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.

Have I Really Been Here For Nine Months?

9 months. I cannot believe I have almost been in Burkina for 9 months. Time really does seem to fly by. Okay, well the first two months of training seemed to take eternity and a day but the rest of my service seems to have flown by. During these last couple of months a lot has happened. There were some problems with the infrastructure of my house so now I have moved houses to live on part of the chief’s compound. He recently constructed a compound (set off from the main family compound) for one of his six wives and her children. However, I guess the Nasarra’s needs trump the wife’s so I get to live in the house. There is another house that is part of the small compound that has not been completed yet. I am not sure if once they complete it, she will move in right away. I am kind of hoping that she will not because I really do enjoy my solitude and privacy. I am thinking that if the completion on the house(there is not much left to complete) in on West African International Time (WAIT), then that will not be an issue because they probably will not have finished the house before my departure next December. Hot season ended about a month ago. Thank God. And now it is rainy season. For the last month and next few months everyone works in the fields from sun up to sun down. The mast majority of the Burkinabes’ income for the entire year comes from cultivating the fields during rainy season. When I walk, families will usually stop me and try to get me to work with them. I pick up the axe looking sort of tool and will do it for a couple of minutes…everyone will laugh and smile and then tell me I can stop. I think they just get a kick out seeing the Nasarra (whitey) do their hard manual labor. One of the times, I convinced an older woman who had motioned me over to help to let me cultivate for a good 30 minutes. After minute five, she kept asking me if I was tired and told me I could stop. I told her I was fine and continued to work. However, after minute 5 is when I started to develop multiple blisters on my hands. I did not show her these until about 30 minutes later. We compared hands. Hers: hard, rough, and deeply calloused from a lifetime of working in the fields and mine: soft and smooth with newly formed blisters. After seeing my blisters she was like oh no, you have to stop working you cannot have a blister. That is unacceptable. I laughed and told her it was okay for me to have some blisters but she would not let me continue. The Burkinabe do not have machinery to cultivate. Everything is down by hand with little axe looking tools or else if you are “wealthy”, you could afford a plow and donkey. Think circa 1800’s and before. Working in the fields is quite difficult and it has given me a deeper understanding of the Burkinabe life and how difficult life is here. To take part in the cultivation is a very humbling experience. On a random note, I finally have made a good friend, Masse, and I will often ask to help her and her family cultivate. She humors me but every fifteen minutes she asks me if I am tired and tells me I can stop if I want to. I help her family cultivate peanuts and millet. Masse, 32, has four children ranging in ages from 3-14. Her family is very loving and giving. I eat dinner with them several times a week. Her family is well off so I eat pretty well when I go over. The mass majority of family in my village can only afford to eat to (pronounced toe-millet dish that tastes like cream of wheat + sauce); however, her family makes spaghetti, rice, and to and often times with pieces of meat). When she feeds me she will always give me the biggest/most pieces of meat/fish and a big heaping plate full of spaghetti/rice etc. Afterwards, she will follow this up with giving me a plate of to. Normally, Burkinabe only have only to. I will eat some but do not even put in a dent in the meal as she gives me so much. She always tells me that I don’t eat but then I follow up that with that she gives me literally two meals (spaghetti + to) and way too much of each. I always am tempted to try to explain to her that I have a love hate relationship with carbohydrates: yummy to eat but not so great for the hips and thighs. They are like my frienemies (Burkinabe live on a carb diet as they eat to for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). While I love Masse and her kids, I tend to try to stay away from the husband. I do not see much of him anyway as he works in Zabre, a neighboring village, and will often come home after I have left. It is not that I do not like the man; he is very nice and a great conversationalist but he is always hitting on me. When I see him at the market or even in front of Masse, he is trying to get me to go out dancing with him or to have me cook for him. I will normally respond and tell him that he can go out dancing with Masse, his WIFE, while I look after his children or that instead of just me and him eating, his whole family can come over and I will cook for everyone. He will usually respond no and tell me he just wants it to be the two of us. I tell him he already has a wife, my good FRIEND, and my answer is no. Sulu, the husband, tells me: “I am Muslim and I am African; I can have 3 or 4 wives (and in some instance 8 wives—the chief of a neighboring village has 8 wives and 63 children—and no, that is not a typo: I said 63 children). Hence, I try to stay away from him. Work wise, I have done a couple of projects but since it is rainy season and everyone is working in the fields it is hard to get a lot of things done. However, I have conducted malaria focus groups with each quartier (neighborhood) of my village and helped with a pre-natal consultation sensibilization campaign in the neighboring satellite villages. I also started a women’s soap making group and where we make two kinds of soap: the hard kind and the liquid kind. They then can sell it in the market or around the village and make a small profit. I have also started an English club where I tutor kids; I really like this because when I pass them on the road or in the market they will try to use the new phrases they just learned on me or else teach it to the parents. The school year is over now but before it ended I started teaching health classes. This last week I spent the week with my friend in a neighboring village helping her with her girls’ camp. This next week I am putting on one of my own so she is going to help with mine. The topics discussed will center on reproductive health i.e. sex, puberty, contraception, excision, AIDS, family planning, and other topics life self esteem and communication skills. I am pretty excited for it to start. I even have boys coming up to me asking when the camp is starting and I usually respond: “you do know the camp is just for girls, right?” I think next year I will do one with boys and one week with girls. Talking about reproductive is always interesting because neither the parents, nor do the teachers, discuss sexuality/reproductive health with their children/students so often times they have no idea what sex is. And I can always be assured that the girls will giggle and laugh when we explain what exactly happens during sex. Last year, Laura my neighbor put on a camp, and asked the girls what caused AIDS and one girl raised her hand and said unprotected sex. Laura was like, “Great! That is correct. Let us continue” Another girl then raises her hand and asks what sex is. Laura then asked the class if anyone knew what sex was, and no one did. Kind of scary because the age range of these girls was between the ages of 11 and 16. Well I have rambled on long enough. Until next time!

A Little Thing Called WAIT

West African International Time (WAIT). Oohhhh, the infamous acronym that every volunteer in Burkina knows about, relates to, and most of the time hates. Ironically, the letters spell out something we do a lot of—this would be waiting. A LOT. This includes waiting for meetings to start, waiting for people to show up that never actually do, etc. The previous volunteer at my site taught my unofficial counterpart (he knows a small bit of English) and ever since him and I joke about this idea because this acronym pretty much defines my life, and every other volunteers, in Burkina. Often times when Ganga is informing me of a meeting that is to take place the following day at the CSPS (local clinic) or the time that he will be by my house the next morning, I will have to ask him: “now are we on WAIT or are we on American time?” He chuckles and responds with one or the other. Now, if he says WAIT, I can expect the meeting or his arrival to start anywhere between 2 hours to 4 hours late. Sometimes, he just doesn’t show up at all. If he says American time, he knows I want him to arrive on time but what ends up usually happening is that he will show up anywhere between 45 minutes to 2 hours late. One time I was leaving my house with Ganga to go have a meeting with the chief of the village and I told my host dad I would be back right away. Ganga then told me I probably should not have said that because the chief was a big talker and could keep you there for what seems like forever. Upon hearing this, I told Ganga: “Ganga, this is Burkina. Right away can mean 3 hours.” He laughs and then nods his head in accordance and tells me I am quite right. Ganga, a couple other health agents, and myself attended an AIDS conference in Koupela back in February. The conference was supposed to have started at 8:30 and at 8:32 Ganga points to his watch and informs me that we haven’t started on time and ask how much longer we would have to wait. While we may laugh about this a lot of the time, when one’s life is defined by this concept, it may become aggravating at times especially when Ganga will say he will be at my house to go start a sensibilization at 7 o’clock and 10/11 o’clock will roll around and he still is not there. So I wait, and I wait, and oh yeah, I happen to wait some more. It sometimes is frustrating because you don’t want to just sit in your house all days if you have other things to do. Sometimes I just say, ^%$@ it, I’ll just leave my house and do what I want to do and he can come find mean. I mean my village is small and lets be honest here it’s not that difficult to find the Nasarra (me, the whitey). Everyone knows what I am doing and where I am. When I first arrived to site, the only piece of furniture I had in my house was my lipico (a loose term for the word bed). It took a full three months to get my two counterparts to talk to and have the carpenter make the rest of my furniture. With this said, while meetings/projects are scheduled for one week and don’t end up actually happening until two months later, they do get done…eventually. When there are times I get frustrated and question how I can be an effective volunteer here when it may seem like there is no motivation from the community/they don’t care about getting things done, I simply just tell myself the project will get done, just not always on my time. When it comes to meetings at the CSPS, I usually will arrive at least an hour late, still be the first one there by at least a good 30-45 minutes. During this time, I usually will bring a good book with me to read and sometimes I will lie out on the concrete benches in the waiting room and take a nap. I am not really sure why the Burkinabe cannot show up on time; it’s not like they are stuck in traffic. The only things going down the dirt road are a few donkey carts and a few bicyclists. Patience and Flexibility: the two concepts the Peace Corps told us we would need to learn to have and embrace to be an effective volunteer here. I know these well.