chek-chek-chek krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

These birds are the bane of my existence. They are called "pintades" (which I heard for a long time as "pin-tards," for which I feel a little guilty, particularly because I think it's more apt.) They are also known as guinea fowl- helmeted guinea fowl, to be precise- and they are the loudest birds I have ever heard. They belong to my neighbors and roost in a nearby tree and are super fast runners so you can only catch them when it rains and their feathers are wet. I'm used to the donkey noises (I still honestly love donkeys: I think they're hilarious) and I'm used to the call to prayer broadcasted every morning from 4-4:30, but I don't think I'll ever be used to these birds. As my birdwatching book puts it so poetically: "Commonest call a series of hard, raucous notes interspersed with grating rattle chek-chek-chek krrrrrr chek-chek-chek...."


This is the clutch of eggs one of my neighbors' chickens laid in my yard. Mme Ouedraogo came over later and replaced some of the chicken eggs with pintade eggs. This way the chicken will nest on the pintade eggs and grow little pintades (you can guess how thrilled I am about that) which is necessary because they don't raise their own eggs. Which is the reason behind a superstition here: if children eat chicken eggs, they'll grow up to be thieves, because the chicken actually cares about her eggs so it's like they stole them. (True for fetuses too- if a pregnant woman eats chicken eggs, her baby will be a thief. Watch out.) Pintade eggs, on the other hand, are fair game.

where there are lions

There are no lions. But that's what Bagré means. I'll take it.

So. Bagré. I went to there. And it was amazing. Seriously, riding out to my village in the bush taxi I hardly even noticed the smoke pouring from the engine into the cabin because the countryside was painfully picturesque. I felt like I was in magic land, with the green rolling hills and trees and occasional mud-walled compounds of little houses with round thatched roofs. Not too frequent, mind you. I'd say perfectly spaced out from one another.

The bush taxi stopped in Bagré village first. It's a smaller village, with no power lines and not many people. It is, however, where the big market takes place every third day. It's maybe 7km from my house, I think. Then we got to Bagré town (my stop!) The town is a bit bigger, and many places have electricity, and it has a lycée (high school) and a CSPS (health center.) And the town also has a smaller market, but it's there every day and apparently has most of the things I would want from a market anyways. I'm in a fabulous area, with the dam and all, so there's plenty of water to grow fruits and vegetables year round. There are also huge numbers of rice fields which produce some of the best rice you'll ever find.

I live a tiny bit further along the road, next to the new lycée. Unfortunately, this is not my lycée. My lycée is, as they say, "en brousse." You may be able to guess what that translates to. I'll tell you. It means "in the bush." So it's along the road between Bagré town and Bagré village, but significantly closer to the village. I think it's about 6km from my house, so I'm going to be a rockin cyclist by the time I'm done with my service. It should actually be really good for me: health-wise, happiness-wise, and birdwatching-wise. (I'm really excited about that part- the wildlife in my area is pretty much limited to birds, but these birds are amazing.) The only thing I'm not looking forward to is April. My region is really temperate, and even cold sometimes in December, but the hot season peaks in April and it's killer no matter where you are in the country.

Okay, so region, school... house!!!! I'm so spoiled. I'm going to be living in fonctionnaire housing, which means government worker housing. But unlike in the US, where government housing on, say, military bases is not necessarily fabulous, the government workers here are pretty well taken care of. My house is concrete, with high ceilings and a (still high) false ceiling underneath to help with the heat. I have a huge main room, two bedrooms, and a closet that would have been a shower had the builders actually installed plumbing. And, beautifully, I have electricity. They didn't actually wire my house, but they're going to, and until then they've just sniped power from the neighbors, which works for me!

Now, this is why I'm really spoiled. I'm replacing another volunteer, Liz, who's leaving this month. So she was there for my entire visit, and I got to talk with her for almost three entire days. And now I feel like I know everything about everything, because she's awesome. And she cooked amazing food, and will be leaving furniture and a cat (Jack) and a dog (Turtle) and a garden (vegetable) for me, and she introduced me to fabulous people: neighbors, friends, really fun Taiwanese NGO workers who have wireless internet, etc. And another Taiwanese man, Eddie, who is incredibly friendly and great and drove us around the countryside so I could see the dam and the rice fields and neighboring villages. And who gave me a ballin trucker hat.

So, long story short (too late!) I feel incredibly prepared to go live in my new home. I know:
where to find things
what I can find in village/town
who to go to with questions or problems
what I need to buy for my house
And so much more!

And I wanna go right now. Oh training.