Apparently garlic purifies your blood

So the neighbors that I hang out with all the time, the Mevi's, his family is spread out all over the place, a fact that never ceases to intrigue me. This weekend his brother came to visit. I can't say whether he's older or younger, I never got a straight answer, but he's spent the last 15 years playing soccer in Belgium, just got back from a three month vacation to America where he visited NYC, Chicago, Twin Cities, Atlanta and LA and then came to Burkina for the first time in 6 years to visit his brother and sister here.

Well, I may or may not spy on them out of my back window, and when I say spy I mean peak out to see if anyone is home, because it would be horrible to walk all the way over there only to find they aren't home. And when I say may or may not I mean may. Anyways, Saturday I peaked back there to see if they were up and I saw the most cut, muscular rasta man playing with the kids and naturally, I made my way over there to see what in the world was going on. I almost never see rasta's here, because for some reason people don't like/respect them. (I'll clarify rasta man, it means any man with dreadlocks, or an artist or musician or someone who makes his living in a similarly unconventional fashion). I go over and find out he's the brother and he immediately says oh are you Canadian? Nope, American. Really? Pure?  Yup pure, 100 percent American.

So we're chatting and I start to get very intrigued because a lot of things don't make sense to me, and I feel this way aobut most Burkinabe who have left Burkina to live/work somewhere else. I cannot for the life of me figure out how they do it, and I don't know these people well enough to really delve into the dirty details about how they live, plus they'd just think that's weird.Anyways, he's been playing in Belgium for 15 years, he married a white woman, they have two kids and are now divorced, spent three months in American and now will spend a month and a half in this region and then he's retiring from professional soccer. So in my head, he must be pretty well off. Those are expensive things he's done, he dresses pretty well, not as well as could be expected but definately middle class. And then I found out his cell phone is probably 20 years old, the basic telephone calls only variety, and that he's never used a computer before. It's that last part that really threw me for a loop. How can you have lived in Belgium for 15 years and have never used a computer before? I do not understand that at all, and brings up a lot of questions aobut how he was living. And then I asked him what he was planning on doing since he's going to retire and he just sort of shrugs his shoulders and says he doesn't know.  Once again, so confused. How can you not know what you are going to do for work? I don't think you are rich enough to not do anything, but he doesn't seem very concerned by it, in fact he was like yeah you know that's why I"m really friendly with people becuase you never know when someone could help you out or hook you up, like you- you could teach me computers... (I always love that. Thank you for opening my eyes to the fact that our entire relationship is in fact just you, using me for something)

Man, it was a very interesting weekend chatting with this guy. It's funny talking with people who have left because you can still clearly see certain parts of the culture still ingrained in them, like the way they talk to children, or about women/relationships (surprisingly) and health/herbal remedies. He's in Ghana this week but will be stopping through here again on his way back so hopefully some more interesting things will be found out or maybe I'll just be puzzled further.

Great news is that I found out an amazing piece of information about my neighbor that I almost couldn't handle when I found out. We were playing with the kids and here no one farts- ever, but little kids will sometimes eek them out and then laugh about it (yup that's the same everywhere). And he starts to tell me that when M. Mevi was younger he used to fart into his hand and then throw it in your face!  Writing that I laughed so hard I started crying a little bit. M. Mevi, 45 years old, father of two, teacher of physics and chemistry as a child would fart into his hand then throw the stinky, farty-air into your face. Love it. Boys will be boys anywhere.