Hello once again from the ragingly hot Burkina Faso,

Unfortunately I have no rat incidents to spice up the blog this time...

But there was another exciting event of sorts that recently took place in our village, the Mask Festival. Now I don't know about you but when I think of an African Mask Festival my mind automatically conjures up images from National Geographic and Discovery Channel, of people dancing around fires with painted faces, spears and chanting. As it turns out, the view of Africa that's portrayed to us in the U.S. through films, t.v., magazines, etc., is definitely not how life really is for most in Africa (something I definitely should have learned by now) or at the very least not of my village in Burkina Faso. The mask festival in my village means that men walk around in groups/lines of about 10 holding sticks and hitting people with 2 of those people being dressed up in... leaves. So... the masks here are really just walking bushes. Who hit people. Nonetheless, pretty much all of Solenzo turned up to watch the first day of this week long event and I of course did too, seeing as it was something other than lizards to stare at! On the last day of the festival everyone was talking about how exciting the grand finale night was and how huge it was going to be so once again I thought that just maybe this would mean scary painted faces, fires, drums and chanting. Again, I was wrong. What this really meant was more walking bushes, longer lines of men, more hitting and as a new twist, quite a lot of drunkenness. (I would like to proudly say though that I never was one of the ones to get hit since I told everyone that my personal friend Barak Obama would be VERY disappointed if anything happened to me. Not a sole touched me and people actually hid behind me!) When people asked me whether or not we had mask festivals in the U.S. at first I would always answer no... but by the end I realized that yes we do. It's called Halloween. Or every weekend at college where people drink way too much, dress up in ridiculous outfits and hit each other. Just like being at home.

After the excitement of the mask festival, I got to attend a Shea Butter formation that our women's group was putting on. While attending a formation spoken in a language where you can only pick out words like 'child,' onions,' and 'work,' (which oddly enough were actually never used together in a sentence..) may not seem like the most wonderful of adventures, I was incredibly glad to receive that invitation. Surprisingly enough to me I've been able to get decently involved and establish relationships with the directors of the government organizations, the radio crew, cotton union etc... but for some reason it's been really hard to get a foot in the doorway of any of the women's groups. There are probably quite a few reasons that a white female can get in easier with previously mentioned male dominated organizations/groups/sectors and not with the women's groups... but I won't take the time to analyze all of that. I'll just say that I was surprised and grateful to get the chance to make some connections with this group. Despite the fact that I could pick out less than 15 words, the formation was a ton of fun. I was really impressed by a lot of these women, mainly the president and vice-president, for their organizational skills (sometime that quite a few lack here) as well as all of their hard work. And they did actually do something that I would have stereotypically called 'African' before coming here, they sang and clapped while they worked. That most certainly made my list of favorite top 10 things that I've experienced in Africa. It was cool to be welcomed into that group of women, at the very least for two days, although I did little other than take pictures and attempt to make Shea Butter... attempts which they all laughed at and enjoyed making me do for that sole purpose... But hey, when in Africa! Since the formation I've been able to have another meeting with the president and am hoping to find them some buyers within Burkina while they're just getting started and then maybe, just maybe, be able to get them the organizational skills, knowledge and certificates to bring them into the international level.

After the Shea Butter formation I actually got the chance to see another women's group do a tye-dye formation. Luckily for me I attended Girl Scout camps way back in the day and my tye-dying knowledge still remained stored, although quite far away, in my brain. Again, I was very excited to work with a women's group and to actually be able to do some of the work this time. Like the other women's group they asked me to participate in some of the pre-dying steps and I think to their surprise I was actually able to not only do all of their models but show them some new ones. Thank you Girl Scouts. This group seemed to have a ton of fun just making fun of themselves and each other, so again, another good experience with a women's group. They promised to get me next time they do tye-dying again so until then I'll be revisiting my elementary school days in attempts to think up some more of those tye-dye models that everyone loved sporting.

Other than that it's been a lot of the same hanging out at the radio/office, chatting it up with the neighbor ladies and planting trees at the environment! And I have recently discovered that I have an insane passion for head-wraps. I have no idea why it took me so long...

Hope all is well for everyone!

Much love.