Voici, Chez Moi au Burkina Faso!

I’ve been meaning to put up for about a year now. They are pictures of my house, some of which have already been posted on Facebook (they’re really old) but I might as well throw them up here too.

One of the times that my house flooded during rainy season. I just moved everything away from the window and then went into the other room, curled up and took a nap. There are a few things in Burkina that you can change but, more often, you ought to just let it do what it’s going to do.

A “barrique” (or a plastic trash can where one stores water). Why, yes, there is a dead mouse floating in it. Good morning.

ACK! The worst part of waking up is seeing Mr. Puddles dangling from my screen door.

Chickens for dinner. They’re alive but my neighbor tied their legs together and then tied them to the post so they couldn’t escape. They are very angry.

Another PCV’s latrine after it collapsed during rainy season. Heh. Heh?

My water filter.

My bike with my bidon on the back. I bike to the pump to get water and carry it back in the yellow bidon (I’m not sure if that is an English word? Jug? I don’t know what else to call it).

Doing laundry by hand. I will never complain about doing laundry in the States ever again.

The giraffe in my bedroom. The poles on the left side of the picture are in big tin cans filled with cement and they hold up my mosquito net. This is about the extent of my handy-man capabilities.

In the shade of my "hangar"

This is where I sleep when it’s too hot to sleep inside. Good news is that it is cooler; bad news is that there are fire ants everywhere and a pack of wild dogs wanders by at the strangest hours of the night. You really have to consider your options before committing to any sleeping space.

My latrine in all of its glory. It is literally just a hole in the ground.

Okay, so there are the pictures. I don’t want to add anything else because I’m afraid that this is already too big for the internet connection (it took me an hour and a half to send an email yesterday… Then I spent the rest of the day trying to play a video on YouTube. Only about 40 seconds loaded so I would play the first 40 seconds over and over again and imagined that I was listening to the whole song. Good use of time? When it is the Thrift Shop video: yes).



Wait, one more: 6am in village. You can get your inspiration on for about 20 minutes before the sun is up and it’s hot again. And then Puddles comes back and ruins by climbing on the screen and peeing on things. Oh, Mr. Puddles.