BF Journal: 10/1 - 10/7

10/1 - 10/3

The past few days have been pretty quiet.  I have been studying and working on side projects.  Zaki and I started going to a new gym together.  It’s not across the street like the hotel one, but it is considerably bigger.  And cheaper.  And nicer.

I think we are supposed to take another trip soon, perhaps out to Lobi or Senufo country.  We shall see.  I will probably choose a language soon after that.

Dasha left today (10/3) in the wee hours of the morning.  It will not be the same without someone I can speak English to.

We visited a small museum yesterday (10/2) in downtown Bobo and did some small things around Bobo.  Here is a picture of me at the museum near the river. 

10/4

Today and tomorrow are apparently days for celebrating the Festival of the Ram.  This is Minkailou (left) and Oumar (right) at a ceremony.

 

We ate a lot and drank a lot.  Well, I drank a lot.  I have no idea if anyone else did.  And we went dancing.  I am still awkward but nobody cared.

10/5

I was so tired today that I made Rip Van Winkle look energetic.  I guess am 30, after all.  According to calendars today is the day, but nobody did much today.  Especially me and Oumar.  I wish I had pictures of us from last night, but you will have to imagine me dancing surrounded by people who actually know what they are doing.  I know this challenging, but give it a try.

10/6

Slight change of plans: I am making plans to do a trip later this week out to another Viemo speaking village.  I didn’t get much chance to check them out with my half-day trip to Karankasso last month. 

I also started gathering language materials to construct dictionary that I will eventually use for my language.  I will likely be working on this over the next week or so as I make a decision on which language I will do.  I am definitely going to do a Gur language.  This puts my choices outside of the scope of Jeff and most previous contributors’ (to the project) dictionary work.  What I mean is, culturally and within linguistic structure, there is likely enough difference that I should carve my own path.  Thus, I need to make my own dictionary.  Whatever, it might help future contributors.  And it will be good experience for me, even if it is only a few/several thousand words.  More to follow on that.

10/7

I got my first package from home.  Mmmmmmmm coffee.  Tomorrow will be the best day of the universe.

And I got some research done regarding how I will set up my dictionary and what resources I will use to help me build it.  More to be done here, but that is progressing.

No news yet on the baby goat situation.  I am not okay with this.  Losing hope fast.

Flies continue to die at my hand (with the electric god racket).  However it seems that they multiply quickly.  Who knew?

Until next time…