My Burkina Journal: Passing time

My time is passing quickly now. Friday evening a number of us went to the French Cultural Center for dinner at the cafe there so that we would be well situated to hear to hear SIL's own ethnomusicologist, Mary Hendershott, play in a local jazz band. Mary is most versatile and plays a variety of instruments, although chiefly her own saxophone and flute, and plays with a number of different groups here in Ouagadougou.

Ruth (Switzerland), Pam and Fina (Indonesia)

Mary on left with sax

Fina had originally invited me to go with her on Saturday to Dédougou for FESTIMA, a week-long festival of masks that takes place in that city annually. It is at least a 4 and a half hour drive from here but Fina's car had transmission problems and we decided it was not a good time to go. We would have been hitting the tail end of the festival anyway, but considered taking a bus, which would have required staying overnight, thought about the prospect of a hot, cramped, dusty ride on a bumpy road for nearly 6 hours, and decided against it.

I am eating well, though. Saturday evening I had dinner with two others at a lovely Ethiopian restaurant, and Sunday afternoon was invited to a friend of Fina's (also Indonesian) for lunch with a group their mutual women friends. Apparently the woman's French husband was away on business, so it was an afternoon of women only. Fina had gone to FECHIBA, horse festival among the Barani [Fulani] people and we looked at the gorgeous photos she had taken of the horses, riders, and the people in all of their finery. Monday I had lunch of with another friend at a small family Senegalese restaurant where we had the [Senegalese] national dish of rice and fish called thiéboudienne. That restaurant was very utilitarian, without any adornment, but at lunchtime had about twenty people dining in the interior, 15 or eating on the terrace, and a half dozen people waiting for carryout.

Brochettes at the French Cultural Center

At the Ethopian restaurant Chez Haregua

Indonesian pork and chicken satay in a gingery sauce, fish with a picante sauce, and grilled fruit in a caramel-like sauce

The Senegalese restaurant--all the motorbikes parked out front show how popular it is at lunch-time. The cardboard the man is holding is to cover vehicles to shade them from the heat.

Monday I also tried to visit to the Médiathèque Municipale, but it was closed. Apparently it is closed Mondays, but there was no sign showing the hours visible from the exterior. I asked a group of people sitting in the surrounding courtyard and was given the disappointing news.

Wednesday afternoon I had a couple of outsiders visit the library, gave them a brief orientation, and showed them how to use the catalog. This was good practice for next week when I give an orientation to staff Thursday, and for our bigger fête on Friday for some of SIL's linguistic partner organizations, invited to the official inauguration of the new French language software on the library's public access catalog that afternoon. The public access catalog is still having Unicode issues in displaying some of the West African characters and diacritical marks, but am confident that the problem will be resolved by then.

Library signage

Damien, Fina and Zakaria attempt to solve the Unicode problem

And later still Wednesday afternoon, Donkoui and Krystle visited from Friends of African Village Libraries. I had met them last year and enjoyed talking with them again. Since I had missed the Festival of Masks they kindly brought me a photo book that FAVL created on the topic using FastPencil, which enables them to produce books to use in the village libraries at an easy level on topics of local interest. I gave them them five ScoLibris titles which they seemed to appreciate--Donkoui was particularly taken by the one on the weaver which reminded him of his childhood.