Adorable

A really adorable thing: Yesterday I was chatting with my neighbor who is currently engaged with three kids, her fiancee lives and works in another city (totally normal here), so they see each other maybe once a month, maybe. When I asked her why she wasn't married to the man who is the father of her 2 year old and 6 year old, she was like well you have to be sure...If you aren't sure after 7 years I don't know that you ever will be, but moving on. She was talking to me about how she saves her money and buys things and then sets them aside until later (people talk about that like it's the most novel idea ever. Yeah, I'm not spending a lot of money right now and these things are cheaper now, so I buy them and then I put them aside so that during the vacation I have all this food saved and I don't have to spend a lot of money!) not only does she set aside food but she sets aside her nice, fancy clothes and perfume and things so that when her man comes around she can look good. Now normally, that idea would sicken me a little bit- getting dressed up for a man but not for yourself, but the way she described it was really adorable and made me wish I had a man to dress up for. awwwww

Speaking of men to dress up for. I had an incredibly frustrating evening dealing with faux types and finding another man here who is the worst (he was telling me about how hard it is managing the 8 different girl friends he has in 8 different cities. Oh I'm sorry I have absolutely no sympathy for you and no I won't find you a correspondent in America who you want to marry soley as a ticket to America. Oh what's that? No I don't have money to give you. Sure you do. No, actually I don't, I reall am poor. No you aren't, you can totally buy me a plane ticket to America. Believe me buddy if I had 2 thousand dollars lying around I wouldn't give it to you), and had basically lost all hope and respect for mankind here in Burkina when my neighbor called me and told me to come over. Naturally I hurried over because that meant food was being cooked, probably some sort of meat. Dog in fact! My neighbor's husband was out of town dealing with the funeral of his uncle and so his friend/collegue at the school had invited his wife over to eat some dog and also so she woudn't spend the evening alone. When I got there he told me that's just how it's done here, what would he tell his friend when he got home? He would ask what he had done for his wife, he wanted to know she'd be taken care of. So he sprung big and buying cokes and cooking up some dog meat. My heart melted a little bit, so nice and decent, didn't want his friends wife to be all alone missing her husband.

Let's not ruin that by reading into it too much.

Random side note: On the way back from watching a soccer practice i saw two ten year olds- a boy and a girl beating the shit out of each other. Like a full on bar fight- running, tackling, wrestling, pummeling. It was terifying! I walked over there and they were pulled a part and i went up to the boy and was like 'hey, you hit girls?' and he said nothing, just looked at the girl with crazy eyes and heaving chest. It was insane! Serious fight, like grown men would have.