Click here to see the chicken run away from the hungry crocodiles.










Click here to see me feed the chicken to one of the crocodiles.

I hope this isn't too hard to believe - there's a place about an hour away from Ouaga where you can get your picture taken sitting on a crocodile. Yep, This Is Africa. Obviously, when I was given the opportunity today, I couldn't pass it up.

So this afternoon, Robyn (a SIM missionary who is translating the New Testament into Fulfulde), Ben Steel (my roommate), Dave and I went to Bazoule, a village about an hour away from Ouaga, to get our pics taken with the crocs. The way it works is like this - you have to buy chickens to lure the crocs out of the water (you can see Dave holding the two chickens by their feet)... after that, you sit on it, take your picture, and then you feed the croc the chicken as its "reward". We ended up buying two chickens for 2000 CFA (~$4) and admission was 1000 CFA (~$2) each.










To lure the crocs out of the water, the guide would either throw the chicken on the ground and then quickly snatch them up when they came closer, or he would put the chicken on a stick and dangle it in front of the crocs. As you can see in the panoramic picture, it worked! We had about 10 crocs about 5 metres in front of us within 15-20 minutes! Click to enlarge the pics.









Alright, so here's the crowning moment....................................










I'll post some really amazing videos of our trip very soon.

Recently, work has really started to pick up... which is good because I really want to be able to contribute something to the work that is being done here. I'm in the office from 7:30-12:30 and 3-5:30 working on reporting for projects to the international SIM office in the US.

Every Tuesday and Thursday nights from 6:30-8pm, I teach an advanced ESL class. At first, I was hesitant to do it because I really don't consider myself to be a good teacher (at anything, even basketball!) - I just know that I don't have that gift. But I decided to do it because I wanted to make the most of my time here in Burkina, and plus, I figured that this would be a great way to build relationships with people outside of the missionary community. During my first couple of classes, I used to get pretty nervous because I didn't know if the material I was teaching was really any good. But now, I really look forward to "English for Everyone"... not so much the teaching English part, but to the discussions that we have in class about our families, current events in the country and around the world, the Bible... At the end of every class, we do a 20 min Bible study. That's probably my favourite part of the class because everyone really gets into the discussion - they ask tons of questions and everyone is very comfortable sharing their thoughts (for the last couple of classes, we've gone overtime 20 mins!). I think that this is definitely one of the most meaningful things that I'm doing here.

Here's a picture of my class. From left to right - Edouard, Sambare, Roxane, Dieudonner and Lassan. Two other students, Alvine and Tiemoko, are missing. The classroom isn't actually that small, we just had to bunch together for the picture.

I got some more pictures of my trip in early September to Djibo. The first two pictures are from the ride up to Djibo. The rainy season was just ending, but the roads were still flooded in a few places. Luckily, we were in a truck so we didn't have any problems.

We stopped by this village on our way up. I think I finally figured out why the ponds up there were like this. The main detergent that people use for cleaning clothes is called Omo, and it contains lots of phosphates... perfect for algal blooms. and yes, that is a sandal stuck to the top of the pond.

These pictures were taken from another village close to Djibo. Something I remember vividly was that when we first got there, the people from the village were very nice and hospitable. They put out mats for us under the shade and gave us water to drink....except the water was very murky. Galen just told us to press our lips very hard on the cups and pretend to take a few gulps. I heard it was called the Friendship Drink, also known to my director as instant diarrhea :P We sat there for about half an hour to an hour, and it seemed like the whole village just stopped what they were doing and just stared at us the whole time. I'm not really sure, it might have been their way of being polite... or maybe they just wanted to stare at the white people :)

Last picture. A lady invited us into her hut to sit and talk. After 30-45 min, it started to get really hot in there... so hot that sweat was dripping off my chin and forearms. A few of us had to leave, and I went to go sit in the truck. Soon, a couple kids came up and started to point and laugh at something in the distance. For the longest time, I couldn't figure out what they were so amused at. Finally, I figured out that they were just laughing at their reflections in the side mirror of the truck. That was a big reminder of how little these people have, as well as how much we take for granted at home.

Here are some pictures of my neighbourhood. As you already know, Burkina Faso is a really poor country. All of residential roads and "side streets" are dirt roads, with the exception of a few newly-built paved main roads (imagine these as the equivalent of a highway in Canada). The neighbourhood I live in is pretty rustic. Most houses look like the few that you can see in the pictures - small brick buildings surrounded by a low fences... some have electricity, some don't. So it goes without saying, my house stands out a lot... and everyone in my neighbourhood knows where the chinese guy lives.

For a long time I felt like my house stuck out like a sore thumb, until I visited a district called Ouaga 2000. It's basically a suburb of Ouagadougou that is being heavily developed for residential purposes... But the houses are gigantic mansions - they're bigger than any house I've ever seen, two to three times bigger than any house on The Bridle Path at Bayview+Lawrence. It's CRAZY. I'll have to take pictures next time, because I just can't describe it in words. And it's not just 5 or 10 houses, it's an entire district full of these houses. The oddest part is that you come out of a very poor area of the city, and then all of a sudden you're hit with all of these mansions. So from what I've come to understand, the rich here are very rich. And if you're wondering whether they care about the rest of the country, well I haven't found that answer yet. I know that many rich people in the country are muslims, and they donate a lot for the development of the country... so maybe. I'm going to keep looking into this.


A view from outside my gate. The building on the left with the roof is like a convenience store that sells very random but useful things (there are many of these types of stores around the city).
















This is the street I live on.















This is my house from the outside.