smacky and bucky

Notice the clock in the left margin of my blog? Good.

Last night on Amazing Race, the teams had to go to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (after they figured out where the hell it is!). That's where I lived for over two years! You can read the show recap here. The teams had to get a taxi from the airport and catch the train. I never took the train in Burkina, since the bus was so much cheaper (yep, the folks on the train with them probably had some money, compared to others in the country anyway).

On the train, a couple of blond chicks (Shana and Jennifer) made derogatory comments about the heat, the flies, the smell, how dirty the country is, etc. They really came off as assholes, especially since this was followed by footage of the others teams totally enthralled with everything they saw. And if Shana and Jennifer ever took the train from DC to New York, they'd see that the area around the tracks in Baltimore is as filthy (if not more so) than Africa. It's because no one willingly lives near railroad tracks, so that area is a dumping ground.

It was great seeing the teams go into a school and either teaching 10 words of English to a student or learning 10 word in Mooré. That's one of the larger local languages in Burkina (there are at least 60 different local languages), spoken by over 5 million people. I still know some of it: N segena (pronounced "en SEG-e-na") means "I'm thirsty." I know a few other phrases I'll teach you sometime if we meet in person (they're a bit "blue").

I was happy to see a lot of girls in the classroom. Many girls in Burkina aren't allowed to go to school because they have to stay home and help the moms. In a lot of these villages, you still have to get water from a well and bring it home in buckets. Imagine that for a second...

I had never watched Amazing Race before, and while I don't plan on watching it for the rest of the season, I'll catch next weeks, because they're still in Burkina. The good news is the show isn't exploitive. It's several notches above "reality" television, so if you must watch one, it's the one to catch.

In other weekend news, I completely rearranged the furniture in our living/family room at the wife's request, and for about an hour Sunday morning I thought I had torn something in my chest, as lifting my left arm sent shooting pains down my side. Luckily it went away, most likely the result of using muscles I simply never use anymore, what with my desk job. The new layout called for moving the satellite wire to the television, which meant drilling a new hole in the floor and seeing where it came out in the basement. It wasn't nearly as much work as I feared. Oh, and we gave each other an early Christmas gift and bought a new television for the newly configured room.

Oh, and the pic above. I used to ride by that globe every day on my bike.Yes, traffic is insane there! I think you can click on the pic and see a huge version of it. Go ahead and do it. See the big building way back in the back of the pic? It's the presidential palace. I was riding by the front gates once and an ostrich appeared at the bars of the gate on the inside and basically barked at me. Scared the crap out of me, as I just caught a flurry of movement in the corder of my eye as it ran to the gate. Yep, he has a pet ostrich.