Back at work

First day back at work after a week of illness - still got the balance problems and ringing in the ears I started having 3 weeks ago, but the stomach and eye thing seem to have almost cleared up.

Weda

Weda

No idea what the English name for the fruit is, nor the French ... no-one can tell me ... but it's a hot item here in the sidestreets of Ouagadougou.

For a month or so now, since the first weda started turning yellow then orange, I've had schoolkids in the street going by throwing rocks (sometimes those placed to border my flowers) into my trees and consequently into my yard trying to knock them down, total strangers banging on the gate asking for them, neighbours proposing to send local unemployed youth scrambling into my tree to collect them, neighbours' kids balancing precariously on the high separating wall trying with a long pole to knock some down, many convinced I don't know or care anything about them being a 'nasaara' (white person) ... sometimes I feel beseiged. Recent gifts of harvested weda to several in the street here will hopefully calm them down, but the school kids will only stop when the last one is harvested or eaten by birds, even those at 3-4 storey's height unobtainable by my climbing Sunday guard with a 6m long stick.

Weda is actually a 'wild' fruit, off a vine found in the forest and not normally in the city, so there may be an element of nostalgia for the 'home village' involved in its popularity. Some of the fruit appeared 9 months ago, some 3 months ago on the vine that gives me shade on one side of the yard and grows up the huge tree on the other side, but they are all ripening within a few weeks and I have purchased a special implement for harvesting them and the mangos - 2 lengths of 3metre 2x4 which we screw together when in use, and attach a cutting hook made locally. The mangos are for others, not me since I'm allergic, so I'm all the more enthusiastic about keeping track of other fruit in the garden.

I personally don't like the work involved eating them, but the juice is like Tang, and that's what I gain, apart from having a unique gift to give to students, Leah, Philippe, Yentema, Esther, Levi, Roland, neighbours, guard opposite, shop opposite, ....