I think one of the only things I learned when I studied abroad in Germany was that the beta thing they use (ß) is pronounced like a double s. I therefore present...
episode 2: scheiße!
At this point Mom and I are done hanging out at site. She's met my neighbors, met my friends, brought fabric to the tailor to have made into skirts. Next up: going to the parks in SE Burkina to see elephants. Now these parks are pretty isolated. I'm lucky because I have great bus service from Ouaga to my site, but to get to the parks we have to get a bush taxi. It was a pretty memorable bush taxi ride.
We wander around looking for a ride. Buy our ticket. Start piling in (all 25 of us). Start piling all the luggage and such on top of the van. We end up smack in the middle of the van. Middle row, middle seats. "Can't we get a window seat?" Mom complains. "It's so hot; I really want to be next to a window."
"No," I reply grumpily, "we're all settled in, I'm not going to shuffle myself around anymore."
So we set off. As it turns out, we are sharing our ride with three German-Swiss passengers, who also speak English. Mom is clearly jealous of them because they got window seats. We're not 10 minutes on the road before it starts raining. Like, storm-of-the-century style. And because our bush-taxi is so decrepit, water is leaking in. Especially by the windows. Everyone by a window is getting kind of wet, but one of our German-Swiss friends who is right on the (very leaky) window is getting downright soaked. Not just with rainwater, mind you, but gross dirty rusty rainwater that passed through everyone's luggage. Each time the bush taxi turns a little bit, all the water rushes off the top of the taxi and onto his shoulder.
"Scheiße!" he would yell. With nowhere to go, there was little he could do.
Now, this is pretty funny in itself. Everyone in the bush taxi was certainly laughing at him. But it became evident after a while that it was even worse than it looked. Amongst all of the luggage on top of the van, there was a goat (of course). The goat did not like the rain. You might say the goat was scared shitless. And the goat-shit was being washed down into the inside of the van, through the faulty window-door... directly onto the guy's shoulder, with all the rainwater.
"Scheiße!"
Needless to say, Mom decided in hindsight that the middle of the van was a very good place to be.