Wa-ga-doo-goo

If you had the opourtunity to create the nickname for Ouagadougou, wouldn’t you shorten it to Doo-goo rather than Wa-ga? I know I would.

The six hour drive from Niamey to, okay, okay, Ouaga, as they insist on calling it, looked surprisingly like the drive from Paradise to Chico, California. The red dirt, the mix of shrubs and trees, the boys splashing in watering holes and the villiages of huts. We’ll maybe not exactly like, but they do have the same red dirt and I keep expecting to see, well, nothing, there isn’t anything between Paradise and Chico, which is another reason I kept feeling like we were on way to Costco.

Peter spent today at the medical clinic, dressed nicely in coat and tie to meet the ambassador. He went to some meetings and saw patients. CaSt and I went to a grocery store and bought the best pumpkin seeds ever, and I paid a guy $2 to show me where another fabric store was because I wan’t happy with the selection at the first one. I bought some fabulous fabric, then we met Peter at work for lunch. The overall look of the embassy is so cheerful, fresh curtains, lots of light and trees growing bananas in the courtyard.

Then we went for a swim at the lovely hotel owned by the Embassy nurse and her husband. She has tortoises, turkeys, little african deer, and ducks in a sort of petting zoo. Also seven dogs. Camille was petting one and I said, “That dog looks like the dog that use to live in our house.” “It’s her sister!” said Paulina, the hotel owner-nurse. That was funny and we had a laugh and looked at the sunset some more.