Good Riddance to Bad Eggs

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

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...

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!