Everything went smoothly for my return to Abidjan. As I mentioned earlier, JeDene and I took a taxi to the airport [or rather an unmarked warehouse behind the airport] for our Covid-19 tests on Friday afternoon for Sunday's flight back. I am amazed at how anyone finds it as there is no sign anywhere until you arrive at the fence surrounding the building where there is a tiny handwritten sign. We paid in cash as paying by Orange Money was the only other option. The setup in Ouagadougou seemed a bit more parochial than the one had been in Abidjan, where the cost of the test was part of the new Déclaration de déplacement par voie aerienne form that is now required for travel to and from the Côte d'Ivoire, which costs about EUR 50, and can be applied for online. In Ouagadougou they were not particularly busy at the Covid-19 testing site, nor were they busy the day of our flight when we returned early for our results, which, fortunately, were negative. We then had a bit of a wait at our Air Burkina flight was delayed at its point of origin [Niamey, Niger?] then delayed again because the Air Burkina computers were down. I had been wondering why our tickets were being hand-written when we checked in, and our names were checked against a simple paper roster... !
Our very small plane was full, but passport control went quickly in Abidjan as the airport wasn't crowded as it is on some of the larger international flights. After a second Covid-19 test, a rapid antigen test this time, we were free to head back to the SIL Center.
The change in humidity wiped me out, however, as Ouaga is very hot [over 100 degrees F, but very dry], and Abidjan is cooler, but suffocatingly humid. I find the humidity harder to tolerate. Fortunately I have been revived by the A/C in my bedroom ! Also, the evening I returned to Abidjan, I skyped my "new" housesitter and she is getting along well with my dogs, which was an enormous relief ! Needless to say, I slept well that night...
I had been working on cataloguing their local language materials in the four major language groups spoken here in Côte d'Ivoire--the Gur, Kru, Kwa and Mande language groups. When I came back from Ouagadougou and started working again at the Abidjan branch, I discovered that I couldn't find any of the data from the work I had done two weeks prior in the database ! I was about to throw in the towel as this was two weeks of painstaking work on a recalcitrant computer. If you add my astigmatic and aging eyesight into the mix, it was not something I looked forward to doing over a second time. Fortunately there was a backup of the data and Laurel Miller, computer guru that she is, will be able to merge the old backed up data with what I did just recently.
The photo is actually me doing the same thing--cataloguing local language materials in Burkina. Below is the handy chart that I used with the Keyman software to make the special characters used here in Côte d'Ivoire. As if typing were not hard enough...
As you can see, the semi-colon has been programed to help create many of these characters. What, however, is missing is the circumflex "^" !! It shows in my "cheat sheet" above but doesn't work so I think it is a programming glitch. In a country like Côte d'Ivoire I have a problem every time I write that word, and need to switch to an International English keyboard 😕 ... Also problematic is the cedilla "ç" because I have not been able to figure out the what the "comma, box" means as it doesn't seem to exist on my keyboard [see last two lines in the box found in the upper right hand corner]. If any of you can figure this one out, let me know !
Meanwhile as I wait for the backed up "lost" data to be merged with the work I subsequently did, I am cleaning up more of the backload of unprocessed items--"gifts", duplicate and triplicate copies of things, trying to tidy up the library and create more space. Stuff they haven't been able to get to over the years has just been placed in boxes hidden by a curtain behind the librarian's desk. Included are books and documents from the former SIL Library in Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire, before it was moved temporarily to Mali during a period of extreme violence and instability in the county in the first decade of this 21st century. The stuff is so dusty though that I feel I should be wearing gloves, a smock and, needless to say, a mask. Of course I do happen to have the last item... 😄 And I need Ezéchiel's little vacuum cleaner !
Buried among the books, I have also found a vintage Toshiba 3-in-one dot-matrix printer, an IBM Selectric typewriter and and assortment of old floppy discs... !
Tuesday evening we had dinner with the Heaths, a SIL affiliated couple who live next to JeDene. It turns out they once lived in Cameroon, and know Keith Patman [a member of my church] who works for SIL and once worked and lived in that country for many years. The conversation turned to good travel agents for Kenya -- Dan and Teresa Heath are planning a trip to a big game reserve and wanted advice, then to taxis in Africa, then bush taxis--the apparent way to travel if you want an authentic African experience. Everyone who has ever traveled to this country will at least have one colorful transportation tale to tell... Bush taxis, especially if taken for any distance at all, can be a crushing [literally], and uncomfortable experience, but I learned that you can actually pay for two spaces so that you have more room ! Who knew ?!
Today I was hankering for some ice cream, and regularly pass by a little restaurant/ice cream shop on the way to the grocery store called Roots. I felt I needed a reward from spending the day in the library sorting through dusty books and periodicals. The place looked pretty nice from their Facebook page, so I stopped by today and discovered, to my disappointment, that they only had a single flavor--vanilla. Their online menu had promised a dozen flavors, including salted caramel, which is the one I was hoping for... but it was not to be. I told them I'd come back another time...
Above: linguistics students installing our browser link on their phones.
This is excellent. I must say, Ezéchiel has been very good at outreach. And I'm so glad that he is able to advertise our new library web OPAC in this way!
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