I think “cold season” is ending prematurely. I haven’t been sleeping with my blanket for over a week. I was mentally preparing for March to be the start of hot season so this is not exactly good news.

Last Saturday I rode my bike to another village for a meeting. Rose and I got there successfully. But, on the way home we had a combined total of 3 flat tires!?! So it took forever to make it back. Reassuringly, we learned that basically every person en route knows more about bikes than we do and received lots of much appreciated help.

Yesterday, I went on another mountain/hike adventure extravaganza. I set off at about 7am with my neighbor and another friend who I think is a policeofficer. We had to ride about an hour to get to the base of the mountain. This time we had definitely left my village and were in another one. Once we got there we found Tikirai’s friends, a father and son who goes to my lycee,, and they agreed to guide us up the mountain. So we set off as a group of 5. The initial part was pretty steep and we weren’t exactly following a path. Our guide had a giant walking stick and a metal tool that looked like Captain Hook’s hook and he was just tearing up whatever was in our path. But my legs are still pretty scraped up from the pricker bushes. When we got to the top we visited this small village there. I couldn’t really talk to anyone there because they weren’t speaking French or even Fulfulde but another local language. But everyone was so nice and welcoming and shaking my hands. Two boys were walking around with radios and getting way better reception than I get at my house, I guess because they’re so high up.

Then about 5 children joined us to climb the final part which was just this huge stack of boulders, making the highest peak in the area. The all took off their shoes and scampered right up the bear rock. I was like nope, I’m going to stay right here. But then they found this crevice and climbed into this opening within the boulders that they somehow coaxed me into. It was pretty narrow and then it ended and the only way to go was up. So I lifted my arms up and they pulled me straight up about 6 or 7 feet. Then all of a sudden we were at the top, and I realized how far up we were. It was an amazing view. Everyone thought it was pretty hysterical that I couldn’t even point to where our village was but once they showed me you could pick out the mountain/hill that’s in the middle of it. You also had a great perspective of which way the road goes to all the other nearby villages. Getting lowered down the rock opening was definitely worse than going up, and it was good to be back on solid ground again.

We went down a different route that was much less steep and took us by a couple of other isolated houses where we stopped to chat, eat peanuts, and have some cold drinks. They took me inside one of the traditional houses and it was crazy how modern everything in town seems by comparison. This house had these long storage containers for grain/millet etc. Then there were different rooms, each with a mini “kitchen” next to it for each wife.

It was was a pretty hot day and when we finally got down and biked back home it was 5pm, making it a 10 hour excursion… I was a little sunburned and very tired out. Just to make things more exciting, when I got home I discovered that there is some sort of problem with my electricity. It sort of flickers when you slap the box outside my house really hard but then it goes out again. Good thing all I had the energy to do last night was get into bed.