I left Dulles airport on the evening of January 15 to spend some time in Paris checking on my apartment before continuing on to Ouagadougou. As you may recall, I had bought the remainder of the books that Scolibris had available by the Malian children's author, Moussa Konaté, on my return last spring. These books have been sitting in my Paris apartment, awaiting my return, and will be donated to Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL) in Burkina Faso.
There is also a poster from the annual National Book Festival which I picked up this past summer to take to the Mediatheque Municipal in Ouagadougou to add a little color to their walls. For those individuals unfamiliar with the National Book Festival, it was started in 2001, organized by the Library of Congress National Center for the Book, and first hosted by then First Lady, and former school librarian, Laura Bush. To see a collection of posters used for the Festival, click here. Last summer one of the SIL employees, Martine Nana, visited the US briefly, and saw me volunteering there at the Festival. It was quite an affair, being held at the Washington Convention Center for the first time, and I think she was quite impressed. She was also amazed to see me because she had been taken to the Festival by friends, completely unaware that I was even in the area.
Probably to her surprise, and mine as well, she has ended up helping staff the SIL library in Ouagadougou when they have been short-staffed. I anticipate that I am going to be training her as well.
Well, now I am in Paris again. It has been quite cold here, and the thought of the heat in Burkina Faso is sounding pretty good. I didn't come completely prepared for cold--I usually leave some clothes in my Paris apartment so I don't need to transport so much, but had to buy winter-weight pj's, socks, a hat and gloves because the weather took me by surprise. Fortunately for me, it is the season of the winter SOLDES, those after-Christmas sales. I am also enjoying hot chocolate and soups, which I only have in weather like this.
When traveling to Burkina in the past, I have usually asked the expat staff at SIL in Ouagadougou if they need me to bring anything (small) from the US, but with all of the events of this past fall--the hospitalization of my father and sister, my father's eventual death and funeral, my sister's long-term convalescence, the Christmas holiday, etc., I managed to forget. I did, however, email them from Paris, and am now transporting a supply of Canon ink cartridges! Fortunately they are light and can be arranged, and rearranged, in my luggage as to not take up much space.
I ordered them from the local Office Depot here over the Internet, and was delighted that they had free delivery. Office Depot's cartridges were also slightly cheaper than the store where I usually buy my own HP ones, which my credit card appreciated as it is feeling overextended, despite the more favorable exchange rates. And just a few minutes ago I received an email asking me if I could bring two external hard disks and a bunch of USB drives!
Paris, as you recall, is still recovering from the Charlie Hebdo assassinations by Muslim extremists, and I passed by the Hyper Casher supermarket the other night where the hostages were held. It was dark, and I was in a car being on my way to dinner with friends, but I could still make out the piles of flowers piled around the perimeter of the store.
I have also managed to take in a pro-life (anti-euthanasia) walk where some 25,000 people (estimates varied from 11,000 - 45,000 depending on who's doing the statistics) marched near the Tour Montparnasse last Sunday, denouncing what they consider a slide of legislative decisions in the wrong direction.
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