Long time, no write

It supprised even me, to see that since november I haven't written a single word on this blog. For the month of december I feel I am exempt, due to travelling around Europe to visit family and friends, but for january, february, march and april? I apologise.

In an attempt to short-story some of what has happened during the past months:
- we moved into a new house (see pictures on the story under this one) and installed airco in the bedroom... absolutely brilliant!
- my office also changed locations, to a much bigger house, and I got an own office (alas without airco, so for now, during the hottest months, I've already moved in with a collegue who does have airco, aaah)
- I've started playing volleyball, and have found a dance-instructor to take classes with
- I made good friends with Tessa, a belgian volunteer sent to a village at 30km from my town by the same organisation as I work for. We have lots of fun, talk about everything, and I am very glad she is here now. This is us on Valentines day, I cooked for her, as we didn't have any amours around ;-)









- Johans brother Marcus came to visit us last week, and got me drunk on a sunday night! As if mondays are loveable as such..
- There have been some rough spots in my life the past few months, hence the radio-silence. But I'm trying to back on the horse now, so I'll try to get into the writing again. Please stay with me.

That's all for the moment, take care***

New house

Some people may know already, but since february we live in a different house. Check out some pictures of the place, new and improved! :-)


our new house, with lovely terrace


































an 2nd shower outside (lovely for cooling down under a starry night sky!) , our chickens and rooster which we inherited from the former tenant




a real kitchen... and, most importantly! a real toilet!! hurrah!!

Onions from Holland

These last few weeks, onions have been a bit scarce here in Burkina Faso. Prices are up, and I even started seeing onions imported from Holland on the markets! How frustrating! We work with people growing onions during the winter, and when they sell at the end of the season the prices usually hit rock-bottom or you may even have trouble finding buyers. Everyone sells their onions at the same time. That's why we are working with conservation methods: if you can keep your onions in good shape for a few months you can get really good prices, and we won't need to import onions from the other end of the world.

Miracle

Every thursday, at 18h45: time for miracles.

Prepare yourself to meet your God!

Did you know that...

In following a friend of mine (lotte, ik pik even je ideetje hier, auteursrechten binnenkort te betalen in belgisch bier, ok?) who always sends great mails in this style when she’s out travelling, I present to you, the latest burkina did-you-knows!

Did you know that:

- fall has come to Burkina too: the leaves (or, well, everything) turns brown and yellow, and the light is different
- the nights are getting chilly
- this make me want to come home and celebrate Christmas
- I am coming home for Christmas, yay!
- I have a colleague who has made it a challenge to convert me to the Christian religion
- He hasn’t gotten very far
- We do have interesting discussions on homosexuality, the pope, hypocrisy and corruption
- He has decided that the way into my religious soul is music
- He may be right that if there’s a way, that would be it
- Johan is in Ghana right now, visiting his little brother Marcus
- They seem to be having fun: they were hungover yesterday anyway
- I am tired of Burkina beer
- That the beer here is almost exclusively sold in half-litre bottles doesn’t help
- There’s no pizza in Ouahigouya!
- My parents are coming to visit me here
- I am curious to see how they react to Africa, 30 years after they left the continent
- I went out dancing all night on Saturday
- I love that people love to dance here, men and women
- I had a great time
- I am speaking completely Burkina-french
- This apparently sounds ridiculous to native French speakers, me not being burkinabe
- I don’t care about that
- I am struggling with moore, the local language
- I feel like I’m language-saturated (after learning Swedish)
- This is a pity, because often I don’t know what people around me are talking about
- This is one of the hardest parts of being here
- There are a lot of things that aren’t easy here
- but some things are so much easier
- I am hoping for more visits from friends
- You are all welcome
- People here all called burkinabe
- They are super-friendly
- I feel like I really have some good friends here
- This is nice
- And this is enough for now!

What can you transport on a motorcycle?

can you imagine what people can transport on the back of a motorcycle? I dare you! Answer: just about anything! from refridgerators to an entire cow which has been cut into pieces!

Houseguests

Living in Burkina Faso means tolerating a certain amount of unwanted houseguests... ants, cockroaches, crickets, lizards... they all live in with me, but don't think they pay rent!

This week I painfully discovered I have new houseguests, ones I hadn't met before. I woke up in the middle of the night being bitten hard by something in my bed..ouch! Then it bit me again, double-ouch! I knew this was no little mosquito-bite or ant-bite. I turned on the lights and saw... a scorpion in my bed!!! Panic!

When I arrived here last november I thought scorpions were deadly. Luckily I had found out that this is not true, that scorpion-bites hurt a lot, but won't kill you. And luckily, Johan was with me that night, so I could make him suck out the poison. Imagine I had been alone and thinking I would die! This not being the case I was just bitten and hurting. All in all the bites didn't bother me all too much, the next day they were just red marks. I think the scorpion (which Johan killed mercilessly) was still a baby, it was smaller than usual, so I guess I was lucky. Still, I have hung up my mosquito-net and tuck it in tight now. Houseguests, fine, but unwanted bed-guests, no thanks!