Una mas, por favor

If you have a list of things to do in your life before you die get ready to add one more: Go to Barecelona. Tom and I spent a week and we did just about everything we enjoy most; relaxed on the beach looking out over blue waters, rented motos and zipped around the city (including the highway; oops!), rode on a gondola ride to the top of Mt. Juic, went to the movies, took a tram car to Tebidabo (the amusement park on the top of a mountain) and spent many, many hours sleeping in, enjoying the sights and multiple pitchers of sangria inbetween. We also completed the Spanish triatholon in our spare time, there was just no stopping us. But when asked by a newcomer what he should do in the few days he had to see the city, Tom's reply was flawless, "Come with someone you love." We could have met under a bridge in Brooklyn and I would have had an amazing time, it is not where you go, but who you choose to go with that matters the most.

Now, if you have that part figured out, take them to Barcelona. I promise to post pictures the minute I can along with a few very choppy home videos because you just have to see this place to believe it. We walked throughout the entire city in about an hour and our hotel was about a 20 min. walk to the beach. A walk through narrow spanish streets, passed ancient ornate churches, under archways with saints carved into their sides and alongside rows and rows of palm trees. Of course it was very rarely a straight shot as we were constantly distracted by the endless line of tapas bars along the waters edge that advertised generally the same menu everywhere of calamari, spanish sausage, tapas bravas (fried potatoes with a spicy creamy sauce)and of course the staple of sangria. It was really quite amazing how the sangria worked well with every meal, from the lunch time tapas, to the evening tapas to the dinner of paella or seafood. Notice I skipped over breakfast, which we literally did without fail every day as we went to bed around 3am and rolled out of our hotel close to noon. We didn't even try to rebel against the established schedule which would start serving dinner around 10pm and end close to 1am. The euro's value certainly tried to rain on our parade at 1.44 to the dollar. But we prevailed by buying groceries for lunch and a bottle of rum for the hotel.

The language proved slightly difficult as well with the local dialect resembling my archnemesis of 'Quebecoise.' When I went to Montreal I thought it would be the perfect time to practice my french. Only upon arrival did I realize that they could be speaking japanese for all I knew because it was not french, it was 'Quebecoise'. To the local population their dialect of french was the original language since France had become trainted by American and english influence. But to anyone who has studied the language that is recognized by the National Language Asssociation, they were speaking jibberish. So this was the kink that made things interesting for Tom whose spanish was immpecable, but Catalan, was apparently not up to par. We asked our waitress on day one for a new glass as mine had mysteriously become full of orange and lemon peels, her response, 'No, I don't know where that is' and she was off. When we wanted to know what time the amusement park on top of Tibidabo closed we were informed it will open at 5pm. At 4:55 we were suspicious when the bar we were waiting at started to close and people started to board the last tram car down. 5 minutes later the loudspeakers confirmed our doubts as they announced the park was closed... maybe the park attendants should understand spanish, just a thought. But we worked around it by avoiding people from Barcelona and finding any english speakers we could, we're crafty like that. And of course we understood the only phrase really necessary; one more please. As in, one more pitcher of sangria, or one more beer, however you phrased it, it worked just fine.

Whether it was having dance parties in our room, walking along the boardwalk, sipping sangria and looking out onto the ocean, or having picnics on the beach; all in all it was easily one of the greatest vacations I have ever had. With the weather at a consistent 80 and sunny we had the luck of the irish with us the whole way. I am looking forward though to many more adeventures with the man who chose to bring me, my best friend, my everything, who reminded me that this is not monopoly money. Thank you.

Spring Wishlist has arrived!

Spring Wishlist!

I want to thank everyone for their amazing support and encouragement, honestly words can't describe how much I appreciate your efforts. Sadly I sent out a thank-you card for all my packages and have so far heard that 3 arrived as empty envelopes and 2 were sent back to me without their contents. :( Apparently the local envelopes can not withstand the journey, or some disgruntled postal workers really liked the postcards I had picked out. O well, ca va aller, as they say, life goes on. So, I will be sending out cards from the states as often as possible and using bigger and better envelopes when not. Hopefully you all know how much I appreciate your support, empty envelope or not. Thanks again and take care.

Food
Nuts
Drink packets; Emergen-C, kool-aid, iced tea
Dried fruit: Craisins, mango, apricot, raisins
Beef/Chicken Jerky: Jacklink's Brand
Luna bars
Alfredo and pesto sauce packets
Bumblebee Tuna and Chicken Steaks
Yogurt covered raisins
Candy: chocolate in a sealed bags, bars could leak; skittles, gummyworms
Gum, starbursts

Supplies
Papermate pens: blue, black
AA/AAA batteries: rechargeable and non-rechargable
Magazines: NewYorker magazine, TIME, The Economist, InStyle, Real Simple, Vogue, US Weekly, People
Books: fiction
US stamps
Venus razor heads
Perfume samples (sometimes you just don't want to smell like Africa)
Neutrogena Skin cleansing Face masks
Ankle socks
Scented candles
Conditioner: Aveda, John Frieda, Dove
Pictures! I have plenty of wall space in my house and and need to cover the brown water stains with something so pictures and plastic picture frames would be just superb


Thanks again, I really do appreciate your support whether it's a letter with melted chocolate or a laminated world map I love and welcome it all. I hope you are all well and take care!

The address one more time;
Caitlin Keenan
B.P. 41
Gorom Gorom
Burkina Faso

Love and hugs,
Caitlin

Bring on the 'bon-bons'

So I got back to village on Monday and opened the doors to my house for the first time in almost 2 months. Inside it was like a tomb covered in 3” of dust. Termites had almost completely eaten through the door frame giving the impression to my counterpart that someone had tried to break in, when in reality the door was just hanging off its frame. Rather than annoyed by the intrusion I was actually impressed with the termite’s work, at least they had accomplished something in this village, a destruction to others meant success to them, nonetheless I hosed them down with bug repellent. All this was only possible after I stood on a stool and put all my body weight into lifting a branch that supported my porch, which had sunk below the door frame making it impossible to open. After all that I could still open only one of my two outward swinging front doors. Finally inside I was relieved to find only one cockroach but not so happy to see snake skin and no snake…

Luckily the first people to greet me were two of my best friends in village, Mariam and Harigetou, 12 year olds in the sixth grade, the highest class in village. I have to interject on their behalf that the grading system is not the same here as it is in the US. They start school between the ages of 5 and 7 and the primary school has six grades before continuing at the highschool level. Well they ran to see me shouting enthusiastically while scolding me at the same time for being 28 days late. ‘Roukie! You said you would come back on the 1st, today is what?’ ‘The 28th,’ I said, ‘You are late!’ they said. But they still took any bag they could and helped me bring them inside. Then they both declared, ‘OK- we are going to clean, clean, clean! Until your house is, clean!’ They can be very helpful girls but I suspected this was also a ploy to get a tour of my elusive home. I never let anyone into my house and always entertain on my porch. Even though I live more frugally than I ever have, in comparison to my neighbors I am a millionaire living in the lap of luxury. I try to downplay that as much as possible, but today was an exception.

Mariam and Harigetou both grabbed rags and began beating the dust out of everything in their reach. We brought everything we could carry out onto the porch to be either shaken out or washed later. Then they both soaped up their rags and started skating around the house, leaving trails of bleach water in their wake. They turned my clean time from a full day into a couple of hours, I was elated. While we were cleaning everything and putting it back in its place it was time to play 20 questions with all my things. ‘What’s this?’ Mariam asked holding up a peeler. ‘That’s something you use to take the skin off of vegetables. (God I hope I don’t come across like Buffalo Bill here) ‘ Oh, like a knife!, she says, Yes, a knife. I realized their range of utensils is a fraction of what we are used to so I decided to try and explain things so they would understand. Harigetou holds up suntan lotion with a quizzical expression, ‘Um, that’s oil to protect my skin from the sun.’ ‘Ooooh,’ she says. This goes on for another 30 minutes, a loofa, candles, Koolaid packets, salt ginder, pepper grinder, spatula, and then they found my stuffed animals. I have one little valentine’s day bear from my wonderful cousins Sara and David, and then a stuffed lion that belongs to Tom and I because he paid for the game but technically I won when we went to Six flags, we’ve since decided on dual custody. One of my older neighbors had stopped by and she was walking around assessing my house when she came across Mariam playing with Lion. Mariam informed me with a delighted smile that the older woman was afraid of the stuffed doll, so of course she thought it would be a good idea to pretend to throw it at her until she ran out of my house. Great, so now I’m a voodoo witch too I thought. If this village had a tabloid I would be on the front page every day.

Finally my house was livable again and I took the trash that I had forgotten to burn before I left out to my burn hole, previously known as my compost pile. I went back in to get gas and matches and by the time I had returned Mariam, Harigetou and several local children and turned the bag upside down emptying its contents onto my front lawn. Then they made a mad dash for things that looked of value and subsequently fought over items they both wanted. So two of the most educated girls in village were now rummaging through my trash, wonderful. I wanted to tell them to stop but didn’t really know where to begin until Harigetou looked up at me and said, ‘You sure eat a lot of ‘bon bon’s don’t you?’ My justification was weakened seeing all the plastic wrappers strewn about our feet. ‘OK, that’s enough,’ I had found my voice and while my first reaction was to defend my eating habits because that bag had been the collection of three month’s worth of plastic garbage, I just told them to put it all back and put it in the hole to burn. They obliged and we properly destroyed the evidence that indeed, I eat a lot of bon bon’s.

Later that day I took a tour of village, walking through the market and on to the health center greeting as I went. Bon arrivee Roukie! Bienvenue Roukie! I heard everywhere I went. It was truly a “Cheers” experience. I ran into the director of the school, one of my favorite people in village for having a great sense of logic and understanding the importance of health education. He gives me a big hand shake and the cultural four kisses on the cheek, apparently we’re one kiss better than the french now. Then he looks me up and down and still smiling says, “You got bigger!” I just laughed. “Yes” I said, subconsciously trying to stand a little taller, “I got bigger.” “The food over there is really good huh?” “Oh my, yes, it is.” Was all I could muster while trying not to crack up, who says that! Well, aparently every third person I saw that day. From the butcher, to the COGES president (Ah, you are fat now, this is very good), to the neighborhood kids, to my counterpart. He even went so far as to comment on how happy Tom must have been now that I’m fatter and “pretty”. Oh the joys of a healthy self-esteem, I just laughed along and agreed that the food over there is indeed very good. I honestly would not have had one less piece of sushi, or one less candy bar, or one less margarita for all the world. In Burkina there is no media to create an ideal image of beauty, there is only the difference between healthy and sick. Those who do not have enough to eat or have fallen ill will look eerily similar to those walking down the runway in New York and Paris. Those who have higher educations and can afford three meals a day wear their weight proudly and are respected for it. They have the luxury of free time and do not perform hard labor to survive, they can afford to have more than 5% body fat. While I feel perfectly healthy I also like to be in shape and be able to pull my own weight both figuratively and literally such as when I have to carry all my luggage weighing over 125 lbs. from the road to my house. It’s a 15min. walk and not an easy task in 100 degree weather but I feel good knowing I can take care of myself no matter the what the situation calls for... ice cream eating contest? Not a problem!

thanks for your extra long attention spans to all of you who made it this far without falling asleep. Take care until next time and thanks again for the packages they are amazingly delicious!

Yours truly,
Roukie