Pigeon & Cock

Ok, I wrote a long post out on my netbook and forgot to save it to my external when I traveled.  Oops.

Everything is so great. Work has began. The holidays were fun. I'm learning a lot. I love my family here.

A little story:
One Sunday morning I went to the Evangelical church where my Papa is the pastor.  After the 3-4 hour mass in the local language I don't speak with minimal translations into a local language I barely understand and some French, we went back to our compound to drink some tchuck (a type of beer my family makes) that took Mama 5 days to make gallons of it.  This old lady who doesn't understand that I don't understand her language is going on and on.  As she's about to leave with some tchuck in a container, I offer to carry it for her since she can barely walk down the crappy road.  I'm walking and my 11 year-old sister, Abla, accompanies me.  This man starts to follow me.  He takes the container and carries it and starts asking for marriage and money and all the typical stuff.  Then he starts whipping juju beads (what? Buddhism in West Africa?) around and screaming like he's possessed.  I sit at the old lady's house with her family and do all my formal introductions and say "hello, how are you? and your family? and your work? etc..." to about 10 people, I get up to leave because this guy is still sitting there and giving me the creeps.

I'm trying to get Abla to tell me if she knows him on 5 minute walk back at a fast speed without the old lady and she starts to run. So I run. So he runs. He's officially chasing us.  We're on my porch and he's screaming and rolling around outside my house in a language I've never heard before. I look to see where Papa is and why he or one of my older brothers isn't coming to my aid.  Turns out Papa has his own issue with a cock. And Koffi and Degnibo (my 21 year-old brothers) are tending to some pigeons.

A community leader found a cock on his property and decided it was his even though Papa cut off it's baby toe and claimed it.  They're both screaming "cock" over and over again and Papa says he is a holy man and refuses to fight, so he can take it but god will punish him.  At the same time, the brothers are killing and boiling the 2 pigeons that I was given to eat for dinner as a New Years present from the president of a development association in my village.

Bon appetit. Right?

(it was actually delicious)