Some Scattered Thoughts

I'm rounding out my first week in Ouaga and my first week of work, and actually have gotten the chance to see the centre-ville area and go into a market, so I feel slightly less ensconced in a bubble than I did earlier in the week. Some observations after 5 days in Burkina that may or may not be earth-shattering and that probably are obvious to people who have spent time in West Africa: 

1. Lizards - there are lizards everywhere. There are tiny ones in the house, large ones on the outer walls, and medium sized ones that scurried away from my feet when I was out running yesterday.  There is one who has consistently been perched on an outside ledge of the embassy cafeteria every day at lunch. I am totally fine with this - lizards are great. They eat mosquitoes, and they are scared of you and scurry away, and they are way less gross than either flies (I still shudder when I think of the Cambridge Fly Massacre of 2013) or mice (3944 Pine). I keep trying to snap a picture but the little guys move so fast. 

2. Working in French - I am in the process of doing a lot of reading in French, and I attended several meetings and calls this week that were conducted en français. It's humbling. I have really let my French go since graduating college, and I was never the best speaker to start, so it's mentally tiring to get back in the game and it's really frustrating to not remember words that you know you once knew.The bright side is that people in Burkina Faso are way less snotty about spoken French accents than Parisiens and are very forgiving of grammar mistakes. But I regret that I skipped the business French course in college in favor of a film course as it really would come in handy now. I spent the day looking up the business jargon used in management reports. I know know the words for "framework" "milestone" "disbursement schedule" "working group" and "org chart" (organigramme, a word I fund rather cute and fun to say - if I one day start a flow-chart stamped graham cracker company called organi-graham, you'll know where the idea came from). 

3. Motos - This one was well detailed in the guidebook: the primary mode of transport in Ouaga is motorbike. The shoulders of all major roads are packed with them, and they contribute to the rather dangerous traffic conditions in the city (though motos are by no means solely responsible for those). What the guidebook did not share was the ridiculous amounts and forms of cargo that are carried on the back of these little bikes. I have seen motos carrying mattresses, motos carrying several bales of hay, one today carrying at least a dozen large clay flowerpots and one carrying a passenger who had several two by fours balanced on his shoulder. What people manage to fit onto the back of these bikes and how they manage to balance and make it through traffic and around the traffic circles of Ouaga is a feat of human ingenuity. 

I definitely have more things that I have randomly thought of, but I am le tired and am heading to bed soon. 

I leave you with the view from my office building today.