Books!

Here are some recent books I've read:

"No god but God" by Reza Aslan- This book is a must read for everyone. Seriously go find it and read it now. The author sketches and narrates an excellent history of Islam from Muhammad to present day.

"Tipping Point" and "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell - My favorite was "Tipping Point", but both are excellent. Interesting ideas made fascinating by good storytelling.

"Mixed Emotions" by Greg Child (Thanks Rachel!) - I've always loved reading Greg Child's articles in climbing magazines. This book is a compilation of his early writing. It was so refreshing to read a good book on alpinism considering how hot it is here!

"Twilight" and "New Moon" by Stephanie Meyer - If you're looking for quick, no-thinking reads look no further than this vampire series. Each took a day to read. The second book was much better than the first, but I'm scared to reach for the third and fourth books. [For a great vampire book though may I recommend "Sunshine" by Robin McKinley.]

Dust Bunnies and Other Tales

Two things finally motivated me to write this blog post.

1) It just hit me that April is over and I didn't post anything for the whole month.

2) I found scorpion number 11 under the food canteen in my kitchen, which I killed by accident. I was really trying to kill a cockroach. I moved the canteen then smacked the roach with my fly swatter. Unfortunately I really pissed off the dust bunny next to the roach because it started to move belligerently! (The "dust bunny" was the scorpion, guess I should wear my glasses around the house more.)

Where to begin... Since my last post was a while ago and so many things have happened I'm taking a bullet point strategy here.

• At the end of March I did something strange ... I went to Ouaga for FUN! Yes Ouaga is still not a favorite city, but there are perks such as concerts and football games. I saw a very short, but very good, concert given by Bil Aka Kora and the Burkina Faso/Guinea soccer game (which we won 4-2), a 2010 World Cup qualifying match. I discovered that I really miss concerts and soccer games are a lot of fun to watch in person. The next match is June 20: Burkina/Côte d'Ivoire. Should be crazy since they're archrivals. At the last qualifying match in Côte d'Ivoire people were actually killed!
  

• The 3^rd trimester started April 1^st. This is the shortest trimester being only a month-ish long. We should go until the middle of May, but there's talk of strikes, the kids are tired, I'm tired and the heat is unbearable. (more "heat" discussion later) I'm giving my last tests next week. This is good since I'm practically in "survival mode" right now. For anyone who has hiked back to the car from Longs Peak (Goblins Forest/Longs Peak trail), this feels like the "last-mile-that-never-ends". I'm tired and sweaty and sleep is a beautiful dream.

• But before the end of school fatigue set in I managed to get in some craziness. The 3^rd annual Hard Core Party was in Djibo (gee-bo) on April 11^th. What makes a party "hard core"? Well you see April is the hottest month (more in a bit) and Djibo is in the Sahel which means that it's normally hot and sandy. Put the two together and you have the perfect time and venue for a party... if you're hard core. Just to make it more insane another volunteer and I opted not to take the bus to Djibo and biked instead (113 km or ~ 70 mi.) the day before. It was a lot of fun until about noon and then it got very hot and windy. Luckily we made to a village 25 km from Djibo at 1pm and crashed at another volunteer's house until it cooled off. We weren't completely crazy! :) Anyway, I love Djibo! It has a laid back atmosphere, a cool barrage and camels.

Road to Djibo

camel!

• It's "Feeling HOT, HOT, HOT" here! My last post mentioned that it was getting hot, now it IS. Let's put it this way 95°F (35°C) is comfortable and kind of pleasant and my house is roughly on average 108°F (42.2°C) during the day. I can't stop sweating! When the sweat does stop that means I really need to restock fluids. Amusingly I've observed a 5 second delay between drinking water and starting to sweat. Weird. Other hot notes: I have one shower temperature – hot, strategically placing toilet paper under your clothes in precisely 3 locations helps keep the sweat from traveling, wrapping yourself in went fabric allows you to get almost 3 hours of sleep and dust + sweat is very uncomfortable. Tuulgo tara mam! ("I'm hot!" or literally "The heat has me!")

Hot

Umm it's getting really hot here. Observations:

• The BBC says Ouagadougou is 107 °F (41.7 °C) as of 3 pm today.
  
• My house, according to my body thermometer, is a comfortable 98 °F (36.7 °C).
• I just stood in line to pay my electricity bill and the sweat was literally dripping off me.
• My skin has a perpetual sheen and riding my bike is refreshing because of the "wind".
• The heat radiating off the computer I'm typing on is unbearable.