Aaron and Amy's Burkina Faso Adventure

Ghana

2010-07-22T02:11:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Ghana was great! We were sad to leave the land of mountains, beaches, and indoor plumbing. Our trip was based around three main themes: hiking, watching World Cup games, and drinking Castle Milk Stout.

Part 1: The Beach
With these themes in mind, we started our trip at the coast in a small fishing village called Butre. Butre was recommended to us because it was a beautiful and peaceful place where you can relax without any hassle. This was all true. We actually found it a bit too secluded and relaxing (dare I say boring) so after two days of sitting on a nice beach with nothing else to do, we hiked 3km to another beach town called Busua that had a little more action. The great thing about Africa is that you can be in the smallest village in the bush with no running water or electricity but if there’s a good soccer game on, somebody will pull out a tv. Ghana is pretty developed comparatively so we had no problems catching World Cup games and had to narrow our prospective eating spots based on whether or not they carried Castle. I had romantic notions that I would go for relaxing runs on the beach every morning while we were at Busua. This presupposes that running on the beach is actually relaxing…it isn’t. At least not on the beaches in Ghana. I had to run by the water in order to avoid the deep sand, but running by the water has its own hazard of the occasional uphill sprint to avoid a big wave. After three days of returning with soggy shoes and sore calves, I went back to the dry comfort of pavement.

Part 2: Cape Coast
After a few days of hanging out in Busua, we decided to continue to the larger town of Cape Coast. Cape Coast is famous for the Cape Coast Castle, an old fort used during the slave trade. If you take the tour, the guide will start by showing you a new plaque on the door to the men’s cells that Barak Obama donated during his visit (2009?). I thought the plaque was somewhat disappointing since all it essentially says is that “on this date, _____, Barack Obama donated a plaque” with no explanation as to why. From talking with other volunteers, it sounds like there are two types of tour experiences you can have depending on your fellow tourists: 1. the loud, somewhat disrespectful tour. These are normally accompanied by Ivorians or Ghanaian students who prefer to work on their movie star poses instead of listening to the information; or 2. the very solemn Jesus tour. This tour is normally with some kind of mission group and you can expect to be treated to spontaneous renditions of “Amazing Grace” with an optional sermon from the pastor(s) leading the group. We had the latter.

We took a day trip to Kakum National Park to see some animals and go on their suspended canopy walk. Unfortunately, our guide informed us right away that after years of loud student groups visiting, all of the animals had moved to other parts of the park but the canopy walk was still fun and the forest was really pretty. Somewhere in the beginning of the hike, our guide stopped a little ahead of us and began searching in the bush next to the trail because he has just stumbled on a black cobra before it disappeared into the bush. I have a feeling that the cobra barely escapes his boot on every tour just to get the group excited.

Part 3: Accra
Before heading east, we decided to spend a few days in Accra. I know this statement might sound obsolete in a month when we’re back in America, but Accra is a legitimate city! Nice restaurants, stores, bus systems, and paved roads everywhere. There isn’t a whole lot of touristy stuff to do there but we spent our two days in Accra just walking around (with stops for Castle and World Cup games of course) and saw a lot of the city.

Part 4: Hohoe
After a week, we decided it was time to leave the coast and head to the mountains east of the Volta River. This area isn’t as frequented by tourists but I would definitely recommend visiting it. We used a town called Hohoe as our base for day trips to local mountains and waterfalls. Unfortunately, our first full day in the east was a Sunday. Sundays are effectively national holidays in Ghana. Everything is closed and it’s tough to get buses or bush taxis. We went to the bush taxi station with a list of places we’d like to see and made our plans based on what taxis, if any, were going that day. There was a car that would take us by Tsatsadu waterfalls, about 25km away, so we decided to go there. In order to visit the falls, you first have to stop by the village chief’s house and pay a fee. Luckily, his house was easy to find so we signed in, paid our fee, and spent the next few hours climbing and relaxing by the falls. When we decided to head back, it was already past lunch time and we were told there was nowhere to eat in the village and it wasn’t sure if another bush taxi would be coming through towards Hohoe. We decided to walk towards the next village where there was supposedly a restaurant and we could spot any bush taxis going by. After an hour of walking, there was no food and no bush taxi, but there was a nice guy with a truck who gave us a free lift back to Hohoe (just in time to watch the next game).

The next day, we were hoping to see Wli Wli falls, the largest in Ghana, and climb Mt. Afadjato, the tallest in Ghana. As it turns out, despite the fact that these are both east of Hohoe, there is no direct transportation between them so we chose to climb the mountain. As usual, bush taxis don’t leave until all the seats have been sold so by the time our car filled up and we got to the village of Liate Wote to start the climb it was already noon. I was a little surprised when I heard that it only took 2 hours to climb the highest mountain in Ghana, but once we started the hike I realized that lots of extra time has been saved by making the trail straight up to the top. Aaron is part mountain goat and had no problem. I hadn’t seen a hill in over a year and this one just about killed me. The funny thing about getting to the summit of the “tallest mountain in Ghana” is that immediately to your right, there is another, taller mountain. I guess we climbed the “tallest mountain in Ghana (that has a trail to the summit)”. In any case, the mountain and the waterfall were really beautiful and we had a great time walking around in the forest and eating fruits from the cacao plants.

Part 5: Crossing the Afram Plains
Next it was time to make our way back to the western city of Kumasi. The easiest way to do this is to take a daily 4-hr bus ride back down to Accra to get around the Volta River and then catch a bus to Kumasi. We opted to go straight west across the Volta and the Afram Plains. This requires two ferries, two to three buses, two days, and a lot of patience. Our first ferry left from the town of Kpando. Based on the guide book and the people in town, the ferry left somewhere between 8:30 and 10:00. Like the foolish optimists we are, we arrived at the dock around 7:45. Once at the dock, our estimated departure time kept getting later as we neared the water. Luckily we found some nice ladies to sit with under the shade by the water. Within an hour of our arrival, our shady spot became a major fish market with more and more women arriving with buckets to buy fish as the men brought them in from their boats. We spent the morning watching and talking with them as they sorted through the fish by size, distributed them between the women, and kept books in their small notebooks stored under their buckets. Around 11, we asked if we could buy one and the lady in charge gave us a big fish for free and another woman cleaned it and made us a fish soup right there on the beach. At 12:30 the ferry finally arrived and around 4, it finally left for the 1-hr trip across the lake. I have to admit, our 8 hours spent hanging out with the fish ladies while we waited for the ferry was probably one of my favorite parts of our trip.

The rest of our journey across the plains was pretty uneventful. Lots of pretty scenery and another, shorter ferry ride before we arrived in Kumasi.

Part 6: Kumasi
Accra might be the country’s capital, but Kumasi is definitely the bustling heart. We got dropped off in some unknown central part of the city. We decided to walk around and find a place where we could watch the U.S. game first, figure out where we were second. It seems that Ghanaians are universally not accustomed to using maps. Throughout our trip when we would ask someone to look at a map and give us directions, they were always at a loss. The nice folks in Kumasi were no different. They couldn’t really tell us where we were, what streets we were near, or where we wanted to go but they were certain that we should down the road and take a right. So we did. After about 30 minutes of wandering around on the bustling downtown streets, we figured out where we were and made our way to a hotel.

Kumasi is a cool city because it is not catered to tourists. There are pharmacies and banks as far as the eye can see but you have to look a little harder to find restaurants or places to shop. We ate lots of fresh coconuts and spent half a day getting lost in what is supposed to be the largest open air market in West Africa (I believe it). When I went to buy our bus tickets back to Ouagadougou two days in advance I was told that the bus was already full and the next bus wouldn’t be for another 2 days. We needed to get back to Burkina on time so I bought tickets to get us to the border where we could find another bus for the remainder of the trip. We arrived at the border town in time to catch the second half of the U.S.-Ghana game at the bus station. Watching that game in Ghana with a bunch of Ghanaians was fun, at first. However, after the U.S. tied up the game, I soon realized that we probably wouldn’t want to be around if Ghana lost. Luckily they won and the town erupted in celebration playing every Bob Marley song in existence. We spent the night at the bus station waiting for the next bus to Ouagadougou that would arrive “around 3 am” but really came around 7. The rest of the trip back was uneventful. We made it back to Ouagadougou, unable to speak French for the first few transitional hours.

Overall, Ghana was great and I hope that we can go back again someday. A lot has happened since we got back that I can’t even begin to explain. Somehow our time here is almost done and we are flying out in 6 days!!! I’ll do my best to get at least one more post up before we leave.

Photos

2010-05-29T08:46:00.000-07:00

I finally uploaded some news photos from this year. If you want to check them out, head to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/amynaaron

Also during the opening of our computer lab, a reporter from one of the national newspapers, Sidwaya, came and wrote an article about the lab. It's in French but we found when you use an online translator, you probably won't get the correct translation but you'll get something fun and often awkward to read. You can find the article at:

http://www.sidwaya.bf/spip.php?article4637&lang=fr

School's Out!

2010-05-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

With a final scribbled signature across some carbon-copy paper that had become slightly damp from my sweaty arm, I finished my last report card and thus my career as an educator in Burkina last week. It was a good feeling. Maybe I’ll be nostalgic for the old days of teaching later but for now all I’ve had time to feel was “woo hoo!”

Mostly we haven’t had time to realize that school is over and our final months in Burkina are winding down. These last weeks have been really packed. The bike race in Djibo went pretty well. Of course everything changed up until the day of the race. After getting all fired up to race with the men, Emilie and I were told that the women’s race was actually 18km long with real prizes so we decided to enter the women’s race after all. I spent the 4 or 5 days before the race going on long rides to get ready only to find out the day before the race that it was only 5km after all. I’m shamefully terrible at sprinting on a bike and this race was no exception. Out of the 25 girls in the race, I was 9th. Luckily Emilie did a better job of representing the foreigners and won first place. The men’s race was really intense with over 100 people competing. After the first 10, they stopped counting the men, but Aaron came in somewhere between 15th and 20th. The real shocker was the bus that brought about 30 riders at the end who didn’t finish the race. According to Aaron there were some bad crashes in the beginning and some of them looked like they had definitely been through a battle.

As soon as school was over, it was time to start our weeklong computer camp. We did two classes every day for 5 days. In the morning, we had a class of students from 8 to 12 and the evening class was for adults from 5:30 to around 7:30. Overall the camp went really well. We did 3 days of computer theory and basics (how to right click, left click, what’s the desktop…) and then the last two days they made their own PowerPoint presentations and presented at the end. There were the usual hiccups, such as teachers who scheduled final exams during our allotted time so students had to leave early or arrive late. The biggest surprise was a 2-day power outage in town that forced us to cancel one of our evening classes and cut a morning class short once all the batteries were too low. I spent several weeks making nice to the head doctor of the hospital so that we could borrow their projector for the training. Unfortunately, after the first day the projector was nothing more than nice décor thanks to daily power outages that lasted anywhere from an hour to a day. Overall camp was fun and we’ve had lots of requests from both students and people in town to have more but I think any new camps will have to be done by someone else since we don’t have much time left and we’d rather spend it visiting our friends in town and seeing things nearby that we haven’t had a chance to see yet.

Our plans for June? Day to day activities may vary, but I think it will consist mostly of laying on the beach, eating fresh seafood, and speaking English…hello Ghana!

Put away your pagnes and get out those padded spandex...it's a bike race!

2010-05-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

After weeks and weeks of sitting around while no progress was made on the computer lab project, things suddenly came together (as they tend to do) all at once. As of last Monday, the Lycée Provincial du Loroum Salle d’Informatique was officially open.

The lab is simple: four tables, ten chairs, and a fan (hoping we can add a second fan soon!). We have ten computers for the students to use and one for the supervisor. Since it is too late to start anything official with the students, for the rest of the school year and throughout the summer the plan is to open the lab for students and public who pay 10¢ and 50¢ an hour respectively. Though we’re open now, the “official opening” (when the important people will be present) is supposed to take place on Thursday. I’m not sure what the official opening would entail. Drinks are more or less mandatory; Aaron and I already had to veto the proposal to serve sodas and beer in the lab itself. (I just know somebody too important to chastise would spill all over the place.) We’re organizing a weeklong computer camp to take place in three weeks when classes are over for students and teachers. After talking with current IT teachers, it sounds like mastering the basics (click, double-click, and that ever-elusive right click…) will take most of the week. It helps that we’ve been helping students in the computer lab all week and saw what some of the major problems are. I think we’re going to spend a bit of time on opening day discussing the pitfalls of using the restart button whenever you can’t get back to the window you want. Also, iChat will have to be disabled for the duration of the camp.

We’ll get lots of pictures during the next few weeks and put them up for you once we get to Ouaga at the end of May.

Other big news, we found out this week that there’s a bike race this Saturday from Pobé (our neighbor, Emilie’s, village) to Djibo. The race is 25km long and there’s even money for the winner. I’m mostly entering to support Emilie. The organizers told her the race was for men only and there was a women’s only race in Djibo (a town slightly larger than our old grocery store parking lot). Well, this got our inner feminists all fired up so now we’re doing the race. I have no ambitions of winning and haven’t ridden more than 5km at a time in months. I’m like that Ghanaian from the winter Olympics: I just don’t want to come in last. Maybe Aaron can do well and win us some money for cold beers in Djibo, though.

Rat Again (Mom can't cook tonight...)

2010-04-22T03:44:00.000-07:00

I have committed an act of American heroism and sin at the same time: I have killed a rat and eaten it too.

Amy has already posted about the other four rats we killed and ate. The other night was rat number five. This time was different, though. The past rats have been unfortunate enough to fall into a hole from which they can't escape. This time, however, I was heading to lock our gate when I spotted the mother of all rats (well, at least the mother of four rats!) just sitting there in front of me, looking confused by my bright headlamp. A chase ensued. Suffice it to say there was rock-throwing involved, many misses, and finally a hit.

The next morning I skinned, gutted, and seasoned the rat for a Rat Tandoori lunch. It was delicious.

Harmatan

2010-04-22T03:30:00.000-07:00

And now Aaron's perspective on the dust:

~~We're snowed in.~~ ~~We're rained in.~~ We're dusted in! Today we're fortunate enough to have the morning off from school. We woke up to a bright red sky and it hasn't yet abated. This is the Harmatan: dust blown in from the Sahara. The past few weeks have been similar--huge dust storms kicked up by the wind and ultimately caused by deforestation laying bare the land. Our house is in a perpetual state of decay. Even with the house "sealed up," one gust brings in enough dust to visually coat everything. Today, however, brings a new phenomenon. The Harmatan does not come and go with the caprices of the wind, but steeps us in a sea of orange. Relief will only come with the rains. We have heard from volunteers up to 40 miles away experiencing the same thing.

I wish I could include a photo. If you'd like to approximate, go to Paint, set the color to orange-red, click fill.

That's all for now. Back to school this evening or tomorrow.

April Update

2010-04-22T03:23:00.001-07:00

Happy Earth Day everyone! Well, everywhere else it is Earth Day. Here in Titao it’s more like “ the day of yellow”. We had a big dust storm roll in and it’s so cloudy that everything outside is in a yellowish red haze. It’s 9am and people are still using flashlights to get around outside because the visibility is so bad. Now, I’ve never lived on Venus but I imagine it’s something like this.

The good thing about days like this is that it gives us a small break from the heat. We’ve been hitting around 120 degrees the last few weeks and it’s been pretty miserable. Our mode de vie has involved several bucket baths a day, keep a hand fan in every room, and no trips in town unless the destination has cold water sachets. We had a brief glimmer of hope last week that our 6-month rain drought was coming to an end when all the villages in the area got a rainstorm. By the time it reached us, there were enough drops to help the dust stick to our bikes better but no real rain.

One of our students invited us to his annual family meeting in his village to discuss the affairs of the Komi family. We couldn’t make it but afterwards he gave us a debriefing. I guess the main part of the meeting was recounting the history of how the Komi family got their name. I asked for the story and after 15 minutes of recounting it, I still can’t for sure say that I know the answer. I’ll give you the highlights: a woman gave birth in a tree and there was a clay pot nearby that had four eyes. Then some kids were given a pet giraffe and the evil dad rode off on the giraffe and got decapitated. And, voila, the Komi family!

We had the annual fête de la pomme de terre a few weeks ago. There was the usual speeches and opening of the potato market where you could choose from many different piles of similar-looking potatoes. Unfortunately this year, since Easter Sunday was the day after the potato festival there was no all night dancing party, which means no Miss Pomme de Terre competition. All my campaign efforts over the last year went to waste.

No Regrets

2010-04-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

Whenever PCVs get together, the conversations always gravitate towards a long list of complaints and frustrations about life in Burkina. This obviously stems from the fact that we spend most of our time in our villages dealing with little annoyances surrounded by people who don’t see them as annoying. What was great about our COS conference this month was that for the first time, the conversations began to shift toward the little things we will inevitably miss about our life in Burkina.

Yes, it has been difficult and those stories of transportation breakdowns, promiscuous pets (did I mention we just had our fourth generation of kittens), and digestive gymnastics always make for good entertainment but they don’t tell the whole story. We have been robbed, frustrated, angry, homesick, and just plain sick during our time here but the more honest description is that we have been happy. Despite all the difficulties and frustrations, we have been happy and have never regretted our decision to join the Peace Corps and our decision to serve in what is considered one of the more difficult PC countries because of the living conditions.

How could we regret such a decision? We don’t regret learning a new language and learning the power of communication when there is no common language. We don’t regret making tô with Bernard and Clarice, eating rat with Coach, and making American food for Mariam and her kids. We don’t regret rocking out to the Celion Dion, Beyonce, 50 Cent, and (the untouchable) Phil Collins in the teachers lounge at school. We don’t regret eating a dinner of mangos and peanuts when it was too hot to cook. I don’t regret Bingo, the Hokey Pokey, the Happy Song and all the other games and songs we did in class that pulled in even the most determined “cool kids”.

I don’t regret my failed girls club. It taught me that youth development work is not my strength (a.k.a. I’m awkward and don’t know what to do with teenagers). I don’t regret the sameness of available food. It forced us to get creative and start eating food we wouldn’t touch in America (hello canned tuna and potted meat product). I don’t even regret our favorite nemesis: the Titao bus that breaks down every other day. I learned how much better if feels to pig out in the big city after biking the 47k to get there. Even if, after our departure, corruption wins out and our computer lab doesn’t get a chance to impact many students, we don’t regret bringing such a powerful resource into our community to people who would otherwise never have a chance to work on a computer.

Every faux type has forced us to get creative in blowing them off (my favorite: I’m from Antartica and only speak Antartican). Every late meeting has honed our waiting skills until we can easily sit for 2 hours without getting restless. Every laughing crowd has taught us to be self-confident. Every challenging class has taught us patience and a sense of humor. Every old woman offers us the best of her garden vegetables as a gift has humbled us. And every toothless old man or woman who has defied their age by singing, dancing, and laughing with or without us has made us smile.

How did I get here?!

2010-03-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

We just finished our Close of Service (COS) Conference in Ouaga. It was three days jam packed with info on everything that needs to be done over the next few months before we leave the country, how to put these crazy adventures into words for resumes and job interviews, and how to adjust to life back in America without annoying all our relations with “well, when we were in Burkina…”. No promises on this last point.

Aside from the comfortable hotel (AC!) and good food (shrimp) COS was a little stressful. I think we all left with long to-do lists and that excited, nervous feeling right before a big change. After two years of learning to do things much slower than reason would deem necessary, we are on our way back into the “land of bonnes choses”. We’ve learned a lot of great things here but I think we have also picked up some habits that Americans may not appreciate. I would like to go ahead and ask our family and friends to forgive us the following:

· Slurping tea
· Arriving late
· Talking about people right in front of them (in English)
· Eating with our hands (especially meat).
· The full hand lick that follows eating with your hands
· “outfit of the week”: Wearing the same outfit to work everyday for a week (hey, as long as there’s no stains or holes…)
· “send a kid to do it”: Forgetting that children are not public property and you cannot discipline them or send them on errands for you
· Arriving unannounced at dinner time ready to be fed
· Carrying a spare roll of toilet paper on hand at all times (you just never know)
· Elbowing or shoving to ensure we get our spot in the car first
· “Visiting”: coming over and then sitting in uncomfortable (for you) silence
· Referring to the left hand as the “poop hand”
· Picking our nose (seriously, with all this dust a Kleenex does not get the job done)

We are hoping to tone some of these down before getting back. Like I said, life in Titao is going to be busy the next few weeks. The third trimester is only 6 weeks long and somewhere between lesson planning and grading we are hoping to get the computer lab open. In June, after school is finished, we are planning on holding a computer camp for teachers and students. We’ve never been to Ghana and still have three weeks of vacation time left so we would like to spend at least a week at the beach before heading back to Titao in July. Then we have four weeks to pack up, make the rounds saying goodbye to everyone in town, pig out on mangos and chicken, and head to Ouaga for a final medical exam. It’s hard to believe we’re only four months, one final trimester, one potato festival, gallons of sweat, and a metric ton of mangos away from finishing our service.

*All the pictures are from my parents' trip to Burkina in December. About time I posted some new pictures, right.

Rat Out, Rabbit In

2010-03-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

The project to start a computer lab is moving along. We hit some unexpected hiccups last week due to some philosophical differences between the school administration and Aaron and me as to how we should present – or not present – the project to the other teachers. The school principal and treasurer that we’ve been working with thought that it would be best if we kept the project hush-hush. So they asked the representative between the teachers and administration to announce that we have computers to sell but he wasn’t informed as to how many were available, where they came from, why they were being sold…he knew nothing. The day of the announcement, 14 teachers signed up to buy the 10 available computers. The treasurer, unsure of how to handle it, told them there were only 6 for sale and for the moment nobody could buy one. I’m not sure how he came up with the number 6 or why he thought that that was an adequate solution to the problem. I’ll probably never know. When I heard teachers grumbling that they were only selling 6 computers, I got scared that they had stolen 4 and given them to friends (pretty likely) so I stormed into the principal’s office demanding to see all the computers. Over a period of 45 minutes, he explained the problem to me interspersed with other woes (the water pump is broken again, the government hasn’t sent money to pay the teachers yet…) that had nothing to do with the computers and about which I could do nothing to help.

Aaron and I decided that all this sneaking around and avoidance of direct questions was unnecessary and frustrating everyone, so we decided to have a meeting with the administration and the teacher’s rep, Coach. Coach was already in the loop because I had told him about the project, but since he hadn’t been “officially informed” by the principal he played dumb. This was somewhat frustrating when it was just Aaron and I in the room and he continued to return all my questions with a shake of the head and “I’m not informed about that.” The day of the meeting, everyone was still “uninformed” so I went around and informed them myself that we would meet and find a way to resolve the problem of not having enough computers to sell to everyone. The problem is that people here are pretty sensitive. All those objective, impersonal (American) methods like first-come, first-serve or auctioning them to the ten highest bidders don’t fly. So we decided that we would offer them 14 computers and use the extra money to buy a printer for the school and 4 cheaper desktop computers from an ex-PCV in Ouaga. We have a strict payment plan established so I’m not sure if all 14 teachers will actually be able to buy a computer anyway but if we didn’t offer everyone the option, there would be drama in the teacher parking lot (under a tree in the school yard). Aaron and I also did a quick presentation to all the teachers about the goals of the project and where the computers came from so that they didn’t think we were running some kind of business.

There’s still a little frustration with the teachers who ask us to change the due date for the first payment for them. This is where we’ve been laying down our cold-hearted business side and telling them that selling the computers is a means to an end for us and we don’t care who buys them. We offered them to the teachers first as a favor but if they can’t buy them we’ll offer them to other people in town who can. Obviously, they aren’t happy to hear this but they’re getting used to it.

Women’s Day was last Monday. I was really excited to play in the soccer game again this year, but it ended up being a little too much for me. My team had over 20 women on it. The first time I touched the ball I was knocked over by my own player; the second time, there were no players from the other team around so I tried to dribble but couldn’t get anywhere because of the 4 players from my team that were in my way and ended up taking the ball from me. The game wasn’t fun enough for me to endure an hour of being called “nassara” on the loud speaker so I made up an excuse and left at half-time. We have a teacher vs. student soccer game coming up next week. The teachers have started training every night and they are always inviting Aaron to join them. Finally, I told them that I would come and play. There was an awkward pause followed by “ok, you can play defense.” This got my inner-feminist all worked up so I showed up ready to knock their socks off that night. I was totally schooled. Those guys are so good and so fast I didn’t have a chance. It didn’t help that the field was surrounded by students and everytime Aaron or I touched the ball or even got near the ball they all start laughing. Oh well, at least I tried.

On the bright side, mango season is here. Mangos are the only thing that makes the hot season tolerable. We’ve settling into a comfortable diet of about 3 mangos a day each. It’s convenient to have a readily available snack that is so delicious because it’s getting too hot to cook and we’re hardly home anymore anyways. Aaron is always studying for the GRE and I’m always at school working on the computers. Luckily, we’ve made some good friends who like to send over extra food when they cook. The other day we were the enthusiastic recipients of rabbit soup and I think lunch will be taken care of today because our friend, Mariam, wants us to try her tô sauce. How can we refuse?

Mmm, mmm, rat. Bon Appetit!

2010-03-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

February has come and gone already taking with it any last remnants of cool weather. Here in Titao, that little month was packed with activities. We began by discovering a new culinary delight: rat. Before you start squirming, I just want to say that I wasn't too excited about eating rat and never thought I would do it but I did (4 times now) and I don't regret it. That stuff is good.

Here's how it came about: we have this big hole by our house that is supposed to collect water but just collects plastic bags and other trash instead. One night we heard a bunch of noise from the hole and found a rat in there that couldn't get out. Aaron was really excited about killing it and eating it so we called our friend – we call him “coach” because he's the P.E. teacher from our school- and he came over really excited to help us kill it. It was late and we'd already eaten dinner so he said he'd prepare it and call us the next day. The next day we went to his house for some homemade rat soup. Two days later, another rat fell in the hole and coach came over to teach Aaron how to prepare it: rat with rice and sauce. Another two days and rat number three took the unfortunate tumble: breaded and fried rat with mashed potatoes. Finally, three days after that, Darwin put the fourth rat on our plates in the form of an Indian-style barbecue. I can't say I'm exactly proud of getting this new dietary notch on my belt but Aaron's pretty proud of preparing an animal all by himself and the meat is good so I'm not complaining. Also, it helped us start a pattern of eating with Coach and his wife a few times a week.

Aside from our culinary exploits we've also been busy with the arrival of the 30 laptop computers to our school. The school administration has found a place for us to set up a computer lab and they went over their proposal with us last week to cover all the expenses so I'm hoping the lab will be set up in the next month. We are going to pay for the shipping costs, the new furniture, the electricity, and all other expenses over the next 6 months by selling ten of the computers to teachers at school on a first come first serve basis. After that 6-month period, the lab should be self-sustained based on the hourly charge for students and locals who use it. This was all supposed to be started last week before the end of February so I'm hoping we can at least announce to the teachers that the computers are for sale before the end of the trimester mid-March. For the moment, I've been busy with 12 hours a week of "informatique" class where I teach any teachers who want to learn how to use Excel and Word for their classes. It's been fun overall but I often feel like I'm dealing with the 6ème students. The other day, I heard myself saying (translated of course): “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop! No more space bar! Use 'align right'. No, stop. I said no space bar! I'm going to take the computer away.”

We're getting into holiday season and hot season at the same time. This means no one, students and teachers alike, is motivated anymore to have class. Last week was Moulard (this is a guess at the spelling), the all-night Muslim prayer party. Everyone goes to a village about 3k outside of Titao and there's a lot of praying until about 3 am. Aaron and I spent a few days pumping ourselves up with how this year we weren't going to miss it because it was our last chance to participate... we were in bed by 9. We tried but you'd be surprised how exhausting is it just sitting around being hot all day. Anything after 9 or 10 is not going to happen for us until we get air conditioning back in our lives. Tomorrow is Women's Day. This is a holiday we can handle because they have activities all day. My friend, Mariam, bought us the official 2010 Women's Day pagnes so that we can get outfits made. She brought over a model that I might want to have copied: I swear there were frills sewed on top of other frills. I had to politely decline the cake icing model and opt for something a little simpler. I've been told that I am on the women's soccer team for the big game against the men on Women's Day. If conditions are the same as last year: the men's team is drunk, we have 5 goalies, and all calls are in our favor, I think we'll be able to pull off a W.

2010

2010-02-06T03:31:00.000-08:00

Happy (belated) New Year! Aaron and I brought in the new year like most 20-somethings with functioning livers: we were sitting on a couch watching "UP" with some other volunteers who were also too tired to party. It seems that New Years is the biggest party of the year in Burkina. I'm not sure if it's because it is the one holiday that Christians and Muslims can celebrate together or if the Burkinabe just like a good countdown, but they definitely love New Year's.

After the new year, the next time you see friends, before anything else, you are supposed to greet each other with a 4-step head tap manuever. While tapping temples, you wish each other good health, happiness, prosperity...the teachers at our school just cut to the chase and we wished each other "everything good". I'm honestly not very good at the head-tapping yet; my efforts to show sincerity have resulted in more than a few head butts and I always run out of stuff to say so then there's an eternal awkward silence while our faces are really close together.

I didn't make any new year's resolutions this year. I normally don't keep them anyway; who needs the disappointment? Speaking of disappointment and failure, after two failed attempts to grow our own garden, we've handed our seeds over to the professionals. Someone in town offered to give us some of his land, prepare the soil, plant the seeds, and water them along with his plants. In other words, there's no way we can mess this up. All we have to do is eat (and as my mom's been telling everyone, that's something we are good at). They also planted us a few rows of potatoes so maybe we can get ourselves a booth at the potato festival.

School is about the same. I try to remind myself that this is our last 6 months of teaching here so we can make the most of it, but the kids don't always make that easy. These days, after particulary dumb questions I find myself just quietly walking away. Our neighbor, David, always has the best examples of these irritating questions. Last week in David's math class, he had just finished working a homework problem on the board when student asked: "Mr if you found the answer was 1/2 but I have 1/5 on my paper, is that okay?" Just walk away.

I did have a bizarre surge of motivation last month and decided to do a song competition between the 4 6e classes. I taught each class The Happy Song and we spent two weeks outside of class rehearsing a preparing routines that Aaron and the other English teachers would judge and decide on a winner. It turns our that in French, or maybe in Moore, The Happy Song translates to "let's go crazy". Rehearsals were about 20% constructive work and 80% madness. I swear the other day there was a kid with both arms out, head tossed back, eyes closed and yelling. Just yelling for no reason. He got a big shock when his yelling was suddenly muffling by the big piece of paper I shoved in his mouth. I think after the initial shock of doing something that doesn't involve copying from the board in silence wore off, practices went better and all the classes ended up doing pretty well. I took a video of each group so if I find myself with decent internet, I'll put it online. Despite the good result, I'm not sure if I have the patience to do it again unless the other teachers want to help out.

The other, bigger, news at school is that we'll be recieving 30 laptops in the next month! Aaron's dad arranged for us to get 30 used laptops that are ready to be used at school. Since our school doesn't have electricity and isn't likely to get it in the next year, the administration is going to rent a house in town where there is power and we can set up a computer lab for teachers, students, and (in the future) paying people from town. There will be a lot of work required in order to train people and make sure they have a good system set up and the computers don't just disappear to the homes and families of various school employees, but this will be a really exciting thing for our school and can help us out a lot. Keith, you're amazing! Thanks so much.

Since we arrived in Titao 17 months ago, and even before, during our site visit, we have been told of a previous volunteer named Tom who was in Titao and taught at our school in 1999. Everyone knows Tom. Everyone loves Tom. He has a small shrine in the school office complete with hand-drawn photos and a poem. Well, brace yourself for this, last weekend we met Tom!! He was in Burkina for a conference (he's still living and working in Africa) and came up to visit Titao for a day. After 10 years, he still speaks better Mooré than I'll ever speak. It was fun to finally see and meet the man himself. I have accepted the fact that Aaron and I will probably never reach the Tom-level of remembrance on our own, so I am thinking of launching a campaign over the next few months where I'll be distributing my own hand-drawn photos of us and sonnets proclaiming our great deeds and incredible good looks throughout the region. Since we are now entering the uncomfortable transition month before the heat arrives, I'm about to have a lot of time on my hands so it would be a good way to fill those long hours spent under a tree, trying to limit any movements.

Tour du Faso

2010-02-05T01:43:00.000-08:00

After all the fuss of the holidays has died down, do you find yourself bored, changing channels between CSI: Miami to CSI: Las Vegas to CSI: New York? (What's that, all reruns.) Are you tired of knowing you car, bus, or bike will arrive in working order and on time at your destination? Ever wanted to see a new place and eat new foods with unknown digestive consequences? If you answered yes, maybe, or even a small grunt (we're not picky) to any of these questions, you should follow my parents' example and embark on a 10-day tour de force of Burkina Faso.

We'll start the tour with 3 days in our quaint village of Titao. Think we'll be relaxing and enjoying the simple life? Think again. Titao is a little-known tourist haven with lots of activities to make those 3 (actually 2 1/2 after the car ride) days fly by. After strolling through original dirt pathways leading to town, you can visit the "marché ladies". With a big smile, open arms in case babies come your way, and a lack of preference for what they decide your name is that day, the marche will be lots of fun. After the market, relax at "the garage" and sample one of Burkina's 6 (count 'em, 6!) beer options. Once we arrive back at the house, don't get too comfortable in those chairs, folks, because you'll be treated to a steady flow of visitors dropping by to say hi and offer tastes of the local cuisine.

If receiving visitors isn't your thing, Titao also offeres an all-inclusive 5-hr school and garden tour. This package comes complete with a full lycée tour, a planting demonstration at the town garden, warm beers at the nearest buvette, and free lycée t-shirts at the end for all visitors. In the evening, enjoy a nice stroll through town on your way to dinner at our friend Bernard's house: tô, mmmm mmmm. Keep those forks at home folks, we'll be eating this mean a la main.
In case you are worried about missing anything by sleeping in, Titao (and I suspect most of Africa) comes with complimentary roosters, donkeys, women pounding millet, and calls to prayer available every morning to drag you into the day. It's so loud, you'll swear they're actually outside your window! Market day is not to be missed. If you're like my parents, sometimes you get so tired of all this personal space and just need to get squeezed in an impossibly small space with strangers. The Titao market is the perfect place to toss that "body bubble" aside while parusing local fabrics, cookware, vegetables, mystery pills, and jewelry. Need those flip-flops repaired? We can do that too.

What's that? You're looking for a party! Well, look no further than chez nous. Bernard and the men will kill, clean, and grill the chickens while the women can whip up pumpkin pies in the kitchen (mom, that pie mix was heavenly!). I know what you're thinking, "what's a party without music?". Don't worry, our neighbor, David, has all the greatest beats for any occassion (NSync's Christmas album, oh yeah!).

And already our time in Titao has flown by. It's now time to head south: land of rainfall, trees, and non-domesticated animals. There is an all-paved route from Ouahigouya to Bobo, in the southwest, but you drive on paved roads everyday, right? My parents felt the same way so we took the shorter, dirt road south that leaves you with a healthy coat of Africa on your clothes and respiratory system. Bobo, what a town! You'll know you've hit the big time when you have a fender-bender just trying to drive by the market. Bobo has lots of friendly people offering to organize tours for you, but I'm guessing you'll want a more local experience: enter our fellow volunteer and Bobo resident, Micheal. Though he's still waiting on his official guide badge, Micheal knows his stuff. He'll show you the Grande Mosque and take you on a tour of the old quartier, all while fending off faux types with his banging Jula and his own brand of faux typiness. The old quartier is the oldest neighborhood in town and home to the "sacred catfish". Catfish that can live in a trash-lined stream where local women do their washing - there's got to be some kind of divine intervention involved! Micheal can also lead you to his friend's shop in the market for your one-stop souvenir shopping.

Had enough of the big city life? Let's get a little more rustic with a trip further south to Banfora. After all the shopping and hustle of busy Bobo, I'l guessing you will need a drink. My parents did. Welcome to Canne a Sucre. A nice-looking (we didn't stay here because they were booked) hotel with a great restaraunt serving homeade rum. I recomend getting the rum sampler. The four different flavors will tickle your tastebuds and send you off to a peaceful slumber.

At this point, you're saying, "Enough mosques, markets, and weird meals. Let's see some animals." A short drive from Banfora we'll find oursevles as Tengrela Lake, home to hippos, crocodiles, and the occassional monkey. This boat trip isn't for the faint of heart so leave your fears and any expensive camera equipment in the car as you climb into canoes in search of hippos. Leaks are optional, but you know my parents, they want the full experience; we went for it. Once the thrill of paddling by hippos in a canoe with a steady intake of water is over, it's time to unwind with a picnic lunch next to Karfiguela Waterfall. What, you say, waterfalls in Burkina Faso?! Oh yes, my friend, but don't let that cool crisp water tempt you into taking a dip unless you're looking to take home some more souvenirs of parasitic origin. Before leaving the Banfora region, we'll stop and visit the domes for some quick rock climbing. Again, I understand your surprise: rock climbing and hills do exist in Burkina. Man, this trip just keeps getting better.

On our way back to Ouaga, we'll make a quick stop to see some sacred crocodiles. What's so sacred about them? They're not even tempted to eat the live chicken we brought as a gift until it's practically placed in their mouths. The guides will offer to let you touch the crocodiles but my parents had some bizarre attachment to their limbs, so we passed this time.

Before heading back home to those comfortable beds and temperature-controlled cars and homes, there's one more must-see stop to make: Nazenga Park. A quick trip south of Ouaga towards the Ghana border, will bring you to Nazenga where you'll sleep in individual huts and eat meals overlooking a lake (supposedly, you can spot elephants swimming in the lake sometimes). Nazenga offers driving safaris through the park twice a day, but you're just as likely to spot elephants, wild pigs, and various deer-ish animals driving in and out of the park. Bring along the goal of seeing "at least one" animal, no need for electricity before 6pm, something to keep you occupied while you wait on meals and you won't be dissapointed.

Sadly, our trip is coming to a close. Before leaving, there is one thing on our to-do list: dinner at Gondwana. This chiche restaraunt is also an art gallery displaying African art from different ethnic groups. It's a classy place. It also has delicious food so go ahead and stuff your face with everything from the pre-dinner rolls to the after-meal tea and liquer. A final note for making your trip to Burkina a success, follow my parents courteous example, and refrain from getting sick until returning to America, so as to not inconvenience anyone during the trip. (Just kidding, mom. I'm glad you're feeling better.)

More sincerely, a huge thanks to everyone who stuffed my parents suitcases with cards, cookies, and other assorted gifts for us. You are fantastic and we really appreciate it! Thanks to my parents for being such troopers during their trip despite a few hiccups. We had a really great Christmas and hope you all did too.

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

2009-12-21T02:26:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-10-24T05:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T10:44:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-09-02T07:37:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-08-09T00:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-30T06:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-23T05:45:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-23T02:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-18T03:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T23:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-27T00:20:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Women's day and other happenings

2009-03-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

This last week has felt like a non-stop series of holidays. Sunday was International Women's Day, followed by the Muslim holiday to celebrate Mohammed's birthday on Monday night. This means that we had no class Monday or Tuesday. (Of course, we only found this out Saturday night from our students.) I feel like holidays are really just a chance for us to play dressup. There was a formal parade with lots of speeches in the morning so we got all dressed up in our best Burkinabe costumes. I had to have my girls at the marché help me put my outfit together because I have no idea how to do it. I've taught the my name, but they can't seem to get it right. At first, they were close with "emy" but it gets steadily further from correct and now we're at "emily".

In the afternoon, there was a big soccer game between the village women and old (drunk) village men. I showed up to watch, they invited me to play and I declined so 10 minutes later I was on the field with a jersey on. Thanks to our teamwork, agility, ball skills, 6 goal keepers, and a referee that called every ball in our favor, we won 1-0. It was great.

Women's Day ended with a village-wide dance party. We're still trying to figure out the time-zone differences between our "nassara" time and "west African" time. We were told the morning's parade started at 8, so we showed up at 9 and were still an hour early. The dance party "starts" at 8, so we came 2 hours late, but that was actually 1 1/2 hr early. My new strategy will be for us to wait until we think we're so late, we've completely missed everything and then start getting ready.

The Muslim fête Monday only confirmed our status as too wimpy for Burkina parties. It turns out that the party doesn't start until midnight and ours was held in a village about 3km away. We tried really hard to stay up, but only made it to about 10:30. Next year,..

We've been really busy this last week or two getting our grades together for the end of the trimester and organizing some other projects around town. We're working with the women we brought to the AIDS training to get a monthly HIV/AIDS class started for the patients at the Doctors Without Borders clinic. Also, our hospital has a lot of solar panels, but they aren't being used because they need to replace some of the converters, batteries, etc so they've been using a gas generator. We're hoping to get them to start replacing the parts for the solar panel system instead of continuing to buy expensive gasoline. Our other project is for Earth Day. We've been planning big Earth Day celebration with our school and local forestry office. The plan is to sensibilize some students from each class on topics like desertification, erosion, etc. and then have them present what they learned to their respective classes the next day where each student will plant a tree. The forestry office has agreed to take care of the trees until it's time to transplant them and then we'll move them to a big, open area on the hospital grounds. To start the trees, we plant the seeds in little baggies, so we need a lot of little baggies if every student will be planting a tree. We decided we needed to start early collecting supplies, so we offered our 6e classes a prize for every 10 bags they brought us. They only had two days from 12 to 5pm to bring bags, and I must say that we grossly underestimated the amount of trash readily available in our village. At the end of the second day, we had about 4000 bags. That's a lot of prizes.

HIV/AIDS Training

2009-02-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

Phew, busy week. Last weekend we had our school's New Year's party (better late than never, right). It was kind of bizarre in that it was a party to celebrate the new year (in February) but it was focussed on wishing our proviseur a happy new year and was referred to as his party. But we had a good time: chicken, beer, and speeches. What else can you ask for?

Monday morning we got the permission for the other teachers to come to Djibo with us for the AIDS training. The training has been really interesting so far. First off, it is being done in three languages which slows things down considerably. There are 11 volunteers and 42 Burkinabe participating. Most of it is being run by local members of a group called Actione Sociale so we are just playing a supporting role. In an effort to feel important, we have endowed ourselves with specific job titles. I am the chef des salutations. I have decided that this means I greet everyone and make sure everyone's happy.

Actually, the only unhappy campers I have encountered have been the teachers that I brought. We've found it to be a lot different when you talk money with fonctionaires (civil servants) and the villagois (regular villagers). It seems that somewhere in the transition between social classes a concept of greed is developed that we don't see as often with villagers. For example, when we first told the teachers about the conference their only questions were: will it be in English? and how will we be reimbursed? This second question came with many follow-up inquiries and seemed to be the deciding factor for them. And once here, the attitudes towards money hasn't changed. They are given plenty of money for the three days here but told me they don't want to use their motos to get to the sessions tomorrow morning if they aren't given gas money as well. It is a little frustrating. However, that being said, I have found that they have been some of the best participants of the group, asking really good questions and staying really involved.

Overall, I think the training was good. One of our translators cried at the end and the group from Titao seemed interested in organising something in our village. We had our fair share of unexpected hang-ups but it all worked out in the end. My favorite example of this is with the hotel rooms. Some of the hotel rooms we booked were rented out to other people before we arrived. Our friend, Emilie, brought a man from her village to the conference and he was a little upset when he was told the first night that he would have to share a bed (not just a room, a bed) with another man because there were no more rooms. The next day they had sorted out the trouble and had a room ready for him. So he calls Emilie over and tells her that he doesn't want to be moved to a room by himself because he gets along really well with this other guy and they are friends. Meanwhile, the other guy is talking to the volunteer from his village about how sad he is that his new friend will be moving to his own room. They shared a bed all week.

We finally got our new camera last week. It was truly a group effort as it had to change hands 5 times before we finally saw it - good work team. We are really excited, so be ready for lots of new pictures over the next few months.

Lessons in Communication

2009-02-20T07:36:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe we are almost through February. I will definitely miss those 3 weeks of cooler (not cold, but cooler) weather. The good news about this time of year is that there are all kinds of fruits and vegetables in the marché now. Mangos have proven to be one of those fruits that you can't eat and still look dignified (at least I can't). I've more or less given up and instead am working on a permanent mango-stash.

The girls club is still going - more or less. Out of the original 70 or so we have about 25 that come for a 2-hr meeting every Friday. I use the term "meeting" very loosely. We mostly just play soccer. I had high hopes of doing 1 hr of soccer and 1 hr of group discussion on setting goals last week. (I even had a cheesey little tie-in to how the players on the soccer field need a goal to work towards.) But we were having some problems of respect with some girls interrupting me, not listening, etc. so I ended the meeting the way any overly dramatic teenage girl would: I stormed out. They have since apologized to me and since I don't think either of us handled it well, we're going to try again next week.

Now that the heat is returning we've started sleeping outside again; this means the rat hunt is back on. Even as I write this, every few minutes I hear the pitter patter of Aaron's feet racing around the house with a shovel. And I'm pretty sure our one remaining cat is pregnant because we were lazy procrastinaters and didn't get her fixed.

Aaron and I double-teamed our 3 6eme classes this week and talked to them about study skills and effective ways to prepare for a test. We talked quite a bit about the importance of understanding concepts versus just memorizing their notebooks word-for-word. I get a lot of crazy answers on tests because students tried to memorize sentences with words they don't understand: "You can avoid malaria because of invertebrates." We'll have to see on the next test if any of it got through.

We are heading to Djibo (a town about 60km away) for a 3-day seminar on HIV/AIDS and how to do AIDS sensibilisations in village. It is really a training for people from our village and not us so that they can be the ones giving the seminars in village when we return. Aaron is bringing two women from the hospital and I have asked some of the other female teachers to come. I gave them about a 4 week warning before the training, which put us right on schedule to find out whether or not they were coming the morning we are supposed to leave. They have to have permission from the school to miss three days of class which requires a written letter from Peace Corps to our regional school director. This isn't a big deal, except nobody was willing to break the news to me so they sat on that information for 3 weeks and didn't let me know until I finally asked our proviseur what the holdup was. I'm sure it will all work out somehow.

Just as a side note, I recently finished a book called "zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". I've heard great reviews of this book and had been wanting to read it for a while. But, as I told Jason, it turned out the be the worst book I ever enjoyed reading. The plot was interesting, but the writing was so intolerable I couldn't stand it. I would gladly take James Joyce and a punch to the gut over reading some of those chapters again.

Val and Keith, we finally got your package last week. Our mailman likes to toy with our emotions. This is his favorite game (and we fall for it every time): it's 4:59 pm on a Friday, the post closes in 1 minute and though mail has come today, the packages aren't ready to be picked up until tomorrow. I'm riding my bike home when the postman waves me down and tells me I have a package. He says if I go grab the slip from my box, I can pick it up tonight: what luck! So I run for the box, fumble a little with the key because I am so excited, grab the slip and start heading for the main office door. Somewhere in the 45 seconds it took me to grab my slip, he has closed the door and locked it. The post office is closed. And no, nobody can pick up packages after hours. Sometimes I hate that guy.

Kilimanjaro and other things

2009-01-31T03:42:00.000-08:00

We're back in town again. A little unexpected, but we needed to come back and book some things for our trip to Tanzania this summer and figure out where the heck our new camera is. We bought a new camera a few weeks ago online, but after a few weeks it had not arrived so we found out that it was sent to the wrong address: our old apartment in AZ. Now we start the hassle of trying to get the camera from there and have it shipped to someone we know in the States who can eventually get it to us. Kind of a pain, but it will be awesome when we finally get it because it is a really nice camera.

We have decided to take our big Africa trip this summer by going to Tanzania for 3 weeks. We'll be hiking Mt. Kilimanjaro for a week and visiting animal parks and the coast for the other 2 weeks. It's going to be really great once we get through the hassle of trying to get everything booked. Kilimanjaro is going to be really tough so we've been doing lots of running and bike riding the last few weeks to start getting in shape. It is challenging to get in shape for a big mountain climb in a place with next to no mountains.

As I had mentioned earlier, my first homologue was moved to a new school about a month after we arrived in Titao but now it turns out that I have a new one. I am not really sure when or how this happened, but we had our training in Ouaga a few weeks ago and a teacher from our school that I have never talked to showed up as my homologue. I figured he just wanted a free trip to Ouaga courtesy of the Peace Corps and who am I to judge, so I didn't say anything, but he seems to be taking his job pretty seriously. He's been giving me materials about the curriculum and even came and observed my class the other day. If only I knew what his name was...

I started some girl's club stuff this week. I basically had two meetings, one with the girls from 6e and the other with my girls from 5e. It was a little chaotic and the jury's still out on how successful it will be, but we'll give it a shot. There were 46 6e girls who showed up and about 30 from 5e. We decided that they are going to perform a dance for Women's Day on March 8th and we are also going to have a soccer game.

I've put them in charge of making the dance, but I'm going to organize the soccer game. If we are going to play for the village to watch, we are going to do it right. None of this everyone runs everywhere and girls just sitting braiding hair in the middle of the field stuff I usually put up with. They are going to have positions and we are going to practice once a week until the big game.

We also elected officers for the two clubs. Overall, they made good choices, except both the presidents will need to shape up or I'm going to change them. The 6e president seems a little slow and is normally the last to know what it going on and doesn't like speaking in front of people. The 5e president disappeared for 20 minutes during our meeting and I found her outside talking to boys. I think over time when the girls who aren't really interested leave, we'll have a good group.

Aside from that, there's not much news. Our nearest volunteer neighbor got himself 4th partied last night. I guess the men from his village told our friend Bernard to tell us to tell him that they are upset about one time when he didn't stand up for the Burkina flag being raised. Of course, by the time it got to us the story was that not only does he never stand up for the flag, he actually sits down on purpose everyday. It was really funny.

Thanks So Much!

2009-01-24T05:32:00.000-08:00

Aaron and I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who sent us packages over Christmas: Val and Keith, Grandpa and Grandma Siersma, Aunt Ann, Grandma Lois, Mom and Ron, Jenn, Bruce and Mardi, Holly, and Grandma Rose. We really appreciated it, you all are great.

We biked into town today to buy some eggs so I just wanted to say a quick thanks. It turns out that there is an egg season, who knew! We can't get eggs in our village, so we've been eating lots of oatmeal and granola but now we are out of that, so it's time to stock up again.

Life is good. School has started so we are keeping busy. Last week, as I am sure you noticed, Obama became president so everyone here was really excited. We listened to the ceremony on the radio and one of the stupid BBC correspondents (after she finished describing what the entire Obama family was wearing) actually said "the first African man has become the President of the United States". We brought a bag of M&M's to school to celebrate with the other teachers and afterwards one of them said he now understood how Americans can get fat so easily with candy like that.

Okay, that's all for now. We are planning a trip to hike Mt. Kilimanjaro in June so more on that later...

Lizard hunting

2009-01-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

We are heading back to village tomorrow so just a quick update before we leave. I am completely oversaturated in yogurt and pizza. I've been eating yogurt everyday and pizza as often as I can: love it. I feel like when we get done in Burkina, we may need to spend some time in a 2nd world country for a week or so to make the transition a little easier. Otherwise, I feel certain that I will cause a scene in the first grocery store we visit in America (we're talking tears, kissing the ground, hugging the baggers...it will be embarrassing).

Yesterday we went to visit a park near our transit house because we wanted to go for a bike ride without the stress of certain death or at least dismemberment that ensues when we try to ride bikes around the city. The park was so great! It was like being back home: dirt paths lined with trees, benches to sit on, no cars or motos zipping past you. So we are already in our zen-nature mode because the park is such a nice surprise when we see a huge crocodile (to avoid future embellishment, we decided it was between 10 and 15 ft long) sitting by a stream bank right across from our trail. After about 5 minutes of sitting and starting, we decided it had to be fake because it was sitting so still. As we were going to keep moving, a Burkinabé couple walks up so we asked them about it. They laugh at us for a while so we aren't sure if it is because we are gullible and fell for the fake crocodile or because the silly white people can't tell a real crocodile from a fake one but it was quickly sorted out when the guy picks up a big rock and hits the (potentially man-eating) crocodile in the face! It was definitely alive and unhappy as it jumped into the water.

We ended up finding 4 other crocodiles around the park as well as a big group of peacocks...peacocks! Who knew? We also stumbled upon a kid's park complete with playground, mini ferris wheel, trampolines, everything. Turns out this little city park doubles as a zoo, county fair, sports complex, and who knows what else. As we left, we found a map and saw that we had only seen about half of the park and there were a lot more animals on the other side, so we'll have to go back and try again.

That reminds me that I have made another New Years resolution: stop throwing rocks at lizards. I don't know what it is about throwing rocks at lizards, I just can't help it. They're asking for it. It normally isn't a big deal, because I am no good at it and hardly ever hit one; but I feel like it is getting a little out of hand. The other day in village, Aaron and I were passing the time with our closest volunteer neighbor by throwing rocks at lizards at our favorite hunting ground, the local buvette. We were joined by some beggar kids and before we knew it, we had a full scale assault with the kids running along the tops of the walls and scaring the lizards down so towards us. (Now, we are teachers in this town so we are supposed to be respected.)Finally, when some other teachers showed up on their motos, we decided the game was over and headed home. About 5 minutes after getting home, we had some kids knocking on our gate and went to find our hunting buddies holding a dead lizard in a water sachet out for us. I felt so bad: they'd killed this lizard for no reason. What are we supposed to do with a dead lizard? So we thanked them and gave them each a piece of candy. (Hopefully, they don't spread the word that the white people give out candy for each dead lizard you bring them.) Anyways, to avoid any future unecessary lizard deaths, I am trying to cut back on throwing rocks at lizards.

Happy New Year

2009-01-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

We are in Ouaga for a week of training which means a week of free internet...yes! It's been great to see all of the volunteers from our training group after 4 months and hear all of their stories. My personal favorite involves a volunteer who has conceded the battle for his house to the cockroaches and now sleeps outside regardless of the temperature. We tried a new bus company into Ouaga and it was so shocking: this place is professional. They only sell enough tickets for the number of seats available, they give you tickets for your bags that you put under the bus and check the tickets before you walk off with a bag, and they even tried to form us into a line to get on the bus! I found myself throwing some elbows in line just for old times sake.

New Year's Eve in Titao was a little disappointing because both Aaron and I got a little sick so we weren't able to bring our A-game to the party (I only made it until 9:30 before going to bed). But we killed 5 chickens, there was lots of beer and wine, and Aaron says at midnight there was a call for everyone to grab some chicken, a glass of champagne (we brought some champagne...it was really crappy, but everyone was impressed), and dance in a circle around the fire to a song that repeats the words "Bonne annee" over and over. It seems like we jumped the gun and the real party doesn't happen until New Years Day because that night we heard the music blaring until 4am. Next year...

I've made some unofficial New Year's resolutions (I like to keep them unofficial in case they don't happen):
- I want to walk with a baby strapped (saran-wrap style) to my back while balancing something on my head
- Actually do some French tutoring this year (my old tutor moved a month after we got there)
- Start a Girls Club or English Club or something at school besides the Sit-and-Stare at Madame Club

So that's the plan, we'll see how things go. We've had some people concerned about packages being lost. The thing is that the whole month of December was pretty much a lost month postal-ly speaking. There were so many holidays that even when there was no holiday, our post office decided not to open (either too tired from the last party or busy preparing for the next). So don't worry. Okay, that's all for now. We're having a great time in Ouaga eating food that requires refrigeration. (Last night was 'taco madness'.) Thanks for all the emails and messages.

Christmas in Mali

2009-01-07T08:19:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holidays were lots of fun. Mali was great. Of course, no trip would be complete without a little unexpected excitement and ours was no different. In order to leave the country, we have to submit a form with our trip plans and get them approved by our country director before we can leave. Aaron and I submitted our forms twice just to be safe but of course that didn't work. The bus to Mali was leaving at 7am Tuesday morning, but when we went to the station we still weren't sure if we were even going or just seeing everyone else off since our forms hadn't been received yet. Luckily, just as they started up the bus to get going around 9, we got a call saying we could go.

We spent 5 days backpacking in Dogon country and spent the last night in a town called Sevare where we heard the food was 'epic'. Dogon is really interesting, it is a stretch of escarpment about 100km (I think, we've also heard 200km) with villages along both the top and bottom. There are old ruins from a tribe that lived there in the 7th century before the Dogon people came as well as old Dogon houses from the 14th century. We stayed in a different village every night sleeping on the roof of the hotels. We started and ended most days by passing a calabash (bowl) of millet beer around for everyone.

Christmas was lots of fun because we went to a village with a big Catholic population that was having a party. By the time we got there, the dancing was already started and it looked like they had already been through some millet beer. We danced with them for a while, got our picture taken with Santa (real name, Daniel), and called it a night since we had a long hike the next day.
We also got to see the opening ceremony of a mask festival in one of our last villages. Dogon has lots of festivals but they change villages every time and some only happen once a year or once every couple years so you can to have a bit of luck and good timing to catch one. (Though I heard if you offer enough money, they will 'reenact' a festival for you.) Most of the villages contained groups of Catholics, Muslims, and animists. Animist sections of town have these rounded statue-like things which are their fetishes, or sources of power or magic. You can't touch them and I think there are also rules about who can go near them (of course I accidentally touched the first one we saw). It was all really interesting: fetishes, sorcerers, black magic.

Our guide was from Dogon and he was great. He liked to sum things up by declaring them "complicated" ("It's complicated...she's complicated...I'm complicated").
After Dogon, we headed to Sevare for our dinner at a hotel run by an American. Ever the bargain hunters, we ended up sleeping in what I can only describe as a nun's army barrack. I only saw the place in the dark, but there were clearly nuns and the rooms were made for a boot camp. Dinner was pretty epic. There were multiple courses and everything. We sat with a group of guys from Britain who had spent the last three weeks motocrossing all over West Africa. They were really funny and taught us all about American culture. It turns out that The Simpsons is the best show ever and that you can't count yourself as American if you don't know where Evel Kneivel was born.

Our trip back home from Mali was the typical transport nightmare. We started at 6am and after 13 hours, 1 car with a made-for-Nascar driver, and three buses (one of which never took us anywhere, we just stood on it for an hour) we made it home. All together, a pretty great trip.

Another Update

2008-12-22T07:28:00.000-08:00

So I wrote this long entry after finding out that week we didn't have school for an entire week. I'll save you the details. Suffice it to say that we asked plenty of questions about how to plan the final few weeks of class and were rewarded by showing to an almost-empty school. I'll note here one little quirk of the Burkinabé though:

Learning that class had been canceled for the week when I should be teaching and not the week before is one thing. But this information was not just passed on to us, "Hi Amy and Aaron, there is no class this week because of the strikes. See you next Monday." No, instead we walked into empty classrooms and then decided to go hang out with the other teachers who seemed to be waiting for the late students. It was during this casual prattle that the censure, the guy with all the info, mentioned in passing how there was no class. This is how it is with all important information. If you don't listen carefully you'll miss the whole point.

Another typical exchange: I sat down at my favorite sitting spot in town and this guy approached and asked if I wanted coffee. Well, this was new to me so I asked, "That's possible?" And he said, "No, there's nothing."

On another note, I've been meaning to mention the bird situation here. It is quite surprising, but Burkina is a mecca for bird watchers. On a typical morning or evening bike ride I'll see many awe-inspiring birds. There are the huge diabolical vultures. The intense falcon (that may have eaten one of our cats), the fighter jet-inspired hawks, the iridescent tropical birds, many brightly-colored song birds, white crane-like birds that go lost on their way to the Nile, something similar to a kingfisher... My favorite bird though is the feather bird. I know, aren't all birds "feather birds" and isn't that a stupid name? Here's the thing: imagine the longest feather plucked from a California condor's wing. Then shove it up a hummingbird's behind and you have the "feather bird." This minutely-bodied bird steers itself through the air much like a rafter navigating rapids--he paddles furiously and seemingly to no avail, but somehow he makes it out alive. A film of this bird in flight would be a great addition to that "air is a fluid" science lecture. Watching it swirl though the sky you have no doubt of air's fluid-like nature.

Book update:

Book Number 13: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

An excellent book. It sums up the history of science from Newton to modern biology in a never-boring way. It's filled anecdotes of the crazy, boring, and sometimes evil figures in science history. Bryson set out to write the book because he had never taken an interest in science and realized as a result he had no clue how scientists knew the amazing things they know. Therefore the book is extremely accessible, informative, and entertaining. It could help change the popular geeky view of science in America.

Book Number 14: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Another winner. This book manages to write seriously, creatively, and... dare I say beautifully... while making fun of serious creative writing and never undermining itself. It's like a basketball star convincing everyone that basketball is lame and so are its players but yet you marvel at his talent and lack of arrogance. I think even the ridiculous critiques of the book on the back cover were written by the author. If you want to read something classically new, read this iconoclastic burlesque.

School's Out!

2008-12-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

As of 7am this morning we are finished with our first trimester. All the grading and recording has taken us most of the last 3 days but we are finally finished. The thing about not having electricity is that you don't have Excel (among other things) so that means you are writing the grades for hundreds of students and calculating their averages by hand. And all school records are written in ink on carbon copy paper so you normally want to do it more than once to make sure there are no errors before you record the grades. What a pain!

Our students did pretty well. We can always tell which students have cheated on our tests because they will have the exact same completely absurd answers. On my last test I has a true/false question asking whether 'l'homme' (man) is an example of an autotrophe (plants that make their own food) and I had three boys say that 'l'homme' was not an autotrophe because it was 'les femmes' that prepare all the food at the house.

Our big victory this week was that Moussa, our student that hangs out all the time, has solved 3 Sudokus!! I'm so proud. At first, when it was taking two days to do a word search, I was losing hope, but he's getting the hang of it now. Also, we have a few sprouts in our garden already. We already have some little bean, carrot, thyme, and tomato plants.

Yesterday the US Ambassador came to visit us. Okay, she didn't come up to visit us specifically, she was in the area and stopped by, but we still felt like celebrities. She even brought us a Christmas present of homemade brownies and banana bread: it was awesome!

Animal update: we are down to one cat and one pigeon now. Moussa thinks someone stole our pigeon but we aren't sure. So I guess we have plenty of room for chickens now. There's this mangy dog around town that Aaron wants to adopt (he calls him a 'fixer-upper') but I think I might veto that (Editor's Note: With a little TLC he'll make a great dog. I think of him as an investment. Kind of like that VW 'fixer-upper' Bug that's been sitting in my parent's garage for years).

Well, I guess that is all the news. The weather here is still warm so it's hard to believe that it is almost Christmas. The other day it was actually cloudy and we got about 10 drops of rain, which was pretty exciting but aside from that it's sunny and warm. We've been told that midnight on Dec. 24th it will get cold (kind of like how in a month we will have electricity).
Thanks to Mom and Ron for the packages.

Tabaski

2008-12-21T10:01:00.001-08:00

Nye Taabo a tout le monde. It turns out that this week is a big week of Burkinabé holidays. Monday was the Muslim holiday of Tabaski, Thursday is a national independence day, and Saturday is the anniversary of a reporter that was killed and all the students go on strike. Naturally, Aaron and I were about 2 steps behind everyone else learning about all of this. The whole situation was really confusing. We were told that Tabaski was coming but nobody seemed to know what day it was. We get the whole week off of school but we didn't find this out until we arrived at school ready to teach. These holidays are a big deal, too. It would be like if nobody told you about Thanksgiving in the States.

So Tabaski is called the fête of the mouton (sheep) and is one of the big Muslim holidays in the year. Everyone starts early with prayer in the morning and then around 10 they kill the mouton and start preparing a big meal. So what better way for us to celebrate and learn about it than by eating chicken with our Catholic friend? Our friend, Bernard, had us over for some chicken, soup, and dolo (imagine really bad wine). He was telling us that in Burkina, Muslims and Christians celebrate each other's holidays. So on Tabaski or the end of Rhamadan, his Muslim neighbors bring him food from their feasts and on Christmas and Easter he brings them food. (Basically, they just like a good party.)

We are thinking of getting a chicken and starting a chicken family at our house so that next year we will have our own chickens to eat for the different holidays. Bernard picked out a cock to give us so we just have to buy the hen and we're in business. We haven't seen the turtle in a while and one of our cats (the one good one) has been missing for a week (there is a chance that a neighbor ate it), so our animal population is almost back down to a reasonable level which means it's time to add some more. I think we will wait until after Christmas.

For Christmas this year we are going backpacking in Dogon Country, Mali for 5 days. It is supposed to be a must-see in West Africa so we are really excited. I'm not sure if we'll have cellphone reception so sorry in advance if we don't answer between the 23rd and 28th. Then we'll be back in Titao for New Years (Bernard has been building Titao up to be the Times Square of Burkina for New Years Eve, but I'm a little skeptical).
Okay, miss you all and hope you have a great Christmas!

Thanksgiving

2008-12-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays everyone! I hope you are all getting your fill of cheesy Christmas songs in all the stores. We've been decorating our house for Christmas. Our theme this year: overkill. I would say between the streamers hanging from the door (Aaron calls this our "Christmas spirit") and the tons of stuffed Santa dolls in every room we are doing well.

Thanksgiving was lots of fun. We started first thing in the morning by killing the pig (we named it Bacon) and while the pig was being cleaned we snacked on some banana bread, goldfish, and beef brochettes. Then it was time to kill the 5 chickens we bought. Aaron and I each killed one and some other volunteers killed the other ones. Combine that with mashed potatoes, brownies, and beer, and you have a real feast Americana.

We did feel a little awkward the next week at school when the other teachers kept asking how our fête was (we didn't invite them, very unBurkinabé of us). The lack of an invitation didn't stop one of the teachers from coming by mid-dinner with his wife and kids and his neighbor's wife and kids and announcing that he came to eat dinner with us and can we pass him a beer. Oh well...

Dec 1st was AIDS day. I wanted to do something for my class so another teacher said he would get someone from the local clinic to come and speak to them. A week before, I reminded him and he said it was all settled "pas de problème". Three days before, I mentioned it again and he gets a blank look and says 'I thought you were finding someone' (but in French). So the night before we have a lady we don't know comes by the house and say that she was told to come to school and talk to our class the previous day and she went and nobody was there. We didn't know anything about this but asked if she could come the next day at 7 and talk to our classes. By 7:30 the next day, I gave up on her and proceeded to hold my own AIDS session. We're still not really sure who she was, and we haven't seen her since. I figure she will probably return at some completely random time ready to do AIDs education.

While I really enjoy teaching, I do find it sometimes difficult to teach a subject that I don't have much of a background in. This became apparent over Thanksgiving when I was talking to another volunteer who teaches the same subject and he was complaining about how he had to make his own curriculum because the book had so many errors. I not only teach straight from the book, but was using the book to teach myself the topics. I can normally cover up my ignorance in class with careful lesson planning but I think my cover might be blown. The student who gave us the pigeons likes to hang out at our house during the week and I think he has realized that I know next to nothing about plants. He used to sit in the yard and ask me stuff about the different trees or plants we have and when I didn't know that answer I would say "I don't know the word in French." But now he doesn't bother asking me questions and he's started teaching me about which tree to use for their leaves or fruit and what time of year they will be ready, etc.

He's also helping us start a garden thanks to the seeds we got from Aaron's grandma. This has required breaking up a lot of tough dirt in our yard. At first I was helping and he just kind of laughed, but then I guess he decided that it was time to get to work and politely informed me that I was just messing stuff up so I stepped aside and he had our plot ready in no time. We've been trying to teach him how to work Sudoku puzzles but so far he hasn't quite figured it out. Last week we took a step back and tried word searches and he is almost done with the first one. We'll get there eventually.

Thanks so much to Grandma Lois, Aunt Ann, Grandma Rose, Val, and Keith for the packages.

Lessons on Boarding a Bus

2008-11-21T08:49:00.000-08:00

We managed to swing a free trip to town this weekend because Aaron is doing bike training with the PC drivers (so maybe it is just me who got the free trip), so that means it's a big weekend in the big city for the Roses. Things are going well. This November weather has been great. We are still sleeping outside, but now we actually use covers...covers! I even wore long sleeves the other morning because I felt a little chilly.

SIAO was lots of fun, we saw some really neat stuff and had fun getting our discuté on. The part we weren't ready for was the vendors from Ghana who can speak English. This proves to be problematic when you are in the middle of a good bargain and Aaron walks up to say "man, I thought we'd be paying twice that!" Oh well, it was still lots of fun.

The trip home from Ouaga was a little less fun. The first bus was broken so we had to sit around for a new one, then comes the epic battle to get on the bus and claim a seat. I was hanging onto the bus door with one arm and holding off an old lady who was trying to pummel me to the ground with the other. Once we managed to get on the bus and get to Ouahigouya, we discovered that one of the girls with us was missing her bag with all of the stuff she had bought in Ouaga. We're guessing the guys at the bus station took it off the bus at some point, but needless to say, that was really frustrating and sad. Our second bus home was also broken so they roll up an hour late with this bus half the size of the normal one. Madness ensues once again; this time we are fighting for a place to stand because hoping for a seat is a lost cause. After everyone gets on sardine-style and they spend a good half hour loading the bags on the roof, the regular bus rolls up. The best imagery I have to describe the scene comes from Emilie, another volunteer with us. She says that the girl running next to her between buses got stuck behind people and Emilie looked back at her and started to slow down but the girl just waved vigorously and said "Allez, allez." It was madness. So within another hour we were on the road finally heading home until our bus broke 5km down the road. I knew it would be a while when I saw the guys starting to make new parts with a machete and a piece of wood. We finally made it home later that night, so I would say we did okay.

We have some new pets. One of my students brought over two pigeons and helped us pluck the wings so they wouldn't fly away and made a home for them. (I tried to take pictures but our idiot camera didn't work.) After a while when the pigeons have made some babies we'll eat the adults. We still have a rat problem and our attempts to kill them are getting more desperate. We used to strategize and plan, now we run around at 2 am trying to smash it with a shovel or drown it in a hole. They are supposed to make great cadeaux for the neighbors if we can ever kill one. We now have a slingshot, a shovel, and a new trap so either that rat is going to get it or one of us is going to be calling our PC doctor to explain how we got hit by a slingshot at 2am.

Other than the rats, things are great. School is going well. We only have about three week left until our break. I am currently reading Ulysses, which leaves me between states of literary bliss and wanted to be hit in the face with a slingshot. This book is nuts, but I am determined to get through it.

We're really excited about Thanksgiving next week having people over. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you back home.

The male half here. How are you folk? And the family? And the health? And the spouse? And the [period of day]? And the work? But seriously, I hope everyone is doing well. Also, that's an example of a greeting Burkinabe style. Not sure if we've really mentioned this aspect of our everyday life, but you greet everyone you see no matter what. Unlike in America where someone may run by with a quick 'hullo' and strangers say nothing at all and that's just fine, here that kind of, um, let's say efficiency, is taken personally. Of course, it's rather nice even if it just a formality. I liken it to the forced-smile effect. They say that if you're feeling down, even a fake smile can trigger something in your brain to make you feel a little better. Therefore, even formal greetings can make you feel welcome. Which leads to another important point: these formal greetings are surprisingly consistently genuine which makes one feel even better.

In Burkina Faso if you want to have a good day, all you have to do is turn to the nearest person and say 'Ca va?'

Of course sometimes, as an American, I forget that being late isn't taboo and walking into a room full of professors and immediately shaking all their hands and exchanging greetings isn't odd. The other morning, for example, I approached the Salle de Prof and, running a bit behind schedule but trying to be Burkinabe, paused at the door, got into the greeting zone, practiced my finger-snap handshake (a must to be cool), and effulgently burst through the door with a smile, a handshake, and a 'Bonjour' for the first person I saw. After the I-just-walked-into-a-dark-room-from-the-bright-outdoors-blindness wore off and I was on my second or third greeting, I simultaneously saw Amy surreptiously flagging me to shut up and heard the Proviseur (read Big Dog, my boss) addressing a committee for some meeting. Oops.

That's about all the excitement I have. I'm looking forward to the bike training this weekend. I'll be teaching the new trainees some basics and answering some questions of the staff who have received some training. If all goes well I may get to go to Ouaga sometime and do more in depth training and help out with the loaner bike situation there. I've been practicing my French bike lingo, so hopefully I can limit the amount of simian hand gestures.

Thanksgiving. Yeah, it's going to be bonafide. We have a local guy, the grillier, or meat-cooker, who has experience throwing Thanksgiving parties. He took care of business last year for Jill and Markus. We're going to finally have an entire pig cooked with pineapple (I wanted one for the wedding), chickens, beef brochettes (shish-kabobs), veggie soup, turkey, mashed potatoes, cold beer and sodas, cafe au laits (that's nescafe and sweetened condensed milk), sandwiches, the whole nine yards. You've still got a week to buy your plane tickets. Vous etes invites!

Really, that's all I have to say. Have a great Thanksgiving and we'll write to you later.

12

2008-11-17T12:53:00.000-08:00

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende

Excellent. An MIT graduate student decides to live in a Mennonite-like community where technology is carefully scruitinized before its use is allowed. Brende's hunch is that though technology is supposed to make our lives easier and higher in quality, all technology is not created equal. Some technology actually leads to more work, more stress, and less enjoyment of life. Living in Africa, his tale is especially poignant.

For example, to wash clothes, he and his wife heat up water on the gas stove and put it in a hand crank washing machine that he claims does just as good a job and isn't too hard to operate. Amy and I set our buckets in the sun, dump some soap in, and in an hour each week our laundry is done. Then it line dries. It doesn't really bother us, that hour, and we use much less water and energy achieving the same result. We also save money and get a little workout That water and energy we just saved also just made someone else's life easier because now there is less demand for those two commodities (less demand that's not good for the economy...that's not the point). Therefore, washing clothes in a bucket is a technological advance over a washer and drier. Would I add a hand crank to my bucket? Yes, that would be easier without any major negatives. Would I add a motor? Perhaps, if the energy it required was small and easily provided by my habitat. Would I add a direct water line, drain, and electric heater? No.

Washing my own clothes, I've realized that cotten is really the only fabric I own that is hard to clean. My more technological synthetics just need a rinse and all the stains are out. That's technology that's worth it. If I didn't have any cotten to wash, I could use three 5 gallon buckets of cold water with a little soap each week and be done with the laundry in under an hour. That's comparable in time to modern laundry and way more efficient.

Those are the kind of conflicts of interest Brende points out. Technology has many hidden negatives such as cost, use of resources, maintenance, etc. that sometimes make tasks more difficult. Being a practical sort of guy, I like this thinking. True engineering takes as many factors as possible into account, so we need to review each new piece of technology to see if it's truly engineered or if it's sequiously engineered.

Also, Brende reminds us that we are social beings and one of his simplest, most profound discoveries is that work isn't work when you're amongst friends. "Working" the fields is an opportunity to hang out friends. Canning vegetables is a party. It sounds silly and perhaps obvious to some, but many Americans have forgotten this as they sit in cubicles 8 hours a day, or traffic 2. Many people dream of a sinecure and when they get it end up unhappy and bored. Humans are social beings and technology shouldn't interfere with that.

Bon travail M. Brende.

11

2008-11-16T12:52:00.000-08:00

Book #11 A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Essentially an autobiography of James Joyce growing up. Not a great novel by itself but contains a taste of stream of consciousness writing, had great descriptions, of hell for example, and contains well-written, well-developed passages on various topics. Should be a good intro to Joyce’s famous “Ulysses” as it introduces the reader to the main character and to Joyce’s bizarre writing style.

10

2008-11-15T12:51:00.000-08:00

Book #10 Active Liberty: Interpreting our Democratic Constitution by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

A bit boring; most of the main points are in the introduction and conclusion. Basically, Breyer says that the constitution was designed as a framework for making decisions meaning: Where the constitution doesn’t clearly resolve a problem, stop looking for an answer in its text, and start using your ingenuity and common sense. Breyer claims that a good judge must recognize the times when the language of a law prohibits it from clearly conveying the point the writers were trying to make and then make a sound decision based on what makes sense and what the writers would have thought. Breyer also claims that we need more “active liberty,” i.e. participation, in today’s government as opposed to apathy.

9

2008-11-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

Book #9 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Definitely a worthwhile book for everyone to read, despite terrible redundancy. This book was recommended to me as a less philosophical, more concrete alternative to Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael,” my favorite book. It’s worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it won for its content and not its long-winded prose.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is an attempt to answer the question, “Why did Europeans end up technologically superior to the rest of the world and not China or Africa or Papua New Guinea?” This question is of course a generalization of the last few hundred years. Diamond answers the question by exploring the ultimate role geography, climate, and resources had on the proliferation of guns, germs, and steel which are the more immediate or proximate answers to the questions. He describes, based on anthropology and other sciences, how humans went from hunter-gatherers to today’s agricultural societies and where the different countries diverged.

Interestingly enough, Daniel Quinn hits the nail on the head in “Ishmael.” Diamonds scientific explanations of humankind’s progress back up Quinn’s theories on the same subject. Kudos Mr. Quinn.

8

2008-11-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

Book #8 1984 by George Orwell

Awesome book. It warned of cold war-like events years before the Cold War. Probably as applicable today as ever. Just read it and see for yourself. I suddenly understand a lot more allusions in everday reading.

7

2008-11-12T12:48:00.000-08:00

Book #7: How to Spend 50 Billion to Make the World A Better Place edited by Bjorn Lomberg

This book is the result of a conference of world-leading economists (8, 3 Nobel laureates) asked to perform cost-benefit analyses of spending money on various world problems. The results are then brought together and ranked in order of priority.
The results:
HIV/AIDS – 27 Billion with a cost-benefit ratio of 40
Malnutrition – 12 Billion
Free trade – “Small” cost resulting in huge benefits, e.g. 2,400 Billion/year
Malaria – 10 Billion

It’s interesting that all the economists agree that free trade is a no-brainer. They explain that the resistance to free trade is purely due to lobbyists who have a lot to lose despite the obvious overall gains of the countries involved—gains which will in the end make it back to the lobbyists and their corporations. I.e., in the short-term some companies lose and that’s enough to create so many holdouts.

Notably, global warming didn’t make the cut. The meeting (The Copenhagen Convention) occurred, though, before the recent slew of IPCC reports that greatly strengthened the evidence for global warming. When the report was published there wasn’t enough data on the economic feasibility of fighting global warming so the economists suggested the issue be looked at again once those studies have been completed. Now that those studies have been completed, and the results generally show economic benefits of fighting global warming, I’d be interested in seeing an updated report.

...

2008-11-11T12:47:00.000-08:00

Book #6: Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman

This book by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist is an excellent overview of physics comprehensible by anyone. Feynman is well-known for his “Feynman Lectures” in which he taught physics to undergrads at Caltech in an easy-to-understand manner. This book is the introduction of those lectures in which he covers physics past and present (1960’s) in the simplest terms. He relates classical, modern, and quantum physics and describes the problems facing physicists today. I wish I had read this book my freshman year of receiving my physics degree as it really helped tie all those classes together.

...

2008-11-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

Book #5: The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest by Po Bronson

A book about as outdated as the technology it describes. The First 20 Million is a novel about Silicon Valley software engineers writing the next killer app, starting a start-up, and dealing with copyright issues. It’s poorly written with a mediocre plot. Goes to show that just because you graduated from Stanford University doesn’t mean you can write a good book. It might have passed as interesting or at least entertaining back during the technology bubble.

Next...

2008-11-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

I figured out how to have posts added in the future. Therefore, since there are so many book reviews to add, and some people (Jason) complain about our rate of adding new content, this should help pass the time.

Book #4: Eat, Love, Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert

Give me a break. Let’s just say I don’t think we’d be buddies. This “spiritual journey” is only redeemed by the slightly elucidating discussions of Hinduism, Yogism, and other Eastern religions and philosophies; my typically limited American perception of these topics was filled out a little better. Other than that, the book was mostly like listening to a self-asorbed, I’m-worldlier-than-you teenage brat. In the end this attitude is replaced to some degree with a new-found humility that I hope persists.

Book reviews

2008-11-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

I've updated my list. Here goes.

Book # 3 : The Brothers Karamazov by Fydor Dostoyevsky

Everybody has heard of Crime and Punishment but critics call this Dostoyevsky’s best book. Einstein called it perhaps the greatest novel ever written. Freud referred to it often. Tolstoy died with it next to his bed. What do I think? Well, I have the goal of reading a bunch of the classics while in BF to make up for the relative lack of reading during college, and I decided to start with the Brothers. I believe it has been an excellent choice.
It’s an 800 page book that reads like 400 it’s so well written. Yet it’s no Redwall; there’s much to think about including religion, crime, guilt, community, wealth, and poverty. It covers much ground in great depth, makes one stop and think, and manages to tie it all together fluidly with a great storyline. That’s the definition of a great novel, right? Highly recommended.

Aaron's Update

2008-11-07T12:37:00.000-08:00

Life is good. Who’d have thunk it? I feel like I live here. Everything seems normal and I’m comfortable knowing I’ll be here for two years. I think that’s a good place to be. It’s funny the things you get completely used to. Bucket baths; no baths; sleeping outside under a mosquito net; pooping amongst the spider, lizards, flies, mice, and other bugs; pooping in a hole; pooping outside; pooping water; cooking with a camping stove; washing dishes and clothes with buckets; never driving a car; riding or walking everywhere; the heat; the dust; spiders everywhere in the house... Sometimes I think, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s not normal.” But of course in BF it is.

Most of our time is spent cooking, cleaning, teaching, lesson planning, reading, and studying. That’s our day. Nothing ever seems too urgent or stressful. What a nice life.

A note on water. Once a week we pay about 55 cents for about 55 gallons of water delivered to our door. Most of that is used for washing dishes and laundry and the rest is for cooking and drinking and showering. For showers we use a 5 gallon pail that lasts anywhere from 2 to 4 showers depending on how clean you want to be and how cold the water is. Therefore, one bathtub probably contains the amount of water we use in a week.

A note on the fou. Amy mentioned that a fou stole my Nescafe the other day. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on her face while she was dumping my coffee into her place. It was a look I’d forgotten existed. It was the mischievous, “I know better but I’m going to do it anyway because I know I can get away with it look.” It immediately brought me back to elementary school where I used see the look all the time in R.B.’s face. He was unique, though, and so was this fou.

I want to say congratulations to Mr. Obama. I have a feeling that Americans are probably 50/50 elated and disappointed. For what’s it worth, America just got a lot more popular in Africa and I think, rightly or wrongly accomplished, that is worth something. (Just heard someone say his name.) Listening to the BBC and the African portion of Voice of America was like a birthday, graduation, and wedding party all in one—everyone was praising and congratulating America and Americans. It was a nice change of pace.

Also want to say congrats to Paul Krugman, the economist who just won the Nobel Prize. I heard a speech of his last summer and thought it was brilliant. Then I realised this great article I was reading online was by the same guy. Now, he’s gone and legitimized my feelings by winning the Nobel. Nice work buddy.

Amy and I want to send a shout out to the following people: Aunt Annie, Amy, and Natalie; Paul and Steph; Mom and Dad; and the other Mom and Dad. Here goes: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PACKAGES. THEY REALLY PUT A SMILE ON OUR FACE. HOLY MOLY M&Ms ARE AWESOME. COFFEE GALORE...X 4!!!! IT WAS LIKE XMAS AND WHAT DAY IS BETTER THAN XMAS? Thanks a bunch folks, it was a really great month.

Another quick note: I'm told that the remaining kitten that we gave to a friend has passed on to a deeper spot on Earth. Something like, "It started twitching like it was having a seizure then keeled over." RIP little buddy.

Hurray for a new president (elect) !!!

2008-11-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

Everyone here in Burkina is really excited about Obama winning the election this week. We had arranged to watch the election results all night at the place where they show the soccer games but, nothing ever works out like we think it will, and we spent the night sitting around our radio at home listening to the BBC and Voice of America. Finally, around 4am, they called the election for Obama (fist pump).

Luckily, I only had one class the next day and ample time beforehand to drink coffee (kind of like college). Classes are going well. I am giving my first test this week, we’ll see how it goes. I’ve been trying to incorporate activities and review games in my class to make it more exciting but last week I received a total slap in the face (figuratively) from one of my classes. They were a little chatty after we finished our warm-up game so I asked if they would prefer to skip the rest of the day’s activities and take notes in silence for the rest of class and received a resounding “oui” in response. What the heck?!!! They preferred to take notes in silence for 90 minutes than play my games. Ouch. Well, that’s what we did and it was so boring (for me, at least). I guess for them that is the easiest way to have class since they seem to learn by taking notes and memorizing them. But I am still going to make them play my games every now and then so they practice thinking for themselves.

A few weeks ago we had a big awards ceremony for all the schools in the area to give prizes to the students who had the highest grades last year. We arrived at 8:30, as instructed, just in time for the ceremony to start around 10:30. There were a bunch of big wigs, like the governor, there who gave speeches for the first hour. Then, we gave out about 10 prizes and they announced that it was too hot and the ceremony was over. I felt bad for the 40 or so students who had to collect their prizes later without a big applause. The prizes were pretty good, though. Everyone got some shoes, notebooks, money, and some students got a bike.

Then it was time for lunch at the High Commissioner’s house. There were 2 buffet tables laid out, one for the teachers and the other for the students who received prizes. We sat for an hour for no other apparent reason than it had been a while since our last wait. Then all of the sudden, it was time to eat. I would describe this experience as an African running of the bulls with rice. There was no line. People were grabbing entire platters of food and running off with them. Aaron couldn’t even get a plate. I got a little meat because a guy we knew threw some on my plate as he ran by with handfuls. Then, I looked up to see the students standing quietly in a single-file line at their table. It was nuts.

Speaking of crazy experiences with people and food, we were eating breakfast the other day (bread, butter, and coffee) at a table in town and one of the town fous (the name for crazy people here) walked up, took Aaron’s coffee, dumped it in her bowl, and ran away laughing. It was ridiculous. Oh well, I guess she probably needed it more than us.

We met a girl from the UN World Food Program the other day who was explaining what the WFP does in Burkina. I guess Burkina just got demoted to “emergency” status by their organization. Their program provides free meals at school to encourage parents to send their kids to school. A volunteer in a neighboring village says the program at her school has doubled the attendance.

We are heading to Ouaga this weekend to go to SIAO, an artisan festival that occurs every 2 years. We are going at the end, so hopefully we’ll get some good bargains. Later this month, we’ll be hosting Thanksgiving at our house. We’re trying to get a pig to roast.

Thanks to Aunt Annie and Val and Keith for the packages…real coffee!!! And thanks to Steph for the phone call and Maria for the text. Miss you guys.

Where have I been?

2008-10-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

It’s been a while. Here’s some recent info from me, Aaron. I’ll have even more next time (I've read a bunch of books I need to add).

We bought a computer on ebay a little while ago. Luckily to avoid shipping fees and import tariffs we were able to have another PCV returning from a visit to the US bring the computer with him; import tariffs on computers can run in the hundreds of dollars we’re told. Why a computer? Well, I’ve started studying for the general and physics GREs and hope to take the two before leaving BF and the computer is a handy study tool. (I can get a few days off to take the GRE in Ghana. There are two times a year to take the physics GRE there.) Aside from studying, the computer will be useful for starting applications and writing essays and my statement of purpose for grad school. Also, we can read e-books, pre-type emails and blogs, and download articles for reading at our leisure.

With this in mind we bought an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) aka the one-hundred dollar computer which actually costs two-hundred dollars. In theory, it’s perfect. It’s durable, light, good on energy, actually easier to see in direct sunlight, and looks like a toy which is a deterrent against theft.

The one problem is that it’s designed for kids, so to make the operating system a little more grown-up, people have been installing Linux. I actually thought of this as a bonus because it would give a chance to learn the operating system, which is becoming more common, and brush up on my Unix skills.

Well, I said it’s perfect in theory for a reason. Things haven’t worked out so well. Most of the time spent with the computer is trying to get it to work right. After a long process, we got Linux installed, sans programs. Shortly thereafter, before we had the chance to install any programs, i.e. make it useable, it stopped working correctly—we couldn’t type—and now it won’t even boot. So, we figured we’d get by using the childish operating system built-in. Nope, that’s not even really working. The version shipped with the computer is really old and really buggy and the keyboard still only works some of the time. We’re heading to Ouaga at the end of the month so hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of the wireless internet there and get things working again.

Ironically, I’m reading a book right now by an MIT (The school where the computer was conceived) grad student’s quest to answer the questions, “Does technology really make life easier,” and, “How much technology is too much?”

Education in BF

A little about education in Burkina Faso. The government has this goal—namely that all of the youth in BF get an education. They even have a law stating that school is required for everyone under the age of 16. Yet, there are two obvious factors working against this goal.

The first is that school is not free. As you’re probably well aware, it’s hard enough for families to feed themselves already. Asking them to pay extra to send a working (money-making) child off to school is incongruous with this fact of life. The cost of school is somewhere between 10 and 25 mil (thousand) cfa or 20 to 60 dollars depending on the exchange rate. For most families that’s a lot. I made the mistake of flashing a 10 mil bill once in the marché; the looks of those peoples’ faces…

The next roadblock to the goal is the education strategy itself. In training we are taught, by Burkinabé teachers, that our goal is for 50% of our students to pass on to the next grade level. Therefore, we’re supposed to aim for an average grade of 10 out of 20 on all our tests, where 10 is passing. This goal is easily achieved. One might think it would be necessary to write some really hard problems for a class to average 50%. Actually, the Rote teaching method makes this goal a cinch to achieve. Due to their training, which is a carry-over from the old Frech-Colonial days I’d guess, the students are excellent at taking notes, following extremely specific directions, and regurgitating exact phrases. Give them a test with the exact example problems from class and they’ll mostly ace it. The problem comes when you change the numbers—when the familiar becomes one step removed. That’ll get you close to a 50%. Then, if you add the typical problems that have different numbers and are a little different in format, you’ve got your 50% fail rate.

The problem is that students here aren’t taught, and obviously lack, critical thinking skills. This is one area I’ve already started working on in my classes. Almost every class we do some sort of puzzle that is applicable to math and requires the students to apply their math skills to a new problem. The good news is that the older students, despite years of Rote learning, eventually figure it out for themselves, if a bit late. Therefore, if you can keep the students in school long enough, learning becomes self-catalytic and the students will continue to grow without formal education.

Which leads to the paradox: economists know that education spurs economic growth, and, assuming BF wants to see economic growth, one would think they’d be ushering students through the school system, not failing them and making them “redouble” (take the year over) which is more costly. The one reason I can see for holding back the number of students is that there’s already a teacher shortage, and maybe, for the short term this practice is actually beneficial.

That being said, our school has close to a thousand students in grades 5 through the end of high school. They are all probably more motivated and definitely more disciplined that most Americans in this age group because to them school is something new and special; school is not taken for granted. That’s encouraging and I think despite the imperfections the schools are a promising sign of BF’s future.

Restaurants

A funny thing happens almost anywhere we can order food or drink.

We ask, “What do you have to eat/drink?”

The reply, “Riz sauce and tô (yup, that’s food).”

“Is that all?”

“Riz gras.”

“Okay I’ll have the riz sauce.”

15 minutes later, “The riz sauce is gone.”

“What do you have again?”

“Tô and French fries.”

“Wait, I thought you have riz gras too.”

“Oui.”

“Anything else you’re not telling me about.”

“Soupe and igname (another form of potatoes).”

“Oh, well then, I’ll have the French fries and soup. What kind of soup is it (the answer is meat or chicken)?”

“Oui.”

“Ok, thank you…”

15 minutes later our food arrives. I get soup (meat), no fries. The guy next to me get riz sauce.

And that’s that. I’ve thought it was due to poor language skills on my part or theirs, but it’s actually just the way it is. Huh.

Good Riddance to Bad Eggs

2008-10-18T02:58:00.000-07:00

Happy belated National Wash Your Hands Day to everyone. That’s right, Wednesday was the big day. In my class, we talked about why it is important to wash your hands, when you should do it, and who should wash their hands (“everyone”). It was really exciting. We just finished our second week of school and everything is good so far. We are both teaching 15 hours a week. Aaron has three sections of 5th grade level math that he teaches 5 hours a week. There are 80 students in each section. I am teaching the three sections of 5th grade biology, and two sections of 6th grade biology for a grand total of 380 students. I have given up trying to learn their names and just call them by their tshirts (I have some boys named, Shakira, Brittany, and lil Bow Wow). I’ve had to kick a couple of students out of class and told many more than they couldn’t come in because they were late, but aside from that the students are pretty well-behaved.

Last week was the one year anniversary of the Doctors Without Borders office in Titao so they had a little shindig that we went to. It was fun and we got to meet the chief of our village. We also did a tour of the DWB facility here learned about their program. Their work here is focused on malnourished children. If the child is under 5, and meets their standards for being malnourished, the mother and child can come to their facility and receive supplements and treatment until the baby reaches a certain weight and is allowed to leave. It was pretty sad to see all those rooms full of sick babies and sad moms who basically sit around all day watching their babies who may or may not survive with a bunch of other moms doing the same thing. I am hoping we can do something with them. If nothing else, maybe we can try to go and visit with the moms and babies every now and then to give them something new to do.

We have been listening to the Presidential debates on our radio. They come on at 1am here so it is normally a kind of dreamy, surreal experience. We slept in a little for this last one and missed the first half but the commentators afterwards said it was just a bunch of mud-slinging anyway. We missed the VP debate so we downloaded the transcript and acted it out (which was way more fun). We had to switch roles every now and then, though, because we both found Palin to be really annoying and needed to share the burden.

Normally, when we ride or walk through town, people tend to sit with an expecting look, waiting to see if we are going to saluer them or not. They get in this position where they are ready to say hi back in case we greet them but equally ready to pretend they didn’t even notice us in case we don’t. So anyways, the other day I rode by this guy and said gave him the ‘ol “bonsoir” and he did a fist pump! He didn’t even say hi back: just closed his eyes and fist pumped, it was so funny. I think I am going to incorporate more fist pumps into my daily life. When my students get a question right…fist pump; when the veggie lady gives me a cadeau of some extra onions…fist pump; when I crack an egg and see that it hasn’t gone bad, you better believe I will fist pump. We have had a string of nasty egg incidents lately. They say that when you buy eggs, you should put them in water and depending on whether they float or not, you can tell if they have gone bad. Well, we tried that but the trouble is we can’t remember if they are supposed to float or sink. Also, it turns out that once an egg goes bad it turns into a miniature explosive device and won’t just go bad in your bowl; that thing will spray all over the counter, your clothes, everywhere. We had one last week that even the cats wouldn’t eat. Flour bugs are another new thing that we have discovered. I guess we will have to find a new way to store our flour.

I think our French is getting better or at least we are reaching a comfortable level of ignorance. I have found another teacher at our school who is going to tutor me so hopefully that will help. We had our meeting of teachers last week where we discuss the school schedule and other stuff for the year and Aaron and I were pretty much lost the whole time (thus the “other stuff” because I don’t actually know what they talked about). The meeting was supposed to start at 7 so we showed up and 6:50. Around 8 the other teachers started to roll in and we finally started. The other teachers have been really nice and helpful. I am friends with the PE teacher; I call him “coach” and we listen to Beyonce in the mornings on his cellphone.

Overall, life is good. They have started killing the pigs around town so we’ve been having Pork Thursdays. It is always takes me a little by surprise when I am digging into my bowl of meat to look up and see a pig carcass sitting in the counter right next to us, but it doesn’t seem to bother me anymore. We are heading to Ouaga at the end of the month for a big artisan festival that happens every two years and people come from all over West Africa to see it. Mom, we finally got your package this week!! Thanks so much, we were really excited. And Steph and Paul, we got yours too. You guys are awesome.

Still no school

2008-10-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

We made it through our first month at site! Aaron and I are getting settled into Titao pretty well now. We have a friend- a friend!!! - who is a police officer and we go to his house for tea on Saturdays (Burkina tea: imagine a shot glass of foamy mint tea with lots and lots of sugar, slurp loudly, and voila) and we found a place that shows Champions League soccer games on Tuesdays and Wednesday, so what else could we need right? A few weeks ago we went to a play/dance party put on by some of the older students in town. The skits were in Mooré so I didn't really follow them but everyone was cracking up so I am guessing it was funny, but the dancing was really fun. These kids can move; and not just the girls, the boys can dance too. Imagine Dalia as an African high schooler in jellies (all the guys here where jellies, remember jellies?) and that's what I am talking about. For those who don't know Dalia, turn on MTV and pick a girl from a rap video.

I did the Titao church tour the last few weeks. We have a Catholic Church and a Protestant church, both services are a whopping 3 hours long. The Protestant service was fun because there was an hour in there that felt like a musical: there was a guy up front who was talking but it seemed like every minute or so everyone would suddenly bust out into a song, I never saw it coming. And the songs would end just as abruptly. As a result, I stopped clapping along after the third time because I was always getting stuck clapping when everyone else had finished and it was quiet (that's not embarrassing). My favorite part of the service was the end when they announced they had a special gift for the pastor and did a big schpeel about his contributions and had some important people present him with his gift. What was this gift? Shoes and extra laces. That's right. In Burkina, that's a really good gift because the men are obsessed about their shoes, but it still made me laugh. Then, to wrap things up, they had an auction fundraiser where they auctioned all kinds of stuff from chickens to onions, to individual Bic pens. By comparison, I would sum up the Catholic service as: stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Nice, but none of the flair.

We haven't started teaching yet. We were supposed to have a meeting with all of the teachers on Tuesday to get our teaching schedules and make the school calendar and then start teaching the next day, but that didn't happen (we didn't really expect it to either). What we had expected was that someone would have given us a heads up that the 7am meeting was cancelled. I guess everyone else just knew it was cancelled because nobody else showed up. Turns out the meeting corresponded with the end of Rhamaddan so it was cancelled for the holiday. Our proviseur (school principal) says the meeting will be Monday and we will start teaching on Tuesday, so we'll try again next week. It's kind of a funny way to do things: tell the teachers what classes they are teaching and what the school calendar is the day before classes start. Luckily, we already know pretty much what we are teaching. Aaron will be doing math at around 5th grade level and I am doing biology to 5th and 6th grade (that's my best guess for the approximate grade levels, could be wrong).

Rhamaddan ended (or is ending, I am not sure how long this lasts). It turns out that the end of Rhamaddan is kind of like Halloween here. The kids walk around and sing you songs and you give them candy. It was pretty fun and we even considered putting on costumes for the kids coming to our house to be more festive but decided that might not be culturally sensitive. We did try to get some candy by singing to the kids we passed on the street before they could sing to us, but it didn't work (probably because we didn't know most of the words and had a lot of "da da da"s). I am not really sure what the adults do to celebrate. I know what they don't do and that's go out in town and eat a restaraunt because we tried that and everything was closed.

Amy's Moment of Whining: you can skip this paragraph, but I've got to put it out there. It is hot here. I have never sweated so much in my life. Honestly, I don't think someone with my sweat glands should be allowed to live in West Africa. The PC needs to include this in their medical screening. Not only is this a medical concern, I must be on the verge of dehydration all the time, but it is an environmental problem. Can you imagine the copious amounts of water it takes to maintain this body? It's a lot. By the end of our 2 years, I think I will be a leading cause of desertification in West Africa. It sounds like we have one more month of heat (or never-ending sweat sessions for me) then it will cool off. The good news is we just started making our own sun-dried tomatos and they are yummy. Aside from that, I can't wait for the heat to be over.

On a sad note, we are down to 3 cats now. I know that we should be excited to only have 3, but the situation was really sad. Our mom cat disappeared a week ago, no idea what happened, so we have been taking care of the kittens. Let me just say that kittens are only cute when their mom is around to feed them and clean them. Whatever we fed them (milk, eggs, meat) they ended up with it all over them and within a few days they would stink so bad we had to wash them. We might not ever have kids after this experience. So last night, we saw a new cat in our yard and chased it out because we didn't need any more cats. But I guess it came back later and took two of our kittens. We caught it taking the third one and scared it off, but not before it bit the kitten and killed it. We are giving the last kitten to another volunteer today. I feel bad about how things worked out but I guess that's life.

To end on a happy note, yesterday before the kitten incident, was really great. It was like Christmas: a PC car came and delivered our packages from Ouaga. Thanks so much to Val and Keith and Tommy and Hiyam. We are so happy! Hiyam, I haven't forgotten your post card, I just haven't found one yet. I'm not sure if the tourism industry in Burkina is up to postcard status yet. Also thanks for the calls from both of our parents; it's always great to hear from home. We are staying in town today and are planning on catching the VP debate tonight (it comes on at 1am here). Until next time...

So far, so good...

2008-09-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

Well, we have finished our first few weeks in Titao and are getting settled in our new house. We decided to bike the 45 km to Ouahigouya, the nearest town with electricity and internet, today. I would say the first 40 km weren’t too bad, but the end got pretty tough. Hopefully, I will get in better shape with time. The good news is that because it is the rainy season, the ride was really pretty because everything was really green.

Overall, things are going really well in Titao. I spent the first day on a spider-web killing spree. I know that spiders “are really helpful because they catch other insects” and all that crap, but we currently have more spiders living in our house than any of the other insects combined. I counted at least 40 in our latrine the other day. Plus, I am afraid of spiders, so there’s my ulterior motive.

We also had 4 cats awaiting our arrival: a mom, Laffi, and her three kittens. By the end of our second day we had decided that we needed to downsize our cat population. Dinner was like a scene from a cheesy sci-fi movie: Meow of Death. We had barricaded ourselves inside the house so that we could eat dinner and there were two cats crawling up the screen door, another one jumping in through the hole in the kitchen window screen, and the fourth one walked in from a back room (where did it come from!). We were under attack and they had us surrounded. There was nothing about fending off cuddly kittens in our Safety and Security training so we were on our own and somehow managed to get through dinner (I think standing up) before the cats drove us nuts.

So, of course, later that night around midnight we are woken up by some weird noises in the house and go inside to find the mom giving birth to her second kitten of the night on my underwear pile (gross!). By the time it was all over, around 4 am, she had 4 new kittens; or should I say we had 4 new kittens. Figures. (Don’t get me wrong, they are really cute, but come on: 8 cats!)

That’s enough about cats and spiders, we have been interacting with other humans too. We normally have between 5 and 10 kids come by to watch the “nassara show”. They just sit and watch us. We tried asking them questions but they just say “oui” to everything we say (How old are you? Oui. Are you 8? Oui. Are you 50? Oui). So we’ve been trying to find little things for them to do around the house while they are visiting. Otherwise, once the “nassara show” gets boring (which takes a surprisingly long time) they start the “je demande”s where they start pointing to stuff and asking for it: bottles, plastic bags, our bikes, everything. By the time the “je demande”s get going, we normally make them leave which means they will be standing outside of our gate for the next hour yelling stuff at us and running away if we walk towards them. We’ve met a few adults around town who stop by to visit every now and then but this is the time of year when most people are out cultivating all day or on vacation so there aren’t a lot of people around.

One thing Aaron and I have discovered here from our interactions with both the kids and adults around town is how funny we are. We ride our bikes, people laugh, we eat, people laugh, we speak French, Moore, or English, all are equally funny. We’ve just been on the wrong continent all this time because over here we are a riot. Sometimes we get tired of being so darn funny all the time, but I prefer that to the alternative of blatant staring and we are learning how to just laugh along.

Cooking for ourselves has been great! Right now, we have onions, green bell peppers, eggplant, tomato, and (sometimes) spinach in season so most of our meals consist of that stuff thrown together with a different sauce. It sounds kind of plain and monotonous, but we’re pretty happy. The only tough part is finding fruit. It looks like the only thing we can get right now is watermelon, which isn’t my favourite.

Right now a lot of people are observing Ramadan. I am learning a lot about it one cultural faux pas and misstep at a time. The other day at the market I got really annoyed because the man selling eggs and refused to talk to me or even look at me to sell me the eggs. He even third-partied me (used a third person as intermediary) to give me the eggs and take my money. I tried really hard to get him to acknowledge me and let him know how rude he was being only to go home and learn that part of fasting is fasting from women too. Well, my hats off to the egg guy (along with my sincerest apologies) for not breaking his fast.

Just a quick word about the marché in general. We have a marché every Friday, when the calm, quiet town of Titao is transformed into a bustling village metropolis with rice, flip flops, little kids underwear, and knock-off t-shirts (“50 cents”) everywhere. I think Aaron describes it best. He says it is like taking all the crap from 10 Wal-Marts and throwing it in a city block. You walk around and see the same cheap stuff over and over, but every now and then you’ll find something cool and unique which makes it worth your time.

We are nearing the end of the rainy season and we’ve been told there will be one more hot month and then it is bye-bye heat, flies, and mosquitoes for the winter. I am especially happy about the mosquitoes since the cats have been putting holes in our mosquito net and I look like I have the chicken pox. Word to the wise, if you opt to use one of those head mosquito nets, make sure there are no mosquitoes in there before you seal your head up for the night (ouch!). Aaron was trying to make me feel better and said my red cheeks looked like I had put on make-up. Okay, this has been pretty long, so I’ll wrap it up for now.

Thanks to mom and Ron for the call, it was great to hear from you. Val and Keith, we heard that your package is in Ouaga and will be making its way up here shortly. Maria, thanks for the text and checking up on us. Oh, and our camera has been working lately, so I will put up some new pics. A la prochaine!

Waggadoogoo

2008-08-31T09:53:00.000-07:00

Hello from two new Peace Corps Volunteers. That's right, we are moving up the PC acronym hierarchy from PCTs to PCVs. OMG! Our time in Ouaga was great- it could probably be summed up in one word: food. We ate so much delicious food: Chinese, Indian, pizza, ice cream...it was amazing. For our wedding anniversary we went to a yummy French restaurant and ate way too much.

I have discovered some universal truths about PC volunteers here in Burkina (and maybe everywhere), we are all obsessed with food. And it seems to be an obsession that has developed while we've been here. Anytime someone came back from the hotel in Ouaga, the first question asked was always "what did you eat?". And that is almost always followed by "how much did that cost?" which is the second universal truth of volunteers: we are incredibly cheap.
We did do more than just eat in Ouaga, though. We did a tour of the PC office and the US Embassey (where we had delicious fajitas, burgers, and milkshakes) and met the ambassador. On Friday, we had our swearing-in ceremony which was fun. Lots of nassaras in Burkinabé clothes. The ambassador and the minister of education were there and some of the volunteers from our group gave speeches in French, Mooré, Jula, Gulmancema, Fulfuldé, and Lobiri. That was probably my favorite part and it also helped establish some equity in the crowd because I know that everyone present got to experience a few moments (some more than others) where they had no idea what was being said.

We also did lots of grocery shopping. The PC gives us money to buy supplies for our new house and since we didn't need a whole lot (thanks Jill and Markus) we bought lots of food that we cannot find in village. Speaking of food we can't find in village, some people have been asking for what they should send us so we made a wish list and posted it conveniently close to our mailing address. If you think the list is boring and would prefer to blow our minds with something we didn't even know we needed, feel free.

In other news, Aaron is better. They found his amoebas, gave him some meds and he is all fixed. He's actually been better for a while, I just didn't get the chance to tell anyone. Thanks for caring, and sorry for those who were worried.

Tomorrow we are moving to our village. We have a month before school starts to meet people and get comfortable. It sounds like the first month or so consists of a lot confusing miscommunications and staring at the wall out of boredom (anyone ready to visit yet?). And while there are goats and chickens a plenty, they don't have their wi-fi connection yet so it might be a while before we get online again: we are hoping to come to town once a month. So feel free to call or write letters. Also, our blog will be picture-free for a while until we get a new camera or our current one stops acting like an idiot. Right now, Aaron and the camera aren't speaking and he refuses to take it anywhere just in case because "what is the ****ing point, the ****ing thing waits until we get to ****ing Africa where we have to way to ****ing fix it and it ****ing quits working!" (He hasn't said that exactly, but the emotions are there.) So for pictures from swear-in, you may want to check out other blogs.

And if anyone finds themselves in Iowa thinking "man, that river is cool but I wish there was some way I could learn about the history, geology, ecology, etc. along the river while aboard some sort of floating craft..." I hear Stephanie gives awesome boat tours, just watch out for the mean driver.

I (heart) les Jeux Olympiques

2008-08-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

There are some people out there who don’t like the Olympics. I am pretty sure I wouldn’t get along with these people. I love the Olympics, love ‘em. I love the Olympics like the Burkinabé love Celine Dion, and they really love her. Our host family has a Celine Dion dvd and we have watched that thing more than once. The cyber café has a Celine Dion calendar and I have stopped being shocked when I see a bad-ass African guy driving a moto, smoking a cigarette, and sporting a Celine shirt.

The Olympics also serves as a good way to spend some time with the host family. They like to watch t.v. and sleep during the day because it is their summer break and since I can only watch so many Burkina gov’t sponsored soap operas and they keep refusing my offers to go head-to-toe at nap time, there isn’t a lot of interaction on the weekends normally. But now I can watch the Olympics with my fam and we all have fun. This weekend I watched some soccer with our host sister and brother. Quick note about this host brother: he was introduced as a brother but we really aren’t sure who he is. He’s someone between 18 and 30 years old and just showed up one day and he’s been staying here for the last week. Family trees are pretty much impossible to discern here because everyone seems to be a brother or aunt or something when they are introduced. Our host mom has only given birth to one son and yet we have met three host brothers and been told about others (and this isn’t because our dad has multiple wives as is the case in other families).

The Olympics have also given me a pleasant distraction from training on the weekends and now we are almost done! Only one week left. Then we go to Oauga for a couple of days and finally, on Friday, we have our swear-in at the ambassador’s. I am really excited to see the end of training approach, but it will be sad to see everyone dispurse to their various sites. I will definitely miss our weekly training newsletter, the Haut Cinq (that’s “high five” in French). Every week a different group of 3 to 4 people put together a newsletter and it is always lots of fun. The latest one included a choose-your-own-adventure trashy romance haiku.

As part of our Peace Corps commitment to share American culture with others abroad, we’ve been teaching our Burkinabé teachers American cultural staples such as “that’s what she said” (ça c’est ce qu’elle a dit) and “douche bag”. Every now and then they will use it correctly and we feel like we are really making a difference here.

But seriously, I can’t wait to get to our site and get to work. I have so many ideas I want to try and if one or two of them results in maybe a couple of community meetings or a girls club at my school I will be so excited. We went to a talk on female genital mutilization last week that was really interesting. Sadly, it is a big problem here, made worse by the fact that any kind of intimate subject (puberty, sex, etc.) are taboo to discuss here. I am not sure how, or if, we will be able to address this in our community but I would like to try. A lot of what we will do will depend on what the community needs, not what we want them to do, so we will have to wait and see.

Other than that, things are good. Aaron has been pooping blood for the last 6 weeks so he is going to Oauga tomorrow to get some tests done. Poor guy. I had some girls in my class give me a letter today with some pictures of flowers that I’ve taught them and a letter that says they want to be my friend and it has their email address. It is really cute.

I put a few pictures up. There is Aaron sporting his new outfit. The men here have a pretty sweet deal in that their formal outfits can also double as pajamas. Then there is picture of us all dressed up with our family. See if you can pick out which ones we are. Finally, there was this really sweet jumping spider that caught a fly and Aaron got some really good pictures of it.

Peace Corps Funding

2008-08-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

As Amy mentioned, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is providing ~$500 million to Burkina Faso over the next 5 (or so) years for agriculture, road improvement, and female education projects. Here’s what slays me: This $500 million was approved by Congress. The Peace Corps budget is also approved by Congress. I forget the exact number, but the PC budget for the entire globe is on the order of $400 million. Furthermore, the budget for BF is ~$2.5 million, and decreasing. Now, if we didn’t have a demand or a supply of volunteers, I would say go ahead and cut the budget, but as it is, they actually have to limit the number of volunteers they can let into the country each year, purely for budgeting reasons. Now, it sounds nice to say, “There are more Americans that want to serve Burkina Faso than we can afford,” but when Congress gives 200x the PCBF budget to our country, it makes one think that perhaps it would be worth it to throw a little more in our direction.

Now, I know that, “it just doesn’t work like that,” but just look at the numbers. And how efficiently do you think that money will be spent? At least some of it is going to end up in the wrong hands/bank accounts. PCVs don’t build roads, but there is an established agriculture program in PC (not in BF, but in many PC countries) that teaches communities what kinds of crops to grow, how to grow them sustainably, and how to do without expensive fertilizer (Kai, a friend and PCV in Zambia is teaching just this. He says the local word for agriculture is synonymous with fertilizer, obviously there are some misconceptions…). It seems like adding this PC program and a bunch of volunteers to the country and making the MCC funds available to their communities would be a good way to ensure that the funds are spent wisely and effectively.

On the other hand, a note about the program’s effectiveness: The program has been operating for 2.5 years already building schools. In that amount of time they’ve built 132 schools. Compare this to the poor guy I discussed in my post about the book “Three Cups of Tea.” He has been in Pakistan and Afghanistan for 14 years and has built 50 schools. The difference funding makes.

That’s all. I just want people to see the numbers. Compare the PC budget with other government programs’ and NGO’s budgets and look at the quality and efficiency of the work the PC does and it begs the question, why isn’t more spent on the program? President Bush recently said of the PC, “It really is the best foreign policy America could possibly have.”

2008-08-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. Hope you are all well. To those of you who have already started school, I am sorry to hear that. Everything here is going great. We are almost done with training!!! We officially swear in on August 29. Model school is going well. Aaron kicked someone out of his class this week. I played Jeopardy with my class. We are giving our first tests this week. I am going to need some time to get used to the grading system here. In America, the "average" grade is always above average, around 70%. But here, it seems like the gauge for making a good test, a good homework, or a good class is if the average is more like 50%. Kind of depressing: my first test average was a 7.85 out of 20.

Aaron and I got formal Burkina Faso outfits made for our swear-in ceremony. We will put some more pictures up along with pictures of us teaching. Aaron's picture is kind of dark because I didn't want to disrupt his class by using the flash (he caused quite a stir in my class).

For my engineering brethren out there: last night I dreamed that I was teaching statics in French. About the time I woke up, I was trying to translate "free body diagram".

We recently heard that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has approved $500 million for Burkina Faso to support agriculture, building roads and schools, and girls’ education. I guess Burkina finally made the cut for funding by being a good democracy. It's really exciting to hear about the funding but it is also a little frustrating for us because the Peace Corps budget for Burkina Faso is less than $3 million and our budget was just cut 4% for next year. This means that they will have to reduce the number of volunteers here. Aaron has been writing feverishly since hearing about this so I am sure he will write more about it later. Prepare to be outraged :)

Jenn, we got your letter last week! I thought it was a goner for sure. Thanks so much for the letter and news articles. Mom, thanks so much for the spices and pictures. We can't wait to get cooking. Thanks to Marissa, Dara, and Trish for the emails and comments. We love hearing news from home. We are in the process of trying to buy a one laptop per child laptop so hopefully when we get that sorted out, we will have more time to spend writing our blog entries. Until next time...

The new Jill and Markus

2008-08-07T04:03:00.001-07:00

Everybody keeps calling us the new Jill and Markus so here you are:

Meet Joanna Thomas

2008-08-07T03:49:00.000-07:00

I would just like to start by saying that here at the Rose's blog, we pride ourselves on customer service. We are all about giving the people what they want and need. We know there are other blogs out there with more interesting stories and better grammar (I hear Michael’s blog is pretty good), but you are reading ours and we appreciate it.

So in the spirit of customer service, we have heard that some people (I am talking to you Joanna's boyfriend and parents) have been checking the blog in hopes of new pictures or stories of Joanna only to be disappointed time and again. My first reaction upon hearing this: Are we not good enough? What's the big deal about Joanna anyway? But then I remembered our goal of serving the people so this blog entry is for you Joanna's parents and Aaron (Joanna's boyfriend):

Joanna Thomas: exposed

Perhaps some of you have seen pictures of a tall, blonde forever smiling and found yourself asking, "What is it that makes her so happy?"
The answer: unhappiness

World, meet Joanna Thomas. She goes by many aliases; in her village they call her Aisha, but I think Danielle says it best when she describes Joanna as "the captain of the bitter boat". This string bean of gloominess is always the first to complain whenever it is time to do group work, go to language class, ride bikes, eat, breathe...If this were Snow White, Joanna would be Grumpy Dwarf (only surprisingly tall).

Yes her persistent bad mood and negativity is annoying, but what really gets my goat is her complete disregard for the cultural values here. In a country where skirts should be below the knee, I would deem Joanna's tube tops and miniskirts not culturally appropriate. And yes, her language skills have improved, but as Danielle again points out "Joanna has learned most of her French from the guys at the bars every night."
Maybe the fact that she knows every cabaret in town could be described as good integration into the community but I think bringing sachets of whiskey to morning language class is a bit much.
As far as I can tell, Joanna's favorite past time is seeing how many kids she can bring to tears on her rides through village.

So there you have it, it's not pretty. Maybe it is best if we stick to tales of the latest parasite Aaron and I have contracted.

But all joking aside, we love this girl. She's probably the most cheerful person I have ever known and we are lucky to have her here with us. Sorry there aren't more pictures for you but we only get to see her once a week.

Model School and such

2008-07-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

Alright, model school is in full swing now. I am teaching 4 classes a week of biology at a 7th grade level and Aaron is teaching math to the older kids. I don't remember ever taking biology in school, so I have been learning a lot about non-flowering plants. (I'm sorry to biologists out there, but this stuff is boring!)

It seems like the priorities in school here is discipline first, teaching second. We have a lot of rules that we are supposed to enforce in order to keep control of our class. For example, if a student comes late, you do not let them in; if a student's phone rings, take it from them; if a student is being distracting or annoying, kick them out of class, etc. I am actually finding it easier than I thought to be strict in class. I haven't kicked anyone out of class yet but I have yelled at them to shut up (which is totally exceptable here). My first class was with the older kids who aren't as well behaved and only half the class stood up when I entered the room so I told them all to stand and made them wait while I put down my bag, took out my notebook, arranged my chalk, and took a sip of water; then I told them they could sit.

The students seem to be hard workers. If you give them a definition, they will have it memorized by the next class. The trouble is critical thinking: if you ask them to give you the same definition in their own words, they are stumped.

So last week I was talking to Steph (are most devoted blog commenter) and she asked me a really good question and of course I gave her a really lame answer because, like all good questions, you can't think of a good answer until later. I am going to try and answer it now, though. Her question was: what do you like the most about being there?

I think what I like the most is the change of pace and priorities of life here. Right now, I have no idea what the price of gas is, I don't know what the summer fashions are (not that I ever had much style), and I have no idea which young actress is being arrested these days. I feel like despite the new food, clothes, people, language, etc. my life has been simplified. Also, it seems that there is nothing so important that it cannot be postponed for a wedding, baptism, funeral, etc. The sense of community above self, is a new concept for a lot of Americans. It has also been nice to get to know the other volunteers in this setting, without the pretext of our cars, or clothes, or jobs that we left back home. We always joke that if we were to meet in America, we would not recognize each other.

Okay, I think that is better than my original answer which was something about liking this yogurty-millet stuff I get for breakfast sometimes.

In other news, thanks so much to Steven for the package!! You totally made our week, buddy. We will try to sneak some action shots of us teaching this next week to post on the blog.

Aaron Speaks

2008-07-24T12:36:00.000-07:00

This is kind of long. Here goes.

We started model school this week. Model school for the students is summer school to help prepare them for the upcoming school year (October). For us PCTs it's practice to learn how to write lesson plans, deliver effective lessons, and discipline the students. Today I taught my first class to the quatrième group (like 8th grade, only some of the students are probably in their 20s). I taught the first lesson in the PC book (physics and chemistry) on solids and liquids. 4eme is where they first see physics and chemistry topics, so we start out easy with the differences between a solid and a liquid, what is volume, and how do we measure the volume of liquids.

The 4ème class is the biggest class in model school; next week it will be split into two groups. There were about 50 students and they were a bit noisy. Helping me teach is one of the current PCVs. When the students get too rowdy the PCV can step in and tell them to shut it. I suppose it went alright today, no one threw anything at me, no one walked out, the lesson plan itself was fine. The hard part is getting excited about defining a solid and a liquid--pretty boring stuff to be honest.

Next week I'll start teaching one of the 4ème sections either algebra or geometry. I think that will be a bit easier and perhaps more fun to teach.

In other news. As Amy mentioned earlier, we went to our future site, Titao, last week. The trip was stereotypically Peace Corps. As the events of the trip unraveled, I felt like I was more of an observer than a participant, comparing what I saw to what I had read or been told should be happening in a given situation. This position of observer was possible because we were being chauffered by PCVs or our homologues the whole time and all I had to do was smile and nod. An example follows in the form of dinner plans one of the nights:

The Plan

Jill and Marcus informed us on Friday that we were to have dinner with the proviseur, the principal of the school, and a bunch of the big wigs at the school. The dinner was a big deal, as the proviseur is probably only second in status in the community to the mayors and chiefs, and the dinner was sponsored by him. Also, the dinner was specifically for Jill and Marcus for the school staff to say their thanks and goodbyes and give Jill and Marcus recognition for their work. We were to meet at 7 pm at the "Garage" which is a local buvette/bar with outdoor and indoor seating. Moussa, the resident factotum of Titao, was to bring the chickens and guinea fowl for dinner.

The Reality

Jill, Marcus, Amy, and I arrived at the Garage just before 7 and just as it was getting dark. At the same time a storm was rolling in and we were glad we just missed it. When no one had arrived by 7:05, we realized there must have been a change of plans that someone had forgotten to inform the guests about. Thus started an exchange of broken telephone calls between Jill and Marcus's two phones and probably everyone else who was supposed to be at the dinner. With the storm, the cell signals of the three providers in town were cutting in and out so that Marcus would get reception back only to be calling someone with another provider whose service just went down, etc. By the time we deduced that everyone else had gone to Moussa's, in the other direction from which we had come, and another km or so from the house, the sky was dark, the frist drops were falling, and the wind was blowing dust sideways. The proviseur was on his way to Moussa's, in a car of course.

We would have asked about moving to one of the local restaurants that has an actual tin roof, but of course the phones were totally dead by now. Therefore, we got on our bikes and headed straight into the storm, using our little lights, riding on dirt roads and watching out for the occasional dog, goat, donkey, guy on bike with no light, drop-off, etc. At this point I smiled--"So this is the 'Peace Corps Experience' " I thought. We couldn't see. When we could see we had to close our eyes because the dust was being blown straight into us. When we could open our eyes we were about to crash into something. And we were going about 5mph because the wind was so strong. And then there was Marcus answering a phone call from his mom, "Umm, this isn't the best time..."

We arrived just as the rain really started coming down and we headed to "shelter" immediately. Of course that was halted by everyone coming out into the rain to greet us. Half-wet, we walked into the shelter expecting shelter. Of course this was an old, poorly thatched room. We sat down in the pitch black, moved around two or three times to find a new stream of water to sit under, and got drenched. I actually shivered. At this point I smiled again, "So this is the..." We commenced with the meal of chicken, guinea fowl, beer, and soda and under using our bike lights. The chicken, actually, was great. The beer was warm and bubbly.

After a bit, the proviseur said some words--thanks, good luck, and even a good luck to Amy and I for the future. A couple of the others spoke and they gave Jill and Marcus some fancy local cloth as a gift. Then we shot the shit for the bit in French.

Once the beer (they only have the big bottles here) had worked its way through a bit and I really had to go, I went out and after a few steps found myself in the middle of a field, animal bones everywhere, dark, low, ominous clouds covering the sky, lightening and thunder non-stop, and the rain. I smiled for the third time, "Awesome!" I went back in, rubbed my belly, and we left shortly thereafter.

I think my training--via the books I read before leaving for Africa, stories I heard from RPCVs, PCV blogs, and the official training of the past 6 weeks--has desensitized me. I'm not likely to get too worked up about anything now. Everything that happened that night would have been very frustrating normally and I was aware of that while it was happening, yet it didn't bother me in the least. That's the Peace Corps. More precisely, that's Africa.

Thanks for listening.

Titao ("Teetow")

2008-07-22T04:27:00.000-07:00

We finished our site visit this week to Titao. Our site seems pretty cool and our house is bigger than our old apartment in the States. We have a market where we can get meat, fruit, and veggies all year round and while there's no electricity yet, you can still get cold drinks at some places. Currently, there are 6 cats residing at our house, but we are hoping to get that number down to at most 2 when we return in September. Not that I haven't always wanted to be a crazy cat lady, but I think 6 is a bit much.

Honestly, the most memorable part of our 4 day site visit was the actual travelling. I would compare Burkina transportation to a ride at Disney World. The wait was longer than the ride itself (in our case, the bus was 3 hours late for a 1.5 hour ride), all the little details seem so exaggerated that they are fake (the music was a few notches above enjoyable and seemed to be playing at 1.5 times the normal speed and the old man next to us decided to dedicate all of his time to staring unblinkingly at us), and as with all popular amusement park rides when all is said and done you have to ask yourself if it was worth all the wait and effort.

We actually had an extra element of fun on our ride: since this is the rainy season there were huge puddles in the road. When you combine that with our driver who must have been preparing for the Daytona 500, I felt like Harry Potter on the night bus swerving all over the road.

This week we start 5 weeks of model school, which is a summer school that we put on to give us practice in the classroom and extra lessons for the students. This week I will be observing Burkinabé and PC teachers and on Friday I am teaching a physics class. While I am nervous about teaching to actual students in French, I think it will help the rest of training go by faster.

Aaron and I have been listening to this program in the mornings called Voice of America. Has anyone heard of this show? We find it both funny and a little troublesome that this one program has decided to represent our country to all other countries in the world, especially since most of it's programs are obviously biased propaganda. Our favorite one comes on a few times a week when they highlight international students who are attending "one of America's great universities". They interview the student and talk about how awesome America is and every now and then they will mention what that student is studying or something about their home country. By the time we are done praising America, there normally isn't much time left to discuss what is happening with the election or economy or things like that. But we still listen because it is nice to hear English and we need a good laugh.

Mom and Val and Keith thanks for calling this week. We were so excited to get a call! Jenn we haven't gotten your letter, but we'll keep looking.

Barak Obama discounts, homologues, etc.

2008-07-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we took another language test to see how we have progressed over the last four weeks. There are three main levels: novice, intermediate, and expert. And each level (at least the first 2) have three subcatagories: low, mid, and high. When we first got in country, I tested in novice-low and now I have moved up to novice-high, which is exciting. Aaron is intermediate-low now. In order to "pass" training and become teachers we have to get to intermediate-mid, so we are getting close.

I met my counterpart (homologue) this week. He is really nice. He speaks English, jackpot! He works as a French and English teacher at the school where I am going to work. We've been doing a lot of U.S. vs Burkinabé culture activities. Monday we played a game that asked questions to see how well we know each other's culture such as "what is starbucks?" (the Burkinabé answer: tv show). One feature of American culture that all Burkinabé seem to be informed about is the upcoming election. Everyone wants to talk about Obama. At our local bakery, we have what we call the "Barak Obama discount". Go in there, make sure the owner knows you are American and that you will be voting for Obama, 15CFA off your baguette. Perhaps this is an abuse, I don't know.

Oh, here's a fun story for those of you who are more scientifically inclined. Friday night we had a big rainstorm. Really big, huge... Now I am not sure if you have seen this in the pictures but we have metal things on our windows that serve as blinds as well as metal screens to keep the bugs out. So Saturday morning, Aaron got up and went to open the blinds and noticed that he was getting a small shock when he touched the metal. Something happened Friday night and now there is a connection between our outside light (which doesn't work now) and our window. This was very difficult to explain to our host family. When we just had them touch the window to see for themselves, the kids totally freaked out and thought they were going to die. I think our host dad is going to call an electrician so hopefully it will get fixed.

Thanks to Ashley's mom and Uncle Dale for your comments and uplifting words. Uncle Dale, we haven't heard of those books but there is supposed to be a big PC library in the capital so we will see if they have any of them.

The Weekend

2008-07-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I feel like I have a lot to write, so I am breaking it up into parts so that maybe it's easier to read. We had a really fun weekend. Saturday we cooked an American dinner for our family. This was kind of a multi-purpose exercise: we wanted to do something nice for them, teach them (and ourselves) how to prepare food we like with their materials, and have a meal that we really enjoy. So we made hamburgers with caramelized onions on top, garlic mashed potatoes, and sauted some veggies. It was really good (at least to us, I don't know if they really liked it or not).

The whole experience was a typical African business deal. We went to the market Saturday morning to order the beef and we were told "no problem", it will be delivered that afternoon to the center where we have class. By 3pm there was no meat so we got the phone number for the butcher and called and he said he would send the meat right away. Shortly after we got off the phone the butcher's son came to say we weren't getting the meat after all. So we went home (about 1km away) and decided just to do potatoes and veggies. After we got home, we realized that I forgot the milk at the center so I rode back to get it and the butcher's son was back with the meat. So it all worked out. We are learning to adjust to the way things work here. For example, when you go to a restaurant and order food and they say ok, it doesn't mean that they have the food and will make it for you. Sometimes they have run out and just don't like telling you bad news so they wait about 10 minutes before telling you.

Sunday we did laundry and went to the pool. The pool was great! We even ate some pizza, sort of. It was ground beef, cheese, and onion on a pizza crust which is good enough for me.This week we meet our homologues and visit our site. I don't know if I explained the homologue situation so here it goes: we each get a person at our site who is involved in similar work that helps us integrate into the community and answer any language, work, cultural, life, etc. questions we may have. Then we get to visit our site from Thursday to Sunday. Aaron and I have it easy because our site is only 45km away but some people have 2-day journeys to get to site. Also, Jill and Marcus (who we are replacing) have one week left in country so they will be there to show us around. I am really excited.

Just Added...

2008-07-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

I just added a new "Books I've Read Section" to the right. I'm going to post my review of the books here though.

1. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

Considered a classic text for the history of science. A bit dense. The concluding chapter and postscript are the most interesting. Now I have more questions as to the actual scientific revolutions cited in the book.

2. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

This was an amazing book. A quick read, great adventure story, but most importantly a lesson on the muslim culture, where all these terrorists came from, and the most effective way of defeating terrorists.Because it was such an imortant lesson that all Americans should know, and probably most don't know, I'm going to go into detail here.This guy Greg went to climb K2, considered the hardest mountain on Earth to climb, tougher than Everest. When he left he promised a small village, on the edge of the glacier in the middle of nowhere, that he would build them a school. He has now built about 50 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He has the official blessing of muslim leaders in both countries and has had the high muslim courts issue statements in his (non-muslim, American) favor. During his time there, since 1993, he has watched madrassas spring up all over the countries. These are schools funded by the Taliban. Some are simply schools, but of course others are the training grounds of the anti-American fundamentalists. In places with the option of going on to higher education, the children and parents will take that option. In the places without schools, and with madrassas, the children turn to their only option, thus the strength of the Taliban and terrorists has increased over the years. Greg actually has a former Talibanist who has sworn allegiance to him. He was only in the Taliban because that was his only choice, now he's happy to serve a good cause. Thus, by simply building schools, Greg Mortenson is fighting terrorism more effectively than any war. The people he works with love Americans but hate American planes-it's that simple.

This, is of course what the Peace Corps does--works to strengthen nations basic resources and set a good example of Americans to promote peace long before peace-keeping efforts are needed.

Site Announcement!

2008-07-09T06:24:00.000-07:00

These last few days have been really exciting. First, we had our 4th of July party on Friday. It was a lot of fun and we had a lot of good food that reminded me of home. It also reminded me of how much I miss the everyday devices which make cooking at home easy. I think I spent 3 hours chopping and peeling in preparation for the party. We did have a local band, called Laffi Bala (pictured here) which is Mooré for "is it good" I think, and we danced a lot. Towards the end, some local people came by and joined us in the dancing. The only downside was 3 days later over half of our training group was sick, so we are thinking there was something wrong with the food. It tasted great at the time, though. :)

I spent the night in a village called Bogoya F on Saturday to get a taste for village life. It was really nice and really different from how we are living in Ouahigouya. At our host family's house, the tv is normally always on and we can communicate with a hybrid French-English concoction pretty easily. In village, I was lucky to find someone who understands French and English seemed out of the question. This led to a lot more awkward silences, but it was okay. Aside from the huge, man-eating spiders that seemed to occupy Joanna's house, it was really nice.

I bought some fabric this weekend called a pagne. I am not sure if it's because of the pagne or something else, but my mom came out of her room on Sunday all dressed up and said, "Amy, take your picture with me" ( in French, of course). She had me put on my pagne and gave me a wrap for my head and taught me how to sit for pictures. It was really cute and a little surprising. The picture is to the left.

Yesterday was a big day for everyone because they announced where our sites are. The way they do the site announcements is there is a big map of Burkina they put on the wall. Someone will read a small clip about the site and then they will announce who is placed there and that person comes up, finds their site on the map, and places a little cutout of themselves on the map (pictured here). Aaron and I are going to Titao. It's actually close to where we are now in the north. When we flew here a month ago, we met a Peace Corps couple at the Paris airport who were returning to Burkina to finish their service. They were on our flight and we chatted with them for a little bit. Well, it turns out that Aaron and I are taking over that couple's site. Crazy. Everyone says they have a great house so we are excited to visit next week.

We played soccer yesterday against a local girls team. I am pretty out of shape but it was really fun. We ended up tying. I think we are also going to start playing volleyball against a local team. That will be lots of fun.

Mom and Ron, we got your packages yesterday. Thanks so much! It was our first piece of mail and it totally made our day. If anyone feels like sending a letter or a package, feel free. We can always use more peanut butter, granola bars, and mixes (sauce, cookie, drink, anything).

USA! USA! USA!

2008-07-04T06:39:00.001-07:00

Happy 4th of July everyone. I hope you have something fun planned. As for us, we are trying to go as all-American as possible here. We are grilling hamburgers and eating the mutton that the chief gave us a few weeks ago complete with fruit salad, potatoes, and even a little watermelon we were able to find at the marché today. I heard a rumor that some local drummers are coming to play, which isn't American, but it is way cooler.

The other day we got a cookbook compiled by former and current PCVs who have created some recipes with local ingredients. I cannot wait to start cooking. Ok, really, I cannot wait for Aaron to start cooking so I can eat and I will start baking. That's right, you can bake here. There are instructions for making a dutch oven along with recipes for breads, cookies...all the good stuff.

We had a class yesterday on how to use the black board here. It was really interesting. The students do not have textbooks so their notebooks are their only resource for studying the material so they are very picky about what they write. This means that you have to be really organized in how you present information on the board so that they don't fill up their notebooks with stuff they don't need. Also, there are specific sections of the board that students will copy everything you write, other sections for where students can work problems, and a section for where you outline the days activities everyday, and a section for equations and new definitions. We also learned how they do basic math operations here. The division is a little different and some of the numbers are written differently. It was just really fun and interesting.

Thanks to the Clem family and Mama Duck for your messages and prayers.

Birthdays, 4th of July, etc

2008-07-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

First of all I would like to say happy belated birthday to MG and Ron and happy birthday today to Andrew. Monday was Aaron's birthday and with the help of some current volunteers I was able to scrounge up some little gateaux and made some chocolate icing for a birthday cake. I also got some of the other trainees and training staff to sing happy birthday in a bizarre combination of French and English.

So one of the helpful/bizarre/embarrassing (pick your adjective) things about living with our host family is that they seem to have a 6th sense when it comes to the latrine. Everytime we use it, one of our host sisters is lurking nearby somewhere to get in there and clean as soon as we exit. Because of this, our host family stays pretty up to date on our digestive health.
Wednesday morning, Aaron wasn't feeling great so I went out to greet our host family and let them know (which of course they already knew). My host mother and one of my sisters kept telling me to go do something or prepare something for Aaron (I'm still not sure what they said) but I just figured they were reminding me of wife duties to go take care of Aaron so I just said ok and went to eat breakfast. A little while later Aaron joined me and our host sister told us that they had called the PC doctor for him. We were a little confused by this, but we just said "ok, thanks" and kept eating. No more than 5 minutes later a PC car rolls up and one of the staff hops out and says "ok Aaron, we take you to the doctor". It was a really bizarre/confusing morning for us.

The thing about host families is that they really take your safety and health into their hands. So when we get sick, they get really worried. It's really sweet but can be difficult as well. Our host dad keeps saying Aaron has malaria, which he doesn't, and I am not sure how to convince him of that.

Moving on, everything else has been good. Next Tuesday we find out where our site for the next two years will be. And the week after that we get to go visit our site. I am hoping to go spend the night with one of our GEE (girls education and empowerment) trainees who lives in a village outside of town this weekend to get a feel for village life. Joanna's boyfriend and parents if you are out there, I am talking about Joanna. She's doing great but she broke her bike this week. Also Lauren Nouis, if you are reading this you should see if you went to school with Joanna. She is from Colorado Springs, she is tall, and she is just like you in all other ways. So maybe you went to school together or are long lost twins separated at birth or something like that.

Ok, it's time for language class. Thanks to Aaron's parents and my parents for calling. It was great to hear from you. I didn't have time to talk about our 4th of July plans, so next time.

Aaron's Random Thoughts

2008-06-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

When we got here the heat was unbearable. Aside from being 100+ degrees it was 100% humidity. Thus, 2 minutes outside and you were drenched with sweat with no AC as backup. We showered 3-4 times a day, which is normal here.

Then, one day after it had rained a bit something marvelous and unexpected happened--I got cold! I was so excited that I yelled it. Now, it is officially the rainy season and I have a big problem-it's too cold to shower.

Speaking of showers, I call it that because the Burkinabe use the french word for shower. It's actually a bucket bath. Everybody has their 5 gallon pail, their plastic cup, and their piece of nylon mesh netting for a washcloth. A shower is just lathering up and rinsing off with 3 gallons of water.

Getting sick is frequent/normal. Amy and I have spent just as much time with ailments as without. Diarrhea, headaches, stuffy head, coughing, funky stomach, and today our first case of vomiting! It's uncomfortable never being comfortable, but as they say here, ça va aller (or, get over it, I think that's what they're saying...).

Cell phones. Their is no cellphone etiquette. If you have one, it's in your hand. If it rings, you answer it, regardless of what you're doing. You may even be able to spy the cell phone in the Chief's hand in the pictures I posted.

Oh yeah. Pooping. We Américains are just not used to pooping in an 8 inch hole at ground level. Peeing also. We guys are not used to aiming for an 8 inch hole 3 feet away. And then the first time you get to try this thing out, of course you have diarrhea! Enough said. Cockroaches come out of the hole at night.

If I've repeated something, sorry, it costs too much to reread it all.

Aaron

2008-06-26T05:32:00.000-07:00

Hello all. We are almost finished with our second week of training, thank goodness. It is pretty tiring. Luckily, the rainy season has finally started so we've not only had some really cool storms but the weather has cooled down a lot. Last night, we didn't even use our fan!

Just to give you an idea what "training" is, here is a general description. Training is divided into a few categories: language, technical, medical, and cultural. We have four 2 hour blocks a day. Normally there are two language blocks, one technical, one of something else like medical or cultural. Our technical training is all about getting us ready to be in front of a classroom so we have been learning about the structure of the Burkinabé school system and classes. This week we started presenting our own lessons. Yesterday we each presented a 10 minute intro to the subject and "motivation", which is the attention-getter for the students, in French. On Monday, it is 15 minutes in French in front of actual students. Pretty exciting!

Our language class varies from textbook lectures to various activities around town. For example, for our class yesterday we were put in groups of two and given the names of two bus stations in town. Our job was to ask directions at the marché to the bus stations and once we get there ask for prices and departure times for three different cities in Burkina. It was pretty fun except that it had rained a lot yesterday and the dirt roads had become mud puddles so I got really dirty and then I got a flat tire.

Last Sunday we spent the day at a hotel that has a pool. It was great. I paid 1000cfa to swim and 2500 for a hamburger and fries (which is a fortune compared to the typical lunch for 300cfa), but is was definitely worth it.

I will leave you with another great language mishap. This morning, Aaron was trying to tell our language teacher that "you are going to teach your students ..." but ended up saying "you eare going to impregnate your students".

That is about it for now. Thanks Steph for calling, it was great to talk to you. And thanks to mom, Ron, Val, and Keith for trying to call. Sorry we missed you.

We have a cellphone

2008-06-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Today we bought a cellphone. It is free for us to receive calls and texts. Our number is 011-226-76810990. The first three numbers are to get out of the US and the second three are the country code for Burkina. We look forward to hearing from you.

Another quick story:
We brought pictures from home to share with our host family and they included a picture of a cactus from Arizona. When we were explaining what a cactus was the three teenage girls in our house were giggling but we did not think much of it. Today we learned that the word for "thorn" in French is "epine" and not "pin" as we had thought. "Pin" is actually the word for a male body part. So we described a cactus as a tree with a lot of reproductive organs.

Bonjour tout le monde!

2008-06-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Only 10 minutes left, so I'll be quick. A few observations: There are some pretty cool lizards here with yellow heads that like to do pushups. The napkins are hit or miss. Sometimes they smell horrible, especially when blowing your nose. We get called "Nassara" everywhere, basically means foreigner. Cell phones are a big deal here. People who have them always have them in hand and will answer them in the middle of a conversation or even a lecture (and they're the one lecturing). Even the chief had his in hand when we met him. Yo-yos and cameras will make kids come out of the woodwork. Everywhere looks like you see on TV, but doesn't seem as bad when you're in it. The end.

Training

2008-06-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

Bonjour everyone! We have just finished our first week of training (except for 4 hours of language class tomorrow). Everything is great so far. We are adjusting to the heat and getting pretty good at bucket baths and using the latrine.

On Saturday we met with the chief here to get his okay that we live here for three months. We have pictures and hopefully we can post them this week. Sunday was our adoption ceremony where we were adopted by our host families and moved in with them. Our host family is really nice. Our host father is a math teacher and can best be described as a jolly, Santa-like man. Our mom is also really sweet but she does not speak a lot of French so we have a lot of awkward silences. There are five kids at our house and most of them are really shy and just giggle when we talk to them. Our family is pretty well-off and we were shocked to get there the first night and see they were watching a dubbed episode of Prison Break.

The Burkinabé people are incredibly kind and hospitable. Greetings are really important here and can take up to 10 minutes. It is not a simple "hello" like in the states. A greeting here goes something like: "hello, how are you..how is your family...how did you sleep...how is the work...how are the kids..."

Aaron and I have learned enough Mooré to greet our neighbors as we ride our bikes to class everyday and they normally just laugh at us, but I think they like it. I cannot express enough how nice the people are. The latest example is that I was having lunch with some other trainees and when we left, one guy forgot his bag. We were already a few blocks away when a man from the cafe came honking at us from his moto with the bag.

I tested into the very beginner French class but my French is really improving. It is hard not to improve when almost all of our classes are in French and we live with a family that does not speak English.

Fun Fact: Burkina Faso has the 2nd highest rate of diarrhea among PC Volunteers of all the African countries. Yay.

Just as a closing note, while we are having a good time and making some great friends, life here can get pretty tiring. Studies show that PC Trainees experience stress levels equivalent to someone who just lost a family member. It is hard to communicate and gets really frustrating, a lot of the food is hard to eat and sometimes makes us sick, and you never get a full nights sleep because of the heat (a fellow volunteer with a thermometer said her room was around 100 degrees). But we hear that getting mail from home can lighten your whole week. So, if you have some time, please send us a letter or email (we prefer a letter) during these next three months. We would love to hear from you. Tomorrow we are going to get cell phones so we will post the numbers when we get them.

We love you and miss you all!

First Impressions

2008-06-13T02:58:00.000-07:00

We are in Africa. So far everything is great. The weather is hot and humid since this is the rainy season, or so they tell us; we haven't seen any rain yet. Today we drive up to our training site where we will be living for the next three months. On Saturday we meet our host family and move in with them on Saturday night.

We actually slept with AC last night which was a pleasant surprise. The driving here is pretty crazy. Lots of bikes and motos. To get here we had to cross the street frogger-style. We will type some more and post some pictures when we get a chance. The keyboards are laid out differently so the typing is pretty slow and the connection is going at a turtle-like pace.
In conclusion, we are happy and healthy and cannot wait to start learning some French so we can get around better.

Off We Go...

2008-06-10T03:18:00.000-07:00

Today we leave for Africa!!! After two whirlwind days of group activities and discussions of Peace Corps policies and such, we are finally going. I am so ready! There are 31 people in our group. My first impression of everyone yesterday: everyone was really nice. Normally in a group this big there are a few personalities that you know you'll clash with but I have sincerely enjoyed meeting everyone so far.

We are going to a clinic this morning to get some shots and then we fly out later tonight. It sounds like we won't be able to call, email, or anything until Thursday at the earliest. So if we don't write, it doesn't mean we've been eaten by a hippo already :)

Greetings from Philly

2008-06-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Philadelphia last night after a teary goodbye (for Amy) at the Phoenix airport. We'll be starting our pre-departure staging today where we'll be introduced to the Peace Corps and our fellow volunteers. Except for a brief encounter in the hotel elevator, we don't know anyone we'll be going to Burkina Faso with yet.

We'll be taking care of paperwork and attending clinics until Tuesday when we'll fly out to Ouagadougou (waga-doo-goo). We'll spend two days in Ouaga before heading to Ouahigouya (why-hee-goo-ya), where we'll be for the three months of training.

Arizona has definitely spoiled us, weather-wise, because this Philadelphia humidity is horrible. We're staying in the college section of town, which is way too hip for us, but the food is good. Unfortunately we won't have much time to see the city during the day. At least we'll have time for cheesesteak. We'll let you know how staging went before we leave.

23 More Days...

2008-05-15T16:25:00.001-07:00

First off, welcome to our blog. Our goal is to update everyone with posts at least once a month. Depending on where we are posted after our three-month training, we may not have internet access that often, but we'll try.

We are now less than four weeks away from leaving for Africa. These next couple of weeks are going to be pretty hectic. We are heading to Tennessee next week for four days to visit Amy's grandparents. After we get back, Aaron will start his drive across the country to drop his car off in Maine while Amy finishes packing up the apartment and moving all of our stuff to Tucson.

On June 7, we fly to Philadelphia for staging, which is basically a two-day orientation, vaccination, paperwork, and get-to-know-you session. On June 10 we fly to Burkina Faso via Paris. Once we get to Burkina, we'll be traveling north to Ouahigouya for our three months of training. Training consists of language (French and Mooré), cultural, safety, and professional training. Aaron's job will be teaching math at a secondary school and Amy will be teaching science, both in French.

For now, we've been keeping busy packing, filling out paperwork, practicing our French, and doing some hiking around AZ. The picture above is from our hike up Mt. Humphrey's in Flagstaff.