August 5th
Well, it's been a
lovely weekend indeed. Both mornings it threatened rain and kept me
from starting my laundry only to clear up later – typical! So I
split it half an half, yesterday I did things that dried quickly and
today obliged me by being warmer to help dry my heavier items. This
morning I headed to the marche earlier than usual, around 9am because
I was hungry but didn't want to have to go out more than once. I
decided on a whim to buy my sugar from my usual guys instead of at
the boutique like I'd planned, and as I was passing the veggie stands
I noticed a beautiful, unusual sight – there was color! More than
onions! In fact, I was able to buy some decent looking baby eggplants
and some of those weird skinny lime-colored green peppers. I bought
my spaghetti and tomato paste, got gallettes from Alimata and bread
from Boukare, and headed home for a delightful relaxing day of
laundry and house cleaning.
I received a weird
text from someone I didn't know this morning, saying that they were
in Kossouka. I was worried that this meant I was going to have some
random person I didn't want to see knocking on my door. When someone
did knock on my door around noon I was a bit reluctant to go open the
door. But it was Juliette! She said hi, it was a bit awkward when we
had nothing to talk about after the usual greetings, and then she
started examining my garden. I pointed out the basil and lettuce and
moringa, and then made some remark about all the weeds, that I keep
pulling them up and they keep coming back so now I only pull up the
ones in the garden. As I said it, I grabbed a few poking up near the
basil, and she responded by starting to pull up great handfuls of the
big weeds by my wall. Grateful for the help and motivation I started
to do the same, expecting us to just do a bit before stopping. Well
she was on a roll, despite my insistence that it was fine and she
could stop. So we kept going until my yard was, while not weed free,
certainly a lot shorter and less green than previously.
I sadly had nothing
to offer in the way of a thank-you, my candy stash being all tapped
out until I get the rest of it from my locker in Ouaga, but I did
offer water to drink and wash her hands. She accepted the drinking
water, but then headed out of my gate, saying she was going to get a
daba to clean the rather impressive lawn of wild grass growing in
front of my gate. I called her back and we managed to extract mine
from under the wreckage of my hangar, and she went to town. Every
time she cleared a rectangular-looking chunk I told her that was
good, but she insisted on keeping it up. I was gathering up and
disposing of the grass into my neighbor's trash pile, but then 3
other girls came up and they all started taking turns. Feeling very
bien integre on the one hand, having petites doing work for me
without being asked (!) and horribly exploitative, having small
children feeling obligated to do manual labor for me on a warm sunny
day when they, for whatever reason, weren't in their own fields. When
they started making moves to dismantle the mess of my hangar (they're
just young girls – that wood is heavy even for me!) I finally
convinced them to stop by insisting they wash their hands and take
200cfa to go buy some cookies as a thank-you. I'll never know if they
actually went, but I did say they could come back next week if they
really wanted to help clean more. Maybe by some miracle my hangar
will be back up (yeah right) and they can help me weed under it,
they're much more motivated than I am, I usually get bored and stop
after a couple square feet.
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