The Necessities: Food and Sleep

The food. Oh, the food. Well there’s carbs, carbs, and more carbs. Since coming to Burkina Faso, I think about food. A LOT! Past volunteers say that you will never talk more about bowel movements or food in your life than during your service. I can attest to this. There is not a lot of variety, here. The restaurants in Ouahigouya (the third largest city) only serve one of four dishes: spaghetti, rice with peanut/tomato sauce, couscous with peanut/tomato sauce, or rice with beans. I have learned to scout out the restaurants that have salad, brochettes, and fries. On the nights that we stay in Ouahigouya, I will go to a restaurant and spend anywhere between 300 cfa to 800 cfa, which is about $0.60 to $1.50. If I really splurge on supper, I will spend about 1400 cfa ($2.80). They usually use a lot of oil here. Yep, a lot. Yep. Lol. I like to think that I will appreciate food even more when I go back home or into the capital (Ouaga). I can usually find some American, Italian, or Thai(there is a rumor this one exists—I will seek it out) restaurants there. However, in relative terms, they are quite expensive. Ouahigouya has a pretty good outside market where you can find apples, bananas, watermelon, guava, peanut butter/peanuts, eggs, bread, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, eggplant, yams, meat and fish (these two scare me), amongst spices and other things that I am sure I am forgetting. I only head to the market on the days that I come into Ouahigouya for class (two days a week). I usually will head to market and pick up some fruit or veggies and laughing cow cheese to make a sandwich. Other days, I will make peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch. I will pick up some fruit to bring home when I head back to village but as I do not have a fridge, they usually go bad within a day or two. The lack of food choices in village had made me creative in concocting new food combinations. My friend introduced me to frozen yogurt and peanut butter. I buy regular yogurt at one of the marts and will bring it back to ECLA (the center where we have class) and ask them to freeze it for me. After a few hours I will retrieve it and put peanut butter on top. It’s actually quite good. If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine it’s a peanut butter frosty.
In village, my host mom will usually give me one of the following: rice with peanut sauce, couscous with peanut sauce, spaghetti, or salad. I am actually pretty lucky because my mom will give me salad a few times a week. In Burkina Faso (for the locals) vegetables and fruits are expensive and I feel quite blessed that I get salad. Especially when one of my village mates only gets macaroni—every night. Every time my mom brings me my salad or any other dish I just have to laugh. She brings me enough food to feed a small army and probably all of their mothers. I usually will get one huge cauldron of just salad, another pot dedicated to onion and tomatoes, and another cooking pot dedicated to cucumbers. I usually mix all of the veggies together and put a little bit of oil, vinegar, and salt on top. So, so, yummy. She also insists on bringing silverware to me for every meal. The nerve of the women! Lol. When I arrived, I asked her if she eats with silverware, she responded no. I then told her that since her family did not eat with silverware, I would not either. Although, to this day, one month later, I still get served my supped with a fork and spoon. I have stayed strong and have not used them. I only eat about 1/4-1/3 of my food and usually ask my brother my join me. However, I feel bad because I usually have about 15-20 hungry kids around me. In the beginning, I did not know if it was appropriate to offer my family’s food to the children since I assumed most of them were neighborhood children(still could not tell you who is in my family and who is not). But now I try to offer the food to the children (when my brother is not around). Most of the time my brother will just take the food and just eat it for himself or share it with all of his brothers/friends? Even if I tell him to share it with the children. When I am done with my supper plate there may be a couple pieces of tomato or salad that I did not eat and one of the little boys will eat it like there is no tomorrow. It is kind of frustrating to watch my brother eat the rest of my food, even after I tell him to share. The Burkinabe people, especially those in village, like to eat to (pronounced toe). They have it for every meal. I believe it is ground up millet that it cooked with water. It then cools and has a consistency of malt-o-meal/cream of wheat. I tasted it once and it wasn’t very good. Well, no. It didn’t taste like anything. Here, the sauce makes or breaks the “to.” “To” is just like a filler. It has no nutritional value but it is cheap and abundant. During the first week I asked my brother what he was eating for dinner and he said to. I then asked what he ate the night before and he said to. I asked him what his favorite dish was and he said to. I then responded…. no, seriously. What is your favorite dish and he was like to. Even though the foods found in the market are less common than those in the city, people still do not eat them. They eat to for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Here is a list of some of the foods that I day dream about: CHIPOTLE! Potato salad, chili, cabbage salad, dad’s guacamole/hamburgers/lemon chicken, banana bread, cookie dough, ice cream, dried fruit, brown cinnamon oatmeal, and monkey bread. Seriously, the list could go on and on…. No, really. It could. However, in about a month when I get to site, I will be able to cook for myself as I will have my own kitchen. Today we had a cross-cultural class on maintaining good nutrition in Burkina Faso. We also received a cook book made up of recipes from past Burkina Faso volunteers who have had to cook without a stove, microwave, or fridge. Everything looks so good in it. If you haven’t figured it out already, I like food.

Depending on if I go to the cinema or not, I usually head to bed anywhere between 7:30 and 10:30. The first night I slept in village I thought I was having pre-menopausal hot flashes. It was over 90 degrees in my room. I kid you not. Since then, it has gotten considerably easier to sleep at night. Heat wise, anyway. Now, it is winter so it may get down to 60 degrees at night. I usually sleep with a pagne (a fabric that triples as my towel, blanket, and skirt). I usually have a chorus to hum along with during the night. And by chorus, I mean the animals. There are goats/sheep which sound like crying babies, roosters—oh, the roosters, chickens, orgasmic donkeys, and the praying/singing men. The goats usually wake me up around midnight, then come the sheep, and around three the roosters start. Some mornings the roosters start around 1:30. Oh, Lordy. Normally, the donkeys have no set time---they usually make their orgasmic noises all throughout the night. The first couple weeks I thought there was a sick baby living in my compound because all it would do was wail. I really wanted to go ask the neighbors which family had the sick baby so I could ask to see if it was okay. I never really did that though because at that time I could only say, “My name is Brittany and I am hungry/I like to eat.” Turns out, no baby--just the sheep and goats. Because I live in a Muslim region, there are four calls to prayer throughout the day. One of which is at 4:30 in the morning. I usually wake up to them singing but I’ve grown accustomed to them. In the beginning I was deathly afraid of sleeping in the dark. I suppose it was mostly because after 6:00 it gets dark, and since, there is no electricity, there are no lights anywhere in the village. I used to leave my lantern all the way on during the night but now I dim it so as to not to waste petrol. However, I swear there is a large animal that roams around in the room adjacent to my bedroom. The first night I woke up to rustling in the adjacent room. I thought someone had gotten into my room and was going through my suitcase. I almost peed my pants. I was so scared to say anything for fear that they would come into my room. I like to think of my mosquito net at my safety blanket. It surprisingly makes me feel safe. My house’s ceilings are lined with black garbage bags and I think the animal walks around up on them. That’s at least what I told myself…the farther away from me the better. However, on the nights that I wake up and have to go to the bathroom, I usually hold it until dawn breaks. Last night I had to go to bathroom around 1:30 but the noises in my houses were so loud that I held it until 5:45. I do have a funny story, though. During one of the first nights when I got to village, I had to go to the bathroom (this was during my three week long diarrhea fest). My screen door to my house can be locked on either side of the door. For some reason, my mom locked the outside so I couldn’t go to the bathroom in my latrine, which was located outside. So I had to go to the bathroom several times during the night in my shower bucket. I thought it was funny at the time--still do. Even with the chorus line and creepy animal, for some odd reason, I still wake up and feel refreshed. I guess it is because I go to bed so early. I never really feel the need to nap here.