"Effective political action must address, and seek to alter, the power relations that perpetuate the problem it seeks to solve. Often, finding a workable solution means changing how groups interact with each other, whether by increasing the power and capabilities of one of the groups, facilitating new forms of compromise and collaboration, or establishing new boundaries or safeguards. As many valuable critiques of Kony 2012 have pointed out, killing Kony or “bringing him to justice” does little to alter the situation in Central Africa, or the years of colonialism, exploitation, and political failure that allowed Kony to come to power in the first place. The actions of the campaign do not help those who have been terrorized by Kony take charge of their own lives or support a vibrant political system that serves their needs."

Sam Menefee-Libey, "Beyond Kony 2012: Atrocity, Awareness, & Activism in the Internet Age"

While the focus of my research in northern Uganda has nothing to do with Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign, it was, I admit, one of the precipitants for choosing the research question I did. In short, after watching the Kony 2012 video and consuming critique after critique, my reaction was, "what about the rest of the story?" Thus, a research question was born.

In addition to my research, I'm writing a paper on the critiques, ethics, and implications of the Kony 2012 campaign for human rights activism and advocacy writ large. A friend recently brought Chris Blattman's fantastic blog to my attention, where I found this treasure of an e-book:

Beyond Kony 2012: Atrocity, Awareness, & Activism in the Internet Age (edited by Amanda Taub)

If you're at all interested in some measured and well-researched responses to Kony 2012, most authored by academics, practitioners, and journalists who focused on the conflict prior to IC's efforts, you can download the e-book for $2.99 on Leanpub.

It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.

Freya Stark

The other night, my first real "night on the town" in Gulu, I partook in "Mexican night" with a group of expats, went to a house party, and continued on to BJ's, the most popular bar/club in Gulu. Among the night's interesting happenings was an encounter with Jacob, a major subject of the original Invisible Children documentary. Jacob is no longer the twelve year-old who movingly breaks down recounting his abduction and his brother's murder by the LRA. He's 21 and studying law in Kampala. He's also, as it were, a bit of a player, evidenced in the very direct attention he paid to a friend of mine that night. We chatted briefly, mostly talking about our mutual interest in human rights law. It took my a solid 30 minutes or so to process the experience of meeting him.

To give further pause to my months-long cogitation on Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign, I spent much of my Saturay morning enjoying banana pancakes and conversation with an IC staffer who has worked both in IC's San Diego office and, for the better part of the past year, in Gulu. Our conversation hinged on her experiences working for IC, the impact of the widespread criticism of Kony 2012, and our respective thoughts on those criticisms. If perpetual consideration of this issue for the past two+ months has taught me anything, it's to learn to get comfy dwelling in the gray. Practically speaking, those of us engaged in work that deigns to improve the lives of others need to acquire the ability to get very comfortable existing in the realm between black and white, where moral and ethical questions don't always have concrete answers, and where practical considerations sometimes trump hard-and-fast standards. At the same time, something that I think has been missing from my graduate education has been an emphasis on the need to engage in constant self-reflection when engaging in questions of humanitarian intervention and the promotion of and advocacy for human rights. I wonder if professors get so comfortable in their silo-ed environment, full of kindred types, often far removed from the contexts and conflicts we're considering, that the primacy of ethical considerations gives way, if it existed in the first place. Perhaps that's unfair. As of yet, I'm just not sure. I do know that I've gained more from conversation with my peers than from conversation with professors on this topic.

On a lighter note, this morning I had a chance encounter with four Americans I'd met Friday night. As I headed out of my hotel to a nearby cafe to do some reading, they were preparing to visit a dance troupe, associated with their NGO. The Child is Innocent pairs sponsors with students in northern Uganda to facilitate education for those who would not otherwise have access. Kevin, one of the founders, invited me to join them on a visit to a beneficiary who is about to graduate from teachers' college and has founded a dance troupe comprised of youth from her neighborhood. It was an incredible treat to watch them perform. I took some video, which I'll post when I have better internet access. Until then, some photos...

Thanks for reading! 'Til next time.

Gulu is the second-largest city in northern Uganda.

Greetings, Readers, from Gulu!

Nile crossing - the de facto border between north and south Uganda.

I arrived Tuesday, in style as it were, since my cousin scored me a cush ride in an Embassy car that was headed north. It was lovely to get out of Kampala (which took about an hour) and head up through the hinterlands, which offered stunning views and a new take on Uganda. The topography changed markedly as we headed north, from verdant hills to more savannah-like terrain. The road was great until we were about 2/3 of the way, at which point it deteriorated markedly.

The trip was uneventful until we crossed the Nile at a bridge the effectively divides north and south Uganda. There are UPDF (Ugandan Army) officers permanently stationed at the bridge. I unwittingly asked the driver if I could snap a few photos of the impressive view of some raging rapids. He said hesitant because, as I later found out, it's prohibited to take photos due to the presence of a military installation up the hill from the river. Two UPDF officers then approached the car, one looking particularly perturbed. The less-perturbed fellow approach the driver and explained the reason that photography is prohibited, while the other officer attempted to grab my rather expensive camera through the window. Happily, the driver and second officer diffused the situation and compared my photos to the portion of the view that was sensitive. Luckily, I hadn't snapped any photos including the installation, so was allowed to keep my photos. We continued on our way as I uttered profuse apologies for the driver, who laughed at me for being both naive and over-apologetic. All's well that ends well, in any event.

After arriving, I headed to a hotel recommended by a grad school friend living in Gulu. I then met up with a Peace Corps-era friend who is currently in Gulu, as well. The world is, indeed, small. We met some Ugandans and other expats for dinner - my introduction to what has proven to be a large and interesting international community in Gulu.

On day two, I met my hotel neighbor, a Canadian who works at the same NGO as my grad school friend. We hit it off immediately and ventured into the center of town for lunch. She hadn't been feeling great and, when we encountered my friend from Burkina Faso, he urged her to get a malaria test immediately. Fast forward two hours to me holding her hand while she had blood drawn, almost getting thrown up on, and, finally, relief at the diagnosis of a virus, not malaria. Talk about a bonding experience.

Since then, I've met more and more of the mzungu (expat) community here - students and researches like me, folks working for NGOs, or who've made a home here and run businesses. It's been incredible. This community has, so far, informed my research as much as the incredible Ugandans that I've met with.

More on the last few days to come. 'Til then, thanks for reading!

Roadside monkey.Mango season!

Sunset view of Gulu from my hotel balcony.

Gulu twilight.

Now more than ever do I realize that I will never be content with a sedentary life, that I will always be haunted by thoughts of a sun-drenched elsewhere.

Isabelle Eberhardt, The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

Hello, friends!

It's been a fantastic week since I last wrote. I spent the end of last week running errands around Kampala, particularly, securing my research permit from the National Council of Science & Technology. After filling out some not-unreasonable, straightforward paperwork, I showed up at the NCST office and was floored by how fast and smooth the process was. Afterward, I sat down to talk with two young Ugandan bloggers who are the founders of Uganda Speaks, a wonderful site focused on young Ugandan voices addressing Ugandan issues. Our conversation provided a lot of food for thought, particularly regarding the intervention of the western world in Africa. That evening, I met up with a friend from undergrad for a delightful evening of dinner, wine, and great conversation.

On Friday, I joined my cousins for a going away party for an Embassy staffer. I didn't meet her until the end of the party, only to discover that she's from Denver and graduate from high school with several of my friends. The party was a lot of fun and afforded the opportunity to talk with State and USAID folks and get some input and reactions to my research topic. Hanging with my cousins and their colleagues puts diplomacy and state-sponsored development work in a whole new, very practical light.

Last weekend, we headed to Jinja and the source of the Nile with some of my cousins' State Dept and USAID friends. My cousins are serious campers and have rooftop tents on their Land Rovers, so our setup was impressive. We enjoyed two days of swimming, sitting around the campfire, and exploring the Nile headwaters by boat. The most striking aspect of the boat trip, aside from the knowledge that we were floating over the source of the world's longest river, was the array of birds--kingfishers, fish eagles, cranes, cormorants, pelicans, egrets, storks, ducks, hornbills, and so many more. Uganda is a bird-watchers paradise.

As we continued down the Nile from the source, our boatman guide pointed out a huge pillar on a hill overlooking the source where John Speke, who "discovered" the source, once stood. Coincidentally, my cousin lent me Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost," a fascinating, disturbing history of the Belgian Congo, the only colony ruled by a single man, and not a state, and the resulting int'l human rights movement that emerged once the atrocities committed by King Leopold's forces came to light. It's a great read for Africa and human rights enthusiasts, alike.

It's been so wonderful to have the opportunity to relax, explore, read, and catch up with family during the first two weeks of my time in Uganda. Having the time to sit still and move a little slower has impressed on me just how hectic life has been during the last year and a half of grad school. 3 jobs, an internship, a full course load, and an active social life have been hard to balance. It makes me to eager to move on to the next step and a more predictable schedule.

Next week, I move on to Gulu, in the north, where I'll embark on my field research.

'Til next time, thanks for reading!

Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one.

Beryl Markham, West with the Night

The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood.

Sir Richard Burton

Greetings from Lubowa, on the outskirts of Kampala. I'm writing from a comfortable seat on the veranda of my cousins' house, with a beautiful view of Lake Victoria. The scene is resplendent with dense foliage including palm trees, banana trees, flowering trees, shrubs boasting hues of brilliant white, violet, magenta, marigold, powder blue, and saffron. There is a subtle and consistent chorus of melodic birdsongs, punctuated from time to time with the honking call of an Ibis.

It's been over four years since I left Burkina Faso, after 27 months of Peace Corps service. This six-week trip to Uganda is my first return to the continent. I'm here in an entirely different role, as a visitor/tourist, student, and researcher. My six weeks will consist of visiting family--my cousin and cousin-in-law work at the U.S. Embassy--and research in northern Uganda, in collaboration with a U.S.-based NGO and an association of indigenous Ugandan organizations.

After 24 hours of typically tedious but surprisingly seamless travel, I arrived in Entebbe three days ago. The first thing that struck me, in a deeply comforting way, was the hot, dusty smell unique to Africa, with subtle variations.

I'll spend the first two weeks of my trip in Kampala with family, networking with contacts in Uganda, catching up with a college friend, and partaking in some weekend adventures, including a camping trip to Jinja and the headwaters of the Nile and some sailing on Lake Victoria. This is Africa as I have never experienced it - with the comforts of expat life, a driver to take me into the city for meetings and errands, consistent wireless internet access, and the wonderful hospitality of family.

Yesterday, I ventured into Kampala for the first time to meet with a representative of an NGO association sponsoring my research permit application (DENIVA - the Ugandan Network of NGOs and CBOs [community-based orgs]). It felt at once vastly different and intimately familiar. Kampala is nothing like the West and North African cities I've experienced in terms of the level of overall development, but the roadside stalls, encompassing everything from restaurants to mechanic shops to purveyors of every good and combination of goods imaginable, are ubiquitous in sub-Saharan Africa. Many of the roads we traversed could easily have been in Ouagadougou, Accra, or Dakar. Isaac, the driver, provided a narration of Kampala sites as we traversed the city, passing Uganda's parliament, embassies, the industrial region of the city, and even a lush golf course.

Today, after enjoying a lazy, rainy morning in Lubowa, I'll head into Kampala to procure my research permit, meet with a young journalist, and grab dinner with a college friend. I'm excited to sit down with Rosebell, an up-and-coming journalist and blogger who writes on current events, culture, and politics and has authored and filmed some wonderful pieces in response to Invisible Children's Kony 2012 campaign. I hope that our conversation will lend some useful context, in terms of public opinion and youth activism in Uganda, to my research, which focuses on the capacities of NGOs and IOs to provide rehabilitative and reintegrative services for children formerly affiliated with fight forces (CAFF) in northern Uganda.

Thanks for reading. 'Til next time.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Martin Buber

Kampala

Downtown Kampala

Kampala traffic

Qaddafi Mosque

Kampala from Lubowa

INDIA!

For the continuing saga of post-Peace Corps life, check out my new blog at: http://chrissyhart.wordpress.com/

During my last month in Burkina, I made a clandestine 3-day trip to Mali with a few PC friends (I’d already used all of my vacation days). The opportunity to see Dogon Country - a unique 100k-long escarpment that runs parallel to Mali’s southern border, whose sheer face is scattered with centuries-old villages nestled amongst the cracks and crevices – was too good to pass up. So I swallowed my moral reservations, informed many friends so that my whereabouts were known and headed north. I’ve held off on publishing this post in the interest of being divested of my volunteer status before confessing but I don’t regret my transgression for a moment – the trip was more than worth it.

Voici, les photos du voyage:

The things that hurt, instruct.

Benjamin Franklin

Dear Readers,

This is one of the last few blog entries I’ll publish…until I start my new blog to report on new adventures, that is.

I arrived in Ouagadougou yesterday after saying goodbye to my village for good. The last several weeks have consisted of uncertainties, changes, a plethora of emotional highs and lows and more goodbyes than I care to recount. As my last week in Burkina Faso begins, I’m emotionally drained and have begun to feel acutely the weight of two years of challenges and growth. I’m simultaneously sad to leave, knowing that this is not an experience one can ever revisit or recreate, and elated at the prospect of a solid month of relaxing at home and then moving on to explore new corners of the world and, well, get on with life.

After working the last week of volunteer training, I headed to village for four days in order to ready my house for my replacement and to say my goodbyes in the way I wanted – individually, taking the time to visit with friends and their families, take photos and make my exit quietly. Some friends – mostly civil servants – gave me a hard time for not throwing a party or making more of my departure, but that didn’t appeal to me, being beyond my means and the means of the average villager. Instead, my goodbyes consisted of conversation; rehashing funny moments – cultural faux pas and foibles, insect-induced screams, lingual confusion - from my first months in village, promises to stay in touch and to send photos and thanks…many, many thanks.

The hardest goodbyes were with my female friends – the unique, dynamic women whose daily struggles and accomplishments never cease to amaze me – and my babies; the children in neighboring courtyards and my counterpart’s family, whose constant, unwavering affection and utter inability to judge me the way I’m so often judged as a stranger here, has been one of the absolute sustaining elements of my Peace Corps service.

I’m just beginning to realize how challenging moving on from and processing this experience will be. I’m the last of my group to leave Burkina – a few of us are already home, many others are traveling and will be for some time, but I think none of us yet fully realizes the challenges that reintegration and life after Peace Corps will present. I think my time at home and then out in the world again (traveling in SE Asia), will allow me to reflect on these 27 months, on the big questions that I hoped to pursue in coming to Burkina, on my place in the world, and on how I’ve changed; what I’ve learned about myself and how it will impact the choices I make and the path that lies ahead.

I recently received an e-mail from a good friend who had just finished his PC service in Mongolia. He was writing about his post-service travels; relaxing on a Cambodian beach, beyond content with a hammock, a good iPod playlist and some copies of The Economist. He wrote that he was just beginning to reflect on his service and those “big questions” pertaining to development, the efficacy of Peace Corps, the impact volunteers make, and countless other elements of the experience. He said those answers are slow in coming. Right now, it’s hard to imagine having answers to those questions at all – being able to generalize or summarize anything about two years of a life transplanted…it’s hard even to imagine actually being back in the States in six days. That said, I know that I’m tougher, wiser, and, grace of getting knocked down and picking myself back up time and time again, better than I was 27 months ago.

As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

International Herald Tribune

The Associated Press Published: August 26, 2008

MONROVIA, Liberia: One of Liberia's most infamous warlords admittedTuesday that he had trained in Libya and helped topple the government of Burkina Faso before overthrowing Liberia's president.

Prince Johnson, a warlord who has reinvented himself and is now a senator in Liberia's U.S.-modeled Congress, had initially refused to appear before the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

His testimony Tuesday before the packed hall was another turning point in Liberia's struggle to make the actors of its brutal 14-year conflict face up to the horrors they inflicted.

Although he is now a senator, Johnson is viewed by many as a warlord-in-a-suit. He is best known for the gruesome torture of Liberia's President Samuel K. Doe, who died in 1990 in Johnson's custody.

Johnson led the assault, taking Doe hostage and then videotaped himself drinking Budweiser beer as he ordered his men to cut off the former president's ears. The videotape was copied and sold on street corners. Johnson's men celebrated by parading Doe's body in a wheelbarrow.

Today in Africa & Middle East

Zimbabwe lifts ban on humanitarian organizations

Iran says it has 4,000 centrifuges working on enrichment

U.S. military secretly sending foreign fighters to home nations

But since Liberia emerged from war in 2003 and he, along with other warlords, reinvented himself as a senator, Johnson has tried to distance himself from the president's death. On Tuesday he told the truth commission that although it was his forces that captured Doe, others are responsible for his death.

He argued that long before he led the Sept. 9, 1990 overthrow, an interim government had been formed in exile. Its goal was to overthrow Doe, who had become deeply unpopular by favoring members of his ethnic group and allowing government forces to brutally kill his rivals.

"They sat in exile and formed an interim government to replace the Doe government when Doe was still on the throne," Johnson said. "I was only the instrument that they used."

"We all were involved in this Samuel Doe matter," he added. "We all wanted a change."

To overthrow Doe, Johnson said he and the other Liberians-in-exile reached out to Blaise Compaore, the head of Burkina Faso's army and the trusted friend of Burkina Faso's President Thomas Sankara. Compaore helped Johnson and warlord Charles Taylor go to Libya for guerrilla training.

In his testimony, he does not say how or why he helped overthrow Sankara. But in his 2003 autobiography, Johnson explains that when Sankara learned of the planned coup, he refused to let his country be used to destabilize Liberia. So Taylor conspired with Compaore to assassinate the president, Johnson wrote.

The 1987 death of Sankara, who was widely considered one of Africa's hopes, was a blow for the region.

Earlier this year, Johnson adamantly refused to appear before the commission, saying he had already apologized to Doe's family. Doe's family has said that although they accept Johnson's apology, they would like him to show them where the former president's body is buried.

At the hearing, Johnson revealed that Doe was first buried on a beach, and was later exhumed and cremated. "Doe was cremated and thrown in the river," he said. "Let us not open wounds."

Although the country held transparent elections in 2005, Liberia is struggling to knit itself back together. With the exception of Charles Taylor who is now on trial at The Hague for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, none of the actors in Liberia's conflict is currently facing charges.

In an effort to heal the wounds of the past, Liberia's new government created the truth commission, where victims and perpetrators are invited to lay the past bare. Many have criticized the commission as toothless, pointing out that numerous well known warlords have refused to testify and even those that have come forward have been less than remorseful.

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

Tom Stoppard

Hello, readers. I’m happy to have something definite to report! Due to the difficulties related in the previous entry and after a great deal of reflection, I have decided against continuing to pursue a third year working with an NGO here in Burkina. I will head back to the U.S. at the beginning of September. In many ways, the outcome is disappointing, but I am happy to have some exciting alternatives for the next year. I’ll be home for a month or so to reacquaint myself with la via américaine and hang out with my family before flying to India in mid-October to meet up with two Peace Corps friends, with whom I’ll travel until the holidays. We don’t have an itinerary beyond a few solid destinations and lots of potential ones. We’ll start in India and work our way east, traveling light and cheap and seeing as much as we can. I’m so excited at the prospect of seeing another region of the world and capitalizing on all the skills I’ve gained during my two years of Peace Corps service in Burkina Faso.

Having traveled a bit during my service (to Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Morocco), I appreciate the ways in which I’ve changed as a traveler. Aside from being considerably more flexible, comfortable with uncertainty and discomfort, and travel savvy in general, I’ve also learned to appreciate travel in a new way and to approach my destination and its culture in a responsible and respectful way, perhaps more so than the average traveler. There’s nothing like two years of intense integration in a foreign culture to impress upon you the importance of cultural knowledge and respect for the very fact of being a stranger in a foreign place.

My plans for 2009 are less concrete, a reality that I am remarkably more comfortable than I would have been two years ago. I’m seriously considering teaching English abroad before beginning graduate school in 2010 and have started exploring opportunities. In any event, I’ve achieved one of the main goals that I set out to in coming to Peace Corps: becoming more in-tune with where my skills and passions intersect and identifying a future course of study that will allow me to utilize and develop those skills while pursuing the things that I’m passionate about.

Despite the frustrations of the last few months and the fact of my third year extension falling through, I am so happy for this experience and the ways in which it has changed and shaped me. I’ve seen and learned so much and, while a lot of the ideas and notions I arrived with have been altered, the idealism that remains is that much more solid for having concrete experience as its foundation.

I’ve spent much of the “summer” in Ouahigouya, a city in Burkina’s north where I am currently, helping out with the 3-month training of our newest group of volunteers-to-be. The training continues until the end of August, so I’ll spend three of my six remaining weeks here and the rest of my time saying goodbye to friends and my village. Due to rainy season flooding that resulted in the complete degradation of the 20 kilometer road to my village, I was forced to move most of my thing out already. As a result, I’ll probably only spend a few days of my remaining weeks in village, especially since my colleagues have all left village to spend the summer holidays with their families in other villages and cities and my closest friends from village now live in Ouagadougou (the capital). As I commence my goodbyes, the weight and significance of my twenty-seven months in Burkina have really started to sink in.

“That’s the tragedy of life – as I always say,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Beginning things and having to end them.”

Virginia Woolf, “The Voyage Out”

Life is short, but the art is long, the opportunity fleeting, the experiment perilous, the judgment difficult.

Hippocrates

The most we can achieve here is to know ourselves unreservedly in our earthly appearance.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Any schoolboy can do experiments in the physics laboratory to test various scientific hypotheses. But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.

Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

Greetings, gentle readers. I had decided that I wouldn’t blog again until I had some definitive news regarding the next year of my life. I don’t really. But that’s news enough, I suppose. The last two months have been busy and fulfilling, but the anxiety I’ve experienced as a result of the next year of my life hanging in limbo has constituted a creeping, underlying stress that has, at times, been a bit unbearable. Ambiguity is inconsistent to my worldview. I work hard to figure things out, to predict, to analyze, to observe and adjust accordingly.

When I applied to extend my Peace Corps service for a third year and was accepted, I thought to myself, “this is a choice I’ve made, this is definitive.” It wasn’t. Peace Corps Burkina requires host organizations with which third year volunteers partner to provide lodging for the volunteer. This can run anywhere from 500 – 1000 USD for the year, a significant amount for any non-profit, especially a local one. Beyond that, a legal agreement must be reached between PC and the organization delineating jurisdiction and responsibility in terms of the volunteer. This has to be approved by PC Washington’s consul before the volunteer can undertake a third year.

Things don’t happen quickly in Burkina. Despite the fact that Peace Corps is an American institution, it often rivals the inefficiency endemic to Burkina. It is a bureaucracy. At this point, I have a host organization interested in taking me on as a third year volunteer, though nothing is certain. Much remains to be done and agreed upon before things move forward. My site (village) will be replaced with a volunteer from the group currently in training at the end of August. I won’t have a home, I want to GO home…to America (third year volunteers take an obligatory month of home leave). If things progress, I will be in Burkina for another year. If they don’t, I’ll be home in early September, after traveling briefly with PC friends. I’ll enjoy some time at home, take the GRE, then take off again to travel until the holidays...probably through India with another PC friend. After the New Year, I may go teach English somewhere or find something to do Stateside. I hope to start a graduate program in International/Intercultural Communication in 2009 or 2010, depending on circumstances.

I’m enthusiastic for the possibilities that lie ahead. The not-knowing is difficult. I can deal with ambiguity to a point, but, as my high school choir director pointed out when I was a senior, I am a Type A. I like structure, assertion, decision, forward motion. While I’ve certainly grown in this regard during my Peace Corps service (structure? ha! logic? predictability? certainly not!), I will always crave direction, knowledge, control…and all the other qualities and elements of efficiency and productivity that make me so very American.

So this is where life stands. I don’t know where I’ll be in two or three months. But as soon as I do, so will you.

Thanks for reading,

Chrissy

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the law of beauty, even in times of the greatest distress.

Milan Kundera

…the gods do not limit men. Men limit men.

Tom Robbins, “Jitterbug Perfume

Come, my friends 'tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all western stars until I die. It may be the gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles whom we once knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts; made weak by time and fate, but strong in will; to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

Greetings, dear readers! I have evolved from a frequent and enthusiastic blogger to an absentee one, which perhaps reflects how this ever-changing experience continues to...ever change. It becomes harder to focus a blog entry on just one subject or experience as I am busier than ever with work in village, preparing for the new training group that arrives in June, a visitor from home and, eventually, to go home for a month...and come back for another year! My third year details are not yet concrete and thus will constitute a blog to come.

Before I report on recent goings-on, however, an administrative note:

My address will change until I am settled in my new situation next fall, thus, mail should be sent to the Peace Corps office in Ouagadougou until further notice:

Chrissy Hart, PCV

Corps de la Paix Americain

01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01

Burkina Faso

West Africa

Also, since Google is LAME (ok, lame in regard to this particular gripe) and doesn't give loyal users more than a Gig of memory per photo page AND blog, I can no longer post pics on either my Picasa site or this blog. So, I have a new photo page and, upon returning to the BF for year three (yikes!), I will start a new blog, so that my entries will continue to be aesthetically AND intellectually stimulating.

Chrissy's Pics (Picasa Page # 2): http://picasaweb.google.com/chrissydhart

Now on to village news. This entry's topic is the recent smashing success of two girls' camps that occurred in my village, Diabo, and Diapangou, that of my PCV neighbor, Orelia (photos from the camp are posted on my new site, link above). With the aid of funding from PC Burkina's Gender And Development (GAD) program, members of the congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Church of East Aurora and many of Orelia's friends, we organized two three-day camps for female students (13-16 year-olds) in each village focusing on decision-making, confidence-building, thinking about the future, as well as a variety of health topics - female physiology, menstruation, reproduction, methods of birth control, STDs, etc.

We collaborated with our village high schools' administration and faculty, the staff of our local clinics and Action Sociale, a government ministry focused on social welfare, particularly issues pertaining to women and girls. We had a midwife, nurses, the director of my village clinic and the AS facilitators explaining menstruation, fertility, reproduction, birth control and STDs, while Orelia and I facilitated the "Life Skills" elements of the camps. We have a great Peace Corps-developed "Life Skills" manual with lots of culturally appropriate activities dealing with an array of issues facing school-age youth in the developing world. We used a few activities from the book to elaborate upon the importance of all the health information provided during the camps by providing strategies for positive behavior and responsible decision-making.

Overall, the camps surpassed our hopes and expectations. Ou collaborators were stellar - knowledgable, patient, and committed to providing as much information as possible - and the 50 schoolgirls who participated were more engaged than we had imagined possible. We had some really frank, productive dialogues which were enhanced by the presence of the Burkinabè women facilitators who were more capable of responding to questions and concerns regarding relationships and sexual behavior in Burkina.

The camps have been one of the most fulfilling projects of my service and a positive note on which to end my work in village. My service won't end until late July, but I'll be spending time up north for 6 of the 11 weeks of training for our soon-to-arrive newbies and well as travelling a bit with my first visitor from America! It's hard to believe that my time in village is up, I have no doubt that it will be incredibly sad to say goodbye. I am, however, ready and excited for the next phase of my West African adventure.

If it were customary to send little girls to school and to teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just and fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences. Indeed, maybe they would understand them better...for just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their understanding is sharper.

La Cité des Dames [The City of Women] (1404) by Christine de Pisan

I have been remiss. I've had lots of exciting things to write about - interesting travels, work in village, future plans - but as the pace of life only continues to increase here (with the odd reprieve of a sweltry, lazy village day), I find it hard to sit down and blog when I have the opportunity. Thus, a quick recap of the past few months and the invitation to check out my goings-on via photos (the medium that I have managed to spend some time making public!).

Highlights include:

- 8 Mars: International Women's Day which we celebrated in village with a host of activities including a parade, speeches, an exposé on the feminization of HIV/AIDS (the theme of this year's IWD), soccer games, a relay race, a bike race and a soirée with dancing.

- an Easter trip to Arly National Park, in a somewhat remote corner of Burkina's southeast. Our group biked around the park (on some VERY rough trails) and saw an array of creatures: elephants, buffalo, koba, bush deer, warthogs, baboons, hippos, some neat birds, etc.

- a late March trip to Burkina's southwestern region for the Semaine Nationale de la Culture (Nat'l Week of Culture) which consisted of some amazing dance and musical performances from groups all over the country, including several from the eastern region and villages near mine.

- in early April, our group's Close of Service conference, where we processed some of our Peace Corps experiences, talked about leaving BF and life after Peace Corps, discussed career exploration - resume writing and informational sessions with local development workers and foreign service officers, and, finally, had a pretty sweet party celebrating our two years and the atypical fact that almost of all of our group actually made it to COS (Burkina has one of the highest "early termination" rates of Peace Corps countries). Our group's official COS date is in late August, though many volunteers will leave in June or July.

I have photo albums documenting all of the aforementioned on my Picasa page so please check 'em out if you're so inclined:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hart.christine

I hope that my next entry will include some exciting and definite news about my plans post-August, but I don't want to report anything before my plans are concrete (so mysterious! ok, not really, I just don't want to be presumptuous). I'll say this: my eagerness to return to "la vie americaine" may have been premature.

…at my worst, I have been a cacophony, a mass of human noises that did not add up to the symphony of an integrated self. At my best, however, the world sang out to me, and through me, like ringing crystal.

Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

In 2007, 1.6 million African adults and children died of AIDS, 1.7 million African adults and children were newly infected with HIV, and a total of 22.5 million Africans were reported as living with HIV.

12 million African children have been orphaned by AIDS since 1981.Source: UNAIDS

Hello! As a member of PC Burkina's HIV/AIDS Task Force, I had the opportunity to participate in the 11th Int'l Conference of the Society For Women and AIDS in Africa/Association des Femmes Africaines Face Au Sida from February 4th to the 7th. Below is an article I wrote on the conference for the Zakramba, PC Burkina's monthly volunteer newsletter. It was a great experience and an informative and generally encouraging look into development both at and beyond the grassroots level. The conference consisted of SWAA/AFAFSI delegations from countries across the continent and representatives from a host of int'l organizations and NGOs.

News from the A-Team:11th International Conference of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africaby ATF member Chrissy Hart, GEEFebruary saw the descent of a particularly impressive and mobilized group of individuals upon Ouagadougou. The 11th International Conference of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa convened on February 4th and consisted of a variety of lectures and round table discussions on themes including: epidemiology, prevention and public health, clinical care, gender and HIV/AIDS, stigmatization and discrimination facing people living with HIV, economic and socio-cultural issues, as well as politics, ethnicity and human rights. Conference participants included an array of stakeholders: SWAA delegations from countries spanning the continent, health care professionals, NGO workers, government representatives, United Nations and World Health Organization officials, and us, Peace Corps Burkina’s AIDS Task Force. The conference was sponsored by UNAIDS, Unicef, and PAMAC (Programme d’Appui au Monde Associatif & Communitaire de Lutte Contre le VIH/SIDA) and the theme was “HIV/AIDS, Gender, and Human Rights: It is time to act.”The Society for Woman and AIDS in Africa was born when several key African women leaders predicted that HIV/AIDS would most severely impact African women and children at the 1998 4th International AIDS Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Today, SWAA consists of a network of 41 country offices and is the only pan-African HIV/AIDS organization working with and for women and their families based on locally determined needs and priorities. SWAA’s mission is to advocate on behalf of women, children and families in the fight against HIV/AIDS and to mobilize communities by strengthening capacity to prevent, control, and mitigate the impact of the epidemic. The international organization envisions a world free of HIV/AIDS where African women and children are empowered to claim equal rights, access to health care, education, and economic and socio-cultural opportunities.Dr. Claude Millogo, PC Burkina’s Health APCD, is the President of SWAA Burkina and was one of the principal coordinators of this year’s international conference. The quality and professionalism of this year’s conference certainly made an impression on participants based on numerous comments made during the closing ceremonies, much to Dr. Claude’s credit. Members of the AIDS Task Force assisted in an organizational capacity and with translation for Anglophone participants and were able to attend a number of lectures and round table discussions.Highlights of the conference included a lecture on various efforts toward universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment, a round table discussion on working with HIV+ youth and another on methods of prevention such as the female condom, microbicides, and male circumcision. Robbie Nelson (RPCV-Tanzania), a representative of The Female Health Company – the sole manufacturer of the female condom - presented on the development of the first and second generation female condoms and fielded a host of questions pertaining to marketing, use and accessibility. Another interesting presentation was put on by The Condom Project, a U.S.-based non-profit organization sponsored by the United Nations and Mtv. The presentation included a video documenting the successes and failures of promotion and training on use of the female condom among sex workers in Ethiopia. Perhaps most engaging was a presentation by a member of SWAA Ghana on the comprehensive educational campaign that they’ve undertaken to create awareness of and promote the female condom throughout the country. The scope and success of their efforts, from trainings of trainers to a multi-media advertising campaign, was truly impressive. Finally, another exciting aspect of the conference was a reception for participants hosted by Chantal Campaore, the first lady, at the Presidential palace. Attendees enjoyed cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, good music and even got down and danced with Madame La Presidente.The conference was a unique and illuminating experience for members of the ATF. We helped out a little and had the opportunity to learn and experience a lot. It was encouraging and inspiring to be exposed to such a dynamic group of men and women focused on change and progress in Africa, engaged in candid and frank discussions about reality and how to move forward from the status quo. I wish that every volunteer had the opportunity to participate in something like the SWAA conference and observe a pan-African effort that, though it faces significant obstacles, is making a real impact.The AIDS Task Force would like to thank Dr. Claude for the opportunity to help with and participate in the 11th International SWAA Conference and to congratulate her for all of her efforts and contributions as SWAA president. Targeting the HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the most daunting undertakings one can imagine, but committed, mobilized individuals like Dr. Claude and the conference participants engender hope as progress continues.

First things first. I’m posting two blogs at once so please check out the previous one about my trip home if you haven’t done so already. Also, I’ve changed my procrastinating ways and finally uploaded lots of current pictures on my new Picasa photo-sharing page (they‘re downloadable, for those who make an appearance), so see the sidebar/below for the link and check ‘em out.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Hart.Christine

As I mentioned in my previous blog, fellow volunteer Joel and I made a stopover au Maroc on our way back to the land of sand. We arrived in Casablanca and hopped a train (a train! one that came on time! seriously!) to Fès, one of Morocco’s imperial cities and the hub of Moroccan culture and art (the city was founded by Romans in the 8th century B.C.). After a scenic 5 hour train ride through the Moroccan countryside, we disembarked and took a cab to Fès El-Bali, the medina or old city. Most Moroccan cities have a medina which is the ancient (and typically still current) city-center, made up of a maze-like network of stone streets and alleyways, medeival in feeling but quite modern in function.

We stayed at a modest but centrally-located hotel that a friend had recommended, enjoying the incredible views of the medina from the rooftop terrace. Though it was much colder than we expected (they actually have cold in North Africa), we bundled up and spent two days drinking Moroccan coffee, sampling tagine and other local fare, and trekking through the medina, getting lost and more lost, but always able to recover our orientation thanks to Joel’s actual geographical sensibilities and my bizarre, slightly inconsistent directional sixth sense. We saw Fès’s famous tanneries, the origin of some of the world’s most reputed leather goods, toured a few carpet shops, admired many of the 350 mosques that lie inside the medina, drank delicious mint tea, and chatted up several friendly shop owners, all impressively good-humored and persistent. I did end up buying some gorgeous Fès needlework and a pretty Berber bracelet, but was able to restrain myself for the most part.

The trip was a great transition on our way back to Burkina and la vie africaine. It was neat to see a small slice of North Africa and appreciate some of the cultural variation (not always so obvious here), that makes Africa such a rich and interesting continent. Morocco certainly whet my appetite for my post-service Africa exploration, I can't wait to see more of the continent!

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The World would split open.

Muriel Rukeyser

Bonne Année 2008!

I’m back in Burkina after a whirlwind trip home that involved several cities, holidays, a wedding, and much-needed quality time with friends and family. America was great but it’s good to be back here with a new appreciation for the 7 months I have left in Burkina.

I left Burkina in mid-December with several other homeward bound volunteers. After a layover in Casablanca and a day of travel, we arrived at JFK. My initial reaction? First, amazement at the diversity of the people I saw - nationality, skin color (an array beyond black and white, that is), style of dress, etc. Second, the enormity of, well, everything; the buildings, the parking lots, the roads, the crowds of people, the selection of items at the airport shops…it was at once slightly overwhelming and wonderfully familiar to be plunked down in the land of consumerism and comfort.

I grabbed dinner with a volunteer I’d traveled with and a Peace Corps friend who came to meet us at the airport, enjoyed my first beer aux Etats-Unis, and embarked on my final flight to Buffalo, eager to see my parents and sleep in my own, miraculously cloud-like (ok, what I’d imagine a cloud would be like) bed.

Home was good - lots of parental TLC, updating my iPod, Mom’s cooking, catching up with high school friends, snow, Christmas at home, seeing family, going to church. It was all easier and more familiar than I thought it would be…until I went shopping the day after Christmas (imagine a foreboding musical interlude here). I was scheduled to continue my journey to Annapolis for a wedding three days after Christmas so, armed with gift cards and a serious shopping list of items to bring back to Burkina (a garlic press, trail mix, shampoo not of European origin, etc.), I set out for the chaotic monstrosity that is a suburban strip mall the day after Christmas. The Subaru seemed to drive itself to Target and Borders (old habits die hard, apparently) and I suddenly found myself standing in front of the biggest building I’d seen in a year and a half (ok, not really, but it seemed that way). Target. Everything under the sun…and more. My memory starts to fail me here. I recall a feeling like horizontal vertigo, if that makes any sense, and experiencing a sort of out-of-body, I’m-here-but-not-really-here daze as I wandered through the aisles, seeking kitchen utensils and nylons. The long and short of it - it was a confusing and somewhat frightening experience, though I did emerge with a garlic press, nylons, trail mix and even managed to continue on to Borders for my East Africa guidebook and issues of The Nation and The Economist (yes! print media! IN ENGLISH!). Needless to say, I didn’t attempt the grocery store. That clearly would have been a disaster.

The shopping episode was followed by fervent packing, a manicure and pedicure (manicure # 2 of my life, pedicure # 1 - enjoyable, to say the least, though I apologized profusely for the state of my feet), dinner with summer camp friends (hello, nostalgia!) followed by an actual camp reunion (hello, former campers who are now in COLLEGE!). The 28th, I was off to Annapolis to see one of my best friends get married. Whew.

The wedding was…awesome. Love, the union of two souls, good friends, good food, dancing, hitting the streets (bars) of Annapolis after the reception - who could ask for more? Despite the wedding chaos, I got to catch up with two of my oldest friends (the bride and bridesmaid), who are both frighteningly adult but comfortingly still very much the girls I started going to camp with in the 6th grade. I gave one of the readings during the service and managed (I think) to speak clearly and slowly and to avoid tripping on the way to or from the podium. Good stuff.

Next, I continued up to Manhattan (the Jersey Turnpike - so familiar in its monotony and occassional stench) to visit college friends and celebrate New Year’s Eve. I enjoyed the excellent hospitality of friends and even a surprise visit from a friend all the way from Chicago. It was so good to fall into old routines, to fill my friends in on some of my Burkina experiences, share photos, and catch up on all the new elements of their lives. Though I definitely felt some disconnect (lack of cultural context, having no clue about movies, new technologies - holy crap, the cell phones! etc.), it was so good to actually be in the presence of the people I’ve been missing for 18 months.

The thing that struck me most about being home, beyond the contrast in quotidian existence - the ease and convenience and richness of American life , was how much more significant the things that are changing in everyone’s lives seem to be. While conversations with high school and college friends revolved around gossip relating to our fellow alums, the news was engagements, marriages, babies, law school acceptances, new jobs, moves to new cities…in other words, the non-trivial, significant, meaningful stuff of life - the lives of twenty-four and twenty-five year olds…adults. And while my life currently exists outside that realm in so many ways, it won’t for long.

After five days in the Big Apple, which included lots of excellent meals (sushi! Mexican! pizza!), and movies, television, the Met, the New York-ness of New York, I headed out to Brooklyn to meet up with Joel, another volunteer, with whom I continued on the Morocco for three days before heading back to the BF (that’ll be another blog altogether). After a brief subway experience and a ride to the airport with a Peace Corps friend, we were off. Back to Africa.

Traveling makes one modest – you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Gustave Flaubert

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.

Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"

Greetings and pre-holiday salutations!

It's December 17th and in T-37 hours I'll be HOME! Barring any snow-related delays, in a day and a half my feet will be firmly planted on Western New York....snow. After 18 months in Burkina Faso, I am so-beyond-ready-its-beyond-words-to-explain to be home, amongst my family and friends.

"What!? You're LEAVING?"

For the past year and a half, I've collected a lot of names. In village I'm Christine, Christini, Christina, Miss, Madamoiselle, NASARA! ("white person", screamed repeatedly by small children), la blanche, "fo" (you), but for three weeks, I'm going to be Chrissy. I have images of snow covered trees and drinking eggnog in front of the Christmas tree dancing in my head that are so wonderful, if I thought hard enough I could cry (les larmes de joie, bien sur). OK, I actually DID cry when I was in the bush taxi on my way to Ouaga two days ago.

"But you're coming back, right?"It's impossible to comprehend being so far away from home for so long unless you've done it. And if you've done it, you know exactly what I mean. I'm glad that I'll probably never go this long without seeing family and friends again. It's certainly caused me to reach deep down into the depths of my strength and fortitude, and has no doubt made me a lot more self-assured, confident, and, well, tough. But, in a nutshell, it's been hard as hell. When I get back to Burkina, I'll have less than 7 months of service left, which will no doubt fly by. It was such a great feeling to leave village, America-bound, but a tad bit bittersweet knowing that soon enough I'll be leaving for good. Literally ever person I came across during my last few days in village told me "il faut saluer les parents et la famille" (to greet my parents and family) or "donnez nos salutations aux gens de l'Amerique" (say hello to the people in America). This experience continues to consist of such an array of ups and downs, despite the fact that I've come so far from the wide-eyed trainee who stepped off the plane into the humid Sahelian night a year and a half ago. I think part of me will stay in Burkina forever. This place is bewitching, simultaneously awful and heartbreakingly beautiful.

My father said that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains' nobility, the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.

Salman Rushdie, "Shalimar the Clown"

U.S. Agency’s Slow Pace Endangers Foreign Aid

By CELIA W. DUGGER Published: December 7, 2007The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a federal agency set up almost four years ago to reinvent foreign aid, has taken far longer to help poor, well-governed countries than its supporters expected or its critics say is reasonable.The agency, a rare Bush administration proposal to be enacted with bipartisan support, has spent only $155 million of the $4.8 billion it has approved for ambitious projects in 15 countries in Africa, Central America and other regions.And the agency’s slow pace is making it politically vulnerable at budget crunch time. Both the House and the Senate have slashed the Bush administration’s 2008 budget request for the agency, but the Senate has gone a step further, pushing for a change that African leaders say threatens the essence of the agency’s novel approach.Eyeing the unspent billions, the Senate has proposed that Congress provide no more than half the money up front for future five-year projects, which typically come with a price tag of $250 million to $700 million. Such projects are now fully financed at the start to make sure countries have the wherewithal to finish what they start.Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, said that Congress could be counted on to come up with the rest of the money if the countries fulfilled their end of the bargain. But, he asked, where else should Congress look for savings in its foreign aid budget? “Do we cut maternal health?” he asked. “AIDS? Malaria? Do we cut refugees? The only thing that’s got a blank check is the war in Iraq.”Agency officials and the African leaders they assist said in recent interviews that the change would be a big step backward. American foreign aid often takes the form of modest, short-term projects that are planned in Washington and carried out by American contractors and charities. But under the agency’s approach, poor countries with sound economic policies and strong track records of helping their people are chosen to conceive and carry out big undertakings themselves. The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s budget now makes up less than 10 percent of the United States foreign aid budget. By changing how its projects are financed, “then M.C.C. becomes like the World Bank and all the other countries using overseas development aid in stop and go fashion,” said John A. Kufuor, the president of Ghana, who heads the African Union. “The aid is spread so thin that at the end of the day the necessary difference is not made.”The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s chief problem has been its sluggish record in getting projects beyond the planning stage to the point where contractors can actually build the roads, irrigation canals, power plants and clean water systems that poor countries say they need.Sheila Herrling, who follows the agency at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research group in Washington, says there are understandable reasons projects take time and suggests that the agency’s current five-year timeline for each one may be too short.Poor countries, even relatively well-run ones, are not used to planning such complex developments and have needed more time than expected to get them off the ground, she said.Also, the infrastructure projects poor countries need are prone to corruption, and putting stringent accountability systems in place has consumed more time than expected.Development analysts have praised the agency for giving poor countries an incentive to make significant reforms to qualify for its big contracts, including improving education for girls, making it easier for individuals to operate on-the-books businesses. But the agency itself must also shoulder some of the blame for the slow progress, Ms. Herrling said. Its decision-making has been too focused on putting together the projects, rather than on carrying them out. “It shouldn’t have taken so long,” she said. “The agency needs to figure it out this year. They are part of the problem.”John J. Danilovich, the businessman and former ambassador who has led the agency for two years, recently reorganized it to concentrate on results with what he called “laser focus.”“We need to do better and we will do better,” he said in an interview.Mr. Danilovich, a Bush appointee, has convinced Representative Nita Lowey, the New York Democrat who heads the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees foreign aid, that he is serious. Mrs. Lowey said in an interview that the agency was still unproven. And she was disappointed on a visit to Ghana this year to find that its $547 million compact to develop a modern agricultural economy still was not very far along. But on the need for progress, she said, “I do believe that Danilovich gets it.”One of many schools in Burkina Faso that had been paid for by a $13 million grant by the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The future of the Millennium Challenge Corporation is one of the many issues caught in the budgetary stalemate between the administration and Congress.The administration asked for $3 billion for the agency. In their foreign aid appropriations bills, the House provided $1.8 billion, the Senate $1.2 billion. Mrs. Lowey said she strongly opposed the Senate’s proposal to provide no more than half the financing up front, an idea originally suggested by Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana. The House and Senate are expected to settle the issue by next week.If the agency gets the lesser Senate amount, under the current rules requiring the money up front, Burkina Faso, a West African country that has spent more than two years qualifying for and drafting its $560 million to $620 million plan, will get nothing, agency officials said. Tanzania and Namibia are ahead of it in line.Burkina Faso’s prime minister, Tertius Zongo, said his country would be deeply disappointed if the money was not available. “We have done our part,” he said. “This is a partnership.”Burkina Faso has gone to great lengths to meet the agency’s good governance standards. The agency gave it a $13 million grant to improve girls’ education, which the country used to build, among other things, schools with day care centers so school-age girls do not have to stay home to look after their younger siblings.Identified by the International Finance Corporation as one of the most difficult places in the world to do business, Burkina Faso has also halved the number of days it takes to start a business, and reduced by a third the cost of registering property.In small, poor countries like Burkina Faso, every burp and hiccup of an aid agency like the Millennium Challenge Corporation is news — and often front page news. David Weld, the agency’s country director for Burkina Faso, said he did not know how he could face people there if Congress did not come through with enough money to help them.“What type of message does that send to Burkina Faso, a country that has spent a huge amount of political capital and money on this process?” he asked. “What does that tell the Togos, the Nigers that want to become eligible? It tells them: Do everything like Burkina Faso, make all these reforms, spend millions of your own money, and then maybe at the end we might be able to sign a compact with you — or maybe not.”

(Posting this surely violates some copyright regulation, please don't report me to the FCC!)

Africans, less esteemed than ever, seemed to me the most lied-to people on earth - manipulated by their governments, burned by foreign experts, befooled by charities, and cheated at every turn.

Paul Theroux, "Dark Star Safari"

Large-leaved and many-footed shadowing,

What god rules over Africa, what shape,

What avuncular cloud-man beamier than spears?

Wallace Stevens, "The Greenest Continent"

Greetings!

Thought I'd post a few pictures of our December 1st World AIDS Day event which I organized in conjunction with Diabo's lycée (high school). We started the day off with a foot race followed by a sensibilisation (educational lecture) on HIV/AIDS facilitated by two representatives from Action Sociale, a Burkinabé organization that targets a myriad of social issues and, finally, a soccer match at the lycée between teams of 1st cycle (Sixieme - Troisieme) and 2nd cycle (Second and Premier) students, with a few teachers playing on either team.

The organization of the day's events was a lengthy process but it all went off without many problems, much to my relief. The only letdown of the day was when the mayor of Diabo stopped in halfway through the sensibilisattion, interrupting the speakers to utter a few platitudes, thereby giving a number of students the opportunity to duck out, much to my chagrin. The interruption was so indicative of the excessive and often blind reverance of people in positions of power that pervades Burkinabé society, quite contrary to my democratic sensibilities. The mayor didn't even speak himself but had one of his assistants make a short, dull speech. One of the most significant lessons I've learned here is to be moderate in my expectations so despite the exodus of students, I was still happy that everything went fairly smoothly.

A few pictures of the days events...

Students lined up for the footrace.

And they're off!

On the road...

Messrs. Lompo, Pacmagda and Coulibaly (administrator and teachers)

HIV/AIDS sensibilisation at the Maison des Jeunes

(we had about 400 students in attendance!)

Monsieur Birba, one of the facilitators

(using a megaphone as a microphone)

L'Equipe Rouge

L'Equipe Blanc

Action shot

Medical and teaching skills were not lacking in Africa, even in distressed countries...but the will to use them was often nonexistent. The question was, should outsiders go on doing jobs and taking risks that Africans refused?

Paul Theroux, "Dark Star Safari"

A Belated Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all revelled in turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberries and other Thanksgiving delicacies and gave appropriate thanks for all of life's gifts and abundances (especially mashed potatoes).

I headed down to the southwest of Burkina Faso - practically a different country being greener and topographically more diverse than other regions (it's a big deal to see a hill in Burkina). After a 14 hour bus ride from Fada, I arrived in Banfora, a city in the very sw corner of BF popular with tourists for its waterfalls and proximity to the Sindou peaks, where I spent the night before heading to the peaks with a big group of volunteers. Some of the SW volunteers had organized an excellent TDay dinner complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, salad and even stuffing, courtesy of a care package. After traversing a bumpy and slightly perilous 67km route (which took about two hours), we disembarked and trekked up to a plateau amidst the peaks where we made camp (set our stuff down) before heading off to climb around the peaks and check out the amazing vistas of the surrounding bush afforded from such heights. We were sooned joined by another group of volunteers and commenced to make merry, give thanks in turn, and enjoy our excellent meal to the percussive stylings of a balafon group (W. African xylophone) under a nearly full moon. We were joined by lots of locals from the nearby village of Sindou who literally danced circles around us. Personally, I exercised muscles that have been long out of use and felt it keenly for the next few days. All in all, it was a unique and enjoyable Thanksgiving celebration in the company of good friends.

After our adventures in Sindou, I stuck around Banfora for a few days with my good friend and travel buddy, Beth. We recovered from the two hours of sleep we'd gotten in the peaks, then explored Banfora a bit before heading 15k outside the city to check out the falls the evening before our departure. We got a ride with a Burkinabé friend who works for Celtel, a cellular service provider, in his spiffy red and yellow Celtel pickup. We had originally planned to bike but were still sore after all that dancing on Thanksgiving so we opted for the vehicular mode of transport. Banfora falls are not particularly grand relative to other more noteworthy falls (Niagara, Victoria and the like) but were a site for sore eyes habituated to the flat savannah of the east.

A few pictures of the peaks, falls and our Thanksgiving fête...

Welcome to the Sindou Peaks!

Peak-turesque(I am so my father's daughter)

Trekking.

Hiking up to the plateau.

View from the plateau.

Beth and I.

Checking out the views.

View toward the north.

Heather, at an excellent vantage point.

View of the bush beyond the peaks.

A peak and nearly full moon.

Post-meal repose.

Balafons.(Yes, they're ALL smoking...gives new meaning to multi-tasking.)

Banfora Falls.

Rapidly moving water = really exciting.

View from the top of the falls.

Me, contemplating profound existential things next to the falls.

…generations of black Africans dreamed and made love…spirits roamed the bush paths, rain soaked the earth in the wet season, and the sun boiled it all away in the dry season, trees fell in the forests…and if any white men saw these things, they left no papers with black marks describing them. There are no books about what happened before white men came to trade slaves. The great deeds and tragedies of the African ancestors were told by the old ones with dimming memories who performed stories by firelight…Richard Dooling “White Man’s Grave”Greetings from the land of sun and sand. Today finds me…hot, sitting in an internet café in Fada, contemplating the beauty of a glass of ice water (freezers are miraculous!) and my inability to procure one at this moment. I’ll be in the United States in two months and, despite the fact of winter, I plan on consuming copious glasses of ice water, just because I can.The school year is officially in swing (it started at the beginning of October, but things are typically slow in commencing) and my village is once again animated and lively. The atmosphere is markedly changed as the village is again populated with people who spent the rainy season in the fields, the civil servants who are back from their “vacations,” and the junior high and high school students who come from surrounding villages to live in mine during the school year. Work is a bit slow in starting, but things look positive and potentially profitable, especially relative to Year 1 of my Peace Corps stint. I’ve already met several times with my primary school’s Parents’ Association (APE) and will be conducting a training session in the coming week for the officers of all 29 Parents’ Associations in my department. I’m running it in conjunction with the regional representative for the Ministre de La Promotion d'Education des Filles (which concerns itself with the education of girls) as well our department’s Primary Education Inspector (dept.-wide primary ed. administrator). Our goal is to instill a deeper understanding of exactly what the APEs are suppose to accomplish and what the responsibilities of the individual officers are within those overarching goals and the general functioning of the association. Bureaucracy is not a norm here and most parents aren't educated beyond a primary-school level, if they’re literate at all. Thus, the basic functions of a purpose-driven association of individuals are fairly far out of the realm of their every day experiences and practical knowledge. Other activities and events that I’m concocting for this trimester include a World AIDS Day extravaganza at our high school, a “life skills” class for high school girls (running the gamut from sex ed to future-planning to responsible decision making, etc.), a repeat of my very successful girls’ sports club at my primary school, as well as review classes for the CEP like those I conducted last year. But enough about work. A few vignettes from my last few weeks in village:ScorpionsPreface: Scorpions in Burkina are generally not poisonous to the extreme of fatality, they just hurt like a “#à@(9&. It’s evident when Burkinabé comment on the level of pain that it truly hurts.Preface No. 2: Up until the happenings recounted below, I had only seen two very small scorpions in my village. This, I believe, signifies that I am not only anomalous amongst volunteers, but blessed by some benevolent god as well.A few blogs ago, I wrote about the benign lizards that populate my house and lauded the fact that I suffer few of the scarier creatures that other volunteers encounter regularly. This previous reality was recently altered by a most unwelcome visitor. A few weeks ago, I went about my morning routine, enjoying a cup of (real) coffee, born of my newly procured percolator, whilst reading one of the many books that I consume rapidly and voraciously (literary gluttony, if you will). After finishing several pages and a cup of American coffee (thank you, Liz!), I filled up my bucket and went to bathe. As I removed the pagne (length of cloth) I use as a towel from the peg rack hanging next to my shower, I was startled by a small, slightly translucent creature lurking ‘neath said pagne. I soon realized that it was a scorpion, about 3 inches in length. I immediately went outside in search for a neighbour to help me but everyone was in the fields, so I was on my own to battle the minute but well-armed creature. I came back to find that the scorpion had moved but soon spotted it on the floor in front of my shower. I grabbed a can of insecticide and sprayed it, hoping to render it immobile before killing it. No luck. It kept moving. I picked up a broom and started to wack the scorpion. Perhaps the broom was not the weapon of choice. Since scorpions have an exoskeleton-like cuticle that surrounds their body, the force of my blows actually propelled the scorpion toward me. Obviously this was less than ideal. At this point I tried to execute the effort with increased fatality-inducing precision. Success. I killed the sucker – by that I mean that I bludgeoned it into an unrecognizable mass of biomatter. I don’t feel bad about that. Burkina could do with a few less scorpions (this would surely be affirmed by those of my colleagues who regularly encounter several scorpions in a night).ThievesWhy, he wondered...do I love it here so much? Is it because here human nature hasn't had time to disguise itself? Nobody here would ever talk about a heaven on earth. Heaven remained rigidly in its place on the other side of death, and on this side fluorished the injustices, the cruelties, the meanness that elsewhere people so cleverly hushed up. Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing the worst...Graham Greene "The Heart Of The Matter"

As those of you who keep up with my blog know, I had a rather unpleasant incident of theft last spring. It resulted in my relocating to another part of village which, both at the time and in retrospect, was a good thing for a number of reasons. Since then, my village experience has changed enormously and for the better. In short, I love my new neighbourhood, my house, and my neighbors, specifically the rugrats who regularly populate my courtyard.Recently, I experienced another theft, that of an especially sinister nature. Brace yourself.Somebody stole my bra.That’s right. My bra. (Pink, very girly, from a package that my parents had recently sent). A very nice bra. A theft-worthy bra.There is a young woman who brings me water every few days and does my laundry. I pay her the equivalent of 10 dollars a month, a tidy sum given the amount of work. She does not, however, wash my undies because it’s very taboo in Burkinabé culture and, well, who wants someone else to wash their undies? I’m happy to handle them myself. Anyhow, a week ago I had quite a backlog of underwear, so I did a bucket-load of laundry. After hanging said items up to dry on the clothesline in my courtyard, I headed out for a late-afternoon run. After coming back, I did a little yoga, took a shower, started to cook dinner and, while waiting for my pasta to cook, went to take my laundry off the line. I piled up the laundry and, as I picked it up to take inside, I realized that my nice, new, seashell pink bra was not amongst the other clean and dry items. I looked around and quickly realized that it must have been stolen. There was no other explanation. I had attached each item to the clothesline with a clothespin. I immediately got really pissed off. It was not a graceful moment. Being a foreigner, I naturally feel a little more vulnerable here than I would in the States, being a stranger renders my situation that much more precarious. Beyond that, having something new that had been sent from the States was a really nice thing. Despite the fact that it was an object as trivial as a bra, being stolen from (again) made me feel like crap. I proceeded to make a fairly big deal out of the incident, informing my neighbors and, in doing so, communicating my displeasure and hurt.

Laundry

After dinner, I hopped on my bike to go to the marché and sit with Salimata, my best village-friend. I told her what had taken place and she immediately said that she’d come by my house the next day to talk to my neighbors. She was truly offended on my behalf, a fact that was deeply appreciated. She pointed out that it was almost certainly a neighbour, someone who felt comfortable enough entering my courtyard without knocking, and was obviously a girl or young woman. This fact was particularly disturbing since I’m on really friendly terms with my female neighbors and the idea that one of the schoolgirls or young women who lives near me would steal from me was disheartening. In lieu of the theft, I had locked my courtyard door with a padlock upon leaving that evening (my door locks but the key has long been lost, Burkina could be accurately dubbed the “land of lost keys”). When I returned, feeling better for Sali’s consolation, I unlocked the door and walked in to find the bra lying on my terrace. It had obviously been launched over the wall by someone who had come by to return it, knowing that I'm usually at the marché at the same hour each evening, and found my door padlocked. In retrospect, I can’t help but understand the motivation of a young woman for stealing my bra. Village girls and women don’t generally have a lot of clothes and the allure of something pretty and feminine is obvious. Women here like to look and feel beautiful, just like the average Western woman. Whoever it was had enough remorse to return it, which makes me feel less slighted. In the grand scheme of things it’s negligible, particularly considering that I certainly own more bras than any woman in my village. Thus, as they say…ça va aller (so it goes).On the subject of thievery, another brief story:The very next night I was sleeping in my tent, outside on my terrace, as usual. I’ve become accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of music and tam-tams (drumming) during the frequent weddings and various village celebrations. On this night, however, I awoke to the sound of persistent drumming at 1 am. This was unusual. Drumming doesn’t typically begin in the middle of the night. I tried to fall back asleep, but it persisted, and was soon accompanied by movement all over the village and the sounds of men’s voices. Shortly after, I heard the women from the closest neighboring courtyard talking as they sat on a huge slab of stone between our courtyards. I grabbed my headlamp, got out of my tent, and headed next door. I asked what had happened and they responded (in Mooré) something almost completely incomprehensible to me save the word “wagda”. Thief. This naturally freaked me out and I stood around with them until one of the women suggested, in a very maternal manner, that I go back to sleep. I did, eventually, feeling secure only in that I knew that if I screamed, my neighbors would hear me. I dozed off to images of a prowler breaking into some villager’s house, searching for money and valuables (villagers tend not to deposit their money in any sort of financial institution, even though we have a small bank, “caisse populaire,” in village and people do understand the basic value of doing so. I’ve been told this is born of the legacy of colonialism - keeping money in any official institution was risky as it would often be confiscated by the colonial powers-that-were). My bedroom

After a less-than-satisfactory night’s sleep, I got up and stopped by the marché before heading off to school. I asked about the drumming and eventually ascertained that the theft had been of a cow, not a break-in. The drumming was an alarm system of sorts, a call to action for the village men. I felt enormously relieved that it was a cow-thief and not a burglar. The thief had gotten away, but without the cow. Though certainly not a good thing, livestock thievery is pretty common and, in village terms, is not as grave as other, less common forms of theft. Thus, my inquietude was diminished.Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.Milan Kundera “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”

Salimata, selling slices of watermelon at the marché

Harvest TimeWell-fed poets may dream of finding the world within a grain of sand, but a starving man can find the entire universe and all the ecstasies of eternity in a mouthful of groundnut stew and a tin cup of well water.Richard Dooling, “White Man’s Grave”We’re currently in the midst of the harvest season here in Burkina Faso, the dry cornstalks and crisp smell of dying vegetation and dry earth are reminiscent of the autumnal northeastern United States (I can almost taste my mom’s pumpkin pie). The word "harvest" seems most appropriately associated with abundance, Thanksgiving's cornucopia, a holiday meal. Unfortunately, this year’s rainy season, though violent, was brief. It started late, came all at once in deluge after deluge, then ceased unexpectedly. In my village, dozens of houses were severely damaged or destroyed, including the house of one of my closest friends. She insisted on continuing to sleep in it, against my protestations, and her house fell in on itself only hours after she'd been sleeping inside. The southern areas of Burkina experienced severe flooding in July and August, followed by extreme drought when there is typically rain. Climate change? Methinks most certainly. The Sahel (immediate sub-Saharan Africa stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea – Mauritania, Senegal, Burkina, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan) will suffer more than most regions of the world for the sins of the West and the evidence is certainly apparent: desertification, shorter, fiercer rainy seasons, hotter average temperatures, projected water wars. Yesiree, the Sahel is screwed. I recently read an excerpt from a memo authored by Lawrence Summers, an economist for the World Bank. To paraphrase, he suggested that the low levels of pollution in African urban centers are an indication of poor industrial efficiency. Beyond the mere fact of suggesting that lack of pollution in Africa is a BAD thing, an obviously assanine statement, the notion that a professional would even consider conducting serious dialogue in terms of pollution as a positive indicator of development is absolutely MIND BOGGLING.Then again,You didn't have to join the human race. You could have stayed in America where five percent of the world's population consumes seventy-five percent of the world's resources (Richard Dooling, White Man's Grave).

I guess it’s pretty obvious that I have a hard time wrapping my head around the increasingly dire situation that this part of the world faces and the factors of Western-origin that caused and perpetuate it. Please forgive the incendiary nature of the quote - it's a harsh reality that I've come face to face with via this formative crash-course in "this is how the world actually works." Life here is hard. I’m confident that, if anything, my blog entries have demonstrated that. The average Burkinabé struggles in a way that the average American can’t fathom. I understand that better than most, but I only live amidst it, I don’t live it. The fact that the lifestyles we, as inhabitants of the "First World", lead actually make life harder here is one of the universe's sad, sick jokes. The really disgusting thing is that, aside from perpetrating heinous environmental, economic and humanitarian crimes against the "developing" world, it's the example of the developed world, especially the United States, that pushes them to strive toward ill-conceived, damaging production methods and consumption habits that mimic ours.

The harvest itself has been dismal. Corn is a third or half the size it was last year, many millet fields were ruined or produced a much lower yield than usual, and I can only imagine the impact the copious rain, then lack thereof has had on cotton. These are Burkina’s cash crops and, currently, it looks like the average family will eat less than they did last year. Prices are already elevated and it’s clear that we’ll witness quite a bit more suffering and struggle than this past year, from the costs of refurbishing and replacing damaged or destroyed houses and the loss of revenue from poor or failed crops - the mainstay of the average rural family's income. The following is a quote from an article, "Local Leaders Say Flood-Hit Residents Will Need Food Aid for Months," the link to which can be found on the sidebar:

"I was sleeping with my family when I heard the waters entering through the windows," Lassina Sanou, father of eight, told IRIN. He said it cost him 300,000 CFA francs (US$645) to build his mud house; now it's gone and he lives in a makeshift shelter. He lost his crops and cattle to the floods."I have to start from nothing again. I will have to come up with money and it will take years."So, there you have it. I realize this is a fairly somber way to end this entry, but it's reality as my friends and neighbors live it. “The people of the First World are eating the children of the Third World every night for dinner,” he said, staring at Boone, as if he expected this statement to elicit a critique from his listener.“That”s…unusual,” said Boone. “But I don’t know what it means.”“Cannibalism,” said Frank. “You are what you eat; but they aren’t, because we eat it all; therefore we are eating them.”Richard Dooling “White Man’s Grave”

Sarata, Amisatu and Rasmata - my neighbors

A millet field outside my courtyard

It’s hard to reconcile the world I left with the one I find myself in now. I feel as if I cheated fate and got a whole other life in my allotted span.Tanya Shaffer “Somebody’s Heart Is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa”

Well, the working hard may be true enough but it's sure not for the money (though, as you can imagine, $240 a month goes a lot further in the W. African bush than...anywhere in America).

We finished up the aforementioned APE/AME (Parents' Association/Mothers' Association) Workshop this past Friday. It was a productive week, though indescribably frustrating at times. Despite the fact that we were working with some high level civil servants, there remained a constant and sometimes insurmountable cultural barrier in terms of professional norms and approaches to the tasks at hand. A lot of our activities focused on groupwork, which was at once enriching and infuriating. I found myself often playing the role of taskmaster and having to guide (sometimes not so subtly) the group discussions back toward a more relevant course. It was pretty fascinating to observe how the education system in Burkina Faso and cultural norms impact professional life and, specifically, efficiency and productivity. It's easy, even after 15 months here, to take for granted the cultural and professional norms of the U.S. and "developed world." Tangents and anecdotes, no matter how related or relevant they are to a conversation, are typically unacceptable, especially in a structured and scheduled work environment. I found myself constantly looking at my watch and venting to other, equally frustrated volunteers during our coffee and lunch breaks. Despite the frustrations, however, we managed to produce some valuable material for the manual that will result from our efforts and I was able to conceptualize and articulate more fully and realistically the activities that I have in mind for the coming school year, such as meeting protocol and management training for the Parents' Associations and specific activities with the students at my primary school. All in all, a positive and useful experience.

Kim and I articulating some fascinating and important points.

And the ground-breaking ideas flow...

Group work. Many brains are better than...

You can't see the audience but, believe me, they were riveted.

Flip charts - a Peace Corps volunteers' best friend.

Girls' Ed and Empowerment volunteers.

Burkinabé workshop participants.

Volunteers, counterparts, and education officials.

"He scoured the bookstores on the Boulevard St.-Michel for African travel books written in English. He found books aplenty on traveling in East Africa, but nothing on West Africa...Tourists, it seemed, preferred lions and the Serengeti Plain to poverty and the Sahel."

Richard Dooling, "White Man's Grave"

is how it falls..."

And falls. And falls. And falls.

In the last month the rain gods have descended upon Burkina Faso with a vengeance, at least in the East, where deluge after deluge has left us…soggy. They came a bit late this year but have certainly left their mark. My village is dramatically transformed, resplendent in every imaginable hue of green. As the millet, sorghum and corn continue to grow, people have begun to emerge from the fields, the majority of actual cultivation completed. Tending and weeding are the tasks that remain until the harvest in October. Unfortunately the volume of rain that continues currently threatens crops in more vulnerable areas. Though we're hoping for a gentle conclusion to the season, it still pours at least every other day.

As the beginning of the school year approaches, I find myself in Ouagadougou for a Girls' Ed and Empowerment workshop regarding collaboration with our village parents' associations (APE = Parents' Association, AME = Mothers' Association). The APE/AME workshop includes 9 volunteers and accompanying APE/AME members from their villages (mine is my counterpart and treasurer of my school's APE, Aissatu), as well as officials from the central and regional bureaus of Burkina's Ministry of Primary Education and Department for the Promotion of Girls' Education. The week consists of various lectures, presentations, group activities and, most importantly, the creation of a manual specific to collaborating with APE/AME that will serve as a guide for future generations of volunteers. We just wrapped up our first day, which was so chock full of information that I find myself a bit fatigued, as a scheduled 8-5 day is a little more intensive than what I'm used to in village.

One thing that I've noted about the workshop so far reinforces a characteristic of Peace Corps that I've really come to appreciate, as my understanding of and experiences with development work grow. In order to establish their volunteer programs in a given country and as an appendage of the U.S. government, Peace Corps must be invited by that country's government. As a result, health volunteers collaborate with the Ministry of Health, secondary ed volunteers with the Ministry of Secondary Education, etc. This collaboration gives volunteers a better chance of facilitating projects that are relevant, as we have an immediate and reciprocal relationship with civil servants at a variety of levels. For instance, though I have yet to embark on any major collaboration with officials at the provincial level, I have sought their advice on numerous occassions and taken advantage of their contacts for projects I've undertaken. I also work closely with the Inspection (department-wide administrative body for primary schools) in my village, and hope to facilitate training for many of the APE/AME in our department (which has 29 primary schools) in partnership with my Inspection order to enable them to function more effectively.

I think the fact of Peace Corps' integration within government institutions and the specific programs they've undertaken negates a lot of the criticisms that I'm aware of (and that irk me enormously). We are not intelligence gatherers or remnants of a darker, colonial era and we're not shouldering the white man's burden. We're trying to help our host-country colleagues shoulder theirs. Peace Corps volunteers are, generally speaking, the best integrated, most culturally aware strangers that you'll find in any given developing country. I guarantee it.

A propos to rainy season work...it's been slow going, but I did pull off a pretty neat tree planting project. Moringa oleifera is an astoundingly nutritious, multifunctional tree native to India found in tropical, semi-arid and arid climates. "India's ancient tradition of ayurveda says the leaves of the Moringa tree prevent 300 diseases. Modern science confirms the basic idea. Scientific research has proven that these humble leaves are in fact a powerhouse of nutritional value. Gram for gram, Moringa leaves contain: 7 times the vitamin C found in oranges, 4 times the calcium found in milk, 4 times the vitamin A in carrots, 2 times the protein in milk, and 3 times the potassium found in bananas." (http://treesforlife.org/) Aside from their excceptional nutritional value, Moringa leaves can be used for medicinal purposes, to purify drinking water, to make vegetable oil for use as a healthier alternative to palm oil, as feed to improve the health of livestock and, when planted in and around gardens and fields, their fallen leaves improve plant growth and crop yield. Not too shabby.

Having learned about Moringas from a health volunteer, I went out in search of seeds in my region (where Moringas are fairly rare, unlike some other regions of Burkina). I stopped by an "éspace vert" (nursery) in Fada N'Gourma, my regional capital. The extremely kind and helpful owner enthusiastically showed me his Moringa tree and sold me 200+ seeds for the equivalent of about 50 cents. Next, I went to my local "forestier" (don't know how to explain his function, he's like a department (county)-wide official who gives people permission to cut down trees and is responsible for area forestry and environmental projects initiated by the gov't and NGOs). He offered me planting advice and had one of his helpers plant the seeds and raise the seedlings in a fenced in garden area until they were mature enough for distribution. I also worked with my good friends, Marcel and Martine Comberé, a dynamic village couple who are the president of our high school's APE and the president of our women's association respectively. They helped convene a meeting of the women's association at our village "maison de la femme" (women's community center) to educate those present on the value of Moringa, plant trees at the center and distribute over 150 seedlings to villagers. Our first meeting was a success and I look forward to repeating the experience and continuing with sessions involving the many uses of the plants (after those planted this summer are mature enough). Some people in village have already started using the leaves to make sauce that's served with tô, the staple dish in Burkina made from millet or corn. Since the sauce has more potential for nutrional value than the carbohydrate base (which consists of ground millet or corn "flour" mixed with water, then whipped into a malleable liquid that is cooked and shaped into servings the shape of a flying saucer), the leaves and vegetables used in the sauce (baobab leaves, okra, Moringa) can have a huge impact on health. All in all, an exciting undertaking with lots of possibilities for the coming year.

Now for a few pictures...

Richard, my friend's son, and a Moringa tree, only a few weeks after it was planted as a very small seedling. These suckers grow fast!

Loading up the trees before our education session my village's women's association.

And the educating begins.

Marcel interpreting my French presentation in local language.

It sounded so much more interesting in Mooré.

Planting Moringa trees outside the "Maison de la Femme" (women's community center).

Many hands make light work.

Me and village ladies planting.

Martine and trees.

Madame Legma, Governor of the Central-North region, putting in some face time with the village ladies. She's one of 3 female governors in Burkina and is originally from my village. She visits regularly and provides our women's association (and me) with a lot of support.

So that's the news that's fit. It's been over 15 months since I arrived and I've gotta say, I'm at once amazed that I've made it this far, enthusiastic for the next year, and wary of how quickly I know it will pass. That said, knowing that I'll be home to visit in 3 months is...fantastic. My plane tickets are booked and I'm mentally preparing for the cold and snow of WNY and the overwhelming excess and ease of l'Amerique in general. It's gonna be good.

Thanks for reading.

'Til next time (provided I don't float away during the next downpour),

Chrissy

"Here is a starving child, there is a mad dog; feed her, bomb him...information about Africa reaches us, most of the time, through a series of filters which, by reducing the vast continent to a cluster of emotive slogans, succeed in denying us any sense of complexity, context, truth...the West was always rather arbitrary about the names it pinned to Africa: Nigeria was named for an imperialist's wife, Ethiopia lazily derived from the Greek for 'a person with a black face.'"

Salman Rushdie, "Imaginary Homelands"

"Nothing ever stands still.We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater or grow less, we must go forward or backward."

George Orwell, "The Lion and the Unicorn"

song of the moment: Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek"

book i've read that you should too: Jeffrey Sachs' "The End of Poverty"

Nobody said it was easy.

No one ever said it would be this hard.

- Coldplay, "The Scientist"

To see things plainly, you have to cross a frontier.

- Salman Rushdie, "Imaginary Homelands"

Life is full of turning points and moments of staggering clarity. My Peace Corps experience is, conversely, often composed of the opposite: moments of frustrating half-comprehension, cross-cultural confusion, blunders, and disappointing or unpleasant revelations. Thus, those rare, lucid moments of self-perception and insight, the bittersweet fruits of an endless journey, are unparalleled in value and significance. I recently happened upon one of those experiences of self-realization that caused me to reevaluate my current frame of mind and approach to this nebulous, enigmatic undertaking that is Peace Corps in Burkina Faso.

I departed on my recent trip to Ghana eager, I'll go so far as to say desperate, to leave Burkina and its reality behind. Ghana offered the prospect of a refreshingly positive (read: more developed) environment free from my consistent and very personal encounters with poverty and all its appurtenances in Burkina. Beyond a much-needed break from reality and a few days on the beach, this trip held the significance of a reunion with one of my very best friends from high school.

In the weeks preceding the trip, I had undeniably reached a low point in service, as was predicted by the graph of volunteers' emotional flux that we'd been given during training (it resembles, quite literally, a rollercoaster). The year mark typically constitutes the down-slope of a low point, an anticlimax of the cross-cultural experience and, for many volunteers, THE low point of service insofar as its intensity and duration. I had thought myself atypical, successful in staving off the predicted case of mid-service blues, until I suddenly found myself quite discouraged, mired in homesickness and discontent. What better time for a vacation, you might suggest?

While the trip was certainly good overall, seeing my close friend was at once a wonderful and welcome relief and an unexpected burden. I found myself looking at myself through her eyes and coming up sorely and unexpectedly disappointed. My self-perception, or the self I had hoped that my friend would perceive was an "adventuring-embarking, Africa-exploring" me, but me in reality was an emotionally fatigued, conversationally challenged shadow of a happier self. This was compounded by the fact that my friend of over a decade is significant to me of so much that is good, in a very personal sense - of home and a full and fulfilling adolescence, of enthusiasm, drive, and dynamism, of some of my most formative experiences and endeavors and of many of the truest and best qualities and parts of myself. I was caught treading water by someone capable not only of recognizing it, but of unwittingly holding up a mirror in which my sorry image was reflected.

This all sounds pretty pitiful, but the experience succeeded in giving me the proverbial kick in the pants that I needed. I certainly lamented the fact, both during and after the trip, that I had been down and out and a bit of a stick-in-the-mud at times, but seeing my friend was probably more helpful than anything in prompting me to get back on track psychologically and emotionally, often not a small feat here in the wilds of West Africa. That said, this whole Peace Corps deal is pretty sweet and, now that I'm back in action, recharged and ready to go, I'm fully aware of just how truly sweet it is and, more than ever, I understand just how profoundly and positively this experience has affected me.

I spent a few days in Ouaga after getting back from Ghana and had lots of soul-searching conversations with PCV friends, questioning myself and this experience and whether I could really hack it for another year. I headed back to village with a bit of trepidation only to find that I was literally able to breath a sigh of relief when I stepped out of the bush taxi into my village. I was greeted with such enthusiasm by friends and colleagues and was overwhelmed with the feelings of comfort and familiarity that immediately washed over me. Diabo is home and these people are MY people. What a crazy, beautiful, unbelievable thing. I live in a West African village and its people have taken ownership over me. I am their child, albeit of a slightly lighter hue than most.

A group of women come up to me as I was walking down the road in village the other day. None of them spoke any French beyond a few greetings, but they conveyed their feelings to me via a series of gestures and some words in Zaore that I actually understand. After repeatedly pointing at me, then pointing at their breasts and making suckling noises I realized what the women were trying to tell me: "you are our daughter."

To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.

- Salman Rushdie, "Midnight's Children"

I'm back in Burkina after two weeks in the greener, cooler climes of Ghana where I frolicked on the sands of the Gold Coast and enjoyed some excellent hospitality in Kumasi, catching up with one of my best friends from home who is working in Ghana for the summer. I headed down on my own, staying in Kumasi for a few days, then continued south to the coast to meet up with some other volunteers and, finally, back to Kumasi for a few days. Here's a glimpse of my trip in photos...

Beinvenue au Ghana. Au revoir Burkina!

Our chariot.

Kumasi. The prolific pavement and traffic required some getting used to.

Leslie with some ladies at a lunch spot near the hospital where she works.

Vikki and Leslie, conducting interviews with sickle cell patients at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital.

Leslie and a patient.

Anastasia doing activities with a girls' group at the hospital.

On the road again. Headed from Accra to Akwidaa.

A colonial fort on the coast. They were used by the Netherlands, England, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Germany for defensive purposes and as centers of trade of ivory, gold, sugar, spices, animal hides, etc. They also played a significant role in the Atlantic slave trade.

Fresh pineapple, yum!

The beach!

Leslie on the beach in front of the Green Turtle Lodge, hooray for several days next to the ocean!

A photographic shoutout to Lea - Ghana misses you.

Couldn't imagine a more beautiful landscape having not seen the ocean (or any signigicant body of water) in six months.

Our accomodation at Green Turtle - all the rooms are solar powered and just comfortable enough to feel like luxury not totally incongruent with the existence of a Peace Corps volunteer.

Sarah and Giorgio beach-ing.

Jenni and I taking a moment to appreciate our environs.

Enjoying some good reading after breakfast...with REAL coffee!

We headed down the beach to the Safari Beach Lodge for dinner one night. A twilight view.

Baked brie, fresh kingfish and well-mixed cocktails. The restaurant/accomodations are owned by a Texan couple so, while the atmosphere was African, the hospitality was distinctly American.

Beth and Giorgio.

Jenni and I.

Our bill. 1,230,000 cedi. Happily, Ghana is in the process of adjusting their currency so that 10,000 cedi will now equal 1.

Back in Kumasi. Dinner with the UPenn crew and friends.

Enjoying a meal of Ghanaian cuisine.

The market.

Stalls precariously perched over a section of the market.

Produce.

Beth, Jenni and I at the cultural center in Kumasi, engaging in potentially culturally inappropriate behavior. We did some serious shopping at the array of shops at the center, scoring some excellent gifts and gorgeous batik fabric from which to have some "haute couture" tailored for our ever-growing African wardrobes.

Leslie and Anastasia's birthday party, complete with an impressive sound system and some tasty refreshments.

Leslie and colleagues.

Jenni, Theo, and I.

And the party continues...

So that was my vacation. Jenni and I weathered a 20-hour bus ride back to Burkina complete with mechanical "challenges" and a few delays...but we're back, refreshed in body and spirit and ready to commence Year 2 in Burkina.

…are equally insufferable in Burkina Faso.

I’ll start with lizard poop, perhaps the more obvious of the two. I do not, like many volunteers, have termites or mice or scorpions or bats or ants tunneling through my walls. I had a tarantula-like spider with a body the size of my fist once – it provoked a scream and calls for my neighbor to come and kill it, which he did while much laughter ensued at my quasi-hysterics (our silly nasara, she’s afraid of a spider!). I do, however, have lizards. Not the disconcerting floor-traveling kind that can pop up anywhere and lurk under beds or scurry across feet, but the much more benign, insect-feasting lizards that people in Anglophone African countries refer to as “wall geckos.” They have those nifty suction foot-pads and make funny guttural clicking sounds when they’re talking or mating or whatever they do. They flee, scurrying up the wall, when I enter a room or my shower and generally keep respectfully out of my way, unless it’s one of the beyond-oppressive hot days when my house is the coolest place they can find and they insist on keeping me company, en masse. So, while I would assert that they are typically polite house guests who do an excellent job of gobbling up insects, they do have one fatal flaw. They poop. Everywhere. They poop on my shoes, in my shoes, on my books and papers, in my shower, behind the door and in other hard-to-reach-with-a-broom places. I have a rack with pegs on which I hang a number of objects which are, periodically and unpredictably, pooped on. In the grand scheme of things, the fact that sweeping up lizard poop is a necessary and ritual daily activity is amusing and I’m sure I will reflect upon it with nostalgia in the future, when I’m dwelling in climates not frequented by wall geckos. But really, is it totally necessary to poop IN my shoes?

Politics. In our American cultural context it evokes images of Congressman debating bills on the floor of the House and Senatorial races with below-the-belt references to so-and-so’s marital problems or history of *gasp* inhaling. We imagine demonstrations on the Mall, neo-Classical columns adorning the colossal Department of Such and Such, get-out-the-vote campaigns, idealistic young liberals struggling to reconcile their bleeding hearts with their consumer-driven lifestyles and curmudgeon-y old conservatives who wax poetic over “a simpler time.”

From what I have read and, quite recently, observed (but have a limited ability to comment on due to the whole being-affiliated-with-the-government thing) “politics,” “politicking,” or however such activities might be accurately categorized here in West Africa, constitute an obscure, mired-in-platitudes, fascinating-in-a-train-wreck-sort-of-way undertaking. We recently had elections for provincial (there are 45) legislative representatives (the same day as France’s presidential election). Since my village is quite large and a few political types actually hale from chez moi, there were lots of activities – rallies, a bike race, mass voter-registration efforts – and scads of publicity posted on trees and people sporting their political garb, from t-shirts to complets made from pagnes (fabric) patterned with party symbols. I avoided all of this like the plague, since it is, quite logically, not befitting a Peace Corps volunteer – a neutral ambassador of our great nation – to take part in local politics. I did have several small children (who, most recently, spend their time chanting party slogans…yes, it’s disturbing in a Hitler-Youth-in-the-bush sense) ask me if I supported the dominant party, and even had a friend ask me to appear on stage at one of the rallies (thanks, but I’d just as soon remain a Peace Corps volunteer until the designated end of my service, i.e. not get kicked out). So, you ask? What exactly CAN you express? Well, this. That all the scathing, critical books I’ve read by Chinua Achebe and other African authors, all those articles in the Economist, a lot of the things I had assumed to begin with…well, yeah, I gather that there’s something to all of that. Nascent democracy (I use this term loosely) is a complex and frightening animal.

Moving on from random diatribes to…village! Good things are happening. Children are learning (potentially), girls are playing soccer and boys are watching, traditional American games are being tailored to rural Burkina Faso. “Duck, duck, goose” has morphed into “mouton, mouton, boeuf,” (sheep, sheep, cow) “sharks and minnows” – the dry land version - became “caimains et poisson” (crocodiles and fish) but evoked such chaos that it resulted in a “let’s not ever try this game again” ruling. My high school/collegiate running career has even proven useful in the bush. My CM2 girls and I start every “gym” session with a run and stretching (them, barefoot, me, with my tender feet, in running shoes) . The other day, after a modest 5 minutes out, I suggested we stop and stretch and then head back. The girls unanimously vetoed this and we continued, eventually making a tour of village that was at least 3k, possibly more. Needless to say, I was impressed with their motivation and stamina. The stretching is typically the most entertaining part of the afternoon. I give them directions in a funny voice which they repeat, in a chorus of equally funny voices. I begin with, in French, the equivalent of “touch the sky,” “touch the earth,” “touch the sky,” “say ‘Good Evening’ to God” (at which point we all wave heaven-ward, which is totally acceptable in this non-secular state, where God is prolific). I even built my school a long-jump pit the other day and am contemplating some modest track and field-type competitions for next year. My head is swimming with ideas and, happily, my enthusiasm is contagious, which bodes well for the next school year. I have two solid high school girls with whom to start my aforementioned girls’ peer-sensitization program and await the end of this school year and their super-serious-potentially-life-altering exam to really get started.

My homologue (community counterpart) has taken an idea of mine and run with it, and I have a potentially great micro-enterprise project on my hands, as well. It involves women making handbags out of a thick, brightly colored nylon thread (they’re quite attractive and popular in cities in Burkina). The idea is that the women work together, starting with a small amount of money that they cotisé (in English…pool, I guess?). They must first be taught how to make the bags (a crocheting-without-needles sort of process). My counterpart actually took it upon herself to go out and buy materials and find someone in Fada (the nearest city) to teach her how to make them – demonstrating initiative like that is rare in village and, thus, is both encouraging and inspiring. They earn a significant profit (about $1-2) on each bag, which will allow them to expand their production. Then, at a pre-determined profit level, they’ll start issuing loans to women in the group to finance their individual income-generating activities (all of the women participate in some sort of commerce, typically selling vegetables or fried cakes at the market or selling an array of provisions – cigarettes, candy, biscuits, etc. – on the side of the road). So, initially the idea is to expand their base of available capital, a pretty simple idea. I want to go a step further and conduct regular business skills development sessions so that we can talk about tailoring production decisions to the market, keeping accurate records so as to track expenditures, profits, and consumer trends, etc. The thing with women in village, the majority of whom participate in some sort of IGA (income-generating activity), is that, despite their sheer doggedness, they lack the basic knowledge to make their endeavors significantly or even sustainably profitable. So many of them produce the same thing, saturating the market to a point where I wonder how anyone turns even a modest profit. There are many dynamic, intelligent women who will, with a little impetus, I hope, start to think more creatively. This, I think, may be one of the greatest challenges in regard to Burkinabé culture. In the West, particularly the U.S., we absorb the rhetoric of possibility, endless horizons, self-starters, and the necessity of initiative from such an early age – after all, it’s the ultimate American dream. We have the legacy of Horatio Alger-esque, up-by-their-bootstraps rugged individualists. Here, however, a collective resignation is most often the philosophy du jour. So, there you have it: all the news that’s fit, for now. Somewhere along the line, without really noticing it (though physically moving from the periphery to the center of village played a big role), I turned a corner (perhaps several) and started to feel like the Peace Corps volunteer I knew I could-should-wanted to be. I will definitely still leave Burkina feeling like I accomplished little, the immense, endemic, colossus of poverty, impotence, and inaction as daunting as ever, but I’m no longer sitting wide-eyed and twiddling my thumbs wondering where to begin or what the next step is. This road continues to be a strange and challenging one, but the journey is often meaningful and never dull.

In closing, some brief comments on the climate and weather. Last year at this time, I was enjoying springtime in D.C. – cherry blossoms, knee-length skirts and high heels, sitting on a bench eating lunch on the Mall, happy hours on rooftop patios in Dupont Circle and Adams Morgan, and the like. Recently, there have been days when I’ve spent the three to four hottest, midday hours as immobile as possible, rendered dysfunctional by the heat which turns human beings (ok, nasaras) into vessels of water consumption and excretion and zaps all energy, motivation, and will to actively participate in, well, life. These are precious hours I will never get back, thanks to geographic position, the hue of my skin, and global warming (Al Gore’s obviously on to something with all this greenhouse effect banter…).

Thanks for reading.

‘Til next time,

Chrissy

When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole…

Fixing and helping create a distance between peoplebut we cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected.

Rachel Naomi Remen "Mouton, mouton, boeuf"...and I'm the boeuf

“Dad was redreaming the world as he slept. He saw the scheme of things and didn’t like it. He saw the world in which black people always suffered and he didn’t like it. He saw a world in which human beings suffered so needlessly from Antipodes to Equator, and he didn’t like it either. He saw our people drowning in poverty, in famine, drought, in divisiveness and the blood of war. He saw our people always preyed upon by other powers, manipulated by the Western world, our history and achievements rigged out of existence. He saw the rich of our country, he saw the array of our politicians, how corruptible they were, how blind to our future, how greedy they became, how deaf to the cries of the people, how stony their hearts were, how short-sighted their dreams of power. He saw the divisions in our society, the lack of unity, he saw the widening pit between those who have and those who don’t, he saw it all very clearly. He saw the women of the country, of the markets and villages, always dogged by incubi and butterflies; he saw all the women, inheritors of the miracle of forbearance. He saw the hungry eating toads. He saw the wars in advance. He saw the economic boom in advance, saw its orgiastic squander, the suffering to follow, the exile to strange lands, the depleting of the people’s will for transformation. He saw the emergence of tyrants who always seem to be born from the extremities of crisis. He saw their long rule and the chaos when they are overthrown. He argued in three great courts of the spirit world, calling for justice on the planet. He argued with fantastic passion and his case was sound but he was alone. He didn’t see the mighty multitudes all over the world in their lonely solidarities, pleading cases in the supreme courts of spirits, pleading for justice and balance and beauty in the world, for an end to famishment and vile wars, destruction and greed. Dad was alone because he didn’t see the others, the multitudes of dream-pleaders, invading all the courts of the universe, while struggling in the real hard world created by the limitations in the mind of human beings.”- Ben Okri, The Famished Road

“The women are, of course, the biggest single group of oppressed people in the world and, if we are to believe the Book of Genesis, the very oldest. But they are not the only ones. There are others – rural peasants in every land, the urban poor in industrialized countries, Black people everywhere including their own continent, ethnic and religious minorities and castes in all countries. The most obvious practical difficulty is the magnitude and heterogeneity of the problem. There is no universal conglomerate of the oppressed. Free people may be alike everywhere in their freedom but the oppressed inhabit each their own peculiar hell. The present orthodoxies of deliverance are futile to that extent that they fail to recognize this.”

- Chinua Achebe “Anthills of the Savannah”

Kin Kindé (Greetings).

A quick update since I’m back in Fada briefly to retrieve a package from the post office – some postal love that, over the past month, has made its way from Western New York to the heart of West Africa and one very appreciative daughter. A new headlamp, a sturdier tent, rechargeable batteries, reading material – this is the stuff of Peace Corps volunteer dreams and it takes on a whole new meaning here in the bush (thanks, Mom and Dad).

I decided to escape the air-conditioned, tunnel-vision-inducing, head-spinning mania of the internet café and take advantage of a fellow PCV’s laptop to type this entry. E-mail access is both a blessing and a curse here as it is unspeakably wonderful to be able to communicate with friends and family, yet it’s an experience that takes on an intensity here so that, in stepping back into the West African sun out of relative technological bliss, the words of people you love fresh in your thoughts, you feel as if you’ve been hit by a truck or, more accurately, slapped with an unexpected reality.

But on to village news…

I’ve talked a lot about École ‘B,’ the primary school that I’m assigned to work with in my village. The director (principal) is one of my closest friends, a confidant and source of sanity in the not-uncommon moments of frustration or confusion. The teachers, too, are good friends and people whom I respect deeply for the tremendous task and sheer difficulty of teaching a classroom overflowing with unruly kids with only a handful of textbooks (classroom etiquette here is woeful and kids, lacking regular supervision at home, can often be a nightmare in a semi-regulated educational environment, especially when there are 80+ in a single class). That said, it’s been a bit challenging to work with the school since the teachers are so over-taxed. However, upon returning to village a few weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised in a conversation with my school director where we managed to iron out a schedule for me to conduct review classes for the CM2 (5th grade class) who are preparing for their CEP exam, which determines whether they are eligible to continue on to junior high. As the system here is French, it is decidedly different than what we’re accustomed to in the States. Students in Burkina are not set up to succeed. It is infinitely easier to fail. The rigorous exams are just one example. As a Girls’ Ed and Empowerment volunteer, I discovered that inequity in the number of boys and girls in primary schools is not a problem in my village, as it is in many others. Rather, the problem is that girls don’t continue on after primary school, the most obvious problem being that they fail the CEP, for a host of reasons and often multiple times. Thus I’ve started conducting two review sessions a week with the CM2 class which will continue until the exam in mid-June. Wednesday mornings are grammar revision and Thursday mornings consist of a dictée – an exercise in which a passage is dictated to the students and then grammatical questions are posed. This is an area of the exam that kids do miserably on despite the fact that it’s a regular part of the curriculum. They must first listen and copy down the passage and then define and categorize certain words and phrases, conjugate verbs in the passage, translate sentences into a different tense or from the active to the passive voice. Each element is scored and students must score the “moyenne” (average) to get credit. Most do not. The exercise may not seem difficult at first glance, but these are 5th graders and French is not their first language. So here is where I come in: I execute an exercise with them and then we correct and grade it as a class. Although I practice reading each passage the night before, my accent sometimes gives the kids trouble…but a challenging revision is better than none at all. Though I haven’t implemented it yet, I’m planning on keeping a score chart for kids who get the moyenne and then I’ll give prizes to, say, the top ten kids who consistently achieve or exceed the moyenne.

Aside from the revision sessions, I’ve also started facilitating the equivalent of a gym class for the CM2 girls three times a week. My main objective is preparing them for the physical element of the exam, which consists of a 60m dash and a long or high jump (with impractically high standards, which boggles my mind…do undernourished kids in the third world really need to be able to sprint 60M in 9 seconds in order to continue their education?). Sadly, this portion of the exam often poses a problem for girls, who aren’t encouraged to participate in any form of athleticism (mainly soccer in village - the favorite pastime of boys). I’ve started off slow; we do a short run, then play a game – "duck, duck, goose" is good as it necessitates running quickly – then do another short run, which the girls, remarkably, love. I try to add interesting elements to the run, like having the girls at the end of the line sprint to the front then yell “allez” (go) to signal the next girls to start. They also enjoy singing during the run, which is always entertaining. The girls are enthusiastic to play soccer, so we’ll start with some soccer matches this week.

I’m hopeful that these sessions will pave the way for a regular sports club for any and all girls interested during the next school year. It’s pretty incredible to see how they respond to having my undivided attention for an hour. They’re used to teachers for whom it is often impractical to give significant individual attention and here I come, Suzy Sunshine ready to play games with them and even ask them what they would like to do. I’m excited about the possibilities that these activities will open up for the next school year. Burkinabé, though endlessly hospitable, are not particularly open, especially with a white foreigner. This makes it hard to tackle tough subjects, which I hope to do. “Empowering” these girls, for me, means giving them ideas and knowledge with which they can shape their own lives. To do this, we need to talk not only about making smart decisions, but what that really means – in other words, abstinence, safe sex, pregnancy, STDs, functioning and asserting themselves as females within a culture that often renders them impotent in everything from who they marry to how many children they have to whether they can leave their courtyard to go to the market. Challenging, to say the least…and I haven’t even begun to skim the surface.

At the secondary education level, I’ve identified two girls so far for the mentoring project I mentioned in the last entry. I’d like to get started as soon as possible, but the girls are troisieme (9th grade) students and are preparing for the BPEC, the exam they must pass to continue on in high school. The CEP, BPEC and BAC are the three major exams within the educational system, the BAC being the exam you must pass to receive a high school diploma and be eligible for university (like the SAT, only more comprehensive and difficult). The BAC is a rare achievement and even many teachers don’t have their BAC. Given their situation with the BPEC, I’ve asked the girls if they’ll be willing to work with me once a week during the four-month break to formulate the “curriculum” of activities and sensitizations they’ll do with the primary school girls. I also need to find a few more girls, but having two motivated, albeit timid, girls is a huge step.

I’ve got a few smaller projects in their infancy, but I’ll wait to report on those. I also await news regarding my Peace Corps Partnership funding application, and fear that it being a significant construction project and more costly than the average PCP project may render it untenable to the powers that be - cross your fingers for me.

So that’s the news as far as work is concerned. It gets easier and harder simultaneously. As I learn to navigate this culture and Burkina’s educational institutions, I identify more and more challenges and the climb only seems steeper. The consul and friendship of other volunteers is key here, as it provides an outlet and a sounding board for frustrations and fears, as well as a forum for idea exchange and support. We all want to move mountains, but we’re not even equipped to attempt hills. That said, I’d rather be here bumbling along and experiencing all that I am than sitting at a desk in front of a computer in the States. I tell myself that, no matter what, being here and trying and trying accomplishes something, even if it’s just to touch a few girls in the most superficial of ways – giving them respect and attention they wouldn’t otherwise receive.

On a lighter note, as the school year draws to a close, I’m preparing for exciting things. I’m planning a tentative trip in June with some fellow volunteers down through Togo, visiting volunteers there, and over to Ghana, where I’ll meet up with one of my absolute best friends in the world who will be working there for three months or so. The prospect of a familiar face is the best medicine I can imagine for the subtle but ever-present stress that living here produces. In July, I’m going to welcome my first visitor, another one of my closest friends, and look forward to sharing my "second home," with a non-Peace Corps volunteer (not to mention several weeks of conversation in English - hallelujah!).

So that's the news. It's hotter than Hades, as my dad would say. The temperature and humidity increase as the rainy season approaches. It's rained for a few minutes two or three times and we've had some relief in several recent overcast days, but, let me tell you, you don't truly understand hot until you've spent April in West Africa!

Hope you're all doing well.

'Til next time,

Chrissy

“…we may accept a limitation to our actions but never, under no circumstances, must we accept restriction on our thinking.”

- Chinua Achebe "Anthills of the Savannah"

A Picture

Beth and I enjoying a cold, tasty beverage on a recent bike trip from her village to Kompienga (70k round trip, done in a day), down near the Togo/Benin border.

Africa tell me Africa

Is this you this back that is bent

This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation

This back trembling with red scars

And saying yes to the whip under the midday sun

But a grave voice answers me

Impetuous son, that tree young and strong

That tree there

In splendid loneliness amidst white and faded flowers

That is Africa your Africa

That grows again patiently obstinately

And its fruit gradually acquire

The bitter taste of liberty

David Diop, “Africa”

Hey, All -

I know what you're thinking..."back again, so soon?" Well, yeah. I'm here in Ouaga, revelling in the glory of a significantly air-conditioned room, taking temporary refuge from the unrelenting heat. I came into the city to submit my application for funding for a new classroom building for my village's junior/senior high school and to type up some work reports.

I thought I'd take the opportunity to share some pictures from my Easter adventures in village. I threw a rockin' par-tay for my friend Sali's baptism (lots of folks here are baptized or married on Easter weekend). The turnout was excellent - the bissap, zom kom, and dolo were flowing ( boiled hibiscus leaf juice, sweet beverage made from millet powder, and village brew, respectively) the riz gras was aplenty, as was the goat and we danced our socks off (ok, no socks were worn) 'til the wee hours. Villageois, fonctionnaires, two of my Peace Corps neighbors, young and old alike came out to celebrate Sali's now-official Catholocism and check out my sweet new digs (i.e. my most excellent new house). It was a fete to end all fetes...but I'll let you judge for yourself.

That's a lot of riz gras....

Village ladies filling up buckets of bissap, zom kom, and dolo

A group of male fonctionnaires (principals, teachers, etc.)and Theo, my second-nearest PC neighbor

Three high school teachers and the primary education inspector

Friends

Les filles - some junior high girls who helped to serve guests and do dishes

Arnold, enjoying some riz gras

The girls - taking a break

Marcel, the president of the high school parents' association and Martine, his wife - good friends and my favorite couple in village. They're often referred to as "les amoureux" because they're love for one another is amazingly evident in a culture where egality and affection are typically taboo.

Adissa, a good friend, and a neighbor.

Aicha, adorably percocious and one of my favorite petites.

Two elementary school teachers from a neighboring village.

Me and Orelia, one of my volunteer neighbors - she biked a good 30k to visit.

Sali and I in front a my blackboard, which Orelia and I decorated festively. It says: "Happy Easter, Joyeuse Fete de Paques and Ny Taabo (Moore for "happy celebration")"

Yambila and me - this is "mam kiera" ("mon cheri") that I referred to in my last entry.

Balagissa and daughter, Michelline

Amisatu and Alima

Germaine (a teacher at my primary school) and daughter, Shakianatu

Neighbor girls and frequent visitors - they got the leftovers

Sali, dancing to traditional drumming - the drums are called "tam tams"

Orelia, dancing up a storm

Me, trying with little success to emulate traditional dance. In my village, if you dance well (or are a nasara who gives it a good try) they put money (5 or 10 cfa coins) on your back, as a neighbor is doing in the photo.

Kadi, getting her dance on

More drumming and dancing...

Amisatu dancing.

Sali and I in our Easter/baptism complets. The complets are covered in tiny crosses with large pictures of a a chalice and host that says "ceci mon corps, ceci mon sang (here is my body, here is my blood)." Somehow, here in West Africa, it's ok that I'm wearing this getup. Interestingly, Orelia, the volunteer neighbor who was visiting that weekend, is Unitarian Universalist, like myself. We figured that embracing Catholicism on Easter weekend was appropriate given our liberal religious roots.

Me and baby Michelline, seconds before she peed on me.According to the ladies in village, this is good luck and means that I'll have lots of children.

So, there you have it. We partied like it was 2007.

Other than being the hostess with the mostest, I've been working on commencing with some new projects in village - a microenterprise/income-generating endeavor with some village ladies and a mentoring program between high school and primary school girls. I hope to have a group of 4 - 6 older high school girls to work with this summer. I'd like to collaborate with them to develop a curriculum that they'll facilitate with older primary-school girls beginning the next academic year. We'll cover everything from HIV/AIDS to "what's junior high really like?" to activities promoting responsible decision making and goal setting, etc. I hope,with their insights and input, to produce a document so that they will ultimately be able to not only facilitate the activities, but also train the next group of girls, thereby making the project sustainable and my participation unnecessary.

That's all I've got. Thanks for reading,

Chrissy

“The [Bush] administration also noted that U.S. aid to Africa “has almost tripled” during its tenure in the White House. But Steven Radelet, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, told the New York Times that American aid to Africa, totaling less than $5 a year per African is “About the same as what many Americans spend each morning for coffee and a bran muffin.” Most Americans believe that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on poor countries, but the actual figure is less than one-quarter of one percent.”

- Charlayne Hunter-Gault, “New News Out of Africa: Uncovering Africa's Renaissance”

That's Mooré for "it's HOT!" The hot (read: hotter) season has commenced with a vengeance. It went from tolerable to "this is what they mean by hellfire" in a matter of days. I will be sleeping under the stars until the rainy season washes me back inside in a few months. I just got back from Ouaga where we celebrated the impending departure of the oldest group of Burkina volunteers, who will be leaving us in June. The weekend was full of boisterous, debaucherous, and generally inappropiate activities ranging from sector vs. sector kickball (Girls' Ed and Empowerment lost badly, go figure) to some good old fashioned college (apple juice drinking) games to skits honoring (making fun of) the departing volunteers to karaoke. I'm currently in Fada, headed back to village tomorrow. Despite the suffocatingly stultifying heat, I am happy, no thrilled, to report that it just RAINED (ok, it sprinkled) for the first time in at least 6 months. Praise allah. Unfortunately, the rain has departed and the heat and humidity remain.

Apple Juice and Beirut skills - still got 'em

Kim and I, displaying unusual cuteness given the climate

This might be a game of flip cup

I mentioned in my previous post that I'd probably have lots to report regarding the move to my new house the next time around. I can't say I have lots, but I have some quality information to relay. The move went smoothly, with even the transfer of my wordly belongings by donkey cart occuring with relative ease. I was able to set up in a few days and already feel quite at home in my new abode. Beyond that, thus far I feel confident in asserting that my original supposition was correct. I am a seriously happier camper and feel like a brand new PCV. I'm amazed, though not surprised, at how much moving a kilometer has changed ma vie au village. It's been two weeks, but my Mooré has already improved by leaps and bounds (thanks to an army of dimunitive teachers, e.g. the neighborhood kiddies) and I am feeling much more bien integré. I've already gotten in good with the local ladies, who like to socialize with me when I pass by and get a kick out of teaching me phrases in Mooré and then listening to me butcher them. The vieux (old guy) in the neighboring courtyard has also declared that he is willing to leave both of his wives for me (oddly, they don't seem to mind) and we now refer to each other as "mam kiera" (my dear). This could be creepy except that he is quite possibly the cutest old man alive (he's got to be at least 85) and he's about 5 feet tall.It's just started to storm for real (hallelujah!), so as this is Burkina and the power and/or internet will most surely cut out presently, I'll keep this short and sweet and close with some pictures of the new digs.

Thanks for reading.'Til next time, Chrissy*Also, because there seems to be some confusion - I'll be in West Africa until August-ish 2008. Yeah, that's a long time. See you at the end of W's presidency.

Home, Sweet Home Carting my stuff via donkey cart

La nouvelle maison

The terrace and front door

The water/dish-doing corner

My yoga spot, for a little early-morning exercise/inner harmony

The reading/eating/everything nook

La cuisine - where the magic happens

My indoor shower (a serious luxury here in the BF), that's the bucket from which I bathe

My bedroom and the world's largest mosquito net

View to the East from my courtyard, my nearest neighbors

The view to the North from my courtyard

A pretty flowering bush in a neighboring courtyard

"The earth swallowed heat all day and regurgitated it at night..."

- Alexandra Fuller, "Scribbling the Cat: Travels With An African Soldier

I'm in Fada for the weekend to do some work - writing an article on an HIV/AIDS sensitization I did with primary schools kids in my village and working on a funding proposal for a new building for my village's high school. The funding is through the Peace Corps Partnership Program which is basically a conduit for private groups and individuals to donate money to specific development projects initiated by PCVs. I will include relevant information once (and if) my funding request is approved.

I'd only been back in village for five days before leaving again, but lots has gone on. First, we celebrated Le Jour Internationale des Femmes (International Women's Day - March 8th). The events included a theater production by high school students, an essay and design competition that I organized amongst the high school students , and a soccer match between male and female fonctionaires (I played with the chicks, we killed, won by a goal). The 8th March is a big deal here, each year they come out with a special pagne (fabric) and everyone who can afford to buys it and has shirts or complets (female skirt/top outfits) tailored. I was a little late getting on the bandwagon and bought my pagne on the 9th March, but I've got a whole year to wear it, so there you go. It was a fun day and included festivities oddly reminsicent of a barbeque (with drumming and dancing).

Aside from the 8 Mars festivities, I've got big news. I've made a significant decision regarding ma vie au village. I've decided, based on recent events and a general feeling of discontent with my living situation, to move. I'll be moving to a house much like my current house but right in the center of village instead of on the outskirts, where I am now. The notion hadn't really crossed my mind, even after Ismael stole from me. It was Nancy, my nearest PCV neighbor, who brought up the idea. We were in Ouaga for FESPACO, sitting outside one evening, catching up and she told me that my friend Sali had stopped by her village before she'd left for Ouaga and that they had talked at length about my situation in village. Sali voiced the opinion that she thinks I could be a lot happier than I am and told Nancy that she had an unoccupied house in mind if I expressed interest. The idea hit me like a ton of bricks and made me realize that my current situation is pretty lame and has resulted in an experience that isn't exactly what I had imagined Peace Corps would be like.

I live in a courtyard with two other fonctionaire houses and my neighbors are, in effect, strangers to the village, just like me. Despite the fact that they're nice (sans Ismael the thief), I didn't come to Africa to make friends with civil servants who are assigned to the village and move every few years, I came here to live in a village and to get to know villagers. Though I am well-integrated into my village and have lots of friends amongst the villagers, I've missed on on a lot of the quotidien experiences of other volunteers by not living directly amongst villagers. This has hindered the development of my local language skills and has, I realize, caused me to be needlessly bored at times.

So, upon returning to village, I dropped by the market to catch up with Sali before heading to the high school to do some work. I mentioned that Nancy had filled me in on their conversation and expressed interest in seeing the house. Sali replied that she would take me to see it whenever I wanted and it turned out that the proprietor is actually a good friend of mine. The house is newly constructed and belongs to his older brother who lives and works in Cote d'Ivoire. Since I had time to kill before meeting with a teacher, we went right away. I was a little skeptical as Sali led me down the paths through a maze of courtyards - mud hut upon mud hut - and was shocked when we turned a corner to find a really nice house in a small courtyard. It's the same two room setup as my house now with the added benefit of an indoor shower (a small room with a drain in which to take your bucket bath, really nice during the windy harmattan season when you freeze your butt off showering outside in the morning). It has a concrete terrace and an overhang with a metal roof and the courtyard is private with a solid metal door that locks. The house is totally screened too, which is rare for a villageois house and is a requirement for PCV lodging. Overall, it's nicer than my current house and its situation is much better. It sits on the edge of a huge, populous quartier, so there are tons of neighbors and lots of little kids running around, but the courtyard is still unique, so I can close my door and have privacy. The courtyard also looks out onto a barrage (big man- made pond which provides the water for gardening and is home to some crocs) and jardin (massive, fenced-in garden that many of the villagers share) . Beyond the barrage is a beautiful vista of the bush/savanah and an expanse of sky so massive that on a clear day you feel like it might swallow you up.

That afternoon, I went to talk to the director of my primary school, since it's the school's PTA that is in charge of my lodging. He was skeptical at first, understanding my current situation but wary of my desire to move right into the middle of the action in village, so to speak. However, after we went to see the house, he was impressed with it and recognized how moving there would positively impact my situation in village. So it's pretty much settled, it looks like I'll move in the next few days, which will be a pain, since it involves hauling all of my furniture and stuff 1.5 k by donkey cart, but I think the effort will be well worth it. I find that the moments I'm happiest in village are when I'm in the marché or the quartiers by the mosque, playing with the kids or talking with my female friends or the elders. I'm excited at the prospect of becoming that much more inculcated in village life and getting to know people better, instead of living in my fonctionaire fortress that is intimidating to most villagers.

So that's the news. I'm thrilled at the prospect of being able to step out of my courtyard into the heart of the village. The director termed my move as a "rebirth" which seems pretty accurate, as my experience is about to change radically. I imagine I'll have lots to report on the move and the changes it brings the next time I write.

'Til then,

Chrissy