Each family has their own compound - a fenced area with a gathering of huts. This settlement had four different compounds, and each had a student from my group. Two of the other compounds were also Boubane families. (Francoise Boubane, living across the main road, is Martin's older brother).
Mom and Dad (Thiara Martin and Odette Boubane) making spoons from Calabasas which they sell at markets (and to visiting American students). They're sitting in front of the main hut - the one where they sleep if it's ever cold enough not to sleep outside, the one that holds all their possessions, and the one in which they keep the bowls of leftover meals for the kids to pick at throughout the day. (A lack of electricity makes refrigeration clearly not possible, so extra food is just stored under the beds in bowls).
That's the kitchen in the background. No chimney for the fire (which is evident in the blackened roof shown in the next picture). To the left of the kitchen hut the Boubane's store their bowls of peanuts and grains, raised so the wandering dogs, chickens, roosters, and cows can't pick at it.
All of our meals were some wonderful form of mush/porridge/grain. Breakfast was a porridge-like meal made from ground corn and Baobab tree fruit. Lunch and dinner were either corn or rice or a combination of grains into a sort of semi-cooked pasta-like dough form. All of these meals were hot, with some sort of sauce. Usually it was made from peanuts. Monique (my 20 year-old sister) would take a bowl of shelled peanuts, roast them, grind them, then turn them into a butter with an older gazelle beer bottle. She would then mix it in boiling water with a few spices and would create the most wonderful peanut sauce to pour over whatever mushy warm grain we were eating.
This is the top of the kitchen. The corn gets nicely roasted (along with the roof) from the fire below. I was able to watch/help with a few meals, but at times had trouble breathing because of all the smoke in the kitchen (which doubled as a sauna, for me at least).
All meals were eaten in communal bowls, with our hands. I've really gotten used to (and good at) eating with my right hand.
My favorite meal was the last dinner - duton. It was made from dough-like mounds (of a few different grains mixed together), baked for a little in the sun to be semi-solid, with a gumbo sauce poured over the pasta cakes.
This is one of the benches under the mango tree (the center of life in the compound - this tree created the vital shade under which we could live). This bench also doubled as my bed. I was given a hut to sleep in, but after 10 minutes of attempting to sleep in my puddle of sweat, I came out here. The combination of noises from the wind and animals created an amazing atmosphere for sleep. I will say that this was probably the worst three nights of sleep I have ever had, but the quiet, sedentary, calm daytime activities didn't really demand a night of restful sleep.
The shade here is from the mango tree, which is held up by those branches in the center and to the right. The hut to the right in the background was my "room"/chicken-egg-laying site. Honestly! Twice I went into the hut to find that a chicken laid an egg on my bed! I took it as a sign the animal life was really comfortable with my presence. It made me feel incredibly welcomed into the village life.
The shower is the enclosure to the left of the hut. A bucket of water has never been so completely refreshing. This is how showers should always be taken - after a day of sweating, being covered by sweet smelling dirt and couscous, out in the open, with cows walking by.
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