Well Hell's Bells. What you trying to sell?

They say brown liquor make you sleep all right. Cocaine make you grind your teeth all night.

I easily forgive grammatical errors in songs if I very much adore the song. And Hell's Bells by Cary Ann Hearst is adored. Seeing as how I don't have a taste for brown liquor or cocaine, I can't relate to their purported effects on the body. But I can deduce that brown liquor, being a depressant, would make a person sleep like a baby. I have no such insights to draw on the effects of cocaine on teeth grinding. Interesting Ms. Hearst, very interesting.

Apparently I used to grind my teeth when I was younger, though it wasn't brought on by cocaine usage. Just a phase perhaps. I know I used to grind my teeth because Remus and I shared a room until I was 16, and she was quite annoyed with my sleeping habits. I breathed too loud, I grinded my teeth, I ignored Remus when she yelled at me to get up. Silly Remus. Anywho, I used to grind my teeth but now I do not. That is all.

This past week we celebrated Tabaski. We celebrate Abraham's offering of his son Isaac (if I were Isaac I'd be a bit peeved at having daddy making a sacrifice out of me) by making our own offering of sheep. I don't much like euphemisms. Sheep were slaughtered left and right, they were cooked, and then subsequently eaten by me. It was delicious. Being a sheep on Tabaski is kind of like being a turkey on Thanksgiving. After the feasting I returned to my house. As I dismounted my bike I heard a quiet shuffling noise behind me. I turned. There were two sheep hiding out in my chicken coop. They escaped. I told them they could hang out with me for the rest of the day, but they baaahed at me and ran out of my courtyard.

I often have sheep with my rice in peanut sauce. Sometimes I just have the rice and peanut sauce if the sheep are lucky. I eat at a buvette in town owned by a woman named Elise. I like Elise a lot--she makes me chuckle and she lets me leave my bike with her when I go to Gaoua or Diebougou (I have to bike 2 km into town from my house to catch the bus). Elise has a little two-year-old girl named Leti who is only now starting to like me. She was always so wary of me before, but now when she sees me she giggles and smiles. When she sees my sitemate Tyler she is stony-faced and she starts to cry if Tyler comes anywhere near her. Elise tells me it's Tyler's hair that scares her, which is funny considering Tyler is darker in color and I'm the huge white girl. I'd bet that my pale skin and mousy brown hair would be more foreign to Leti than Tyler's full head of black hair, but that's not the case. Curious.

Some parents tell their kids that us whities are going to eat them. Cruel, you think? More amusing than anything else. For example, when eggs are in season (they aren't right now) I eat omelets at this table owned by a nice man with twin boys. The boys used to be deathly afraid of me because they thought that I'd eat them. But it's been over a year and I still haven't made my move, so now they approach me and touch me all the time. And they talk. Oh the talking. And the drool and the spittle and then they touch me. I think I prefer the days when they feared me.

The twins' mother is actually a student of mine. She's in my English class and like most female students, she rarely speaks up in class. It's a little strange having her as a student because the previous year I've been calling her "Madam" and she's made me food and I've thought of her as my elder even though she may be about my age or younger. It's probably the whole Mom-thing and running a business-thing. She seemed older somehow. But now she's my student and I've taken on the elder role. It's just a little awkward I guess, but I'm slowly getting over it. I just hope that she never does anything for which I'll have to reprimand her--my favorite form of punishment is having students sit on the floor--and I don't want to have to do that to my elder. But I will if she forces me.

Anywho, it's Ibe's birthday and I'm in Gaoua to celebrate with him. I made him a card, treated him to a lunch of petit pois and coke (a-cola that is) and bought him some American movies dubbed in French. I'm hoping he likes Star Wars with the koalas.

For tomorrow: Happy Birthday, Silly Matt! And Jillian too!