Being more expert on Burkina Faso than the day before.

It took me an hour and a half to get round the supermarket and buy pumpkin pie ingredients for R yesterday. Mostly because I spent the main part of this time sitting on the bonnet of my car talking to the lovely man who had offered to wash it.

I always think that everyone has a story and the most fascinating tales come to you when you least expect it. He walked up to me and said "Excuse me, lady, but THAT baby needs a wash" and proceeded to pick at the great globule of windscreen bird muck with his fingernail. I shrieked with prissiness and tried to find him a wetwipe. He laughed back at me. "Lady, " he said "I am from Burkina Faso. We don't worry about such things there."

I was immediately hooked. "Burkina Faso?"

He grinned. "I bet you don't know where it is".

I have pride, even in a supermarket car park near Staines. I told him I knew exactly where it was, that it rubbed its landlocked borders with Mali and Niger, and Ghana and Togo (I swallowed that last one a bit as I wasn't sure - I always mix up Togo with Benin, ignorantly. Having looked at the map now, I can see it's both, anyway). I said it used to be called Upper Volta, had been nabbed by the French, and it's capital was Ouagadougu and I sat down on the bonnet and waited for him to be impressed.

He wasn't. He laughed again. "Not Ouagadougu," he chuckled. "OuagaDOUgu".

It did sound better when he said it. And I thought mine was close but he shook his head and said "No, no, terrible", though very amiably. But he did come and lean against the bonnet and we started talking. About Burkina Faso and what it was like. And I learnt absolutely loads.

He told me how Burkina Faso's neighbours all envy her for her organisation, palm wine and film festival. He told me Burkinabe are relaxed happy people who like to read and tell stories. He took me through the transition from independence to today's regime semi-presidentiel, (sorry, can't find acute accents in this format) and that Burkina Faso means "A Country of Honest People". He told me his favourite dish was a mix of rice, okra and peanut sauce and his Mum made it best. And that 200 000 are still homeless from the summer flooding. And that just after his grandfather had died, his apparition had appeared at his neighbour's house, floated round the dinner table wagging its ghostly finger and scolded him, in front of his family, for having had an affair. And then he sang the anthem for me. Une Seule Nuit. I'd never heard it before.

It is amazing how the most interesting moments come flying at you when you least expect them. I got pretty much the whole shop done in a wonderfully smoky daydream of Burkina Faso and without the tiniest shred of Shopper's Impatience.

One can learn much in Sainsbury's car park on Saturday afternoon. Who'd have thought it?

He also pointed me towards this. I have no idea what it's about, but I'm imagining it might be something to do with getting plastered? Odd, but vaguely compelling.



After-afterthought...
Although one more thing - how awful that so many people have lost everything in one tiny country and the thought of it has barely crept into my mind. THAT was badly done, Emma. Badly done indeed.