Sometimes the kids drive me so crazy. A couple days ago I would have murdered one if it wasn't for Mawa. She yelled at the gaggle of boys to stop harassing me then sent her stepdaughter (what do you call your co-wife's children? I'll have to look into this...) to chase after them. I think I'm in love my neighbors.I used to think hitting kids in school was bad but not so much anymore. After you see what these little shits are capable of, you might agree too. Really though, students shouldn't be hit for not knowing answers to questions. They should be hit when they sit on your porch for hours demanding things and generally not respecting their elders, especially the crazy tubabu muso (Jula for western lady) who could snap at any second. Alas, I made peace with them today, and after we all washed my bike and swept the yard, we played with some little plastic trucks and random McDonald's toys. They loved it, and I loved getting all my yard work done in 5 minutes. Sigh, I will truly miss child labor when I leave here. I can picture it now:James: What do you want for dinner?

Me: How about tuna pasta?

James: We're out of pasta.

Me: Send a petit to go get it. Oh wait... Here are today's petits:

06 Février 2012 FN: 5 No joy in Mudville Well, damn. It was a good game and a good effort, but the Patriots lost. I’m little sad about that, but I’m all but despondent about the fact that we lost to effing Eli Manning. Again. He’s better now than he was in 07-08 – hell, […]

Living here in Burkina, I have grown to understand the power of “brainwashing”.  Since coming to this culture which is so new to me, I have realized how much I have been conditioned by the messages and behaviors of society in America.  For example, it is nothing here for someone to throw a used plastic [...]

It isn't a secret that I have a type-A personality when it comes to work. I've had to curb that itch (as much as humanly possible) while on this journey we call Peace Corps Burkina Faso. But, if I am completely honest I must admit that I can never and will never shake it. I am not sure that I have ever wanted to change my work ethic except in Burkina as a method of preserving my mental health (it is a necessary tactic when the pace of life is close to molasses).As responses from graduate school applications begin to roll in I can feel the familiar push. My Close of Service Conference is nearing, which means the inevitable plane ride to an as-of-yet unknown destination. What will be my next big thing?I can't help running the scenarios through my head. What if I attend this program or that one? What if I apply to this summer Arabic program or that one? (We're talking Summer 2013.) I know... I have a problem. My name is Casey D. Hall and I am a relapsing workaholic.I can keep an endless series of simultaneous task lists set for different time frames ranging from the next three hours to the next 20 years. Maybe I took all the talk about time management too close to heart when I was working for my university. Does obsession with tasks and planning qualify as a desirable trait for employment? The renewed fixation has translated into immediate disappointment. I made a list yesterday of the tasks I wanted to get done: talk to the primary school director about the AIDS mural, talk to the head nurse about a variety of projects that are on the table and talk to the acting president of the theater troupe. I jumped on my bike and headed to the school. The director wasn't there and was in fact out of town. I brushed it off and biked to the clinic. The head nurse also had left. Lastly, I biked to the theater president's favorite spots. He apparently went away as well.I can't remember a single day in the U.S. when I failed to complete the vast majority of tasks on my list (unless it was one of those rare snow days in Washington State when everyone doesn't have any clue how to drive in the snow).Burkina has a life pace and subsequently a work pace that is closer akin to the saunter of a camel than the trot of a horse. It makes total sense considering the climate and resources available. Camels don't book it across the Sahara for a reason.So, the Faso puts my personality to the test especially considering the coming transition. My mind is racing, the calendar is steadily marching and Burkina is sauntering. How do I integrate the layers of my personal space-time continuum without rupturing it?Obviously I am joking, but I am definitely feeling a collision of worlds approaching. Somehow I will be coming out the other end as a repatriated RPCV graduate student. New labels for a new life, right?So Mr. Hall, what is your next big thing? Well, grad school of course. I don't have the details, but I can tell you I will have them soon. I'll send you a memo of my transitional to-do list as soon as the news breaks.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.

Well, I've been at my site for almost 2 months now, and the integration is coming slowly but surely. Its been a huge improvement having my own house and complete control over the food I eat and my daily schedule. Living with a host family during training meant that I gave a lot of those freedoms up, and that was very draining for me. I didn't realize how much I appreciate those personal freedoms until I was put into a situation where I had to eat food I didn't want to eat, wake up when I didnt want to be awake, and speak French when I didn't feel like it. The French is still an everyday struggle, but I love most other things about living at my site. My house is big and comfortable, and now includes my new puppy, named simba, as well. The people of my town are very welcoming and kind- constantly inviting me over for meals or just to watch tv at their house (this is a very kind offer where television access is very limited!). I'm slowly getting to know my community and evaluating their needs, which is my jo for the first 3 months here. I'm missing everyone back home a lot, and some days are harder than others, but overall things are going well. I'm hoping with this new iPhone I just received in a care package (thanks mom!) I can stay more connected to people back home, since I'll have consistent access to the Internet! I hope all is well with everyone in the states, and I always appreciate any updates I receive!

                Okay, I’m currently in Ouaga for a GAD meeting (Gender and Development volunteer committee, of which I am now Co-Chair/VP), and I’ve got a computer and basic Internet connection, so I’m going to try to throw a blog up.  … Continue reading →

4 Février 2012 FN: 5 A long weekend So we’re still stuck in Ouaga – we’ll be here until at least Wednesday – but at least we have a novel experience coming: a three-day weekend. Sunday is the Muslim holiday of Mawlid, the observance of Muhammad’s birthday, and since Africans are loathe to let a […]

If you want to know the names of those mystery birds in the last blog, check it out again. I received lots of suggestions and I think they are now all properly labeled.



Tiebele

One of the tourist sites I was able to visit while I was traveling with my friend from John Carroll, Elizabeth Swenson, was a village that is famous for the way folks there paint their houses. Everywhere else in the country traditional houses are made of mud brick, like this one that is currently under construction in my village.

After it is finished, the people will cover the walls with clay to form a protective coating so the mud does not wash away in the rainy season, so it looks like this.

Sometimes people mix concrete with the mud and for concrete blocks, like this.

Either kind of construction can then be covered with mud and concrete mixed together for a longer lasting covering. In either case, the walls as usually left the color of the material with which it was constructed. What makes Tiebele different is the designs the women paint on the houses. The place that is the official tourist site is the compound of the village chief. I have no idea how many people live here, but I would guess over 100. Here is the entry to the compound.

When you walk through the compound you can see that there really are people who live here and it is not just to show to tourists. Actually there are probably not enough tourists who find their way to this town to keep up a place just for show.

Many of the houses are round, like these.

This is the one house that is set up to show tourists. This low rounded door is a defensive measure. Through it you can see another low wall. To get into the house you have to duck down crawl in. Then you have to crawl over the little wall. That would make it hard to surprise people in the house. Someone would be able to club you on the head before you could get in and do any damage to the residents.

In the house we were allowed to visit there were three round rooms. In this one you could cook in the rainy season or when the wind was too strong to cook outside. The gourds hanging on the wall above the place to build a fire would act as cups and bowls to eat out of.

The doors to get from room to room were similar to the one to enter the house, except there was not the extra barrier to crawl over.

Here is the door to another round house. Notice the column by the door with the white stuff on top. That is a fetish, a place where people can make sacrifices if they are asking the powers in the traditional religion to do something, like make it rain, or assure the harvest is good.

No all the houses are round, as you can see in this picture. Notice the snake made of clay that is part of the decoration on the one straight ahead here.

One of the women was making local beer from sorghum. The beer in my village is yellow, but this beer would be red, because of the kind of grain that was used to make it.

The decoration of the walls is a job for the women. They use the feathers of the pentards to do the painting.

All of the designs have some meaning, which our guide explained to us. Some stand for particular animals, and he told us that the mark that looks a bit like a wagon wheel is a beauty mark that you might find as a scar on the cheek of a village woman. Traditionally people here cut babies faces with particular scar patterns which helped identify the ethnic group to which a person belonged. For example, if I see a man with three small lines by his eyes, as with my friend Prosper, I know that that man is a Mossi and will understand Moore.

As our guide said, facial scaring was a kind of identity card in the traditional culture. This kind of scarification is not practiced as much these days as it was in the past. You do sometimes see marks on babies’ faces, but usually it is a simply X on a cheek. A Peace Corps volunteer friend told me that many people believe that if the baby is flawless, the spirits may want the baby and it will die. Putting a scar on the face assures that the baby has a flaw and that may protect it.

I know a little late, but Happy Holidays! I hope that you enjoyed the season and got to celebrate with people you love. The holidays here in Burkina were exciting this year. For Christmas, I went with a few other volunteers to an elephant park. We went out on one ride through the park and saw just about all the types of animals that are here in Burkina (no, there are no lions here, no there are no giraffes). That included lots of elephants and a few different sorts of antelope-type animals. On our way out of the park, we saw a baby elephant in a group of adult female elephants. He was encircled by the herd as he played in the mud. At one point, one of the adult elephants actually sat on him. We were a little worried as he struggled, but apparently they were just playing. After a little bit, one of the elephants noticed us, slowly walked away from the group, trumpted to warn us, and then charged towards our car. I mean, what would you do if a bunch of people were watching your kid play? (Pictures coming soon – they charged per camera, so we shared a camera and I still need to get the pictures.) I celebrated New Year’s back in village. The day before New Year’s Eve, I went into my district capital for a traditional Bissa New Year’s celebration at the chief’s house. There were TONS of people there – crowd certainly wasn’t as big as Inauguration Weekend in DC, but I’d say my fear of being trampled was equal. They were doing crowd control on horseback. And by they, I don’t mean a police officer trained in crowd control or even horse back riding. I mean a few random guys in the chief’s family. To get people to move back, they charge towards them on the horse. It gets people to move, but is also causes people in the back to randomly start getting pushed back by everyone in front of them. I went with a cousin of the director of the school in my village, and I clung to her for dear life. The ceremony was pretty basic – the chief came out, walked down the aisle of tons of people, and sat down to make the sacrifice. I was expecting a chicken or goat, but all I could see him put down were a few feathers, some dolo (local millet beer), and a few other random trinkets. Not like I really would have watched a goat or chicken be sacrificed anyways. Then, men played the drums for the chief and women danced. I tried to ask my friend the significance of the ceremony, but I really couldn’t get more out of her than the basics – health and luck in the new year. The next day, I went back to village for the real New Years. I made a village version of Pad Thai for my family and then we went to see a concert. So I thought that celebrating at midnight was a universal thing. But apparently it’s not. I was counting down, watching my phone. But when it turned midnight, no one seemed to notice. It took about five minutes for people to start realizing midnight had passed and slowly, people started cheering and celebrating in their own way. Time is not as fixed of a concept here as it is in the States. Sometimes for a meeting or activity, a sufficient meeting time to set is simply morning. So I usually think I’ve gotten used to most aspects of life here that seemed bizarre at first. Chasing a chicken out of the maternity ward or my house, cramming onto bush taxis, the market. But there are still those moments where all I can say is “What now?” The other day, there was someone that was referred to the district hospital in Zabré from our health clinic. They had called the ambulance to get him. My brother, the pharmacist, who also raises and sells livestock, had some turkeys he needed to get to Zabré. So he asked the head nurse if he could take advantage of the opportunity and put them on the ambulance too. And yes, he sent his turkeys to sell at the market in Zabré with the ambulance. How many health codes would that break in the States? The next day, I had just arrived home from the market when my mom pointed towards the path leading to our house – there were two camels. Now I don’t live in the desert, but the northern part of the country is the desert. There were two men ridding the camels. They had left the north and were riding around the country begging essentially. They go house to house asking for money or millet. Camels are surprisingly tall. They are also quite loud, particularly when someone tries to mount them. Only in Burkina Faso.

Wednesday was my last meeting in village with my immediate supervisor. It was just a gathering of representatives of the village to discuss past and future projects. It went fairly well, although one village committee felt like they were out of the loop when it came to updates on my projects. It was a little frustrating for me to hear, since I had been inviting them to every meeting before but gave up after 6 cancellations.

At any rate, I would be happy to work with them in my last 6 months if they are good for their word. My clinic listed off all of my projects and we tried to discuss sustainability of projects and how to make sure that projects would continue after I leave. I am the last volunteer in my village, so it is a very important subject.

What I have slated for the last few months so far is: an HIV and AIDS mural, HIV workshops, nutrition workshops, the Hearth Model, a Family Planning theater presentation, world map murals, tree planting and a mosquito net campaign. I think that will be more than enough and likely is too much. I could get a lot more done on my own. Since my work is by definition community work I am at the mercy of community schedules.

I mean, anything we get done will be an improvement. So we will see.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.

For our last jaunt we went up to Natti, a town where there is a house for Peace Corps volunteers. We stayed there and enjoyed the company of the local volunteers before jumping in yet another cramped car to head toward the Tatas.The car traversed the beautiful hills of Benin. Down through a town that was a series of mini-fortresses made from mud (the Tatas). We wound up in a larger town to discover we had already passed the town that we wanted to visit. With some patience and an odd French man we found a taxi-motorcycles that drove us across the border into Togo and through another series of Tatas.The Tatas themselves resemble the courtyards that we live in here in Burkina. However, the buildings are in closer proximity and the walls were 2 to 3 times taller. They were clearly meant to protect whoever lived inside. I kept saying that when I get back to village I would build a majestic Tata of my own. I am not sure what my village would think of that.The trip took us to a town in the top third of Togo. We were planning on staying, but the police station couldn't help us with our Visas (I was the only one that had a multi-country Visa). So, we ventured northward. It was rough getting a car for a reasonable price until one that was passing by stopped and gave us a good price. We couldn't take that car because we were still waiting for our friends to get back from visiting the police station. Once we got into a car we discovered that the road was terrible. It was less than a single lane and falling apart. Huge semi-trucks would be coming toward us head-on and our tiny car would be forced to off-road for a bit. At some point we passed the car that had originally given us a good price completely totaled on the side of the road. It was not a fun ride.We stayed in a town that I think is called Dapaong. Unfortunately, we didn't do any of the sight-seeing in Togo that we had planned aside from the Tatas. The town we stayed in was cute and compact. We were next to the marche and sampled some of their local cheese. People in Togo seemed markedly less nice than our Burkinabe brethren, but after all we were on the final stretch of our journey.The next morning we took a taxi to the border town and walked across the border without any problems. On the other side we met some Lutheran missionary students. It was funny to see the looks on their faces when I told them we were there for the voodoo festival.On the Burkina side of the border we immediately felt at home. The people on the car back to Ouaga were very nice. We were able to talk in local languages. All was right in the world again.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.

We made our way northward and escaped the humidity of the coast. Abomey is a smaller town in the heart of the voodoo regions in Benin. Our hotel had the air of a jungle filled with wooden depictions of spirits with enormous phalluses. There was a live monkey at the entrance, crocodiles near our room and some sort of striped miniature dear by the restaurant. The dear licked my hand when I gave it salt. I stopped her when she started biting.We decided to take a late-afternoon stroll from temple to temple. Each household had a temple to communicate with their particular spirits. Each temple had its own legba which is a lesser guardian spirit depicted by a mound of dirt. The only discernible human characteristic was of course a massive phallus protruding from the mound.The temples looked remarkably modern to me, since the were build from cement and painted in acrylics. However, that makes sense since most architecture in the are is made of mud brick and any temple must have been rebuilt periodically over the years. We saw the courtyard of the previous king and some of the larger temples.The largest temple was white and sprawled across a large field. One passerby suggested we throw money in it to please the spirits (a suggestion I assume was only so he could retrieve the money). When my friends walked closer and closer to throw American coins in the voodoo believers around us looked increasing nervous. I guess that if you touch the temple as a non-believer you will be cursed and forced to ask the spirits for forgiveness through an elaborate ceremony. When the coins were tossed the man ran for the temple but was grabbed by another man and immediately scalded.It just so happens that we arrived in Abomey the night of a specific spirit's festival. On top of that, they had decided to film this particular night for posterity. The festival was one of the nights where spirits possessed the bodies of living representatives from their lineages. When we arrived a field was surrounded by a crowd of people. In the center was a sort of parade of people in elaborate brightly colored costumes. They were grass skirts, crowns, wings and sea shells (think carnival but on a smaller scale). We were told to cross the terrain barefoot with our heads bowed and we took a seat on the other side.It was dark out, but there were lights to aid the camera at capturing the ceremony. We were the only foreigners in a sea of locals. The audience was peppered with old women sitting at tables with their faces illuminated by a single candle before them. The people in costumes began dancing to the shifting rhythm of the drum. They took turns gyrating, flipping, shaking, flailing, and seizing. Sometimes groups approached and danced intricately in a dazed haunting unison. Some spirits were more mischievous than others. One approached the crowd smacking them with a wooden representation of a phallus and humping young men. Our guide explained that he taught the young men about sex. The same spirit smacked/humped my friend in the face, which was evidently a solicitation for money. When the spirit received less than he desired he smacked my other friend in the face with the phallus and continued on his way. The audience chanted out at the spirits and others responded with other chants in unison.We stayed there until about midnight watching the spirits take possession of people in the dark until the last parade broke into chasing people through the night. The screaming crowd dispersed and we snuck out on a small trail back to our hotel.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.

I can honestly say that I have never thought about how liquid soap is made. I simply go to the store, buy, use it, then repeat the cycle.

WELL, upon moving to Burkina Faso, that definitely changed!

Soap making is a great way to increase the income of women in the developing world. True, in some areas, the soap market has been flooded, so one may not be able to demand as high of a price, but it seems to me that the women are still happy.

I recently started working with a mothers group at my neighborhood primary school. They, like most people, are interested in increasing their income. I personally enjoy and prefer income-generating activities (IGAs) because you it is easier to track your progress and see results from all your labor.

I doubt I have peaked your curiosity about soap-making, but you're going to have to read my step-by-step (that probably left a few common-sense related steps out) guide and look at my pictures nonetheless. I LOVE my MOMS! They are incredible, and even if I don't understand a fraction of what they are saying (because it is in Moore), I still look forward to phone calls asking about soap-making...

Here we go....

1) Gather your materials... You'll need a bucket that can hold at least 15 liters, one kilo of tansigex (no one really knows how to spell this, but its the chemical we use that starts the soap-making process), a cup to take water out with, two buckets that can hold at least 7.5 liters of water, a kilo of rock salt, and a big wooden spoon! (Note: everything should be plastic or wood... DO NOT use anything metal!)

2) Dissolve one kilo of salt into 7.5 liters of

3) Whip the tansigex until it looks like marshmallow fluff. This usually takes about ten minutes if you are working with one kilo- fifteen seems to be sufficient for up to three kilos of tansigex.

4) Starting with the salt water, add in water one liter at a time (alternating salt water, regular water) until all water is used. While you are mixing it is VERY important to add the water in in small quantities, and stir until the contents of the bucket are homogeneous (the same). Totally learned the hard way that this is necessary.

5) After all water is mixed you, cover your bucket, and let sit over night.

6) [When you come back the next day] Uncover bucket, and add perfume(specific to soap-making, not the type you wear) and coloring.

7) Bottle, and then you are ready to sell, Sell, SELL!

So there you have it... This is how to make liquid soap!

Until the next time,

Happy blogging,

Ebben Wiley

Oh, and sorry about some of the action shots... taking candid photos here is an art that I have yet to perfect.

03 Février 2012 FN: Different strokes for different folks One of the interesting things about living in the transit house is that you encounter a wide range of volunteers from a wide range of sites. If you live in a more or less urban setting (like I do), you don’t really get to see much […]

Have you ever wondered how to make liquid soap while living in a West African land locked country? Well in that case, this blog post is just for you. This past week I visited my (almost) site mate Barb in a neighboring village 12 km away to help her complete a liquid soap making demonstration. Truthfully, I didn't really do much helping because I don't really know how to make liquid soap. We briefly went over this in our training but I think I was getting over some remnants of my giardia because all I remember was a lot of stirring with a wooden spoon. Thankfully, one of the veteran volunteers who lives in Ouahigouya came out as well; Ebben works with a women's association to help with a number of income generating activities such as liquid soap, neem cream, and weaving.

Anyway, the whole process of soap making actually started last weekend when Barb, Carrie, and I spent 4 hours wandering around the Ouahigouya marche looking for Tangenx (not sure really how to spell this, it's basically the chemical base of the soap), and other materials for a hand washing station. The marche in Ouahigouya is seemingly endless, so after two hours of hopeless wandering we finally found a petite to take us around to every hardware store in town looking for supplies. Other needed materials include water, salt, and a big wooden spoon which many women here use to make to.

It turns out making soap is actually really easy; all you need is three buckets. One bucket with 7.5 liters of salt water, one bucket with 7.5 liters of plain water, and a bucket with the chemical base. One must continuously stir the chemical stuff as you alternate by adding salt water and regular water until, viola, you have your soap. We were working with a young woman, Bintu, who runs a kiosque across the street from Barb's house. The idea is to show her how to make soap and have her sell it at her kiosque, all the while encouraging clients to wash their hands with her brand new hand washing station, also built by us on that same day. Here are some pictures:

Ebben and Barb working on the hand washing station.

Hand washing station, done!

Bintu mixing that soap.

I think its about time to have an update on here. I was hoping that Pat would get internet soon, but there have been a number of delays, so he asked me to update the blog and include pictures.

--Britt

Pat is really settling into his new place. This week was a very productive one! He taught an english class on nutrition and planned an entire lesson for 80+ kids. And its not even the number of kids that is most impressive, its the lesson itself! It was more than complete with Jeopardy questions, free cookies as incentive to answer questions, and building human bridges to show the importance of eating foods from ALL the food groups. Looks like his RA knowledge on ice breakers and the sort is being put to good use! In BF, "to" (pronounced "toe") is a very popular dish despite having little nutritional value; thus Pat wanted to teach the importance of a balanced diet. The absolute best part of this week was the excitement in his voice! He is really having a blast!

Pat has also been playing soccer with the local kids a lot. His cooking endeavors continue as he accumulates an impressive amount of international food options into his repertoire (he didn't mention that his first meal at his new home in BF was mexican spiced macaroni and cheese). Yesterday he went around with another worker as she did sensibilizations in the village and surrounding areas. This allowed him to meet many people and watch someone else give lessons. He continues to screen babies and children for malnutrition (a big concern over there given limited food options).

Another exciting thing that Patrick is working on is building a garden in front of the CSPS (health center/clinic) that he works at. This is a challenge simply because fencing is expensive and the whole thing takes a lot of planning, but I know that he is equal to the task. He recently has been working on his Plan of Action and report to submit for review by PC. In this document, he is to analyze the needs of the community and detail his plans for his remaining time as a PCV.

Pat has gotten very close with some local youths and they hang out in his spare time listening to music or just talking about life in general. Rihanna is very popular over there (something Patrick can relate to). Eminem, Lupe, and Akon have also extended their fan base into Burkina Faso. Pat has a hammock that he often relaxes in after work.

He has been on a quest for internet, but it has proven unsuccessful a number of times for one reason or another. Issues include ATM running out of money and lack of internet keys/car batteries. It seems acquiring internet is about as difficult as you would imagine in the rural areas of a developing country. That being said, Pat is very thankful for his close proximity to the marche or marketplace. This ensures that he is able to get food on a regular basis as it is needed. However, since the harvest this year was not ideal, there is potential for a food shortage. Let us hope and pray that does not happen!

The next couple months will be super busy for Pat! He will be doing more volunteer training during which his stage will be reunited! He is pretty excited to see the people he swore in with after such a long time apart. He also has a committee meeting. He has joined the Youth Development committee which meets about every 3 months. Additionally, the volunteers are planning a visit to a village in BF where there is going to be a huge festival that only happens every other year. Pat is pretty excited for that as well!

Below are some pictures from BF taken from facebook for those of you who might not have seen them yet. I have included Pat's captions as well.

Great tree to watch the sunset on. sit right there in the nook

I wake up to life in the BF. My courtyard with my host family. Far left is the oven and dishwashing on top. what looks like a rug is actually seeds from harvest. and the bottom center is usually a fire where food is prepared. the Jugs all around are filled with Dolo, a local beer that my family makes and sells from millet. (They popular people)[This was where Patrick lived during training, this is not where he currently resides]

Mah house [on left] The kids, and my host mom, sleep in the round hut. :-( gender inequality

My host family and i communicate through dance

One of my lil Host Sisters. May just be one of the sweetest kids I've ever met. She stares at me while i eat breakfast every morning and dances in the evenings with me. Although you cannot see it here, she has one of the purest smiles you could ever imagine. There have been many of dark days where her smile brings light. :-)

Our boss donated three turkeys and one oven to our thanksgiving cause.So we dug a hole, filled it with hot coals, and cooked turkeys in it. Earth Oven. TrueLife, I cooked a 15lb Turkey in an Earth Oven.

Success!

PCTs chillin

Right before the electric slide

MONEY!!!

the day after Thanksgiving, we did condom and family planning demonstrations for 8th graders. FANTASTIC!!!

Presenting a certificate to my Counterpart after counterpart workshops. Conference finale with Homologues, Supervisors, Trainers, PCVFs, and PCTs

G25![aka: Pat and his stage! They swore in on December 15, 2011]

The east!

Right now, things are going very well for Patrick. Please keep the prayers, good wishes, packages and letters coming in his direction!

Summer camp seems to be a staple of the American childhoodexperience. After all, parents need some way to keep their kids busyand out of trouble once the summer vacation starts. But here inBurkina, life is a little different. The school vacation correspondsto the growing season, and once students are out of school for theyear, they often head to the fields to plant corn, millet, beans,sesame, and other crops. There are very few other options forstudents during the summer.

Last year, a few PCVs brought an international Peace Corps program,Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World), to Burkina. Here, it became CampG2LOW (Girls and Guys Leading Our World) to include malestudent participants. This summer camp aims to offer students at thetop of their class a chance to continue their education and getleadership training during their vacation. Sessions focus on leadinga healthy lifestyle, becoming an active and informed citizen, andpromoting gender equality. And of course, there will also be funactivities for the students such as yoga, games, and s'mores. Thisyear, the camp has expanded to 4 locations, and a total of 240 girlsand 240 guys will be able to participate. Each site will hold oneweek of camp for 60 girls, and the following week for 60 guys.

Needless to say, organizing these camps will be a big task. I'm onthe planning committee for the camp in Fada, the regional capital ofthe Eastern province in Burkina. We'll hopefully also be partneringwith the local offices of the Burkina Ministry of Youth and NationalVolunteer Program in Fada. The camp won't be until July or August,but there's a lot to do before then! We'll have to contact and holdmeetings with villages that wish to participate, fundraise, determinehow to select participants, order supplies, plan the schedule, andhold a training of trainers with our Burkinabe facilitators.

And we'll need your help to make Camp G2LOW possible! Thecost of each camp is approximately $11,500. About half of the costwill be contributed by the community (lodging, transportation,volunteer facilitators, etc.), but that means a significant amountstill needs to be raised for each camp. The exact figures for theFada camp are as follows: Total cost: $11,801.06Community contribution: $5376.61Amount left to raise: $6424.45

Moredetails about Camp G2LOWand how to donate can be found here:http://www.pcburkina.org/camp-glow(Click on the image for the Fada camp to donate to us Easterners!)

Thanks in advance for your help!

02 Février 2012 FN: 10 Vignettes of Ouaga life, in Drabbles A drabble is a story in exactly 100 words. They’re not very long, but they can be surprisingly challenging to write. These are what I could come up with. Enjoy. The force is strong with this one… The current in the US is a […]

There is nothing like sitting on a bus waiting for a herd of Elephants to cross the road. Since arriving in Botswana, we have been lucky enough to catch a lot of African animals just chilling on the roadside. Our first encounter was with the caribou which are like the deer of Africa. Going from Francistown to Kasane, we go through the outskirts of a few big game parks. We saw a lot of elephants, a pack of zebras, giraffes, and a family of monkeys. In Kasane we took a boat ride through the Chobe National Park. The park is beautiful and we continued to see so many more animals. In the park you can either take a safari by land, or water. If we would of done it by land we could of gotten closer to the animals, but by water you get to see more, and don’t end up scaring the animals away. We saw hippos, crocs, monkeys, giraffes, multiple types of caribou, a weasel, elephants, and plenty of birds. The park is also on four countries, so while on the water we passed through Zambia and Namibia. After the boat tour, we ate dinner at the hotel we took the tour from. They have a buffet, which was my first buffet in 3 years, but it also serves game meat! I got to try Impala meat(like a deer) and Kudu (another deer) and a few different types of fish. After Kasane, we traveled north and crossed the border into Zambia. Going from Botswana to Zambia you take a ferry, which I can add to another type of transport we are taking on this trip. Crossing the border was easy, then we went to Jungle Junction. It’s a little island, about a 1km long on the Zambezi. We got dropped off on the Zambezi, and a guide came to pick us up by canoe. Since we were the only 4 people on the island we had a nice view of the river. Our chalet was like the house in the Swiss Family Robinson. In the evening it started raining, so we hung out in our chalet and relaxed. From Jungle Junction we went to Livingstone. That is were our group split for a few days. Two of us headed to Luska, and the other two into Zimbabwe. Upcoming Events: Victoria Falls, then heading to Namibia!

It’s only been a few days since my last post, but I want to share two short stories with you that have recently brightened my little corner of the world. Perhaps they will yours too. The first is an update … Continue reading →

01 Février 2012 FN: 7 Le remède contre le paludisme OR How to (not) get malaria More or less everyone knows that malaria is a parasitic infection that is transmitted by mosquitoes and is endemic to most if not all tropical areas. Americans primarily know it as one of those “hot country diseases” that people […]

This one's for the people back home.

I’ve realized there is a lot I forget to tell you guys or that’s difficult for me to explain. I forget that many of the realities I deal with everyday make no sense to you, because I forget that they are not “normal” or thought of in Americaland. And, sometimes I just feel weird posting about the honest realities where anybody with internet access can read them. Anyway, we’ll start here...

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Quick update: We finally met up with Heather, our final group member. We also made safely to Francistown, where our vacation officially starts! After being in West Africa for 3 years, Francistown is like mini America. There are shopping malls, grocery stores, and people don’t sell things from the top of their heads, or go to a farmer’s market for their veggies. Since there was no direct bus from Jo’Burgh to Francistown we had to stop in Gaborone. We arrived, EARLY, but at night, so we didn’t get to see much, since early the next morning we took off for Francistown. Since our arrival, we took a tour of the town, which is really nice. Francistown in the 2nd largest city in Botswana. It’s also halfway between Gaborone and Kasane, a large tourist city. Since there isn’t a lot of touristy things to do, we have been doing things, that Heather participated in while a volunteer here. Friday morning we went to the Prison of Immigrants and played volleyball all mornings. People who illegally sneak into Botswana, and then get caught go to this prison, while waiting for a visa, or asylum seekers. Most people here have been denied asylum or a visa and are awaiting to be returned back to their country of origin. Heather got involved here and would do educational programs for the women, and recreational activities for the men, since this was her last time going, we decided to play volleyball. I felt we gave them a good run for their money. They were pretty competitive, but I was on the winning team! Next leg: Kasane-boat cruise Livingstone- Fisherman’s village, Victoria Falls Luska

31 Janvier 2012 FN: 8 Office space Today, I get to write my first post from my erstwhile desk in my putative office at FAIJ headquarters in Ouaga. I say erstwhile and putative because it sounds better than “the long table I share with 5 data entry functionaries” and “the place I’m going this week […]

Dearestfriends and family who have stayed with us despite our infrequent posts andlack of pictures, thank you! It's been a whirlwind the past few months. We will do better, we made a resolution for 2012.




November

Birthday at the Cheesecake Factory!James and I loved seeing friends and family whenwe vacationed to the US (never thought I'd vacation to Iowa...) for my babysis's wedding. We also loved stuffing our faces with the delights of homecookin' and mouth-watering restaurants. We brought back two suitcases full ofprocessed food and an extra 11 and 7 pounds, respectively, which we promptlylost thanks to biking and tasteless dinners. Nothing here measures up afterhomemade ice cream... chicken wraps... cheesy mushrooms... pizza... I'll stopbefore I become too sad to eat my Vache Qui Rit (Burkina's version of Velveeta)mac n cheese dinner.

One week after returning Nicole became our veryfirst visitor! She braved the 24+ hour trip and ventured into the unknown ofBurkina Faso. She got her fair share of "you're going to Burkinawhat?" only to enter a land where many couldn't pinpoint the US on a map.Guess it works both ways. We spent time in our village where Nicole got soacclimated to living cheap, bucket baths, and latrines that other Peace CorpsVolunteers mistook her for one of our own. We painted signs for Siaka'srestaurant Marley's since I learned the previously week that James has zero artskills, then visited the waterfalls, domes, and hippo lake, played soccer withkids, and toured the village health clinic, where Nicole deftly diagnosed andtreated our neighbor boy Issouf of ringworm. Put Nicole's bike skillz to thetest when we traveled south to Niansogoni to see the cliff dwellings, thenbriefly stopped in Bobo before going on safari and seeing ELEPHANTS! Includingcute 2 ton babies. I'll attempt to post a video later when I'm not writing onthe iPhone in village in the dark. It was fun getting a new perspective onBurkina and life here.




December

After seeing Nicole safely off, we boarded ahellacious 24 hour bus ride sans air conditioning to Togo. Arriving two shadesdarker due to the dust, we spent hours washing our clothes and James's peanutbutter covered bag. Sidenote: If you decide that you too want to bring 5gallons of peanut butter from Ouaga to Lome on a bus, please make sure thatit's closed well and won't explode all over the undercompartment of the bus andeveryone else's luggage. Thanks.




We met up with our second brave visitor, John, andwere off to see Ganvie, the village built on stilts in the middle of a lake inBenin. Beautiful – the Venice of West Africa. It was like any other villageswe've seen except people took canoes instead of bikes and farmed fish insteadof corn. There were boutiques selling phone credit, packets of spaghetti, andsachets of gin, women paddling around selling vegetables and other wares formaking dinner or braiding hair. People collected (in canoes) around the waterpump (yes, a water pump in the middle of a lake) and it became very dark atnight without electricity. By some miracle the rickety two story place westayed had lights and an actual shower and though James lost his iPod through ahole in the floor (retrieved by the nice lady selling booze and knitting in thecourtyard), the place didn't collapse like I thought it would.

We wove our way through Togo, probably spendingmore time squeezed on transport and as a result touching each other non-stopthan actually seeing things, but it was worth it for the mud fortresses ofKoutammakou that I wanted to visit ever since starting my application for PeaceCorps in 2008. We stopped at the cliff dwellings at Nano in northern Togobefore crossing the border and making our way across Burkina and to ourvillage. John jumped into village life helping out at Marley's, and we allcelebrated Christmas in Bobo with twenty or so other PCVs and Chris! who madeit on a Christmas Eve flight and bus. A couple days touring Bobo then thelovely Karen and dashing Derrick arrived!




No time to rest as we rushed north to Mopti, Malito see Dogon Country. Amazing. We hiked for three days through cliffs,celebrated New Year's in style, and ended at the awe-inspiring cliffsidedwellings. Our guide Oumar was amazing as was the company.







JanuaryWe returned triumphant to Burkina and spent a fewdays in our village before John, Chris, and Karen left for Accra, Ghana toenjoy swimming pools and Derrick, James, and I voyaged to Bobo then Ouaga tosend him back to America via football match in London.




Then life got pretty quiet. I enjoyed that forabout one day then started in on school stuff. Incredible how much progress hasbeen made! Met up with the President and Secretary of APE (parent'sassociation) to buy the roof in Bobo then back to Banfora for the remainingsupplies. The masons arrived January 16th, and they've been working non-stop.Already the building is unrecognizable, and I can barely keep up with pictures.Note on cameras: our Sony TX5 dustproof, waterproof, shockproof camera lastedabout 6 months in Burkina before breaking. We're trying to get it repaired forthe second time, but it's not looking good. If any Sony employees read this, I believeyour company owes me a camera that can handle a little bumpy, dusty adventure.Pathetic attempt but I'll give you one more shot.




So lately James has been working hard with Siakaon his restaurant repairing the hangar and preparing to construct sleepinghuts, and also been spreading La Vie Chère internationally and prepping torepair the canal with the Rice Association.




I've been virtually living at the school. Everyday there's a new problem to solve (Umm, what do you mean you didn't measurecorrectly for the roof?? Ok, I guess I'll climb the ladder in my skirt and showyou masons how it's done) or cool new thing to see (400 liter cementhandwashing stations!).




Overall the village has been amazing. The parentsare motivated to help in any way they can (example: Paul's dad who is nicknamed"The American" repaired the metal doors and windows at cost, whichwas a third of the price if someone else did it). People constantly tell Jamesand I thank you, and we remind them that it wouldn't be possible without theirhelp, too.




This is definitely not a typical Peace Corpsproject. Most volunteers do few if any funded projects and when money isinvolved, it's usually less than $1,000. Part if it depends on resources(Karfiguela's school wouldn't be possible without your support and the grantfrom the US Embassy) and part of it depends on your view of development.Volunteers can effect change just by addressing a community's mentality.




Example: A PCV can conduct sensibilisations(awareness campaigns) and hold informal causeries (chats) with communitycounterparts and say, "God isn't the only one who decides if you get sick.You have some control. Wash your hands with soap, eat nutritiously, and go tothe CSPS (health clinic) right away when you're sick instead of the traditionalmedicine man. That's how you can stay healthy."

Happy 2012!


Another really effective tool is to find the “PositiveDeviants” in your community and empower them to be agents of change. Positivedeviants are the rare people doing things differently, with better results.Maybe it's a mom feeding her kids well or a dad who's sending his daughter touniversity.




But sometimes, you can only talk so much. You cantell kids they're supposed to wash their hands with soap, but if there'snowhere for them to do this, how can they change their behavior?




When we arrived in village 1.5 years ago, theprimary school made the top three list of most needed projects for every groupwe talked to from the chef du village to the women's associations to the ricecooperative. What was once a sore point for the village - an outside group camealmost 10 years ago to build the school then bouffed (stole) the money andleft, leaving the building and teacher housing unfinished - is now a source ofimmense pride. The entire village is excited to have a finished building sincealmost every single family has kids there, and the teachers and students aremost excited of all.




I couldn't be more impressed with the way the APEbureau has stepped up to manage. Once they found out that I hadn't budgeted forpaint, they became even more dedicated to finding the lowest prices formaterials so they could have a beautiful finished building. Of course theyleave all the tedious paperwork to me due to technological and literacyrestraints, but I love it because it takes me back to Excel spreadsheets andcrunching numbers, making budgets, and performing risk analyses. I miss beingan accounting nerd :)




Enjoy a few pics:




CP1 (kindergarten) kids dancing with excitementfor their new classroom! On the right are Seydou, the APE president, and Karim,the secretary. Both have been instrumental in dealing with the issues thatinevitably crop up and making decisions. Literally couldn't finish the schoolwithout them.





The master mason, Salif, in the middle with theroofers and little helpers in the back. Paul's (motivated high school studentwho facilitated last summer's girls camp and has been our Karaboro tutor)little brother Yanma (adorable little guy) "helps" the masons almost everyday because he wants to make sure his classroom is done as soon as possible.He's 5 years old. So. Cute.

In other news, the saddest thing this week wasfinding out that my great uncle passed away. The hardest thing about PeaceCorps after dealing with harassment/discrimination is missing out oneverybody's lives back home.




The second saddest thing this week was noticingthat one of the little boys who hangs around our house has a dislocatedshoulder. I took him to the CSPS (remember our PC vocab from earlier?), andafter looking at his arm and consulting with the boy and a couple villageladies, the major (head nurse) told me that the boy had dislocated it threeyears ago and he would have to go to the hospital in Banfora for surgery. WhenI asked how much that would cost, he said at least 75,000 CFA. I sucked in mybreath. That's over half a month's stipend.

Would the major please explain to the little boythat he needed this so he didn't grow up handicapped?

Yes, the major said, but it wouldn't matter. The familycan't afford the surgery and in the parents' mind, they can just have morehealthy kids rather than pay the money to fix the one they've got.

Major, what can we do? Isn't there some group thatcan help?

Maybe, he said. Action Social. In Bobo. (It mightas well have been in Paris). But I was white. Wasn't I going to pay for it?

I don't have that kind of money, I said. Pleasetell his family about Action Social. Explain that the boy's life will be somuch better.

Ok. I'll try.

Another one of the tough things you'll experiencein Peace Corps that you most likely won't hear much about and no amount oftraining can prepare you for. Yes, technically James and I could pay for thisboy's surgery, but then we'd have a line out our door of people expecting us topay for their medicine/treatment/new bike/whatever. We live and work here, andit's hard enough convincing people that we're not here to hand out cadeaus(presents) and bags of money that we have lying around our house. It's harderknowing that if his parents had taken him to the doctor three years ago, itwould have been a simple pop it back into place procedure that cost a few mille($4-6). Even worse watching this 6 year old kid running around with a uselessarm and believing he had been born like that because he's only ever known lifewith a dislocated shoulder.




This must be one of my longest posts yet. Sittinghere thinking happy thoughts about the school and a potential second annualgirls camp this spring, I'm off to take a bucket bath and go to bed. The sunand chickens will be up at 6 tomorrow :)

It has recently been brought to my attention that after over a year here, I haven’t done a very good job of shedding light on my day to day life. So I will begin my post by trying to better illuminate village life.

By the time I wake up around 7 AM (a little later the few weeks a year it’s below 80˚) everyone in village is awake. The women are busy, finding wood to cook with or pounding something (rice, millet, corn, etc) and sweeping their courtyard. I drink some instant coffee while eating oatmeal or the previous night’s leftovers if it’s not hot season. After a couple of hours to myself, I head out to the CSPS. While I’m there, I generally hang out in the pharmacy or the maternity. I help with little things as needed until lunch time. While I’m doing this, village women are still pounding things and preparing lunch/dinner (usually one meal is prepared a day and the family just eats throughout the evening until it’s gone). If it’s rainy season, people are in the fields planting and weeding and whatever else goes into growing crops.

At lunch time I bike back home, stopping at my village’s mini-marché on the way. At its best, there are tomatoes, onions, cabbage, garlic, aubergines, hot peppers, yams, and very occasionally, green peppers and lettuce. At its worst, it has onions, some very sketchy looking tomatoes, and dried hot peppers.

I buy whatever veggies I need and continue home to cook them with rice or pasta. After lunch, it’s the beautiful time called repose. Sometimes I nap, sometimes I read, but it’s almost always a time to not move during the hottest part of the day. The rest of the village tends to be lounging around under trees.

When the sun starts to lose the worst of its intensity, I visit neighbors or hang out with people who have come to visit me (mostly this consists of children, though lately I’ve had a few more adult visitors than usual!). Visiting someone usually means being offered a stool to sit on and a bowl of tô to eat. The women almost always keep doing whatever they were doing when you I arrived and very little talking takes place (unless there’s a group of women and then they talk too much and too fast for me to understand anything).

Once the sun goes down, I take a bucket bath and settle in to read or write letters by candle light. Sometimes a couple of my neighbors come over and they use my battery-powered light to do their homework. The past couple weeks they’ve brought over some leaves that we boil in water until the water turns red. We take out the leaves, add sugar, and enjoy (Okay, I’ll be honest – I’m mostly enjoying the company and drinking the beverage to be polite). Then eventually it’s time to go to sleep, and my exciting day is done!

A few notes on life in general:

Amenities – There is no electricity in my village. For water, there are wells and a few community faucets of water where people get water by the giant bowl full (or, for those of us who can’t carry 25 L on our heads, by the 30 L yellow gasoline jug strapped to the back of my bike!)

Language – Some people speak “village” French and essentially everyone speaks Jula and Gouin. I can get around in Jula and greet people in Gouin, but I rely heavily on gestures especially when talking with women. Days can pass when the only person I speak English to is myself.

Getting Around – I ride my bike everywhere, and there are many families that have bikes. Some people have motorcycles/mopeds and there are two cars in my village. Getting around village, most people walk.

What is an AME?

If you are thinking AME stands for African Methodist Episcopal, you are oh so wrong... well at least here in Burkina you are. AME, in Burkina, stands for Associations des Mères Educatrices (Mothers, and Female Educators Association).

Due to dated traditions and what not that exist here in Burkina, Women tend to be left out of important decisions when it comes to their children's schooling. With these associations, Women are now able to have more a voice when it comes to the scholastic environment.

At the primary school I am working with, the AME was non-existent. I am proud to say, that since my arrival in November of 2011, we have established an association with an executive board. We have also started doing income-generating activities. The larger idea is that we will be able to establish a center where children from the primary school can come on free days and holidays to learn trades skills. Yes, it is very important that these children receive an education, but it is also very important that they have work skills other than farm work to fall back on.

In this society, the most sought after jobs are NGO jobs and government jobs. Unfortunately, due to how the school system is organized here, few individuals actually make it into these jobs. The idea of the mothers is to equip their children with unique skills to make them stronger candidates for employment later in life. I LOVE IT!

We have started VERY small. Right no we are doing soap-making, and neem cream. There are countless problems with hygiene here, so soap is definitely something that makes money. Neem cream is also something that makes money here. Think of this as OFF, but natural. We boil down leaves from the leaves of the neem tree, and then mix it with shea oil to make a lotion of sorts. It ends up repelling mosquitoes, which in turn, helps prevent people from being bit by malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Its really cool, and I promise to come back and add photos, and better explain all of this.

All in all, I am VERY proud of my AME! They are kicking ass, and making giant steps every weekend!

I promise to keep you all better updated in regards to what I am doing.

Take care, and until next time,

Ebben Wiley

SO,

A great deal happened between rainy season and now. Obviously the fair happened, but I also changed sites.

I am no longer down in the East near Togo and Benin... I am not in the North not far from Mali. I have been at my new site since November 9, and I absolutely LOVE it.

I meant to post about the site change around Thanksgiving time, and got distracted by the super fast internet at our library. It is actually easier for me to work from site these days, and I take complete advantage of that.

I now have a house that is at least two and a half times larger than my old house, and a private courtyard that is , no joke, the same size of the courtyard I used to share with at least 13 other people, and God only knows how many animals. (Link to first post about my old courtyard.)

This new site feels like it always meant to be, you know? I mean, don't get me wrong, I am thankful for all my experiences at my old site. I learned a great deal from my old site, and if it were not for that, I don't think that I would be enjoying my new site as much.

I am currently working at L'École National pour les Enseignants Primaire (the National Teachers School). It is an interesting match. I am now more closely aligned with my original assignment, which was Girls Education and Empowerment (now known as Non-formal Education).

I work with the AME ( Student Mothers' Association) to help bring money into the school— I'll be posting on out income-generating projects soon. With the women, I also advocate for the rights of the children, and will be working with them to help teach their children income-generating activities during their free time, and school breaks.

Another project I am excited about is my work with the student teachers. During this time of the year, the student teachers from the teaching school go out into the field to observe teachers. I will be working with the student teachers at our school on Thursday mornings. Every Thursday, I will teach the student teachers a Life Skills lesson. It will then be their job to write a lesson to teach the students the next day. I feel this is a more effect way of teaching Like Skills and what not because it will be coming from a host country national. It is also a great opportunity for the student teachers to get some practice.

I am working on doing a big sibling/ little sibling exchange between the local high school and the primary school I work with, but that may be a little down the line.

All in all, I know that February is going to be too short. It's all good though, I am totally up for the challenge... I can honestly say that I have never gone to bed angry/anxious, nor have I woken up angry/anxious due to problems at my new site since being here. In fact, I feel far more integrated into my new community that I ever did at my old community.

Can't wait to tell you all more about life at site!

Ebben Wiley

Hey guys,

I am so sorry that it has taken me over four months to bring you up to speed on how the fashion show went... I am pleased to inform you that it went REALLY well!

The weaving association we worked with made over 300.000CFA (over 600USD) by the end of the fair from the fashion show, accessories, and orders for fabric at the fair.

Moussa (the shoe guy) made over 100.00CFA (over 200USD) by the end of the fair.

My tailors did pretty well as well. They brought in around 50.000CFA (USD) from the fair.

Work backed up, so the video footage that was taken has not yet been edited. Hopefully I will have that up soon though. Until then, here goes a few of my favorite photos from the fair. (I will post them by Feb. 4, 2012. Promise.)

Happy bloggin,

Ebben Wiley

After the voodoo festival we made our journey Eastward toward Nigeria. We went to Porto Novo, a city highly influenced by the Portuguese. The town overlooks green lagoons full of little wooden boats and people digging sand out of the bottom of the lagoons to sell on shore. The city itself is on a hill which adds to the slightly European feel. Ornamented, brightly colored buildings, museums and monuments mingled with shacks and street side vendors.We stayed at SONGHAI, a sort of agriculture/agro-business commune and education center where they promote local agricultural techniques. It was really quite astounding. You'll have to look it up, but I believe that the center has been there for approximately 25 years. It incorporates a wide range of agro-business: fish farming, soy, snails, bananas, moringa, essences, sales, edible oils, marketing, water sanitation, machines and more. They have a nice little hotel and several restaurants and their campus does give the feeling of an agricultural university. Although I didn't get to critically look at their statistics, they did claim to be 100% self-sustaining now. It gave me a sort of window into a potentially sustainable model of development in West Africa.In town we also ventured off to see the monuments and the big mosque. The mosque looked rather Portuguese in influence and had bright colors of paint that were pealing in places. Above the back door was an analog clock (no longer functioning) that looked like it could be from the 70s. On the way we found a large white stone monument of a man in traditional clothing. I am not sure who he was, but it reminded us all of statues in Lord of the Rings.Later that day we took a trip to a hotel bar that overlooked the lagoons. I had a coffee and fries while we lounged on leather couches and watched the boats pass by on their quest for sand.One of the days we took one of the little boats up the lagoon to a village built on stilts. There are several such villages in Benin that were built to avoid slave trade or for other defensive reasons. They are built in areas that are covered in water much of the year, so everyone has boats to travel from house to house. Farm animals are tethered to an island made of hay that they slowly eat as the water levels drop. Even the clinic is built on stilts and has an aquatic ambulance. It was a very different feel than my dry Burkinabe village.Porto Novo was my personal favorite city on the trip because of the architecture and the scenery. I have heard of others who didn't appreciate it as much. To each their own, I suppose.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.

So last Saturday was my first Birthday in Burkina. In the United States this might consist of people buying you dinner, people buying you drinks, getting lots of presents. Or like my birthday last year, attending a conference, knocking the … Continue reading →

30 January 2012 FN: 6 Life in Ouaga For those who don’t know, the capital of Burkina Faso is Ouagadougou[1]. It’s a largish city[2] of about 1.5 million[3] people located almost exactly in the dead center of the country, and it has almost all of the perqs of any capital, and almost all of the […]

29 January 2012 FN: 7 Go go gadget…language! Pretty much everyone in Burkina Faso speaks at least a little French; whether it’s in the schools, in the mosque, or in the marché, if you use basic French, you can more or less count on finding someone who understands you. However, more or less no one […]

27 January 2012 FN: 5 Work! Yesterday evening, I learned that I will finally be getting my FAIJ training in Ouaga so that I can actually begin doing the job that I am putatively here to do. This means I’ll be leaving for Ouaga Sunday afternoon, and I’ll be working and living there until the […]

With February just around the corner I’m finally able to sit down and write. It has been too long since my last post although not much has changed. I finished up the trimester with ease and headed to Ouagadougou for additional IST-In Service Training. My counterpart has been terribly sick and therefore was not able to accompany me. Instead my school director showed up in her place. It was incredibly motivating for all of us and we were presented with great tools to take back and use in our communities.

After the whirlwind of IST, came the greatly anticipated arrival of my mom and sister. They arrived on the 21st of December, we began our adventure with pizza, beer, and fried plantains on the street in Ouaga! Oh boy, the fun began! From Ouaga we took a bush taxi semi-truck down to Sapone and specifically Bonogo the quartier of my host family. The taxi dropped us off on the side of the road, with suitcases in tow we rolled on down the dirt road until the African children (who had never seen a Caucasian child—Anna), surrounded us. We were greeted with a warm welcome and my host family was beyond thrilled to meet my family. My mom and Anna presented wrapped Christmas gifts for the whole family. Our custom of wrapped gifts was a little confusing at first, after a little prompting to tear them open the uncertainty passed and they were so excited. The little girls were elated with the crayons and coloring books, Mama Cecile loved her knives and Papa Jacob strutted around showing off his new soccer ball. They too presented Mom and Anna with gifts, they were given the traditional hat of Sapone, a labor intensive and meaningful gift. My Aunt Shirley sent these balls that light up, the children were having a great time with them until the parents realized how fun they were. Soon the parents were passing them back and forth. Ha ha . My mother was asked to be a second wife to Paul, my host uncle. We met the chief of Bonogo and participated in a honorary ceremony. Following the ceremony we were paraded through the village to greet everyone who lived within a five-mile radius. The whole experience in Bonogo was unbelievable, they rolled out the red carpet for my family!

On to Leo via a landrover and a driver, (pheww) took it easy on the girls for a couple days, we hoteled it, swam in a pool, visited a fellow PCV, went on a little safari through Nazinga , saw some amazing elephants!

Next on the agenda was Bouroum-Bouroum, my home. It took 5 hours by way of the public transportation system, which is a large shotty charter bus ready to break down at any minute. Not to mention their packed with as many people and tend the travel at the speed of light. I’ve become quite accustom to this mode of transportation however mom and Anna…not so much. It felt good to be back and it felt more like a home with the company. I had so much fun showing them around the village, meeting and greeting. The people here are very relaxed and value each other over time and things. Salutations and taking tea is more important than Mom’s to do list. She will have to come about five more times to complete her list. Anna was so wonderful with the children—they still ask about her everyday.

We made a day trip to Gaoua by bush taxi, experienced the marche (market) filled with produce, grains, seasonings, cookware, jewelry, fabrics, etc… Anything you need to live is locally produced and sold at the marche’ with the sad exception of a few items that are beginning to ship in from China and India.

For New Year’s we were tired, so we came home early. But about three in the morning we were awoken to the beautiful sounds of the balafon. It’s peaceful tones echoed through the village. Only in Africa, a once in a lifetime experience.

The trip went by too fast and feels almost surreal now that they were here. Since they left, life has gone back to the way in was. School, the maternity, and my clubs fill my time. Presently we are preparing for Camp Glow, a leadership camp, and a Science Camp for students in September. Thank you for all of the wonderful gifts for my community and the incredible emotional support as well. Until next time….Remember to stop and take some tea :) All my Love,Ash

So here is my belated holiday post! Next year I’ll be in America for Christmasand New Year’s!This year I went to Mali for the holiday break. A few days before Xmas, my friend Val came tovisit my village. Her town is just 20ksouth of the capitol, and she commented how much colder village was and howmany more stars are visible at night :) We went for a bike ride around the area, had lunch with my favoriteprofessor’s family and had drinks with the president of the local PTA.

Xmas eve morning we made the trip from my village to Boboand you could definitely tell it was a holiday! The trip took about 2 hours longer than normal… That evening we went to a new bar/grill rightdown the street, watched an xmas movie and went to bed. There were about 20 volunteers there andxmas day we made dinner and watched movies all day (I definitely watched moviesmore than helping with dinner)

The next morning Val and I left at about 6:30 for Mali! We went to Mopti, a city where the Niger and Bani Rivers meet. The bus ride there was about 14 hours, but we had a remarkably uneventful trip up there. Our first morning there we had a tour of the city – saw their markets, a local mosque, the ship builders and just some of the side streets. I know that I can’t really compare Mopti – a tourist city – to my rural village, but I was surprised by the amount of development surprised me. Mopti is between Bamako, the capitol of Mali, and Timbuktu and the city has been a part of the trade route for centuries. We saw some of the big chunks of salt that is mined near Timbuktu as well as lots of smoked fish, all ready to be shipped one way or the other on the rivers.

Salt mined near TimbuktuThat evening we went on a sunset canoe ride around thearea. There were a couple islands rightacross from the city so we got off and walked around a couple of them. We saw fish being smoked (they cover a pileof fish with grass, then light the grass on fire) and the evening nets beingdragged.

The evening catch.The next day we sat around the pool reading with a walkalong the river. The rest of our groupgot in that evening – two other volunteers (from MN!) and their four friendsvisiting from home, one of whom works about two miles from my house.Craziness. Our guide for the hikingportion of the trip also got in that evening, so we figured out the last coupledetails and headed into Dogon Country.

Dogon is an area of south eastern Mali – just north ofBurkina Faso – where the Dogon people lived in villages built into the cliffsof the Bandiagara Escarpment. Our tourstarted on top of the cliffs and ended a couple days later at the bottom. Our guide, Oumar, is Dogon and was both superknowledgeable and super awesome. Hespoke English and you could tell from different phrases he used that he haddefinitely spent time around Americans.

In each village we passed through Oumar would explaindifferent parts of the village and its significance in the culture. Each village had several “town halls” wheremen would go to resolve disputes. Theparties in conflict would go in with several village elders and no one couldcome out until they reached a resolution. And not a strict democratic, 51% say yes 49% say no type conclusion, but aresolution where everyone was in agreement. They would talk around and around the issue, each side trying toconvince the other of their validity. You’ll also notice how that the ceiling is very low on thesebuildings. The reason is so no one canstand up in anger and make any move to hurt another person. A kind of cool concept.

The 'town hall.' It sounds like the US could've used a couple of these this past year...As I said, the Dogon lived in cliff villages: today thevillages have all been rebuilt either above or below the cliff. We were able to see an ancient village,though. Oumar informed us that the Dogonweren’t the ones to build the villages; they moved in after a people called theTele left them. The villages consistedof mostly houses and grain silos.

One of the ancient villages on the cliff.In the last village we visited we were able to see a maskceremony. While these are typically justpreformed for tourists today, traditionally they were done at funerals to guidethe spirits. Each different type of maskrepresented a different person or belief in the traditionally animist culture.

Giant Mask! He was also doing these awesome spins and dips and i thought he was going to fall or take someone out, haha.After our 4 days hiking we made our way back to Mopti, thenback on into Burkina. Our bus ride backwas equally uneventful as the one out, which really is a quite surprising inWest Africa. We got back to Bobo where Iwas able to hang out with some volunteers from Ghana. We ran into them in Dogon, then again inBobo. Also, they were from MN!

Overall, we had a really great week and it was pretty greatway to ring in the New Year. Happy 2012,friends!

On Wednesday and Saturday mornings, Sada cleans my hut. I could clean my hut. It’s not that I don’t have the time, though often I lack the inclination. And it’s not that my huts isn’t always tidy . . . it is, always! Tidy, impeccably organized, and overall all quite clean . . . if not completely sanitary. But the floors! And during dusty season. Eeek.

I am absolutely incapable of cleaning my floors. I have real broom, yet I still cannot sweep as well as Sada with her broom-o’-twigs. And when it comes to mopping (no, no mop . . . think rags), I only succeed in making mud. So I need Sada. Twice a week.

Sada’s cleaning of my hut entails me (me, though Sada would if given half a chance) removing every piece of furniture that isn’t essentially nailed down. Bed stays, kitchen table and propane tank stays, bookcase stays, bench-sofa stays, trunk with clothing stays. I remove everything else outdoors.

On the first occasion of our cleaning the quartier children came en masse to see whether their nassara was moving out permanently. No, merely a thorough cleaning. Imagine, when the small end tables, baskets, and crates are removed, with contents, children want to inspect every single item thereon and/or within. So it’s essentially a full-time job to keep my possessions neatly organized within said baskets and tables.

With everything removed from the hut, I begin dusting the remaining items, including every food container on the kitchen shelves, with a cloth damp and bleach water. This I do while trying to stay one step behind Sada’s sweeping. Yes, behind! Don’t need dust alighting on recently wiped items. But as Sada’s sweeping concludes, it’s time for me to move outdoors to dust all recently-removed furniture (and remember that my furniture is all painted high-gloss black, foolishly), while Sada mops the floors. First with soapy water, then a rinse with bleach water.

I pay Sada 8000 cfa per month for her 15 minutes of work, twice weekly. That’s about $2.50 U.S. per cleaning. My portion, the furniture removal, dusting, wiping, and return of said items takes about 45 minutes. This is the easiest 8000 cfa that Sada ever earns. Occasionally other older women come to help, for free. This they do to get a glimpse inside their nassara’s house. I love giving them the full tour of the tiny three-room hut. OK, I do own and display a Clarisonic facial cleaner and Braun toothbrush. But otherwise, I live it a typically Burkina home. It’s the way things are arranged that fascinate the local women. As Kyle once said, it looks like Ikea exploded in my hut. I could arrange things similarly for the village women. Interiors by Katerine. But frankly, they probably think my style is bizarre and totally undesirable. Probably some offensive version of Pô decorating . . . the antithesis of feng shui here in little Pô.

Other volunteers have observed that I pay too much. But to me, it’s worth every penny. While Sada cleans I get to baby sit little Victorine. I’d pay for that privilege even if Sada didn’t clean my floors. Sometimes Victorine’s older sister, 8-year-old Sophie, helps me wipe the furniture. For this they get bon-bons.

Should there be one single dish that is dirty, my morning coffee mug, for example, it disappears while Sada’s son, Nestor, is told to wash it. I’ve never left a dirty dish in the hut overnight. Bugs and rodents, you know. If I’m simply not up to the task of washing dishes in the evening (or if the water is off), historically I’ve placed the bucket just outside the door. These days, I don’t dare. Sada will do my dishes. Once in a while Sada tells me that something is filthy in the hut. Something that perhaps I’ve never noticed, or about which I’ve been in denial. She’s been known to abscond with my three plastic-woven floor mats and scrub them to a shining brilliance. I never knew they were suppose to shine. Ceiling fans . . . another example. One day Sada washed my ceiling fans. Never knew they were a brilliant white under all that brown dust. I genuinely believed they were a dingy egg-shell color. Mouse-Back, to plagiarize the true name of a U.S. paint color.

Sada knows that I pay her too much. She wants to clean my house daily for this price. Now that’s what I call integrity. Frankly, I don’t want to be deranged daily for cleaning of floors. I sweep twice daily, and that satisfies my cleaning needs.

Some days when I’ve returned from the village, I’ve discovered Sada scrubbing my blue metal exterior door. She washes my outdoor plastic chairs and sweeps my terrace twice daily. She doesn’t do this for money. She doesn’t do this because I lead a filthy lifestyle. I don’t! She does it because she’s my friend and an excellent neighbor. She does it because I love her kids. I’m always looking around the house for some new gift that I can bestow upon Sada. Never found anything that could possibly express my thanks . . . not for her cleaning abilities, but for her friendship. What do I own that could possibly express my thanks and love for Sada? We can only speculate.

Tuina Aubin. He's 15 and a student in my 5e Math class, 3rd in his class overall, and he passed away this week. When I showed up at school Thursday morning, the director was talking to the Bureau des Eleves (student council) and when he was done he came up to me and said that he had some bad news: a student had died.

When the director told me the name, I recognized it, but couldn't put a face with it immediately. And that killed me. I've spent about 4 months with these kids now, and I doubt I could name 10% of that class. I knew what area of the class he sat in, I know that I recognized the name, meaning it was someone who participated, but I couldn't picture his face for the life of me. It wasn't until a couple hours later when all the professors sat around talking about him that I was finally sure I was thinking of the right kid. It just felt like i was doing him some sort of injustice by not even being able remember him.

As to how he died, no really knows at this point. He was sick this last week, he had come in to school Tuesday to get the Medical Notebook (they have the local health clinic sign it to justify their absence from school) and he apparently had some sort of local medicine on his forehead (used for headaches) and he was sweating a lot. So it could have been anything. And apparently the situation escalated over night, and being that my village is at least 2 hours from a hospital, I doubt anyone thought to take him there. Or that it wasn't that serious.

After hearing the news that morning, the school staff and the bureau des eleves went to his family's house to give our condolences. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done. As we approached the house we could hear the crying, and then there were about 30 women sitting around under a hanger. The women were all crying: heavy, anguished, pained crying. In this cultural it is not acceptable to cry unless someone has died. Meaning that small frustrations and struggles we often cry over in America are dealt with in silence here. And part of me wonders that because a death is the only time they can cry, let out their frustrations, they take it to another level. Another part of it, in the US mourning families are supposed to maintain some level of control. It's often considered uncouth to be overly distraught in front of others. Here, they don't care that anyone is seeing their grief: their child just died, of course their grieving. That's how they see it, and that's how anyone else sees it, too.

After a couple minutes the person standing in front of me moved a little to the side and I noticed that their was a bundled blanket in the middle of the women under the hangar. It took me about two seconds to realize that it was the body. It was just wrapped in a simple fleece blanket - the same kind every market sells and every home has one or two of - and it was laying on a straw mat. I found out later that my director asked if we could see him, but they declined. I also later learned that the body was washed the next day, and it is at that point that men also join the wake.

When we got back to school the biology teacher just kind of walked slightly away from the rest of the group and simply states "that was too hard." He was the one to ask why only women were there. None of the professors are the same ethnic group as the village, but our secretary is Bwaba, so she explained some of the customs to all of us. As we were sitting around talking the biology teacher once again speaks up, "just this week, I used Aubin as an example of one the good kids we had in 6e last year." The french teacher commented that if there were too many players for soccer, he could always ask Aubin to wait for the next half and Aubin would never make a fuss about it. He was polite, kind and smart.

I've talked to a couple other volunteers about this, and I think that most volunteers experience a student death in their two years here. Pretty sad statistic and I wonder how it compares to a lifetime of teaching in the US. When I was student teaching at DCIS one of the teachers was talking about his motivation for joining the Peace Corps and he said that he did it because he wanted to see dead bodies. Not in some disturbing morbid way, but just that he wanted to live a life closer to edge of life. A little less protection between you and the realities of life and death the world over. And whether or not that is something I was expressly looking for in my service, it's certainly true.

Good news everyone! My project got funded! Woot! Now I just have to wait for the money to arrive and keep my fingers crossed that my school will hold up their end of the bargain and then everyone will enjoy the hot season so much more with air conditioning. Huzzah!

Happy 2012 everyone! I've been looking forward to this year for a while because I feel 2012 is far easier to say than 2011. Also 2012 is when I make my grand return to America. Don't ask me when (September probably?) or what I'll be doing (...) but I'll be coming back. So get ready for me to eat all your food and make weird observations and be overwhelmed by the cleanliness of everything and so many television channels. I really look forward to the television channels.

I've spent all morning uploading a ton of photos from my Mali vacation. It was really great, look at all the pictures. We went to Mopti, which people there like to call the Venice of Mali, becuase there are two rivers that run through it. And then we took a sunset canoe ride on said rivers, explored the city a bit, spent two days sitting around a pool and reading at our hotel. Then for four days we hiking around in Dogon Country. The countryside was pretty reminiscent of the American southwest, and a very nice change from the bland, flat world that I live in. Our daily schedule was to hike all morning stop in a village around noon, wander about while they cooked us food, ate and then hiked on until we reached another village where we'd spend the night. It went like that almost everyday. We stopped in Ende and watched a mask festival dance. They do it mostly for tourists now but it started as an animist tradition during funerals to guide the spirits.

It's real interesting actually. Look it up, learn about the Dogon people and animism. I could tell you all the things I learned, but I don't want to. I'm also real bad at blogging now, for which I apologize. There's going to be real trouble during that writing section of the GRE I'm taking in two weeks. Yikes.

Stay sweet. Get ready for hot season and mangoes everyday!

How do you write about a month in which every day was radically different from the next, in which you saw your family for the first time in over a year, in which you celebrated Christmas, and New years, and … Continue reading →

  Blogo-soundtrack: a recent acquisition of a recording from Bonnaroo which can only bring a smile tomy face I found her last night at a funeral. Yesterday afternoon, Alima stopped by my house to let me know that the weaving center was closed for the afternoon: an old village vieille (old person) in our neighborhood [...]

BIRDS!!!



While we were at Ranch Nazinga we saw lots of birds. We saw them at many other places as well. Most of these pictures were taken by my grandson, Jesse, who has a great eye for nature and a pretty good camera. I suspect some of you bird watchers will have an idea of what these birds are. I found a couple of them in a bird book and put their names in the captions, but I could be wrong and am open to suggestions. Others are, for the moment, nameless. I will update the names as folks tell me what they really are.

First, here is one of my favorites, because of the bright colors. I think it is a sunbird, although the colors do not match the picture in the little bird book I have here. It also resembles a group of birds called bee catchers.

Sun birdIt was fun to watch it swoop down off the branch, grabbed a bug, and returned to the same perch.

Sunbird in flight

They were quite common at the ranch, as you can see from the tree, below, that is covered with them. Yes, those are birds, not leaves on the branches!

A tree full of sunbirds They have nests in a clay bank, kind of like swallows in the states.

Sun bird homes This is some kind of hornbill, but I don’t know which one.

Here are a couple of African grey hornbills (I think) hanging out together.

This is an African jacana.

African jacana

This amazing bird is a kingfisher. We saw it hang in the air above the lake, almost the way a humming bird can stay in the same place above a flower. Then it suddenly dived straight down into the water and flew off with a fish.

Giant Kingfisher

I think these are cattle egrets. They follow the cows and eat the bugs they stir up.

Cattle egrets

I think this is a Goliath heron

Goliath heronThe coloring here is similar to a red cheeked Cordon-Bleu, but the head is not quite the same. Suggestions?

Cordon-Blue? Maybe..They call this bird a pentard. We call them guinea fowl. I think they have about the ugliest face of any bird I have seen, but they sure are good to eat. You know that this one is domesticated, because of the knob on top of its head. The wild ones look just like it except for the knob.

As everywhere in the world, there is a need for carrion eaters, like the vultures (of whatever their real name might be here). These were at the ranch, but I have also seen them on the road, disposing of road kill.

Vultures?You may have noticed this big pile of straw in the branches of this tree in the middle of the lake in the elephant pictures. It is actually a bird nest. If you look carefully near the bottom of the nest you can see a hole through which the birds enter the nest. We saw a couple of them go in and out. The bird is called a hammerkop.

Hammerkop

Now it's time to play "name that bird." Let me know if you recognize any of them. I will move them to the identified section when I have names for them.

Name that bird 1

Name that bird 2

Name that bird 3

Name that bird 4

Name that bird 5

All suggestions are welcome!

26 January 2012 FN: 9 With apologies to Hemingway… The waiting room of the commissariat was small and square and held only two desks. One was occupied by a young secretary who played solitaire on her computer. The other was occupied by a functionnaire who placed papers with great care into an ancient filing cabinet. […]

Our AIDS/HIV wall was completed this week. My fellow PCV, Naeta, and her flawless French, came all the way from the border of Mali to help. We estimate that about 125 persons, mostly under the age of 25 years (precisely my target demographic) turned out to see what I had planned for this wall. Indeed, well over a hundred showed-up, but only about 75 participated actively in the condom demonstration, the sensibilization about HIV, the games, and for the hand-print decoration of the wall.

Sometimes there simply aren't enough wooden penises. In our health kit the PC provides one wooden penis and one wooden device that purportedly represents external female genitalia (though, trust me, it doesn't). So what do we have this time of year in Pô that can be used to demonstrate condom use? Why, the cucumber, of course. And during the time of cool-season gardening, these are cucumbers of no small size. In fact, they're enormous . . . and inexpensive . . . and uncircumcised. Perfect for a demonstration about how to use a condom in Burkina Faso.

And who doesn't love a condom-application speed-race using a cucumber? Now I don't know whether it's good news or bad news, but my students are experts. The goal was to properly dress the cucumber with a condom, beginning with the visual inspection of the condom package (expiry date, right?), forming/identifying the petit chapeau at the tip of the condom, application of the condom . . . and continuing the demo right up to removal and proper disposal of the condom. Trash can disposal here is not an option for a number of reasons. Of course, Pô simply doesn't have enough trash cans . . . it's not as if every household has a trash can. Imagine that! But the bigger problem is that Pô's children are drawn to trash cans as so many American children are drawn to the foot of the Christmas tree . . . treasure lurks therein. Thus, the only place to dispose of a condom is in the hole of a latrine.

I've attended and assisted with a number of Sex Ed classes at Pô's Lycée, so I know that the my students already receive accurate knowledge about HIV transmission and prevention. The real question is whether they (or any of us) actually apply the knowledge to day-to-day living. After all, you can lead a horse to water . . . .

After the fun with condoms, each of Pô's Petites donned a latex glove that was then slathered with paint. They said aloud the healthy lifestyle promise and placed their hand print on the painted wall with the AIDS ribbon. While I had envisioned a wall with the red AIDS ribbon and a lot of red hands, I was happy that there were many paint colors from which to choose. Most of Pô preferred green, which they recognize as the color of life. In any event, lots of multi-colored hands made for a much more colorful wall.

The Maison de Jeune is directly across from one of Pô's finest hair salons. Yes, my village has hair salons. These young ladies, generally too timid to join in the hand-print fun, definitely wanted condoms. So we took the party across the road to their salon and continued the education with our wooden devices. They look quite happy about the event, don't you think?

Yes, the day was passed discussing a very serious topic. But when it comes to young people, cucumbers, condoms, and colored paint, one can expect a lot of giggles. I encourage this. It's hard to be serious while tightly grasping a cucumber and trying to slip on a pre-lubricated condom. Giggling is entirely appropriate. Additionally, I'm convinced that all the giggling takes away some of the mystique, embarrassment, awkwardness [insert your own descriptive phrase here] from real-time condom usage, which is a serious issue in Burkina Faso.

The grand finale of the day was the donation of a permanent hand-washing station (a bidon) at the Maison de Jeune. Liquid soap was donated, and now Pô's Petites have yet another location in Pô to practice hygiene. Yes, there was one tiny problem. As is so often the case in little Pô, the AIDS wall project came on a day when Pô was completely without water. Had it not been for our latex gloves, the village would have had their hands in oil-based car paint, with nothing but gasoline to remove that odorous paint. Hardly a desirable practice for safety and health. But hopefully by this afternoon, this bidon actually be filled with water for a true hand-washing station.

Once again, I say thank you . . . insofar as you, you, you (and Naeta's flawless French) helped make this possible for Pô's Petites.

I find it ironic that as I sit under a shade tree behind the wall of the Maison de Jeune, I can smoke a cigarette with dirty hands contemplating how to best educate Pô on healthy lifestyles, including the transmission and prevention of HIV, as well as how to treat with respect our Pô citizens who are HIV positive. I'm not really the poster child for a 100%-healthy lifestyle.

But as the saying goes, do as I say, not as I do.

And so the AIDS Wall was completed this week. Naeta, and her flawless French, came all the way from the border of Mali to help. We estimate that about 125 persons, mostly under the age of 25 years (precisely my target demographic) turned out to see what the Peace Corps in Pô had planned for this wall. Indeed, well over a hundred showed-up, but only about 75 participated actively in the condom demonstration, the sensibilization about HIV, the games, and for the hand-print decoration of the wall.

Sometimes there simply aren't enough wooden penises. In our health kit the PC provides one wooden penis and one wooden device that purportedly represents external female genitalia (though, trust me, it doesn't). So what do we have this time of year in Pô that can be used to demonstrate condom use? Our ol' pal, the cucumber. And during the time of cool-season gardening, these are cucumbers of no small size. In fact, they're enormous . . . and inexpensive . . . and uncircumcised. Perfect for a demonstration about how to use a condom in Burkina Faso.

And who doesn't love a condom-application speed-race using a cucumber? Now I don't know whether it's good news or bad news, but these kids are experts. The goal was to properly dress the cucumber with a condom, beginning with the visual inspection of the condom package (expiry date, right?), forming/identifying the petit chapeau at the tip of the condom, application of the condom . . . and continuing the demo right up to removal and proper disposal of the condom. Trash can disposal here is not an option for a number of reasons. Of course, Pô simply doesn't have enough trash cans . . . it's not as if every household has a trash can. Imagine that! But the bigger problem is that Pô's children are drawn to trash cans as so many American children are drawn to the foot of the Christmas tree . . . treasure lurks therein. Thus, the only place to dispose of a condom is in the hole of a latrine.

I've attended and assisted with a number of sex-ed classes at Pô's Lycée, so I know that the students here already receive accurate knowledge about HIV transmission and prevention. The real question is whether they (or any of us) actually apply the knowledge to day-to-day living. After all, you can lead a horse to water . . . .

After the fun with condoms, each of Pô's petites donned a latex glove that was then slathered with paint. They said aloud the healthy lifestyle promise and placed their hand print on the painted wall with the AIDS ribbon. While I had envisioned a wall with the red AIDS ribbon and a lot of red hands, I was happy that there were many paint colors from which to choose. Most of Pô preferred green, which they recognize as the color of life. In any event, lots of multi-colored hands made for a much more colorful wall.

The Maison de Jeune is directly across from one of Pô's finest hair salons. Yes, my village has hair salons. These ladies, generally too timid to join in the hand-print fun, definitely wanted condoms. So we took the party across the road to their salon and continued the education with our wooden devices. They look quite happy about the event, don't you think?

Yes, the day was passed discussing a very serious topic. But when it comes to young people, cucumbers, condoms, and colored paint, one can expect a lot of giggles. I encourage this. It's hard to be serious while tightly grasping a cucumber and trying to slip on a pre-lubricated condom. Giggling is entirely appropriate. Additionally, I'm convinced that all the giggling takes away some of the mystique, embarrassment, awkwardness [insert descriptive phrase here] from real-time condom usage, which is a serious issue in Burkina Faso.

The grand finale of the day was the donation of a permanent hand-washing station (a bidon) at the Maison de Jeune. Liquid soap was donated, and now Pô's petites have yet another location in Pô to practice hygiene.

Yes, there was one tiny problem. As is so often the case in little Pô, the AIDS wall project came on a day when Pô was completely without water. Had it not been for our latex gloves, the village would have had their hands in oil-based car paint, with nothing but gasoline to remove that odorous paint. Hardly a desirable practice for safety and health. So when will this bidon actually be filled with water for a true hand-washing station? Hopefully the water will be on again by 15h30, but we can only speculate.

The holidays are over unless you are catholic (there are a ton of Catholic holidays and the catholic sisters I work with are always telling me about another holiday they have coming up which means food, drinks, and hangout out with people…oh yeah, of course there is prayer and remembrance for that special celebration). Might I add that that comment has absolutely nothing to do with this blog, I am just astonished at just how many holidays there are that are celebrated in the Catholic Church! I am so happy that I live in Burkina Faso where people of all religions can hang out and celebrate together, it is like the ultimate cultural and religious exchange. But back to the real topic…WORK!

So the holidays are over and it has been the time to get back into the grind of things. I cannot remember how much I have told you all about my work here, but I will try to summarize. I work at a community house and help plan life skills sorts of activities for the girls. For example in the month of November the topic of the month was Hygiene and health, December was all about communication strategies and being assertive and confident. This month is about decision making and goal setting. I also have English clubs with the girls because they take English as a foreign language. Finally, I am helping to documents the progress of the community house, since it is a pilot program we have to look at whether or not girls living in the community house are measuring up to their peers. So for the last week I have been making more tables and charts and comparing data based on more data than thought I ever would. I must say I may have been spoiled by the wonderful technology HCPS purchased to analyze data because right now creating my own excel worksheets to do such is well uh...some work, but its cool. I enjoy helping out :-). The community house just got a computer so hopefully in the next few months I can try to transfer some of this knowledge over to the administration here so they can have the joy of making excel sheets, or at least maintaining the ones already created.

For the last few months of my stay here I have decided to try to up the ante and work in the town a bit more. I now have an English club with some administration of the jail, which is quite interesting to say the least. Some of them are working toward professional goals that will take them to English speaking countries so they are trying to improve their conversational English. There is a huge AIDS Day celebration that I am helping with (yes we are 2 months late, but it’s going to be huge…blog coming soon), and I am also trying to set up some peer educator trainings in the nearby high schools. There are other things in the making, but I would rather wait until things pan out a little more before sharing. To say the least, things are going well and I honestly feel like my work here is going well. The thing I love most is that the ideas and the resources for these activities are here already and I am just another support. My hope is that my work is sustainable development, not “here comes the American plopping some info in our laps that we didn’t ask for”. I am truly trying to work with the human resources here and well, things seem to be working. Wish me well as I continue to explore and work.

I figured that no one could give you all a better perspective on Burkina Faso from an outsiders point of view than my Dad. Here are his thoughts about what he found here that I thought might be interesting. (With photos provided by me In the words of Mr. Marc Droppert: Having traveled in third [...]

So actually, it looks very little like Christmas for a few reasons: -1-It is January 26, 2012 and I am just getting around to blogging about the holiday season. Heck Christmas is over a month old now!-2- Christmas in Burkina Faso is nice, but not quite what I think of when I am in the Christmas spirit because people do not put up Christmas decorations and trees all over the place, though some do, it is quite a rare delight when you do see it.-3- Christmas time in America was not what most people think of in my good ole state of Virginia. This winter was warm and in the 60s. What kind of Christmas season is that?!But, I must say, despite the aforementioned reasons, this Christmas/Holiday time was an impeccable time of celebration with those I loveJ. Here is my story…

This Christmas I decided to go back to my old village where I did my original Peace Corps service and celebrate with them. Since my return to Burkina Faso, I had yet to visit, so I figured the holiday time would be perfect because all of the students would be home for school break, those who now work in towns far away would be home for the holidays; it was just perfect timing to see everyone at once. First I must say thank you (sarcastically) to the Burkinabe school system for making the last day of school before the break 23rd of December. Meaning that every person, their momma, their cousin twice removed and of course I travelled on the 24th (might I add that is Christmas Eve). A trip that should have taken me maybe 8 hours total on a few buses turned into 2 days. I left my town and travelled to the capital to change buses and yep kiddies you guessed it, all three possible bus companies were booked. I had to take a latish bus which put me in the next town where I needed to switch buses again near dark and well, you can see where this is going. I had to sleep there and then wake up at 5am to catch a bus taxi into my old village. Nice thing I did, I was able to spend Christmas Eve with about 15 other volunteers, which was nice.Christmas day I arrive in my old village and seriously, it felt like a “Cheers” (TV show) intro music was my background music…sing with me! “I wanna go where everybody knows your name –doom-doom-doom-doom- and they’re always glad you came!” It was fantastic! Olivier, who was like my baby, is about as big as his big brother Roger was when I left. Roger is no longer chubby…still a little bandit… and they have 2 new siblings. Yeah, I know, NUTS! One of my old students is married now, my next door neighbors are pregnant (really only the wife is pregnant, but it is nice to think that the man might be sharing in the process). Most of the village looks pretty similar, but there are new houses, some new faces, and definitely changes in the magnitude of fish and veggies available. When I was there the place was overflowing, but the environmental workers have cut down on gardening and fishing in the area because the area was being over exploited and would in the future lead to a barren town…so sadly and also fortunately for the future they’ve cracked down on things a bit. Despite all of the surprising changes, it still felt like home. There is a new volunteer there now and I stayed with her (in my old house) and a couple of times I referred to it as “my house” and she politely reminded me that I no longer live there…no comment, just an LOL. But I guess I feel like even if I move to a new geographic location anywhere in the world or in Burkina Faso, it will always be my village. It is the first place I ever lived outside of the USA and things just felt like home. Christmas is about remembering that the Christ was born, to save us. Somewhere along the lines even if you are not Christian, you still may celebrate Christmas and say that it is about family and love. Well I agree with both because when Christ was born people travelled from all over to come and hang out, to share love, gifts and laughter. And that is just what I did. JAnd then I left the next morning to be greeted by….”WAIT FOR IT” (this is a quote from the sitcom “How I met Your Mother”, funny show by the way)…another long return because everybody’s uncle, brother from another mother and I travelled back to their respective locations on the 26th. Yep took me 2 days AGAIN! I will not go into detail about how one of the bus taxis I rode in broke down every 25 minutes because there was a leak in the gas tank so it would only ride for 25minutes before we would run out of gas. I will just keep that one to myselfJ.

Some pictures are on my facebook page for those of you who have access. Those who don't I will add some pictures when I am in a town with good internet connection...takes longer to load on blogger than on facebook.

I was so happy to see my parents in Tenerife for Christmas. We had a great week together. And then I got to bring my dad back with me. The two times I have left Burkina and come back its like stepping through a time warp, or onto another planet. Just a few short hours [...]

We made our 16 hour trek down to Lome where we were forced to rely on the advice of motorcycle taxis to find out hotel. They agreed on a price and we went. The ride was long and took as far from the centre of town. As it turned out they had some agreement with another hotel to bring them customers and brought us there instead of the hotel where we had reservations. It got ugly.Once we calmed down, rested and woke up we made our way to Ouida where the festival was to be held. We stopped for food and our worn out 50 piece was refuse for the second time by a street food vendor (something that doesn't happen in Burkina). As we ate a zombie came by. Not the American horror movie variety, but the returned from the dead spirit with colorful cloths and horns type. He had an entourage who requested money. We gave them the 50 piece and even the zombie refused it.The ride out to the beach was beautiful. The whole place was covered in palm trees and out hotel was built on the white sand. We had an olympic sized pool and there was the monument "The Door of No Return" on the beach withing sight of the hotel. The monument was beautiful and moving. It has depictions of slaves from behind chained and forced onto a boat. When you cross the door and look up you can see the pain and horror in their faces as they are forced to leave their home.We later learned that many captives would eat dirt to kill themselves. I had heard of people jumping ship, but not the dirt eating. The museum had artifacts like chains examples of voodoo implements. There were also a lot of maps and sketches of historical events. At the gift shop I bought a guide to Gris-gris, which are essentially spells or talismans.The festival itself wasn't as awesome as I had thought it would be, but it was still cool. I guess I wanted to see more vodu practices. I suppose I should have known that such a public event wouldn't be sharing intimate religious beliefs. There was dancing, the undead (which were masked and covered in long sticks or grass) and there was bamboo dancing where people did acrobats at the top of a timber bamboo trunk. Much of the ceremony consisted of speeches by various people, the king of vodu, a pop musician and an American representative of the African diaspora. The general message was to hold on to traditional identities and beliefs.Outside of the festival people sold many different artisinal items. A lot of it I have seen before. Some of the items is saw that I haven't seen in Burkina were brightly colored masks, vodu idols, gay sex statues (I know, odd) and lots of phalluses carved out of wood. After the festival we relaxed on the beach and swam. I am glad we went. I think that it is really important to recognize traditional beliefs and how they influence our lives today even an ocean away from their source. African diasporic cultures in the Americas are heavily influenced by West Africa. It is astounding to see the abundant influences on their home turf.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Airtel Burkina Faso.