Rainy Season AKA Trying To Find Creative Ways To Entertain Myself So I Don't Have To Talk To Myself

Random tidbits:
1) Saw a 3 y/old boy fall in a well. He is okay.
2) Saw an Animist ritual. Disturbing to watch but very interesting.
3) My friend, Masse, is still trying to kill me: death by carbs
4) I've only had two accidents this month. Yes! Score!


Rainy season has officially commenced. Well no, not really. It almost two months into the season and when I officially envisioned rain every other day. However, rainy season normally starts slow and then picks up momentum as it progresses. This has not been the case--it only rains about a couple times a week. Now, its up to three times. When the rain falls, it does not just fall, it pours for hours at a time. Think 4-5 hours worth. I love the rain though. It's fun. I have a tin roof on my mud hut so when it rains it feels like I live under a subway station. As fun as the rain is, rainy season means my market stinks. Fruits and vegetables? Non existent. I can find some sort of tree leaves they put in a sauce that everyone makes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I kid you not. This, and a couple other carbs are all I can find in my market. I have to bike the 9-10 km to Zabre to find my basic veggies. Rain or shine, Zabre, here I come!!! Despite not being able to do big projects, I have tried to stay busy with doing small AIDS sensibilizations in ________ and its satellite villages. This past month I also did my week long girls camp; it went really well. Twenty six girls were in attendance. As mentioned in last month's blogs I wanted to focus on reproductive health and having good role models/goals/esteem. Laura, my volunteer neighbor, came and helped me with my girls camp. She was a God send since she is completely fluent in french and was helpful in explaining technical terms and just generally when the girls had no clue as to what I was talking about. This was not because I was explaining something difficult to comprehend, it was more my massacreization(yes, i just made that a word and am sending a letter to Webster's to seeks its introduction into the English language)of the French language. In the last post I forgot to mention why I wanted to focus on having goals and good role models/a good support system. This stems from an incident that happened at Laura's camp that I helped with a couple weeks prior. Laura had just assigned a task to the girls. Anyhow, since children in our region do not start learning French until they hit primary school, some girls' French level are more advanced than others(it is not uncommon to see 15 and 16 year old girls who are still in primary school). Anyhow, this was the same time that one of the primary schools decided to drop by the camp to see how it was going. Since Laura's camp encompassed different grades/ages, some girls were slower to start(I assume it was because their French levels were lower). The teacher spotted a couple of girls who were slower to start; she then proceeds to slap one of the girls in the back of the head and yells at them for being slow. She then tells Laura, "Don't pay attention to these girls. They are slow and dumb and will not amount to anything in life." Ironically, the task that Laura gave the girls was to write down a goal they wanted to accomplish in life, how they could accomplish it, and who in their lives could encourage/support them to achieve this goal. Hmmmm..yeah, I am thinking that these girls did not put this teacher down as as being apart of their support system. It was nice to spend so much time with another volunteer(between one week at her site and her at my site for one week)because on a normal basis on any given month I only see volunteers for a couple days when I head up to the the capital. To keep busy I have been reading a lot these last couple of months. When I head back from the capital, I try to bring back as many books as I can with me on transport. However, with books, food, my travel clothes, and soap making materials for my women's group(bane of my existence because the materials weigh a ton and then some), I don't bring as many books as I would like back to village. I maybe bring back 15 books(and that's on a good day); however, when I can read a 500 page book in one day, these books go fast and then I am like, "Doo, doo, doo...what to do? There's always the reliable wall that I have been known to talk to." Don't get me wrong, I leave the house and walk around the village, hang out at the local boutique, and help my friend and her family cultivate, it is just that my village turns into a ghost town since everyone is in the fields. Right before coming to Ouaga, I assisted with a four day Polio vaccination campaign. Now that it is rainy season, it wasn't a door to door campaign like normal, it was a door to door and field to field campaign. We searched high and low for children under the age of the five. At times, biking way out en brousse. On the last day as my partner and I had just finished our satellite village and were heading to another village's market to help another team, I got a flat. Being way out en brousse, there were no mechanics around to help me fix my bike, so I told my partner to go onto Fourbe and I would walk on back to the hospital. Lucky for me, the hospital was a two hour walk away. Did I mention it started to rain at the same time? So..doo, doo, doo...I am walking in the rain first to Yorko--another satellite village--and then onto to my village. Being en brousse I did not know a direct route to my village. Anyhow, I come across a flowing river that was made worse by the rain. My only option is to cross so I take my bike and start to walk across. I notice the river is now past my knees with no indication of stopping. I was like, "oh, no. I may not always have common sense, but I have more common sense than this." I am also thinking, "Note to self: I am probably contracting shistosis as we speak so Googling symptoms of shisto when I get to Ouaga would be a good idea." Shistosis is a parasite that enters the body through skin pores--aided by running water. I started to walk back out of the river to find another spot to cross. A man stops me and asks me where I am going, so I tell him. He then proceeds to tell me that this spot was the only safe spot to cross and instructs me to give him my bike so he can carry it over his head. I do so and follow him into the flowing river. The river is now past my waist with my skirt rising to the top of the water and I hear a little girl laughing from one side of the river. I think to myself, "Laugh while you can, shithead. You're going to have to cross it next." Fun. Fun times. Let's see...what else??? I just painted my house yellow...well more like an off white/pukey yellow. So I originally bought bright yellow and white as the base and was like, "I am going to paint my walls egg shell(maybe a little brighter) yellow. I am such the domestic, interior designer." Well, there was not enough yellow for the white and the yellow did not exactly take to the white so now my house is kinda white with just ugly streaks of a shade I assume that passes as yellow. It was a two day long ordeal but I painted my house all by myself. When I told people, including the my dad the chief of the village, was taking on this endeavor, they were like, "That is not possible to do it yourself. Why subject yourself to that? Just have Ganga find you a boy to do it." Some of you may not know about my stubborness but I have quite a lot of it and when I run out of it, I always have plenty on reserve. Needless to say, I was determined to prove everyone wrong by doing the paint job myself. Not going to lie, really hard. Especially when your walls are high and your minus a ladder. What did I use, you ask? I balanced on my water bucket. As fun as this experience was, you will not see me with a paint brush in my hand.... I am thinking ever. When I get back stateside, I am hiring people to do this. I will be simply be the supervisor and there for moral support. When I head back to village I am going to stop by Laura's village for a couple of days to attend her village's festival that happens every three years. Really excited for that. And that's my life in a nutshell. Voila.