VIP stops by our village

To our surprise, we hosted a very special visitor at our village a couple weeks ago. Madame Jackson, the Ambassador to the USA here in Burkina Faso paid us a visit. Here is a picture of her welcoming committee. We were happy to be able to share a few of the projects we are working on, and discuss what the US Embassy is involved with around the country in terms of aid and development projects.



In other news... Ryan has completed his 18 village tour. We live in a 'departement' (what would be considered a county in the states), where there are 18 villages near our village. Technically he is supposed to support the entire departement. 21 community meetings later (as some of the villages are sub-divided).

Sonia is busy as well wrapping up her "Etude de Milieu" (a community needs assessment for the health needs). She has been making the round between the health clinic, maternity and nutrition center. She has also befriended a group of "guides", which is here the version of the Girl Scouts. So she has been spending some time with the girls/young women, who will likely help out on a lot of the community education projects.

Hmmmmm, what else. No recent illnesess to report. All is well, gastro-intestinal speaking.

Oh yeah, there is the heat which has started mounting again. December and January were quite nice, and February had the brutal Harmatan winds. Now it's just starting to get plain hot again. About 90-95 everyday. We are probably going to start sleeping outside pretty soon, but are dreading the battle with the mosquitos. (Thanks for sending the tropical tent Dad and Mary.) The heat should continue to increase up to the 105-115 range by April. Anyone want to come work on their tan? Sometime between late May and early June it should start to rain again (but with the heat it should be pretty humid). Remember, it has not rained a drop since October 15ish.

On the national news front, the capitol city saw some mild rioting and demonstrations last week due to an overall cost of living increase on goods. But all was quiet as could be village-side. We believe all has simmered down in the city as well. These was roughly the same cost increase that led to pretty bad rioting in Cameroon. Guessing this did not make the international news circuits.

We listen to a lot of the BBC World Service from our handy-dandy little shortwave radio. Although the US sports coverage is REALLY bad. Only soccer, golf, tennis and cricket.

That's all from Burkina.

Here are a few other glimpes into our slice of life here...