Oh la vie..

Now that I've been living with the Kone Bakary family for 2 months, they mean a lot more to me than a name. I tried to do my best here to show that.

Back: Emanigi, Nani, Emanuel

Front: Musa, Kolo, David

My bike, with Mohammed, a neighborhood kid, on the rack.

Kadi. Mother of 2 boys (but houses 4 + me), cook, sells charcoal (in the bottom photo, she had just gone to the village to bring back 40 sacks), makes bisap, baobob, and other sorts of homemade popsicles to sell at school at 7 am, 10 am, and 3 pm. She is an African supermom.

Bakary. Father and teacher (for elementary school age, and for me). This picture was taken by accident by Emanuel.. But I think it shows his personality pretty well. This is his “explaining” visage.. Which he does a lot with me! He’s very loving about it.

View from the door, of people dancing through the streets, the day Gbagbo was arrested. Djik! The smaller of our 2 dogs in the courtyard.

Kolo. She is 14 and unafraid to speak her mind. “Kolo, tu parles trop,” (Kolo, you talk too much), and “tu as foulle” (you are crazy), are things I say to her a lot. She dances on a regular basis and sings songs in Senoufo with my name in them, so I all I understand is “da da da Stephanie da da da”. But without her life would be uninteresting. In the bottom photo, we were washing our clothes together in the courtyard. It’s those moments that I look forward to the most.

Emanigi. She says she’s 9, but doesn’t know when her birthday is, so she is most likely 10. Her laugh warms your heart, and when she cries, it kills you. She’s the first to run up and hug me when I’ve been gone, and the last to whisper “bonne nuit” through my window at night. She’s living with our family so that she can go to school here. She’s told me that, in the village, her mom hit her, and that if she stayed, she would have been circumcised at the age of 11. Thankfully, she is welcomed into warm arms here as part of the family.

Emanuel. He is 7. His new favorite game is Uno. He whines a lot and asks too many questions, but he adores me and so I do my best to remind myself of how nagging and questioning I was as a child. That changes my attitude pretty quick. In the top photo, he was dancing for me on the front porch (yes, in his towel, he was on his way to wash).

David. He just turned 6 on Tuesday! We ate peanut butter cookies, sang and danced. This little guy is one of the greatest joys in my life, even though he drives me crazy. You can see him climbing a wall in one of these photos, stunts like that are things that he pulls every 5 minutes, and then says “Stephanie! Reguarde!” (Look!)