I had better luck on the phone today and managed to get in touch with the Papiers du Sahel women! Their store and outdoor workshop are both fine. Nearly all of them escaped Tuesday's flood with no major problems. Sadly, the home of one family (Ramata's) collapsed and she and her children are now lodged in a school building with hundreds of other families. But at least they are unhurt and safe.

I chatted awhile with Haoua and learned that the women are getting pretty discouraged with the project. Sales are way down since I left the project and few orders are coming in.

I was happy to be able to tell her that things may get better in the future. This month, a French bridal magazine gave about half a page to Papiers du Sahel wedding invitations!

The women now have one small order for them, but lets hope for many more to come...

If you'd like to see what the women make and how they do it, check out this site. If you'd order, that would be even better. They can't ship tiny orders to the USA or Europe, but if you'd like to give a bunch of Papiers stuff as holiday gifts, or sell it at a craft fair/Christmas fair/whatever, you can order in quantities they can ship.

If you don't speak any French, contact me and I'll take care of the ordering for you.

(NB: If you live in Australia, order from these nice people here. If you live in Utah, visit these good folks in Logan. )

Yesterday morning was spent running errands, checking up on the painters at the house and visiting friends. Our good pals of Goat Race video fame are back from California for a short visit and it's so great to see them. (Check YouTube for the video if you haven't seen it. the search 'Ouagadougou goat race' unearths it nicely.)
Then Saturday afternoon was the goodbye party for me over at the Papiers du Sahel project. I'm leaving them after eight years, so I definitely felt it was an affair to mark with a celebratory meal and speeches. I contributed the money for the food and requested rice with beans. But the ladies had different ideas of what constitutes 'festive' and bought dried fish to cook up with the rice.
The dried lake fish here is black, smelly and often has maggots.
I'm just saying.


The real big event was the soft drink each of us got. That made the party. My kids were happy to have the cool Cokes on a hot afternoon, that's sure. But for the Burkinabe children it was really a huge event. A soda is something that you get a few times a year, if you're lucky. I knew one little boy that got an Orange Fanta as his Christmas gift one year. That's it - a bottle of orange soda. These kids were thrilled, but very well mannered. All the adults got served first as they waited patiently, as is the norm here in Burkina. 'Women and children last' is kind of the general theme in family and social life.
Anyway, everyone got their soda and rice and a (pretty) good time was had by all. It was about two hours of sitting outside with hoardes of flies buzzing around. And while I did my best, perhaps my speech was not All That. But there you go.


That night, JP and I went out to dinner with friends and then out to shoot a few games of pool. Maybe I seem to write that easily, but it's not a phrase that falls trippingly from my keyboard. I'm not much of a pool person. The last time I played was probably at the Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole Wyoming in 1987. And I haven't missed it. Really.
That said, it turned ot to be kind of fun, especially watching JP suffer through it all. If I may be said to be 'not much of a pool person', we could say that JP is 'the complete and utter antithesis of a pool person'. He actually played pretty well, but found it profoundly boring.
So, I guess we won't be buying a pool table for our house in France.


Despite the late night last night, we were all up early this morning. We had to be out at the Koubri monastery for the morning mass there. Brother Adrian himself had invited JP to bring the family out and JP found the offer irresistible. The downside was that the mass was two hours long and completely in Moore, which neither JP nor our children speak at all. And even I was at a bit of a loss, as I hardly speak it at all. I recognised about 25% of what was said. But at least with that, I could amuse myself by trying to guess which bible verses were being read. And during the homily, I listened very carefully, imagining that the priest was speaking a mixture of English , French and Moore. I just filled in all the blanks with what the word sounded like in one of the other languages. It worked great! In fact, I'd SWEAR that he said at one point;
'God spoke and there were mice. But they knew tai chi and there were problems. When the kangaroo is at the tomb all day - that's all. It gets better as God blesses them. Amen."
That's just a rough translation, of course.


Brother Adrian? Hard to describe. Our codename for him is 'HS' (Holy Smurf) Not that he is blue and featured in an animated cartoon series. But he is very, very short and has a very, very long white beard.
After the service, he took us on a tour of some of his favorite reservoirs.
That was sure exciting.
The kids sure thought so. Boy howdy, after a person sits through a two hour service in another language while being stared at by 300 or so curious people, he/she likes nothing better than to drive around the bush squeezed into a tiny car, touring small manmade bodies of water. Yessir. Nothing beats it.

I'm going to go lay down a bit.
More from me soon- maybe tomorrow.

What did I get for Christmas ? Two bars of scented soap and a calendar. I feel that I am already both prompt and reasonably clean, but maybe I’ve just been kidding myself….Anyway, I’ve had lots of time to puzzle over the question today, as I couldn’t go to work or run any errands. The car (yes, the “new” car) broke down in the middle of Avenue Charles de G. right in the middle of the morning rush hour. The pathetic creature had to be towed to the Garage Seid, where my previous vehicle spent so much of its leisure time. So, my little station wagon and Mr. Seid are spending some quality time together today. How nice for them. For me, not so nice, as I had other plans, including the Bank of Africa, the medical laboratory, video shop, and gym, not to mention a stop at Papiers du Sahel to see how the project is doing over the holiday. Instead, I’m at home, dealing with the kitchen sink- still leaking after two “repair” jobs- and trying to “work” online. Dial-up is just hopeless, isn’t it? I may as well incise my messages on clay tablets and ship them by sea. It would be less frustrating. But perhaps messier. Anyway, I’ve spent hours today trying to catch up on emails and trying to “upgrade” my blog. And I think I broke it. Yes. I broke my blog. My counter is gone , my little flags, etc. They say the original template is saved somewhere, but I can’t, for the life of me, find it. And none of the features work like they promised they would. Which is all par for the course when someone says they are going to “improve” something and make it “easier to use”. It’s never true, is it?

In a way, though, I’m glad I was home this morning. Our young friends Aisha and Mariam came by for a visit, which was very unusual. They know I am typically not around during the day. But, as it happened, I was. The girls told me that their father died this morning. It was quite sudden an unexpected, though he was quite old. They asked if they could leave the two younger children with me today, as their courtyard would be full of visitors. And they thought spending the day around their father’s dead body might be a bit much for the little ones, as well. So, Alima (age 6) and Moussa (8) are here. Mallory just took them out for a walk with Aslan and his little goat cart. Now they’re back, playing on the terrace. Like most young kids, they have hardly realised what has happened. It’s harder right now on Aisha (19) and Mariam (13). Their mother is severely mentally ill and I know that the girls are scared that the landlord is not going to let them keep their little home without a man heading the household. I think Aisha could hold the family together, but this society is still so sexist at base, it might not work out. The elder brother has come in from the village, though, so it’s to be hoped that he’ll be able to figure something out. Though if he comes up with something horrible like : "Aisha should marry some creepy old man", I'll definitely have to do whatever I can to keep her from that fate!

As if I needed any further distractions, I recently found THIS very entertaining and useful site. You define a series of words and earn 10 grains of rice per correct answer. It shows you a little picture of a wooden bowl that gradually fills, but it's not just virtual. The rice really is donated to the United Nations World Food Program and goes to feed hungry people.
If you have a spare minute, it is worth the time!
The difficulty of the words increases as you answer correctly. The words are divided into levels from 1 to 50 and the site info says that people rarely go beyond level 48. Vocab maven that I am, I reached the mid 40s within minutes, but can't seem to stay at 50 for long. Guess I don't know every word in the dictionary. .....
Still more interesting news: If you check the links at right, you'll see a new one for my recycled paper projet here in Ouaga. The site is up and running at www.papiersdusahel.org.
More news, but maybe not so interesting: Aslan has been under the weather. We had to take him to the vet, where I got to demonstrate yet again how good my command of the local lingo is. "My goat has sores on his butt", I said clearly and confidently in well-accented French. How many times in your life do you get to say something like that and really mean it?
The chickens all had to visit the vet's office, as well. They have....... Chicken Pox. Really. I'm not kidding. It's called that for a reason, you know.

Good news: the Papiers du Sahel website will rise again. Eventually. We lost our old domain name and the site is down, but it will be all be replaced under the name www.papiersdusahel.org, or something similar. I am not sure when, but it will happen!
More good news: JP (my oh-so-clever DH) just got another book published this fall. You only want to try to read it if you a.) speak French and b.)are very smart. On the other hand, there are several pictures. Which is good for me. Anyway, if you are a brainy, French-reading person interested by land tenure issues among the Winyé of Burkina Faso, this is the book for you.
Yet MORE good news: Valentine has been blogging a bit more regularly. Check on her blog from time to time. She's a funny girl.
And finally: those wishing for a closer look at the winning Halloween costumes of the Jacob family have only to click on the photo album link at right. From there, click on the Oct 07 album. Many, many pics.

Here's a cake I made on the weekend for the birthday of little Zoe next door. This is just to show you that I keep busy while not blogging.
Also: I have had a few people write and say that the Papiers du Sahel website seems to be down. When you try the link, you get a sanitation project site. Now, I am all for sanitation, but I think it's pretty mean they grabbed our site name. I have written to my helper in Canada and asked "What's up with that?". I will doubtless soon have some info for you all.
More news: I finally managed to sell my demonic Land Cruiser. It is no longer mine and there is a song in my heart! I am now driving a Toyota Corolla station wagon that does not seem to break down on a near-daily basis. Which is nice.

82. Can you believe it? This is my 82nd post on this blog. I'm amazed that I'm still here and still manage to find something to write about. Admittedly, maybe the Happy Donald Hamburger House is not the most exciting subject, but there has been the occational rocketfire to make up for it.
Today was payday at the paper project. The women are in charge of all the money now, so I was just there pasting together bookmarks and lending psychological support. The cash was handed out as each woman stepped forward. But at the end, the President had one more woman to pay and was 10,000 cfa short. The money had just been counted fifteen minutes before, so the hunt began. We all hunted under the tables and behind the shelves. Finally, each woman came and showed the money she had been given. Amazingly, the mystery was solved. Mariam had gotten 40, 000 istead of 30,000 cfa. Two bills had been tightly stuck together and she hadn't noticed. We're lucky she's so honest!
That taken care of, we all breathed a sigh of relief. It was a very short sigh. Eugenie, the president, couldn't find her money. She rumaged in her purse, then we all started a re-enactment of the search we had just undertaken a few minutes before. We'd been looking for about half an hour when I opened a notebook that had been sitting in front of me. I paged through it and found the money. I handed it over to Eugenie, saying "It wasn't me! I swear!" which the women all thought was very funny.
All the excitement certainly has me thinking that payday is going to have to be a little more organized in the future.

I finally have my computer back! At least for a few minutes. I'll have to write fast. On the rare occasions that I am at home with a moment to spare for blogging, there always seems to be one of the kids playing Zoo Tycoon, Roller Coaster Tycoon, or another new acquisition. These games are pretty fascinating. I make it a point to check them out, so I know what my kids are doing. ( BTW: did you know that in Zoo Tycoon you can make a Tyranosaur enclosure, then break down the gate and let the dinosaurs lose to eat all the zoo patrons? This works best if you block off all the exits.)

Our Christmas was good. Calm. No guns firing. But I did have to make food for nearly 20 people. Which, incidentally, did make me want to shoot myself at certain points. Luckily, Valentine was a great help and we managed a Christmas feast, American Style, for several of our Burkinabé friends. They weren’t quite sure what to make of the stuffing, but the turkey went down very well, as did the various pies and cakes.

Right now I am working lots for Papiers. The new workshop is nearly built and we’ll be moving soon. I’ve also been preparing samples and a catalogue for a big exposition in Los Angeles! I am really excited that Papiers has been invited. Too bad that we don’t get to go along with our paper samples! But it’s a VAO manager that makes the trip and takes the orders.

Today at Papiers, one of our newest big clients passed by. She’s a French jewlery maker that spends a lot of her time in Africa getting materials. She told me she needed to pick up her latest order a few weeks ahead of schedule (?!!) because she is catching a plane out a month earlier than planned! It seems that she was completely traumatised by the events of last week and doesn’t want to be in Burkina any longer. She was quite shocked at how suddenly life went from normality to terror. “I am an artist. I go by my feelings. And my feelings about all of this are very, very bad. I feel like anything could happen here.” She added that she plans to never return to Burkina. And I thought I was a Drama Queen. Geez.
Her reaction was very, errrr... extreme. Even when the fighting was bad on last Wednesday night, I never thought of calling Air France for reservations. I find that daily life in Burkina has such an ambiance of goodwill and peace that any variation from this can only seem temporary. (Now just watch them stage a bloody coup d’etat and make me eat my words while packing our suitcases.)

My main indulgence these days is to watch a few episodes of "LOST" every night! Yes, a local video club now has the first two seasons for rent! I am enjoying it, despite it’s obvious flaws. It’s amazing how all the crash survivors happen to be exceptionally attractive people between the ages of 20 and 27. They also manage to stay astoundingly well groomed considering that they spend months sleeping outdoors on the beach among the wreckage of a downed jumbo jet. And I can't imagine how they propose to eventually tie the "plot" together.....

As soon as the SIAO finished, I embarked on a program of household improvement, to make up for the month or so of neglect. First of all, I had the house fumigated. (Fewer bugs is definitely an improvement, don't you agree?). The problem was ants. Previously, they hung out in the kitchen. I was ok with that. But recently, they started venturing out into the livingroom. Onto the sofa, even. I think they were just hoping to have good seats if the kids put on that Bug's Life video again, but that's no excuse. Anyway, filling the house with poison meant we had to go live in the house of our kind neighbors for three days. They are in Germany right now and said their casa was our casa. Not to say that it was stress free - I spent the whole time lunging at the kids shrieking "DON'T play with/touch/use/look at/breathe on that! This is not our house!". Few things kill a friendship faster than having your home destroyed. (Don't worry, Tony and Kirsten. Your house is still standing) We ended up staying about a week, as I had our place repainted immediately after. Then a mason joined in the fun, as there was a hole in the wall to repair and new tile to install. Then the water heater had to be replaced...It often seemed overpopuated around here, what with my three household help women, six painters, a mason , two air-con installers, the carpenter, the plumber, the gardener, the security guard and the driver...not to mention the four kids, their pals and a partridge in a pear tree.
No wait- that's next month.
The house is taking forever to finish. My car has been breaking down every two days. Alexa has a cold. Mallory has headice. Again. And gave them to ME, which I figured out at about two in the morning, which caused me to LEAP out of bed as though I'd received a severe electric shock via a cattle prod to my pancreas. I spent the next four hours shampooing my hair with lethal poison and combing it with a tiny, sadistic comb. Yeah, lice. I am about ready to set off a thermonuclear device on top of my head. I figure the residual radiation would kill off any lice left on the kids. Damn I hate these things. It's roaches for hair! How messed up is THAT? A good (?) pal of mine just wrote: "I guess that the shortcut of locking Mallory in the house whilst it was being fumigated didn't occur to you, did it? You should consult with me on these things." Always one step ahead of me, that Barb!

Anyway, what with all the running (and riding) around for Papiers, organizing the house and keeping up with life in general, I have been getting a tad exhausted. My solution? Take eight children camping in the African wilderness! Of course! The kids rode bikes, rode horses, played baseball and re-enacted all six StarWars films. I got no sleep. The four younger girls, who I had thought would chatter all night, promptly fell asleep, while the three boys howled like maniacs until about 3am, at which point I unleashed my flying monkeys.
I am still not feeling very perky, but life goes on. The car is still not fit to drive, so I am home today, blogging, answering emails for Papiers and making a giant cake shaped like a turkey. Don't ask.

Because of the nature of my blog entries, most readers probably have the idea that I spend my days making pink birthday cakes, singing and fussing over my cat. This is far from true. I also go to mask festivals and lock myself into hotel rooms. But when I am not busy with these activities, I have plenty of other things to fill my time.
Most mornings I go to the Papiers du Sahel workshop. And I spend many afternoons doing work for the project at home- answering e-mails, printing out labels, making phone calls, taking pictures of products, and lots of other things.
It’s a particularly busy time right now, as the rent on our workspace as gone up by 100%! We need to move- preferably to a better location. I am currently trying to get a grant to buy land and at the same time trying to get a place in the national craft center here (the Village Artisanale). We’ll just see what works out best.
The women at the project are very busy, too. They are currently making 6000 gift envelopes and 500 Christmas tree ornaments for a client in France.
I also work with a small group of women that make soap. A friend in Switzerland did fund-raising and got me some money to start up a project making liquid soap and bars of shea butter soap. It has been running for two years now. The women of “Savons du Sahel” are very busy right now as well, making 400 bars of soap for a client in Niger that has a small gift shop.
If you are curious, do follow the link for Papiers at right. It is in English and we are going to be updating it this September. It gives a little history of the paper group, a short biography of each woman and some photos of some of the things we make.
There are also Papiers pictures in the Photo Album. At the top of this post you can see a photo of Alizeta making Christmas tree ornaments.