City Life

Done with my second trimester. Time is slipping on by. The break (decidedly not called “Spring Break” here after consultation with the thermometer) is two weeks long. I’m back in the classroom the first week of April, and the school year ends before the end of May. I’m working on getting together some books for my school using the recommendations from my colleagues. (If you feel like helping out, you’ll be able to contribute. Keep an eye out for updates.) This morning, I went to a library in Ouagadougou to meet my school’s headmaster and look up some prices. I biked into town.

I haven’t been in Ouaga on a regular workday very often. This morning was the first time I hopped on my bike at 7am and biked into town like all the other city folk. The myriad mopeds and motorcycles buzzed by me. By now, I can spot how fast the moto in front of me at a stop light can go by looking at it. On my fancy American bicycle, I passed a few. Others passed me. Cars whizzed by. (Don’t see those much in village.) I suddenly, for a moment, felt the novelty and excitement of being in a place so far from home once again.

In Ouagadougou, there are no lane markers. There are stoplights, but this morning, the power was out all over town. They weren’t working. The mopeds buzzed around me like angry bees. I pedaled hard to keep up. Moore and French were being screamed across the pavement. I dodged and ducked. The morning rush hour. This doesn’t happen outside of Ouaga. The rest of the country is not on a 40 hour work week. This is the picture of a place struggling to make it in the modern world: Buzzing, beeping, screaming chaos in the dead center of a country, surrounded by endless sand and savannah.

My baby sis is coming in June. I can’t wait to see this place new again, through her eyes. Then home for July. To see home, after being away so long, will be the most exciting.

Enjoy the weather.

Jon