Happy Thanksgiving

I hope yours was more eventful than mine. I spent the day all on my own prerogative, reading Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope”, learning to make basi with Sita (they call it “cous-cous” but I call it millet sawdust with a delicious bean sauce made of water, beans, peanut butter, Maggi cube and salt – could definitely be made more nutritious with some tomatoes and onions but hey, it’s got protein!), eating basi (after the sheep spilled all my sauce while I was washing my hands and getting a piment), napping, cleaning my house, cutting my toenails, picking up my Tabaski clothes from the tailor (I am SHOCKED he got everybody’s clothes done, he is the only tailor in town and pretty much EVERYBODY wants at least one new outfit) and the coup de grace: enjoying a packet of Easy Mac and a tootsie roll pop.

I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do today, like have to entertain people or study Bambara. So in that sense it was a holiday. But I did not end up making a holiday meal and I am going to bed with a stomachache. Christmas better be more exciting.

Yesterday my cat decided to shimmy up one of the big tree trunk poles holding my roof up and camp out in the black plastic ceiling. You can tell where he is because it makes the plastic dip down. But he makes me angry because he scratches holes into the plastic and can’t get down so he meowed all night last night, yet wouldn’t let me help him down. This morning he was sleeping on the edge of the plastic above where I hang my purse, so I opened the purse and let it hang open and then flipped him out of the plastic and he just happened to land in the purse, looking very confused, then rocketed onto the bed where he got stuck in the mosquito netting. All of which was very amusing for me. When I got him loose, he hid and ate and then I watched him climb back up into the plastic! Where he currently still is. If he starts complaining that he can’t get down tonight I am going to poke him with the broom. Also the mice he is supposed to be scaring off are NOT scared off and one particularly fat one has been spotted for the last couple of days. Cat not doing his job. I think he will probably disappear when I am at IST anyway. So I am not going to name him unless he is still around when I get back (why waste a good pet name?).