Welcome to the Grand Village of Balla.
Laurent my neighbor boy. Dad your mail is going to good use. Envelopes make great hats.
The hammock in the background is where I spend most of my freetime reading or playing guitar.
Larent forgets his pants often.
He is cute.
Cotton being packed into the Semi trailer. Near 10 tons in all. Cotton is the cash crop of my region.
The trailers are filled and picked up and taken to Bobo to be sold.
Helping compress the cotton while singing and marching together.
On top of the cotton. Helping pack in as much as possible.
Everyone works.
Cotton from my village, awaiting transport.
Dry season. Nothing is green.
Little guy.
Friend making big spoon to stir the to.
To is the main carbohydrate of Burkina. It is really good with leaf sauce.
Drinking dolo (local millet beer) out of gourds. You can see all the sand and dust in the flash. Dry season.
Pounding corn in to flour for making the to.
To is good, but not really much nutritional value.
Women working.
Big animals with long noses.
In the forest less than 5 miles from my house.
Running away.
Encore.
Elephant tracking group.
Hippo Lake Sign.
Map of the Forest and Hippo.
Rules.
Fisherman at the hippo lake who pirogue the tourist boat to see the hippos.
Colleauges and friends.
Hungry Hippos.
They are big.
Hippos.
Fisherman throwing a net.
Hippo lake. Probably the biggest open water in Burkina.
Neighbors on the hippo lake.
Forest and Hippo Lake map. Stephs village is Padema and Me in Balla.
Group shot.
Each Sunday the market comes to balla. Here is the guy who sells pots and buckets.
These ladies fry anything in season to sell. Dough is fried like a biscit, and yams almost like french fries.
Local Drug Store. Anything you want you can find. More on the problems with unregulated drug vendors later.
More pots.
The fabric guy. Pick what you like and the taylor can make what ever you want to what ever size you are.
Some produce.
School
6eme Math Students. They can be a handfull.
Classroom resources limited, what you see is what you get.
6 eme Math. Only about 75 students in this one.
4eme Class. My oldest group 16-19 years old.
4eme
5eme Math
Macro Lens is cool.
Ants even in Burkina
Forest Flowers
Not sure what this is... carnivorous flower of some kind. Help anyone?
Feet are always dirty here
Chaco's got abused, so did my feet.
Perspectives. The value of electronics on this table is worth more than 4 times the average Burkinabe salary.
Spring Break at one of the only pools in Burkina.
Drums and Balaphones
The courtyard where my drum teacher lives and works
Instruments to be shipped to France
Got some video of this guy playing too, pretty amazing.
My Djembe teacher, 20 years old, working on a Kara.
Oven to dry the wood
Cutting drum heads, cow and goat mostly
Me doped up in the clinic in Ouaga. That sling is no joke. It got a little itchy and sweaty in the 115 F heat.
The "Teachers" who are finishing their service and will be heading home in June. Don't want to see them go, all good friends.
What a blur.
Fun times with emergency medicine that I will never forget.
My Driver, Solo. We took two bulls into Bobo this time. Sitting in the back makes for an interesting trip.
Pulling on a bulls tail.
Laurent finally got tired of asking for cartons, and took a nap on my porch.
That was in my house.
Back sweat.
My view for hours grading/sweating.
My neighbor Fulbert making a handle for a new axe. He is 25 also, but didn't go to school.
Banfora
Banfora Falls.
Crazy friends at the Banfora Falls. We swam and got sick for a week, the water wasn't clean. Dysentery rules.
Fun trees, always.
Holding hands with my director.
Burkinabe mosh pit or dance off, either way pretty crazy times.
Mask dancing at the new years ceremony.
Chilling at school.
No shoes.
