Let's go topless

We finally have our truck up and running. And there are a few weeks left in the dry season so we can drive around with the cap off. It's so much fun! We get a lot of stares on the road; I think Burundians are not used to seeing muzungus drive such a beat-up, open-air vehicle. We also get waves and smiles.

Having an open-air car is like being in San Diego again. We surprisingly saw a Cabriolet last weekend that looked to be about the same year as mine was, maybe even older. I had actual pangs of homesickness for San Diego at the sight of that little car. The guy driving it looked so happy. There are a handful of VW Golfs and GTIs here, but I haven't seen any other convertible car. (As much fun as a convertible is in the dry season, it's just not practical for the rainy season unless you have a garage or carport, and almost no one does.)

Now, we're not in a Cabriolet, but we think our truck has tons of character. We are so happy to drive in the sun and the wind.

I feel I should note that we keep pepper spray within easy reach, because there is the possibility that someone will try to jump in. We also never have anything valuable in the car unless it can be hidden under my feet while Mike's driving. However, given all that, there are neighborhoods in the United States that I wouldn't drive through with the top open, either, for the same safety concerns. We are fun loving, but we aren't stupid.

I think I speak French now

Or I at least comprehend a noticeably higher percentage of it.

It’s been nearly a year since we arrived here. Today I was in my office doing a bit of online research for some local shops and businesses. Last year I would have been completely frustrated by all the French-only websites with paragraphs of information while being lucky to find two sentences in English.

Today, however, I turned my research into my homework for French class. I copied the text of one of the pages into a Word document, then translated the whole thing into English. Wow, I can do that now!

I’m not claiming to be fluent or anything and I still stumble at cocktail parties; I still prefer my French movies with English subtitles. But I can communicate with our cook. I can read and understand short articles in Jeune Afrique magazine. I can initiate a conversation, even if it’s only to find out if the other person knows more English than I do French. I’m trying to come up with a good lawyer/avocado pun because they are the same word in French: avocat. I can finally read reviews of Bujumbura shops and restaurants online!

We noticed when we were in France and Switzerland that we could check in to our hotels and order in restaurants and the locals did not automatically say to us, “Speak in English,” as they are wont to do with annoying Americans. But they didn’t even recognize us as Americans at first! All they knew was that we weren’t native French speakers but we were more than tourist French speakers. In Europe, our African French apparently sounds different from the French that’s learned in the United States. We learn a different accent here. Although to me, the French here sounds a lot like the French I learned in school; it’s much easier to understand Burundian French over France French.

When babies are exposed to more than one language, they tend to start talking later, but they have higher comprehension and they tend to speak in more complex structures than single words. 

I think I'm in that absorbing, comprehending stage of language learning. A few weeks ago we spent a weekend with some people who spoke almost no English, and I understood at least 80% of the conversation. I didn't say too much, though. I think it's shyness that's holding me back from blabbing in French, not necessarily ability. (Let's face it, I'm fairly quiet in any language.)

The Big Cheese Deal

A couple months ago, Mike took a trip upcountry and on the drive home he called me to say he had a present for me. My first thought was that it was a rabbit, because I really want one and upcountry they have little kiosks that sell rabbits by the side of the road (I'm pretty sure they're not meant to be pets, though, those roadside rabbits). But he was traveling with his boss who I was certain would not tolerate a rabbit in the car for the several-hours' drive back to Bujumbura. So I waited anxiously to see what my present was.

Cheese! Mike had visited a frommagerie, fresh cheese shop/maker, with his boss, sampled the cheese, and knew immediately that I would love it. At Frommagerie St. Ferdinand, they make two kinds of cheese: frommage de vache and frommage de chevre, cow cheese and goat cheese. And boy are they good! It's the heaviest, freshest, creamiest cheese I've ever had. It's all made right here in Burundi with fresh cow's and goat's milk. He bought enough that after a couple months we've just recently run out. (It freezes well.)

We shared our cheese with some friends and everyone else was just as hooked as we were.

Mike said that the cheese maker's brother lives in Bujumbura and would be willing to supply us any time we wanted to order. As it turns out, I'd met this brother independently of Mike. When we were driving around one day Mike said, "The cheese guy's brother lives there," I said, "Hey, I know who lives there!" So I called him up and we made a deal. Thanks to all my friends and coworkers loving the cheese, we had quite a hefty order.

Yesterday I collected the cash from everyone and the cheese was delivered. I think our cuisiniere (cook/housekeeper) was a little confused and overwhelmed handling all the cheese and money, because he was home when the cheese was delivered and I wasn't. It does feel kind of like a drug deal. I have a dining room table covered in cash -- coins are rare in Burundi and even the smallest denomination equalling about 8 U.S. cents has a bill -- and plastic-wrapped cheese packs that look like bricks of cocaine. 

Tonight I'm hanging out at home, waiting for people to stop by and pick up their cheese stashes. I'm a cheese dealer with a major hook-up.

The Cute and the Fuzzy

I've realized that a lot of my posts recently have focused on not the most adorable subjects. Ants, spiders, more ants, tailless geckos, dead kittens, etc. So now here's a treat:

Chicks!


Bunny!


For more barnyard fun, click here.

The microwave doesn't kill ants

Someone at HowStuffWorks.com was reading my mind when they posted this question and answer. To paraphrase: How come the microwave didn't kill the ant on my plate?

Ants in the kitchen are a big problem here and it's impossible to avoid them. They are harmless, except for the fact that they're walking all over your food if it's left on the counter unattended for two minutes. I'm always able to clean any ants off before consumption. But it's true that if you're hoping to kill ants on your food by zapping them, it won't work. Here's why:

Small black ants are only about 2 millimeters long, and they also have a certain amount of intelligence along with built-in temperature sensors. Their intelligence and their small size gives them the ability to survive in a microwave oven.

You may have noticed that your microwave oven does not heat evenly. This is especially true if there is no spinning carousel in the oven (or if you turn the carousel off). The microwave energy in the oven has hot spots and cold spots.

So the ant is walking around, and its intelligence allows it to sense the hot spots and avoid them. Its small size means that if it makes a small mistake, heat dissipates very quickly. That gives her a little extra time to explore for a cooler spot. And the sandwich also created some “shadows” – areas where it absorbed a lot of the microwave energy – giving the ant even more protection.

If you were to constrain the ant so it could not move around, the probability of death is much higher.

Who knew they were so clever and sensitive?

Eventually you learn to live with the ants. You have no other option. You get to the point where as long as they're not biting you and they're sticking to the kitchen where the food is, as opposed to crawling on you while you sleep, you may as well live with them in harmony. There's not enough RAID on Earth to kill all the kitchen ants in Burundi. (Rest assured, a huge amount of our food lives in the refrigerator, which the ants cannot penetrate.)

New posts at What I Eat and Confessions of a Book Addict this week.

I'm glad they didn't get stuck in my hair

We took a little trip into the country over the weekend, to Mutoyi. There are lots of wonderful things to say about Mutoyi, but I'm going to start with something spooky -- giant spiders. We were touring the grounds of a hospital. The children and the nurses and all that stuff was great but we became captivated by giant yellow and black spiders spinning webs in the bushes just over the terrace wall.

I think they are golden orb weavers. There were at least twenty of them, and this one was the king. His body had to be about as long as my thumb. If they are golden orb weavers, then we are lucky they didn't decide to get stuck in our hair as we were leaning over the railing trying to snap photos. Their venom is similar to that of a black widow, but less potent. They are usually not fatal to humans but can cause some nasty swelling and pain around the bite site.

We were in a group, and some people couldn't understand my and Mike's fascination with the spiders. Je les deteste, "I hate them," we heard from more than one person. I tried explaining in my broken French that I like all animals, but I do prefer spiders when they're outside and I'm inside. I think my reaction to the chicks, bunnies, and cow later in the trip proved that I'm an animal equalist. But I've seen chicks, bunnies, and cows before. I'd never seen a spider like this.

Written with information from wikipedia.org.