When I found out I would be serving in a West African country as a health volunteer, the first thing that came to mind in terms of diseases was HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. Turns out, malaria is the number one killer in Africa. This doesn't mean that HIV/AIDS and malnutrition are not issues here, but I think that many people forget that malaria still exists, and how severe its burden of disease is for people living in this part of the world. So here are a few facts:

Every 10 seconds a child is diagnosed with malaria in Africa.

Pregnant women and children under 5 years of age are at the most risk for contracting malaria. They are also the population that is found outside during the highest malaria transmission hours, specifically 9 pm – 4 am. This is because women and children take this time to cook and clean for their families. Not to mention, this is the population most susceptible to other maladies such as malnutrition (women and children eat last), sexually transmitted diseases (women are more susceptible to STDs anatomically), genital mutilation, etc.

Malaria is preventable and treatable. In theory, any child under the age of 5 or any pregnant women who exhibits any symptoms of malaria (fever, dizziness, etc) should be taken straight to the CSPS by a local health agent. Medication is given, either free of charge or very cheaply after these patients are tested with rapid diagnostic malaria tests, distributed through the ministry of health nationawide. In addition, every woman that shows up to the CSPS for a pre-natal consultation should be given a free mosquito net treated with insecticide. Unfortunately many times this doesn't happen for a number of different reasons. Women are responsible for most of the work load around the house, and therefore do not have time to go to the CSPS. Most CSPS's service a number of satellite villages which are located many kilometers on brousse away, making it difficult for women and children to get to a health clinic. In 2010, Burkina Faso hosted universal mosquito net campaign, which was supposed to provide one mosquito net for every two people, free of charge. Although these nets were distributed, many people did not use them for sleeping. Once again, the reasoning behind this is varied. Some sold the nets for profit, some used them to go fishing or as tami's to make zoom koom (a local drink that requires a strainer). Some live in parts of the country (such as the Northern Sahel, where I am located), where it is too hot to sleep indoors under a net, so they sleep outdoors. Lack of trees or hangers to hang the mosquito net on outside prohibits people from using them when they sleep outside. Some people do use the nets, but they are ripped and torn. Some washed the nets weekly, thus eliminating the effect of insecticide.

The effects of malaria on Burkina's people cannot be under estimated. In many ways, malaria is a disease of poverty, caused by poor hygiene, lack of education, lack of resources. The burden of disease falls most heavily on those who are already more prone to being sick. Malaria is one of the top reasons why children in Burkina do not reach their fifth birthday, do not go to school, do not help with family chores, do not play or just do whatever a child should do.

PC Burkina is part of a larger West African Peace Corps initiative which requires every volunteer, regardless of domain or job description, to work on malaria prevention, treatment,and education activities. Right now I am in Ouahigouya with the nurse/midwife from my village to work on training and education for malaria prevention activities in village. One of the activities we are in the process of doing is door-to-door mosquito net inspection campaigns. My village is organized in round cartiees of 30-40 families each. Together with my community health agents, midwives, and nurses, we will go to each house and inspect mosquito nets to see if they are in good condition and actually used. Those people who show exceptional knowledge about malaria and mosquito net use will serve as community leaders to educate those who do not. Another project currently in the works involves an anonymous survey of mosquito net usage. We will place two boxes at my CSPS, one with a picture of a mosquito net, and one without. People will place stones in either of the two boxes depending on whether or not they slept under a net the night before. I will calculate and graph these monthly campaigns and display them on the CSPS grounds along with the number of malaria cases diagnosed each month. The goal is to get people to see a connection between the use of a mosquito net and the idea that malaria cases can decrease (hopefully) as net use increases. We'll see if this actually works, but it's worth a try.

To find out more about what PC Burkina and PC Africa are doing to help end malaria, go to http://stompoutmalaria.org/. If you search by country, you can even find a little bit of info about me on there! How will you stomp out malaria in 2012?

Tomorrow is a legendary day for Peace Corps Burkina, because close to 80 volunteers will be celebrating the closing of their service (COS) as volunteers. This group is by far the largest training group to come into Burkina and so are appropriately named Super Stage. COS means a 3-4 day conference, a huge party, and then three more month of service until you can official leave. Most volunteers also plan a large COS trip after they complete their service.

Saying goodbye to fellow volunteers is bitter sweet. On one hand, I am happy and excited for my friends to start this new part of their lives. On the other hand, I am, and we all are, sad to see these people go. Super Stage volunteers hold a special place in my heart as they worked my training session back in October when I first got to country. Looking back, it's almost funny to remember how different things were - not knowing the language, how to use latrines, how to shower, how to cook, how to use public transportation... essentially when I first arrived to Burkina I had to learn to live again, and super stage volunteers taught me how to do just that.

Seeing other volunteers COS also reminds you of how important human relationships are here in Burkina. I have amazing friends and family back in the States (and elsewhere in the world), and not a day goes by without me missing them. In Africa the bonds I have formed with fellow volunteers are indescribable. My closest neighbor is 12 km away, and although I have only known her for 5 months I feel like I've known her my entire life. She is my best friend, my mother, and my sister all at the same time. Here, volunteers see each other at their worst points - sick, cranky, tired, dirty, the list goes on and on. Every imperfection and quirk that you have is amplified a thousand times for others to see, and yet somehow we still manage to get along and actually like each other. Gossip and rumors are frequent here, but in the end all we really have is each other.

It's also crazy to think that in a year and a half I'll be COSing as well. This seems so far away, but time here goes quicker than you think. The days are slow, but the months are fast. I came to Burkina with a solid plan of what I wanted to do after I left, but now I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life post Peace Corps. Perhaps the next 20 months will help me figure it out, or maybe not. Maybe I'll just go back to the States and eat cheese all day long.

Anyway, the point is, thank you Super Stage for teaching me everything I know about living in Africa, you will be missed. In June a new stage will come in, and we are all looking forward to meeting our new neighbors! Also, cheese is delicious, if anybody wants to send me some parmesan that would be really fantastic.

Raise your hand if you have ever been to summer camp. I bet that the majority of my blog readers have at some point in their life attended some sort of summer camp. The camp experience is a unique one that can change a child’s life.Unfortunately many children in Africa never get to experience a camp. Camps are costly and many students spend their summers tending their fields that provide food for their families.Camp G2LOW (Girls and Guys Leading Our World) is an already well-established national camp happening annually in 22 Peace Corps countries around the world. Burkina Faso became the 23rd country to host Camp G2LOW in August 2011, starting the first edition of Camp G2LOW at the regional level in the cities of Kaya and Boromo. Our goal is to add two more regions each year until it reaches the national level with a two week long camp: one week of boys and one week of girls. Next year, in 2012, we hope to expand Camp G2LOW to include not only Kaya and Boromo, but also Léo and Fada as well. That way the camp will touch four different regions of the country.I will be working the Kaya Camp This summer.The camp trains 6eme and 5eme (6th and 7th grade) boys and girls and focuses on three main themes: healthy living practices, leadership development, and the promotion of gender equality. Some of our sessions during 2011 included:Men as partners/developing equality LeadershipHygiene and sanitationEffects of alcohol and cigarette consumptionHealthy relationshipsEffective communication skillsSelf-esteemReproductive and sexual educationHIV/AIDSFamily planningMaking the right decisionsPlanning for the futureWhat is violence?Career panel with Burkinabe businessmen and womenIn 2011, the Peace Corps Burkina Faso team of volunteers and staff put forth a lot of effort to reassure the community participation and sustainability of the camp. Villages were requested to choose 4 girls and 4 boys to attend the camp based on their school performance and character. They also helped to choose a host country national (HCN) to work with each Peace Corps volunteer (PCV) and to help be a counselor during the camp after completion of a comprehensive training. Communities also helped pay for student transport, housing, and materials.In order for Camp G2LOW to take place again in 2012, in addition to the 25% community contribution by the villages involved, Burkina Faso PCVs as well as Burkina Faso HCNs must raise $44,000. This is where your generosity can help! With your help and donations, we will be able to achieve our goal. Any donations, big or small, are greatly appreciated. We are hoping to raise $24,000 through the help of our family and friends through the Peace Corps Partnership Program. If you are interested in making a 100% tax-deductible donation and would like more information on how to donate, please go to http://pcburkina.org/camp-glow.Two weeks in four different cities. 60 middle school aged students a week. Giving students a week to just be kids. Giving students a week to learn more about their bodies and how to make good decisions. Developing tomorrow’s leaders.Camps change lives. Please donate to Camp G2LOW. Give a Burkinabe child the gift of a summer they will never forget!Thanks to fellow PCV Sara Goodman for this blog post! Follow her progress as an non-formal education volunteer in Northern Burkina Faso: http://ilovealtoclefinafrica.wordpress.com/tag/peace-corps/

So I know you are all probably getting goosebumps from my last post, and now, are you ready for this, a new and revised UPDATE ON THE GRIGRI BRACELET.

My entire stage is currently in Ouaga for in service training (IST), scheduled to go to Koudougou (another city) today/tomorrow for more IST trainings. While repacking his bags for Koudougou, G mysteriously finds the grigri at the bottom of his backpack!!!! He swears he left it in his house in village, and now it somehow magically appears in Ouaga.

At dinner tonight, we asked some locals about the grigri, and they told us that in order to get rid of the spirits we have to boil it with potasse and citron (lime). I'm not sure we were entirely convinced, but all the Burkinabe seemed very set on not having anything to do with the bracelet.

We haven't actually decided what we're going to do with the grigri at this point, I'm pretty sure it's coming with us to Koudougou for further observation. Stay tuned!!!!! You can't make this stuff up..

One of my close friends, another PCV, let’s call him G, lives down south in a small village situated roughly 40 km outside of Dedougou, a bigger city in Burkina Faso. G’s village is about as traditional as you can get when you think of living in the African bush; it is situated about 40 km outside of any major city, home to a large Animist populations. Animism is a difficult religion to explain, and I am not really even sure if you can call it a religion. Either way, it’s a collection of beliefs that I can compare to paganism, voodoo, or sometimes even black magic.

One day G was sitting in his village, waiting to get some food, when he realized that there was something wrapped around his foot. When he reached down he realized it was a long strap of braided leather with a flat piece of some strange material inside. When he asked a local about it, they told him it was medicine, however he probably shouldn’t be touching it. Now, let me tell you, G is really a one-of-a-kind volunteer. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, biochemist in college, quite a high-end job at a lab to live in New Orleans, G is literally up for anything. Naturally, he decided that this leather strap is awesome and puts it on his wrist as a bracelet.

Later that afternoon, G started to feel horribly sick (probably the chicken soup he ate earlier) and went back to his hut. That night, the wind storms came and turned half of the country into a cold, barren, nuclear winter. The droughts started that month, and G’s villagers had to start trekking longer and longer distances for water as the wells in his village dried up. In addition, G also began to deal with some sad personal issues back in the states. All in all, it was “one of the worst months of my life.”

About a week ago G was visited in his hut but a local girl from his village. She was on her way to search for water from a far away well and decided to stop by for a quick bonjour. When she saw G she immediately noticed his bracelet, and, after a brief shocked moment insisted that he take it off right away. Apparently, G had found a grigri, an instrument used in voodoo to capture human spirits. After it had captured your spirits, you were supposed to take it off or else the spirits could not leave your body and cause you harm. G didn’t really think that much of it, but took of the bracelet anyway to please his friend.

Later that afternoon the rains came. Rain is hard to come by here in Burkina. Rain is life, as it provides people with food, water, everything they need to survive. G has been having a wonderful last week in village ever since he removed the grigri.

I don’t believe in voodoo or black magic or witchcraft. But, being in Africa changes you a little bit. Next year I’m going to Benin for the annual voodoo festival, where things “seriously get really crazy.” I wonder what I’ll believe then. Regardless, when I get back to village in a few weeks (I’m in Ouaga for training right now) I’m going to find the craziest Animist I can and hang out with them for a day. I’ll let you know if the spirits catch me.

Studying nutrition in school I was constantly aware of the political issues surrounding the origin of our food, the implications of local and organic farmer, the so called Farm to Table movement which focused on answering the question, “Where does your food come from?” Along the same, yet slightly different topic, I’m going to try and answer the question, “Where does your gold come from?”

Let me explain first, why I want to even approach this topic. Up here in Northern Burkina, searching for gold is a frequent village profession. As I try to chat with my villagers in broken Moore, one of the few things I know how to ask is, “Fo tumbda boe?” or, “What is your work?” The most frequent response I get back is “Sanem” meaning simply, “Gold.” I think I have mentioned in earlier posts the frequent pounding I hear day and night of the women in my compound searching for gold, but let me explain in just a little bit more detail the entire process.

Gold mines are set up outside and around my village and my satellite villages. Men, women, and children alike set out early in the morning or late in the evening to avoid the heat of the day to pick up large stones from the mines, which they bring back to their courtyards. This trip can take all day, as gold mines can be as far as 20 km outside of village, and although many people own bikes, some of the children in my compound walk to the mines and back, carrying heavy metal plates filled with rock on their heads.

After the rocks are brought back to each compound, women and children (and sometimes men as well) take large metal rods and begin to pound the rocks into a fine powder. This takes hours, if not days. I’m often awoken as early as 2:30 in the morning by the pounding in my courtyard, as women must have time not only to look for gold but also to cook, clean, and take care of their families… there just isn’t enough time in one day for all of that. The powder is then sifted carefully in search for gold. I frequently return to my compound and cannot recognize which women and children are pounding the gold; their faces are covered in such a thick layer of white dust. (Also note, respiratory infection is one of the top 5 maladies diagnosed at my CSPS). I often try to chat with my host family, but every time I sit down next to them as they pound gold I start to cough because the dust is so thick, and my host family quickly shoos me away, telling me they fear I will get sick. But what about them, don’t they fear that they will be sick as well?

I have only one time seen an actual piece of gold found; a tiny stone smaller than a pin. I was told this will be sold for approximately 2,000 FCFA, the equivalent of 4 American dollars. Total time spent searching for these 4 dollars? Probably a month. A month of carrying hard rocks on your head, pounding dust into your lungs, avoiding sleep, missing school.

Now let’s take a look at another side of this story.

One weekend when I was in Ouaga, a few other volunteers and I were walking around Zone de Bois, the neighborhood around the PC Bureau and transit house. This neighborhood is known for its peaceful demeanor; filled with foreign aid organizations and thus foreigners. We stumbled upon a newly opened restaurant/bar/lounge not far from the transit house, and, being slightly bored/curious, we decided to step in for a drink. Walking in made me forget for a brief second that I was actually in Africa; the lounge looked like something frequently seen in NYC’s swankiest neighborhoods. Drinks sold for a pricy 5,000 FCFA (yea, it’s 10 US dollars for a beer, expensive on both sides of the Atlantic).

Luckily we were the only ones at the bar, and got talking to the friendly bartender and owner, who happened to be an Australian native, currently married to a French Canadian. Her husband’s profession? Gold mine owner – in fact, his company owns the mine right outside of my village. So here we are, sipping on freshly made margaritas, sitting in an air conditioned, darkly lit lounge, while some 200 km away my host mom was probably pounding some more rocks which will pay her entire family (30+ people) less than half the amount I just paid for my drink.

So there it is, that’s where your gold comes from. Well, probably not everybody’s gold, but at least somebody’s.

I am supposed to be here to theoretically help and educate people, but I feel like I will be learning more from Burkinabe then they will ever learn from me. I don’t know if anything I do here on the work front will have any impact at all on anybody’s lives; in fact, I don’t even know if during my entire two years I will be able to convince one child to wash their hands. Another big part of being here is trying to understand and see more of the world. So this whole gold-digging process, that’s all new to me, and I hope it’s new to you too. Yes, we see movies and read books about the world’s savage inequalities, but do we ever really ask ourselves what we can do differently to change things? I don’t know if we can, as the system is already so big it seems impossible to change.

Regardless, I think it’s important to know that everything you do, everything you buy, eat, and wear, in one way or another effects somebody else. And despite the size of the system, I do still believe that everybody can do something to make the world a better place. I’m not saying move to Africa, I’m not saying stop buying gold necklaces. All I’m saying is, be aware, and try to make the best choice there is.

This is what happens when you put 5 Peace Corps volunteers in a room with electricity and semi-running water for 6 days after 2 months of living in a cement hut.

At least the French dictionary is open so it looks like we're actually doing work.

In other news, I really really really need a toothbrush holder. I've been using black baggies that they sell me my peanut butter and tomatoes in and I only just now realized how disgusting that is. I probably have so many parasites my body has just become numb.

First off, I would like to thank my beautiful and amazing friends for sending me an incredible care package filled with taco seasoning and every magazine published in the past year about the Kardashian family – perfect for reading under the hot, hot, sun.

And speaking of the hot sun, hot season has officially begun. This means that I spend most of my days sweating through every article of clothing I own, squinting into the dust storms as they pass while I bike around, and taking 2-3 bucket baths a day. The good news is that I have finally mastered the art of balancing on my bike with a 20 Liter bidon of water, however it is now too hot to pump water in the middle of the day so I have to do most of my water pumping at 5:30 in the morning. This is not only effective in terms of avoiding the heat, but also effective in terms of avoiding the 56 thousand little children that like to watch and laugh at me whenever I do anything.And since I’m talking about the weather, last Sunday night as I was trying to fall asleep I got rudely awakened by 50 mile per hour winds – the Harmattan! Good thing Burkina is the dustiest country on the planet, so on Monday morning my village looked a lot like nuclear winter. All the dust got picked up by the wind, making visibility worse than in the middle of a winter storm. Here are some pictures:

On the work front, I’ve introduced liquid soap and neem cream into my village. I showed my CSPS staff how to make neem cream, and I am currently working with a women’s association/ parent teacher association at one of my village’s primary schools to make liquid soap. The ladies are all super motivated and plan to make batches of soap every Saturday morning at the school, selling it at a price of 100 FCFA at my marche. Profits will go toward building hand washing stations for the kids. Here are some pictures:

The kids in my primary school discovered the name tag on my bike and spent about 2 hours trying to pronounce my last name.

Nick, another volunteer from up North came to one of my soap making sessions, here he is trying to become part of the women's group.

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.

A big thank you to my aunt and uncle for sending me not one, but two care packages filled with yummy goodies that me and my fellow PCVs enjoyed all morning. You are the best!! We live for our mail here, it's always nice to go to the bureau and see that you've got packages!!

For the first three months at site most volunteers are busy completing their etude de milieu, which translates to a needs assessment of their community. Our one main job is literally to learn to live in our respective villages. Although we aren't really supposed to start working on any real projects just yet, I've started to put together my small morenga tree nursery at my house. My eventual plan is to start planting morenga at my primary and secondary schools, as well as at my CSPS and other public gathering places such as the mosque, around the water pumps, and the football fields. Morenga leaves are extremely nutritious (high in vitamin C, A, E, zinc, and iron) and can be turned into a powder to fortify baby porridge among other things. In order to start a tree nursery one doesn't have to look far in village, as all the necessities are easily available:

1. Lots and lots of cow manure. 2. Dirt.3. Sand. 4. Something to put the new dirt into such as already used water saches.5. Water.

Although all of these things are easily available in my village, acquiring them is a pretty daunting task for a few reasons. First of all, I cannot tell the difference between sand and dirt in my village, because everything just looks like red dust. Luckily, I was able to find a large mountain of what I think is sand right behind my latrine, I'm not sure why it's there or how it got there, but I'm 87% positive that it is in fact sand and not dirt, so I used it. As for the dirt, my strategy was to go outside of my courtyard with a large bucket and pick up the first thing that I was able to find on the ground that wasn't rocks. I'm not sure how effective this strategy is but it seemed to work well. Finally, the cow manure. Cow manure is available everywhere around me: in my latrine, in my courtyard, outside my courtyard, on the backs of my shoes, etc... however, walking around, picking up cow manure and putting it into a bucket was the equivalent of a broadway show for everybody in my family compound. Although I tried to explain to everybody that I was doing it for my garden, pretty much nobody understood my mixture of Moore/French/English/Spanish/Russian/Sign language and to this day I think they just assume I really like cow manure.

Anyway, after assembling all the necessary ingredients, my next step was to mix the dirt, sand, and manure with water in equal parts. Then, I took the 200 used water saches I acquired from another volunteer up in Ouahigouya (THANK YOU EBBEN) and stuffed them with the new dirt. YUM!!! I'm away from site now for a commitee meeting, but once I get back to site I will start planting my morenga seeds and hope for the best. Here are some of my water saches:

My typical morning commute back in the US consisted of breakfast, lots of coffee, subways, T trains, and biking. Here in Africa, things are just a little bit different.

1. Wake up at 5:30 am in my bug hut, courtesy of my neighbor, to secure myself away from all the spiders.

2. Put on a turban to hide your respiratory tract from the dirt and dust of the northern Sahel. Begin the 9 km bike ride up to Ouahigouya, usually my speed is slightly hindered by the northern winds.

3. Watch the sun rise up on the dirt road against the desert.

4. As I enter Ouahigouya, try to weave in and out of the dust clouds/really fast motos going by.

5. Arrive at the Ouahigouya STAF bus station, where I watch about an hour of strangely modern music videos (Akon, Drake, Flo Rida) and wonder how it is okay for these to be shown in a country where a woman's knees are considered inappropriate.

6. Get ready to load on up to the STAF bus to Ouaga, turban in hand.

Here is me and my favorite petites! The girl standing next to me is Fatimata, she's 13 years old but does the workload of a 30 year old back in the states. Typical day consists of waking up at 4 am to start pounding rocks for gold, then making breakfast (yum, to), then school, then returning home to wash clothes, more school, returning home to pump water, prepare dinner, and then possibly, if there is time school work. She also goes running with me. She is amazing.

This guy lives in my family compound and he is just so funny. Every day he sits outside his house and weaves little straw baskets. The straw he uses is kept on top of a hanger which is located right next to my latrine and shower, so sometimes when I'm taking a shower or using the latrine I see him climbing up to get hay and I'm like "I'm in here!!!!" In the above photo he is killing my chicken.

My chef du village getting ready to get saluated by everyone in my village. My favorite part of this picture is the guy on the left hand side in the all brown outfit; he is one of the people who shot guns up in the air, but I love that he is wearing cheetah print uggs.

Here is Fatimata along with some other regulars from my family compound. They love getting their picture taken. You can also see my lovely personalized courtyard in the background, it was laundry day. In the very back you can see my chicken coupe, which I'll probably use to keep my moringa tree nursery.

Another day, another dance circle. Here are some women getting down!

With New Years and Christmas having just recently passed, my village has been having a lot of fetes lately. So far I've attended three: Noel with my catholic homologue, New Years with the little kids in my village, and a celebration for the fiftieth anniversary of the primary school in my village. In addition, the chef du village came and went, throwing a huge welcome/good bye bash, pictured above, which involved tons of traditional dancing under one of my favorite trees, also pictured above. Here's some more details:

Noel: my village is almost 99% Muslim, but because my homologue is Christian I was invited to come fete over in his cartie. My neighboring volunteer joined me and we were given about 4 liters of dolo but didn't dare touch the home made moonshine that was so strong it couldn't be poured into plastic bottles! The Catholic pasteur liked us so much he gave me a black baggie raw pork, a really big deal considering the fact that my village is almost entirely pork-free. I was very honored.

New Years: for New Years, my village organized what I can only describe as an underground dance party, except instead of being underground/ in a lower east side dive bar it was very much above ground and in a cleaned out cartie. Somehow, my electricity free village had managed to find car battery operated disco lights and gigantic speakers. The night consisted of tons of little children shaking their booty like no other. The Imam had given me a gift of a live chicken earlier, and since I had a guest with me (another volunteer from up North) we had one of my host families kill the chicken and then prepared it. Unfortunately I was also very sick so when I say we prepared I mean I was mostly lying passed out in bed while my poor friend fried up a delicious, truly organic, free range chicken. Yum!

Primary school anniversary: Okay first of all, I had no idea that my village was even around 50 years ago, but apparently it was, and so was its primary school. Education is extremely important within my community as we have two primary schools, a CEG, and a Lycee (the equivalent of a middle and high school). My host dad does a lot of work with the school and is currently organizing a huge campaign in an attempt to raise funding for the CEG and Lycee in order to expand the number of teachers as classroom sizes keep rising. I am looking forward to working with all of the schools in my village for a number of different projects including community gardens, sensibilizations, theatre troups, and career fairs. Of course these are all in the very very very early stages of actually being realized, but it helps to have these big goals in order to start working out the details. Regardless, this past Saturday my village hosted a number of prominent and important faces in the education realm of Burkina including the minister of education, and the mayor of Ouahigouya. Not only did I get to hear and see all of these people's speeches, I also ran into a returned PCV who served in Niger as a health volunteer many years ago. He now lives in Ouaga and works on education programs but has worked all around the world in the field of education, mostly English tutoring. It really is a small world out there; my new friend and I will hopefully be working on some education projects in the future, along with two other PCVs in my region who also attended the fete.

Chef Du Village: My village chief, or chef du village, actually lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, when he does come to my village he throws a gigantic fete where all of the inhabitants of the village can come to saluate, present gifts, and causer with the chef. I was really excited to come see the chef du village, but I was caught off guard when I was greeted by 7 men in traditional outfits shooting guns into the air as the Chef entered the cartie. Apparently this is a sign of respect and actually part of animist rituals in many Mossi villages. I think my ear drums popped a few times, but after the initial shock the ceremony was really cool and as usual ended in tons of traditional dancing, bissap, and rice.

Moral of the story: my village likes to party, you should come visit.

Hello! Yes, I am alive, sorry for the long hiatus but things have been a bit busy with affectation (when all of us move to our sites), trying to get my house/hut organized, and figuring out how I’m supposed to survive in the middle of the Saharan desert. Because yes, my village is literally in the desert. Let’s start from the beginning:

1. Swearing in: about three weeks ago my entire training group swore in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. This is a really big deal because it means we will never again have to sit through 8 hours of language classes per day while dying from giardia. The ceremony was held at the US Ambassador’s house, afterwards we all went to across the street to the American Rec center to eat a lot of taco salads, jump into the pool in our matching pagne outfits (really stylish), and basically just try to forget the fact that we are all moving out on our own the next morning. 2. 2.Affectaion: pardon my language, by affectation was the biggest shit show I have ever seen. First of all, none of us had gotten any sleep because the day before was swear in day. Secondly, me and the other volunteers going up north had to take public transportation up to Ouahigouya because the driver couldn’t fit all of our stuff and our bodies into the peace corps truck. So here we are, running on zero hours of sleep, trying to figure out how to get our bikes and bags onto a super crowded bus/bus station, for the first time on our very own. After our first two busses were delayed and then my bike ended up not making it on the bus that my body was on, I decided the only way to handle the stress was to binge eat a baggie of Riz Gras with mystery meat. Once we got to Ouahigouya I discovered diamond-gateau, basically a cake like substance sold in packs of 7 or 8, which I decided to binge eat while attempting to finish shopping for my house. Side note, in Ouaga, we were all supposed to buy stuff for our houses, and being the smart responsible volunteer that I am I purchased a hookah, a giant bottle of champagne, and a gas stove; so basically the essentials. Now in Ouahigouya I was running around, sans bike, binge eating gateau, trying to buy a gas tank, cooking utensils, pillows, etc. Did I also mention that up north, everybody mostly speaks Moore and NOT French? So there was that factor also. Anyway, when I actually did finally manage to get everything into the Peace Corps truck and drive on out to my village, I was hyperventilating and possible binge eating a baguette with peanut butter. As the car pulls into my village, I see a circle of 30-40 people sitting on my CSPS grounds, just waiting for me. Turns out, my homologue had collected all of the village elders to come and greet me, which was very nice but extremely overwhelming because SURPRISE, I had to make a speech in broken French the minute I stepped out of the car. After that little fiasco I was taken to my house… which brings me to my next topic of conversation.3. .That time I almost sat on a small child: I live in a family compond of not ten, but THIRTY families. There are 32 children/petites constantly running around, not to mention the goats, chickens, and cows. When I first dropped all my stuff in my house I turned around to go back outside and literally couldn’t see past my door because of the wall of children standing starring at me. At this moment I decided to have a small mental breakdown and started hysterically crying, which was also when all of the thirty families in my compound decided to come and saluate me. Crying is not acceptable in Burkinabe culture so I had to pretend to disguise my face behind a pagne while sobbing/laughing at the entire situation. Nobody in my compound speaks French except for my host dad, who walked into my courtyard the first night with two avocados in hand, “I’m going to plant these with my daba!” So a typical conversation between me and everybody in my village looks like this:Villager: Ney Yibeogo (good morning)Me: Yibeog Kibare (good morning)Villager: blahblahblahbblah moore blahblahblah.Me: Laafi (the Burkinabe equivalent of okay, but literally translates into health)Villager: blahblahblahblahblahb (insert lots of hand motions and hip sways and sign language)Me: AHHAA!!!! LAAFI.Villager: blahblahblah (now either getting angry or laughing at the fact that all I say is laafi)Me: AH! JE NE COMPRENDE PAS!!Villager: Fo gomda moore? (Do you speak Moore)Me: AYO (This is Moore for no… which I find hilarious because it sounds like something out of a rap song)Villager: laughter, blahblahblahblah, hand motions, laughterMe: Laafi… smiling and walking away.

So I basically do that 60 times a day. I also almost sat on one of my petites because it was dark outside and I didn’t realize they had been sitting on my chair in the courtyard. In addition, I fail at biking with a 10 L bidon of water on my bike… my balance is just not that good yet. So one time as I was attempting to pull into my courtyard with the water on my bike I lost balance and accidently dropped my bike and my full bidon of water on top of one of my petites. WHOOPS! The good news is that children are virtually indestructible in this country, I see them fall, get thrown, and tossed around in so many different ways and they are 100% okay, so the bidon incident mostly just freaked me out rather than the child.

So what do I do all day in village? Well, every morning I go to my CSPS and hang out with the staff. The nurse midwife, called an accouchose here, is basically my best friend. She feeds me benga and explains how everything works in the CSPS. She also speaks French, which is a plus. My major, or head nurse, is almost always in Ouahigouya doing some project or other so I never really see him. My official homologue knows literally every single person in my village and usually takes me around to each individual cartie (neighborhood of houses) so that I can saluate in my broken French/moore. In the afternoons I wander around the small strip of boutiques in the village, which consists of one actual boutique, two guys who sell meat, a dolo bar (my favorite place in town), and a few small cafes. After I awkwardly saluate every single person I find I usually retreat back into my family compound and try to chat with the women who sit and pound gold for hours and hours at a time, because yes, there is a gold mine in my village. This usually turns into an afternoon of sign language and Moore lessons. The women in my compound are actually very sassy; they have made it their life goal to try and turn me into a full fledged Mossi women by attempting to give me a Burkinabe hair style (think weave with plastic coils everywhere) and dye my feet Mossi style (think henna tatoo of a sock that doesn't come off ever). Although I wouldn't mind getting my feet dyed, my hair is going to stay 100% American until I leave this country, which is difficult to explain with my zero language skills.

I bike into Ouahigouya 2-3 times a week to buy food and other things for my house. It's a 9 km bike ride from my site, 12 km to my closest neighbor, 17 km to my other closest neighbor. I dont' think I have ever biked so much in my life. I think if I start tallying up my km I will soon bike the distance around the entire continent of Africa. In addition, I've come to learn that you can transport anything and everything on the back of mountain bikes. I mean literally everything, including king sized mattresses, tables, chairs, etc. My life goal of never ever owning a car when I return to the US should be fairly easily to realize as long as I have a Trek bike. It's also worth mentioning that my 17 km neighbor not only roasts his own coffee at site but also grows his own tobacco. And this is why life in the desert will not be so bad for the next two years.

Anyway, I'm currently back in Ouaga, sitting in the cool, air conditioned, volunteer transit house, watching the Lion King and waiting for my friend to bring me back hard boiled eggs. The village life is sweet and quiet, but it's nice to know that Ouaga is only a 2 hour bus ride away.

Finally, a quick thank you to my AMAZING sister who sent me the best care package ever!!!! And of course my mom, who sent me literally every copy of Time, New York mag, and The Economist from this past year. We live for our care packages here; any type of spice mix from the states would be appreciated. Taco mix in particular.

I just want to let everybody know that I just ate freshly picked papaya with lime juice. Best meal ever.

It’s really amazing how quickly a person can get accustomed to certain aspects of life. It seems like only yesterday that I was freaking out about cockroaches, latrines, the heat, and so many other things that can often define living in Burkina Faso. Now, I only have a week left of training, I’m sitting in an air conditioned hotel room with wifi, running water, toilet bowls, and continental breakfast, actually missing a little bit of village life (mostly outdoor bucket baths, because this AC is way too cold).

As the last part of PC training we are all in Ouaga for a two day counterpart workshop conference. This means that each of our respective Burkinabe counterparts (people from our villages who have been assigned to work with us for the next two years) have come out to Ouaga (not an easy journey when you’re 7 hours away for some) to familiarize us with our community, potential projects ideas and needs assessments. My counterpart is the president of my CSPS COGES (board of director’s for the local health clinic) and he is also my host dad, since apparently I’m going to be living in his family courtyard. He seems really nice and motivated to work with, and has given me lots of useful information about my village. Apparently there are 11 satelite villages under my CSPS that I will also be working with, which is a bit overwhelming but opens up a lot of project opportunities. Also, on the food frontier, according to one of the staff members here there is a bomb café au lait joint right next to my CSPS so, coffee withdrawal problem solved!

This time next week my entire training class and I will be officially sworn in as peace corps volunteers at the US Ambassador’s house. Training has been long and tiring, but I think I’m really going to miss Sapone and all the other trainees. It's going to be difficult going from seeing each other 24/7 to being the only American in your village. The morning after swear -in I’ll be shoving my suitcases, gas stove, and bike onto public transport up to Ouahiguya (can’t wait to tell you all about my chaos) where I’ll meet some PC staff and current volunteers to do the rest of my house shopping and finally move into my village. Sooooooo close yet so far.

First I would like to wish everybody a bon fete! We had ourselves a huge celebration over here for Thanksgiving, involving three fully grown turkeys and tons of delicious sides. We felt like actual pilgrims... cooking in the ground and killing our own turkeys. We didn't actually kill the turkeys, but our country director picked them out weeks ago from a farm. I also want to give a huge THANK YOU to my wonderful mother who sent me a really intense care package complete with GRE books and more protein than I could ever ask for. Thanks mom! And now for other news...

I’m officially moving up North (to the equator) to Ouahiguya for the next two years. My site will be a small village (population of 1000 people) 9 km outside of Ouahiguya, which is one of the bigger cities in the Northern region of Burkina Faso, right on the border of Mali. My village hosted Peace corps health trainees in the past, which is good because that means that people there have actually seen Americans before and know exactly what the Peace Corps does. The other good news is that I’ll be working with a group of farmers on sustainable agriculture and food security. In addition, because I’m so close to Ouahiguya I’ll have the opportunity to work on larger scale public health initiatives with the regional medical centers specifically focused on nutrition. I’ll be living in my own house but within a family compound. I find it funny that the first time I’m ever going to be living without roommates, in a place of my own, is in Africa.

I don’t know much about Ouahiguya but apparently I can buy all the fruits and vegetables I want as well as American style cheeseburgers and I’ll have access to a swimming pool! There are four other trainees going up north with me, and there are already 5 or 6 volunteers stationed near my site, so I’ll have many fellow Americans near me (I’m writing this specifically for my parents who I know are freaking out right now… don’t worry, I’ll probably even have access to internet if I get a USB key…)

I am really happy about my placement however I am a little bit jealous of my friends who ended up being placed elsewhere. Two people are in the East right on the border of Benin in safari land with elephants, waterfalls, and tons of other cool wildlife. Their marche also feeds in from Benin and Togo, which should be amazing. The luckiest people are those that got placed in the South West with the Lobi people. The Lobis are an ethnic group known for their crazy animist rituals, dolo drinking habits, poison arrow making, and fetishes. Also Bobo, the second biggest city in BF is located in the Southwest and is said by many to be the coolest and youngest city in the country. There is also the fact that some of the volunteers in the Southwest are going to be living in fully equipped mansions with running water, refrigerators, and DSL internet connections…. So basically posh corps rather than the peace corps. Regardless, I’m excited to come visit all my fellow trainees and current volunteers.

I’ll be living with the Mossi people, the major ethnic group in Burkina. My village also has Peuhls, another ethnic group that speaks Jula but I think they are the minority, which could cause cultural issues when it comes to group sensibilizations or health campaigns. Since I live with a Mossi family right now, I can say that they are pretty relaxed, open minded people.

Speaking of my host family, they keep asking me to work the millet fields with them on Sundays and it is becoming increasingly harder and harder to get out of it. I know that I have to integrate into society and all that, but seriously, I am not working in the millet fields on my only day off, especially because I usually get home pretty late on Saturday nights (enjoying the bustling Sapone night life aka the one place that’s open past 8 pm). This past Sunday I woke up to find my host mom and host brother sweeping up a dust storm (side note: people here literally sweep dust every morning because they think it makes the courtyard cleaner. On the contrary, it makes the air smell like dirt and makes your eyes water and often times you end up coughing up a lung) in the family courtyard to clear room for all the millet they were going to collect that day to make Dolo. My brother was really insistent on me getting out into the fields, he kept pointing at the Dolo calabashes and making weird noises and gestures, I had no idea what was going on. The only way I could get out of it was promising them that I would cook them dinner that night. When I came home to start cooking I found out that my host mom had come down with a bad case of malaria and that I was going to be making To from scratch with my host sister (and/or house servant, not sure who she is exactly). Anyway, making To basically involved me pounding dried fish for an hour (where on earth do people get fish here? It’s a land locked country with zero bodies of water…). In the middle of the fish pounding I realized that I was coming down with a slight case of food poisoning, so I had to take a short break to go throw up. At that exact moment, there just happened to be a voodoo wedding going on in my neighborhood millet field. So there I am, sitting on a water bidon in the middle of my latrine, waiting to throw up, getting serenaded by a voodoo song and dance. Just a typical Sunday night…

It’s been a month and I still don’t know how to properly do my laundry in this country. My family believes that washing clothing on Saturdays is bad luck, so every Sunday at 6 am I have to wake up, bike to the marche to get some laundry soap, and start scrubbing my clothes. Usually this process involves three buckets; the first one has water, soap, and your dirty clothes. The second is just water for rinsing, and the third is the finished product. I have no problem with the soapy water step, but I can’t figure out how to get all the water out of large articles of clothing such as wrap skirts, pagnes, and sheets, so I end up hanging up dripping clothing on the clothing line for the entire neighborhood to laugh at. Also, the dirty left over water is fed to the donkeys instead of being thrown out; no wonder all the donkeys in this country cry every night, they are drinking gross laundry water!!

On the work frontier, we recently visited the local CREN. A CREN is a rehabilitation center for severely malnourished children. CRENs vary depending on where you are in the country; some are funded by the government and others are funded by NGOs or religious organizations, and depending on the funding the functionality varies. The CREN in Sapone is not as functional as it could be because it receives federal funding and has only serviced 12 children over the past year; not an indicator of the good nutritional status of the village, rather the poor referral rate and identification of malnutrition in the CSPS. When children are brought to the CREN they are given extreme nutritional rehabilitation, usually in the form of tube feeds or enriched nutritional formulas given orally. Mothers often have to pay for all the food and for transportation, as CRENs are only located in larger villages. Many mothers have smaller children back at home and are therefore unable to stay for long periods of time, which is detrimental to the health of the malnourished child as rehabilitation can often take weeks. All of the nutrition formulas in the CREN are donated by foreign aid, something that really bothered me as it leaves the entire process completely unsustainable. One of the things PCVs do in order to help prevent malnutrition among children is to sensibilize women and men about exclusive breastfeeding and proper weaning techniques as well as demonstrate ways to enrich bouille (baby food made by local women here) to be higher in protein, vitamins, and minerals. I had the opportunity to make and taste enriched bouille (we used peanut butter, bananas, oil, and corn flour for our recipe) and teach some local families how to make their own bouille at the CSPS in Sapone. The good thing about enriched bouille is that all ingredients can be easily bought and found within small villages throughout Burkina, making it completely sustainable and affordable. It also tastes like the sugar-less side of frosted mini wheats, so, there's another advantage.

Stage has had its fair share of socializing, but the majority of what I’m doing here for the next two months is training for the next two years. Here’s a little bit about what my job will look like (and what your tax dollars are paying me for):

I will be working within the ministry of health within Burkina Faso. The healthcare system within Burkina is divided into three tiers: central (the national hospitals, located in large urban centers which serve as tertiary care centers, catering to severe and extreme illnesses), intermediate (regional hospital centers, located in more rural centers and serve as secondary health care centers, servicing referrals from the peripheral tier and referring most severe cases up to the national hospital level), and the peripheral tier (primary health centers located in the most rural areas). I will be working within the peripheral tier, specifically within the Centre de Sante et Promotion Sociale (CSPS, or in English, the Center of Health and Social Promotion). A CSPS is a small clinic located within a rural village, which provides basic primary health care such as prenatal consultations, vaccinations, health education, basic medications, and referrals to higher up health care institutions when needed. A CSPS can serve satellite villages; during my demystification trip, the CSPS of Zonse was responsible for the primary health care of 16 neighboring villages (and so was its respective Peace Corps Health Volunteer).

Burkina’s health care system is the result of The Bamako Initiative. TBI emerged from a major conference in Mali in the 1980’s which focused on decentralized systems of health care in order to increase local community involvement and better serve the people and promote health. The result provides an intricate system of primary health care that is much more accessible to people living in rural areas. Each CSPS is required to have at least three staff members from the national level; these employees are medically trained and are not from the community itself. Aside from these staff members, the CSPS is largely run by local who live within the community, understand its needs and its resources. As a PCV I’ll be working specifically with these local community members.

Within the CSPS, I will be responsible for education and prevention activities focused on the “health high five” which are the top five health concerns of the country: HIV/AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, hygiene, and family planning. There are a number of different activities that current volunteers do within these five areas, including sensibilizations (large educational activities at community centers such as churches, schools, and mosques), demonstrations (neem cream making, mosquito net distribution), games (coaching for hope, a soccer camp focused on HIV/AIDS education and prevention), women’s groups, theatre troops, etc.I was actually surprised to find out that the rate of HIV/AIDS here in Burkina is actually lower than in the United States, at 1.2% of the population. This however, is only the reported rate, and is probably an underestimate. One of the biggest issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in Burkina is gender roles; polygamy is often practiced, and even if it is not official it is socially acceptable and expected for men to have multiple sexual partners. Women are often not told if their spouse is involved with anybody else, and thus the disease can spread. Another issue is for villages located on the border of Cote D’Ivoire, which house many refugees. Often women crossing the border are adopted as additional wives into Burkinabe families, bringing HIV/AIDS with them. Another issue with HIV/AIDS is stigma, one that is shared back home in the states. Many women, when tested positive for the virus, do not inform their husbands out of fear or stigma. Many community members who have tested positive for the virus have been known to “disappear” in the middle of the night, that is, leave society out of fear of isolation.

Back when malaria was prevalent throughout the United States, The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was started to combat the disease. Although malaria has been eradicated from most areas of the world, sub-Saharan Africa continues to suffer. Malaria is spread by the female anopheles mosquito when it bites an infected person, picks up the parasite, and then bites a non infected person and spreads the disease. These mosquitoes are most active at night and during rainy seasons, however can be present anywhere and at any time. They are also commonly found around stagnant bodies of water. Thankfully, Burkina has basically no water in it ever, so stagnant water/vector control will not be an issue. The majority of my work will involve the promotion of mosquito nets, education about the spread of the disease, and neem cream production. Let me just say, I sleep under a mosquitaire every night and I actually love it; it feels like I’m sleeping under a four poster bed. Unfortunately many of the locals are not so fond of these nets, as they remind them of tombs. A recent trend in mosquitaires has been to “bedazzle” them in colorful pagnes and other designs to encourage use and discourage negative, tomb-like connotations.

Neem cream is another malaria prevention strategy utilized by Peace Corps Volunteers. Neem cream is made from neem trees, which are found everywhere throughout Burkina. The leaves are boiled in water for 20 minutes, mixed with soap and shea butter, and then spread over the body. (PS: people here eat shea butter plain). Neem is a natural insecticide and can also be used as an income generating activity for many local families, especially women. We made neem cream the other day in class, and it smelled delicious. Maybe I’ll export it into the USA, as it is also said to have anti-acne properties.

The one aspect of my job that I am most excited about is the work I’ll be doing to combat malnutrition. Let me just say that I seriously think I’m going to be malnourished at the end of two years. The lack of protein and variety in any type of produce (basically just tomatoes and onions here, which we have to soak in bleach for 15 minutes before we eat them to make sure we don’t die of food poisoning) is seriously starting to get me down. I am always hungry, and I know that I have it easy. In my family, and in many families, the men eat first, then the women, then the children. By the time the children get to eat, there is hardly anything left over. Meals consist mainly of starch, specifically to or pasta or rice. Protein sources are available but are expensive (meat) and may only be abundant seasonally (peanuts, beans). In addition, most people have no idea what makes a balanced diet. Like in the USA, Burkina has its own “food pyramid” which focuses on three main groups: energy (starch), constructors (protein), and protectors (vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients) and takes on the shape of a house.

This past week we were given our first official work assignment, which for me ended up being tied directly to nutrition. Along with two other trainees, I visited a family living locally to conduct a nutrition needs assessment; basically collect information about all aspects of their diet and accessibility to food. The family described their typical intake to consist of three meals during cold season (when crops are plenty) and two meals during hot season (less availability of crops). Each meal was to with gumbo sauce. The family cultivates their own grains, specifically corn and millet. They also cultivate some peanuts and benga (beans) but these grow only seasonally and are therefore eaten very rarely. They purchase tomatoes, onions, and eggplant from the marche. They sell their livestock for money. This is a very typical situation for most families who live in rural villages. When asked what their favorite foods were, the family didn’t know how to respond and simply said that they ate whatever was available. I myself am obsessed with food; I literally plan vacations around when and where I’m going to be eating, and a bad meal will ruin my mood for hours. In Burkina, there is no such thing as a favorite meal, having any meals is considered a luxury.

Even among Peace Corps volunteers internationally, Burkina is known as one of the most extreme countries to live in, partially because it is the poorest country that the Peace Corps serves. I’ve definitely experienced some of the reasons behind these rankings, including food poisoning, continuous attacks from angry African fleas, 110 degree weather, dust everywhere, burning garbage all over the streets, no running water, no electricity, lack of toilet paper… the list goes on and on. These things, however uncomfortable they may sound, are actually easily forgotten within one or two weeks in country. These things become the norm, and you’re pleasantly surprised when you find a toilet bowl. Talking with our needs assessment family about food though, that really hit home. Not being able to enjoy food, that’s freaking hard (TRUST ME).

On a more positive note however, life has been pretty sweet here in West Africa (despite the above reasons). We celebrated Halloween with a massive party which involved our trainees, teachers ,and host families. It was really hard trying to explain the concept of Halloween to my host brothers, and also the fact that I dressed up as a latrine. I must have looked like a lunatic when I took a perfectly clean white shirt and rubbed it in the dirt, and the cut a hole in it for the costume. The party itself was off the hook; we got lots of kids to start dancing with us. The 5 year olds in this country have more rhythm than Michael Jackson. We also celebrated Tibaski, a Muslim holiday which involved lots of sheep sacrifices. I ate four plates of rice which was pretty awesome and went over to a neighbor's house to celebrate. Her family killed an additional two chickens for us so for once we were satisfied with our protein intake.

To: If for some reason you decide to move to Burkina Faso, To will be your best friend and your worst enemy. Best friends because you will be fed To 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, everywhere you go. Worst enemies because it has the consistency of thick jello and is dunked into a gumbo sauce which looks a lot like human snot and is often eaten out of a communal bowl (don’t use your left hand when digging in) and will surely give you a bad case of food poisoning. Nutritionally, this dish has basically nothing to offer the body except for calories, which is really disappointing considering the fact that my host mom spends about 5 hours grinding the millet/corn together and cooking it down to just the right consistency. It makes sense for a strongly agricultural community to rely on a high energy food, but given the lack of any fresh fruits and vegetables here, combined with the rates of malnutrition in both women and children, I really wish that to had more to offer. I also have a personal vendetta with To. My family thinks I’m the stupidest human being to ever cross the ocean and land in their courtyard, and I can’t blame them. When I first arrived I didn’t even know how to take a shower, sweep the floor (with a dalai broom aka a bunch of sticks stuck together with a string), or lift a bidon of water. Let’s not even talk about my biking-on-dirt road skills (I can draw you a map of every constellation in the sky using the bruises and mosquito bites on my legs). I also still have no real clue how to do my laundry, I kind of just throw everything into a bucket of soapy water and hope for the best. Anyway, the point of this whole rant is to describe my to making experience. One night I came home from training to find a giant pile of rosy flowers lying in front of my door. My host sister was really excited about these flowers, apparently they were new harvest of to-making grain and set me to work peeling these roses and separating the flowers from the inner seeds. I’m pretty sure she thought I was going to fail miserably but apparently I’m really good at peeling flower petals away from seeds, so now my host mom is all set on having me peel all the To plants every night I get home from training. Freaking to! Dolo: “Let’s go check out that dolo bar!” Dolo is your drink of choice here, a bitter-sweet murky mixture of millet beer, 2-4% alcohol. My family makes their own dolo and feeds me some every morning. This stuff is really popular in the marches, which have at least 1 or 2 dolo bars filled with people sipping this yummy drink out off wooden bowls to cool off in the middle of the day. Some areas of the country are really big into dolo, specifically in the Southwest, but you can basically find dolo in any small village, even those that are entirely Muslim (alcohol is prohibited in the Islamic religion). We actually got a nice lecture on how to make dolo in one of our classes, but I wasn’t really paying attention (all the donkey screaming at night prevents me from getting a good night’s sleep so I doze off sometimes…) Anyway, I think that setting up a dolo bar in your local farmer’s market could make some big dollars back in the states. Riz gras: Literally translated to rice with lard, this stuff is actually really good. It reminds me a lot of paella rice and can be cooked with meat. My family made this for me the first night I arrived, and I am 50-60% positive that I ate donkey meat with it. This stuff has the potential to make a nutritionally complete meal, but animal protein is extremely difficult to come by. During our demystification trip a local village leader gave us a chicken as a gift, and our host PCV provided a second chicken to make some couscous for dinner. Even though we had two chickens, we had barely enough meat to feed the four of us. Chickens here actually look like real chickens, that is, they aren’t pumped full of hormones to have gigantic breast muscles. This has its upsides, specifically the fact that the meat I’m eating is 100% from farm to table and organic. Downsides include the small quantities and the almost mandatory ingestion of awkward chicken body parts such as the head, the neck, the feet, and the organs. I am 97% vegetarian here solely because meat is nowhere to be found, it’s gotten to the point where I look at animals and start to wonder how they would taste. During demyst, one of the other trips actually had a trainee kill a chicken, apparently he did a really good job and now everybody is looking forward to Thanksgiving turkeys. Benga: Benga is bangin’. These beans are the American version of black eyed peas, served with rice and tomato sauce. I try to eat benga every day, it’s my favorite food here. There’s a nice benga stand right next to our training center which I refused to go to for the first few days because everything tasted like fish, but I recently gave in and had the best dish of benga ever. Peanut butter: I had a small panic attack about being protein deficient when I first came here since most of the food my family makes me is carbohydrates, but then I discovered fresh peanut butter at the marche. It tastes better than anything you will ever buy, even Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s organic brand name stuff. The locals mostly use peanut butter to make peanut sauce that is then thrown over rice (also delicious by the way). It’s also peanut harvesting season here, which means that every once in a while I sit down to dinner and my host mom plops a giant peanut plant on my lap, dirt and all. Raw peanuts are 100% slammin; you should all try them.Bissap: Juice made from hibiscus flowers, frozen, and placed into tiny plastic baggies. This stuff is amazing and really refreshing in the middle of a hot day and can be purchased for 25 CFA (the equivalent of 2 US cents) at the marche. Other beverages such as water and coca are also sold at the marche, but coca is usually already opened. Water is often sold in rectangular baggies, much like bissap, peanut butter, and basically anything and everything else you can think of. The Burkinabe have a weird obsession with rectangular baggies, and at first I must admit I thought the concept was really weird. Now it almost seems second nature to bite into the edge of a plastic bag and suck out whatever awaits your taste buds.Pima: My sister will love this when she comes to visit. It’s basically extremely hot sauce. I have no idea what is in it, how you make it, or how much to eat. If you put it on top of your Benga you’re in for a deliciously spicy meal (and probably some diarrhea, but you can’t win them all)!

I'm currently alive and well, sitting in a nicely air conditioned room in the PC headquarters in Ouaga. I wish I could write about all of the crazy things we've been doing, but there are about 50 people in line waiting to use the computer and the bus to take us back to Sapone leaves in about 40 minutes. Here are just a few highlights:

- BUCKET BATHS: are awesome!! It's like jumping into a pool of cold water. I actually seriously think that showers may have been a step backwards for humanity.

- Demystification: Just got back from a weekend trip to Zonse, a small village on the border of Ghana and Burkina Faso to visit a current volunteer for a "demystification" weekend. This trip is meant to give trainees an idea of what life as a volunteer is like. The trip was awesome, complete with a 5 hour bush taxi ride (think: small van that is meant to fit 5 people but actually fit 50 people, 3 bikes, some motorcycles, and all of our luggage), and a ridiculous (but fun) bike ride through corn fields, rivers, and goats. We were also required to greet many village elders including the chief, who gave us a live chicken as a gift which hung from my bike handlebars as I biked back to our PCV's site. (Disclaimer: I got really scared when the chicken tried to fly away so had to hand it back over to our PCV before we actually got to our destination).

- My host family: Is awesome! They feed me Dolo (millet beer) every morning along with baguettes, butter, rice, and pasta. I have no idea how many people are actually in my family because every day more and more people keep showing up outside in the courtyard, and I can't understand French or Moore (the local language) so I spend most of my time using sign language to communicate.

Now that we're all past demystification, we will be getting some type of internet access to share among ourselves for the next nine weeks so I will be back for more updates! Life here is hard and hot but really remarkable. The Burkinabe are some of the nicest people I have ever met, and my fellow trainees have become family.

I do not know what is more amazing, the fact that my luggage made it to Burkina in one piece or that I do not have any gastro intestinal issues yet.

So, first impressions: HOT. I havent stopped sweating since I got off the plane. I did not even know that some parts of my body can sweat. I walk around all day looking like I just got out of the shower, but really it is just my sweat. Second impression: AWESOME. Tomorrow our agenda for the day is two hours of malaria and diarrhea education... I mean how much better could it get..

We are staying at a catholic hostel for a few days and heading off to our training site and homestays in Sapone on Friday. Staying here is really cool because not only do we get to see Ouaga, but we also have running water and showers. The Peace Corps staff are all very supportive and the safety and security here is really intense.My French placement exam was today, which was a disaster to say the least: I called my male facilitator a woman and then awkwardly tried to shake his hand when he was actually trying to hand me a notecard. I have also found some new running buddies! There are about 6 of us here that go running in the mornings... which means 5 45 am to avoid the heat.

I cannot write a lot right now because of limited time and a new French keyboard which is really hard to figure out as the A W M buttons are all in different places. I do now have a cell phone. My number is 77494380, the country code for Burkina is 226. It is free for me to receive texts, just remember that I am 4 hours ahead of NY time. More later, I am taking lots of pictures. Now I have to go and wipe the sweat off my face and prepare for a fancy dinner at our Country Directors house.

Staging is over and I am now an official Peace Corps Trainee (PCT)!

There are 25 other volunteers in my staging group, with about half in health and half in small business development. The diversity among us is unbelievable, there are people here from all over the US and most of them have traveled all over the world... I thought that I had an interesting life but it is nothing compared to these guys. They've worked in non profits in Jamaica, lived in Burkina before, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Australia, Fiji.. there is a married couple here as well. Many people brought musical instruments including a viola, a ukulele, a harmonica, and a guitar. There is even a girl here who is almost a registered dietitian!

The staging process itself was a bit of a drag. The entire day was filled with skit performances, team building exercises, and logistics regarding our credit cards, our travel plans, and most importantly what to do if you have really bad diarrhea (part 1 of 235231234 lectures we will get while in country). Here are some highlights in picture form:

Our anxieties and aspirations, which included the hot sun, the toilets, big spiders, losing too much weight, making friends, riding bikes, and really good artistic skills.

What to do to avoid assault, as presented by some of my other fellow trainees. Please note that some suggestions include endurance (run) and mace-knife (shank em!)

Yes, we love team building!

Upon coming to Philly I was most nervous about my French skills, or lack thereof. The good news is that I was assured multiple times that everybody receives intensive training and is able to communicate fairly well within their community by the end of training. The other good news is that I finally know how to pronounce Ouagadougou: Wagadoogoo! The bad news is that once we arrive to the capital we probably won't have access to a computer or phone for 1-3 weeks, so this may be the last post for a while. I will try to call/email as able.

It's 5:42 am and I slept maybe a max of 2 hours last night. This is partially due to the fact that I wanted to watch as much Arrested Development as I possibly could before I left the states, but also partially due to nerves. Anyway, off to Philadelphia today! I am so excited to meet all the other volunteers, but sad to be leaving loved ones behind. Thank you to everyone who has made this last month absolutely amazing! To my parents in particular, do not worry! I expect everybody to make their yellow-fever vaccination appointments within the next two months, you'll need them when you come visit me in Africa.

I will miss you, amazing chocolate cake.

With two days to go before departure, I finally have some updates regarding my living situation for the next two months! This Sunday I'll be heading off to Philadelphia for a pre-departure orientation known as staging, which, based on our itinerary, is going to be a lot of paperwork and awkward ice breakers with the other 30+ volunteers. From there we'll be bused over to JFK (for a last goodbye to NYC!) and flown overseas. I just now noticed that we will be taking FOUR different planes to actually get to location, so my luggage will 100% get lost and/or sent to another country, as is known to happen to me every single time I fly. For this reason I'm keeping my packing to a minimum. I am however, bringing my bike helmet, which the Peace Corps reminded us to bring 4 million times in every email we've received (bikes will be our primary means of transportation while in country).

Once we arrive, we will be staying in Burkina Faso's capital city, Ouagadougou (Ouaga for short) for the first few nights at the Peace Corps headquarters, after which we will be "adopted" by my host family in Saponé, a community roughly 40 miles outside of the city. Here we will complete our training for the next two months.

I probably won't have internet access for the first week or so, and I'm not sure what the cell phone situation is going to be like upon arrival. Rest assured, I will be fine, perhaps even better off without constantly checking Facebook or getting carpal tunnel syndrome from sending text messages.

I'm looking forward to the culture shock, lack of toilets, and bucket baths. Au revoir!

In honor of my new RD status, here are links to some of my favorite nutrition organizations/professsionals:

Food Politics:

In my undergraduate nutrition department, Marion Nestle was basically a nutrition and food policy god. Aside from regular updates on her blog, Dr. Nestle has published (and continues to publish) a number of books. My personal favorite is What to Eat, a bit lengthy but worth the read.

City Harvest:

One of New York's premier food rescue organizations, City Harvest works to feed over 300,000 hungry New Yorkers each day. In addition, City Harvest provides its clients with nutrition education programs. This organization is near and dear to me as I've had the pleasure of leading some of these educational programs throughout NYC. It only takes 27 cents to rescue one pound of food, you can donate online.

The Boston Living Center:

The idea behind the BLC started in 1989 when a group of HIV positive individuals met to consume a Thanksgiving meal together. At that time, people had yet to hear of Ryan White, and being HIV positive often left people isolated, afraid, and stigmatized. The meal provided people with hope, support, and a sense of community. Since then the BLC has grown to provide a number of services including free meals, nutrition counseling, therapy, career counseling, etc, all free of charge, to its members. Here's a really attractive picture of me in my uni-hair hair net along with other staff members and volunteers as we prepare to serve a hot lunch to members:

Guiltless:

While working with the Massachusetts Student Dietetic Association last year I met two social media gurus who started Guiltless, a blog focused on positive body image. Stephanie and Elizabeth never fail to disappoint with numerous tips on nutrition, health, and feeling good about yourself.

Meal Makeover Moms:

I must admit, I have no personal connection with these two RDs, however I did hear great things from one of my close friends (and another fellow RD). Meal Makeover Moms provides quick, easy, and nutrient rich meal ideas for busy moms and families. Check out their cookbooks for ideas!

And yes, there are RDs in the Peace Corps!

Basically, being an RD means having the best job in the world, or at least I like to think so. In the words of Steve Jobs, "the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do." (Taken from 2005 Stanford University Commencement Speech).

From October 2011 - December 2013 I'll be serving as a community health development worker with the United States Peace Corps in Burkina Faso. This blog is for family, friends, future volunteers, and the general public interested in the PCV experience.

So where in the world is Burkina Faso?

A few statistics:Ranked 161 out of 169 on the United Nations International Human Development Index (HDI).Healthy life expectancy (HALE) at birth of 35 for males and 36 for females.Under 5 mortality rate of 192 per 1,000 live births.1 physician for every 10,000 people. (For reference, the United States has 27 physicians for every 10,000 people, Cuba has 64, and Russia has 43. Way to go America!)Despite these challenges, BF is known for its friendly people and abundance of art and culture. Burkina's capital city is famous for the Pan - African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), held every two years since 1969.

Additional Info:WHO: Burkina Faso Country Health ProfileUN: International Human Development Index, Burkina Faso Country ProfileFESPACO

In the mean time, I'm planning on eating as many burritos as I can, drinking some good wine, and oh yea, taking my RD exam so that I can finally be a registered dietitian.