So far, so good...

Well, we have finished our first few weeks in Titao and are getting settled in our new house. We decided to bike the 45 km to Ouahigouya, the nearest town with electricity and internet, today. I would say the first 40 km weren’t too bad, but the end got pretty tough. Hopefully, I will get in better shape with time. The good news is that because it is the rainy season, the ride was really pretty because everything was really green.

Overall, things are going really well in Titao. I spent the first day on a spider-web killing spree. I know that spiders “are really helpful because they catch other insects” and all that crap, but we currently have more spiders living in our house than any of the other insects combined. I counted at least 40 in our latrine the other day. Plus, I am afraid of spiders, so there’s my ulterior motive.

We also had 4 cats awaiting our arrival: a mom, Laffi, and her three kittens. By the end of our second day we had decided that we needed to downsize our cat population. Dinner was like a scene from a cheesy sci-fi movie: Meow of Death. We had barricaded ourselves inside the house so that we could eat dinner and there were two cats crawling up the screen door, another one jumping in through the hole in the kitchen window screen, and the fourth one walked in from a back room (where did it come from!). We were under attack and they had us surrounded. There was nothing about fending off cuddly kittens in our Safety and Security training so we were on our own and somehow managed to get through dinner (I think standing up) before the cats drove us nuts.

So, of course, later that night around midnight we are woken up by some weird noises in the house and go inside to find the mom giving birth to her second kitten of the night on my underwear pile (gross!). By the time it was all over, around 4 am, she had 4 new kittens; or should I say we had 4 new kittens. Figures. (Don’t get me wrong, they are really cute, but come on: 8 cats!)

That’s enough about cats and spiders, we have been interacting with other humans too. We normally have between 5 and 10 kids come by to watch the “nassara show”. They just sit and watch us. We tried asking them questions but they just say “oui” to everything we say (How old are you? Oui. Are you 8? Oui. Are you 50? Oui). So we’ve been trying to find little things for them to do around the house while they are visiting. Otherwise, once the “nassara show” gets boring (which takes a surprisingly long time) they start the “je demande”s where they start pointing to stuff and asking for it: bottles, plastic bags, our bikes, everything. By the time the “je demande”s get going, we normally make them leave which means they will be standing outside of our gate for the next hour yelling stuff at us and running away if we walk towards them. We’ve met a few adults around town who stop by to visit every now and then but this is the time of year when most people are out cultivating all day or on vacation so there aren’t a lot of people around.

One thing Aaron and I have discovered here from our interactions with both the kids and adults around town is how funny we are. We ride our bikes, people laugh, we eat, people laugh, we speak French, Moore, or English, all are equally funny. We’ve just been on the wrong continent all this time because over here we are a riot. Sometimes we get tired of being so darn funny all the time, but I prefer that to the alternative of blatant staring and we are learning how to just laugh along.

Cooking for ourselves has been great! Right now, we have onions, green bell peppers, eggplant, tomato, and (sometimes) spinach in season so most of our meals consist of that stuff thrown together with a different sauce. It sounds kind of plain and monotonous, but we’re pretty happy. The only tough part is finding fruit. It looks like the only thing we can get right now is watermelon, which isn’t my favourite.

Right now a lot of people are observing Ramadan. I am learning a lot about it one cultural faux pas and misstep at a time. The other day at the market I got really annoyed because the man selling eggs and refused to talk to me or even look at me to sell me the eggs. He even third-partied me (used a third person as intermediary) to give me the eggs and take my money. I tried really hard to get him to acknowledge me and let him know how rude he was being only to go home and learn that part of fasting is fasting from women too. Well, my hats off to the egg guy (along with my sincerest apologies) for not breaking his fast.

Just a quick word about the marché in general. We have a marché every Friday, when the calm, quiet town of Titao is transformed into a bustling village metropolis with rice, flip flops, little kids underwear, and knock-off t-shirts (“50 cents”) everywhere. I think Aaron describes it best. He says it is like taking all the crap from 10 Wal-Marts and throwing it in a city block. You walk around and see the same cheap stuff over and over, but every now and then you’ll find something cool and unique which makes it worth your time.

We are nearing the end of the rainy season and we’ve been told there will be one more hot month and then it is bye-bye heat, flies, and mosquitoes for the winter. I am especially happy about the mosquitoes since the cats have been putting holes in our mosquito net and I look like I have the chicken pox. Word to the wise, if you opt to use one of those head mosquito nets, make sure there are no mosquitoes in there before you seal your head up for the night (ouch!). Aaron was trying to make me feel better and said my red cheeks looked like I had put on make-up. Okay, this has been pretty long, so I’ll wrap it up for now.

Thanks to mom and Ron for the call, it was great to hear from you. Val and Keith, we heard that your package is in Ouaga and will be making its way up here shortly. Maria, thanks for the text and checking up on us. Oh, and our camera has been working lately, so I will put up some new pics. A la prochaine!