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.