I've got plenty of time to fill

I have been enjoying life back in civilization. It’s rather lonely here, but I make do. I’ve gotten a fair amount of work done in the last couple days, working on a paper Jeff sent me and making some small recordings with Ramata. Starting last night, I decided it would be a good use of my time to sit down with Ramata for an hour every evening and start editing the dictionary. I can understand her pronunciation much better than anyone else’s, so I can quickly go through and verify the words I’d found with her father or her M. Guindo. Tomorrow M. le Maire should get here, so I can simultaneously be filling in the sections of the dictionary I don’t have yet and editing those sections that I do. That way, this whole thing should be done in just two or three weeks.

Other than working, I’ve put together an entire jigsaw puzzle in under 24 hours (someone have too much alone time?), cleaned my room, had a somewhat epic battle with the mouse that used to live in Kevin’s suitcase, made some fresh-squeezed orange juice, washed some underwear in a bucket, and listened to music. Dave was going to come up to Douentza yesterday, but I guess he’s having too much fun in Sevare. Maybe he’ll come up today. It would be nice to have some company.

I got the sheep back in the courtyard again, too. I’m a little disappointed in Hamidou. I gave him 5000 francs to take care of the sheep while I was gone, but they don’t look good. According to Oumar, they weren’t getting very much to eat, even though the money I gave was more than enough for sheep food. I gave Bean a bath yesterday, but then the poor little guy spent the rest of the afternoon shivering. It is quite cold here. He’s beginning to grow some little horns. Ah, they grow up so fast.