"You stop, fire!"

I was driving the other morning when I got pulled over.

I had just driven through an intersection and way way up in front of me a cop steps into the street and waves for me to pull over. "Great, what now? Maybe he just wants to check my papers...."

It's uncommon for the police to pull over cars with diplomatic plates, but it does happen on occasion...usually when I'm driving is the occasion.

So I pull up behind the three wheeled hybrid motorcycle cart in front of me that was also flagged down, I grab my paper work and license and roll down my window to talk to the officer.

In the best of situations it's challenging to understand French here (for a variety of reason) but factor in I'm on the side of the road, there are cars zipping by, it's windy and loud from the car engine and outside traffic and the officer is not speaking loud enough.... and I was basically doomed for being able to hear and understand him through the passenger side window that he came to.

Great, this outta be good....

So I smile and try to hand him my license through the opposing widow but he won't take it.

Okay.

Instead he starts talking and looking behind me, but the word he keeps using I don't understand so I'm all like, "quoi? quoi?", which of course just prompts him to keep repeating himself. So I tell him very politely, "Je suis désolé, mon francais n'est pas bon," hoping he'll just leave me alone and let me go.

Finally he says in english, "You stop, fire!"

What?!

A fire?

I start frantically and confusedly looking around. I don't see a fire. I look at him confused and say,

"fire? where?"

"You stop, fire!"

"I did stop! I'm stopped. See. Stopped! Right here. Where's the fire!?!"

"Fire!"

AH! I'm looking around again, thinking that maybe my car is on fire, or I maybe drove through a fire and somehow missed the part where I screamed while charging through scorching flames and thick black smoke.

But nope.

No smoke. No fire. At least none that I can see.

I look back at him with my eyebrows all cockeyed in different directions not having a clue why he keeps telling me to stop, which I was, because of a fire, which there wasn't.

When finally it dawns on me....

"you when the traffic light? the red light back there?"

"Yes, fire. You no stop."

"Yes I did. The light was green."

"Okay, have a nice day."

..................*breathe*..................*take deep breaths*.......................

See. This is why we have problems Burkina. Right here. This is it.

Because when you say "fire", I think you're talking about a fire, when in fact you are referring to a stop light. You didn't have to talk in English. You could have said in French something similar that would convey the same meaning, like, "la lumiére" or "rouge" or "pas vert".

Something that would put my mind at ease that I wasn't about to spontaneously combust while traveling down Charles De Gaulle. But no, no, that would make too much sense. This whole learning a foreign language thing...not all it's cracked up to be.

And then after all of that...."have a nice day"???

Um, just so we're clear...if I was a dragon and could breathe fire on you right now...you'd be toast. Just sayin'.

Bonne journée.