Today was filled with preparations for the workshop that could be done while still in the capital city, followed by the 3-hour trip from Ouagadougou to Garango. We had planned to leave at 2:00, but it was 2:30 by the time we were finally able to push off. But I won't bore you with the details of the workshop preparations. I think you'll find other components of this Monday morning more interesting.
Since I arrived at the SIL center in Ouagadougou near the end of the workday on Friday, this morning was my first opportunity to see and greet most of my friends who work there M-F. The first hour of the workday morning was therefore spent going from office to office, greeting people. For the few who had ordered something from the U.S., I had something to deliver, and of course that made them quite happy. It was good to see so many of my friends—both Burkinabè and expat—again.
I also squeezed into my morning a visit to the tailor who has made all of the clothes that I have from Burkina Faso. He works a few miles from the SIL center, so I rented the SIL motorcycle and went to see him. My primary motivation for this trip was the fact that I had a piece of clothing with a broken zipper to get replaced. (We take advantage of these trips to Burkina to get our shoe and clothing problems fixed, since we have people with the necessary skills whom we know and trust and we can help them out financially by giving them work—and save money ourselves at the same time.)
My tailor friend (Matthew) was delighted to see me. He expounded for a couple of minutes on the fact that many who came to him for their sewing needs when they were based in Burkina Faso never come to visit him, even when they return for a short visit, but that there are a select few of us who always stop by each time we come back. He made me know he was very glad to see me. And then I gave him some business—which cost me all of 60 cents for time and materials. I also gave him some cloth that I had bought and asked him to make me some more shirts. That's more involved than just replacing a zipper, so each shirt will cost me 7 or 8 dollars to make (in addition to the cost of the cloth, which is about the same amount).
The trip to Garango with our SIL colleague Pam Morris was all on paved roads, though some of them had very large holes in places, so it wasn't quite like the trip to Washington, DC last week. Her truck has the old-fashioned form of air conditioning, so we each got to contribute to the regulation of the airflow by winding our window up or down. The scenery was mostly dry and dusty.
In Garango, I met Pastors Alphonse Bambara and Thomas Yembone, who are working on the translation of the New Testament in Bissa Barka. Alphonse is the logistics coordinator for the upcoming Rapid Word Collection workshop and I believe that Thomas will be doing the record-keeping. I'll find out more about that tomorrow when we sit down to talk about the details of the workshop preparations.
I am staying in Hôtel Boulgou, where the room is similar to the one I stayed in when I was in southern Ethiopia. There are some differences, though, that made my transition here quite a bit easier than that one.
Even though the chair is a simple wooden one that makes it hard to stay seated long enough to write this blog entry, the room is a bit bigger and there is a clothes closet where I am able to lay my clothes out or hang them up. The shower doesn't have any hot water, so no difference there. But there is electricity, I can talk with most of the people that I want or need to, and there are screens on the windows, so no mosquitoes.
Kevin Warfel
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