Innundation

Well, what a near miss!  Apparently, although the Berghaus rucksack is waterproof, the zip cannot withstand Burkina downpours – not surprising;  very little can.  I set off in a slight drizzle following a huge downpour, only to have the downpour start  again …. Before long I was peering through very wet specs at a road awash;  I forded two rivers to get from the bus station to my house and opened the rucksack to find my laptop and camera swimming in water ….. arghhh!

And two days later, after bags of rice and separating out batteries – phew – all is well.  Huzzah for good advice from Sybilla and the lucky fact that neither piece of kit was plugged in when the soaking took place.  Not a coffee spill at the desk.  It made me realise how very, very dependent I am on my laptop for just about everything – I couldn’t work, communicate by email, sort and store photographs or listen to The Archers.

It is very, very wet.  The topsoil in my courtyard is slowly seeping under the gate and into the road outside.  The road outside is pitted with extraordinary, deep potholes.  Where is everything washing away to, I wonder?  Burkina seems to be tilted slightly eastwards – most of the reservoirs are on the west side of the roads, with overspill rivers now in full spate on the east side –fast flows which have exciting-looking rocky rapids.  Two months ago there were not even puddles where these broad and deep rivers are now coursing. 

What’s new?  Busy times at work - 20 new village meetings and 10 theatre performances programmed, training for our village facilitators delivered by the team,  our new project director from Ouagadougou has visited and praised us all for the amount we have achieved .... the next step is likely to be a challenge!  and my cinnamon apple tree is producing ripe fruit.  A cinnamon apple looks like a fir cone, tastes like a pear and is full of seeds like a watermelon.  Weird!