Parades, Strikes, and Sean Paul...never a dull moment in Brukina

Merry Christmas everyone! Well, close enough anyway. We're definitely ready for Christmas here in Titao. Last week we realized that we should probably do a little house cleaning before my parents arrive for Christmas (we had a cobweb situation that could rival any haunted house). And so, armed with about 10 students, lots of soap, and the promise of a soccer game later, we got the house swept, mopped, and organized in about 4 hours. Since Burkinabé tend to keep their homes pretty clean, I'm sure we now have a bad reputation around town for how dirty our house was. Oh well.

The Independence Day parade was December 11th. It was fun, kind of. We arrived around 6am for parade line-up and finally started marching around 10. How did we pass the 4 hours of waiting time? It was a combination of standing in the sun, squatting in the sun, and being rushed into our formation by the officers in charge for no apparent reason other than we haven't done it in the last 20 minutes. Our group in particular managed to kill a lot of time whenever a new officer would walk by because they kept changing our formation and then changing it back again (2 lines of 6 or 6 lines of 2?). In the end, we went for a triangle- fancy! Our group consisted of 12 PCVs and 3 Japanese volunteers. According to our sign, between the 15 of us, we were representing all non-Africans in Burkina. Being the only white people in the parade definitely drew some attention. The highlight of the parade for me was getting to see and be the honored recipient of a wave from President Compaore himself (I like to call him "my boy Blaise") as he drove by before the parade. There was a huge military showing in the parade. The two groups that really stuck out for me were the "soldiers of the night" who wore black face masks and marched by punching the air in front of them, and the group of guys-who-watch-too-many-action-movies that put 7 armed people on one moto, each aiming their weapons in different directions, Charlie's Angels-style.

Two days after Independence Day every year there is a student strike in remembrance of a reporter that was killed. For the past few weeks, I asked the other teachers at our school if they thought our students would strike and they all unanimously said "no" since we weren't a major city. They struck. Two days in a row, the students let their teachers get 30 minutes into a lesson before they started filing out of class. Since I have the younger kids, they just sat anxiously watching other students file by the door, not sure what to do until I gave them permission to leave. The strike was actually convenient for us because it gave us two free days to finish filling out report cards.

A popular thing for women to do here before holidays is paint their feet and hands with henna. Last week I was henna-d by a student. I didn't realize what a big commitment this is: you have to sit still with plastic bags on your feet and hands for hours...twice! Now, whatever you might be picturing in your head for henna, stop there. The decorations they do here are not so much brown flowers and vines, but black bars (picture a lemur in prison). Unfortunately, we ran out of the black layer for my hand so it has maintained an orange umpalumpa-esque hue. Also, there was a little henna left at the end so my student decided to get creative and wrote "Mrs" (instead of Madame) across the top of one foot. This would have been a little odd, but okay except the "s" didn't come through very well so now my right foot has been tagged "Mr" across the top. Awesome.

Sean Paul had a concert in Ouaga last night. You have to admire a world-renowned artist coming to a small, little-known country to perform. Unless of course, that artist doesn't bother to learn the name of your country and continually mispronounces it throughout the show and only says one word, "merci", in the national language during the entire show. Mr. Paul's philosophical tweet before the show yesterday: "Brukina Faso is a poor country. The people have so much love tho."

On that insightful note, I hope you all have a fabulous Christmas. Thanks again to everyone for keeping in touch with calls, emails, and amazing packages. (Is this guy on the right fabulous or what!)

Pas de Titre

Hello everyone. Sorry it has been a while; we finally made it back to the internet- now I just need to remember how to use this French keyboard...where is the "m"!!!!

Life in Titao is going well. We gave our final tests yesterday so we have two more weeks of school to wrap things up and fill out our report cards before Christmas break. Our school principal was moved to a new city last month. It was interesting to see how everyone waiting until he was gone to tell us about how he was taking money from the school. Even our PC boss, who is based in Ouaga, alluded to it during his last visit to observe our classes. Since then we sat down with the new principal to discuss secondary projects we could do with the school. We spent a long time trying to figure out where all of the money the students pay in fees is going every year. The real mystery to me is our APE, the school's parent association. They get $7 from each of our 1000 students every year and when I asked what they spent it on, I was told they have the burden of buying drinks at our 3 annual meetings, buying lunch for inspectors when they visit, and paying for the bus tickets and lodging when students from two grades take national exams at the end of the year... Suffice it to say that I don't see any of our secondary projects involving us providing funds.

Speaking of inspectors, our school had a surprise visit this week from the regional inspectors. I'll never understand why these annual visits can't be planned more than one day in advance. (Don't get me wrong, I love the last minute shuffle to rearrange everyone's schedule as much as the next guy...keeps things spicy) Tuesday I was informed that the biology inspector would be watching my class on Wednesday and the English inspector would come Thursday. Naturally, Wednesday is my English day and Thursday is biology so we had to move everyone around to create classes at the hours they requested. My English inspection went well, but biology wasn't so great. The two main themes from the biology critique were: 1. you don't speak French (ouch!) and 2. you didn't do a real lesson, it was just a revision (my class had a test the next morning). The inspector seemed to derive joy from throwing one or both of these between any other topic..."you had a nice diagram on the board, but since you don't speak french and it was just a revision and not a real lesson, the students didn't need to copy it" Oh well. Any hard feelings from my critique were quickly washed away by the joy of watching all of the other professors stress out over their impending inspections. There was a fiery debate in the salle de prof over whether you should take attendence in the beginning of class or the end, the best way to hide your cellphone (which is the official timekeeper), and whether or not any new vocabulary should be underlined or placed in a separate box on the right. Priceless.

This year we decided to fête Thanksgiving in Djibo so that Aaron and I could get out of village for a weekend. Thanksgiving weekend happened to fall on the same day as Tabaski this year, kind of. In Titao, Ouaga, and most of the country, Tabaski was on Friday. In Djibo, Tabaski was on Saturday. I had several people explain to me how the day is chosen and why they were different. Don't ask me: I still don't know. All I know is that the bus from Titao to Djibo said it wasn't running on Tabaski but since there were two Tabaskis nobody knew for sure when, or if, the bus was coming. Thanksgiving was fun. We managed to find a pumpkin to make pies and our neighbor brought a turkey. Throw that in with some gravy and stuffing packets, and it was like mini-America, but with camels. There was a brief moment when I thought I wouldnt be stuffing my face over Thanksgiving due to a small language mix-up. I've developed a habit of just going along with what people say to me even if I didn't understand it all and figuring it out as the conversation continues. Normally, this works out. The other day, my friend Mariam (thats's right, I have a female friend!) was talking to be about something she was doing with her church for 40 days before the new year and told me I was invited to join. I wasn't sure what was going on, so I just went with it and said sure. Turns out that word I didn't quite catch, was somewhat crucial. She is fasting for 40 days. I don't fast; I get grumpy. I had to go back and tell her I'd pass this time, maybe during the hot season when you're already reaching unknown levels of physical discomfort everyday.

This Friday is Independence Day in Burkina. Every year they do a parade and ceremony in a new city and this year it is in Ouahigouya, near us. The volunteers from the region are going to be in the parade so we had to come into town for parade practice tomorrow morning. Whenever I tell people that we'll be in the parade on Friday but we're only doing one practice, I tend to get one of two reactions; outrageous laughter or stunned silence. I'm not sure what to make of this. Granted, the groups in Titao have been practicing for weeks, but how hard could it be? Get in a line, check. Right foot, check. Left foot, check... I do think we might have to do that awkward straight leg and arm march, but I think we can handle it.

How Do I Reach These Kids!

ςa fait deux jours! It's been two days! This is what we say in Burkina when you haven't seen or spoken to people in a while. I would say it's a helpful piece of colloquial knowledge if you plan on visiting the region and can help you avoid many awkward conversations where you respond, "no, it's been 3 weeks", followed by a weird silence.

The closing ceremony for English camp went well. We were told it started at 4, so we arrived at 3:30, just in time to hear that it didn't start until 6:30. The extra time was helpful, though, because they wanted one of the volunteers to give a small speech in French to the 200 or so students and parents present and that volunteer ending up being me. I think only those who witnessed me cringe and shake my way through freshman-year speech class can fully understand what a big step this was for me. Did my hands shake? You bet. But overall, it went well and I was somehow infinitely less nervous than during that first 5 min pick-your-topic practice speech from freshman year.

Unfortunately, our trip to Ouaga ended on somewhat of a bad note. We had a lot of heavy books and things to bring back, so we opted to take a cab instead of riding our bikes to the bus station. There was already a man in the backseat of the cab so I sat up front and Aaron sat in the back with one of our bags since our bikes had filled the trunk. The driver was acting weird and kept asking Aaron to move his bags so that he could see and the man in the back was coughing a lot and leaning over Aaron and out the window. At one point, we pulled over to the side and the cab stopped so the driver asked Aaron and the other man to get out and push, saying we were pretty much out of gas. Honestly, we didn't think much of this since we've experienced much worse things in Burkinabé cabs. Finally, after we'd driven a little further, the driver said that his car couldn't make it and pulled over to the side and started throwing our bikes on the side of the road. He told us the ride was free, he was out of gas, and pointed in the direction of the gare (bus station).

It took Aaron about 15 seconds to realize that his wallet was gone from the zippered pocket in his pants and by then the car (which suddenly had lots of dispensible gas) was gone. Interesting to note that although those jerks robbed us and dumped us on the side of the road, the driver actually pointed us in the right direction to the gare. That's service! After about 20 minutes of riding around with our heavy bags, we found the gare, hopped on the bus, and tried not to talk about what just happened.

School is in full swing now. Aaron and I are both teaching more hours this year. Aaron has three 6e math classes again as well as 1 5e math class. I'm teaching 3 6e English classes and 1 6e biology. We were told that, despite our requests to teach older students, the administration prefers to have us teach the younger kids because we motivate them to continue. While this is nice for the ego, we're fully aware that they're just making stuff up because Burkinabé teachers don't want to teach the younger kids. Can you blame them? This year, each of the four 6e classes have over 100 students and their French is poor to nonexistent. That is why M. and Mme Rose aren't taking any lip this year. We were told that classes started Oct. 1, so we began teaching Oct. 1 and our classes are silent. The other teachers at our school are funny. For the first 4 or 5 days, they came to school during their class times, but instead of going to class, they sat in the teacher's lounge and talked about how it was impossible to cover all of the material. When their allotted class time was over, they went home.

I'm always surprised at what an emotional rollercoaster teaching can be for me. There are some days when I walk out of class feeling like the queen of secondary education: I can teach these kids anything. Other days, I am overcome with flashbacks from Stand and Deliver, "how do I reach these kids?!" Overall, I think this year will go much better than last year for both of us.

I think by this point Americans have grown accustomed to the wide array of get-rich-quick reality shows that have inundated our culture. Some are interesting, but I feel most are rapidly speeding past "gone too far" territory. (i.e. recent story of couple who faked their child's disappearance in a hot air balloon with the hopes that it would result in a lucrative reality show deal). Well, our country is not alone, nor- I think- are we the worst: last week in Sudan they held a Koran quiz competition. Nothing wrong with seeing which of your neighbors knows their Koran the best, until you realize that the big winners receive AK47s!!! For the runners up, there are hand grinades, other small arms, and computer parts. Pretty scary.

Along those same lines, every year there is a prize awarded to an African ex-leader in recognition of good governance called the Ibrahim Prize. This is the biggest prize in the world: $5 million plus $200,000 every year for the rest of your life. This year, the committee announced that there will be no recipient. This is a sad commentary on the state of African politics and unfortunately overshadows many of the good things happening on the continent. But I believe that the Ibrahim foundation is correct in one aspect: most of the improvements and developments we see cannot be attributed to specific leaders, but are the results of the people coming together to improve their country.

One final note, I recently read the short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Hemmingway. Before reading this, I had heard two comments on it: 1. "that really made me want to climb Kilimanjaro" and 2. "isn't that the one about abortion?". Now let's look at the story: there is a couple who is on a safari-type trip in Tanzania. When the story picks up, and for the ensuing 26 pages the man is dying from gangrene on his leg. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that reading about how one little thorn in Tanzania can wreak such havoc on the body didn't leave me with any burning desire climb Kili. And perhaps I am too dense for the embedded gangrene-aborted fetus symbolism, but I didn't catch anything about abortion. Up next on the list is F. Scott Fitzgerald; I hear it has aliens!

Doing Things Differently This Time Around

Upon arriving back in Titao after 5 weeks in Ouaga, we decided that this was a good time to make a fresh start. There are a few things that we've chosen to do a little differently for our second and final year in Burkina. On the right you can see one of our more personal projects: bringing back the thumbs-up!

First, the grass. Thanks to our enclosed courtyard that doesn't permit the stray animal to enter and an abundant rainy season, our yard was somewhat jungle-esque when we returned. The grass was up to my waist and I had to hack a way to the latrine. However, much to the dismay of our neighbors, we have decided not to have someone dig it all up like we did last year. Instead, we've been inviting boys to come by with their cows and donkeys to graze (and hopefully leave behind some fertilizer for the soil). This is mutually beneficial because while the cows get free food, we get free help sweeping the porch and doing the dishes.

Second, laundry. Last year we did our own laundry. I'm not sure why. I believe that there was some unspoken desire to get the notch on our belts and the supposed bragging rights which we felt went along with this torment. Thankfully, we have seen the light and this foolishness is now over. To be honest, I hate doing my own clothes; it makes my fingers bleed, takes lots of water and time, and I'm not even very good at it. Saturdays are essentially a new holiday for us. We wake up Saturday morning with a depressing pile of dirty clothes; then, the laundry fairy from across the street sweeps in and all the dirty clothes disappear; a few hours later we have a pile of impressively clean clothes waiting for us. It's amazing! We now have more free time to go visit the town barrage (picture on the right) or grill some chicken (picture below).

Third, school. We're trying to have more say in what subjects or hours we teach this year. At first, this looked really promising: I was told by our principal that it should be no problem for me to teach English and Aaron could take the upper level physics courses, as requested. However, during our visits to school over the past few weeks things have began to look bleak because we are missing a lot of teachers and the school might be forced to put us in the classes and subjects that are more critical. A few days ago when I went to visit, the censur was simply shaking his head and saying "we have no other teachers for biology, english, history, or physics" (this pretty much leaves Aaron, myself, and the P.E. teacher). Classes are supposed to began next Thursday, but since we aren't planning on learning what classes we teach until Wednesday, I think we'll put off the first day until Monday.

Finally, tree planting projects. Our Moringa projects have been semi-successful thus far. The 200 trees planted in Salla, a village 3km away, are doing really well and we even did a sensibilization last weekend with the women's group that planted them. Continuing our tradition in cultural sensitivity, we brought informational booklets on moringa for each illiterate woman in the group and planned to do a cooking demonstration with moringa leaves for our grand finale, forgetting that we are in the last days of Ramadhan (on the right, some of the women getting fresh leaves from the trees). The women didn't seem to mind and we all chowed down village-style by using our hands to dip out some moringa leaf and cous-cous mush, rolling it into a ball in our hands before popping it in the mouth...yum. The other 400 trees are still AWOL. The President of the women's group told me they were planted in two neighboring villages, the man from our forestry service says there were planted at a women's center in town where they are now dying, and someone else from town says they are still at the tree nursery. I've managed to cancel out the latter, but I can't seem to find this elusive tree-murdering women's center or get in touch with the woman to find out what villages she went to visit. I feel like a much less-interesting Sherlock Holmes hot on the trail. Despite these difficulties, everyone we've been working with is really enthusiastic about planting more next year so we are looking forward to planting more next spring.

It's Raining Moutons Over Here!

We are almost done with our month-long stay in Ouaga. English camp has been fun, but we are excited to get back and see our friends in Titao. Teaching students from Ouaga has definitely been a different experience from teaching students in village. Most of these students are wealthy, or at least their parents are wealthy. They all seem to have nice motos, wear nice clothes, and speak better French than I do. The real shock for me was seeing how little they know about village life in Burkina. Many of them have never been to a village in Burkina...never. For vacation, they fly to France or Cote d'Ivoire or America; it's really unbelievable. Our first week of camp, we talked about the environment and one day I was asking the students what they knew about pollution and I had students answering me with things like "global warming" and "geothermal energy"!! Where do they get this stuff?

Every week at camp we have a song competition between the seven classes. Each class picks a modern American song from a list we compiled and they create a routine and perform at the end of the week. It's been really fun to see how creative they can be while singing Rhianna, Bob Marley, Alicia Keys, and Mariah Carey. I've still got my fingers crossed that a class will pick some of the songs I added (c'mon Jackson 5!).

In other, bigger news, mother nature unleashed her fury on Ouaga yesterday morning. Around 5am it started raining. By 6:30, we realized that the enclosed porch where we were sleeping had become a lake with our mattresses serving as slowly sinking islands. Around 9, the power went out and we were told that because of the extreme flooding around town we shouldn't go out. By the time the rain stopped at 3pm, it had rained 26cm, thousands of homes had been destroyed, and at least three people had been killed. I have never seeen so much rain in such a short period of time and based on the reaction of those around us, neither have most people here. School has been cancelled for the next two days because the classrooms were flooded. Ironically, despite the enormous amounts of water dumped on the city yesterday, there is no running water. There's also no power in most of the city, but that is to be expected since it tends to go out every other day with or without extreme weather (I'm not counting hot as hades as extreme weather).

Hopefully, by the time English camp ends on Sunday we will be given the okay to travel out of Ouaga. I'm excited to see how our trees are doing. I've been told that the women's group finished planting the remaining trees in two other villages around Titao so when we return I'll be riding around visiting everyone and trying to set up sensibilisations on how to use the Moringa leaves. As you can see, I'm trying to get pumped up for a second, and last, year in Burkina. It makes sense that Peace Corps is a two-year program: the first year is spent stumbling around in the dark not sure what you are doing and the second year is when you can actually get some work done, hopefully.

We are finally in Ouaga for 5 weeks of English camp. The tree planting is still a work in progress. After my sympathy campaign around town, I had about 20 people planning on meeting me the next morning to dig holes so I was getting really excited that we might be able to get the trees planted after all...wrong. One person came and he left after about an hour. By this point I was into my stubborn "let's just get it done" mode so I started digging myself. Shameful as it is, I actually thought if people in village went by and saw the white girl doing lots of manual labor they would jump in to help. After 3 hours, I had 16 holes out of 240 done, my hands were bleeding, my back was killing me, and nobody had offered to help. Finally, I accepted the fact that I would need to rethink our plans. There was no point trying to do a project where the people weren't investing their time and energy to contribute. Needless to say it was a frustrating day (made even worse by two people congratulating me on how fat I've gotten...thanks!).

A solution for what to do with hundreds of homeless trees finally presented itself when I was trying to forget my sorrows by ordering a bunch of dolo (millet beer) from a friend of ours and venting my frustrations to him. He returned to our house later that night, but in place of the liter of dolo I had requested, he brought a woman. It turns out that she is the president of a women's environmental group that works in all the villages in our province. The group has more than 1000 members spread throughout the province and she agreed to talk with members from each village and find a place for our trees and the labor to dig all the holes and make protective fencing. Things are looking up.

Of course soon after talking with her, she went out of town and I haven't seen her since so we've been talking through calls and text messages but she seems to be getting everything done. The village 3k away, Salle, didn't let us down either. The had all of the holes dug within a week and last Friday I went down to "help" (aka stand around) as their women's group planted 200 trees. Victory at last!

I made up with the Doctors Without Borders director last week too. After she bent the rules to give me a ride back to Titao so I didn't have to take the bus I decided she was no longer my nemesis and we could someday be friends.

Now we are settling in to spend the next month in Ouaga. We got a 1 month membership to the Embassy rec center so that we can use the pool and the gym and have been scouting out all the quiet places around town with free internet that we can use for graduate school research. I think we are going to try and take day trips on the weekends to get a break from Ouaga when possible. Today I am going with some other volunteers to a zoo just outside of town. We actually lucked out getting tickets to the zoo because it is normally quite a process to get in since it is located right next to a presidential palace. My understanding is that if you want to go you have to go to the tourist bureau in Ouaga and get permission to visit the zoo. If you get permission, you go to the zoo (35k away), but not to go in, just to pick up paperwork that you will fill out and return to the tourist bureau. If the paperwork is good, they will give you a pass. Luckily for us, when we dropped by the tourist bureau, the man was really nice and had some extra tickets that he gave us.

Back in Burkina

Now we are finally back home...kind of. Neither of us will be spending more than a week at a time in Titao until mid-September because we are working with the new group of volunteers during their PST during July and spending the month of August in Ouaga teaching English through the American Language Center. The little time we have in Titao has been spent trying to get our trees from Earth Day into the ground. To be honest, we should have planned this better. Trying to find volunteers to help us dig holes when everyone is busy cultivating in the fields is tough and those who aren't busy want to be paid to for digging hundreds of holes (can you blame them!).

We are putting 240 trees at the hospital in town. Since the Doctors Without Borders clinic will be using the trees for their malnutrition program, we arranged with their director to have the women staying at the clinic spend an hour one morning and help us dig the holes. Unfortunately, 10 days before we had planned to dig, a new director took over their program and now it is "pas possible." After hearing this, the rest of our meeting did not go well. The director mistook my silence for a problem of comprehension instead of shock and disappointment and then began to speak to me in loud, slow ENGLISH. Needless to say, messing up my plans and speaking to me like a child in my own language did not endear her to me and I left soon after.

After this set back, I embarked on a sympathy campaign around town to find holediggers. This consisted of riding around town, stopping to talk to anyone I knew, and shamelessly showing them my blistered hands while I asked what they were doing tomorrow morning. I went to school and offered the use of my soccer ball to those who would come and help (I get to play of course).

We are also planting 200 trees at a health clinic in a village 3km from Titao. The experience there has been completely different. Issouf, the forestier, and I showed up to measure and mark the planting site and there were immediately 7 men who had run home to get there tools and wanted to help. When we finished marking the holes (I say "we" but I just stood around stupidly the whole time), the president of the community decision-making group said he would get people together that week to dig all of the holes. Fantastic!!

I had a discussion the other day at lunch with some men about the Peace Corps philosophy on development work. It turns out that our school needs a new classroom and so some the men at the table mentioned that the white girl at the table could pay for it. I explained that my job wasn't to give them money but to teach them how to solve these problems themselves since there won't always be a volunteer around...etc. They listened attentively and when I finished, they said "I understand and we'll learn that in the future but right now we need a classroom so if your family could pay for it, we'll put their names across the entrance." Time well spent. I think my next strategy will be WWOD: What Would Obama Do? Maybe coming from Barack, the message will be better understood.

Part 4: Zanzibar

We arrived back in Moshi from Ngorongoro after dark and went about repacking our bags once again for our departure the next morning for Zanzibar. The beach at last!! The trip to Zanzibar was in two parts: 8hr bus ride to Dar es Salaam where we'd spend the night meet up with our friends Kai and Janet, and then a 2hr ferry ride to the island the next day. The bus ride was mostly uneventful. I just want to mention the 2hr movie we watched because it was particularly awful. Here's the basic story: man cheats on his wife and hits both her and his girlfriend. Girlfriend gets pregnant so he starts being nicer to her and meaner to the wife. Girlfriend gives birth and man finds out it's not his kid so he goes back to his wife. They live happily together because she understands that he just wants to be a father! Terrible.

Zanzibar is amazing! You know those postcards of people sitting on a beach and it looks like paradise, it was here (or maybe Hawaii). We are spending 6 days in a town on the east coast called Paje. Our hotel is run by a fun Italian couple and is on the beach. The first few days were a haze of playing at the beach, lazing in hammocks, and sipping cocktails. All of the local rice dishes were cooked with coconut milk, so we had lots of curry with different meats in the sauce (octopus, king fish, etc). Unfortunately for Kai and Janet, the vegetarien options were a little more limited and so they embarked on a "vegetable curry tour of zanzibar".

We took a day trip to Jazoni Forest, the last protected remains of the forest that used to cover the whole island. This forest is famous for the Red Colobus monkeys that are only found on Zanzibar and the welcome center has a big sign about keeping your distance from the monkeys so you don't give them human diseases. However, once you enter the forest, you really don't have a choice because these little guys have no fear of humans and they are really friendly. They were running in between us and jumping around our heads hitting us with branches. As luck would have it, right as we entered the monkey haven, our camera ran out of space so we don't have many pictures of them. Our guide was really funny and talked nonstop the entire trip. He liked to do voices for all of the animals and loudly lament that it was too quiet in the forest. Luckily, the animals seemed used to his shouting and we still saw lots of cool forest creatures.

After 6 days of lazing at the beach, we travelled back to Stone Town, the major city on Zanzibar. Stone Town is fun because it is a tourist stop where local people are living so it doesn't feel quite as theme-parky as some of the other places we'd visited. It is surrounded on three sides by water so you can spend hours wandering the endless, narrow alleys and not get lost. It also turns out to be impossible to get a bad meal in this town.

We stayed at a hostel run by the Anglican Cathedral. The picture to the right is of a tangle of spider webs strung between two trees containing about 100 hand-sized spiders. This was just outside our room balcony. The Cathedral is actually a big tourist stop in town because below the hostel, there are holding chambers from the old slave trade and the cathedral alter is located where the old whipping post once stood. We took a spice tour our second day in town and drove to a spice plantation where you get to see all the plants and eat a lunch cooked with local spices. It was interesting to hear which spices are grown locally and which aren't (contrary to what they try to sell you in the shops). One of the highlights of Stone Town (for the carnivores in the group) was the night fish market. Every night, you could find a whole line of cooks selling freshly grilled fish, crab, lobster, shrimp, Zanzibar pizza (veggies cooked on an Indian tortilla), and freshly pressed sugar-cane juice. The market is normally found in a park by the water, but the park was under construction during our stay and moves every few nights to a new location so it took us a few nights to find it. Our last day in Stone Town, we visited a museum where they had an AIDS presentation put together by local kids. They explained that since the island wasn't hit as hard with HIV/AIDS, there is a much bigger stigma and misunderstanding by the people here and so the presentation was local kids and teens with AIDS telling their stories and asking local people to be more accepting. I was really touched by their courage and started crying which was really uncomfortable since we were immediately surrounded by pseudo-Masai people hassling us to come into their shops.

In order to get back to Moshi in one day (Dar didn't really impress us and we didn't want to spend the night there again), we decided to take the night ferry back. The night ferry leaves Zanzibar at 9pm and arrives in Dar at 6am. Thus, a ride that normally takes 2 hours is extended to 9 hours, the ticket price is cut in half, and you don't need a hotel room. When we arrived, we were escorted to the (mandatory) "VIP room" with couches and comfortable chairs, which seemed to be the room where they stick all the white people. I meant to find out why the trip took so long at night (do you sit in the harbor for a few hours?) but fell asleep right away instead only to be woken up around 2 by a German girl near us getting seasick. Poor girl. When we arrived in Dar, we headed to the bus station to catch the first bus to Moshi. The Dar bus station is full of faux-types, overflowing really. And what made it difficult was that I can't really understand what their strategy is. They follow you nonstop and are always trying to "help" and show you to the ticket office or the bus, but really they are just confusing you. How do you make money confusing people? When we arrived, we were led to the "ticket office" where a guy told us the 7am bus had left and the 7:30 bus was full. He even went to the trouble of looking at a fake passenger list. Finally, we were tired of him lying to us so we walked around and found the bus we wanted (the 7am) and hopped on (still being grabbed by our "guides").

Our last day in Moshi we finished up our shopping (Kilimanjaro coffee!) and walked around town one final time. It was sad to say goodbye to such a beautiful place, but I was also happy to get home and finally unpack.

Part 3: Safari

Since we got off the mountain a day early, we decided to do a 2-day safari before heading east to the beach. We arranged to spend one day at Lake Manyara park, only 3 hours from Moshi and famous for sightings of lions sleeping in trees, spend the night outside the park, and visit Ngorongoro Crater, famous for being jam-packed with animals, the second day.

And so, one day after finishing the climb, we hopped in a van (not really "hopped" since we were really sore from the downhill; more like "waddled") and headed to Lake Manyara. On the way to the park, we seemed to enter into a Disney-style themepark version of Tanzania. The only other people at the stops for gas or lunch were tourists decked out in their safari regalia (white safari shirts, cargo pants, big tan hats, and camera around the neck). It was unreal and would have definitely tainted the experience except that the drive itself was really beautiful and distracted me.


Lake Manyara park was a lot of fun. We popped up the roof on the van so that we could look through. Immediately, we ran into a group of monkeys hanging out on the side of the road and right after passing them we were brought to a stop by an elephant walking out of the trees right in front of us. Luckily, our driver had a little more self-control than the safari driver from Burkina and stayed calm so that after a few minutes of the elephant facing us, it got bored and walked off. Aside from lots of monkeys and baboons, we also stopped to see hippos, zebras, giraffes, warthogs, flamingos, and lots of antelope-like things. And then,...we saw them...lions sleeping in trees! There were two adult females and three cubs all sleeping in a tree not far off the road. It was really cool. Another cool sighting during our drive: 4 people that climbed Kili with us. We took pictures of each other; I think, mostly, because we were in safari-mode where you take a picture of everything and stop to look at it later.

Day 2: Ngorongoro Crater. We had a 1-hour drive from our hotel to the crater so we started early in order to get down into the crater before the animals got drowsy. Our driver was convinced that all animals were lazy. Anytime we stopped to look at an animal and it was just standing or laying, he would shake his head and say "lazy" (I can only wander what they must think about us as we drive by in cars). Currently, there are Masai people living around the rim and you can arrange to do a walking safari with them through the crater. However, despite the park brochure's boasts that they are balancing traditional ways of life with tourism, the park service is slowly kicking the Masai people out; it is pretty sad and made me feel more than a little guilty about my role as a tourist.

The crater isn't really that big, only 18km in diameter, which explains why so many people come here because it hosts tons of animals. We had wildebeasts (the big ones that killed Mufasa), water buffalo (we decided they looked Swedish), and zebras walking right next to the car all day. We stopped to watch a pride of lions sleeping in the grass and ate lunch next to a lake filled with hippos. All in all, it was amazing!!.

Part 2: Kilimanjaro

Let me just say that climbing Kilimanjaro was definitely one of the coolest things we have ever done. I will try not to bore anyone with all the nitty-gritty details, but I want to share the whole experience.

We are climbing the Machame Route with the plan to complete the climb in 7 days. This route is supposed to be prettier and less populated than the Coca Cola route. The minimum number of days required is 6 but we added an extra day to give us more time to acclimate. Our first big shock of the climb was to learn how many people would be climbing with us; I do not mean other climbers, but porters. All told there were 14 people in our party: Aaron and myself, our guide, assistant guide, cook, and 9 porters (one of whom was to serve as the waiter at meal times). We had an entourage!! Even now, I cannot write about this without feeling a little humiliated that so many people were going to be involved in getting just 2 of us up the mountain. Talk about high maintenance!

Day 1: We were picked up from our hotel at 7:30 (18 hours after arriving in TZ) the next morning. It turns out that the guy who organized our trip is kind of famous. If you've seen the IMAX movie on Kilimanjaro, he's the lead guide. The drive to the park entrance was a bit surreal for a few reasons: 1. I couldn't believe we were about to start climbing, and 2. we were listening to this bizarre mix of American songs that someone had on an MP3 player (my favorite was "Grandma got ranover by a reindeer").

Our first day was a 10km climb from the Machame Gate (1950m) to Machame Camp (3300m). The hike was really beautiful. We started in the rain forest and ended in moorland - this may not be the correct term, but it's what our guide used. It was really cool to see the terrain and vegetation change as we changed climactic zones. Overall the first day wasn't too bad. What you'll hear everyday on the mountain is "pole pole" which means "slowly slowly", so that's what we did. We were told that it's important to eat while you can because most people lose their appetites from the altitude so we ended our first day by pigging out.

Day 2: Every morning on the mountain starts with "wake up tea" at 6:30, which is brought to our tent (at this point, we still haven't realized that we have a waiter). After tea, we are given a bowl of warm water to wash with before packing up our bags and eating breakfast. Today's hike was 8km to the Shira Plateau (3810m). The hike was pretty steep so we walked slow and arrived at Shira in time for lunch. After lunch our guide, Richard, took us another 200m up to the Shira Hut to get a good view of the plateau and acclimate a little more before going back down to sleep. Every night, Richard measures our pulse and oxygen levels to make sure we are doing okay with the altitude. He says at the base, our oxygen levels are around 100 and at the summit they will be in the 70s. So far we've been in the low 90s, so we're doing really well.

Day 3: It's the third day and I can't believe I'm still feeling good and I'm not even sore! I start today's hike like I have the last two by thinking, "today's going to be the really tough day". Today we are going 7km up to the Lava Tower (4400m) for lunch and then descending for 3km to the Barranco campsite (3910m). There are about 20 hikers that started the climb the same day we did, so we've been making some friends on the trail. I'm starting to feel a little less ashamed as I realize that the other hikers also have their own army of porters. It looks like we've been some of the few not to get sick from the altitude or the food yet. I would say our only biggest health problem right now is sunburn; even the backs of our hands are getting burnt!

We crossed into our third climate zone, desert, at lava tower (picture on the right). After living in Arizona and Burkina, I've seen my fair share of desert so I was happy to descend back down to moorland after lunch. The descent after lunch was probably the hardest hike we've done so far. It was steep and really hard on our legs. I'm going to be upset if my first day of sore muscles is because of 3km of downhill! The Barranco camp is set in a canyon filled with these funny cactus-like plants and is pretty chilly so we mostly hang out in our tent to keep warm. We're slowly learning more about Richard. He used to work for the park service and says he's climbed Kili 3000 times (we think he means 300) and his fastest time is 24 hours - pretty impressive. Today we got our first good glimpse at the summit. It still seems much too big and far away.

Day 4: Today is another 10km to camp. We are hiking 7km to lunch and then 3km to Barafu camp (4600m). On the trail map, the first 7k look pretty flat, this is very deceiving. It is actually 7k of climbing up and over steep ridges. I know that going up and back down helps you acclimate but when your goal is to reach the summit, there is something very unsatisfying about climbing 2000 ft only to descend 1900 immediately.

After talking with Richard, we've decided to do the climb in 6 days instead of 7. This means we'll be attempting the summit tomorrow and if we don't make it, we'll have another day to try again. He also says that it would be easier if we start the climb around 5am instead of midnight, which is what most people do. Since we seem to be the only people not getting sick from the altitude, I think he's been doing a good job so we decide to take his advice and sleep in a few hours before the summit tomorrow. (We'll take some altitude sickness medicine just in case- don't want to press our luck.) The picture above is Aaron fixing my trekking pole during our lunch break.

Day 5- Summit Day!! Today we attempt the summit. We ate a quick breakfast of tea, pourridge, and muffins (no eggs today because they might make us vomit) and were off a little after 5. The porters are going to wait for us at camp, so it's just the two of us, Richard, and our assistant guide, in case someone gets sick. We put on all of our clothes for the climb - it's really cold up there! The ascent is 5km to Uhuru Peak (5896m) of steep uphill. The first 4k took us over 4 1/2 hours...pole pole. It was steep switchbacks with blizzard-like wind blowing and fogging up my glasses. One thing I learned from summit day was that Richard is not to be trusted to give an honest description of the trail. He told us the trail to the summit was an even mixture of really steep, kind of steep, and flat. Untrue. It was about 90% really steep, 9% slightly steep, and 1% flat. He also has a tendency to tell us we are almost to certain points when really we have another hour of climbing. But looking back, I think it's better he lied; the truth would have been too depressing. The other climbers we had been hiking with started the ascent at midnight so a few of them passed us on their way down which gave us some encouragement.
Finally, around 10am, we saw the sign announcing the peak through the clouds. We were told that when you reach the peak, you are so tired and feel so ill that you just want to get back down. Luckily for us this was not the case. Aaron had a headache and my stomach was doing something weird, but overall we were feeling really good. We took some pictures, danced a little and then I was hit with the feeling of "so what now?". Unfortunately, it was too cloudy to see the crater or more than a few minutes of the glaciers so after about 20 or 30 minutes we headed back down. The descent was fast - 2 hours to get back to camp. It turns out that I'm not very good at walking downhill; my total number of falls: 4. When we reached camp, all of the porters congratulated us, which was really nice, and we had a hot lunch before continuing another 2 hours down to a lower camp for the night. We finally realized on our last night that the same porter was always bringing our food and tea...we had a waiter!

Day 6: This is our last day on the mountain and also the day I was finally feeling really tired and just wanted to get down, pretty convenient. Our legs were pretty sore from the summit and descent yesterday (I never knew downhill could be so hard on your legs!). On the Machame route, you take a different, more direct path down so we only had about 11 or 12 km to the park gate. We realized yesterday that we never lost our appetites and that eating enormous amounts of food was no longer justified (especially since we're going to the beach next week) so we cut back a little on our meals, which really confused Richard. After about 4 hours, we reached the bottom where we received certificates with the date and time of our summit and gave all of the porters their tips before saying goodbye. By the time we reached the bottom I was really tired and, I think, more than a little grumpy and sore so I don't have many recollections from that morning. The picture above is our whole group minus 3 porters. We had a group of 3 brothers whose grandfather died so they left yesterday morning to attend the funeral.

I apologize if this was too long; you'd be surprised what I left out. If there is anyone thinking of doing the climb and wants more info on routes, guides, etc. feel free to write us. The next day we started our safari so watch for another entry with some cool animals...

Tanzania: Part 1

Jambo from Tanzania! We have been really busy and having an amazing time in Tanzania so far. There's a lot to talk about so I think we'll do this in installments. Let me start by saying that I cannot think about this trip without a flood of superlatives coming to mind so prepare yourself to read about things that are the most, best, greatest, etc.

First, the flight to TZ. We got a good first-hand look at the security of the Burkina airport as we were leaving. We watched as every member of the flight crew set off the metal detector and kept walking without anyone so much as raising an eye. Then, all of the passengers are subjected to a very public patdown. When it was my turn, the lady grabs my money belt under my clothes and announces in two languages (in case anyone was confused) "money, ok": very discreet.

We had an overnight layover in Ethiopia and were pleasantly surprised to find that the airline had booked us at a local 4-star hotel where the employees were very eager to please and even more eager to apologize for anything. At one point, I had someone apologize to me as I was walking up the stairs. I am not sure what that was supposed to mean, perhaps it was "I am sorry that you are walking up these stairs instead of me carrying you." At any rate, it was more attention that we are used to or comfortable with.

We flew straight to Kilimanjaro airport, which was amazing because we got to fly right next to the summit on our way in. I was pretty intimidated by how huge it was; excited, but really intimidated. Our trekking company picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel in Moshi. It was pretty unbelievable that we were going to be picked up at 7am the next morning to start the climb. It felt like it was coming too fast. We spent the few hours left of the afternoon walking around Moshi, buying altitude sickness medicine, and staring at the mountain towering over us. Our first impressions of Tanzania, it is beautiful. It is so green here I can't believe it. I got really jealous walking through their fruit and vegetable market. It's been hard for us to adjust to everyone speaking English here. We keep answering people in French out of habit.

Coming up...the climb

Kilimanjaro. Check.

Only have 4 minutes to write this. We just hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. It was awesome. Tomorrow we leave to go on a safari for 2 days. Then to Zanzibar. We'll write more and add pictures later. Hope all is well.

Moore 101

Thanks to our friends at the marché, "Emy" and "Harouna" have slowly been improving their Moore. Here are a few key things we've learned:

sida = husband: Learning this during training would have really saved me some trouble. In French, AIDS is called SIDA so you can imagine my confusion when everyone at the marché one day kept asking me how my "sida" was doing. I told them, in Moore, that I actually don't have AIDS but they insisted I did and wanted to see it. I actually started to get a little upset as more and more people joined in to insist that I had AIDS until finally someone mentioned "Harouna" and I figured it out.

If in doubt, mmbaa or mmdaa: It turns out that this is an official response to a lot of things, so if you're not sure what someone is saying, just throw it out there and there's a good chance it'll work. There is supposedly one of these that women say and another one for men, but I can never remember so I just kind of mumble it. The other day some old guy rattled off some incomprehensible Moore to me so I gave him a nod and an "mmbaa" and he looked shocked and told all his friends that I speak Moore.

wend.....-> amina: There are a lot of different ways to say goodbye and they normally involve some kind of blessing and the word "wend" (might be "wenda") for God. Anytime you hear a sentence start with this, you can just tune out the rest because the answer will always be "amina" (amen).

ligdi ya wanna?: Pricing in Mooré is kind of odd. We've learned the Moore words for most of the prices we use in the marche (100F, 50F,...) but it doesn't actually mean we've learned the words for 100 or 50 in Moore. This is because there is a conversion of 4, or maybe 5 (I missed this session in training), between Francs and Shells. Moore prices are given in Shells which means when I wouldn't use the same Moore words to buy 25 mangos and pay 25CFA.

There's been lots of other things, but we'll leave it there for today. In case there are any lingistic scholars out there, many (and probably most) of these Mooré words might be spelled wrong. Since we learn by talking to people, I just write them how they sound to me and have no idea how to spell them.

Pictures!

Here are some of the new pictures:

Potato marché: every stall is full of potatos or onions.

Soccer with the girls club.

Issouf, our forestier, talking with the students

Planting the seeds

This picture wouldn't be nearly as funny except that it wasn't posed - this is how I found Aaron one day. This is what the hot season has done to us.

The kittens have brought out Aaron's maternal instincts. Quick note about the facial hair: Aaron decided to stop shaving sometime back in March. We have been shocked at how a culture of supposedly indirect communicators have been so direct in telling him that they don't like it and he should shave.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing teenaged boys walking around school holding hands. Here are some of our students.

Awarding the top students

Our trees after 2 weeks

This guy is incredible. He got all of the soil ready for planting and waters the trees everyday. He does it all for free but we occasionally bring him some lunch.

Holy Heat Rash!

School is finally ending. These last few weeks were tough for everyone: teachers and students. Luckily, there were enough (unexpected) holidays and special testing days thrown in to keep things exciting. The girls club has come to a somewhat tragic end for the school year. We had been playing soccer and dancing every Friday night and a few weeks ago during our soccer games, one of the girls called me "nasara". This immediately ended our soccer game and any future soccer games. I probably would have let her off the hook if she had apologized, but she decided to laugh about it instead...she should've apologized.

Each class at school has a "professor principal" who is like the homeroom teacher responsible for the class and any problems with discipline or grades can be brought to the PP. I brought the problem to the PP of her class thinking he might talk to her for a while, take a few points off....the usual punishment. The next thing I knew I had a bunch of girls in the salle de professors (teachers lounge) crying their eyes out and apologizing. It turns out that the PP decided to punish the entire girls club by lowering their grades (still not sure by how much), and expelling them from class for a week. I tried to tell him that we could just punish the one girl but he is now convinced that they are all bandits and the others should have corrected her, but they didn't, so they are just as guilty. While I appreciate his help and I'm sure this is how Burkinabé teachers handle problems like this, I feel like this might hinder any future girl's club participation. Next year if I try to advertise for girls to join, what can I say: "Remember that big group of girls you saw crying outside of class for an entire week? That could be you!" Maybe I'll try an English club instead.

We're getting ready for our trip to Tanzania next month. Getting in shape for Kilimanjaro has been pretty challenging since Burkina is blessed with an abundance of conditions exactly opposite of what we'll find on Kilimanjaro (hot, flat, sea-level). I do a lot of walking with a heavy pack on really early before it gets too hot and we've created a home gym equipped with weight machines (Puma backpack filled with rocks) and a stairmaster (cement block next to the house). After all this work, I really hope I make it to the top of Kilimanjaro. If I don't, I hope I can at least fail with some dignity. If I were to get violently ill from the altitude or get injured saving a fellow hiker from a falling boulder, there's some dignity in that - a little less in the case of the illness. But if I don't make it because I've stopped on the side of the mountain crying because I'm too tired to go on, that's just disappointing. I don't want to rule out crying like a baby, it might very well happen, but I do hope that I will get up and keep walking afterwards.

All that stuff I had said about it not being that hot...I was wrong. These last two weeks have been wretched. It's too hot to nap, but too hot to move, so we've been reading a lot. Luckily, I think we will start having some cloudy days every now and then to cool things off. We actually had about 5 minutes worth of rain last night which was enough to make the next day almost comfortable. My heat rash is awesome now. Everyday I discover new clusters of red bumps.

School is now over for us. Aaron had the fun idea to capitalize on the Burkinabé love affair with certificates and printed off certificates for the girl and boy with the highest grades in our classes and give them some candy. We also recognized the most-improved boy and girl in each class, but didn't have time to print them certificates so they just got candy. The award ceremonies were fun. We still struggle to tell which students are boys and which are girls based on their names; as a result, the most improved girl in 6C math turned out to be a boy, oops. Both Aaron and I met with our proviseur this week to talk about what subjects we'd like to teach next year. It sounds like I might get to teach English (a subject I know about) and Aaron will teach physics as well as math. Hopefully, this will all work out. I think the fact that the school doesn't have to pay us gives us a little sway in what classes we will teach, but not much.

Earth Day and other things

Other big news from Titao: The government-run electric company has finally finished their 5-yr long expansion of their power lines from the nearest city 28 miles away and we now have electricity!! Life is pretty good on the grid. It hasn't made a big difference in our lives except that we have street lights on our two main roads and we can finally find yogurt. Who am I trying to kid...yogurt!...it's made a huge difference. The other big arrival that we are constantly reminded of has been the infamous hot season. It seems to be the favorite pasttime of people around town to ask us how we are dealing with the chaleur. Honestly, it's hot, but I was expecting much worse. After months of hearing about the hot season, I was ready for unimaginable awfulness but it's really just a lot of imaginable sweatiness (and I mean A LOT of sweatiness), and the occasionally heat rash in unexpected places.

We are now finishing our first school year - hurray! It's been fun... sometimes. Lately, I've been trying to incorporate the kids' knowledge of American culture into our classes. Last week in Review-Jeopardy, Barack Obama destroyed Eminem, Shakira, and 50 Cent. I also taught the girls club some American dances. Really, they couldn't have found a worse resource for American dance moves...I know nothing. So far we've done the electric slide and the macarena. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know; otherwise, I'll have to bring out the lawnmower and maybe the sprinkler.

We heard the best song on the radio on Easter Sunday. It was set to lounge-type music and the only lyrics of the song were: "Jesus, il est comme ca" (Jesus, he's like that). Enough said, I guess. The kittens are now in their cute phase. Before they were boring and slept all day, and later they will be too big to qualify as "cute" so these are the golden weeks right now.

Yesterday we did our Earth Day tree-planting with the students from our school. We had about 45 students come representing almost every class at our school. The first hour or so was a sensibilisation from our local forestier about the importance of trees, deforestation, littering, etc. and then we had another PCV who lives near us speak about the nutritional and other properties of the trees we were going to plant. Finally, we got to work opening water sachets, packing them with pre-mixed dirt, sand, and manure, and planting the seeds. They planted 1000 sachets with 2 seeds in each sachet just to be safe. The majority of the trees were moringa which are becoming popular here for their use in malnutrition but we also planted some neem seeds that will be transplanted with our moringa trees because they are supposed to keep termites away.

Overall, the tree-planting went pretty well. There were the normal surprises and hiccups: like when our school told us three weeks in advance that there wasn't class Tuesday through Thursday only to tell us the night before that there was class and we needed to change the date for the tree-planting; or when the forestier told us 2 weeks ago he had extra seeds, but then he didn't bring them for the planting so he left to get them, and came back saying he didn't have any. I would still call it a success. Of course, we aren't done yet. Our work for the next month will be planning out the area at the hospital where we will be transplanting the trees, finding people to dig the holes and a way to protect the trees from animals, and teaching the people at the hospital about moringa and how to use it in their malnutrition program.


By the time we finish that, it will be time for a vacation! Tanzania here we come...

Potato Festival

Sorry for the long absense, we've been in village (without internet) for the last 7 weeks or so. We're pretty excited to get away for a few days. The only drawback to leaving village is taking transport. We still have a hate-hate relationship with our local transport. We hate that they are normally anywhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours late because the bus has broken down; but we also hate that sometimes the bus arrives 30 minutes early and leaves without you. Today was an early day. We arrived at 8:25 for the 8:30 bus to find that it had already come through town 30 minutes ago. The next bus doesn't come for another 7 hours and we didn't feel like waiting, so we stayed on the side of the road until we found a nice construction truck to take us. The ride was actually more comfortable (and perhaps safer) that the bus.

There's a lot to catch up on from the last 2 months, so let's start with the safari...

Like Aaron said, we went to visit the southeast of Burkina during our spring congé and went on a safari with some other volunteers. While it is true that our safari driver did drive kamakaze-style straight at a herd of running elephants with no escape plan, I would say that I was pleasantly surprised with our overall safari experience. I had visions of the car breaking down before we even reached the park, the driver demanding extra money or just not showing up at all, but everything actually worked out really well (except, of course, for the part where we almost died).

We arrived home to Titao just in time for the annual fête de la pomme de terre, or potato festival. That's correct: Titao's big claim to fame is the annual potato festival that happens every spring. Why a potato festival? From what I can tell, it is part of a bigger effort to fight hunger in Burkina and find plants that people can cultivate in the north where water is scarce (plus, we just like to party). If you are thinking that a potato festival can't possibly be that exciting, think again. This thing is a big deal. They sell t-shirts. There was a ceremony in the morning with the usual three hours of speeches and dance troops followed by prizes of farming equipment for the top cultivators this year and then they opened up the potato marché. This was the funniest thing I've seen in a while: rows and rows of vendors standing next to huge piles of seemingly identical potatos with signs that let the anxious customer know which village these particular potatos hail from. We wanted to take a picture at each stand, but realized it would take too long.

No small town potato festival would be complete without the election of Miss Pomme de Terre. The festival ended at night with a competition between 10 girls for the honor of being Miss Pomme de Terre. I wanted this so bad and spent all day securing votes, but it turns out the competition was already closed. Next year. Each girl had a tailored dress made and took turns walking out on stage, showing off their outfits, and striking their best poses. For the second round, each girl had to explain why they wanted to be Miss Pomme de Terre. Trying to pick the winner was tough; I felt like Tyra Banks. (That girl was fierce.) Of course, in the end I wasn't actually a judge and the real judges didn't care what I thought. One of my students was competing, so I was cheering for her, but she blew it on the Q & A so they gave it to another girl. The winner wasn't announced until 2am, so by that time I was too tired to be truly disappointed.

The Burkina Faso Safari Experience

Good Day Folks!

We just returned from a day-long safari in the southeast of BF. What a trip. We put 7-8 people in two jeeps with a couple "guides," some water, and a "gun."

I don't have long, but suffice it to say it was a proper safari, if a little on the unprofessional side.

Everything went fine for a while. We saw antelope and monkeys and warthogs from far off. We stopped at a small lake and saw several hippos in the distance.

Later we stopped along a river and I almost got attacked by a giant lizard. I was carefully watching the water for crocs and moving along the waters edge (a safe distance away from it) and ran right into a 4-foot long lizard than bolted from me.

Eventually we even came across some elephants. Well, a whole heard of elephants, perhaps 60 according to the guide. What do you do when you see a heard of elephants running kids and all? You drive straight at it really fast until you get so close you don't have any room to maneuver. Then, when two elephants turn to you and one starts charging, while you have enough time to drive away, you try to load the gun instead. Then, when the gun doesn't seem to be working, and there are two guides in the back without the steering wheel and throttle, you finally toss the gun back to them, hitting Amy in the head with it, and start fumbling for the wheel again. We almost ran into a tree that would have stopped us for good. Somehow, though, we managed to drive away with about 10 feet to spare.

Turns out the gun was broken and the guides weren't exactly the most experienced. As Jenny said, they're like little kids--except they now have guns and a car.

It was quite a frightening experience, yes, but we're alright. It was also very real. Something to keep in mind: you pay for what you get. Pay for an experienced guide or don't let him get so close.

Check out the photos from the trip by clicking the slide show to the right. They'll tell the rest of the story.

New Pictures

I finally posted some new photos we've taken in the last month or so. Most of them are from Women's Day and the cool park in Ouaga, but no crocodile pics yet. It's been really dusty and hazy the last month, so we're waiting to take outdoor photos.

We've decided to give up taking taxis around Ouaga because dealing with the taxi drivers is just too frustrating most of the time. We've been biking everywhere this week, which isn't too bad as long as you don't mind arriving sweaty. Biking has actually proven to be really helpful for a few reasons: 1. it's nice exercise, 2. it helps me learn my way around the city, and 3. it gives me a chance to practice my French when the cops stop me (like they did twice today) and threaten to take my bike. Luckily, I was able to talk them out of it both times (I'm just a simple village girl who doesn't know her way around the big city).

Anyways, we're heading to the south to see some animals on Monday so we'll post some more pictures soon.

Kittens, airlines, and keeping our cool

We bought our plane tickets for Kilimanjaro. Online ticket purchases from Ouaga hasn't arrived yet for all of the airlines so we had to buy them from the actual airline office here in town. Buying our tickets was really funny. We arrived on transport with the expectation that we would drop off our things and shower before heading to buy the tickets. However, we ended up with a cab driver who was keen to give us the Ouaga city tour, so we ended up just getting out and going straight to the airline since we were in the area.

Let me pause and say we get really dirty on the buses. I've never really figured out how it is that we get so filthy; everyone else seems to manage the journey without looking like they've been rolling in the dirt for the last hour.

So here we are at the office for Ethiopian Airlines: dirty, and sweaty, with all of our dirty bags. This place is immaculate. The people are equally immaculate. I feel certain that we fulfilled any and all of their expectations for loud, messy Americans. They refused to answer any questions while one of us was standing, and they refused to talk above a whisper. This would have been easily understood and appreciated except that we were the only customers in there! At one point, our agent had a question for the guy 2 desks away, easily in talking distance, and he called the guy so that they could whisper to each other over the phone instead. It was great.

We are now getting into the hot season (as everyone in our village loves to remind us). Some tips we've found for staying cool:
1. avoid direct sunlight like the plague; I've taken to using a bizarre series of windy paths in order to stay out of the sun at all times.
2. before bed, take a shower and don't dry off
3. between the hours of 1pm and 4pm, find a nice spot in the shade and try not to move
4. when drinking water, feel free to miss your mouth every time

Other news from the homefront, we have three new kittens. Our last remaining cat from the first group had kittens a few weeks ago. It actually took us a while to confirm that she'd had them. We saw her one night and realized she was skinny again and went on a mad search for the kittens but couldn't find them. Finally the next day we found them in a pile of Aaron's clothes (of course). These kittens are much cuter than the first bunch and I think they have staying power. They're spending the week at Uncle Bernard's while we're on vacation, so maybe he'll decide he wants to keep one.

Also, we want to say hi to the 7th graders from Appleton Village School and the 5th graders from Rio Vista. Thanks so much for your letters. We'll be sure to write back and post some new pictures.