I invited ddandb to join me again for the Ouagadougou Cathedral Dance Festival. Last year he was beheaded for bringing a camera to a religious observance. RICKAMAVEN warned me not to ask him again, but I thought things might be different.
Well, it happened again this year. We tried to hurry up and take our pictures before the Festival began, but we were spotted by priests inside the building again. Just like last year. Some people never learn from their mistakes.
That’s me lecturing ddandb about being that kind of person. If he hadn’t been wearing denim – a symbol of American imperialist oppression everywhere on earth – the priests might have relented. But noooooooooo! It had to be long pants and it had to be DENIM! The outrage!
At any rate, the priests beheaded ddandb for the second time in two years. And, for the second time in two years, I had to find somebody to sew his head back on. I was POSITIVELY NOT going to send ddandb back to his wife in TWO separate containers this year.
Luckily the Ouagadougou Central Market has a stall for everything. About two-thirds of the way down, on the right, is a guy who sews people’s heads back on. Its true. I’ve used him twice now and he does good work. Besides, he has wireless high-speed internet access and he likes to read my posts on the forum. The guy says it’ll take about an hour to reanimate ddandb.
With an hour to kill (no pun intended), I went across the aisle and around the corner to check out the street food. I buy a scrambled ostrich egg with salt and pepper and a side of goat on a stick. Altogether it cost about 9-1/2 cents. Street food is one of my favorite things to do while traveling. I eat my breakfast and browse the market: Warsaw Pact and NATO weapons here, ammunition and spare magazines there, some colorful beads and shiny disks similar to pirated DVDs across the aisle. The Central Market is a world away from America and yet familiar in a way that only regular flea market visitors will understand…
An hour passes, seeming simultaneously like a lifetime and merely an instant. Or was it only a dream? Someone behind me shouts “Hey, camper,” jolting me back to reality.
I turn to see a resurrected ddandb coming toward me. He says he’s hungry, so I buy him some smoked goat (3-2/3 cents from a vendor with 7.62mm WP ammo on a 2-for1 special.) I figure chewing goat meat and walking will be a good way to test his reflexes.
We hail a cab for the airport so ddandb can get back to the States while I have one last conversation with war protestors before I leave for Windhoek (that’s in Namibia, if you didn’t already know) to negotiate a zillion dollar deal for the International Monetary Fund.
I love having friends reanimated in Ouagadougou!
