International Life of Mystery--Revealed

I leave for site tomorrow! Holy crap! So I have been in Burkina for the past ten weeks but most of you do not know what I have been doing. And while it is fun to live an international life of mystery, it is more fun to share it. Hence, I guess I should explain. Where to start? Where to start? Well, I guess I will start with the training portion since that takes up about 80% of my day. My time for the last ten weeks has been spent attending multiple, multiple,language classes, health technical classes, cross cultural class, and medical classes. For language classes, I have been taking both French and Bissa. We have at least have 4 hours of language a day(sometimes more)—needless to say, these are long days. For my end of training language placement oral exam, I tested as intermediate high (this is from novice mid at the beginning). However, do not let this fool you. I think anyone who can form a compound sentence would place in this level as well. Either that or my interviewer was feeling very generous and decided to give my Christmas present early. As for my health technical sessions, during the beginning sessions I was bored out of my mind. Most of the classes focused on the theoretical/historical side of the Burkinabe healthcare system. Usually, during this time I would zone out and day dream. What would I day dream about? More times that not I would concoct the perfect five course meal in my head (usually starting out with dessert first). I am getting hungry just writing this. However, in the second part of training we did more practical sessions and/or field trips. One of the most memorable times was when we took a field trip to the local CREEN; A CREEN is a village type hospital where children who are severely malnourished go to receive treatment. The mothers of the children are also allowed to live at the CREEN. The average stay at the CREEN is twenty-six weeks. The children stay at the CREEN until they are healthy enough to go home. Depending on how malnourished the child is, he/she may have to stay in the hospital for three weeks where they are fed intravenously. After the hospital the mothers and children then live in a secluded community--that is still apart of the hospital--where they recieve sensibilizations on nutrition. During our tour of the hospital, I met a five- year old boy who was only 5 Kg (11 lbs). When we met the boy; he was laying on a metal table, motionless, with flies all around. It was so incredibly sad to see children in this state. I started to cry but then tried to hold back my tears because I did not think it was very appropriate. In Burkina Faso, children are generally malnourished. However, there are different degrees of malnourishment ranging from mild to severe. Most of the children in my training village are anywhere between mildly to moderately malnourished. Most of the children have bloated bellies and some what blondish-yellow tinted hair(a sign of malnourishment. This past week when I met my village counterpart, I asked him if malnutrition was prevalent in my future village. He responded that malnutrition was very prevalent and I responded, “That is great news! Errrrr…no, wait…that is not what I meant. I just really want to work on malnutrition.” Nevertheless, he laughed. He is young so I think he understands me or at least I would like to think he does. If he did, it would make for less awkward moments like this one. Another activity that I really enjoyed was learning to make enriched porridge, thereby, being able to bring these recipes to my village to sensibilize the women. Prior to porridge sensibilizations, I would also partake in baby weighings. About 90% of the time, the baby is between a really poor weight and an okay weight. Malnutrition is a big problem here mainly because of a lack of resources, education, and woman having multiple children(short weening process). Other activities included learning how to plant Moringa trees, make soap, mud stoves, and radio broadcasts for World AIDS day, to name a few. During our cross-cultural sessions we usually just learn what not to do to offend the locals. For example, in this conservative culture, it is highly offensive to show any knee. Prior to coming here, I did not wear any skirts/shorts that came remotely close to covering my knees. I had search high and low to find this mysterious thing called long skirts. Now, if I ride my bike and my skirt rides up past my knees, I feel like the village whore. Although, I find it rather odd that in a culture where you cannot show your knees, it does not have a problem with you showing your boobs. My host moms whip their twins out all the time. Morning, noon, and night. Inside, Outside. That is just geography. Most of the time I do not know what to do; I just try to not look below their shoulders. One time I thought my host mom asked if I wanted to breastfeed a child or breastfeed from her. I had her repeat herself like ten times. I thought to myself, “this woman cannot be saying what I think she is saying.” Like a second reflex, she proceeds to whip out her boob, and lifts it up to suckle from it. I must of looked incredibly confused because...well,.. because I was. Prior to this gesture, I would have thought something was lost in translation but afterwards I thought there was nothing to be lost. To this day I do not know whether or not she wanted to breast feed me or have me breast feed one of the many children in my quartier. For the cross cultural sessions, some of the classes included sessions on the socio-political history of Burkina or how to date in Burkina (as if there is a science to it). For medical sessions we usually learn how to avoid malaria, giardia (check), amoeba (check on that one too), or staph infections to name a few. I am probably not your model healthy Peace Corps volunteer. Usually, these sessions just make everyone a hypochondriac, namely myself.

Potpourri

A few weekends ago I biked 20 km to spend the weekend at my friend, Amanda’s site. I have come to the conclusion that biking in 100 degree weather is not the greatest idea, especially when your bike dies on you. Die, you ask? Yes, this may seem a bit dramatic but die it did (chain, flat tire, and tube). Luckily, after a few minutes of waiting (not really sure what for), a couple of bicyclists stopped to help. In my best French, I tried explaining that my bike had died and there was no possibility of reviving it—at least on my end. In my long explanation of what had happened there were lots of pointing, hand gestures, and me saying it would not work. They asked if I was headed into Ouahigouya and I told them I was headed to village about 10 km outside of the city. One of the men said if I hopped on the back of his moto he would take me to a mechanic in village. While I was appreciative of the offer, I had to decline because of Peace Corps policy. You would think that I had to decline because it is Peace Corps policy not to hitchhike, but nope, I had to decline because I cannot ride motos. Anyway, I seemed to have gotten my point across because they proceeded to stop a random bicyclist that was heading in the opposite direction. They informed him he would need to give me his bicycle so I could ride it into town. I got on his bicycle and headed into the next village with my entourage of three guys on their bicycles/motos. They led me to a mechanic in the next village where they stayed with me until I assured them I was okay.

Happy Kill the Native Americans and Steal Their Turkeys Day....One Month Late

Ahhhhh…the best meal I have since my arrival in Burkina! For dinner, most of the trainees split up in small groups and made one or two dishes. With a few of my friends, I made deviled eggs and sweet potatoes. From the looks of the pictures, they don’t look very good but they were actually quite delicious. It is possible to make American food in the bigger cities but it is quite expensive and you would have to go to multiple markets to find the different ingredients. However, since none of us had ovens/some ingredients, we had to be creative and make all of our dishes without them. At the start of dinner, I was already uncomfortably full because my stomach was weird that day (at this point I had had nothing to eat for the day; my giardia had also not been diagnosed yet). But I did not care about this small detail. I forced my self to eat, and eat, and eat. And eat, I did. There was so much food! Here, if good food in involved (food that you normally cannot find in country), we will stuff ourselves. When the SED group went to the Associate Peace Corps Director’s (APCD) house for Mexican food, they ate so much that the majority of them puked and then went back for seconds. Appetizing, right? This makes me even more excited for Christmas dinner when we are going to go to a Lebanese restaurant. At our Thanksgiving dinner, there was stuffing, pumpkin pie, rice pudding, brownies, deviled eggs, fruit, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, salad, green beans, goat, and turkey (the US Embassy sent us butterball turkey from the states). We also had a goat—a week or so after our arrival we visited the chief of the Ouahigouya region and as a gift he gave us a goat. We named the goat, “Turkey,” and decided that we would eat it for Thanksgiving. One of the health volunteers “adopted” the turkey and brought it to her village to fatten it up until it would meet its fate.

Site Announcement!

Site announcement was about five weeks ago and I have just been too lazy to write….So alas, here I am writing. I am very happy with my site placement; I am located about 7 km outside of Zabre in a large village of about 9,500 people. Sorry kiddos, I cannot disclose my actual site because the Peace Corps does not want any psychos flying three thousand miles to come stalk me. My village is located in the south central “green region” of Burkina. I am excited to be located in the greener part of the country. I am currently commuting to Ouahigouya which is located in the northern part of the country. Because I am in the north, it is very dry, dusty, and hot. However, as I will be living in the south, I will have to put up with the humidity. Nonetheless, I think that it is a fair compromise considering during the hot season in the hottest part of the Sahel region it can get up to 130 degrees (it is a bit cooler in the south). Apparently, during these times you just want to die because there is no relief from the heat. At site, I will be living within a family compound; however, I will have my own private courtyard. I am told that I will have two small houses (one room each)—a circle thatched mud hut and a square one. The volunteers near my site tell me that the square house is used for sleeping, the circle one is used for storage, and the kitchen is outside in the courtyard. Hmmmm…I do not know how that is all going to work but I am just excited to finally have a site and a place to call home for the next two years. I also will have three moms! Yayy for triple the love!! My village has a small market every three days; I am thinking I can find your basic fruits/veggies, bread, and maybe even eggs there. In Zabre there is a larger market. Because I am so close to Ghana, Ghanaian merchants come up to Zabre with “fine goods” and yummy sweet bread. It is a good thing I have to bike 8 km to the Zabre market because with all of that yummy bread, I will be turning into a chunky monkey. Yes..….I can foresee it now—either that nickname or Mrs. Butterworth II (second in line to Penny—of course). Even though I do not have any close volunteers from my training group near me (the closest one is 80 km away on an unpaved road), I do have two volunteers—one 7km away, and another 22 km—from the training group from the year before. If you head directly north, you run into a hippopotamus reserve and if you head North West, you will see lots and lots of elephants!! While I am excited to be heading to my site in ten days, I am sad to leave my friends. Especially, since they are located all the way at the other side of the country. Even though they are pretty far away from me, each month I will get 4 days away from site (in addition to 2 vacation days)—called Time Away From Community days (TAC). I plan on visiting or meeting up with them on the weekends in Ouaga (the capital); this will be crucial to maintaining my sanity—I have been known to talk to myself. Similarly, to preserve their sanity, lots of volunteers have adopted cats and/or dogs. I was really considering this until I heard horror stories of having pets at site. One current volunteer has been through three cats. One cat was eaten—yes, that’s right. It was eaten by the locals. Another cat was subject to animistic voodoo practices; it came back with its eyes removed. I assume it died. The last one mysteriously “disappeared.” Frankly, I would have stopped after cat number two. Nevertheless, I think I will just opt to talk to myself instead of having a cat/dog.
To prepare for site, I have started to learn another local language. Bissa is spoken by only 500,000 people and is one of the lesser known languages in Burkina. It is pretty exciting that I will be learning a language that is not spoken by a lot of people; however, it is kind of not that great because I can only use it in few places in Burkina. Additionally, because only the educated know French (located mostly in the capital), I will only be working with people that speak only the local language. I am guessing about 15% of the total Burkinabe population knows French—maybe less. I will then rely on my assigned counterpart to be my translator during village sensibilizations. Bissa is proving to be a difficult language to learn. Since Bissa is not a written language, every time my tutor spells a word, he will spell it differently. For example, he may spell the number four as “she” one day and another day spell it as “chi.” Bissa, as well as the rest of the local languages, are phonetic so you just spell them how you think they sound like. Bissa speakers also eat their words which is proving to be quite frustrating. For example, instead of saying, “Iris dogta ki,” which means “how are you,” they will condense it to, “I dogta ki.” Often times, my tutor will ask me how I am doing and because it is shortened I will not understand. I will then look confused and he will say we already went over it and then I will respond, “No, I am pretty sure we did not.” He will then point to the phrase and then I will be like, “Oh…so I am thinking you ate the word again?”
I leave for site in about ten days. We were originally supposed to leave on the 20th but the Peace Corps thought it would be cruel to send us off to site so close to Christmas. Hence, we get to stay until the 26th. I am pretty happy with this arrangement because this is the first time I will be spending Christmas without the crazy, dysfunctional Bermudez clan.

Giardia, anyone?

Yep, that is right. I ate poop. So far I have lost 15 pounds in the six weeks that I have been here. ick. Sometimes I make it to the bathroom and sometimes I do not....and that is all I am going to say about that.