John, one of your favorite events of the day at our home in Santidougou was when Yusufu threw out the garbage in our open garbage pit at the back of our yard. You and all your friends raced out there and found all kind of goodies: old tin cans, paper, bits of food and so on. And each child had his own stash of goodies from the Pierce daily garbage disposal!
You and your friends also loved to get the ingredients from Yusufu in the kitchen to make your own rice over a little campfire. Sometimes you shot lizards or mice which were added to the pot, and you begged the rice, oil, tomato paste and onions from our kitchen. Your friends had been lighting outside fires since they could walk and they taught you and later you taught Mark, so we were not worried about you around fires. . After the food was cooked and cooled, you all gathered round the pot and ate with your fingers in true Bobo fashion.
You had a big red wagon and the village kids loved to push you around in that. One day we took your picture in that wagon - it had been raining and you had a big umbrella over your head and your friends were pushing you. You looked like the king of the village with your slaves pushing you. You also had a friend who was a lot older than you and was a deaf mute. His father was a policeman living at the edge of our town and he owned a donkey. One of your favorite sports was to get on that donkey with your friend, yelling all the way down the road, as the two of you rode that animal at top speed!
When you and your cousin, Tim Albright, were about four and five, you went with Dad and me to Sanekui where Aunt Donna and Uncle Jim lived. There was a large crowd of pastors meeting there in a conference - Dad was there to represent the mission, I went along to help Aunt Donna with the cooking, and you and Tim and Steve were just running around the area. One of you got the idea one morning to climb up on the roof of a building which was right alongside the thatched shelter where the meetings were going on. We knew nothing about your antics until one of the pastors attending the conference came to the house to tell us the three of you were doing antics and making faces at the delegates, cracking them up to the point that no one was listening to the message! So we got you down from there and decided that the best place for the three of you was the shower! You were covered with dust and we took your clothes off and put you together in the shower to wash off the dust and dirt. We figured we knew where you were - in the shower. When I went in to check on you, here was a dazed scorpion in the shower - the three of you had been dancing around the cement shower area, under the water, and had not noticed the scorpion He was so dazed he could not even sting you!
Back at Santidougou our big Lassie dog had about eight beautiful little German Shepherd puppies. They were in the garage and we would let them out to crawl around her during the day. Dad went to look for the puppies to put them in another place and he could not find them anywhere! He had looked and looked and finally came to the house to tell me. You, John, overheard him and said you had taken care of them. He led you to a large empty container in the garage and opened it - and there were all the pups, dead, suffocated from the heat and no air. You had no idea what you had done.
At that point, you spoke nothing but Bobo. Because your grandparents lived near us, you did learn a couple of phrases like "good food!" when we ate with them. Our family and our whole village spoke Bobo and that was your language until we took you on that first furlough. You did learn some English to play with your cousin, Michael Kennedy, who lived in Bobo. If I had errands to do in town, I would take you along and let you play while I shopped or taught a class, and then came back and picked you up to get home in time for supper. One day I totally forgot that you had come with me - and I was all the way home to Santidougou before I discovered what I had done. Dad drove back to town and picked you up and you were not too happy with me!
Furlough time came around and your main language was still Bobo. You understood English as the rest of us in the family spoke it and we figured you would soon learn when we got to Nyack and everyone else was chatting in English. Which was exactly what happened! We also enrolled you in a pre-school class where all the children spoke English. And before we knew it you were chatting along in either English or Bobo. That was the furlough when our "Bobo son", Tite Tiénou, started Nyack. He was sitting at the table beside you one day and at opur home and we were all chatting in English. You kept looking at him and finally you asked your question: "Tite, why didn't you turn white like me when you learned English??" I guess you always thought of yourself as black when you spoke only Bobo - and with your knowledge of English came a color change!
You carried some of your village habits back to Nyack with you. One of them was raiding the garbage cans. You thought you had found a gold mine with all those overflowing garbage cans along our street in Nyack! You got the neighborhood kids to join you, and you brought back all sorts of "treasures"! The boys next door to us had a very proper mother and she was not amused when her sons came back with broken toys and old puzzles and books which they had found on the street before the garbage man arrived! The two boys came to the door one day and asked, "Aunt Nancy, can we store our treasures at your place - our Mom won't let us take them in our house!" And of course I obliged! You also shot squirrels with your slingshot and skinned them and nailed them on a board to dry. Our neighborhood kids learned all kinds of fun tricks from you!!
The event that took the cake was while you kids were staying at our house, with Grandma Pierce taking care of you all while we went to Council for a week. Danny Moore was a favorite friend of yours, and the place you loved most was Mr. Fredericks' workshop. When he was out with his truck, the two of you would explore the wonders of his workshop! He was the man who took care of all the missionary homes and his workshop was well stocked. You were pretty careful not to go in when he was there, as he would paddle you if he caught you! Somehow you managed to filch an open can of bright blue paint. You took it up the our yard and proceeded to "paint" your wagon! There was no brush so you and Danny just used your hands! You knew you were in trouble when you realized that paint would not wash off your skin and came home with the wagon, parked it by the back door, went into the bathroom by the door and locked yourself in! (Danny went home to his house, covered in paint! too) Grandma saw the blue paint everywhere and wondered where you were - she finally traced you to the locked inside bathroom! And she had to coax you out and clean you up - and I don't remember if the wagon was ever the same again! Bless Grandma, she never told us about it on the phone but waited till we got home and saw the "painted" wagon! You were never one to lack for ideas - I understood you, I am high in ideas too! But a I try to use them more creatively.....
We sent you to a pre-school so that you would learn English - and it worked. By the end of furlough you were speaking all English and had to re-learn Bobo when we retuuned to Africa. At the final session of pre-school, each of the twenty students had to tell one thing they had learned that year at school. Your contribution was: "I learned that I have an inside voice as well as an outside one!" A great lesson!
The teacher one day called me aside and said, "You know, I think John may have a problem with the fact that he only has sisters. He keeps talking about his imaginary brother and talks like he knows him well and he lives with you." After asking a few questions, we realized it was Tite he was talking about - Tite was his big brother!
And so we decided - after getting back to Upper Volta - that it was time for John to have a little brother!
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