27th Year of Service as a Human

New atoms, same Aaron.

Or is it…. ?

Greetings from the 27 year old version of me. I now think I am somewhat respectable, because 27 years of Being Cognizant of Things and Reflecting Upon Them should mean I am respectable. Or not. As usual, the ability to trust someone’s musings probably depends on context.

I arrived in Burkina in October of 2008. As of March 15th, a full 15 months will have passed since touch down. My eye is on the week of December 1 – 7 of this year to be out of Burkina. Ergo I am ‘T – 9′ months and counting to be finished with my rather bizarre stint as a westerner allowed to air-mail himself into a land-locked west-African country. Most incredible, indeed.

Let’s talk about what Aaron did on his 27th birthday, because it was probably quite different from all other birthdays hitherto.
I woke up at about 6:10am. I found myself inside a ‘BugHut 2′, which is basically a tent without any semblence of rain protection. It was slightly cool, but certainly not below 75 degerees fareinheit. My cat was attacking my ‘BugHut 2′, and I had to hit her (gently) to avoid (more) rips. Please note that cats are suckers for tent-like-things. I don’t pretend to comprehend, but the second I set up my BugHut 2 for the night, Topaz starts zipping around inside like a possessed labyrinth marble. Her mother was the same way (God rest her annoying soul).
I remove my alarm clock, solar lamp, and A.J. Jacob’s “Guinea Pig Diaries” from the tent, and fold up my slightly sweat-stained sheet. These items, along with a now thoroughly-crappy foam “mattress” are all portaged back inside my oven-cum-house. Said house is fairly clean today, and I am therefore content.
I put on long pants and a short sleeve collared shirt – each one an American import that has survived the past 15 months of sun and heat and dust and wind. I walk outside, close up my house, and head over to the market to have my now-usual breakfast – corn-flour couscous mixed with black-eyed peas, oil, salt, and crushed hot pepper. Classic American breakfast….
I pay my $0.25 and move on up the hill to my friend Sylvestre’s house. We had agreed to meet around 7am in order to go see the village chief. Why, you might ask, would an Aaron go see the village chief on his birthday? To receive an anniversary blessing? To thank the chief for allowing me to live in his kingdom? To see if he’ll break out ther really AWFUL whisky and get me knackered?
None of the above. Quite simply, Aaron et al. needed to ask for the right to chop wood from 20 – 40 year old Nim trees in order to build a fence and and awning to protect a tree nursery from sheep and chickens. Said Nim trees are on the chief’s land, and therefore require his dispensation to chop. Voila.
I, along with Sylvestre, prostrate myself before the chief briefly. The chief calls for a white plastic lawn chair to be brought to me the westerner. I sit in the white plastic lawn chair. Sylvestre sits on the ground. After some discussion and working through an intermediary (the chief sometimes hears your queries directly, and sometimes via a guy sitting just to his side who repeats everything), we receive the chief’s good graces to go chop his wood in an environmentally sustainable way (Nims are pretty dang good at grown back branches). Huzzah!
We go to Sylvestre’s house-area, which is made of of small houses for him, his mother, his brother, and some smattering of other relatives. There is also a place to mill flour by hand, a gazebo-ish thing made from wooden poles and millet stalks, and a funnel/filter for making local hooch (millet beer). All very normal, actually.
Sylvestre sends someone to fetch a machete. We wait an hour, and discuss possible ways to hold gender-equality forums in Sabce and a few other village. Sylvestre sends someone to check on the person he sent to fetch the machete. The machete, along with our friend Jean (also sporting a machete) show up in the next 10 minutes. We relay the good wood-chopping news to Jean, and head out.
Part of the chief’s terrain is an absolutely stunning mango grove. Dry, yes, but still sporting about 20 or so GIANT mango trees, providing massive amounts of shade and loveliness. Mixed in amongst these mango trees are a few of the Nim trees we are looking for. Collecting wood from Nim trees is Jean’s forte, apparently. He scales three different trees over the next couple hours, climbing a good 30 – 35 feet up and hacking away some impressively large branches with his machete. It is at once scary, exciting, and sad. Yes these branches can/will grow back because we are cutting in the ‘right’ places, but we are still abusing a good decades worth of growth in some cases. Damn.
A kid shows up with a donkey, and a cart attached to said donkey via old bike chains, rope, and a grain-sack semi-full of I don’t know what. As wood falls from the Jean-inhabited heavens, Sylvestre cleans it off (i.e. removes very small branches from what can otherwise be stout 6 – 10 foot long poles of wood). When Jean comes down, I grab his machete and copy Sylvestre. Jean smokes, then comes back and says I should rest a bit and he’ll work. I say he’s already worked a lot. He says I should rest. I say no it’s ok. He says he’ll work. I give up and hand him the machete.
Note this interaction describes approxmately 7/10ths of my life here in BF, and specifically of my attempts to perform physical labor. I have to admit, my hands have been away from farming so long that I already get a blister from working with the machete barely 30 mins. Likewise I could only have performed Jean’s feats of climbing were I on some type of amphetimine that did not cause shaking or rash decisions. But still… I can work, damnit. I squelch my manly indignence and watch Jean cut more things.
Soon enough, we load up the cart with our wooden winnings and trek off a short ways to the water factory where our tree nursery is housed. Yes, Sabce has a bottled-water factor….err, bagged-water factory. Bottles are expensive to come by, so instead you put water in a bag and you chew off a corner of the bag and you suck out the water. Duh.
We dump the wood in a couple different piles according to size, and make plans when to meet and actually build the fence so that goats and chickens don’t muck up our plantings. Jean and Sylvestre say Monday night! But, I won’t be here monday night, I will be in a village called Sapouy, visiting my girlfriend. Jean and Sylvestre say they can handle the construction themselves. Very entirely and totally true – I am totally not necessary. Basically, when I come back to Sabce, exciting things will have magically happened and I can feel productive. Score! Motivated people are awesome.
(note- some of the money you readers are contributing towards the tree-nursery project have gone / will go towards the thatch fencing material. Thank you!!!)
This all happens before 10:30am. It is now probably 90+ degrees out, and ergo a prime time to bike 15 miles to my neighboring PCV’s village. She has baked me spice cake!
I do the bike, wipe the salt off (that’s right- the sweat evaporates, and I literally have salt on my arms. Lovely), and take a warm shower from a bucket. We go have celebartory cokes and cake and sheep meat, then trundle off to a primary school and put the finishing touches on a painted world map project she started up with some 6th graders. Despite her doubts, it looks quite good, and hopefully we will finally be able to show that ‘AMERICA’, ‘UNITED STATES’ and ‘WASHINGTON’ are not separate countries. And that ‘NEW YORK’ is both a city and a state.
I take a brief leave from painting the map’s frame to go get water. Someone is yelling my name across two fields. It is the woman Margot who used to make friend sweet potatoes and plantains in Sabce. She has since married a teacher in my friend’s village, and now sells green beans, potatoes, and salad instead. I am sorry for the loss of her culinary skills, but sharing is caring, so I don’t complain too much. She invites us over for chicken and potatoes. I tell her I ate recently (as in, 2/3rds of a spice cake), but she gives me an extremely sour look that transcends all cultural protocol and means I damn well better eat her potatoes and chicken. I have a few spoonfuls. Really good stuff, but I don’t regret scarfing the cake.
5:00pm rolls around, which is the ideal combination of not-too-hot and still-enough-light to start biking home. My friend stays behind to start coaching a bunch of 6th grade girls who want to play soccer for International Women’s Day. A couple of said girls leave off to walk me back to my bike, and to bring back some soccer supplies. One of them thinks I am her husband.
The bike back takes a bit over an hour, and involves lots of “GOOD EVENING!!!! HOW’S TIME PASSING??? HOW’S YOUR FAMILY???” to passers-by along with way. I stop, sweaty mess that I am, to inform the local forestry agent of our progress on the tree nursery. He is content, but people are waiting to pay for authorization papers to go chop wood in the bush. We leave off till later.
I go home. I shower because I am incredibly salty and disgusting again. I go out to buy fish for my cat. She is grateful and cute. The chickens are asleep by the time I give her the fish, so they do not steal it. Please be aware that Chickens are jerks, and are also cannibals. When my neighbors kill a chicken, and toss out bits of meet or bone, the other chickens eat it. Just saying.
I buy bread and put mayonnaise on it. I then sprinkle crushed chilli on the mayo. I then slice up tomatoes and put them on the bread and mayo and chilli. This suffices as dinner because the 2/3 of a cake I ate is still very much present in my stomach.
I eat outside by solar-lamp-light and it is delightful. There is no moon, and the stars are superlative in their starry-ness. I finish eating rather quickly, sweep off my porch, and set up my ‘BugHut 2′. My cat runs around inside it like a maniac and generally gets in the way. I fetch my decrepid “mattress”, sheet, and pillow from inside the house and set up my bed inside the BugHut 2. I hunker down with my solar lamp and read a selection from A.J. Jacobs “Guinea Pig Diaries”, this particular vignette concerning his life-experiment (duration: one month) of being absolutely and completely devoted to his wife’s every whim. I learn about the profound number of pet peeves prevalent in marriage
I go to sleep.

Oh, Burkina. you are an odd little realm in which for me to exist.
Be well all
Aaron.