stormy weather

Yesterday we took the Prado (SOLD btw YAY) to the garage for a service, and in the afternoon went back to collect it

As you can see - the sky went ominous, and we could see that a dust storm was approaching - the question was - how fast?

the streets are emptying

Lon in the embassy car in front of me

It was quite impressive - I managed to just get home as the world was turning orange - it felt like the opening to the Wizard of Oz, Lon was driving back to the embassy, and had to put on his headlights as visibility got so bad.  When I got home, I asked Habibou if it would rain as well - she said no...just sand.  Ten minutes later it was bucketing down..

Unrelated - but seen on the way to pick up the car

yes we do transport panes of glass with our bare hands on the back of motorbikes

what do you mean Health and Safety??

The moving has started

---again, it feels like only yesterday we were packing out of Rwanda

we have a date set for 9th July when the fine gentlemen of Transdem will pack our belongings into boxes

however since our last moving experience is so fresh in our minds we are starting to pack up now, little by little ourselves. Last time, a lot of IKEA furniture didn’t get taken down and so took up more space than needed, and the IKEA furniture that was taken apart, wasn’t done that well.

We found this under a cupboard in the corner of the bedroom! Not the kind of roommate anyone wants

Our Congolese console table and some of our stools are getting shipped back to NL with one of Lon's colleagues, to go into storage - we have much more that we we'd like to store out of the humidity in Dhaka but we are happy to have at least this safely away.

Centre Delwende

Back at the end of May we took a lot of old clothes and shoes to a project that we had heard of, but not yet visited. In Ouaga expat slang they are known as the sorceresses, but the reality is much sadder.

Elder women are cast out of their villages penniless accused of witchcraft.

Out of respect we chose not to take photos as we were just dropping off a donation, but some more details and pictures can be found here and more information

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/may/14/burkina-faso-women-accused-witchcraft


http://crs-blog.org/delwende-in-burkina-faso/

I bought some of their hand carded and spun cotton yarn to knit with – wonderful, but tricky wind into smaller balls.

The orginal spun ball was like this…

 

And ended up like these – plus the big knotty mess on a stick!