Alright time for more pictutres. Everyday I am in hours of class, lately language class, and instead of sitting inside a classroom, my class (three of us) bikes out somewhere in the town and has class there. Often we go to the outside of a cyber café and these little birds like to hang out there in pairs. The male is a bright red and the female is green and red. They're the most common birds I see around here other than hundreds of vultures but I don't yet have their species name - but I'll look it up soon in my bird book! So here's a male.

This is a picture of a lot of my host family. On the left is my 11 yr old sister Toma (TOH-mah) and then my mom Ami (AH-me) and her yongest son Nayeme (nah-YEEME) and Ami's aunt (I think) who was in town for a visit and then Abbas (ah-BAS) my 14 year old brother. This is a shot of most of the living room - the only indoor space that they spend any time in, and a great deal of the size of the house. There on the table is my normal breakfast: bread and powdered milk or tea. There in the background you can see the stove they use - it's similar to a camping gas stove. A lot of the cooking is done outside though because it gets really really hot in that room when that stove is on.

The other night a whole lot of family showed up all of a sudden and started cooking a lot. I was supposed to go out that night with the volunteers so I wasn't around for most of it but when I woke up the next morning there was a lot of cooked things and a lot of Zom-Kom (this cold sweet drink that is kind of fruity, kind of tea-y, and has a lot of millet flour in it. I'm not yet used to it's taste or the fact that there is flour in what I'm drinking but maybe I will be soon. Millet makes its way into a lot of things here like little cooked grains of it are put in yogurt type stuff, for example. But anyway that morning I was told that someone had died 33 days ago. I'm pretty sure it was 33 days ago. It was an old man in the family - not the direct family - but in the larger, African family - and that took place before I got there but the family is Muslim so there are several death-processing events. There's the immediate one and then there's usually something a week later and then if it's a man 33 days after the death (or 44 for a woman) and then usually something 100 days after the death. This could be slightly off since these sort of details are hard to get in fast french that you're not really expected to be fully understanding anyway - which is a shame since the culture is really interesting. Anyway that morning on my way out of the courtyard and into the street, I was accompanied by my mom who was escorting me past all the men that had gathered along the street on mats because of the occasion. The food was an offering I think and also something nice to do for the direct family. Death here for older people is not a sad thing, persay. It is only a tragedy when the person is still young. This was an elder person though.

Here's a couple shots of the inside of my room. I don't know for sure but I think that I might have the only bed in the house. Everyone sleeps outside, either on matressess or little thatch mats. So this room is pretty cush. You can see such features as my big white water filter, my green mosquito net, and some African pagnes (wraps) hanging around. You can also see that I al very privilaged to have a standing fan. That is a real treat here. But it's necessary for that room - because as you can see with the size of the window - it would quickly become a clay oven in there w/o air movement.

there in the foreground. On the right you can see a couple metal doors and those go to the latrine and the shower area (bucket bath). On the left you can see a little door which goes in a little house which is what all the houses are like here in my courtyard. There are 3 orMost of the time is spent outside in the courtyard though which is pictured here. This is a shot from the front door on my way out in the morning. That's my sweet Peace Corps mountain bike 4 of them - all belonging to this family - surrounding this courtyard. I don't really understand the center yet - because it looks like either something was/is/or will be being built there. That door that i referred to is actually a tomb, it seems, for my mom's late parents. She says we'll go in there someday. The houses are hard to count though - it's hard - it all kind of resembles a maze. And yes - that there on the left is a sateillite dish - my family has enough money to have TV and there the dish is, smack dab in the middle of this African courtyard. I really haver grown to like the bucket baths though - especially when you take them around dusk. Around that time of day, if the water hasnn't been out in the sun all day, you can almost feel nice and cool. This courtyard is on a side street right off of the main drag of Ouahigouya so this is a downtown place. And the next picture is a pic of the side street just down the block from my house. This is a pretty typical side street. The road goes from busy and paved to dirt and lined with trash and animals in less than 2 blocks. No the trash doesn't smell good. Yes I should ideally be greeting every person I meet on the street. Even if most of what I hear down these roads is "NASSAARRA". On one hand I think it's great that I have to do so much greeting because it kind of makes me think that just walking by people without even looking at them in the States is kind of wierd, but at the same time the whole greeting routine and frequency of greeting is hard to get used to for someone like me once you've done it for the 50th time in one day. That's abnormal since I'm in class so much but on the weekends it's not that far off. I'm at least comfortable with the greeting process in Mooré now. Goes something like: Good morning, how are you / good / how's your family / good / how's your work / good / etc etc. This can be abbreviated for perfect strangers or you might go through the whole thing with someone you don't know at all.

There are a lot of animal noises here. It's worse/louder/more noticable in the villages but there are a fair number of donkeys, chickens, sheep, goats, bulls in the couple blocks around me. Here's a random picture of one bull on my street. I'm not used to being able to just walk by a bull. They're all lightly tied up like this one and all seem pretty low energy. I heard there's a camel in one of the villages and I told my host mom I wanted to ride one and so she said she'd take me to go see him sometime.

The swimming pool here is amazing. It's a real pool! And the water isn't too hot. It's a little pricy but it's totally worth it.

Anyway - those are all the pics for now. Feel free to ask any questions since things that might be self apparent to me might not be to you.

Thank you for the care package offers and phone calls and emails and messages. There is no way to explain exactly why or how these three weeks have felt like a year to me and to everyone here, but they have and there is also no way to explain how nice it is to hear from you all. Ciao for now.