Category: on the road

The colossem. Candy shops. Melon and mint gelato on one cone?! Up and down and up and down and up and down the Spanish Steps. Camille ate ravioi in creme sauce twice and is now craving it on a regular basis.

Peter’s conference keeps him busy while we spend half a day at the first toy store we’ve seen in seven months. We wandered the Villa Borghese with another family that Peter met last spring at orientation, they have been so gracious to tolerate us, especially Stefan the wild child. It’s like we came here with friends.

We were looking at the photos outside a restaurant of the famous people that have eaten there, Sophia Lauren, George Cloony, Pope John Paul. The picture of the pope is one in which he is playing boules. Stefan said, “And there is a famous bowler!” I stole Atya’s joke and said, “Yes, but he’s better known for his other work.”

We have also gotten a rough version of the bid list, listing 25 or so cities in the world, one of which we will be calling home in 2008.

“What if lightening came in the hole?” asked Stefan as we all gaped at the circle of blue sky and shaft of light coming into the Pantheon. We can step outside and there is the whole sky, clear and blue; why is that circle of sky and shaft of light so awe-inspiring?

The Romans don’t want to put away the furs, so they are still wearing coats. It’s not that cold, but a little chilly for Stefan to be in flip-flops, the only shoes we brought for him. I wanted to get him some 1930’s looking high-top t-straps, but he would not go for it. So his new shoes are more modern, they have a wing-tip design I like, and he says you can run as fast as Spiderman in them. So we are all happy.

Now it’s teatime. We are back in the room, trying out the new chalkboard and markers and tiny parking lot for toy cars, waiting for Peter to get home and tell us about his day over pizza.

The nurse who works in Ouaga also owns a fabulous hotel. We just got back from dinner there. She is married to a Burkinabé, that’s what they call people from Burkina, I just love that: Bukinabé. Paulina’s husband’s family is from Belgium. He’s lived here all his life, his parents, now passed, ran this hotel, where grew up, Hotel Richard. Paulina herself is from Chile: Chileanebé! She is a nurse at the embassy by day then comes home to nine dogs and this big old hotel inherited from her in-laws. The place is dreamy, a huge swimming pool, plus lion, ten kinds of antelope, red buffalo, and a wildlife park-full of other animal trophies hanging on the walls, african art everywhere, white table cloths and uniformed waiters serving you dinner, with two kinds of wine and a cheese course, then killing you with strawberry mousse or creme caramel for dessert.

We really want to see elephants while living in west Africa, and many people drive for hours to the wildlife parks, camp for days and never see them, elepant hide nor elephant hair. I thought: here is the guy to ask! Here is the guy who will save me from a safari where we only see guinea fowl, which I saw from the road on the way from Niger. “Oh, yes,” he says, “the best time see elephants is now, fevrier, mars. I saw more than 100 when I was out today at Parc Something Somthing.” My jaw: still on the floor.

Then, somehow, Richard started talking to me about the Cathars and the history of the holy grail and Mary Magdelene, and this conversation was waaaaaaaay beyond my DaVinci Code level of expertise and/or my level of French. I had to make him say the word “parchment,” which should have been a give-away, three times.

Oy, it was a good time. That co-worker of Peter’s, she knows how to throw a party. And now you know the good time of year to see the elephants in west Africa.

Our trip to Ouaga conincides with the 20th biannual Festival of Pan African Cinema of Ouagadougou– the West African version of Cannes. I’ve never seen so many Europeans in my life, the place is full of them. And Americans! Walking down the streets of Ouaga!

This morning, sitting at the table next to us, while Camille slurped her mango, was an obvious french-style african-hollywood director: the shoes, the watch, everyone wanting to shake his hand, a skinny french woman at his table dripping with Jean Paul Gaultier.

Of course the front desk of the hotel doesn’t have a schedule or a poster or anything, even though the hotel is packed with the aforementioned Europeans, Americans and director-types. We asked where we could find information and they pointed us to the streets of Ouaga in the most general way. We walked in the hot sun, kids complaining every step, motos wizzing by, deep open holes in the sidewalk, not finding anything except an african guy with a FESPACO badge looking for the same office we are. After talking to a couple of guys in front of the building where the office is not, (we had been directed to the same building) he confidently takes off down the street. We follow him for a few sweaty blocks. Some people are following us, and this is annoying me. I turn around to get a good look at them, and they look like us, except they have FESPACO badges. “Anglais ou Français?” I ask, and she is American, with a Dutch boyfriend, and a map and knows where the FESPACO press office is–it’s the opposite direction from where are heading.

The press office is literally around the corner from our hotel. Being a film-maker myself, I feel I have every right to go in press office and am graciously handed a schedule and discriptions of all the movies, post cards and flyers.

We would love to be spending all day watching movies, but we have kids and therefore, a babysitting issue, so I read all discriptions of the movies and and try to find one I think kids could watch.

The beauty and the difficulty with the movies shown is that they are about Africa. I sort of forgot this crucial aspect of the festival. Therefore, the movie discriptions start like this: “a young former Sierra Leonean fighter stuggles to find his bearings between his rehabilation center and a national reconciliation tribunal…” or “After a jail sentence, a young man with a cruel past and an uncertain future is realeased…” Hmm, not so much good for kids. “Marion, a young prostitute from the outskirts of the city decides to move downtown…” Uh, no. “Mustapha has spent the past five years of his life in prison for drug trafficking…” “Making Off is set around a shooting scene and tells the tragedy of the three characters involved…” “Marjolie sleeps with a dignitary of the Presidency of the Republic, he dies in the course of the action…”

I finally found a short film I thought kids could handle, about a boy whose family lives at the garbage dump in Burundi. It was fun to go the theater, camera crews outside, everyone wearing a FESPACO badge. The directrice of the film came out and spoke to an audience that might as well have been the United Nations, followed by much applause.The theater was nicely air conditioned, but they had light trouble, are they on? Are they off? The film began. Camille immediatly hid her face in her lap and kept it there the whole time–she says she just didn’t want to watch the movie– and Stefan promptly fell asleep.

Peter and I liked it though.

Tonight we will go see another short film, this one about a guy who has collected bottles on the beach in Tunisia for 30 years. At FESPACO, the only kid-appropriate films are about, as Pippi Longstocking calls them, Thingfinders.

Avocado and shrimp salad by the pool, under a mango tree, trying to figure out the West African Film Festival movie guide.

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.