Kilimanjaro and other things

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!

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

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

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

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.