BF Journal: 1/17 - 1/24

1/17 – 1/19

It has been a few days since Jeff and Minkailou left.  We are settling into our own routine here.  Zaki has started eating lunch and dinner with us here at the house.  That has been nice since he is very good at keeping conversation going and he’s funny.  Anyone who has ever eaten with me knows that I am sort of not good at that.  If there is food in front of me, that apparently takes priority.  Or perhaps I am just an awkward nerd. 

I noticed more flies around the house over the past couple of days.  This is perfect because Jeff took both electric rackets with him to Mali. 

We wanted to see some soccer match between Burkina Faso and I forget who else.  So, we fixed the TV.  We now apparently eat inside.

I have some ideas prepared for when I am in Karangasso-Vigue for the next few days.  This will be my first stay there for more than a day or a night.  I am pretty excited about it and anxious to get some things done.

1/20

We stopped in town before heading to KV for a few provisions and to have lunch.  From there the trip was somewhere around an hour to get to KV.  Upon arrival at Bakary’s family courtyard, the school (basically across the road from where Bakary lives) was still in session and there were many children outside.  Quick aside: in villages and in Bobo, families often construct houses next to each other and share a common space in front of all of them.  Anyways, like 50 kids came out to greet our car.  It was a little much for my taste.  Some people like these sorts of receptions, but I am not one of them.

By then the sunlight was oppressively hot.  I think I started sweating just leaving the vehicle.  We unloaded what we needed and placed everything in Bakary’s brother’s house (where we are staying).  Bakary’s brother is elsewhere for the time being, but he left us a key.  The shade was a nice comfort after greeting his family, the village chief, and arranging our stuff.  Bakary kept himself busy by preparing tea while Zaki started to get food ready for our evening meal.  The smell is sweet and pungent and it is the same everywhere you go.  It even overwhelmed the carbon smell of gas powered flour production machine puffing nearby.  By this time in my stay in Burkina Faso, the smell of tea boiling is a comforting norm.

Some men have come to the courtyard to pray.  There is music on the radio in another nearby courtyard and a soccer match just started on our radio.  Zaki is talking to someone in a mix of French and Jula about the game.  A golden haired dog is trying to sleep next to us.  He is doing a better job at concentrating than I am.  There are many distracting sounds.  The tea, however, is predictable and mesmerizing.  I snap out of it as Zaki references the match from the other day. L’autre monsieur qui a marqué contre Burkina Faso est rapide mais aussi poison.  I am pretty sure I heard that wrong.  The nearby music stopped and others joined us for the match.

Bakary’s adorable toddler struggles to bring his chair to where we are making and sipping tea.  Nobody feels the need to assist him.  I have yet to see a Burkinabe coddle their child the way Americans do.  He figures it out and sits next to his dad.  Nobody appears to notice or take pictures.

Several fires are burning in preparation for various evening meals.  This does not mask the smell of tea either.  People appear out of nowhere to greet everyone and grab some tea. The scent can be strong, but it seems like people can sense its presence from football fields away.

Speaking of football, Bakary and I played soccer with a bunch of kids.  Everyone had a great time except for my body.  It is sore already.  And everyone is better than me.  Like, the kids are better than me.  A couple of them asked me if I knew how to play.  This is certainly a good way to keep you humble.  I am a little afraid to play with the teenagers.

Zaki promised the kids I would play a movie for them later on that evening.  This would normally be  fine except that I didn’t have my external hard drive cable.  The kids seemed pretty disappointed that the túbàbù (not 100% on those tones) didn’t have a movie to play for them.  Thanks Jeff (he always plays movies for the kids, whether they like it or not).  The candy I handed out did very little to curb the disappointment.

1/21

Last night I slept very well.  Except for a fucking rooster next to our lodging at 5ish a.m. (they sort of roam freely).  I asked today if I could buy and eat that specific rooster but people mostly seemed confused by the question.  I seriously would have paid like 20 bucks for it.  However, Zaki did find someone that we could buy a couple chickens from.  This is pretty normal except that they are tied up right next to where I walk into my lodging.  I got to stare at my dinner all day long.

The vehicle battery died today.  Normally this would just be a minor inconvenience until we found someone with a solar panel so we could charge it.  However, I needed the vehicle to record some specific words whose tones I wanted to check with various speakers.  The wind is too strong outside and there is a lot of consistent ambient noise.  So we sat in a car that felt like the sun for these recordings.

We also did a couple of interviews.  The interviews required less of a noise free environment so we went to the place where Bakary used to make bricks.  There was shade from small trees and the wind was diminished by being the actual pit.  The nearby school provided some background noise but not enough to make the recording unintelligible.  It was peaceful until we needed to leave due to some bees.

The village history interview was the highlight of the day.  Bakary was very satisfied after that particular recording.  He was extremely pleased that I decided to video record that session along with our audio recording.  This history lesson took place in the early evening just before the sun was setting.  It was cool and serene.  I do wish the mosquitoes didn’t mess with me while recording it.  You can see the video randomly veer off or shake for apparently no reason every so often.  But there is a reason and I hate bugs.

Bakary getting a history lesson

Closeup of Bakary's bricks

Bakary inventorying

A view of a couple of Bakary's brick pits

A view inside of one

This is how the walls look

1/22

We walked around a lot this morning and took some interesting photos.  I got to say hi to the Dugutigi (title for village chief) again.  His cold has left him unable to talk much but he is always welcoming and interested in what Bakary and I are doing.  We snapped photos with him, of a house in construction, a mosque, and trying our hand at clay mining (for brick making).  I also began capturing video of that process for later use.

Here are the photos:

House construction

Making the mud mortar

Their bricks

Tons of bricks stacked at the pits where people are fulfilling a large contract for some

Bricks drying

A worker chipping up the clay

Bakary showing us how it is done

Zaki giving it a go

A pile of picked cotton for eventual sale

Mosque on the village outskirts

Dugutigi on the right

Me being not awkward with my hands, as usual

I also captured video of me walking through a market with Bakary.  The markets here are often overwhelming.  Many things compete for your attention in a small space.  That said, I do like walking around and taking it all in.  I just wish that children would stop touching or grabbing my arms/hands to see if I feel different from other people.

Tonight we assembled some children for a dance competition.  Zaki appointed himself judge and he did a good job at it.  He is pretty good with kids anyways.  Next time we plan to be better prepared for such an event.  The kids liked the little bits of money and candy that I handed out as prizes.  Half of them were better dancer than me, not that it takes much.

1/23

Last night I decided that the best place to urinate in the middle of the night is not the latrine.  I have never seen so many spiders that were bigger than quarters in one place.  I walked into the latrine and walked right back out.  Nope, nope, nope, nope.  As luck would have it, the same night, my cot gave out.  I guess I cannot say that I am losing weight anymore.  This was not my best night ever.  The instant coffee we brought barely took the edge off.

The trip back to Bobo and the unpacking and such was uneventful.  It felt nice to use a shower again.  It reminded me a bit of my time in Iraq when I would get back to Al Asad after being gone for a week plus.

1/24

Today I tried a new fruit for the first time.  It is called in French pomme cannela (if I heard correctly) and in Jula it is súnsùn (nasal vowels).  It reminds me of a granny smith apple.  It was sweet and a little tart.  It had a few big seeds but nothing to worry about.  I would have taken a picture for you but I ate the whole thing.

Bakary was able to transcribe the entire 15 minutes of the oral history of Karagasso-Vigue this morning.  I was rather shocked when he presented me with seven pages of Viemoŋ right after lunch.  I am pretty excited to get into this text, but it will have to wait for a short while as I have some other things to finish first.

BF Journal: 1/7 - 1/16

1/7

I was not feeling much like anything today.  My solution?  Have a beer while doing text translation.  10 a.m. is late enough right?  By the way, what exactly is “extra quality?”

1/8

Zaki, Bakary, Oumar , Oumar’s side chic, and I all went out tonight because this is Oumar’s last night with us.  We went to a mostly empty bar.  We bought tons of street meat from the vendor outside the bar.  We gorged an drank some beers.  By some, I mean too many.  I am honestly impressed that Zaki could safely drive us home.

Throughout our last night out the bar remained quiet.  It gave Zaki and Oumar the chance to swap stories about people in the project.  The scent grilled meat stayed long after it was devoured.  At one point, after a couple tall beers, my head started to feel that familiar fuzz.  Everyone else seemed fine.  I am definitely a light weight now.  Dance music played at a normal volume but nobody danced except the lights. 

1/9

Oumar left today early in morning.  I was supposed to ride to the bus station with him but I apparently slept through everything.  I expect that he will call and I will apologize.

His departure seems to make sense given the project reorganization.  Jeff is heading back to Mali and not trying to do much more in Burkina Faso.  The idea is to have Jeff slowly give up the rains and some capable/experienced person (or people) will take over in Burkina Faso.  As such, this operation needs to become self-sufficient and dependent on Burkinabe.  All the same, people here will miss him.

Jeff left for Karankasso-Vigue with Bakary to fill in some names for fish and frogs or whatever he didn’t have yet.  I stayed behind to work on other projects.

1/10

Oumar called me and let me know that he arrived in his village safely.  He thanked me for the gift (a new phone because his old one was both old and the screen was cracked in several places).  I wished him well, apologized for missing him the other morning, and told him to keep in touch.

Now, for news about my project.  I may have mentioned before that I think adjectives are really nouns or at least all derived from nouns.  I am wondering about the state of prepositions and adverbs in Viemoŋ.  I am starting to think this language might not have them either.  There are precious few words that my consultant ever translates as prepositions or adverbs and half of the time when he does, I recognize it as a verb with a plausibly related sense.  Or perhaps there is are classes of each category that derive from verbs.  Examples: 

Note: I actually use a nasal consonant following the nasal vowels in orthography (ex: the language name, Viemoŋ)

(1)    Preposition:    hã      vs.      Verb:     hã-bɔ 
                             for                            give-INF

(2)    Adverb:          jĩ        vs.      Verb:     jĩ-bɔ

                             before                        know-INF

However, at this point in time, such observations are merely conjecture until I can demonstrate a systematic correspondence.  It could be coincidence, it could grammaticalization, or some other process I don’t know of yet.

1/11 - 1/14

The past few days of text were pretty standard.  We would get through a couple/few sentences per day and I learned something every day.  I am definitely going to train Bakary to get me more texts.

Jeff and Minkailou left early this morning.  I was awake this time.  It was pretty simple, just handshakes and they were off.  Minkailou called us later that day to let us know they had arrived safely in Bamako.  I guess I am truly running the show here now for the coming months.

1/15

I spent most of the day moving across the hall into Jeff’s old room.  And cleaning it.  It kind of smelled like… old (I really hope he never reads this).  I will take some pictures for the next blog post.  I definitely enjoy having a bigger space and my own bathroom.  This move is interestingly just in time for me to start spending less time here as I make plans for village trips.

1/16

Today’s text work was much the same as usual except we ran into an interesting part.  My translations into English are likely a little rough at this point, but it was still an interesting excerpt.  When responding to the question about what he knows about AIDS transmission and prevention, he had apparently said:

Note: the punctuation and capitalization are his doing.

Bã hueci vi vi yɛrɛ võmi võmi nĩ lata larɔ, a bi hiyewo yi bɛ yi dori di desi mũ hã.  Hali a tego sida yãrũ fɔ a dɛ a kapɔti jẽge, a jĩ sõ ocɔ nu.

In the city, the girls are very big now.  If you see them, you will want them.  After you chat up a girl, you should often put on a condom, due to AIDS, before sleeping with her.

Well, that escalated quickly.