Hello lovely people,

This past month has been INSANITY mostly due to that dreaded Closing of Service Conference. What the conference basically entails of is experts telling us how to handle job interviews, write resumes, and trying to help us figure out what we want to do with our lives. Basically we all left that conference about 50 times more stressed than when we went into it... mostly because we're terrified of the real 9-5 work world and have no idea what to do with our lives... And we're also slightly panicked about how we're going to integrate back into American society after perfecting the art of sitting and doing nothing for hours, not to mention the fact that we've all become a bit... unrefined... since being here. :) I think the only thing that saved me from a life after Burkina meltdown was a visitor from back home! After much coaxing she helped me realize that the real world wasn't that scary and that if nothing else I would get to do something wonderful - see family and friends. I also don't think she thought I had turned into a complete weirdo so I felt pretty good about that as well...

Heading home is really becoming a reality. Despite the fact that the amount of time left in my village is dwindling down, the amount of work has actually seemed to increase. Sustainability is the goal in most all projects we undertake in Peace Corps and unfortunately it is one of the hardest goals to attain. None of us want to feel like our 2 years here have amounted to nothing, we all want to be able to come back 20 years from now and see that the same projects we started are at the very least continuing and at the very best see that they've made an impact on lives, groups and communities. I'm not going to lie, the thought of all the projects falling apart once you've left - all the projects you've dedicated the past couple years of your life to and all the things that you gave up for those projects (namely Chipotle Burritos, cheese and ice cream...) is enough to keep you up at night. Fortunately I finally figured something out: the quantity of people that I train isn't nearly as important as the quality. While that might seem obvious to others, I thought that the more lives I could change, (which for the most part mean the more income I could help people earn) the better. However after a year of doing trainings and activities with large groups of people I realized that while many people talked about changing their lives and incorporating these projects, the 'best practices' trainings and ideas into their daily routine, not a lot of people actually take any actions. Basically everyone is amazing at 'talk the talk' but very few can actually 'walk the walk.' Absolutely one of the most frustrating parts of working here. Luckily there are some people who follow up their 'talking' with some 'walking' and those are the people I'm banking all of my hopes and dreams on. No pressure right...? :)

I've found that selecting leaders of the group is a lot easier during rainy season... mainly because either everyone has left my village for the faster-paced lives of the big cities or they've decided to spend every moment of their life in their fields. (I tried the second option again this year in hopes of having a pretty little plot of my own but after 30 minutes of dripping sweat and only a 2x2m weed-free area and 6 blisters to show for it, I decided that once again I'd just stick with flowers and leave the corn, millet and peanuts to the experts...). The selection process has especially been easy with the soccer team. Out of the 10 randoms and 15 regulars that came during the school year only 4 are left in village. 4. So basically we've been playing a lot of 2 on 2 lately... By some random stroke of luck though 2 of the girls that I already considered to be captains of the team stayed in village. It was these two that I sent to Coaching for Hope this year (the soccer camp that incorporates soccer and HIV/AIDS trainings) where I hoped they would learn some leadership and coaching skills. While I didn't get to do the camp with them, I was able to see that their excitement for the sport and our team as well as their overall confidence in themselves had definitely increased after their 10 days were over. These two girls are motivated, hard-working and love the sport... in a way they remind me a lot of a younger version of myself... :) I've gotten really close with these two and with a few more months of practices with them I think female soccer in our village will have a bright future.

Another exciting project I'm starting to wrap up is our trash/recycling project. Thanks to some funding I was able to collaborate with the environmental department to purchase 8 trash bins for the community. Now 8 is clearly not going to hold the trash of all 20,000 villagers but it's a start. Again, by some stroke of luck one of the guys who works at the environment is super motivated and has talked to the Mayor about paying a women's group to empty them and is looking for a spot in village to put all the trash. Our very own trash heap. I'd like to think that we're fulfilling every pig, sheep and goats dream. All that's really left with that project is making sure that before I leave they've found a practical way of emptying out the garbage and figured out where to put it all. The other half of the recycling project is making thrown-out plastic bags into women's purses/clutches - the women take discarded plastic bags lying on the ground, wash them, iron them together to make them more durable, then cut them out into different patterns and sew them into hand purses. A lot of women in village are interested in making them and a lot of Peace Corps volunteers are interested in buying them so I'm hoping that before I leave there will be a few women/groups who can make the purses well and sell them both to villagers and volunteers. (I realize that I definitely have no idea how to explain this project but I'll refer you to the pictures on the right of the women sewing the plastic together to make bags... I also do need to thank my friend for helping out with a couple training sessions, making different hand-bag models to add to the collection and putting up with 4ish straight days of sewing plastic. Now there's a true friend :)).

I'm wrapping up my work with the other 2 women's groups as well. With one of the groups we had trainings on gardening, found funding for fencing and will be installing an irrigation system. The cool thing about this project is that the higher ups are interested in turning this group's garden into an example/experimental garden for the village. That means that they'll probably always get help from the agriculture and environmental department as well as become an amazing example to other villagers who are interested in starting a garden. Group #2 has made enriched baby food and is currently selling it in pharmacies and shops around the city. The hard part about this project is that women are typically pretty shy so getting them to market and sell the product has been a bit of a challenge. Even if they don't continue to sell the baby food I hope the project will, at the very least, give them more confidence and skills when it comes to selling a product.

Well naturally since I've written out a majority of things that I have to do I'm starting to once again get a bit panicky about being able to finish it all before I leave.. keep your fingers crossed that I'm able to get it all done, and make it sustainable!!! Probably make sure both hands are crossed.... and feel free to throw in toes as well...

Cannot wait to see all of your lovely faces in just a short while!! Hope all is well back home!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

So it's been a bit but I'd say I have a pretty good excuse.... World Cup!!!!!!!! 14 days of soccer insanity... can life get much better than that?? I'm thinking no... unless your life consists of living in a village in Burkina Faso.. :) and village life these days is even more exciting because it's rainy season - part 2!!!

While rainy season has a wonderful way of cooling off the country, it also has a way of chasing away everyone in village. All the students return to their respective villages, all the government workers take their vacations and all those that are left gather up their cultivating tools, hitch their donkeys to their carts, and spend the next 3 months in the fields. Which leaves me and about 5 other people in village. It makes my favorite past time of sitting outside with my neighbors and staring at the passing people pretty... unexciting. It also means that my last few months in village will be made a little difficult by the fact that most my team isn't there, my classes have finished, the women's groups that I'm working with have headed to the fields, and everyone in my English classes are taking exotic vacations in Bobo and Ouaga. Which leaves me with not a whole lot to do other than watch corn grow.

However, learning to adapt to situations is what us Peace Corps Volunteers do best! Therefore the poor girls from my team who remain will be worked pretty hard, the girls left from the classes will be making all the purses (and potentially a line of rain jackets as well) from plastic bags possible and every women left from the women's groups will have to be constantly making soap, lotion and nutritional porridge with me. Translation - I was obnoxious before trying to push everyone into working but seeing as time in village is quickly coming to an end... I'm redoubling my efforts to irritate everyone to the point of changing Solenzo into Burkina Faso's very own cosmopolitan Manhatten... I'm sure it can be done in less than 4 months, after all we are getting 6 of our very own trash cans :).

Unfortunately my plan to be the most annoying person ever hasn't been put into action yet, do the fact that I have spent the last few weeks traveling to and attending the worlds most exciting tournament... WORLD CUP!!!!!!!!!!! As it turns out, South Africa is actually not Africa, or at least not the Africa that I'm used to. There were paved roads, dogs without rabies, the ocean and the sign of every developed countries - the golden arches of McDonalds. South Africa is already a beautiful country, but put in the wailing sounds of the vuvuzela, the colors of different flags from around the world and the proud chants of the fans and it just makes it that much better. I loved everything about that trip, from the moment I landed in the South African airport and heard the Argentina fans singing their national anthem, to the moment I walked back onto that plane to the sombrero wearing chants of the Mexican fans. Whether you like the sport or not, it's such a rush to be surrounded by people dressed in their national colors from all parts of the world, listen to their cheers and languages, and meet different people who have all come together to celebrate the world's best game. We were lucky enough to get tickets to 4 games, travel around the most beautiful parts of South Africa, and check something off my bucket-list.... surfing!! All in all it was an incredible trip and I'm already counting down and planning for the next World Cup. Brazil 2014!!!

Now, once again, it's back to village. I'm really hoping to wrap up every project that I've started, hoping to make everything sustainable. For me at least, this will probably be the most nerve-racking part of all of service. I thoroughly enjoy and believe in all the projects that I've started thus far and want more than anything to be certain that they will be maintained once I leave. In Africa it seems as if it's easier for things to go back to the way they were before as opposed to maintaining changes. It'll be a huge challenge to tweak slightly, not to mention change altogether norms within my community but I'm hoping that myself along with all the motivated Burkinabe who have helped me from the start will be able to accomplish this. I'll let you know... :)

Hope all of you are enjoying the beautiful summer sunshine!!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

So the month of April was like sitting in a sauna. For 23 hours during the day. 30 days out of the month. Pretty sure that global warming decided to pay special attention to Burkina Faso this past April. Incredibly kind of it...

Besides the weather's attempt to drain all the water from my body, April turned out to be an overall successful month. I think the reason for the success would have to resolve around discarded plastic bags. Since the beginning of the month I have started teaching classes at both the girl's center and the technical school on how to take the discarded bags and turn them into hand bags/purses. At the girls center they got off to a slow, frustrating start. It took them FOREVER to make a simple, small, woven bag but when we switched to the fused bags, everyone had one within a week, some people even had two! They were even talking about how family and friends were requesting these bags and how they would use them to bring to class, take to the market or just fashionably tote around the town! The technical college has been even more fun to teach at. There's about 40 boys and girls who come to the classes which makes it entirely more chaotic (since there is only twelve girls at the girl's center) but also makes it a lot more interesting. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty doubtful that the boys would be willing to participate in what is typically considered a girls activity, let alone be able to sew and weave a purse, but there are actually some who can do it better than the girls! This group has been so motivated, fast and hard-working that we've actually been able to create a competition between the girls and boys as to who can make the prettiest bag! Besides the huge benefit of cleaning up Solenzo it's also been a lot of fun to get closer to groups of girls other than the soccer team. Honestly the only unfortunate thing about this project is that it makes me realize how little creativity is valued in this society. This means that I have to continuously weave and design new bags as examples for the girls/boys to model theirs after because their education teaches them to copy everything rather than come up with their own ideas/designs. Fortunately one of my good friends in village is a tailor interested in creating the fused plastic purses and she's more than willing to sew all of the new models I come up with, saving me millions of hours and pin-pricks. There is actually quite a bit of interest in these recycled purses, to the point where my tailor friend is starting to take orders and make money! Lovin life.

Along that same environmental theme, I organized a clean-up day at one of the elementary schools. All the kids brought their brooms and we swept up the area around their school and picked up the plastic bags that we could use for creating the recycled purses. It was fun day to spend some time with the younger kids and the younger kids are starting to realize that you don't have to throw out plastic bags... and instead you can take them to the white girl's house! Which pretty much makes my courtyard the local trash heap... And means that these plastic bags have infiltrated every part of my life, to the point where I'm even dreaming of sewing them together in my sleep. It's made for some pretty enthralling dreams....

My soccer team, aka my life, has also been successful, as in we won our first realish match!! Our team played against the other girls team (yes there are now 2 girls teams in Solenzo, which I'm taking all the credit for) from the technical college and beat them 5-0. The win really wasn't all that exciting because the other team hasn't been practicing as long as us but the actual game itself was cool. While the amount of people couldn't really be called a crowd, there was a decent amount of people watching the game and the little kids, both boys and girls, who have been watching our practices ran up and down the sidelines screaming whenever our team scored. Honestly, I didn't even care if we won or lost it was just so cool to have people watching the girls and getting into the match. Afterwards a lot of different people, both ones that I knew and ones that I'd never met before, came up to me and told me how surprised they were that my girls could actually play and how well they played! We've also had even more add-ons and counting all the regulars, sometimes regulars and not very regulars... we've got about 30 girls! Way to many for me to handle but pretty cool nonetheless!

So I've got the rest of the month of May left in village to continue working with the recycled purses, soccer team, community garden and nutrition. One more semi-busy month left and then it's off to the WORLD CUP!!!! A very needed vacation... After there will only be 4 months left in village. I cannot believe this insane experience is slowly coming to an end and that the world of fast food, showers, air conditioning and modern technology is coming up!

Well hope spring is off to a good start for all of you and that you're enjoying the weather!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

You know you’re Burkinabe when: you set your Akon ringtone on high and have it ring at least a couple times during a meeting before answering just to make sure everyone knows how cool you are (and naturally you take the call, wouldn’t want to be rude to the caller…); wonder what people are waiting for outside of ticket counters when all they really have to do is walk towards the front and lean their head into the window directly in front of the person who is standing there; or choose to head outdoors and stare/wait for the tractor that passes once every 5 hours rather than write a blog. The last one is my level of Burkinabe at this point…

So Senegal was probably the best vacation of my life. I won’t draw it out too much only to say that highlights included a West African PCV Conference, Thai food, salsa dancing and participating in the greatest karaoke/dance party ever held on Senegal’s very own ‘China Street.’ No one excels more at the art of karaoke than the Chinese… :)

After that, it was off to Burkina Faso’s Biannual Mask Festival held in a village not to far away from my own. Unfortunately I have been spoiled thus far by being able to take buses to and from all of my destinations so therefore it seemed fitting that in order to get to this village I would have to sit in the back of a truck (think Ford Ranger cab size) for 3.5 hours with 17 other people. I will say that it is rather remarkable how many people the Burkinabe can fit in one small vehicle. Just when I would say, ‘Okay, there are already 13 people here, some of which are sitting with their heads between their knees… so we can probably take off because there’s no more room…’ A Burkinabe would say, ‘well lets take that inch of space that every one person has and throw 2 more people into that and while we’re at it, why not just throw the other 2 on top..?’ Resourceful! The mask festival was definitely worth the brutal ride to and from though. There were masks from all over Burkina Faso and West Africa, each with their own costumes, music and dances. A very cool, once in a lifetime opportunity.

After that it was back to village once again!

During the month we held a couple of trainings for one of the women’s groups. For two of the four days the women learned about raising poultry and pigs. I wanted the teacher to tell the women how to breed the animals together in order to produce superior animals but fortunately he knew better than I did and realized that the focus needed to be on the basic food, shelter and water since the women didn’t grasp the significance behind those three. The other two days the women learned about best gardening techniques which once again were surprisingly basic to me. It’s amazing that these women will continue with the same practices passed on from generation to generation, never completely understanding why they are necessary and/or never changing their techniques when new and improved ones come along. That last part I’ve especially seen a lot of in the agriculture field. It seems as if everyone follows the ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’ rule and takes no interest in learning and applying new technologies that could completely transform their fields and lives. Luckily I’ve got a little more money left over and will be able to continue to hold more trainings for women’s groups and possibly another finances/budget training for the males.

Our soccer team held our first ‘little buddies’ clinic this month. We had about 30 little girls come out to the field and I had my girls lead them in warm-ups, games, drills and a final match. My girls were EXHAUSTED by the end of it and naturally I let them all know that that was how they made me feel after every single practice. I don’t think any of them listened to that… It’s amazing how difficult and exhausting teenage girls are to work with… Who would have thought? :) The little girls loved it though and kept showing up to our scheduled practices until I finally designated every Sunday as ‘little sister’ day. It is cool to see my girls working with the younger girls and becoming role models to them as well as to see the enthusiasm that the younger girls bring with them. I think the hiring pool for the future Burkina Faso women’s team will be solely based out of Solenzo…!!

I also took 10 of my older girls down to a fellow volunteer’s site where they and 3 other groups of girls participated in a 4 day Coaching for Hope camp. I think it was a great opportunity for them to see a different part of their country and interact with girls from different socio-economic classes then them. For me, it was an opportunity to get to know my girls better and to finally see them bonding more as a team. I feel like in Africa the bonds between family members and ethnicities are so strong that sometimes it prevents relationships with those who aren’t included in those categories. Being a real team, a family, rather than a group of hot-tempered, gossiping individuals is something that we’ve really struggled with and it was so rewarding to see the girls finally stop bickering with one another and take the first steps towards becoming a team. With everything that girls face here – teen pregnancy, forced marriages, excision, lack of encouragement and lack of power, to name a few – it would be so much easier for them to face and stand up to all of that as a group of girls, rather than as individuals. That would be my main goal with the team and after the last week I hope/believe it’s finally gotten somewhere… just as long as it carries over to Solenzo. Oh yeah, and we had a final match between all the willing girls and the coaches for our grand finale. I made sure to constantly remind the girls of this match during the week leading up to it as well as continuously reassure them that we coaches would be taking away the win! In case you were wondering - we won (of course), had to show those girls why we were the coaches! :)

So now it’s back to village again where I’ll be starting to teach four times a week at two Girl’s Centers and starting a large community garden project! Definitely looking forward to all that, continuing with the girl’s team, English clubs and agriculture formations… Dare I say I may just actually be busy?? It’ll definitely be an adjustment for both me and my fellow lizards if so…!

Oh – and I added some more pictures for your viewing pleasure! Most of them I can’t take credit for and anything that looks really professional/creative/artsy was taken by my fellow volunteer. Anything that doesn’t – that’s mine!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

Well the month of January flew by in village! Just kidding, it never flies... But we have left winter behind and moved forward into the windy/dusty season. Which means that while in the middle of a conversation with someone you'll look up and discover that their finger is half-way up their nose. Even after all this time I can't say I've quite adjusted to that site...

Another thing that I will never adjust to are all the wandering animals. I don't have much talent growing things, so when I actually got 5 of my sunflowers to actually take to the soil and grow, (the other 10 died right away...) I was really proud! I checked them every time I left my courtyard to watch their progress and was so excited that one was just about to give a flower... when the sheep in my courtyard came and ate all of them. So I spent 5 minutes chucking rocks at it, which not one of them hit the target, but was able to successfully hit it with a soccer ball.. which of course it then tried to eat. So I think he really learned a valuable lesson. Legitimately before Africa I would have rather run myself of the road causing thousands of dollars in damage to my car and myself rather than hit a deer. Now, whenever our 100 ton bus goes barreling towards a donkey that's decided the middle of the road is a great place to hang out, all I can think is... 'if you're not smart enough to get out of the way when something 50 times bigger and faster than you is heading straight for you... well, survival of the smartest.' Believe me, PETA would never survive over here.

So besides unsuccessfully throwing rocks at every roaming animal I've started teaching English at our hospital. Pretty much every person here is always telling me that they expect me to 'learn them English.' Unfortunately the one phrase that they are able to come up with is 'I speak English small-small' (which is an amazing phrase because it basically destroys the entire language in fiveish words) and after that they've basically exhausted their English vocabulary. When the workers at the hospital approached me to see if I could come teach them English I figured it was just people once again saying they wanted to learn English and then never actually taking any action to learn the language... However this group was surprisingly more motivated than most so we've been meeting on a consistent basis. Basically the group consists of doctors who are used to being in charge and male nurses. Normally there's about a ratio of 5 males to 1female which makes arguments about what is considered the women's roles vs. males roles in the world incredibly lopsided... Although it is great to not be the one coming up with phrases like 'That's wife's job' or 'From man comes women who wash clothes.' Regardless they're a fun group of people to spend time with even if we do have significantly different perspectives.

The making purses out of discarded plastic trash bags is going really well as well! There are women walking around our village using them as their actual purses and showing them off to their friends and family so I'm pretty excited about how well the project has started off. My next steps will be getting them to try coming up with models themselves, drastically improve the quality of the purses, and teaching them how to organize and market their product. Basically it's a lot to do with only a little time left, especially considering how slow everything moves here in Burkina, but I'm pretty excited about the potential! I think we might even be able to find some money for recycle bins around the village so that'll behuge!! They don't actually care about recycling and will probably think their public toilets but hopefully they'll help decrease the amount of plastic burned , deaths of idiotic animals who eat them and the spreading of sickness from all the kids that walk through the trash without shoes on.

Myself and my counterpart have also decided to go on a tour of the neighboring villages giving formations on personal finances and budgets to farmers there. It's more or less trying to get them to realize that they need to save some money rather than spend all of it at once on brand new phones, motorcycles and houses. Since they get paid in a lump sum at the end of cultivating season we're trying to teach them how to calculate a budget for each month, how to save a bit for medical emergencies, how to cut out the unnecessary items such as cigarettes and Dolo and how to invest money in a garden project or animal (basically the form of banking over here...). They seem excited about what we teach them but I'm not entirely sure how much of it will end up sticking seeing as every time I step out of the courtyard there's someone zipping past on their new moto or constructing yet another huge house of which financing for will run out within 2 months...

So while I've enjoyed everything that I've done this past month my favorite project still remains by far my soccer team. Actually this past month we've run into some male critiques, something that really surprised me. Normally everyone has been pretty supportive of the team, unless of course it's the 12 year old boy who can't decide if he loves or hates girls... This time however, a teacher at the local high school has been telling the girls that the team will never last, that they're not a real team and that they shouldn't waste their time because they'll never even play a game... So awesome that a TEACHER is telling these girls that. The cool thing though is that despite the fact that he's been going around discouraging every girl on the team, we've actually had more and more girls show up. Before our practices consisted of somewhere between 8-14 girls but now they're normally more like 15-20. The team is definitely having an impact on the village, more so than I think any of them even realize. The challenge will be to have them play against a real team though, hopefully in our village, with hopefully every villager watching and cheering... Well dream big anyway, right?

Time here is starting to wind down and I feel like I've got a hundred and nine things to complete before I leave... But before I continue with all those projects I'm actually heading over to fellow West African country, Senegal for the West-African Peace Corps Volunteer conference! And the beaches... more that than anything else...! Ten days of good food, lots of English and the ocean, doesn't get much better than that!

Hope all is well for everyone back home!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

So over the holiday season I got lucky enough to have 3 wonderful people visit me in my current home country!! And while writing blogs is one of my favorite things to do.. I decided instead to feature a guest blog from my younger sister so you all could get her 'outside' perspective of Burkina Faso. Ladies and gentlemen, words from Paige.

"Hello!

Abby's sister, Paige here! As some of you know, my parents and I had the chance to visit Abby over Christmas, and despite the intense heat, abnormally large insects, and long dusty bus rides, had an AMAZING time!! We arrived the night of the 19th and after a solid hour of trying to find a legit taxi to bring us to a hotel, finally settled in for our first night in Africa!

The whole trip went fairly smoothly thanks to our awesome tour guide and translator :) We spent the first day in the capital Ouagadougou, then, along with another PCV and her family, we headed down to Po for a night to the Nazinga Wildlife Ranch where we were able to see nearly 30 elephants, warthogs, crocodiles, baboons, and several kinds of antelope! It was an awesome experience, and good to get out of the city and see the countryside. When we got back to Ouaga, we caught a 5-hour long bus ride (which turned out to be closer to 7 hours, since we spent the last several kilometers moving as fast as a tractor, as one burkinabe said) to Bobo, the second largest city in Burkina Faso, and spent the night there. The next day we took a 3-hour bus ride to Abby's site/village, Solenzo. During the three days we spent there we became well-acquainted with the sights of her village and were able to meet many of her good friends and people she works with. Everyone was so welcoming and hospitable! I also was able to play with the soccer team Abby helps coach, experience the Solenzo night life, eat To and other african food, and am also proud to say I have one dead giant cockroach under my belt!

For the final adventure we headed back to Bobo, and then caught a 1 1/2 hour bus ride to Banfora, aka the "pretty part" of Burkina Faso. The parents stayed at an encampment, while Abby and I stayed two nights with a fellow PCV Kat, who's village was throwing her a party for being there for 1 year. Kat's village was beautiful, and much more like the traditional African village you see pictures of; with the mud huts, traditional African dress, kids, goats, sheep, and donkeys running around, as well as a crazy cool dialect. And once again, everyone was very friendly and happy to have us. The party was scheduled for 8a.m to 6a.m. and included traditional African drums and balifones, as well as traditional African dancing which included shuffling around in a circle for hours on end. Very cool to be a part of! The four of us took a break from the partying to bike to the cascades and domes, the number one tourist destination in Burkina! The domes were massive (similar to the pinnacles in Australia) and great for a little rock climbing :)

The next day it was back to Bobo, and then back to Ouaga for our last couple days in Burkina Faso. In Ouaga we went to the Village Artisinal which had a ton of African arts and crafts, and also went to the Marche, where a herd of Burkinabe constantly followed us around, trying to speak english and direct us to their shops. Abby was able to show off her bargaining skills at both places, and again, we would have been completely helpless the whole trip with out her!

We flew out on the 31st, and got back to the U.S. on the 1st. Quite a temperature change to say the least! Flipping through my 500 some photos while passing time at the airport, it was hard to believe that I had just experienced all I had. It was awesome being able to become completely immersed in another language (my french vocabulary now consists of a solid 10 words) and culture. It's amazing how warm and friendly the Burkinabe are, and Abby's definitely has some solid friendships with many people in her village... along with a few marriage proposals to consider ;).

So for all of you out there considering a visit to Burkina Faso, do it!!!"

Once again I need to say how lucky I was to have my family visit - now when I go home and talk about about my life here it wont just be me that has the images of babies strapped on the backs of their mothers, has seen how the moon and stars can make the night seem like day or has experienced the kindness and generosity of the people living here. It was definitely an adventure!!

I hope all of you back home had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Years!!

Much Love

Hello lovely people,

Well the past few weeks in village have flown by - I've given 4 trainings, held my first soccer match and attended the night of 'Zuk' in village, not to mention went on a 3 day worldwind tour of Southern Burkina...

I'll go ahead and start with the Zuk. It's a dance and as far as names go for dances, it sounds pretty cool right? None of that Waltz or Fox Trot stuff... So this 'Night of Zuk' is held yearly by the local radio station which I closely work with and so for a week leading up to the magical night pretty much everyone working there asked me about 7 times each day whether or not I was going. The only thing was, no one could ever seem to describe to me what the Zuk actually was rather than saying, 'oh it's just a dance.' The night of the dance rolls around and luckily enough for me my friend from my courtyard got permission to go to the dance from her older brother, who happens to be a very strict Muslim. Unfortunately the strictness meant that he could change his mind at any time so we had to set off towards the dance at the very uncool hour of 8:45. Besides the people that were actually working the dance we were literally the only ones there for at least 30 minutes. Not to mention they seated us under a glaring spotlight so everyone who came in could see how incredibly uncool we actually were... So we sit there for about 3 hours watching the one incredibly intoxicated person dancing solely on the dance floor (which turned out to be almost anything better than I could have watched on T.V. back home). Finally when enough people showed up my friend turned to me and goes 'Okay, this is the Zuk!' I looked at the dance floor expecting to see some kind of insane African Hip-Hop/Dirty Dancing/Salsa style dance but instead it was couples hugging each other while swaying on the dance floor. Major let down. Absolutely could of headed right back to an Eastview High School dance if I had wanted to be a part of that... But overall the night was pretty great and it made me feel young again to stay out past the normal 8:30 bed time!!

In sports news, the Solenzo girl's soccer team had their first match of... ever! My 15-19 year old girls lost to 8-10 year old boys by an incredibly score of 10 - 2 in what was probably a 50 minute match overall. You could say that we've got some work to do... Despite the fact that it was a pretty hefty loss, I am very proud that they were able to go out there in front of a crowd of unsupporting males and still try. I don't think it was easy for any of them to hear some of the comments that the guys on the sideline were making not to mention get down right laughed at, but they kept trying and actually had about 5 minutes of brilliance in there! At least it's something to build on! I also have to say thank you a million times to everyone who has been helping us with the equipment aspect, it makes both the girls and the community feel like we are a legitimate team. Honestly, thank you all so much for the generous donations!! Hopefully the winning part will follow...!

I was also able to hold some of the first formations on the plastic bag purses that I've been working on. Unfortunately for the community there exists a large rift between the women who are native to my village and those that moved here from elsewhere. The two groups want basically nothing to do with each other so whenever I teach something to one group I always have to make sure I teach it to the other one or else there's even more bickering... It's so frustrating that they don't realize that this is a huge reason that Burkinabe women in general aren't able to become more developed - I mean they don't even need the men to hold them down, they're doing a great job by fighting amongst themselves. It's incredibly hard to watch to say the least... Anyway I ended up doing the same formation with both groups and was really happy to see how excited they were to make these purses! The second formation was by far my favorite - the first day about 20-25 women showed up and couldn't figure out how to string their 'looms' or how to do a basic over/under weaving. By the end of the day there were only about 3 women who were able to adequately grasp the concept. Day 2 however, just about every women finally understood how to make the purses and were all contently weaving away. They would get really excited to show me their purses and overall just really motivated not to stop at one but to keep trying with plastic sachets until they could get professional looking purses. I took one of the better made purses back to my courtyard with me and all the ladies were telling me they wanted to buy a purse just like it, meaning that these ladies are going to be able to make money off of something that people literally cover the ground with. Very cool. The next few weeks we'll be holding quite a few more trainings on how to make more designs, how to incorporate different 'trash,' and how to make rugs from clothing scraps thrown out by tailors.

Finally the Burkina Faso Bike Tour 2009. It's not quite as big as the name might lead you to believe... it was only 3 days long but we were able to take in the Peaks of Sindou, and 3 other villages. I went from biking about 2k every 3 weeks or so to biking 76k in one day, which at the time felt like one of the worst decisions of my life. The 40k and 50k days afterwards didn't do much to help me change my mind not to mention despite the impossibility of it, I'm pretty sure the entire trip was uphill... But despite how brutal it is to sit on a bike seat for hours straight, it was by far one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life. We passed a lot of villages where the kids chased after us waving their greetings, raced Burkinabe for fun on their no gear, no brake bikes (lost of course but they bike every day...) and took in some of the beautiful orchard scenery that the South of Burkina has to offer. It was both painful and awesome and I'm glad to have done it but will probably never have the desire to do it again...!!

Tomorrow I head back to village to spend Thanksgiving there and participate in Tabaski round 2!! I hope you all have wonderful holidays as well!!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

ONE YEAR!!!!!!!! That's right, I've managed to combat suffocating heat, battle the African wildlife (and this is more along the lines of cockroaches, rats and bats and less along the lines of lions, elephants, zebras or giraffes...), not fall into the abyss that is my latrine and do just a little bit of work in the process! Basically it feels good to have survived! One down, one to go...

Since this is nearly our half-way mark of service us in the Small Enterprise Development (SED) group got pulled into Ouaga for our mid-service conference. During that time we got a thorough (seriously) medical exam and started filling out our first of many mountains of paper. It was sooooooooooooooo incredibly good to see everyone since we haven't all been together for about 6 months now. We also had our own little 'show and tell' section of the conference where we all got up and shared our past few months, what went well vs. what didn't and projects we plan on doing in the future. Like before when we presented it was so cool to see what everyone's life was like in their village and how successful they've all been in the past year. Legitimately, despite the fact that I'm incredibly biased, this SED group that I swore in with is incredibly impressive. The whole time it was just this huge brainstorming, teamwork fest where everyone was giving out ideas and helping solve problems. There are people starting their own loan systems, people planting fields of Moringa, people starting clubs of all sorts, basically anything we can think of that'll keep us busy enough not to watch that 3rd season of Gossip Girl. It's very easy to feel alone during this Peace Corps process since normally you are the only minority, spend hours in a day talking to plants and animals, get stared at by ever male, female, child and toothless old man, go weeks and even months without seeing another American.... With all those factors working against us, I find it a bit astounding that our group can be so much more team orientated. Basically without all the support that is passed around, I don't know if I would have survived this first year.

The past week has pretty much been a reflection period of the year that's past and the year that is to come. All I can say is that I cannot wait to see what's going to happen this second year. Already I have a sweet present to bring back to my village.... Soccer uniforms!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to the absolute generosity of my old coach and team (for those of you who didn't closely follow my career that would be the UWEC Blugolds) I'll be giving my soccer team the awesome present of a complete uniform (Normally the teams here just wear shirts that resemble each other so this is huge!!!), T-shirts to practice in and 3 brand new shiny soccer balls - also a huge feat since quality balls here are basically non-existent and very expensive which is why most kids end up forming plastic bags into soccer balls. Not incredibly durable believe it or not.... Anyway despite the fact that this team is decently terrible and has yet to figure out the concept of 'team' and 'teamwork,' it's still really cool to see the younger girls trying to play games on the sidelines in attempt to be like the older ones and to see the men at our practices actually make positive comments about how the team is playing. Other things on the agenda for the upcoming year: continue to utilize my knowledge of crafts thanks to my Girls Scout training and my mother's love of craft fairs to turn 'trash into treasures/lots of money;' attempt to win thousands of dollars for my women's shea butter group; give out trainings on Moringa, composting and other good stuff over the radio; start an English Only club; work with village women groups to teach them the basic soap making skills, and anything/everything else that I can find. I'm looking forward to the next year and hope I won't even have time to carry on long, deep conversations with my tomato plants. :)

One thing which will remain constant throughout this service is that I still miss all of you guys!! Thanks for all of your emails, calls and mail - definitely makes living over here a lot easier.

Much love.

Well hello from Africa,

I've been hiding out in village for a bit so I haven't been that great about updating this thing lately... So luckily for you that means another long tale of the glamorous life in Burkina Faso!

I think I'll start off with my bat. The thing had been living in my house for about 3 months clearly not comprehending that I didn't actually want a roommate. I had fear of being anywhere but safely tucked away inside my mosquito net after 7:00 when the sun went down because if I wasn't careful that thing would fly out of nowhere straight for my head and despite the fact I realize that vampires aren't real, I can't say I get too excited about things flying towards my head... It would somehow get out of my house and then proceed to wake me up at 4:30a.m. when it would return. Well, one night when it decided to invite 3 playmates over to play in flight battle/mating for about 4 hours, I decided that I'd had enough. After explaining to my counterpart and about 20 other people that I don't leave my door open at night and therefore it doesn't get in through there (because that's not the first thing I would have thought of...?) they called someone to seal up all the holes in my house. I was incredibly happy and excited until it becomes nighttime and I realized that no exit point means flying around my house the entire night. Great. So as it was turning dark I frantically pleaded with my neighbors to come over and find it's hiding spot. In mid-search for the hiding spot the bat comes flying out of nowhere straight for my face. Naturally I started screaming and hid behind a chair while my neighbors decide that instead of trying to hit the thing (yes that is how sophisticated our bat killing machine was - a stick about the same diameter as a golf club...) that they'll instead decide to not even attempt because they're too busy laughing at me trying to army crawl my way out of the house. This whole time the thing realizes who the weak link is and continues bomb diving me, doesn't even concern itself with the others... Fortunately I made it out of the house alive. Just happened to leave every amount of respect that I earned thus far in the house with the bat. It didn't help that numerous neighbors who actually lived in different courtyards sent people over to see who was dying. Turns out they pretty much all have bats that live in there houses and weren't super impressed about the fuss I was making over one... Happily my neighbor (did I mention that she's 9) finally killed the thing so now I am able to sleep soundly through the nights. The one good thing I've discovered about all my different creature encounters is that it seems as with ever new discovery, I become a little less afraid of every other bug/animal. For example, I never used to turn my back on the giant spiders that reside on my walls for fear they'd crawl onto me.... until I discovered cockroaches. And now that I had my bat experiences cockroaches aren't really that big deal... 2 words - Personal Growth.

I guess my biggest project for these past couple months has been somewhat of individual work since those few that were left in village all took about a month long break to flock to our village's very own Hamptons (Bobo - probably the only thing they have in common is that sometimes the houses are bigger....).So seeing as I couldn't keep checking my tomatoes every 5 minutes to see if a new one has emerged, I decided to try and do something about all the trash that gets thrown out. And by thrown out I mean literally chucked out your front door (or if you prefer, the window) since all of the land here is designated as your very own trash can. One of the biggest problems is all the sachets that literally line every road. Not only do the animals, which are the livelihood of many people here, choke on them and die, the people tend to burn piles of them which is about just as destructive as throwing them everywhere. In Bobo a very successful group of women has transformed the sachets into fashionable purses which is awesome.... only they don't like to share their 'how to' with any other groups of women which is not awesome. So I decided to take those sachets, it's equally abundant partner the discarded fabric, and my hazy elementary school knowledge of weaving potholders in order to try and make something that people would be willing to buy. The purses that I attempted were nowhere near as good as the women's in Bobo's but have surprisingly gotten very positive feedback. The same thing goes for the mat that I weaved with the discarded fabric which is more or less your average 8th grade art project but interest to learn how to make and purchase these has been repeatedly expressed as well. .

My other favorite pet project as of right now is my girl's soccer team. My months of hoping and wishing finally came true thanks to the help of one of the incredibly motivated guys who came with me to OAG. Pretty much the day we returned he was out in the village searching for potential players and much to my delight he was actually able to find some! So I went into our first meeting super motivated and even managed to stay that way after only 4 girls showed up. But then my friend started talking to the girls about the team and about how the girls should always remember to hold their heads up even though pretty much everyone in Solenzo will watch them, critique them and talk about them. I did not really get the significance of starting a female team here until that moment, until I looked around at those girls and saw that they couldn't even make eye contact or speak up with just us. Throughout all of my experience playing on teams I've never had to worry about people outright pointing and laughing at me. Of course as soon as I stepped on the soil here in Burkina, I've gotten rather used to people pointing and laughing at me... And if it's still sometimes really hard for me, I cannot even imagine what it's like for these girls that have rarely heard encouraging comments in their lives. I'm not going to lie, I walked out of that first meeting unbelievably discouraged, thinking that this team would just fall into another one of those 'talk a lot and take no action' categories that Africa seems to put just about everything into. I didn't have too high of spirits for our second meeting, expecting us to be down to 0 again. However, I think walking up to that meeting location was probably one of the best moments of my life. All of the girls had come back and this time there were 5 more players with them brining our grand total to 9! Not enough for a team quite yet but what I perceive to be a huge step forward. Slowly but surely more people are starting to come to practices and although we are probably the equivalent of the ball clumping team's of my very young years, this is one project that I am incredibly proud of and believe has quite a bit of potential

My final bit of excitement these past two months has come from manipulating some fellow peace corps volunteers into coming up to my site. My talented friends are able to make high quality homemade soap and jewelry for the women to sell so I lured them into coming to my village to teach my women by promising chocolate and Velveeta Cheesy Shells! So much to my delight and the shock of my fellow villagers, 5 of my friends decided to take the trip up. Before the scheduled formation day, Kat and Amanda (two volunteers) decided to come up a day earlier so Kat could play her flute live on my 'American hour' on the radio station while Amanda helped me DJ. Being able to talk in English over the radio with someone other than myself was a lot more fun, and I can say it didn't hurt that we could say pretty much whatever we found amusing since there are no Burkinabe in my region who could understand (no worries though, we always remained appropriate...). The next day, joined by 3 other volunteers, we held a formation at our Maison de la Femme with about 20 women in attendants to teach my friends how to make tie dye, followed by Kat's master soapmaking skills and Amanda's artsy jewelry. The women were super engaged and seemed to enjoy everything we had to teach them - all in all an incredibly successful formation. The following day we biked out to the highest peak near my village which turned out to be roughly a 4 minute hike up a small hill... But it was a beautiful 10K bike ride and the view from the top was rather spectacular. The villages we passed on the way not to mention the crowd of kids, sheep and cows at the top of the hill all came out to watch us seeing as we were the closest thing to a circus/parade that they've ever seen! I'm hoping to be able to find something to entice people up to my village again in the near future because not being the only one with the 'doesn't belong here' label is kinda great...

So after a long stretch in village, myself and a huge chunk of the volunteers are now heading to OAG to have our send off party for our next departing group. I almost can't comprehend the fact that we've been here for almost a year now and that the half way point is fast approaching. Which means there's still about a million more things to get done here but as they say here after just about everything, 'it'll all be fine." (seriously, advice for everything...)

Hope all is well for everyone back home!!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

Since I haven't written in a bit and since life here has actually been moving more like that of an American life... this might get a bit long so I'll try to mix it up with some pictures...!

So Ghana... Absolutely is/was the land of dreams. Crossing the boarder the grass immediately turned a stunning shade of green, birds sang louder and while the sun was shining brighter, it wasn't the stifling humidity of Burkina. Basically Ghana was brilliant. Eight of us made the journey to what is known as West Africa's 'success story' in order to see more than 5 scragly trees clumped together, splash in a large body of water that wouldn't immediately send us to the infirmary, eat anything and everything that didn't look like a lump of white play-dough, and basically not hear our pet nicknames, Tubabo and Nasara for 10 days.

We kicked the trip off in Ghana's capital of Accra where we spent a couple days wandering through the streets and eating all sorts of unAfrican food. Cape Coast was next on the agenda where a trip to West Africa's oldest standing, slave-trading fort was a must. (Unfortunately for us we missed Barack Obama's speech there by a little over a week). Despite the fact that I've unfortunately never been much into the historical aspects of sightseeing, I'm unbelievably glad I got to check this place out. To be able to able to catch a glimpse of the living conditions that the West African's were subjected to at this time was pretty powerful. Our next stop on the trip was my absolute favorite - the Canopy walk through the Kakum National Park. First of all this place is an actual rainforest so that automatically makes it cool. Secondly, you can spend the night in the park in cabin type tents. Thirdly, the have a canopy walk high above the forest that gives you the most spectacular views. We were lucky enough to be able to spend the night in the park (and be lulled to sleep and frightened awake by all the animal noises) and were therefore able to get to the canopy walk before the busloads of school children and tourists came through. Despite the fact that we didn't get to see much wildlife, not to mention almost fell to our death when the 40m platform we were on started to shift downwards, the view from up above was one of the most stunning things I have ever seen. After being dazzled by the sights of the rainforest, we turned towards Ghana's other biggest sight for us scenery/nature starved Burkina volunteers - the ocean. The rest of the trip was spent relaxing by Ghana's beaches, diving through waves and eating burritos. By the time the bus was departing from Ghana back to Burkina, we were all seriously considering ways to get ourselves transferred.

I did manage to drag myself back to village though for 7 short days and actually had some work to accomplish before heading out again. Thanks to hard work of a fellow volunteer, Burkina will be getting computers shipped over from the U.S. that are high in quality and incredibly low in price. Since my city is one of the bigger ones in Burkina, I thought it was absolutely necessary that we receive some of those and had already spread the good word and gotten local organizations excited about purchasing them. I was incredibly excited about the response from the organizations and the local mayor about purchasing computers and developing our village... And then I found out once again how things work in Burkina. Both getting people to actually commit to a number of computers and then giving me the money in time was a huge headache. I spent every day at nearly the same organizations reminding them that they needed to tell me a number and to get me the money before I left again or find their own means of getting it to the other volunteer. It was actually incredibly disappointing to see such little follow through on their part for such huge opportunity for development. I felt like it was a chance of a lifetime that people should be jumping at yet I felt like I was begging them to take these computers that would change their village and lives. Once again it brings up a lot of questions on development - what's right, how to do it, etc...

While I wasn't continuously showing my face at these organizations I went out to the fields in order to plant some crops for the upcoming season. I was looking for any excuse to get out of it... but am actually extremely happy that I went! Oddly enough being out in the fields reminds me of one of those big church potluck picnics. Kids running around, parents chatting, animals braying, hundreds of people eating out of the same dishes... It was an awesome community feeling with everyone calling out encouraging words as they passed by. My hamstrings were of similar tightness to that of piano chords the following day but it was a very good bonding experience, not to mention earns you some respect for being able to cultivate for more than the expected 5 minutes!

A short 7 days after I returned I was back bumping along our unpaved roads towards Ouaga, and this time it was for something which was quite possibly even better than the paradise of Ghana - Coaching for Hope. Coaching for Hope is this genius idea that takes soccer coaches from villages in West Africa, brings them to the capital city, and for 8 days teaches them how to combine soccer techniques and drills with information on AIDS. I can't even begin to describe how ridiculously excited I was to be able to attend this camp - playing soccer for 8 days straight on one of the only grass surfaces in all of Burkina Faso... I probably would have even road a donkey cart to Ouaga. Coaching for Hope met all of my expectations and then some. From day one, everyone was enthusiastic, encouraging and incredibly into the training. The main coaches were extremely knowledgeable in giving out advice on how to be a better coach on the field and off as well as how to incorporate AIDS (or any other sort of life lessons for that matter) into drills. The participants were all more than willing to do all of the drills, pay attention and participate during all of the lectures and in true African fashion, lead cheers, songs and dances at the end of each day. And us volunteers... well lets just say we were ridiculously happy to be outside, to receive good food, and just be a part of a training that had so much energy. The last day of training was like the last day of camp - the big intra-squad match took place, everyone gave out numbers, people were taking all sorts of photos, awards were presented and there was a big closing ceremony which ended with our weeklong chant and dance. I'm just going to go ahead and say that Coaching for Hope was one of the best things I have done thus far in my life and I'm hoping that my two guys from village were similarly effected enough to apply all that they've learned in village.

So once again after an incredible time outside of village, here I sit in Bobo waiting for my bus to take me back to my home here in Africa. Once again it's the mixed feelings of wanting to get back into village in order to turn everyone into CFA (BF's currency) millionaires, miraculously grow crops for everyone to eat and sell and cure all types of diseases... but at the same time it's always a little daunting to head back to a place that you never really have or will fit into not to mention can't necessarily figure out what role to even be playing... But nonetheless that's where I'll be hanging out for hopefully the next month straight.. And I'll probably have some amazing hamstrings by the end of it from all the cultivating I'm going to be volunteering to do!

Hope all is well back home and a special congrats to Becky and Nate Ness on getting married!!!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

So the rains are starting to come pouring down on Burkina Faso. This means that I no longer have to meticulously try to stay absolutely still for fear that the slightest movement may cause wave loads of sweat. It does mean, however, that periods of time are spent during the day inside for fear you might drown in a giant puddle.

Rain also means over here that it's time to start getting the fields ready for this year's harvest. Pretty much everyone has a field as well so the village is starting to empty out as everyone spends their days out in the fields. Our local high school kids were one of those groups to leave after finishing up with exams. In my village of the 500 third years who took the BEPC exam (some test that gets you something or other.. not sure what since the schooling system over here is quite a bit more than complicated...) only 32 passed. 32. That should probably give you a little bit of insight as to how the education system is run here...

Most everyone else here has taken their equipment and headed towards the field as well. And by equipment I don't mean tractors, sprinkler systems, fertilizer... Nope, I mean their two hands, pile of seeds, dauba and cow. With just that is how about 80% of the people here in Burkina Faso earn their living. As you can probably guess, it's not much. And as you can probably guess, it's not easy. Trust me. I haven't been able to steer a cow yet in order to plow the fields but I have used the dauba, (which is exactly like a hoe except much shorter so you have to bend over to in order to use it) cleared about a 2 meter radious circle in roughly 4 hours and couldn't get out of bed the next day. It's a killer!! It's starting to be a very good thing that most people thought I was joking when I said I'd help them out in their fields...

Fortunately not everyone has left quite yet and their are some people that will remain and not be doing any sort of body-breaking activity for the next 3 months, aka my new best friends in village... But we have been able to get another tiedye formation in which once again I was able to show off my girl scout knowledge which is being referred to as the 'white foreign girls' tiedye models. This group of women has just made their group official though and are extremely motivated to learn all sorts of incoming generating activities so I'm hoping to be able to get some partnership 'we'll teach you tiedye you teach us what you know' sort of formations going on. I'm hoping that this women's group isn't going to completely shut down for the rainy season as well and that they'll provide me with a good excuse stay in village rather than bend at the waist for 6 hours straight... :)

I've also been able to do a Moringa formation with another women's group in town which I'm hopeful will lead to a Moringa field that the women can use not only for the nutritional benefits for themselves and families but also for a potential incoming generating activity. They seemed really excited about it at the time, so I'm hoping their excitement will remain and they'll really want to do this... rather than just saying they want to and then never following through with it... quite the common trend here in Burkina. All of us volunteers, not to mention international organizations around the globe, are fairly excited about this tree as well so if you don't know much about it yet you should definitely check it out. Without going into too much detail it's a fast growing tree (rare) that can grow in all types of soil including the rocky/sandy/clay type here in Burkina (again - rare) and contains within the leaves and pods quite a bit of vitamins, calcium and a lot of other things a body needs at a minimal price (extremely rare). It's also been said to purify water, act as a fertalizer for other crops, has oil which can be used in soapmaking... so basically a miracle in a land where not a lot of them grow...

So right now a group of 7 of us are hanging out in Ouaga, (the capital) waiting to head to the paradise land of Ghana tomorrow. English speakers, beaches, malls.... Absolute bliss!! Who knows if we'll ever want to come back...

Well that's all for now, hope all is going well over there and that you're enjoying summer!!

Much love.

Hello once again from the ragingly hot Burkina Faso,

Unfortunately I have no rat incidents to spice up the blog this time...

But there was another exciting event of sorts that recently took place in our village, the Mask Festival. Now I don't know about you but when I think of an African Mask Festival my mind automatically conjures up images from National Geographic and Discovery Channel, of people dancing around fires with painted faces, spears and chanting. As it turns out, the view of Africa that's portrayed to us in the U.S. through films, t.v., magazines, etc., is definitely not how life really is for most in Africa (something I definitely should have learned by now) or at the very least not of my village in Burkina Faso. The mask festival in my village means that men walk around in groups/lines of about 10 holding sticks and hitting people with 2 of those people being dressed up in... leaves. So... the masks here are really just walking bushes. Who hit people. Nonetheless, pretty much all of Solenzo turned up to watch the first day of this week long event and I of course did too, seeing as it was something other than lizards to stare at! On the last day of the festival everyone was talking about how exciting the grand finale night was and how huge it was going to be so once again I thought that just maybe this would mean scary painted faces, fires, drums and chanting. Again, I was wrong. What this really meant was more walking bushes, longer lines of men, more hitting and as a new twist, quite a lot of drunkenness. (I would like to proudly say though that I never was one of the ones to get hit since I told everyone that my personal friend Barak Obama would be VERY disappointed if anything happened to me. Not a sole touched me and people actually hid behind me!) When people asked me whether or not we had mask festivals in the U.S. at first I would always answer no... but by the end I realized that yes we do. It's called Halloween. Or every weekend at college where people drink way too much, dress up in ridiculous outfits and hit each other. Just like being at home.

After the excitement of the mask festival, I got to attend a Shea Butter formation that our women's group was putting on. While attending a formation spoken in a language where you can only pick out words like 'child,' onions,' and 'work,' (which oddly enough were actually never used together in a sentence..) may not seem like the most wonderful of adventures, I was incredibly glad to receive that invitation. Surprisingly enough to me I've been able to get decently involved and establish relationships with the directors of the government organizations, the radio crew, cotton union etc... but for some reason it's been really hard to get a foot in the doorway of any of the women's groups. There are probably quite a few reasons that a white female can get in easier with previously mentioned male dominated organizations/groups/sectors and not with the women's groups... but I won't take the time to analyze all of that. I'll just say that I was surprised and grateful to get the chance to make some connections with this group. Despite the fact that I could pick out less than 15 words, the formation was a ton of fun. I was really impressed by a lot of these women, mainly the president and vice-president, for their organizational skills (sometime that quite a few lack here) as well as all of their hard work. And they did actually do something that I would have stereotypically called 'African' before coming here, they sang and clapped while they worked. That most certainly made my list of favorite top 10 things that I've experienced in Africa. It was cool to be welcomed into that group of women, at the very least for two days, although I did little other than take pictures and attempt to make Shea Butter... attempts which they all laughed at and enjoyed making me do for that sole purpose... But hey, when in Africa! Since the formation I've been able to have another meeting with the president and am hoping to find them some buyers within Burkina while they're just getting started and then maybe, just maybe, be able to get them the organizational skills, knowledge and certificates to bring them into the international level.

After the Shea Butter formation I actually got the chance to see another women's group do a tye-dye formation. Luckily for me I attended Girl Scout camps way back in the day and my tye-dying knowledge still remained stored, although quite far away, in my brain. Again, I was very excited to work with a women's group and to actually be able to do some of the work this time. Like the other women's group they asked me to participate in some of the pre-dying steps and I think to their surprise I was actually able to not only do all of their models but show them some new ones. Thank you Girl Scouts. This group seemed to have a ton of fun just making fun of themselves and each other, so again, another good experience with a women's group. They promised to get me next time they do tye-dying again so until then I'll be revisiting my elementary school days in attempts to think up some more of those tye-dye models that everyone loved sporting.

Other than that it's been a lot of the same hanging out at the radio/office, chatting it up with the neighbor ladies and planting trees at the environment! And I have recently discovered that I have an insane passion for head-wraps. I have no idea why it took me so long...

Hope all is well for everyone!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

So I skillfully navigated public transportation and made it back again to my lovely village. Once again it was wonderful to hear the 'Welcome back' in different languages.. that was until they followed it up with another sentence 'Tu est plus grosse!' Literally translates into 'you look fatter!' Great. Thanks. It's really good to see you too. I'm just going to keep telling myself that it's a cultural comment meant to flatter and not actually true...

I'm going to go ahead and jump right to my most eventful moment of the month. I had been working late at the Cotton Union/Radio office playing secretary, (which I complained about not having anything to do before so I probably shouldn't complain about having to do secretary type work...) so that by the time I arrived home it was dark. I grabbed one of my water buckets along with my nifty little flashlight phone and headed over to the well in our courtyard to start pulling my water. After the first pull I poured about half the amount of water into my bucket when I heard a weird splash. One of my neighbor girls had come over to the well with me and I turned to her and said 'Wow, must be a big fish!' I was of course incredibly excited because I've never been all that good at fishing or any of those type of chance carnival type games, but for once I had just become one of those lucky few winners! So my neighbor girl grabs my light and shines it on my bucket. Definitely not a fish. Definitely a giant rat. Not a winner. I started yelling (in English of course, couldn't think of enough bad words in French to say at the time), enough so that another neighbor came over, took one look in my bucket, went back into his house and returned with a machete. He walked about 10 feet away from us, poured the bucket out and started trying to hack the thing to death. Not successful. Instead it started running frantically around the courtyard so I took off to hide in my neighbor’s house while screaming in English and leaping over buckets and small children. Not the bravest moment in my life... but it was definitely a life or rabies type of choice. Moral of the story is that I will never again pull my water at night. Now all the courtyard kids like to say 'It's a big fish!' to me and even taught the only girl in the courtyard who speaks no French how to say it in French. At least now when she actually does see a big fish she'll know what to say in French. I'm always trying to help people learn. Huh.

Actually things around here have started to pick up quite a bit. My counterpart and I have gone out to a few surrounding villages now to do compost formations which have all had a decently large turn out... of men. It's definitely a little disappointing to see that the women are never included in any of these formations, seeing as they work just as much and as hard as the men in the fields. The compost is pretty essential here due to the terrible conditions of the soil and these men, who could have continuously done the compost since right after harvesting, have waited until after the last possible moment to start their composts. This means that it won't be ready for the end of May/beginning of June when fields are being prepped, which is a really disappointing since so many of these farmers struggle to have enough money to cover an entire year. I have a feeling that the women would be a lot better at making sure to do it in time as well as be able to use some of the compost for the gardens that most of them have during the non-rainy season. Hopefully we'll be able to hold some composting formations for them as well at the end of the harvesting season, but this means that someone will have to contribute money to the compost supplies and I'm not entirely hopeful that the men will be willing to do that...

Since I've been playing secretary to the Cotton Union lately, I've been able to spend quite a bit of time over at the office which houses both the Union and the Radio. Despite the fact that over here they don't ever rigorously work to establish 'a positive work environment' or have numerous 'team bonding' workshops, the office has such an awesome work rapport. Basically they spend quite a bit of time making fun of each other and handing out sarcastic comments, which believe it or not is something I'm a big fan of! I'm also slightly obsessed with music so it's fun to be able to play my music for them and even get them to play some of it on the radio (which I'm sure is highly illegal).

Thanks to a lot of hard work from fellow PeaceCorps Volunteers, a lot of chances for already funded opportunities have come through (funding is not something we find a lot of in the PeaceCorps). One such chance was to have our village host an agriculture expert to speak with our community about harvesting, planting, fertilizing, etc. Fortunately Solenzo was one of the villages that got to host an expert so the past week we had our 3-day training seminar. We picked team leaders, so to speak, from our surrounding villages and started off the first day in a classroom. The first day was not pretty. We discussed rotation of the crops and spent what felt like 4 hours doing examples of how to rotate crops. Literally the Ag expert would put up a big box, divided into four different boxes with names of crops in each box, and ask the farmers there to rotate the crops throughout 4 years, not repeating the same one in the same box. That first day not one person in that room could do it. It was a very hard and frustrating thing to watch, both because for us that would be something in the ball park of 2nd grade math, but also because it just shows how much the education system here fails the Burkinabe. The truly wonderful thing to watch though was that these guys asked for homework example from the ag expert, came in the next day, and got the problem on the first try. I was very impressed by their desire to learn as well as help their fellow villagers and cultivators improve their field.

So I think that’s quite enough for one post…

Hope all is well for everyone back in the states and that you’re enjoying spring!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

Today is officially the last day of In-Service Training (IST) for us fellow SED volunteers and it’s definitely a bit bittersweet…

We kicked off IST in what has now officially become my favorite region of all of Burkina Faso, Banfora. Those of us located within the Southern region got together for a week worth of language studying, exploring and eating at the world’s favorite restaurant….McDonalds!! Okay not the real golden arch kind but a restaurant with the name, incredibly good burgers and probably the world’s sweetest T’s. As of now it’s my life goal to be just like the wait staff there and somehow get a McDonald’s T with a huge hamburger on the front and wear it every day in village. Besides eating at Micky D’s, we’d have about 4+ hours of language a day along with 2 hours to go visit with a fellow NGO, womens’ groups, Burkina ministry of something or other, etc. Our teacher was unbelievably good and I’m telling you, by the end I was speaking French like a native… well a native Burkinabe at least. We also got to see what must be one of the more well-organized and bigger women’s groups in all of Burkina along with some small organizations, environmental agencies, etc. All in all it was a great week and to top it all off at the end of it we biked to one of our fellow PCV’s sites 8K away and saw the Domes and Cascades. Beautiful is not a word that us PCVs often use in describing the landscape aspects of Burkina Faso, so it came as a pleasant shock to be able to see such beautiful scenery. To put it rather cheesily, it was the perfect ending to our first week of IST!

The following week the SED crew was reunited in Bobo for our first week of technical training. It was wonderful to be able to see everyone again and get updated on everyone’s running to the latrine in the middle of the night horror stories. We spent the first week more or less going over what we did during Pre-Service Training (PST), discussing how we could improve on PST and the SED program, met NGO’s and mainly hung out together and laughed at how sweaty each one of us was capable of getting. For a couple days our counterparts also made the journey down to visit us and we held a workshop to draw up plans for future projects for our sites. It’s always a lot of fun when we have these workshops because by the end all of us PCVs and our counterparts are ready to head back to village and change the world.

But, there has been no changing of the world yet because we had one final week in Ouaga to spend some more time on SED and cross training. Before any of that began though… There was the Burkina Faso vs. Guinea qualifier game for the world cup!!!!!!!!! For a total of 2 dollars we got to cheer while our home team of Burkina Faso crushed those Guineans. Seriously awesome. It was all the better because before the game started they were watering the lawn with a sprinkler, the score-board was broken and the clock was a hand clock that was also broken. Gotta love it. There was quite a few people in Ouaga for the event and we wrapped ourselves up in flags and took to the stands singing with the Burkinabe. At one point we even attempted to start the wave… unfortunately no one besides us Americans seemed to catch on. Hopefully that was all just a warm up for the actual 2010 WC in South Africa… Anyone in? As for work during our Ouaga stay, we took a field trip out of the city to look in on a fellow SED PCV’s site who had been there for over a year. At his site he’s worked a bunch with Moringa (a tree which grows very rapidly in West Africa with little water, in of itself a miracle, but whose leaves also contain large amounts of nutrition) so we got to see some of his fields, how he processed the leaves and how he sold it. It was very impressive and I think we all left feeling a little inspired and wanting to plant thousands of Moringa trees ourselves.

So basically during our three weeks of training we learned a lot both in the way of language and technical information. I can’t say enough about how inspiring it was to be with the fellow volunteers. Just to sit around, bounce ideas off of each other, give each other advice, and plan together was such a difference from the solitude of village. It definitely made it seem as if we would approach everything as a team and less like individual… Very comforting since after spending 3 weeks speaking English, hanging out with friends, eating good food, having access to internet, etc., village once again seems, well, a bit daunting. Fortunately it won’t be starting from scratch like before and my counterpart and I have some projects to take care of for April… So I’m crossing my fingers that the villagers haven’t forgotten about me yet and that I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for the next 20ish months..!

Oh yeah and I was able to upload some pictures while I had all this internet time! The pretty scenery is of the cascades and domes, unfortunately not my village. There’s one with myself and my host family (Burkinabe think it’s cooler to not smile in pictures.. And seeing as they were a wealthy family they could eat more…), the one with the weird dresses is from the swear in, there’s one of 10 of us in that taxi (very safe parents), a couple from Tabaski and a couple from before and during the soccer game.

Hope all is well for everyone.

Much love.

Well hello lovely people,

So Burkina Faso has gotten increasingly hotter, as in over 100 degrees hot. It’s really fun to explain why I have that perfect circle appearing on my stomach… I haven’t quite figured out the word for sweat in either French or Jula so I either tell people that my skin’s crying or that I’m melting. Rumor is April’s even worse…

So I kicked this past month off down in Orodara for an AIDS formation, where 9 volunteers, including myself, brought 4 fellow villagers along in order to further educate the masses on one of Africa’s biggest killers. Like most things in PeaceCorps it seemed to be thrown together at the last minute, but despite the down to the wire planning all of our fellow villagers seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. The volunteers, however, had minimal participation in the formation since most of it was done in Jula by a doctor from the region. I thought this could potentially be problematic seeing as sometimes the Burkinabe are reluctant to talk about the subject of AIDS, such as how one can contract it, what one needs to do for protection, etc., but I was incredibly pleased by how much energy the audience had and how much willingness there was to participate. I guess for those of us volunteers it was more of a chance to see one another and swap the major cultural blunders of the month. The time in Orodara flew by and before I knew it, it was time to head back to my ville.

I can say that the one thing I thought I would never have to do upon arrival in village is sell myself to the people. I knew all about the Burkinabe’s addiction to Maggi, the scorpion carriers and the hot season but had no idea that there wouldn’t be a line of people through my courtyard waiting for advice and ideas. This is after all a country that always finishes near the end in literacy rates and even making it through some of high school is a considered a high accomplishment. Along with the college degree I also figured the word America would give me some credit since just about everyone in the village has begged me to take them back to (which of course I always say yes to… and hope that none of them take me seriously…). However, instead of waiting for the pounding on the door it’s you who has to take the long walks through the community in order to find people to work with, it’s you who has to make a fool out of yourself attempting to speak languages that you don’t know to the constant laughter of others and you who has to all but badger people into meetings and follow-ups. I now completely understand why so many successful politicians have Peace Corps on their resume… Fortunately at that point some of the walks and talks were starting to pay off. I could at least walk down the main street and hear my name being called rather than some form of ‘Hey whitey.’

Before I had a chance to conquer all of the town though, it was time to once again leave. This time I was meeting up with almost everyone who I flew into Burkina with for the BF’s biggest claim to fame, FESPACO. I have no idea what it stands for, but I do know that it’s West Africa’s biggest film festival that’s only held once every 2 years. Of course this alone made it pretty necessary to attend but even more excitingly, I had heard rumors that some of the greatest movies done about Africa such as Blood Diamond and The Last King of Africa had showed in previous years. Being as this is Burkina though, choosing films such as those proved to be pretty difficult seeing as all we had to go by were the films’ titles. If I wasn’t before, I am now a firm believer in ‘don’t choose a book by it’s cover’ because that’s exactly what we did and that’s exactly how we struck out every time. While I’m sure there was some sort of art to washing a dead corps for 20 minutes without saying more than 5 words, I just couldn’t seem to figure it out. We even stayed up to watch a showing of one of the most talked about films in FESPACO only to find ourselves watching some sort choppy chick flick that oddly incorporated a woman’s rights in Egypt. Despite the lack of seeing this event’s Hotel Rwanda, it was still an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

When returning back to village this time around, I walked that main strip from the bus station to my house and pretty much everyone I passed along the way gave me the ‘welcome back’ greeting in Jula or French . I can’t lie, that was an awesome moment. That alone made all those seemingly pointless and relentless walks worth it. Luckily enough the community integration didn’t stop there, thanks to International Women’s Day. Yeah, I never knew it existed either. It’s on March 8th. For those of you who now want to celebrate. The day before the main event a bunch of us women gathered at the House of the Women and prepared to clean the village. Cleaning the village here consists of using a broom (and by broom I mean one with out a handle so one has to bend at the waist and sweep) and sweeping the dirt and garbage into piles to burn. Huh. Despite the fact that to me sweeping dirt seems to be the most pointless activity ever invented, (which I pretty much refuse to do around my house here and is probably why the neighbors think I’m a filthy individual) I grabbed up a broom and swept around town for four hours with somewhere around 30-40 other women. I also should include that there was one male who decided to help us… Although I think he might have been drunk and joined by accident… The next day there was a large parade/gathering and a female soccer game (with some males dressed in the female apparel playing both for and against). The second of the two was by far my favorite event of the day. The women that played were all the ‘old’ women of the village and they were throwing elbows, grabbing on to bodies, picking up the soccer ball, and pulling out pretty much all the same tricks that my teams used to do when we played against the boys. I couldn’t stop laughing at the site of the slightly overweight, older women in WalMart sweatpants and bi-focals thundering after the smaller man wrapped in a skirt, completely ignoring the ball and instead hurling him to the ground like it was no big thing. I wish every day was International Women’s day.

So after that day it feels more like things are clicking between myself and the village. People now stop me on my walks and will say more than just the ‘take me to America’ or ‘do you have a husband’ and I’ve actually had requests for meetings! The only downside to all of this is that I’m once again leaving village, this time for 3 weeks for the In-Service Training. Of course I am incredibly excited about being reunited with the SED crew but I’m also hoping that it doesn’t mean 5-6 steps backwards in integration… Because it would pretty much be terrible to have to go on long walks in more than 110 degree weather and to attempt to explain that there wasn’t a rain cloud over me and that I actually just sweating that much… Can’t wait.

Hope all is well back there and you all made it through the winter okay! Thank you all very much as well for the birthday wishes. It was very nice to receive emails, cards and calls from the other side of the world!

Much love.

Well another month has passed here in village. I really can’t say that it’s been a blur of activity since once again I’ve frequently found myself staring at walls and carrying on conversations with lizards, but I’ll spare you those details and instead recap the more exciting parts of the month…

At the end of the January I attended my first formal Burkina dance of sorts. It brought back memories of 8th grade dances where one awkward soul is dancing on the dance floor and everyone else is just watching and waiting for everyone to start dancing. I think I passed about 2 hours nodding my head to the beat and wondering when I could go home. After a while of synchronized head bopping and toe tapping though, a few more brave souls ventured onto the dance floor and before long pretty much everyone was dancing. Well by that time it was unfortunately about 3 hours passed my bed time so the only thing I could do at that point was head home. I was surprised though, seeing as I thought all the parties/dances would include more African drums, chanting and dancing around a fire pit and less like 8th grade… Cultural exchange right?

The next morning I biked with some people to a village 8kish away for a large Catholic prayer gathering. It’s a special event that happens only one time a year so every Catholic in neighboring villages dresses up and heads to the outdoor church, although I wasn’t able to figure out the significance behind the first Sunday in February… It was another cultural moment and was more of what I pictured Africa to be with the African gospel choir singing and dancing and all the people sporting bright African floral prints.

Other than that most days here are about the same and more or less it’s all about what you can do here to pass some time. One of the ways I try and do that is by taking long, meandering walks around the village (which is actually more like a small town but everyone refers to places as villages here..) so people can get used to the site of a white person living among them. Most the time I either feel like I’m either running for office or competing in a Miss. America pageant with all the smiling, waving and greeting that I do. For however much I don’t particularly love being stared at, there are some moments of absolute brillance on these walks. For example, this morning I came across an old lady (old ladies are by far my favorite group of people here) who was munching on some sort of peanut butter sauce. I gave her the typical smile, wave and the African greeting and she gave me the biggest, peanut butter/toothless filled grin back and gave me the one American phrase that all Burkinabe seem to know ‘Bye-bye.’ I don’t really know why I enjoyed it so much, maybe it was how proud she looked after she said those words or maybe it was the fact that she was so happily smiling with peanut butter all over her face, but I‘m pretty sure I now love her.

I’ve had a few more meetings as well, another one with the Director of the Women’s House and one with the head members of the cotton union. The Director showed me all the items that were to be assembled into a schedule for 2009 and there were definitely a lot of things that I felt I could help with. The only disappointing part was that he had yet to set any sort of dates for the events and seeing as time is a bit different in Africa, I’m thinking that nothing will get scheduled for another month or so… I rather enjoyed the cotton union meeting as well, despite the fact that it was mainly held in Jula and I waited about 2 and ½ hours for it to begin. It kind of reminded me of one of those mafia meetings where the heads of the different families all get together for some important event… Except this gathering was more or less only about cotton… Nonetheless it had all the big-league cotton farmers from around the area present and it was interesting to watch how they conducted their meetings.

Other than that just continuing to live life one day at a time here! And trying to figure out how I’m going to survive the next few months seeing as I’m pretty sure it’s already a billion degrees during the day here and will only get hotter in the next few months…

Much love

Dear Americans,

So life in an African village… Probably not quite as glamorous as you all were expecting.

Us volunteers (no longer trainees, now official) spent our Christmas together and a little over half of us took off the next morning at about 5:30am to catch our bus. Those of us who represent the dirty South spent about 10 hours in travel that day and finally reached the splendid city of Bobo. Bobo is one of the other major cities in Burkina Faso, is located in the South and is also the only other city in country that has a Peace Corps transit-house. It also has a wonderful pizza place, a quaint little burger shop and a much, much smaller version of a SuperTarget. I chose to spend my time there wisely and pretty much spent all of it in those three places…!

Before I knew it though, it was time to head off to the next two years of my life. They piled all my stuff and another guys into the same van and we took off towards the African bush. Now I think all of us volunteers have all heard stories and nervously joked about how the Peace Corps vehicle drops all of your stuff off and you… and then drives away. And then it’s just… you. It was exactly like that. I think it took about 20 minutes for all my stuff to get unloaded and before I knew it the driver and the other volunteer had pulled out of my courtyard and I was standing there wondering what in the world to do.

Well it’s been about three weeks now and I can’t say that thought has exactly gone away. We went from having structured classes from 8-5 almost every day out of the week for two months to having no agenda for the next two years. It is just about as opposite as you can get.

I’d say the first week was one of the hardest ones in Peace Corps thus far. Besides meeting all the high up people in the village, such as the Mayor, prefet, high commissioner, police, etc., your only other real job is battling all the cockroaches, spiders and potentially mice that have taken over your home. There was definitely a lot of down time and I probably read as many books as I normally get through in a year in that first week alone. A lot of time to sit and stare and contemplate your life…

However, each passing day got a little bit better. The ladies that live in my same courtyard are incredibly welcoming and wonderful. I enjoy sitting around with them and their families, attempting to help in any way I can and am also incredibly glad that they have a t.v. This of course means I get to continue watching Burkina Faso’s favorite soap opera. Probably incredibly similar Guiding Light. Or Lizzy McGuire.

Leaving the courtyard is an entirely new adjustment as well. Whenever I leave and walk down the road I can expect pretty much everyone to stop what there doing and stare at me. As flattering as it is, it takes quite a bit of concentration to not accidentally trip or get hit by a moto. Just like everything else here though, it seems to get easier with every day. Everyone is always willing to smile, wave and give the obligatory ‘how’s the family, the life, the activities, the day, the morning’ greeting questions. It’s almost like being back in the good ‘ol Midwest…

Probably my favorite thing about my village so far is that there are a lot of opportunities here. Which means I won’t be reading quite as much or staring at that same wall for the next two years, a definite plus. The past week I had a meeting with a group of women and got to ask them what they wanted for their village. The thing that surprised me the most is that they didn’t ask for money or brand new equipment, something I had thought for sure would be demanded of me. Instead they were interested in solving problems and coming up with new ideas concerning cultivation, exportation, marketing and the environment, the last one being something that I am grossly excited to work with!!

That about sums up life in the African village so far. Not as many elephants, giraffes, zebras and lions that I hoped for… But still pretty cool.

Much love.

Happy Holidays from the BF,

Our training has finally come to an end and as of December 19th, all 32 of us who made the initial journey to Burkina Faso together swore in as volunteers! We’ve now got a few days to live and relax at our training site before we get shipped off to our sites for the next two years…

But before getting into that I’ve got to describe a little bit about what happened over the past weeks… To begin with we were able to take part in one of the biggest Islam celebrations throughout the year known as Tabaski (although probably not known with that type of spelling…) Seeing as our training site is up North where a large population of Muslims live, our entire city seemed to be out celebrating the holiday. Fortunately for us we were able to get the day off of training in order to partake in the festivities! At around 9 in the morning we headed to the ‘Place of Nations’ where hundreds of Muslims took part in the prayer. It was an incredible experience, whether or not you are Muslim, to be among hundreds of people who were praying together in unison. After the morning prayer, those of us who had Christian families decided to go on a ‘Tour de Tabaski’ to other volunteer’s houses who lived with Muslim families. Over the course of the day I think we made it to four other houses where we received plenty of sheep meat (families are required to buy a white sheep and slaughter it on this day), rice, cuscus, green beans, juice and whine. Overall it was a really unique cultural experience and all the delicious food that we got to eat definitely makes it one of my favorite Burkina holidays thus far!!

For this month of December we’ve been finishing up our language and technical courses in preparation for our move to site. Last week was somewhat of the grand finale of training and all of our counterparts (the person we’ll be more or less collaborating with on projects for the next two years) all made the trip to our training site. I’d say we were all a bit nervous to meet the person that we would be spending a majority of our time with for the next couple of years, especially with most of us not quite being fluent in French yet… And of course within the first few minutes when I was trying to ask my guy what his wife does I ended up asking him what his husband does instead...How long they’ve been married for… I’m sure he was incredibly impressed…

During this time those of us who spent training in the city were also busy packing up our rooms in our host family’s house. On December 19th, same day as our swearing in date, we were once again living on our own. It was definitely nice to have freedom and independence once again but at the same time it was hard to say goodbye to the people you’ve grown accustomed to seeing and chatting with for the past 2 months. My nails and hair will not be getting the same treatment for the next 2 years…

For the time being we’re all living at our training site together… I’d say it’s pretty similar to those days I spent at Camp WAPO, although with no camp-wide capture the flag. Instead we spend the days watching movies, replaying episodes of the Office and eating as much good food as we can before village! It’s nice to have a few days to relax and hang out together before we all leave and it’s especially nice that we’ll all be able to spend Christmas together. Our plan for that day is to open Secret Santa gifts, play a little white elephant, eat at a very nice restaurant and maybe have a little ‘no-talent’ show later in the evening. All in all seems like it’s going to be a good day, although maybe a little bit weird because it’ll probably be around 90 degrees…!

It’s definitely crazy to think that in less than a week I’ll be the only English-speaking, ‘Nasara’ for quite some distance…

Hope you are all having wonderful holidays! Enjoy that snow… Merry Christmas to you all and a very Happy New Years!!!

Much love.

Greetings from BF

First of all I’d like to start by saying Happy Holidays to everyone! It’s definitely tough spending the holidays here but I get to be thankful that I am with the other volunteers at the moment! We were all able to spend thanksgiving together, and despite the fact that I missed Grandma’s cake roll, we still had an amazing feast!!

The end of the training period is coming up fast. We only have a couple weeks left of actual training, then a down week to shop for our new houses, Christmas and then we’re shipped out to our villages the following day. It’s crazy to think that the people that we’ve been seeing everyday for over the course of our time here will soon be gone. It’s definitely a little intimidating to think that sooner than later we’ll be out on our own…

During the past few weeks though they have been cramming as much knowledge into our brains as possible. We have continued on with our French learning but have also added on a local language. My local language is Jula, which, in my opinion, is a pretty amazing sounding language. Besides from the millions of language courses we’re taking, we’re also taking classes for our SED programs, such as environmental classes, soap making, miranga trees, etc. We have even taken a couple of field trips, one was a biking one to a semi-nearby village (I think it must have been more than 10K, it felt like forever) for AIDS day and the other one was to a current volunteers sight to watch a women’s group tye-dye and make hard soap (luckily we were able to get a ride to that one).

This upcoming Monday is one of the biggest festival/celebrations in Islam as well as in Burkina Faso called Tibaski (definitely not spelled right). Those of us who live in the city and have Christian families will be doing a ‘Tour of Tibaski’ to our fellow volunteers who live in a Muslim family. We’ve been told there will be plenty of food, including the slaughtering of many white sheep, as well as music and a lot of all around merriment. I am incredibly excited to take part in this grand celebration and quite possibly even more excited that we get to miss almost a full day of classes for it!

The only other thing to report is that this morning I woke up and had to wear long sleeves and pants for a good chunk of the morning. Definitely made my day to see a man zoom by on his moto in a winter parka, thick gloves and a bright scarf wrapped around his head..!

I have a feeling the rest of the time in training is going to fly by and before I know it I’ll be living in my village… hopefully with a brand new, shiny little puppy!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas to everyone, Happy Birthday to the many that are coming up and congrats on graduating to those that will soon be leaving Eau Claire and elsewhere.

Much love.

Greetings from the BF,

I’ve gotta start out by saying thanks to everyone that sent me snail mail. I never actually thought I would get excited by snail mail, but I’m telling you, it’s the little things these days! Anyway thanks for the letters, especially from those people that were born into the world of email and internet and still decided to send me one old school style anyway (I’m going to have to give my Cale and Bess shout-out at this point…)

This week was a big week for us here at Camp Peace Corps… the week that our future sites would be revealed to us. I found out that I will be living in a fairly large town, I believe around 30,000 Burkinabe residents, and will be residing incredibly close to the Mali border. For safety reasons which Denny emailed me about, I guess I am probably not allowed to reveal the name of the town on the blog, although he has also said he will be happy to show anyone my town on the map if you’d like to get into contact with him. Huh. Anyway the site has electricity throughout most of the day from 7a.m until 11p.m. which is crazy! It also has three rooms in it, although I’m not really sure what all of them are for. It is cool to think that I am only 22 and live in my very own house.. Even if it is in Africa..! There was a girl that was living there before me and left some pretty nice things behind, so I guess I am not really going to be ‘roughing it’ in the African bush for the next couple of years. As disappointed as I was to not have mud and a thatched roof, I actually got over it decently fast! The only real bummer about the site is that I am the only Peace Corps Volunteer for about 100K… So I’m probably going to get a dog. And quite possibly a goat which could bring back some nice childhood memories of Snickelfrince, my old buddy I used to ride around the grandparent’s farm. If you have any suggestions on pets or names for my pets let me know!

Also this weekend a couple of us ‘city girls’ took a trip out to the villages to see our fellow trainees. Village life was awesome. Not only was the ground not littered with trash, it wasn’t as dusty and therefore we could see pretty much all the stars in the universe at night! You definitely get celebrity status in the village as well but it’s a different kind. In the village everyone waves hello to you and tries to help you carry your things, which is a nice change from the city where all they do is point, stare and yell. The people there were really welcoming and fun to be around… Not to mention how wonderful it was to sleep outside under the stars. It actually made me wish that I was going to a smaller village where, well, everybody knows your name…!

Us SED volunteers also started working on our Income Generating Activities this week. We split up into three groups and have each paired up with a local businessperson to help them come up with ways to improve their business, both through actual sales and through other ways like accounting and marketing practices. Our group proposed the idea of iced coffee to a vendor that we frequent and she was very open to our suggestions. She sold our iced coffee one day and the next day came up with her own idea to sell iced chocolate milk and tea. We were definitely ecstatic not only because she was making changes to her business by introducing new ideas, but also because we got our very own Starbucks in Burkina! Not sure if she will keep selling all this stuff once her loyal American customers are gone but we can only hope! The business style here, both on the selling and consuming end, are quite a bit different from everything were used to back in the states… I think that’ll be a great subject for the next time…

Today (Sunday) was also cleaning day and I did wash my clothes again today by hand, although one of my sister was telling me the whole time that I wasn’t getting them clean… And then they made me clean my shoes as well, (brown Asics included although I kept trying to tell them that I had gotten them because they were brown so I wouldn’t have to clean them) although to their credit my shoes really do look like they’re fresh out of the box. My clothes are another story… Pretty sure they think I’m the most unclean human being on the planet! But oh well, they still like to paint my nails.

Much love.

Greetings from Burkina Faso… a land that is basking in the glow of Obama’s win.

A few of us stayed over at our training sight, ECLA, to watch the ‘live’ television coverage of the election on Burkina’s local (and I believe only) channel. Needless to say the set looked like something out of the 60’s and there were no pretty colored charts, maps or predictions to follow. I won’t lie, I fell asleep at about 11:30pm BF time since the coverage wasn’t quite as stimulating as CNN… Anyway at about 5am BF time I woke up in time to catch the end of Obama’s acceptance speech. There were only a few of us volunteers left to watch the election but we cheered particularly loud when he talked about the people huddled around a radio listening to the results. Ours was a little fancier then a radio but I’m pretty sure he was talking about us… The next day we were celebrities around Ouahigouya and instead of being solely called ‘Nesara’ (not a clue how to spell that but pretty sure it means foreigner or whitey) and ‘les blancs’ by the small children we were called Obama by all. It was a welcome change!

To back up a bit and write some about the week beforehand…

We had our much anticipated Dymystification visits last week along with our overnight stay in the capital city. Myself and three other girls got to go and visit a Peace Corps Volunteer located in the center of the country in one of the largest city’s, Koudougou. Let’s just say that our visit ended up being a bit more like a vacation... Well I suppose to us this was as exciting of a vacation as going to Hawaii if we were living in the U.S.. But to you all it would be more like a vacation to Iowa complete with a three nights stay at the DaysInn. Our ‘vacay’ went a little something like this: picked out dresses from a catalogue that we wanted made, shopped at a local market for materials, dropped off the photo and material at a tailors to have it made, made delicious food like fruit salad and mashed potatoes (to be fair I didn‘t do any of the cooking, I mostly just ate the fruit as soon as it was cut up and put into the bowel.. Luckily we had our very own Rachel Ray with us), lounged out by the local pool, and spent the last night celebrating Halloween with costumes and a pumpkin but were safely tucked in bed by 8:30 before things got too out of hand…It was definitely nice to get away from Ouahigouya for a little while and to be able to see how a fellow volunteer lives and works.

After our visit our entire Small Enterprise Development (SED) group met up in Ouagadougou to spend a couple of nights at the transit house. Although the name implies that it is somewhat of a halfway house for recovering addicts, turns out it’s just the place that all Peace Corps volunteers around the world can stay in for a very low price… Free internet included! If that doesn’t make you want to join…. While we were in Ouaga we also had a Mexican feast cooked for us at our SED director’s house. It was probably the most amazing thing I’ve eaten yet!!

We returned back to ECLA after our little vacation/trip and it was back to classes in Ouahigouya. We’re fast approaching the mid way mark of our pre-service training and I can speak for most of the group when I say we are looking forward to the end! It seems as if everyone had a great time on our Dymst visit and cannot wait to get into our villages. Although I don’t know if us SED kids are entirely ready for the village seeing as many of us have electricity, a television and some of us lucky ones even have running water… A couple of my health volunteer friends came over to see the house and meet the fam and let me know that this life was in no way similar to village living. I will be taking a trip out to the bush next weekend to stay the night though, so I’m going to finally experience the African bush!

And as a side note, I think that language for all is improving. It seemed like so long ago that I was telling my host mother ‘I friend rice’ rather than ‘I like rice.’ Luckily for me though, there have been other large blunders within our group. I think my favorite of all the stories though has to be about one of my favorite health girls sprinkling millet (some sort of grain) all around her toilet because she thought that her family had told her to do that. They were a bit confused when she came back with the bin and no millet… Pretty soon we will begin attempting to learn a local African language so I’m sure there will be plenty more miscommunications along the way!

Not too much else on the horizon except within a week we will be learning which village will be graced with our presence! I know Denny is particularly looking forward to that seeing as he bought the worlds most detailed map of Burkina that shows every city/town/village/tribe/elephant and I’m sure he’d be happy to let you know precisely where I’m located!

Wishing I was in the states right now to see the aftermath of the elections….

Much love.

Ne y ebiogo fellow Americans,

Thought I’d throw a little African dialect your way, spice up your day a bit…

Well it’s week two of the journey although I’m pretty sure my fellow trainees and I have been here for 2 months instead… It is amazing what you become accustomed to in such a short period of time. I am no longer bothered by the hundreds of flies that land on me per day nor the fact that there always seems to be a perfect circle of sweat on my stomach. It also feels as if I’ve known all of my fellow trainees for an incredibly long period of time since up until this week we’ve pretty much seen each other’s sweaty faces 24/7. Sadly though, this week our happy group of 31 has split into two, with 13 of us Small Enterprise Development people living in Ouahigouya and the rest spread across three villages outside of town. It’s definitely weird to not see everyone every day and definitely a bit more lonely…

Although I am missing my fellow trainees out in the African bush, I did move in with my host family on Sunday. Let’s just say that I am living in upper Manhattan compared to most of the rest of the volunteers residence in Queens. My family, which consists of a mother and four daughters ranging from 12 to 22, has a television, electricity and running water for their indoor shower!! Probably the only thing bad about this place is that the bathroom is still outside and filled with giant bugs so I try as hard as possible to never to visit it and prefer to hold it until I get to our training site. I’m sure I’ll pay for this later when I have severe bladder problems for years to come but for now I’d say it’s worth it! I haven’t quite adapted to the giant cockroaches yet…

The family is as wonderful as their ‘modern’ house. From what I sort of understand from my wretched French, the mother works for the Economics and Finance department of the government and oversees banks in Ouahigouya. To be fair this could be incorrect though seeing as I don’t seem to comprehend much…Communicating has been a bit of a struggle but I am determined to be able to speak with them in French (and after I conquer that hopefully the local language Moore). Each day has seemed to be a bit of an improvement over the last although I have to credit some of that to the fact that the two older ones have studied a bit of English. Despite the fact that I can only speak and comprehend simple sentences I enjoy hanging out with the family and even get to occasionally watch a soccer match on the television.

The typical SED trainee day in Ouahigouya consists of waking up at 2:30a.m. because the idiotic roosters outside the window somehow think that it is sunrise, again at 4:00a.m. because the donkey ran into the goat and won’t stop hee-hawing, and again at 5:30a.m. because the sun really does come up then and the roosters just won’t quite. Finally at 6am it’s time to rise, check the room because there is guaranteed to be some new bugs that have nestled into our room and hop into the shower/bucket bath. Breakfast consists mainly of bread and nestcafe so most of us (grudgingly at this point seeing as we‘ve had bread at pretty much every meal) grab the bread and head out the door to language tutoring. The next few hours are split into two sessions, one session of language tutoring and another of either health, safety and security, culture diversity or SED training. For lunch we zip around town on our ten speeds and grab a lunch which has mainly consisted of a sandwich, beans, or rice. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to expand our horizons much seeing as it is incredibly easy to get lost in Ouahigouya due to the fact that almost everything seems to be covered in the same reddish/brown dust and buildings are never greater than two stories. Afterwards it’s back to training for the rest of the working day, tutoring afterwards and possibly a run. Although to be fair that last part seems to be rare because it is rather difficult to run in Africa seeing as the temperature doesn‘t like to drop below 80 and the small barefooted, sometimes naked African children run after you screaming ‘Mensara mensara” (white person) which potentially drowns out the Ipod... This is not to say that the kids here are not adorable because they are, especially when they are wrapped to the back of their mothers with only a towel like cloth. I still can’t figure out how they stay on… Anyway for the rest of the night I’m at my host family’s house hanging out with the sisters and attempting to converse while they comb my hair.

The days seem to get long and repetitive here but luckily we all still enjoy each others company and small things, like watching a heard of goats and those funny cows with the big bump near their head cross the street, still makes me smile. Fortunately we also have sessions that every so often remind us why we are here. It’s in those sessions, the ones where we talk about the illiteracy rate, the mortality rate, the small businesses, the exports/imports, the agriculture, the generosity of the people and their willingness to accept everyone, where we finally breathe again. These are the sessions that put things into perspective and remind us why we are working so hard and giving up all those things in life that we know and love…

I think I’ll stop there before I get too dear diary… Anyway that will be my life for the next couple months. We’ve got some great sessions coming up, such as visiting the capital during one of the biggest craft shows in all of Africa (presents anyone??) as well as traveling to a current trainees village to see what sort of things they are doing there.

Stay safe and healthy! Thanks for the emails, although I struggle a bit responding quickly enough with the limited internet time and French keyboard…

Much love.

Hello dear people,

Just as a precaution, this is going to get a little long. You may want to grab a snack in between or possibly take a short nap before wading through all of this… I guess the best place to start would be from the beginning….

Leaving the States sucked. Let’s just put that out there. I never knew that saying goodbye could be so hard/awful, but turns out it is! I am above and beyond blessed to have such an awesome group of friends and such a caring family all of whom sent me off in the best possible way. Thank you so much for all the love and support, although it definitely made it much harder to leave!

On to Africa….

Flew into Philadelphia on Monday, oddly enough on the same flight as another fellow Peacecorps volunteer from Eden Prairie. I met her along with another guy in the airport (we were able to pick each other out because of the overwhelming amount of luggage we were toting) where we grabbed a quick lunch and went to orientation to meet our fellow trainees.

All of the trainees fall into the age bracket of 22-31 which includes one married couple. I’m not going to lie, everyone here seems to be pretty brilliant. For instance pretty much everyone has traveled and stayed in a third world country before, has an impressive resume and education background and can speak at least one language, some people even taught themselves French within a matter of months and can speak it adequately. Needless to say I think the group is decently intimidating but at the same time everyone is extremely friendly, outgoing and helpful.

We arrived in Africa on Wednesday night (I know most of you will never believe this but Africa is HOT) which is odd to think that it has only been 5 days since we’ve been here since it feels like I’ve been in this completely different world for so much longer. Since the beginning, each day has seemed to stretch on for ages since we have had tons of meetings, orientations, classes and tests beginning from sun-up to sun-down. For our first night we stayed in one of the nicer hotels in the capital city where we had more information thrown at us along with language testing and medical clearance. I can say that I passed the medical exam but definitely have some major work to do with language! The following day we headed towards our training sight in Ouahigouya where I and my fellow Small Enterprise Development people will be living for the next couple of months. (The community health development volunteers have to stay out further in the villages for their training although they do come in at least once a week for volunteer-wide training. Suckers). It’s definitely going to be weird being split up from one another since we’ve all seemed to bond incredibly fast within the short time that we’ve been together… Luckily we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other still!

Training days range from 7am-6pm and consists of language, culture, how not to get AIDS/malaria/diarrhea, and a wide variety of skills that we may find handy for small enterprise development. As nerdy as it may sound I’m actually unbelievably excited to work on my language (both French, Moore - a widely spoken dialect here, and possibly another local language) and SED skills which have classes titled Animal Husbandry, Gardening, Environmental, Microlending… etc. Cool right?!? During the entire time that we are in training we will be staying with a host family which we actually find out today! We have lovingly titled today as our adoption day (no one can replace you Denny and Linda, no worries) and get to spend the following couple months in a room in a Burkinabe family home where we get breakfast and dinner cooked for us. Not a bad deal if I do say so… And speaking of which the food here is not bad thus far. We’ve had spaghetti for a meal, along with rice, fries, curry and chicken, so nothing has been too out of my element yet, although I am hearing that I will soon be eating something called Toe (sp?) and something called Foo (sp?) which I guess is a local specialty here…

I feel as if I’ve got about a million and one more things to write about but this is grossly long and I‘m sure there will be quite a few more to come… Anyway if you so feel inclined to send snail mail my address here is

Corps de la Paix Americain

01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01

Burkina Faso (West Africa)

Or if you prefer modern technology my email her is ofstedaj@gmail.com. (and I’m getting a cell phone pretty soon so stay tuned for my African number!!)

I hope all is going well for everyone back in the states. Make sure you write to me and tell me about the election and how everything is going in your life!

Much love,

Abigail