12/22 – 12/24
My ears feel the familiar gust of wind as I
am riding to the bank. I know what is
coming in less than two seconds. Dust
kicks again as I shield my eyes with my forearm. My sunglasses seem entirely ineffective. I wonder
when sand became so merciless. By the
time I arrive, I feel a thin layer of red dust everywhere. EVERYWHERE.
I am starting to get used to the dry season
in Burkina Faso. Or as I like to call
it: the planet Mars. Needless to say,
the past few days have been dry. It
feels as though I have the same habits as winter here, minus some clothes. This includes always applying chapstick when
I go out, using hand/body lotion, and needing to protect myself from the wind
with a coat (well, a thin jacket). I don’t
imagine the dust nor the wind get better for a while. This has made running difficult, but I deal
with it.
I finished up a rough translation of my first
text and commenced a phrase by phrase and word by word translations
(concurrently). This process is a bit
tedious. After two days of this, we have
basically one paragraph’s worth done. I
am learning some grammar in this process, but I hate feeling like I am not
accomplishing a ton. The morphology is
essentially nonexistent so far. There
are some suffixes on verbs (that I haven’t quite figured out yet) and the
presence of plural suffixes. This likely
means that most of my future work will come in the form of syntax and phonology.
My consultant has trouble explaining how he
uses various function words (words whose meaning is mostly tied to how they
work in the language system; English examples include the, as, and got).
However he is fairly creative thus far with inventing other examples
where he can use the word. About half
the time I am able to extrapolate the meaning and/or usage fairly quickly based
off this technique. He absolutely loves
it when I figure out how to describe a grammatical particle.
12/25 – 12/26
I woke up yesterday morning (12/25) in a
village mud brick house. It was sweltering
even inside. An open window was my only
comfort. A single shaft of light peeked
through the aluminum door. Fine
particles ceaselessly churned in the sun.
This mesmerizing dance easily captivated a man with a thundering
headache. Until… OUCH! This laser beam was not tolerable against my
bare calf. Naturally I tried it with my
hand, just to be sure. I understand now why
the Anakin Skywalker was such a crybaby.
For the winter solstice holiday, I hooked up
with a couple of Peace Corps volunteers and went to one of their villages (and
stayed in the house described above). It
was fun to meet some people and I practiced my terrible Jula skills in a market
in Bobo before leaving. One of the
volunteers I met works in a language area with significant variation between
villages (but with the same language). I
may follow up on this in the future, but I already have a few project ideas
that I am toying with for future studies.
The holiday meal was satisfying and rather
uneventful. I left the village to hitch
a ride to Bobo shortly afterward. I
arrived before nightfall and passed out shortly after dinner. Today was work as usual.
12/27 – 12/28
My text work continues and has become more
interesting. I am starting to enjoy
seeing what I can recall with little effort from the previous day and it
doesn’t feel so slow. I picked up on
some other grammatical particles today (12/28).
I also noticed that this text work is helping me memorize
vocabulary. I am killing two birds with
one stone and it is fun to boot! It is a
good feeling when your daily work routine is pleasurable and edifying at the
same time.
I am getting anxious to make a trip to
Karankasso-Vigue, but this will need to wait.
No date on this yet. I am also
anxious for the New Year celebration here.
Apparently it is basically a two day party. I guess they go hard here. I hope I can keep up. And not make a fool of myself. Or perhaps, that is exactly what I should do…
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