Headphones follow up

Or headphone follow up, since the left one went into hibernation a little early. Almost ready with a massive blog attack...will send tomorrow...work updates, some pictures, life from a three room house (four if you count my outdoor kitchen, five if you count my outdoor powder room - don't get them mixed up if you come visit) situated in between the villages of Kampti and Bouti and surrounded by fields of sweet potatoes, peanuts, and beans that feed off the barrage from Poniro, a village 6 km up the hill with a man-made lake that drains into the small but existent Kampti basin where the maize stalks are drying up and gold and almost romanesque-looking now that they've been harvested. In the Africa that I know the fields are the only places you see straight lines. There is no logic to the cities. Unless you are on the coast there are no natural barriers to account for, and even then the constraint is limited. There are no neighborhoods or suburbs with streets based on land subdivisions and dirt distributions. New cars are few, houses have leans to them, even the spoons are bent and wimpled like old New World silver.....ah I'm getting away from myself. I was writing to say that since only the right headphone works, when I'm listening to Hendrix now I'm only getting one feed and Long Hot Summer Night is completely a cappella. It would be good with a stand-up piano. Oh and I'm back in Ouaga because I've been sick for the last ten days but today I feel like a hundred bucks and I'm going to a restaurant with singing nuns tomorrow night and a crafts festival this weekend. The restaurant is called L'Eau Vive which means the living water or, my preferred translation, The Water Lives. Hi, The Water Lives? Yes this is The Water Lives. I'd like to make a reservation for two at The Water Lives. Will the singing nuns be there? Yes here at The Water Lives the singing nuns are here every night. Perfect, Clay, C L A Y LaPointe, table for two, The Water Lives. Yes sir. Thanks, see you tomorrow. Very well, thank you. Click.

October 4th, Gaoua

Biked in to the post office today. While in Ouaga I couldn't get any photos up from Paris, and when I stopped on the side of the road to take a picture this morning of the countryside my battery died. I think this could mean that a career in photography, even developing them in HEB, isn't in my future. Talked with Dad on the phone last night until my phone died, and come to think of it the left headphone for my iPod fell apart and I now only have the right one; not that it matters since the iPod's battery died this morning as well. What is the word, Luddite? I think that might be someone that dislikes technology. If so it doesn't work for me: I love technology, it just doesn't love me. My dad will probably put pictures up on the TV while I'm home at Christmas, so just come over then and watch. As far as things back here in village? Last night was nice and quiet, interrupted only by the hesitant knocking of rain on the tin roof. Thank God I dropped and broke my radio a while ago or I would have missed it.

All my best, Clay