P. Colman

Did I ask for the anthropology lesson? This guy was beginning to bore me and amuse me at the same time. “Ever seen one?”

“What?”

“A pencil-viper.”

“Pencil-vipers are prevalent in sub-Saharan West Africa. They’re about the size of a Bic pen; they look something like a chubby earthworm, but deadly. My sons and I have killed a few of them, but I keep my distance for the most part.”

“You mean you’ve been there?” Is this guy for real? I found myself unconsciously adjusting my seat and moving a few safe centimeters away from my host.

“Sure. My wife and I were missionaries for fourteen years in Burkina Faso, a former French ‘colony’…” I sensed a subtle note of prideful distain in his tone.

“Burkina what?”

“Burkina Faso - a small, land-locked country just north of the Côte d’Ivoire, the Ivory Coast. The country used to be known as Upper Volta, and was colonized by the French in the late 1800s, and was part of what was formerly known as the French Sudan. It used to be part of the old kingdom of Ghana, now an English-speaking country bordering Burkina on the south-east. The name Haute Volta was taken from two narrow, muddy tributaries of the Niger, which traverse the country’s arid dry laterite terrain…”




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