BF Journal: 9/17 - 9/21

9/17

I skipped the last day of the conference and got some study time on French and a little Jula elicitation.  It was nice to have the house to myself. 

At night we had a party because the Russians were leaving.  We had a local band over for a couple hours and it felt like half the neighborhood showed up.  We had people from Burkina Faso, Mali, Russia, and the U.S. at the festivities.  It eventually turned into an international dance party.  I have pics and a video for you.  

Dinner before the festivities

Warming up

Playing

Vydrine dancing with the musicians

Minkailou's picture of us toward the end of the video, the cameraman is on the right

Jeff with neighborhood kids + one of the students

For the video, please excuse the camera work and one-day editing.  I basically threw it all together last minute and it was my first time using that camera.  I had to make it low quality as well for uploading. Keep the video small, it looks like garbage if you make it big.

Do not judge me on whatever awkward Pinocchio-esque nonsense I am doing.  I dance like a worm with knees.  Or maybe a cricket with Parkinson’s disease. 

Do pay attention to Jeff’s and Vydrine’s dancing at the end.  Yes, Jeff put money in Vydrine’s pocket, like an exotic dancer.  

Did Vydrine just win Burkina Faso?

9/18

We picked up a nonlinguist (herein referred to as Dasha) who will stay with us at the house for a couple weeks.  She was not among the students who stayed with us for the conference but she was at the party.  She works on a project finding Arabic manuscripts with local languages written in Arabic scripts.  Some of the pictures of manuscripts that she has collected are incredibly intricate.  Here are a few examples.

We (Jeff, Minkailou, and me) plan to visit the plateau in a few days to do some more plants/animals for Jeff.

9/19

Today was fairly uneventful.  It rained, I went to the supermarket, and I studied.  Try to remain in your seats.

9/20

Dasha and I went to see some waterfalls and natural geological formations that everyone calls the domes.  After a 90 minute bus ride and we were in Banfora.  From there we biked roughly 15 k to the falls.  It took us longer than we expected to get there but it was worth it.  I have some pictures of the falls and the domes for you.  I went swimming at the base of one of the falls but nobody took a picture of it.  Before setting out on our bike ride, Dasha mentioned that she had never seen 70 SPF sunblock before.  When we got back she asked me how I got a little red with sunblock that was so strong.  Yup, a Russian person is making fun of how white I am.  This might be a never-before-seen level of whiteness.  Here are some pictures from the trip.

Dasha, my travel buddy

Me on the footpaths up to the falls

Much of the path was littered with corn and sugarcane fields

...along with tropical trees

The waterfall from the bottom

From the top

Great view, huh?

Care for a swim?

Right next to the rushing water

Us with our guide

The domes from a distance

A bit closer

View of the domes from one of the midsized ones

View of the road, woods, and farmlands from a high dome

The domes from a high vantage point

Toward the end of the sight-seeing

We made it back 30 minutes before dinner.  Afterwards, Oumar, Zaki, Wamara (Vu’s consultant), Oumar’s woman, and I piled into the 4x4 to go dancing.  None of us danced but I did manage to almost get through two beers before going into a zombie trance until I hit the sack.  Dasha was smart enough to stay home and sleep.

I made contact with a Jula instructor who is from California.  It was only by email, but I hope this ends up being easier than my current method of attempting to do fieldwork-like elicitation with Zaki.

9/21

In the morning Wamara left to go back to his village.  Zaki, Dasha, and I made our way to a market outside of Bobo (I will put the name in here later).  We got there as people were arriving and setting up.  We bought some caterpillars for tomorrow’s dinner.  I will try to remember pictures of this tomorrow.

After a quick rest at the house we three went back out to a local venue to see the same band from the video.  We drank millet beer and watched people dance.  I finally ate some dog.  To be honest, the meat was average.  I would eat it again, but will not go out of my way for it.

The War of the Flies rages on.  No decisive victories yet.