It was quite the weekend. After 5 weeks of vacation, then 2 weeks of my cousin Virginia visiting, life gave me a shove back into reality. I got a very well rounded set of experiences in just 4 days.  

 

Backing up, Thursday, Jan 26 was my father's last day at work at a company he has worked for some 40 years, going from the bottom to the top, stopping at every job in the middle, taking it to be one of the largest general contracting firms in Canada and a public entity. Quite an accomplishment. And quite a marker in my mind as to how far life has gone. I remember my dad at 40 telling me he would never retire. Never say never I suppose.

 

On Friday, Benny turned 10, another significant marker in time for a child. More teenager than child, my little boy is quite independent and in many ways his own person. Still the cherub faced, good natured kid he was even as a baby, I am starting to see some of the characteristics that will settle and stay. He is in too many ways, my child. But I realize again, I am running out of time to have much influence on his character, and that someday my baby will fly the nest.

 

Friday night we stayed at Koubri, for the first time in many, many months, as we haven't had much time to be with Carol at all. I haven't slept at Koubri since last May I think, and not in the cold since 2 winter's ago, before the car accident. Carol is off again in a few weeks and I realize what little time we have, as after that we likely just be crossing paths for the rest of the year again.

 

Saturday, we went to a wedding, Myriam's sister. Of course, everyone wanted to know when Loren and I are getting married. Many comments were made about us being next. I know I am sort of the hold up, not Loren as he has asked me. I just haven't answered altho that is as much due to his behaviour as my aversion to commitment. Anyway, this wedding was extra special as she was marrying a Captain of the military. She was put through the works, required to wear a flak jacket, full rucksack and helmet and RUN in her dress and heels from the City Hall to the Officer's Mess (I think this is why it was built less than a kilometer away). Apparently she got off easy - some brides have been made to CRAWL, knees and elbows then sit at dinner in their dress all dirty and ruined.

 

Saturday night we said goodbye to Virginia.It was a lot of fun but as we know, all good things must come to an end. Vee and I are such that no matter how much time passes, we pick up where we left off. With FB it's easier to keep up but somehow things were different this time too. I don't know why. I felt bad that I had to work and I was spent so much time rushing about. Vee reminded me that it was her I was going to go travelling with, when I got pregnant. I was going to inform my boss on July 1, 2001 that I was taking a year (2002) sabbatical to travel. We had a plan to do Africa starting in Burkina heading south then to India, China, Japan back to Vancouver where I was living at the time. I got as far as telling them I was leaving but it was for maternity leave instead. She went to Australia instead, called me from the airport on her way, out the day after I gave birth.

 

From the airport, Loren and I went to a restaurant to eat. We met a man who is a friend of Loren's friend Micha. Micha is a German who took 2 years to travel from North Africa to South... on a bicycle. (that would be like riding your bike Labrador to Los Angeles and back, not using any roads and dodging bullets. He then came back and settled in Burkina, started a business, adopted a child. He was essentially Loren's older brother (he was about 45). I've only met him once or twice. He was the one who convinced Loren to do the trip to Canada saying it was very important to connect with family. On our return from Canada, Loren went looking for him only to find out he was in the hospital. This man who we encountered on Sat at the restaurant, Loren had met in Micha's hospital room. Micha had cancer of the spinal column/nervous system. He had known some 8 months before that he was going to die, so instead of seeking treatment, came back to Burkina. Yes, he knew, even as he convinced, Loren to go to Canada. This man told us that Micha had just come home from the hospital that day. Loren hoped that meant he was doing better, we discussed going by his house to see Micha and meet his mother.

 

I had 2 very bad dreams that night. One that Ben was badly hurt in an accident and I had to watch him die. The other was that I was leaving our house, Loren was still at home when the military struck again and I was forced to run and hide, unable to get home and warn Loren what was coming. I saw a friend shot by the military. I awoke at 4 am grateful to find Loren alive, and thankfully remembering that Ben was safe at Koubri.

 

The next morning Micha died. The man we met at the restaurant called Loren to tell him. We went to his funeral Sunday afternoon.

 

It was very stark. I've never been to a funeral in Burkina although I know several people who've passed away. This was quite poignant to me though for so many reasons. Micha was buried in the same cemetary as Burkina's Golden boy dictator, Thomas Sankara. The cemetary is much like the rest of Burkina, red dirt, dusty, full of garbage and black plastic bags. The ceremony was, well, unceremonious. Micha had become a muslim only a few months before. The hole had been dug some time earlier that day. The body was carried in a cube van, on a mattress, wrapped in a straw mat and a white cloth. Cement blocks were put down and a wood board and the workers argued about how to go about the business of laying the body. They took the mattress and white cloth and then dumped the dirt back in. As we stood back from the flying dust, I stood with my arms around Loren as I watched him cry silently, again losing probably his closest friend (his best friend Marc was killed in an accident in March 2009). An old woman came up and scolded him for crying saying he needed to be strong for Micha's mother. A slim woman, she stood there with Micha's adopted child (now a young man) and the Imam, tears rolling down her face.

 

I looked around to see if I could see Sankara's grave. You can see them, his and the other officers killed are marked in white tile and shine, especially in that place where most of the graves are unmarked mounds of red dust. Some have a few bricks surrounding them, others small crosses of wood with their name carved in it. Others a slab of mud with their name scrolled by someone's finger, sitting formless ontop of the mound. Others with nothing at all. There were no flowers, no tombstones, no elaborate stoneworks. Farther away, you can see where grass has covered the mounds, and some were so small, you wonder if the child was ever even given a name. Just next to our feet, 3 small graves in a row, no markings at all. In that moment, the truth of human tragedy came crashing in on me. Who are we and what does what we do mean? If anything at all. There are 7 billion people, and the one thing we all have in common is we will all die someday.

 

At the end of it, we greeted other people there with mumbled condolences and I hugged Micha's mother very hard. I got the idea that this wasn't her wish that he be buried in Burkina but she said he was happy and smiling in his last hours, what more could she ask? She asked about my children, I said I have a son who is 10. She smiled, and told me how lucky I was. Don't I know it.

 

Benny has been given a poem at school to study, we learned it together.

The Difference - Jean Pierre Simeon

 

For each one mouth, 2 eyes, 2 hands, 2 legs

Nothing resembles a man more than another man

So between the mouth that wounds

And the mouth that consoles

Between the eyes that condemn

and the eyes that light up

Between the hands that give

and the hands that strip

Between the step without a trace

and the steps that guide us

Where is the difference

the mysterious difference.