Hello from Burkina!

Wow. So, right now, it is 31 degrees in our air conditioned room, and I have never in my life been so hot while doing nothing. Hoping I'll get used to it quickly.

Met Emily at the airport yesterday afternoon, she actually caught me just randomly, and held up her half of the agreement to "just meet randomly in a Paris airport and discover we are going to the same place"… perfectly calm, she says "Hey dude, what are you doing here?" I was caught completely off guard, and couldn't do the calm greeting thing, but I don't think that's too much of a problem.

The flight down went smoothly. Em and I were a few seats apart, so we couldn't do much talking, though we did a lot of catching up at the airport. We exchanged occasional panicked, excited, nervous, and unbelieving glances over the course of the 5 hour flight, and shivered in the air conditioning of the plane. Landing in the airport, at 7:30 local time, it was dark as mightnight and hot hot hot. The pilot announced it was 34 degrees, which didn't sound all that high (as in, compared to what I was worried about, like mid-40s), so walking off the plane I assumed the immediate blast of heat was coming from the plane engine. HA, no. 30 degrees is hot. This will be an interesting summer even just for that. After a slight hassle with passports (Emily got through fine, but they didn't like mine as much, oddly), we stepped out to be greeted by a man from BoH (Bridges of Hope) (the organization we are working with). He helped us get our bags, rushed us through customs (which consisted of a person looking at the outside of your bag and then deciding if he wanted to go through it or not, thankfully neither of us had to go through that), and led us through chaos to meet Tatania, another person from BoH. By chaos, I guess it really wasn't, it was just a lot of people wanting to 'help' us with our bags or be a taxi (for untold fees). We then loaded up into a SUV/Jeep thing, and drove through Ouagadougou to our present lodgings.

We aren't sure if we've seen downtown yet, but if we have, it is nothing like a city of several million at home. What we saw was more like continual suburbs; small one-room houses of earth and metal and wood, people everywheres, and bikes and motorcycles and cars. The roads, though we were told they are paved, are about equivalent to PEI dirt roads in the early summer, very bumpy and rough. Though it was clear that you are supposed to drive on the right side of the road, that is free to change if there is a bump ahead and you are bigger than the oncoming traffic. All buildings were about the same size, be they stores or houses (or the gas station, Shell), being the one room standard, if it was a store with whatever good piled up (shoes nailed to the wall, shirts tacked up, fruit piled high).

We have been teased continually since arrival by Tatania and Daniel's brother, which is quite welcome, about everything from the weather (we were promised snow soon enough), the heat (told that the difference between white and black people is that white people haven't been properly cooked yet, as in, were not put in the oven before being born, and told that we were going to cook in Africa), ghosts (we don't have to worry about them, so long as they don't say our name?), language, and the president (who will soon pop out of the TV to say hello and welcome us to Burkina Faso).

Yes, I did just say TV. We are living like royalty; we've got electricity running air conditioning, lights, running water, a lady is cooking wonderful food for us, we are eating the best fruit that exists anywheres, windows with screens (and bars), we have a fridge, our beds are some kind of crazy soft foam, our door has a lock, there is someone who guarded the house last night, we have access to internet next door… it is hard to take in and hard to accept. We stay here until around Monday, at which time we move to Leo for a few days before starting our projects from Boura. Phones are in the works, Emily is uploading a video tour of the house right now, and now I'm going out the door to visit the Embassy. (?)

Side note, I'm typing on Emily's computer, but keyboards here have the ! where the . usually is, which I think says something right there.

3pm, Thursday the 24^th of May.