after this picture was taken I saw a man take the head and roast it over a fire. I think I'll stick to the not eating four-legged friends thing.

I could have put cute pictures of the kids, but you've seen those already. I thought this behind the scenes stuff was more interesting.

bazin

This is us in our new bazin outfits, the picture is from when we were at a celebration in Bamako.

Bazin is the special fabric of Mali. It is made white and can be dyed into all different colors. Its a lot more expensive that regular printed coton African fabric. It starts out really shiny and stiff, but that goes away after it gets washed. Its also really hot to wear because of all the starch in it. Some people really want it to be shiny and stiff though, and they starch it and then get people to hit it with wood to make it shiny, they actually bring thier clothes to a place where someone's job is to hit bazin with wood all day. I don’t quite understand how this works, why hitting the fabric with wood makes it shiny again, but somehow it does.

To get a new outfit, first you go pick out the fabric you want, you bargain for the price and buy it. Then you decide what style of outfit you want made. I drew a picture of what I had in mind. Then you take the fabric to a tailor and try to explain what you want him or her to make. Since these have embroidery we had to go to a shop that does both sewing and embroidery. At the shop you can decide on colors and styles for the embroidery, too. The tailor measures you and finally you can leave. A few days later you go back and what you get back is never quite what you imagined, but hopefully its close.

kids at school

Here’s a picture of some of the kids at school sitting on the steps right outside the classroom. We sing songs the first thing every morning, so that’s why they’re clapping. I know a lot of kid’s songs at this point. I’ve learned plenty of new vocabulary from the songs, too, along with them.
There are only 6 weeks left of the school year. We are practicing a special song for a big end-of-the-year party on the last day, June 30^th.

bagged water

This is a scene I came upon the other day when I turned a corner at market. I thought it was cool and something I’d never see back in the states. Maybe there it would be a bunch of boys making stockpiles of water ballons instead.

These ladies are making plastic bags of water to sell. In hot season we need to drink a lot of water here! This water is straight from the tap, so I can’t drink it. When I go on bus trips I can find sealed bags of water, they are blue and have printing on them, and that water is safe to drink, so I do get to have the experience of biting a hole in the corner and drinking out of a plastic bag. Have you ever drank your water that way? There are also big plastic bottles of water that can be found, but these are a lot more expensive and not as interesting.

garibouts

In the background you can see some of the people and the activity on the base from the Assembly General we had here at Eastertime. In the foreground are 4 garibout boys eating rice out of a big bowl. Garibouts are boys taken to live together by a Maribout, a Muslim teacher, to memorize the Koran and fund the Maribout with the money that they get from begging on the streets. They are given by their families at quite a young age and then they are treated worse than animals and sent out on the street everyday to beg for food and money. It is really a heartbreaking situation that I am faced with every time I leave the walls of the base, or in this case I didn’t even have to leave the base because the boys came to the gate to ask for food since they heard the noise of all the people that were here and they came to beg for leftovers. This is one of those things here that is hard to see and hard to think about, but I don’t ever want to become calloused to it.

the stadium

This is a picture from the stadium. The stadium is mostly used for soccer matches, but also for concerts and other events. Since its within walking distance from where I live at the base, I come here pretty often to walk and pray and have some peace and quiet. And for the grass. This is the only big patch of green grass that I know of here. I can take my flipflops off and feel the grass on my feet. I like to just take in the intense greenness of it too, it is such a bright contrast to all of the brown I see everywhere else around me.

hot season

It is HOT season now. It has been over 100 degrees every day for weeks now. At night it stays pretty warm, around 90 in my room, which makes it difficult to sleep even though the heat is exhausting.

This is Hannah, one of the girls in my class. She has a great idea for cooling off on a hot day. She jumped into the clothes washing basin. I wish there was one big enough for me!

During cool season I really missed hot or even warm showers as the water out of the tap only came out cold. But now the water comes out quite warm and I wish we could have cold water again!

Tribal paint?

A few kids have come to school with similar "tribal paint" on their foreheads lately. I finally asked what kind of celebration or ceremonial ritual this kind of face decoration is for. After getting a funny look I was told that this is just baby powder to combat heat rash. Oh.

Engagement News

Yes, it’s true; I’m engaged to be married!

In case this comes as a big surprise to you, I’ll fill you in on some of the details.
Let me first assure you that I wasn’t looking to meet a guy when I came to Africa; I was quite content with being single. When I lived in the states I never met anyone that said “oh yeah, I think I want to spend my life among the poor in Africa, too.” So to me it kind of makes sense that if I were to meet that someone special it would happen here - to meet someone with similar goals, beliefs, and vision for the future; someone who is already in Africa. Although we come from different countries and cultures, we have a lot in common and we are very happy together. I am so thankful for this amazing blessing in my life.

I met Jean-Patrick when I was in Mali the first time, in January and February 2009. We got pretty well aquainted during that time and after I left we sent emails almost daily until I came back in October. Since then we have seen each other every day.

Jean-Patrick is from the country of Chad, but he has been in Mali for several years. He came here and then spent 3 years in Bamako (the capital) studying at medical school to become a nurse. Then he returned to the base to join as staff. He works with the baby malnutrition center and is often called on to use his nursing skills in other ways, too. I’ve watched him give injections to treat typhoid, I’ve seen him drain an infection, and I’ve heard him help people to understand the details of their malaria treatments. He also bandaged me up nicely when I cut my finger one time. He’s a great nurse.
Besides the nursing stuff, he works with kids in the children’s clubs here and leads music on the base. I think that he’s all-around fantastic.

My relationship with Jean-Patrick has definitely helped me with my language skills as we mostly talk in French. His first language is French, but his English is getting better and better. He can speak a total of 9 languages!

We are working on plans to make trips to both Chad and the USA. I’m hoping to be able to do this after the school year ends. It is really important for us to meet each other’s families and to see where we both come from. To be able to do this we need to get a visa for me to go to Chad (not too hard) and a visa for JP to go to the USA (this is a bit more complicated, but not impossible.)

We also need the money needed to get the really awfully expensive plane tickets to fly to both Chad and the USA. (Chad is only 2 countries over from Mali on the map, but it would take at least 5 whole days to get there by bus, and I am told that this is not safe for me to do as a foreigner.) 

Beyond the trips to Chad and the USA, our plans are to get married and to live happily ever after.

Thank you for sharing in our joy!
Love, Erin

village visit

I had the opportunity to spend a day in a local village called N’golobougou. It was a cramped 1 ½ hour truck ride over rough roads to get there. In most of the villages the people mostly only speak Bambara, and there isn’t electricity or running water. They don’t have some of our simple luxuries of life in town such as boulangeries to get fresh bread. I got to visit at the home of a family. On the way back we stopped to load the truck with wood. It was a really good experience, but I am happy for now to be living in town.

Ah... everyone enjoys a nap in the afternoon here. Its so hot that you can't do much else.

Birthday at School

One of the girls in my class had a birthday and her parents sent cake to school to celebrate. I remember when I was a kid that we couldn’t have homemade treats at school because people were afraid of getting poisoned or some government regulation or something. Anyway, I was asked to go find a candle but all I had was a giant one for if the power goes out. No problem, we’ll just stick that in the cake. You can see in the picture that the cake doesn’t have frosting, and this is normal here since Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines don’t send their products this way and powdered sugar is hard to come by.

January 31st Christmas party

I got to help out with a party we had at church for the kids a few weeks ago. It wasn’t until that morning when I was asked to write “Joyeux Noel” on dozens of colored papers that I realized that it was a Christmas party. I found it amusing but not too surprising that the Christmas party was being held on January 31^st. The idea of things being on time is not as important here as in the USA. It was a fun time with singing and treats.

Little luxuries

There are certain things that I have developed a great appreciation for here.

First is toilet paper. A lot of people here don’t use it, they bring a plastic kettle thing with water in it to the bathroom with them. And they eat only with their right hand. I’ll let you use your imagination from there. Toilet paper is kind of expensive, but I don't think I'll be giving it up any time soon.

Next is butter. It is a great joy to me that I am able to buy butter, real butter, here in Koutiala. Most luxuries of this sort are only available 6-7 hours away in the capital of Bamako. The butter is imported from France and can only be found at a few shops in town, and only when they have it in stock. It makes me so happy to put butter on my bread in the morning. But I also kind of feel bad because my friends don’t have butter, its too expensive. (and if I shared with them all I wouldn’t have butter anymore either)

Then there are apples. Apples are imported, too. There are yellow ones for about 60 cents each or better red ones for 75 cents each. This is really expensive, especially if you compare it with something like bananas – you can get a little banana for less than 10 cents, or a whole bunch for the price of one apple.

Neighborhood outreach

My friends have set up this big screen outside the base when there have been important soccer matches on tv lately. The picture is from when they are still setting things up, later there were around 75 people from the neighborhood gathered, but it was too dark for a picture. 

the morning snack

In the morning at school we have a snack break around 10. By 10 I'm pretty hungry because we usually just have a piece of white baguette bread around 7 for breakfast.
The first picture shows a couple of the snack ladies with their tables and wares, there are about 10 of them in the school yard everyday at snack time selling different foods.

My favorite snacks are beignets (donuts, but just fried dough really) like in the photo above (shown also with a sweet-potato fry wedge and sauce) and sandwiches like in the photo below. The sandwiches come with a yummy filling of little fried potatoes, cucumber and onions, and an spicy oily tomato sauce. Delicious!

One thing that is interesting/nasty is that they hand you the snack wrapped in a piece of paper. As you can see from the photos its used paper, maybe an old bill or reciept, or someones old school notebook paper. Makes for a good bit of reading while I eat.

dry feet and $5

I have 2 random stories of things that I think are odd that you might find interesting.

The first is about my poor feet. Because it is so dry here, my feet are getting nasty and starting to crack and peel. Its hard to put lotion or something on them because that will make even more sand/dirt stick to them when I'm walking around in flip-flops. I have some pumice stones and I got some glycerine that was supposed to help, but these dry feet are unlike anything I've delt with before.
So I'm excited because I have finally come up with a good solution: when my feet become unbearable I slather them with this vaseline-like moisturizer that I have, and then put them in plastic bags, then I put socks over that to hold it all together, and I wear this to sleep in. In the morning my feet are excited to get air again, but look remarkably better. Its weird, but it works.

The second is about $5. One day I was walking in our neighborhood with a friend when some people sitting just outside thier gate started talking to us (actually shouting across the road) they wanted to know where I was from - yeah, they can tell just by looking that I'm not from around here - ha! Anyway, when they heard that I'm American they said they had something to show me. A guy ran in the house and came back with a $5 bill. I wasn't expecting that. They asked what it was worth, I said a little more than 2000 cfa, and that was pretty much the end of it. Until about 2 weeks later when a guy showed up at the base with the $5 and asked if I would buy it from him for the 2000 cfa. I said no problem. Well actually, all I had besides small change was a 5000 cfa note, so I had the guy take that to a little neighborhood shop to buy me a few eggs and when he came back with the change I gave him 2000 cfa for the $5.

chicken and cow

There are always chickens running around freely here. I don't quite understand how they know where they live and continue to come back home. That kind of goes for all the animals here, they always seem to be wandering around loose looking for something to eat. There are herds of sheep, goats, and cows that go on our road past the base every day. I think about how if a fence gets broken in the states, it is a big effort to round up the cows or whatever. Here they are calm and stay in the herd and go where they are supposed to. Even though they are calm it still scares me to drive past (or through!) a herd of cows on a moto. These cows have some big horns and could do some real damage if they wanted. Anyway, here is a picture of the ugliest chicken I have ever seen. Poor guy. Baby chicks are so cute, then they go through an ugly adolescent stage before becoming normal adult chickens. But this one has no feathers, I'm not sure why, I guess the other chickens were mean to him or something.

And here is a picture of one of the cows with the big horns. You can see my friends playing soccer (its "football" here) in the background while some cows are making their way across the field, no big deal.

We have big soccer fields right next door to the base. They are busy early morning and around sunset but mostly empty during the middle of the day because its too hot then.

Zap, zap, mosquito killing racket

This is my friend Jean-Patrick playing with the fun new mosquito zapping racket I bought. I keep this thing by my bed at night and then when I hear an annoying insect buzzing in my ear, I can experience the satisfaction of frying it to death. (yes, I do have a mosquito net for my bed, I just don't like to use it.) We figured out that if you kind of lightly spit at the racket it zaps the spit. Really this is one of the funnest toys ever! Don't you wish you had one?

R.O.U.S.'s

Um, yeah, so here is a picture and a video of the "rat" my friend was cooking up when I went outside last Sunday morning. They had caught it in our garden in some kind of trap, some kind of box and string trap, nothing fancy. But its not a rat (right?) I guess it is in the rodent family, but thats way too big to be a rat I think. So it is some kind of R.O.U.S. (rodent of unusual size, like from "Princess Bride") My friend was cooking the critter and scraping its fur off with a knife. After this he chopped it up, cooked it, and ate it. Am I sure I don't want to try just a piece? Yeah, I'm sure.
In the video my friend tells me that wild meat has lots of vitamins, more than regular meat. I say "lots of vitamins, eh?"
My friend's name is Dieudonne, it means "God gave", I think its a cool name.

New Baby!

I got to go visit the new baby! His name is Othineal or something close to that, I'm not sure how to spell it. The first picture shows big brother Ezekiel, he is in my class at school, so he is my buddy. This was the first baby of one of our group's families to be born since I've been here, but there are 3 more on the way! (and they will all be first babies for couples who have all been married very recently, less than a year - thats the African way I guess!)

Crocodile!

Last Saturday, I got to go visit this interesting hotel place about 10 minutes away. They have a swimming pool with no water and rooms with no guests. (the guy working there did say that they have guests sometimes and that sometimes there is water in the pool, but honestly it was pretty dead when we were there) The reason we went was to see the crocodile! The crocodile is pretty much the only thing in town here that you could call a "tourist attraction." I've been hearing about him for weeks, so I'm glad that I finally got to go see him. It might have been more exciting if he had actually moved, but as you can see in the picture there isn't much in the way of a barrier between where I was standing and the croc, so maybe its good that it wasn't so exciting. Anyway, it was interesting and now I can cross "crocodile" off of my list of things to do.

dressed for success

These boys show a good example of some of the interesting outfits the kids show up to school in.
The boy on the left is wearing a pinstripe suit. (the sandals add a nice touch, eh?) I imagine that they want to get as much use out of the suit as possible, so why not wear it to school.
The boy on the right is wearing his hat and coat because in the morning it might be as frighteningly chilly as 68 degrees. By noon it is probably in the 90's.

Let's share some germs!

These are the cups that I fill several times each day at school. I draw water out of a big clay pot thing in our classroom. The kids grab a cup (any cup) and have a drink, then they return it to the tray so other kids can drink from the same cup. The cups do get washed regularly, but I am always thinking that this kind of thing just wouldn't fly back home.

Mango flowers

It is the time of mango flowers! We have lots of mango trees on the base and next door at the school. I will be eating loads of sweet and juicy mangoes in a few months. I have to be careful when I walk under mango trees for now though, the little flower bits get all stuck in my hair. When it is real windy the flower bits fall from the trees and it is almost like its raining.

the school cleaning lady

This lady is always hanging around the school with 2 small kids, and finally I asked what was up with that. (the girl in the red shirt and then a boy, not pictured, about a year older). I guess she does some cleaning during the school day and then sweeps the floors after we have all left. She is really nice, but wouldn't look at the camera for a picture. This was the day that we had cake at school to celebrate Christmas, so thats what they all have in hand.

Bobo head drumming

These guys came to visit us from their Bobo village, so I guess that makes them Bobo's. I can't really say or hear that without cracking a smile. Its just a funny word I think. We had this really cool festival of music here and this was one of the groups that participated.
I especially liked seeing all the dancers, some of the dancing is really complicated and fast.
The guy with the drum on his head is wearing an outfit, kind of like a dress, made of lacey material. Pretty, huh? I have even seen some men in pink lacey clothes.