Sorry I've been ignoring my blog, but life has been busy!

Some momentous events that have happened or are upcoming…

1. I got to meet the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso a couple of weeks ago and helped give a presentation on the work we’ve done to help the flood victims. This is basically the second guy in charge of this country after the President. So.. that was pretty exciting. That would be the 3rd time I had a minor appearance on Burkina TV. :)

2. I’m going to France TOMORROW for a 10-day vacation, during which time I will get to celebrate my birthday in Paris and spend time with people who love me. I cannot wait!

3. Temps seem to be dropping into the 90’s before dark lately, so that’s been a nice break. Otherwise, it’s 110-120 degrees every day. Even at night, you can hardly feel a relief from the heat. It has started raining though, and that’s just been lovely…. Except for the continued flooding.

4. I officially accepted my invitation to Columbia University, so I will definitely be starting there in September.

The nature of the project I’m working on is a “crisis” so everything needs to be done yesterday, or as soon as possible…. ALL the time. Some days this is exhausting, but most days I don’t mind because the more I work, the faster time flies. I’m well past halfway through this assignment now, and I’m getting excited to come home and get back to my life I put on hold, start grad school, etc….

Our reconstruction has been moving along at a good pace. We’ve constructed well over 100 homes in just about 8 weeks now. Unfortunately, after we helped people construct solid foundations, they continued to build the remainder of the walls with unstable mud bricks that basically melt when it rains hard. And unfortunately again, that’s exactly what happened this past week…. Some of the “brand new” houses we’re building have already begun crumbling after the first few rainfalls.

This is all quite discouraging for many reasons, other than the obvious that is seems like we just took a huge leap backwards after many massive ones forward. The government is one frustration. They sent people out to the middle of nowhere, where there’s no drinking water, no infrastructure, no drainage, and it’s a flood zone. Therefore, thousands of displaced flood victims who have lost everything were given new plots of land about 5 or so miles away from their old homes IN A FLOOD ZONE. It’s a frustrating process. People here don’t have the money to construct their homes the way we’re advising them to, so we’re trying to revamp the entire program to help them construct the entire home now and not just a good foundation. We’ll see how this develops. Otherwise, it's really an unsustainable and pointless effort.

We're also planning a huge tree-planting ceremony in June. We're going to plant over 1,000 trees at the site, which will give people shade and help beautify the desert-like zone they were sent to. This will be a collaboration with the Peace Corps, so we'll hopefully have at least 30 volunteers, plus our African volunteers, running all over planting big old mango trees everywhere.

Otherwise, I really feel like the 4 months I've spent here so far have been more satisfying and impactful that the entire 2 years I spent here the first time. Not only have I been able to help people rebuild their homes (whatever part will be a success), but I've also been able to: help old friends secure work with my company who've been unemployed for years, get funding to get a pump installed in a village that has no drinking water source, participate in a school reconstruction project with some French people I met, and help plan various presentations for major international and national donors and political figures. It's been a much different experience than the Peace Corps was, and is proving to be as good an insight to my intended career path as I was hoping it'd be.

Well, my head’s already on Paris time, so that's about all I've got to say.. must get packing now!!

:-D

Merci et a plus!

Steph

Hello friends.

It's been a while since I posted a blog, but I don't really feel like I have all that much to report.

HOWEVER, 2 great things did happen on March 13th:

1. It was my official 2-month mark (1/3 of the way through already!!)

2. I found out that I was accepted to Columbia University to pursue my Masters Degree!!

So this was a landmark weekend... relatively. In addition, I also potted some plants and hand washed some clothes. It is such an exciting life, let me tell you.

Living in the big city is actually much more difficult than living in a village. I mean, physically, it's obviously much more comfortable with my A/C, running water, good food, etc... but socially, it's not that easy. When you are the only stranger in a village where there's no electricity or other entertainment, it's really easy to make friends. Actually, you are immediately everyone's friend, whether you like it or not...

But I don't really have much of a social life in the capital. Having a bicycle and my 2 feet to get around doesn't make it any easier, either. Additionally, there's road work literally surrounding the area where I live, which now physically cuts me off from the rest of the city. I have to traverse an obstacle course to get to work, climbing over and under fences, and jumping over ditches. To get a taxi, I now have to walk 10 min from home and wait for a taxi for no less than 15 minutes. He'll try and jack up the price every time, too, because not only am I white but I am also living in the part of town that's practically inaccessible. :(

Work is going pretty well. At this point, I've become the center of it all. Every day I field calls from, and solve problems for, beneficiaries, construction workers, material suppliers, construction inspectors, and colleagues who're helping with the project. It's great to feel so involved and to troubleshoot everything going on. But sometimes it's just frustrating because all the solutions that I can come up with are completely out of my control. Whether it's internal bureaucratic procedures or government protocol, eventually it just becomes a waiting game.

Overall, I'm learning a lot with the project and getting great construction management and project management experience. Combined with a Masters in Urban Planning, I think this was the right move to get a career in the field I want - (planning and international development). If you know me at all, though, you know I just go wherever life takes me. I'm not much of a planner, and while things are working out as I "planned" so far in 2010, who knows where life will take me next? :)

Oh - one fun thing I get to do this week is Skype with my friend's classroom in Chicago! One of my friends from the Israel trip asked me to talk to her kids about Africa, so we set up a Skype date. I'll be up on their big projection screen, answering questions about what's going on on this side of the world. Should be fun... and I'll leave out the really gross stuff.

Hope to hear from you soon... It would be great to hear some news from you all, too.

Steph

What I love most about this country, hands down, is the people. Burkinabe people are the warmest and most welcoming people I’ve ever met. They can also frustrate the heck out of you, but mostly because of cultural misunderstandings and differences. After wanting to just hate a person, they can flash a smile and say something funny that completely makes your mood do a 180.

On that note… I would like to share some funny stories that are such typical Burkina moments, that as soon as they happened I had myself a little private chuckle and thought how it was soooo Burkina!

Burkina Moment # 1 : eating out

I went to a relatively fancy restaurant in town with 2 other Americans who live in my building. We were the only ones in the place, and the waiter comes over with 3 fairly thick menus. Already I am impressed because for some reason, you almost always get at least one less menu than number of people at a table in many restaurants, and there are usually no more than 5 things to choose from. So the waiter gives us a good 15 minutes to mull over the menu. As we’re discussing the many choices, we all realize that each menu is different. Some of the pages had totally different prices and food choices! Not being too surprised (because this is sooo Burkina), we ask the waiter if he has certain dishes on our respective menus, when he returns to take our orders. He says “no” to each one of our requests before saying “please allow me to make some suggestions for your orders, because we only have 2 dishes available tonight…..” and proceeds to name 2 dishes that weren’t on any of our menus.

Burkina Moment # 2: being white

As a white person in this country, you get used to some level of special treatment, for better and for worse. You cannot walk down the street without someone every 50 feet yelling “Nassara” at you, which means “stranger” or really just “white person.” It’s not said in a rude or negative way… more just a matter of fact way, like they are acknowledging your presence and have to just yell out “YOU’RE DIFFERENT!”

Along those same lines, people also get very excited when you do something JUST LIKE THEM. And on some level, I suppose I get used to getting praised for every mundane thing that I do… so for instance, when I leave my work area for lunch and eat a local dish that everyone else is eating, it is impossible to do it without everyone in the immediate vicinity remarking on how amazing it is that this white person is eating the same foods as them (it’s often just rice, by the way)… I also get met with extreme excitement, praise, and many benedictions whenever I simply shake hands with someone. If I decide to throw some local language out there… typically nothing fancier than a “good morning” really… people react as if I just cured cancer or something. The hand clasping and laughter that ensues makes me really feel like I did something amazing! .. .So this is why I own a shirt that says “I am a rock star in Burkina Faso.” I guess it’s also such a downer when I come back to America and everyone isn’t immediately praising me for carrying my own bags or knowing how to ride a bicycle. What a letdown.

Burkina Moment # 3: tradition

Ouagadougou is a pretty modern city, all things considered, and many people who’ve gone through the school system have relatively modern thoughts and ideas. So the other day, I was driving with a chauffeur from my workplace to the construction site and noticed a whirlwind of dust that spun high into the air, kind of far away. They look like mini-tornadoes, but do nothing more than blow a big gust of dirt in your face. I pointed it out to the driver, and his response went something like this “oh yeah… it’s one of those dust whirlwind things…. Or …. it’s a sorcerer. That’s how sorcerers travel, you know. The evil ones and the good ones. Female sorcerers are the worst, though… they are the most evil of them all! If you are happy in your marriage, and one of these sorcerer women get a hold of you…. Boy, o boy, will you have problems. G-d really knew how to make those women evil. *snicker*… Oh, those sorcerers… “ Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard people talk about sorcerers, but you expect it more on the village level than in the city…. And also, I’m pretty sure that we have those “female sorcerers” in America too. Except we call them “homewreckers.”

Burkina Moment # 4: kids

Kids are the best Burkinabe people of them all. Not only are they the most cheerful people I’ve ever seen, but they are goofy and carefree and everything else that I like being when I’m not forced to act like an adult. Some of them are also terrified of white people because they’ve never seen one before. On one of my more frustrating and difficult days in the field last week, I was completely exhausted from explaining and debating in French that I walked away for a break, and to find some lunch. This one adorable little boy comes running up to me, brakes hard in front of me with a big, goofy smile, and yells “chocolate!!!” and runs away… and because I am a big child myself most of the time, I chase him around in a circle for a while, as he continues to yell “chocolate” at me and laugh incessantly. When I finally grab him, he starts kicking, screaming and crying, and runs off to his mother because he was terrified of me when I got too close. Of course, this sort of thing gets every witness in an uproar of laughter, which is always fun to do… and so with a smile, one word, and a laugh, that little boy completely took me out of the funk that had settled in for the day.

Burkina Moment(s) #5: brutal honesty

Interestingly enough, Burkinabe people address serious matters of conversation indirectly, often using a 3rd party to make sure that points are made with grace and with complete understanding. However, when it comes to all the daily little things we Americans are generally pretty sensitive about, it's nothing but brutal honesty over here. For example....

One of my colleagues took out some little cakes to eat and offered me one. I said no thanks, and he asked why I didn't want one. I said, "I don't want to gain weight here, and I'm also not that hungry." He replies, "that's good, because you're already kind of fat. You shouldn't get any bigger than you are." ... and ... I cried. OK, I didn't cry, because if I had a franc for every time someone here called me fat, well... I'd probably have a dollar's worth of francs (which is a lot, incidentally). Maybe I winced a little, though... because it still takes a long time for a girl to be OK with people calling her fat "because it's culturally acceptable" even the 2nd time around.

OK logging off now... hope all is well in America. I see the snowstorm is driving everyone crazy in the NE, but it's making me miss home a bit..... Best of luck shoveling out of it and staying safe on the roads!

GO SKIING!

Sweating it out in 90+ degree heat,

Steph

Life in Ouaga is pretty sweet. Aside from the periodic and unexpected power and water outages (1-2 times a week), everything has been great. It’s giving me a good chance to reconnect with my bat senses, even though there has been the occasional stubbed toe. I was in the shower tonight when the power cut out, so that was pretty fun getting back to my room without walking into any walls. Regardless, I have a balcony and the sky offers a gorgeous starry view… so it’s all OK by me. Plus I had the chance to catch up on my blogging. At any point in time I have at least internet, running water or electricity in my crazy big apartment, which is more than I ever had in village the first time. I figure if I keep comparing everything to the village life, I will never be disappointed. I also have my iPod and my exercise room for when nothing at all is functioning, so that’s OK, too. In case you’re wondering, my exercise room has nothing but a jump rope and a plastic mat for sit-ups, but if I didn’t use it for that purpose, it would just be an echoey, empty room that I will never use… so.. I guess it feels more hoity-toity to call it my exercise room.

The one and only thing that actually scares me some is when I'm biking in town. My only provided mode of transportation is a bicycle, unless I have my friends with cars pick me up, or I take a taxi. But every day since I've been here, I've seen at least one vehicular accident... often involving someone slamming into a bicyclist. Traffic patterns aren't anywhere in the realm of safe, and everyone seems to go where they want on the road at any given time, with little or no signaling. It actually reminds me of driving in NYC, except that 90% of the vehicles are motorcycles and bicycles. And unfortunately for me, the bicycle gets the least respect.

In other news, the job is going really well. I went through a couple of days of training to learn the business processes of the company I’m working for (CRS). Then I had another 5 days of training in the field to learn about various construction techniques using native, natural resources such as earth, rocks and granite. We constructed 5 sample foundations and foundation walls using these techniques. It was like being back in geotechnical lab at some points because I learned how to distinguish the various soil types found on site to determine which ones could be used to construct adobe homes. We also built concrete foundations and walls, but the ones using natural resources were really interesting to learn. Not only are they more environmentally friendly, but they are more practical in the heat and cold.

Our mission is to help 400 of the thousands of displaced persons reconstruct stable foundations for their new homes after having lost theirs in the catastrophic flood of last September. Between the government and all the other international agencies over here, everyone who lost their home will receive some level of aid. We began handing out coupons this week that cover the costs of labor and materials needed to construct a solid foundation for a new home. Then we will just supervise the construction process to verify that they’re using the materials provided and that the masons are using the proper construction methods. My role is somewhat supervisory, but at the moment I’m still getting my bearings and making sure I understand all the measures that have been implemented up until this point.

The Harmattan winds have begun kicking up dust at every turn, so I come home every night covered in a nice thick layer of red dirt, as it sticks quite well to sweat. However, the temperature is only in the upper 80s-low 90’s so I can’t complain until the HOT season gets here in about a month. Then I’ll be reporting temps upwards of 110, if memory serves correctly. And then I will talk more about how great it is to have air conditioning at home… except when there’s a power outage.

I have a bunch of pics and videos that take forever to download, so if I can’t get them up on this site, I will post somewhere else and post the link to them on this blog. I’m using skype at home, too, so if anyone wants to skype me, my username is stephanie.servetz .... that is, of course, when my internet is working.

That’s about all there is to report from my end. More soon…

Steph

Holy crap I have an amazing apartment in Ouagadougou!! It’s a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, extremely spacious apartment, with air conditioning, a refrigerator, a balcony (!!), a stove, etc… simply ridiculous. I realize how much of a volunteer mentality I still have by the way I reacted to this place. I came here expecting more than the village lifestyle, but I was still preparing my self for the possibility of bucket baths and extreme sleep discomfort. However, this place is bigger than most apartments that most of my friends and I have in America. Once I get it set up, I’ll post some pics so you can be jealous. (heheh) If anyone wants to visit, you’ll have your own room, complete with a Queen-size bed, and your own bathroom!! Is that incentive enough???

Bizarrely, I do find that I miss some elements of the village compared to Ouaga. For instance, in the village, if I ever needed help with anything from killing a spider to welling my water, I would just have to holler to the nearest person and they’d be more than happy to take care of me. In Ouaga, I need my cell phone to find help. In village, I could get fresh cow’s milk from a woman who’d just show up at my door, honey straight from the hive from someone who’d just show up at my door, or pick local fruits off a nearby tree for a snack. In Ouaga, I have no idea where to get any of that, but I’m pretty sure I’ll mainly be shopping in an actual supermarket. This will be an entirely different ballgame than the first time I lived here.

I had my first day of work last Friday, and it felt just like America. It was a very full 8-5:30 day, complete with my own workstation, 2 meetings in the field and one in the office. They were not kidding when they said I’d hit the ground running. Between jetlag, fighting a cold, getting used to the heat again (it’s only in the 90’s for now…) and readjusting to everything being in French again, I was passed out by 10:30. I worked Saturday, too, but it was more relaxed and intermixed with personal errands for my new place.

I feel completely at ease in this country, and while it’s been an exhausting couple of days, I’m a little amazed at how familiar and comfortable it all is. The foods, the mannerisms, the language, the culture… it’s actually the pace of the “big city” that’s taking more to get used to than anything else!!

I’ll try and get some pics and/or videos up soon. My boss and I drove around some of the displaced person sites that have been mostly abandoned by now. People who got shuffled into the temporary government sites have since moved in with family or friends, or began reconstructing their own homes. Everyone will be receiving some level of aid from the government, but things do not move as quickly as we’d all expect. Timelines have passed, and the situation has changed. Mostly, my work will consist of helping document the movement of people from these temporary sites to new, permanent homes. CRS (the agency I’m partnered with) is providing funding for people to get construction materials for the foundations of a new home and a temporary latrine. There are many more complex elements involved… but since I’m just trying to wrap my head around it, I won’t blog about too many of those details.

I officially moved into my place this past Sunday. I am going to try and get Wifi set up at home, but unfortunately things move at the pace of Africa… meaning that if it works out, I won’t even get it set up for at least 2 months. So I’ll have to keep you all posted on that. I do have cybercafés all over, so it’s not like I’ll be out of touch… just not from home for a while (if at all). My only insect interactions so far have been with a friendly gecko who was hiding in my food pantry, a huge and nasty cockroach who woke me up when walking in my bedroom on some plastic, and some harmless ants in the kitchen. As long as I don't see any of the scorpion-carrying, hairy camel spiders, though... I am OK!!

My cell number here is: (011 226) 76 90 66 10

You know the drill if you called me while I was here last time. For the rest of you, I’d recommend getting a calling card if you plan to buzz me… or we can just try Skype when I can get to a cybercafé.

More soon…...

(INSERT HUG HERE)

Burkina is exactly the same. As soon as I stepped foot off the plane, the smells and sounds were so familiar (in a good way). I've eaten rice with peanut sauce and sheep liver (my favorite meal), drank water out of a plastic baggie and sweated like nothing else during my 1 block walk to get food.... just like the good old days. One major difference will be that I'll be living in Ouaga!!!! with an apt that has running water, electricity and possibly wifi. Now THAT is a foreign concept to me in Burkina. I can't wait!

It's amazing to me how much this feels like home, though. It's actually even more amazing that the US, Israel AND Burkina Faso all feel like home to me. What a whirlwird of a few weeks I've had....

I'm in meetings/training sessions all day with the Peace Corps, with a small swear-in ceremony to make my service official tonight. I was supposed to get one-on-one training with a shelter expert from Kenya who specializes in reconstructing homes after natural disasters... but he's on his way to help people in Haiti instead. So for me, I think I'll mostly be learning the scope of my job and visiting sites to better understand what's in place and what will be done while I'm here.

Otherwise just want to let everyone know I'm safe and sound and excited to get started on this new endeavor!!! I plan to get a cell phone tonight, so I will post that number as soon as I do.

Big hugs!

Hi everyone,

For those of you who will continue to be my loyal readers, you'll be happy to know that I plan to blog while I am in Burkina Faso again from January 2010 - July 2010 for a disaster relief project. Burkina Faso experienced 25% of its annual rainfall in one day, this past September 1, 2009. The damage caused by this flood caused the displacement of an estimated 150,000 people.

Here's a video summing up what happened that day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E-RINnw88w

Through Peace Corps Response, I will be working with Catholic Relief Services and the Governement of Burkina Faso to help rebuild homes and infrastructure that were destroyed. I will be based in Ouagadougou, which means I will (thankfully) have running water and electricity, and regular email access. I will be traveling to satellite villages where the majority of the destruction took place, but this is all in and around Ouaga.

My head's not in the game yet because I just returned from Israel, where I experienced an amazing and life-altering 10 days. Israel is nothing short of a beautiful country, with breathtaking landscapes and people full of life and very strong moral fibers. However, since I need to get ready for this trip, I'm struggling to pull my head out of the clouds and begin my preparations!!

I will post my Burkina number when I get a cell phone, but in the meantime, I am available on FB or email...

much love,

Steph

Hi all,

Please check out the following link and read about the great opportunity the Fresh Air Fund has to get dollar for dollar matched on all donations to support their great programs!!! Only a week and a half left...

http://freshairfund-newsrelease.com

Thanks for your support!!!

Hi all.

Please check out this link if you are interested in working at a summer camp this year:

http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us/

Just to check in with those wondering where I am in the world, I'm in Casablanca, Morocco!! It's vastly different (and by that I mean immensely more developped) than the capital of Burkina. There are so many satellite dishes and there are sidewalks, and everything is so clean! I'm with 5 other EX-Peace Corps Volunteers. So we are 6 of the original 15 of us who arrived in Burkina together in March 2005. The other 3 of us who finished service are on a motorcycle trip from Ghana to Morocco, so I won't see them again until we're all back in the States.

Lucky for us, one guy in my group knows a woman he was in college with who works here in Morocco. And again lucky for us, she has an amazing, large apartment that accomodates all of us. She's so nice and set us up with everything that could easily WOW newly released PCVs from Burkina Faso... like we ate cheese and cake and used a washing machine and slept in real beds.... simply glorious.... And the weather is perfect. We arrived here about 11 a.m. yesterday and didn't leave her apartment all day because we hadn't slept at all before our 6 a.m. flight and also because we had everything we could ever need in one place. We stepped out on her balcony (!!!) at night and the air was cooler than any air I've felt in burkina since January. It's just perfect.

I guess we'll actually try and leave the apartment at some point and check out some sites here... like the Big Mosque of Casa, the beach, Fez, I don't know what else... But I'll probably not blog anymore, and I'll be home in ONE WEEK from today! Can't wait to see everyone!!

A Bientot!

Well..... I've finished. I have checked out of village, said my goodbyes, and by next Friday I will no longer be an official Peace Corps Volunteer. How do I feel...?? all mixed emotions, as you may imagine. Obviously I'm thrilled that I'll be rejoining my family and friends and old life again... but the departure from village was way sadder than I was imagining it would be. Let me backtrack ...

In summary, since my last posting..... I finished up school, I turned 28 years old, I ate more hippo (there were more attacks), I got sick one last time, I packed my bags, I gave all my stuff in my house away, and I had many small goodbye parties in village. My goodbye parties were fun.... I was invited to a few peoples' houses on different nights for dinner. Had stuffed pigeons and lots of chicken. My big goodbye party at school was this past Tuesday from about 4 pm to 2 am. First we had a goodbye ceremony, during which there were speeches and gifts presented. Then a big meal with all the invited guests, lots of pictures with the guests and my students, and finally a big dance at night at the school. It was fun because it gave me a chance to just be relaxed and have fun with my students instead of playing the disciplinarian role (which I hate). I had fun giving away stuff from my house to people I chose. If you start randomly asking who wants what, the harassment will never end and people will never stop showing up at your door. But I subtley invited people over and gave them stuff I thought they'd appreciate, one by one. When I said goodbye to my 14 year old best friend (sweetest girl ever, with the cutest family ever), she cried for about a half hour. My neighbor also began crying when I hugged her goodbye... they both made it really sad and hard for me to keep on saying goodbye. A couple of people.... villagers who I know are very poor, gave me money "to buy water" during my trip... 1000 francs each, which is about $2 each. One person gave me 200 francs, about $0.40. People were just so giving and it was really touching how sad people were saying goodbye to me.

It's difficult to put into perspective what you are gaining from this experience when you are one year into it or even 18 months into it...because a lot of the time you are uncomfortable or homesick or sad or bored or HOT or whatever... but when I was leaving village I realized that I didn't dislike where I was every minute of my two years. Sure there are ups and downs and times when you wish there was a coup d'etat... but the contact I had with the friends I made was worth the last two years. What you learn about yourself and what you can support, plus to live in a place that is almost like a fantasy world time warped from the past... it's not something you can get in America. So all in all... I'm glad I did it. Not the easiest two years of my life, but certainly the most adventurous and character-building time of my life thus far.

I will be home by June 26th. I'm travelling to Morocco soon to spend one week there, and then I'll be one my way home! I can't wait to see everyone and get all the hugs I've missed out on!!! See you very, very soon!!!!!!!

Real quick life update… First of all, I will be home in TWO months!! That is the best news of all…. Except that my friends Emily and Keith (in America) just had their first baby… a little girl!!! As sad as I am to not be able to meet her, I did get to see her photo shoot on the internet, and she is beautiful!

In BF news…. As the heat rises and the sweat pours out in buckets from my pores, I am as excited as ever to return to America, where there is the option of air conditioning and pools. Bizarrely though, the last two days in village we had an unusual amount of rainfall that was early for the rainy season. It brought much needed cool air, but it also dumped a huge quantity of water on us… So much water in fact, that it cut my village in two parts. Being that our bridge is still crumbled into the river, there is now no way of crossing from my side of the village to the other side without having to walk through rushing water. And after the last two days, there was enough rushing water to go white water rafting in. Class 5. Seriously the amount and speed of the water was no joke and I had to wait on my side of the bridge for 3 hours until the water subsided enough to be able to pass through the river when it was less high (up to my shins) and rushing a lot less. About a month and a half ago, some big time city workers had come to village to begin rebuilding the bridge. But being the way things work here in Africa, they got off to a great start but after two weeks they’ve disappeared, nowhere to be seen to finish the job. What they did was come through with a bulldozer to remove the crumbled concrete and level the ground a bit to begin preparations of the groundwork. They even hauled in from Bobo large quantities of sand and gravel and even iron to reinforce the new concrete bridge. But alas, we are still waiting for the concrete to arrive. Therefore, the ground was level and the piles of material have been sitting on the side of the road for a few weeks now….waiting, waiting….. And then the rains came and swept away a bunch of those materials down the river, and the ground is no longer level. It has in fact become a deep crevasse that makes traversing the river near impossible and very dangerous. So that is the bridge situation.

School is OK. I’m so unmotivated and so are the kids, especially when you consider the heat factor. But I’m getting through the rest of the year and there really is only about one month of work left. Yay! After that, you will never see me in front of a classroom again. Ever. In my life. If I learned one thing in these two years, it is that teaching is not for me.

The one extremely unfortunate piece of news that has happened in the last week was the death of my good friend’s 7 year old son. It was actually ten times more horrible than it normally would have been because I actually watched him pass away. Last Sunday, I was in town with a friend and heard that our friend, Karim’s son – Ilassa - was in the hospital (health care facility – no electricity or running water – try to imagine what kind of health care you could get). So we decided to stop by and see what was happening and wish our best to the family for a good recovery. When we got to the hospital, Ilassa was hooked up to an IV and unconscious. He took these extremely deep breaths every minute or so, but on the exhale it was like his face got stuck and he took a few seconds to exhale correctly. After about ten minutes of watching him with his family and the doctor putting some fluids in his IV, we all watched his heart stop beating. Just like that. It was one of the worst moments in the entire time I’ve been here, as you may imagine. Ilassa was one of the quietest boys ever, who used to be afraid of me and has gradually grown to accept shaking my hand to greet me and even began being courageous enough to call out my name “POKO” when he was with his friends and he saw me. He was in his first year of school and the oldest child of my friend Karim. Karim was so proud of him because he, himself, is illiterate and never went to school but has vowed to send all of his kids to school. Karim is a guy who is big and tough but sweet at the same time, and to see him sobbing over the death of his boy really hurt to watch. It was really heart wrenching. I don’t even know what sickness he had. Right now it is meningitis season and it has already killed many people all over the country. But I think Ilassa may have died of malaria, based on the symptoms people were saying he had. It’s just hard to say because no one really asks those questions. They just tell you “he died, he was sick” - end of story…. So it’s sort of frustrating but understandable because unfortunately death is a relatively common event. People just don’t look to investigate what happens every time. I think I’ve been to more funerals in my two years here than in my whole life in the states.

So sorry to end on a really sad note, but that has been what’s been going on over here. It was a sad week. Next blog I hope to have better news to share with you… If I had my way it would go something like this: “Guess what everyone??? We have a brand new structurally sound bridge in Padema!! Complete with guard rails and night light reflectors to protect people!! Also, the hospital now has electricity and running water and there is a health care system in place so no one is afraid to go to hospital (to avoid having to pay money) and the care is TOP NOTCH! Kids have been getting vaccinated against meningitis, yellow fever, and TB. The road has also been paved, so my village is now getting a constant stream of merchants who bring fruits and vegetables to us on a daily basis. Life is good, and everyone’s happy and healthy! …. And I LOVE teaching!!”

Um…. Yeah. Back to reality…..

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted, but with school and an END OF SERVICE conference (!!!!!), I haven’t been on the internet very much. In case you didn’t notice, that bolded part in my first sentence means that I am just about finished with my PC service!!!!! Less than three months to go..... it’s unbelievable! I’ve officially been in this country for over two full years, as we arrived in Ouaga on March 16, 2005. That just blows my mind, and it’s hard to wrap my head around how fast the time has gone.

Now I will excuse myself ahead of time for the mathematical psychosis in this blog, but as I was sitting on my most recent 5-hour bus ride, I started thinking about how I have passed these two years, and, well… being a math teacher and all, my head starting thinking about a statistical breakdown of time spent in Burkina Faso. The PC is very big on putting things in chart or graph format, and I guess that I have been slightly brainwashed to start thinking in similar terms. So here is the percentage breakdown of how I figure I have spent two years of my life as a PC Volunteer thus far:

Out of the 16,968 hours in two full years (excluding my 3 wks vacation in the wonderful United States of America) this is how I figure I have spent my time…..

Teaching (in class and lesson planning)...2250 hrs ~ 13.2%

Training (Pre-Service and In-Service) ....540 hrs ~ 3.1%

Sleeping .................................5968 hrs ~ 35.1%

Traveling on transport ...................350 hrs ~ 2.1%

Vacations (in BF, Ghana and Mali) ........758 hrs ~ 4.5%

Free Time ................................7102 hrs ~ 42.0%

So here’s the thing... From the very first day of training, it’s ingrained in our heads that we, as volunteers, have three objectives… These are:

1. Primary Service to Country (for me that is teaching)

2. Cultural Exchange - meaning talking with Burkinabe about what American people and culture are all about and learning what Burkinabe people and culture are all about.

3. To bring home to the states the knowledge about the Burkinabe people and share it with our fellow Americans.

Now, Objective #3 is something I have to do when I am finished with my service and back in America, so my time in BF should be split between Objectives 1 and 2 (normally a 50/50 split, right?). HOWEVER, due to the educational schedule and my low number of scheduled teaching hours, only 13.2% of my time has been spent on Objective #1. Taking out sleeping, traveling, training, and African vacations, that left a whopping 42% of my time that is free, in which I was expected to be culturally exchanging. Since that is quite a tiring amount of cultural exchanging, it really boils down to about 2/3 of that 42% spent on staring at walls, reading, or swatting flies into my screen door with my fly swatter (best purchase ever). Therefore, if 1/3 of that 42% (or 14%) of my time was actually spent on Objective #3, that would mean that I spent 2375.5 hours (about 99 days) exchanging with the Burkinabe.

The moral of this mathematical lesson is that if I have actually spent 99 days working on Objective #3, I think that my mission is accomplished and I can now spend the remainder of the free time I have left until June going back to staring at walls, reading, and swatting flies into my screen door with my fly swatter. Well, maybe to have a round number, as it seems I've developped some form of OCD, I’ll get to 100 days, but that’s it!

This brings me to my next mental flow-chart..... Again, this goes back to something that we saw numerous times in training. During practically every medical training session I have ever sat through, there is reference to a graph that is supposed to represent the emotional roller coaster that is our Peace Corps service. Basically it tells us that ups and down are normal and it gives it to us as a function of time in 3 month increments. It says that we should expect to go through a variety of emotions based on cultural shock, homesickness, physical illness, loneliness, effectiveness in work, cultural barriers, and lots of other things that make us ride that roller coaster. Reflecting on my ups and downs, I think that chart has been pretty accurate, but I’d like to propose another chart from the volunteer perspective… that is a chart of MOTIVATION as a function of time. It’s actually very simple to visualize. It starts out at a plateau, where I’d categorize motivation as “very high” or “eager”... Then somewhere around the 12 month mark (coinciding with emotional lows, per the PC emotional roller coaster chart), motivation takes a sharp nose dive and lingers somewhere around “ambivalence” ... Getting further into the second year of service, I’d say there’s a slight rise around the 15th month to “renewed motivation but with lack of energy”... and then from months 18-24 there is a steady decline in motivation until you finally reach the final low point of “lack of interest in anything but staring at walls, reading, and swatting flies into my screen door with my fly swatter.”

To summarize these statistical reviews of my time and emotions, I’d say that I’m just about ready to come home. And that I am pleased, but slightly terrified, that I can still pass five hours on a bus with the thoughts in my head, such as the analysis of my life by percentages and flow charts.

Speaking of passing the time, since I haven’t blogged in a while, the only things I’ve done over the past couple of months have been teaching the second trimester of school, my end of service conference, and a small side trip to a city in the south of BF called Gaoua. The second trimester of school was fine… same old stuff…. And the conference was really great because not only did I get to spend a week with my awesome training group (we’re down to 9 people by the way) in an A/C hotel, with a pool and amazing food, but we also discussed a lot about life after Peace Corps and getting back to our American lives. Actually, talking about getting back to our American lives made us all a bit anxious about the idea of job searching and reverse culture shock and all that, but I think mostly we’ve all reached the point where we’re ready to move on, so it was really great to discuss. Also, the other volunteers who are NOT at the end of their service (ha – suckers!) were kind enough to throw our group a big goodbye bash. This is sort of a tradition amongst volunteers so that everyone can be together with the outgoing group one last time. So we had a really fun day-long party with a kickball tournament, pool, food, dancing, and two awesome little surprises. The first was a funny skit people played to represent all of us. It was basically a skit of everyone’s character flaws, but of course, that’s why it was so funny. And the second was a hand-drawn picture of all 9 of us in my group, which was amazing!

My trip to Gaoua was OK, too. I went to visit a museum they have there to teach about the culture of an ethnic group called the Lobi, who live around the Gaoua region. It’s pretty incredible how they lived and how recently they lived like that, because some of the info and pictures are from the 1930’s. The Lobi were probably the most warrior-like group of people you will find in this country, and there were pics of warriors with poison darts that they made using snake venom and decomposed corpses. They really did wear loincloths made from animal skins or shells because even in the 1930’s they did not have fabrics to make clothes. Female excision was an absolute must if any girl was to be considered for marriage. And women pierced their two lips with pieces of bone that held in place pieces of gourd shells between their lips and teeth. So it looks as though their mouths are protruding, but this was done to make the women more attractive to men. Once married, the women would sometimes bind the pieces of gourd to each with another piece of bone whenever they had a problem with their husband that they wanted to discuss. Therefore, they’d walk around all day with their lips literally sewed together until the problem was resolved. I don’t think that would fly so well with us American women, but I guess it’s also a good passive aggressive, patient way to communicate with your husband.

As we are getting deeper into HOT season again, I am remembering what it feels like to be aware of every pore in your body. It’s hard to imagine that a person can sweat as much as he/she does, but it’s literally like when you go into a sauna and your body naturally starts dripping just sitting there. Well it’s pretty much like that from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. nowadays. On that five hour bus ride I spoke of earlier, in order to escape the suffocating felling I had being trapped on a non-A/C bus in midday with many neighbors and screaming babies, and aside from the mathematical psychosis I was suffering from, I was trying to take notice of all the little things that are part of everyday travel and life so that I don’t forget it when I go home…. Like the rooster that was strutting around in the overhead compartment that is supposed to be for luggage. Needless to say, I did not sit on that side of the bus or put my stuff up on that side, in case he needs to relieve himself during the voyage. Or the women who sprint up to the windows of a stopped bus selling food from plates on their heads. They sell anything from eggs to carrots to little fried dough balls to water in a bag (for drinking). And it’s funny how you get used to these things and sometimes look forward to those ladies so you can stick your head out of the window of the bus, drop money on her plate, and eat the carrots that have been sitting out in the sun and dust all day long and think that it’s such a treat that the carrot lady was there today. My neighbor opted for hard boiled eggs, so when he came back from the window he had four eggs cradled in his hands. He stuffed two in his pockets and cracked open the other two for his little treat en route.

The last interesting thing I have to share with you all ... (This is a long blog, huh?) ....is that a reporter from PBS came all the way to my village last October to do a report on cotton production and how the US subsidies affect international cotton farmers. The people in the footage from BF are from my village and the main Burkinabe man in the show is actually the parent of one of my students I know very well.

The program aired in February, so if anyone is interested in reading it, here’s the link:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/310/africa-cotton.html

And finally, if anyone was thinking of sending any more packages, I’m leaving in less than three months, so don’t bother sending more stuff!! Unless you’d like me to share it with those less fortunate volunteers who are not yet through with their services. Or, if you’d like to still send something, I’d welcome any school supplies to give out to the kids at the end of the year… like pencils, pens, erasers, rulers, compasses, protractors, pencil bags, etc… otherwise, I’m coming home, so no more packages needed!! And a big THANK YOU to all of you who have sent me stuff since I’ve been here!! They made HUGE differences in my everyday life and saved me from starvation when I could no longer bear the lack of variety of food available in village.

I don’t know when I’ll blog again, but surely before I am finished with service.

Happy Passover and Easter to all!

For the third time, I'm preparing myself to live through hot season in BF. Within a week, it has already gone from pretty cool and comfortable all throughout the day... to HOT! And its starting really early this year. Ugh. Not looking forward to sweating through every minute of the day and night once again....

As for work, school is going pretty well. I really love my 3ème students, who are the kids who are going to be taking the national exam at the end of the school year that they have to pass in order to continue on to high school. My 3ème class is exceptionally intelligent and dynamic, and I think that if it wasn't for them, I can't say for sure that I would have lasted through a second year of teaching. There's one girl in particular who is extremely inspiring. Her name is Aminata, and she's 14 yrs old. She lives in a village about 10 miles from where the school is, and she lives during the school week in a house with two other female students. Can you even imagine a 14 yr old in America living with two of her classmates, cooking for herself, cleaning, etc, and studying enough to be one of the best in the class?? She was 3rd out of 40 students the first trimester, and she's just extraordinary. There are some kids in the same class who are 20-21 yrs old (they're kids who repeated entire school years many times because they didn't have good enough grades to continue on to the next class - like being held back, but several times in several different grades). Aminata kicks their asses so bad in school. Love that girl.

My PCV neighbor, Megan, and I also started an English Club for my 3ème and 4ème (the younger class) students. So once a week we get together for 1-2 hours and play games in English. The 3ème kids are hilarious.... the first week we had about 20 kids and played pictionary with them. We split them into groups of 5 or 6 and told them to pick team names. So the first group comes up with the name "King Boy." Now, ingenuity and creativity are not very cultivated in the school system, or in general very much over here, so we weren't too surprised when the next two team names the groups came up with were "Best Boy" and "Golden Boy." We formed a fourth group after some stragglers came in late, and when we told them to come up with a team name, it wasn't a surprise that after they had a small conference amongst themselves, looked at the team names that were already written, they came up with the name "Crazy Boy." Meg and I laughed so much with them. They're just really cute and very bright and very funny. I am really happy that they're the class I get to end my service with because I think they're going to do really well on that exam at the end of the year, and I'm glad I'll be able to say that I helped them get there - at least in math and maybe some english. My other, younger class I teach - 4ème - on the other hand, are not quite as bright and dynamic as the older kids. We do the english club with them, too, but with them it's slightly torturous. For instance, we played 20 questions this past week, and we had people, places and objects that we chose that they had to guess the identity of. So one kid would go... "Is it a person?"... "Is it a place?"... etc until they guess the thing. One example of why this was difficult was a boy whose word to guess was 'Ouaga' (the capital of BF)... so his questions and our answers went like this:

"Is it a place?".... YES

"Is it a village?".... NO

"Is it a city?".... YES

"Is it a window?".... um.... no

"Is it an airplane?"..... um... what?

I guess he didn't understand the game because his questions continued like that for a couple more before eventually starting to guess cities. One other kid also stood up and pretty much stared at everyone for a good 2 minutes between questions. It got awkward.

Overall, though, I am enjoying teaching more the second year and since I am teaching the same kids I taught last year, I know every one of their names which makes classroom management easier, and it's nice to see what they actually remember of what I taught the year before so I know I wasn't totally useless and that they understood my French.

I've eaten some cool things this past week, too. OK, well maybe not cool.... but different than what you'd find in an average American meat market. So throughout the course of a week I ate stuffed pigeon (absolutely delicious), monkey meat stew (not so bad), and bush rat (also not too bad if you don't have to look at the head - which I did). So since I've been here I have eaten goat, sheep, cow, hippo, caterpillars, pigeons, guinea fowl, chicken, turkey, random other wild birds, bush rat, lemur (I think that's what it was), lizard, and monkey meats. Yum. Who says there's nothing to eat in Africa? If you know the right people, someone will hunt and kill something in the night that you can buy the next day and put in a nice, hearty soup.

That's all for now. Just checking in. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the cold weather.....

Only four months to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since Thanksgiving, I’ve been a pretty busy gal. Mostly with fun stuff - after school finished up, of course. So yeah, school is on break until next Monday, and during that time, my college buddy, Kristina, came to visit !!! So happy to finally have someone from home here on my new home turf and see and experience what I have been living for almost two years now!! She got to see my village, some of the south of Burkina, Ouaga, and Mali!! Mali was such a blast, and I would say it is the most beautiful place I have been since coming to Africa. The region we went to is called Dogon ('dough-gone') country, and it's north of Burkina about 90 km. I went with a group of 8 people, and for three days, we hiked up rocky, steep cliffs that were about 300 feet tall, and slept two nights up on the cliffs! It was freaking cold, by the way. But luckily we were all prepared with blankies, tents and sleeping bags. And yes, we hiked with all that stuff in backpacks, or strapped to backpacks. We had a wonderful Malian guide, as well, who is fluent in English and has definitely spent way too much time with Americans and other foreigners. I know this because he used the F word more than any of the rest of us. It was very funny hearing an African guy cursing in English. Especially in the mornings when it was pretty chilly and he'd repeatedly say "Damn, it's F-ing COLD!" with an franco-African accent. Attaining the Peace Corps objective of cultural exchange?? - check!

Here are some pics from Mali:

Another great time I had with Kristina was at a zoo that the President of Burkina owns, or used to own, or something. It was amazing! Actually, Kristina thought it was sad, but I thought it was amazing…. All about the relativity of where each of us has been for the last two years, I guess… but anyway, we walked around the zoo and saw giraffes, tigers, lions, elephants, zebras, hippos, monkeys, ostriches, turtles, peacocks, and lots of other cool animals. I tickled a lion’s paw that was pressed up against the cage while he was sleeping, and an elephant tickled MY foot with the end of his trunk. The fence had a small opening in the bottom and I guess he wanted to smell my feet. And by the way, in case you didn’t know, hippos are HUGE!! I had only seen their faces peering out of the water when I saw them on lakes. But I got to see their massive, full selves this time. They really are like water bears. I'll post pics soon, but I have to wait to get them from Kristina.

One other notable event of the holiday season was actually on Christmas Eve. I spent it at my friend Haoua’s house (the same Haoua who was in the states the same time as me last year). But the special guests who joined us were a man who was a volunteer in BF back in the 60’s with his family and 2 of his friends! It was really fun exchanging stories and chatting with them. And really just being around an entire American family again was pretty fun, so if you’re reading this, Robert, thanks for spending that time with me and Kristina. I really enjoyed hanging out with your family.

Other than that, no particular news. I don't feel like writing anymore because uploading pics tired me out and made me mad at this computer. So more next time.

Happy New Year everyone!!

Thanksgiving was so wonderful!!! It is my favorite holiday, and instead of being bummed out about not being home for it (like last year), some other PCV's and I hosted a big T Day dinner THIS year in Bobo. It was perfect! We had 27 volunteers come down for it... some from as far as a full day's trip away!! And thanks to my great family and friends, we had tons of decorations and all the traditional food you get to eat in the states. And since we have much to be thankful for, we all sat around family-style and did the traditional "what are we thankful for" roundtable before eating. We did Thanksgiving a little like how the Pilgrims and Indians did it, too..... slaughtered, defeathered and gutted three HUGE turkeys for dinner. Though we did have an oven to cook in... but whatever. How many of YOU slaughtered your own turkeys??? Got to love Thanksgiving! Here are some pics....

(Thank you, SUJIN, for the decorations!!! Everyone was blown away by the decor, and it made it really feel like we were home... )

The three assassins after the deed of killing the turkeys was done... and the aftermath!

The de-feathering team

The kitchen staff

Laura cutting up the grilled and sauteed turkeys. We cheated on the actual cooking of the turkeys. I got a local restaurant, who is a friend of the Peace Corps, to cut up and cook the turkeys. But we really did kill, pluck, gut and clean them ourselves before handing them over!!

The BIG FEAST!!!!!

Me, about to pack on a few pounds, and absolutely thrilled to do so.

Kelly's and my pies

Me and my PCV neighbor, Megan. We practically live in the same village and we share a great love of food!!!

One very satisfied customer, all full of turkey!

What I am thankful for most of all is the support from everyone back home. Especially my family!! But also my wonderful friends. It's just been nonstop support from you all ever since I left you, and I can't express how much it means when you are this far from home. I am also extremely thankful that I get to spend NEXT Thanksgiving in America, and that I only have seven more months to go!!!!

In October, I may have written about a festival we had in village for the installation of a new mayor in my village. Here are some pics from that day, too.... the instrument that looks like a xylophone with gourds is called a balofon. I am wearing an outift made of a fabric the village picked out to be "the fabric" of use for clothing to wear for the festival.

And finally, here is a great picture I captured of that monkey, Sushi, who bit me and made me get a rabies shot. I just like this action shot - it makes him look very intimidating, n'est ce pas??

That is all from me. I will write more soon. One of my awesome friends is coming for a visit in just a couple of weeks, so I should have some more good pics from our time together and whatever travelling we will get to do.

Hello all. I am very happy to be in the grand city of Bobo. I needed to get out of village. For no reason in particular, it's just that sometimes you need to get out. And now is that time.

Actually I am a bit frustrated with school, because half the time I am teaching, I am one of only two or three teachers at the school. A school with four grade levels, and 225 kids. So when I am in one of those four classes, and other kids don't have teachers, they are outside making noise and just generally disturbing my classes. So naturally those that are in MY class are paying attention to what is going on outside, and eventually no one wants to be there working. Including me. It's very annoying.

But in my English class, one day we were reading a chapter about going to an oracle/fortune teller, and then translating those predictions written in the book. The kids were bored after a while, and so was I, so I gave them a writing assignment (in English) to write a future prediction for their classmate neighbor, and then for themselves. Reading their papers in English had me cracking up, and I'd like to share some choice parts of some of their papers with you. Not that I am making fun of their English, but some of the stuff they said was hilarious, just because of the context.

Predictions for your friend:

"....Next year you will marry a beautiful girl with that you will not have children, you will go take all money of your parent and will give.... if no you will die"

"You will have in your future one wife and her will have one boy. this boy won't speak but when he will have 10 years old there will be strength in the world"

"You will be a beautiful man, and the girls will like you and you will buy a bicycle for your wife."

"You will meet the big dog"

"You will buy a new car, you will marry a bad girl"

Predictions for their own futures:

"I will marry a red wife and will have 3 children"

"I work in assembly national in BF. I will buy a car for my father and a bicycle for my mother. I will marry a girl for my sister who live in the village. I will have a long and successful life."

"I will be joy because my father give me many money"

"...I will be an Ambassador in Los Angeles. I will get married the girl of the President, our child will be a beautiful girl.."

"I will meet the master man....I will live in the city, classic."

"I look my future I see that I will have a good health but I will be a president of Burkina Faso"

That is some good stuff. I had my older class of kids write me stories of how they passed their Ramadan holidays, too. There were also some great phrases, but these (above)were some of my favorites. English is fun.

In my math classes, I am actually having a much easier time this year than last. I feel much more comfortable teaching, and I take less time to prepare lessons. In my older class, though, ... the class of kids who will have to take and pass the national exam to continue on with their education in high school... don't have any books. There are literally 8 math books available for a class of 37 kids. This is also very frustrating, especially when you want to assign homework. But they work it out, and I am going to talk to our new school director (like the principal) to see about ordering more. Probably not going to happen, but it never hurts to inquire.

Other news.... not so much. Just the holiday Ramadan, which was relatively uneventful. Just a lot of eating and greeting and wishing well for the new year.

I was trying to think of stuff to blog about and I decided on a good old "list." Of what? you may be asking yourself... well, I'll just call them

"Everyday situations that I never thought I'd be in".

I'll give you ten:

10. Sitting at home plucking a freshly killed chicken (with blood-stained feathers at the neck) so that I can have me a nice dinner.

9. Teaching my math class when a chicken walks in, clucks a few times, poos on the floor, and exits (I should have killed him for dinner).

8. Seeing a huge monitor lizard crawling up into my ceiling space from the outside and then trying to sleep while I hear him scratching the ceiling 'tiles' as if he wants to get through them.

7. Welling the water I use for bathing, drinking and everything else, and finding a big toad or any array of insects in the bucket I am pulling up.

6. Replying to people in Julah or Moore with some kind of smart remark when they ask me to be their 4th or 5th wife.

5. Sitting on the side of the road for a minimum of two hours to try and get a ride to Bobo in a crowded vehicle with any sort of combination of animals and people.

4. Biking for 15 min and climbing a steep hill to have spotty cell reception to keep a semblance of contact with the world while in village.

3. Having ice available to me one time a week, on market day, in a place where it is at least 100 degrees every day, and considering this a grand luxury.

2. Having to ask a friendly Peul (an ethnic group) man to move his cows out of the road so that I can bike by without getting a horn to the face.

1. Falling asleep at 8:30 every night, with the noises of braying donkeys, neighbors talking and cackling in another language, sheep baa-ing, mosque prayers over their loudspeakers, and some random blasting music from a party one kilometer away.

Yes, I am sort of homesick.

Here are some pics, finally, that I owe you all from past post stories, and from these past holidays:

Here is Sushi, the monkey that bit me and caused me to go get rabies shots:

What used to be a full bridge in my village. I live on the other side of this bridge

Will post more this weekend. Go to run

I don't have much to report, but I like to blog when I am in town to let you all know I'm still alive and kicking.

I started teaching last week. Well, technically school has started, but no one has REALLY started. I mean, I gave lots of practice exercises to my students in math to review everything we did last year and just get them in the right frame of mind to start school. But no one has actually begun teaching their real classes yet. Since I am also teaching English this year, I am trying to throw together a program of lesson plans to follow, but unfortunately for me I have absolutely no guidance. Not even a text book. So I just went into class and started asking questions in English, and tried to get an idea of what they know and don't know. But I am a little worried about having an actual year full of lesson plans. Math is so much easier for me... plus, I actually have books to guide me in teaching math. Oh well.... c'est la vie

I was extremely encouraged with the class of older kids I am teaching, though.. those who were in quatrième (4e) last year, who are now in troisième (3e), which is now the year they will have to take and pass the BEPC national exam in June. So when I was giving out all these practice problems to them, just about every single kid I had last year in 4e did the problems without even batting an eye and with no problems at all... whereas those who failed the national exam last year, who had to take the 3e class for a second time this year, did not really get about half of the problems we were discussing. I think a lot of it probably has to do with my old students being used to the way I teach and my accent and all... but just to give myself confidence, I will say it was also due to my amazing teaching skills last year!! :)

We did have a pretty cool (relatively cool) party last Friday for a new school building that had been constructed in my village last year. It is supposed to serve as a second building for the school I work in, so as to double the amount of classrooms for each grade. So there would be less kids per classroom, for better learning capacity. A German NGO was responsible for this, and the NGO representatives came to the party in village, so that was kind of fun to have other foreigners to hang out with for a few hours. But for the building, we don't have enough students or teachers, so for the moment, it stands empty. But this particular NGO has done so much work in Burkina - constructing schools, teacher housing, and water pumps all over, on the village level, and it was very comforting to see. If only someone would come fix the damn bridge in my village!!! I fear for my life every time I bike over it.

The party we had for that building inauguration was cool, because there was a lot of cultural stuff going on that I never get to see in village. Like there are these 'masks,' which are people who have these elaborate painted wooden masks covering their faces, and the rest of their bodies are covered in flowing pieces of grass or colored strings or something of the sort so as to cover every inch of their bodies. They came out and danced to drum beats, and they are supposed to scare kids, because kids get smacked by them (that is actually a part of their presence - hitting children), and it was really fun to watch. Then they had a balofone player come out and play some traditional music, too. The balofone is like a xylophone, but with carved out gourds under the wooden keys.

And lastly there was a Mossi tribe of people (an ethnic group) who came and did some traditional dancing for everyone, too. It was really different and fun for me, because we never have that sort of thing in village. I found out, too, that people even nowadays, can still communicate to each other using drums and balofones. One man told me that he can be on the other side of his village and hear the music of a balofone, and hear a message within it. Like he will understand the announcement of someone's arrival in the village, or the birth of a baby, or really just about anything. That really blew me away. It amazes me how much culture is still existent in this country. Although, I guess when you come from America, where everyone's cultures are thrown in a blender and mixed up so that in the end, we have one big mishmosh of culture, it is easy to be impressed by some authentic culture.

Other than that, I would like to thank my care package providers for coming through on the mac n cheese and other goods. You know who you are, and for three days straight I ate nothing but mac n cheese and Oreos. It was so good.... and I didn't gain a pound, thanks to the hot season getting going again, my water welling, and some biking.

Back again at the end of October. Possible Halloween party with fellow volunteers!!

Hello.

I guess it's been a while, but I finally have some more free time again, since Girls Camp is now officially over. It went really well overall, and succeeded in making the end of my 4 month summer break go by very very quickly. Oh, and it helped out some girls, too.... Over the course of about 6 wks, twice a week, we met with 20 girls who attend the school I teach at. We had a large gamut of topics that we discussed, from HIV/AIDS to unwanted pregnancies (how to NOT have one), to why to avoid the old men that hit on you and offer you money to be their little mistresses, to more forward-thinking things like which high school diplomas offer which types of work and how to get there. We also took the girls on a one day outing to Bobo, where they got to take a mini tour of the town (some of them have never even left the village), speak with a wonderful woman who is the Director of the fanciest bank in Burkina, eat well, and then learn a little about computers and how to use them at the cybercafe. They really seemed to enjoy the outing, except for our ride home. We got stuck in a huge rainstorm that pretty much wiped out the road back to village. So what should have been a three hour ride turned into a cold, wet 6 hour ride, in the dark, on a washed out road, and the girls had to get out and walk across certain parts of the road that were too dangerous to cross with passengers inside. We got home at midnight, all soaking wet. But hopefully it was worth it for them. We asked lots of evaluation questions at the end, too, and it seems that they all got something out of it, whether it was a few days off from working in the fields, or a real appreciation of discussions about topics people generally do not discuss in an open and honest matter. Especially health matters.

The road to my village... that is a story in itself.... so there are about 35 km (like 20 miles or something) between the paved road and my village. If it was paved, I could normally be home from Bobo in an hour, but because of the shit condition of the road, it takes a minimum of 3 hours these days. Rain is still falling at least a few times a week, and every time, you'd swear it was a hurricane coming. The sky just turns an ominous black, the winds pick up to enormous rates, and then the sky just opens up and downpours for at least an hour. This turns the road into a river each time. Again, having a civil engineering background, it pains me to see how people think they are "fixing" the road problems we have. For instance... there are various parts of the 35 km bad road where men have placed large boulders... not in any orderly fashion... over many feet of the road, over the entire width of the road. This is their solution to the water pockets. Instead of driving through water where you don't know how deep it is and possibly killing your engine, you have to now drive over craggy, badly placed rocks that are big enough to scrape the bottom of your vehicle as you drive over it... and/or disable your car entirely from moving in a forward direction because your tires get stuck between boulders and people have to push the car over the rocks. Can someone PLEASE send me some bituminous material to pave this freakin' road???

Oh, also... that bridge that connects me to the rest of world that is in my village.. the one that last year I thought was going to fall in the river because it started crumbling and the "engineered" solution wasn't really a solution at all.... well, with the last big rain we had, the bridge has now fallen into the river. Yes, it is true. This year, the cement surface developped a huge, wide crack in it for the last few wks, since the rains got heavier and kept pushing out the under-support of the bridge with every rain. Instead of solving this problem when it started, we waited til the crack got big enough to stick a tree branch in it to warn people to steer clear of that side of the bridge (seriously). And one day before it fell, some men piled some of those large, craggy boulders in the water (like the ones they use to 'fix' the road problem) on the upstream side of the bridge for the large vehicles to cross over. But the water runs over those rocks, too, so if you are on foot or bike you chance slipping on the rocks and falling in the water. OR, you can still cross a part of the bridge, because not the entire bridge fell in the water, but it looks like someone took a huge bite out of the side of it, so there is still a way to pass. But at one point the passage narrows to about a foot and a half wide. So if you cross on a bike or motorcycle and you lose your balance or look down or something, you get to fall to your death, because laying just below is a huge mound of crushed concrete, boulders, and metal rebar. I don't know what to do about this situation.

And not only did the bridge fall, but lots of homes and outdoor "hangars" - enclosed areas made of straw and wood - are falling because the rains are heavier than usual and lasting way longer into September than usual. The big hangar at my house completely fell, too. I came home one day after a big rain and found that the entire thing had caved in on itself. But luckily I had some neighbors who I paid to help me take apart the remains and reconstruct a smaller space, so at least I still have outdoor shade and a little privacy.

In other news.... I have a monkey. Well, I am co-owner of a monkey. And as you could guess from the blog title, I named him Sushi. Named after the one meal I have constant cravings for and one of the ones I miss the most. I guess I thought that if worse came to worse, one day Sushi the monkey could also become Sushi the dinner. But doutbful. SO... this little monkey stays in a tree all day, and as a very stereotypical monkey, he loves bananas. But he also enjoys to eat peanuts, tomatoes, milk and the occasional spider or cricket. He is pretty cute, and very fun to watch because he amuses himself just like you'd expect a little monkey to do. When we let him off his rope, he climbs trees and jumps on everything, and generally is very good for passing the time. Only problem is that he sort of hates me and attacks me. I already have been bitten by him like 3 times and scratched about a zillion. But at least he doesn't throw his poop at me or anything, and he has been vaccinated. We're working through our differences slowly but surely.

In school news, three teachers from my school have been 'affecté' to other schools. That basically means the government decided to change their work locations. This is something that happens quite frequently among the working class in Burkina, especially those who have government jobs, like teaching. If a person is at a site for at least two or three years, it's possible that one day the government will just call you and let you know that your site is being changed. Or sometimes the people request the change of site themselves, to be closer to their husbands or wives or something like that. So at my school we lost our English, French and science teachers. No word yet on substitutes to replace them, so for the moment it looks like I will be taking over the English classes until someone gets affecté to Padema.

I am in Ouaga for a few days, so if anyone wants to call the cell, I am available and waiting..... Then I will be back in school starting Oct 9th.

Oh... little requests, also, if I may..... regarding care packages. I mean, I know a lot of people have ASKED what they can send.... so...well.... here is a list to satisfy your burning desire to send me packages. Really, I am doing this for you and not for me.

I am planning on hosting Thanksgiving this year for other volunteers, so it would be really helpful and wonderful if you could send me some Thanksgiving stuff... i.e.:

stove top stuffing

cranberry sauce

canned pumpkin

nutmeg

graham crackers (for pie crust)

cheery pie filling

decorations - Josh requests pilgrim hats and/or Indian costumes, and hand-turkeys (those things kids make in school)

other decorations such as leaf cut outs and Happy Thanksgiving banners, napkins or tablecloths

Other stuff in general that I miss or want, non Thanksgiving related:

spaghetti O's

Parm cheese

cup o noodles

mac n cheese (+1 for Josh - sorry, he is sitting next to me while I compose this)

chili

M&Ms

Thanks in advance for your generous contributions to my survival.

Happy Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Ramadan!

Life has finally gotten busier again, thankfully. With the Girls Camp in full swing, there is constantly lots of organizing to be done. And so far, so good. Megan (my PCV neighbor) and I, along with various members of the village, have had 4 successful meetings so far. Daily themes ranged from "what does it mean to be a Burkinabe woman?" (societal expectations, objectives in life, living in a village, etc...) to Health discussions (mainly puberty and HIV/AIDS) to discussions with their parents about why they don't want to send girls to school. It has been educational for everyone involved, I think. In general, it has been killing lots of down time and (hopefully) positively affecting 20 young girls in my 'hood. We'll see.... we are planning on evaluating it all at the end with questions/surveys, so that should be a good indicator.

One of the girls at Girls Camp. They cut out magazine pictures to decorate notebooks we gave them... pictures that represent themselves or something they strive to have in the future.

The girls at work on their notebooks

And more girls working on their notebooks

I biked 40 km the other day. Something I haven't done since last year in training. Don't know why I am so lazy here, but it felt good and made me realize that I need to get my butt in shape. Although with all the "women's work" I have been doing since my girls are no longer around (they're in the fields every day), like welling water and laundry and all.... I feel like I'm buffing up again. oh yeah.

Here are some pictures of my village, Padema. Note the extremely well-planned and well-constructed bridge over the water:

This is my little 2 yr old neighbor, Mariam. She showed up at my house carrying this very large kitchen knife. Don't know why, but I didn't take the knife away from her. She seemed to know what she was doing. I don't underestimate children with sharp objects in this country.

A little friend who visited me at home one night. Actually I saw one like this guy practically every night for a week.

I had a not so great experience in Bobo just yesterday with some rotten little kids. There are kids in all large cities who run around selling little trinkets like tissues, or candy, or post cards, etc. out of cardboard boxes they carry around.... and they harass the crap out of you if you look rich or especially if you are white. Usually I am friendly to everyone, and I try to politely refuse whatever is being sold.... and usually about 80% of the people you'd cross in the street will greet you with a smile and friendly hello and when you say no they will eventually just go away and let you be. However.... these freakin kids, who I recognize from every time I come to Bobo and get harassed about buying something.... deserved a swift kick to the mouth. I was biking around, running errands, and was stopped buying something, when the brat came up to me. With a serious and mean face on, he started in on me...

Little Brat: "I know you. Don't you recognize me? You know me. HEY! Last time you said you'd buy something from me. Aren't you going to buy something? Don't ignore me. Here in Africa people say hello to people. I know you, white lady!!"

Me: "no, leave me alone, I'm busy" and I try to start biking away

LB: "Oh you're a mean person. You say you don't know me and you do!"... blocking the way

Me: "yes I am mean, now get away from me."

LB: "you're a RACIST!!! RACIST!!! RACIST!!!"

Me: "yes, kid, I'm a racist. That is why I am working here in Africa. Because I am a racist. Good bye."

I start riding down the street, which is crowded with lots of people.

LB: "RACIST!!! BASTARD!!! SLUT!!! RACIST!!!RACIST!!! I know your bike. If I see it in town, I'll slash your tires!!"

His little rotten, rude friends also start chanting "RACIST" at me as I am riding away.

I keep riding and saying "ok... bye now"

There is nothing you can do in this situation. If I stop and have a battle in the street with a 12 yr old kid, I look like a fool. If I hit him, someone will think I started something, or the kid could say I did. If I ride away, he's screaming racist at me, and everyone is staring. Nice kid. At moments like those, I wish I was in village where everyone knows me. It's amazing how differently people act from the village to the city. You can even feel the judgements differently in the city. The way people look at you. Sometimes if I say hello to someone on the street, they reply with shock and thank me for saying hello, whereas in the village it's a huge, friendly hello that is just natural and anticipated. I don't know why that is. I guess it is based on experiences with other foreigners, but the Burkinabe themselves have completely different attitudes from the village to the city. Good old press and other worldly influences. Helping develop the social situations all over the world. For the worse.

I posted some pics on the last two blog posts because I finally got to upload them. So check them out whenever.

And if anyone was planning on sending me any pkgs, please include some mac n cheese. I'm out!!

S.O.S.!!!!

THANK YOU!!!

Aside from starting out the week with a case of salmonella, this past week was really fun!!!

Last Thursday, I rode on transport up to a city called Dedougou, where I met 8 of my friends. Luckily (for the first time in a long time) the transport timing worked out perfectly for me to meet them and hop directly onto another car, with them, to get to another city called Nouna. Our eventual destination was my buddy Josh Y's village. It's in the northwest portion of Burkina, very close to the border of Mali. He invited everyone to have a Christmas in July... in August party...in Bomborokuy. (It was originally slated for July but was rescheduled to August). Let me tell you, if I didn't look at the calendar I'd have sworn we really were celebrating Christmas. Josh's parents were here for a visit recently and brought lots of Christmas-related goodies for his party, and since Josh also gets like 3 packages a month or something ridiculous, we all got spoiled! He had spray snow in a can, which was all used; tinsel, paper snow confetti, santa hats, a mini Christmas tree with decorations, and lots of instant food that made it feel like a true American feast. Instant mashed potatoes, instant Stove Top stuffing, gravy, and even.... apple pie!! It was absolutely delicious, and if you are reading this, Mr and Mrs Yardley.... THANK YOU!!!! You helped make bored, hungry volunteers who haven't eaten such goodies in a long time very happy..... a Christmas MIRacle!!.... in August. Josh's only requests from us were a wrapped gift and our tents. Done and done. SO much fun. I never have a bad time with other volunteers, especially those from my group who have become like my brothers and sisters, so add in all that Christmas cheer and it was a blast.

Village style.

Me giving Josh a Christmas present

The whole Peanuts Gang at (August) Christmastime

On the way back home there were a couple of typical Burkinabe moments. For instance, when we rolled through Nouna on the way back, there was a lady selling rice and sauce in the bus station, and I was very hungry. She wasn't at the table when I walked over so I peeked in the pot to see if there was any left, and there was a lot left. So I called her over and asked for one plate of rice and sauce. Our conversation went like this:

Me: Hello, I'd like one plate of rice and sauce please.

Rice Lady: The rice is finished.

Me: Well, I just looked in the pot and I saw lots of rice, so what do you mean it's finished?

RL: No, it's finished.

Me: So if I open up the pot and I look inside it, there will be no rice?

RL: Yes, it is finished.

..... I walk over to pot and open it. The rice is still there, obviously.

Me: So..... correct me if I am wrong, but is that not rice?

RL: ok, I'll get you a plate of rice.

Me: Forget it, I don't want your rice anymore.

It is like this allllll the time, and I still don't get it. Here's another conversation one of my friends, Kara, had when she went to go buy us all waters:

Kara: Hello, I'd like 9 waters, please.

Water Lady: We don't have that many waters.

Kara: Well, however many you have then, I will buy those. Do you have 5?

WL: Yes, there are 5.

Kara: Great, I'll take the 5 then.

... WL gets the 5 waters.

Kara: Do you happen to have 4 more?

WL: Yes.

Kara: I'd like to buy those, too, then.

WL: ok

.... WL comes back with 4 more waters, and Kara now has 9 waters.

Then, when I was alone on the ride back to Bobo, the bus stopped at a sort of "rest stop" for food. Normally when you buy a plate of rice it costs 100 francs, and it's sort of a lot of rice. I wasn't that hungry, but since it was a long ride I wanted to buy half a plate to eat before continuing. These aren't like take-out pre-prepared plates. They scoop it out of the pot and serve it while you are standing there. You eat and leave the plate when you are done, so buying half a plate shouldn't be too hard, right?

Me: Hello, can I please have 50 francs of rice please?

Rice Lady #2: No, that's not possible. You can't do that.

Me: You mean, you cannot give me a plate with half the quantity you normally put in and charge me 50 francs?

RL2: No, not possible.

Me: Not possible or you just don't do that?

RL2: You cannot order 50 francs of rice.

Me: Fine, I will take the 100 francs of rice and only eat half and throw out the other half.

RL2: ok, here's your 100 franc plate of rice. Bon apetit.

Me: Thank you.

UGH! Many times this country can be the most frustrating place.

One interesting thing that has never happened to me before also happened... well, to us all actually, when were on a mini-bus back from Nouna to Dedougou, the day after the party. On top of the bus is a big billy goat who is just tied to a rope, like you'd tie a dog up on a leash if you go in a store for something and leave him outside. But the goat is on the roof. Usually when animals are on roofs, they are laid down and their feet are tied to each other to prevent them from moving around. This billy goat was about to go surfing on top of the car. When we started moving, we heard all this weird scratching on the roof and realized it was the goat trying to get his footing. Then we took the turn out of the bus station and BAM! The goat fell off the side and smacked the windows just outside of where we were sitting, and was hanging like as if in a noose because the rope was around his neck. He was dangling there for about a minute until one of the guys (not that speedily or as if it was something of an emergency) climbed on top of the car and hoisted the goat up and tied him down properly. He was ok, the goat, but all 9 of us white people let out quite a scream when he fell and was dangling next to us like that. And not so much to my surprise anymore, I broke out hysterically laughing, because sometimes I just still can't believe what happens on a daily basis.

My ride back to Bobo today, alone, was also an experience. It was another mini-bus type setup, but it was completely rusted out and looked like it was grabbed out of someone's junkyard. Inside the bus, the metal rebar that should be structurally supporting the roof was mostly bent, fallen off its hinges, or completely cracked and dangling. I was sitting just behind a family that was sitting under a bar that was cracked and attached together with a rope that was tied back to other rebars, which were also not attached to where they were supposed to be. And where the metal jutted out was all jagged and rusted. The metal roof panels, aside from being totally rusted out as well, were missing almost every single nut or bolt that would normally be useful to keep them in place. Where these panels met the sides of the bus, there were many spots where the bolts were also missing, so they just sort of flapped about a lot in the wind as we drove. And on top of all these structurally UNsound metal objects was everyone's luggage, weighing down the unstable, rusty, dangling metal bars just above our heads. And being the dirt roads as they are, it makes for many ups and downs and bad turns and big potholes, so this was turning into quite the death trap. I noticed today that I have begun planning escape routes every time I am on transport these days. I guess it sort of became a subconscious thing, but whenever any car I am in starts moving, I tend to immediately look at which windows I could climb out of if something was to happen.... how I would brace myself if we were to tip over.... which way I would jump if something fell from above... that sort of thing. Today was one of the worst, though. The entire 5 hours I was in this bus, my palms were sweaty, my heart was thumping, I was praying, and I was eyeballing at least every 2 minutes all the places that were juuuuust keeping the roof from collapsing in on us and/or flying off completely. With my luck being as it has been lately, I really thought this was the end of me today. Even the other Burkinabe passengers were doing nervous laughing and pointing and mini-screaming with each jump of the car. So I know if THEY are freaked out by it, I am definitely going to be uncomfortable. The driver looked like a black Kramer (from Seinfeld), and every time he hit a bump he'd turn his head around and look at the roof to make sure it was still there, too. Seriously. Now.... I'm all for adventure, and if there were like wild elephants or lions or monkeys or SOMEthing to look at on this "safari" or something, it would have been so much cooler. But I am sort of over the adventure of being scared of dying every time I travel between cities.

My village Girls Camp with my volunteer neighbor, Megan, starts this coming Saturday, the 12th!!! I can't believe how fast it is already here. I am also going to be starting a project to paint the map of the world in at least one of our classrooms on the back wall. So I should be pretty busy, but unfortunately not in Bobo so much, over the next few weeks. Out of touch for a while, but I will blog next time I AM around.

I have new package requests if anyone is interested in that sort of list.... I was inspired by all the good food at Josh's, and I know how to make an oven using clay and a big pot... so baking stuff is now on the list, too:

brownie mix or cake mix

pie crust mix

pie filling

Bisquick (for pancakes or quiches)

mac and cheese (I'm almost out!!!)

chili packets or small cans

cup o noodles

and anything else you feel like. As usual, if you are sending something, SMALL Packages are the way to go... like under 10 lbs... and AIR MAIL!! Thanks in advance to anyone who loves me enough to send food (that's a total joke- I really do like letters and emails just as much)

ok.... bye

I don't know if it is me, or what, but things have not been turning up all that much since the last blog. I'm sort of afraid to leave the house at this point.

First off, that friend of mine who was in a coma the last time I blogged.... well, she passed away two days after I visited her in the hospital. The health care in this country is the most frustrating thing... well, one of a zillion frustrating things anyway. I think it's very possible that a lot of people have chronic health problems that they are just unaware of, because preventative health care doesn't exist in this place, unless you are rich and/or live in a large city. On that note, it's very possible that many people get treated for an illness which is not at all what they have. Like in my village, practically every time someone says they are sick, they say that they have malaria, because that is what the nurses at the local "hospital" treat them for. Hospital meaning a dirty concrete slab of a building that (obviously) has no electricity or running water, and the ambulance is anything from a beat-up station wagon to a motorcycle with trailing cot/bed in back of it. So, even though the vast majority of people here certainly do have malaria on a regular basis, and it is very treatable, sometimes when something actually serious (that is NOT malaria) is the problem, it is not properly treated because it is often treated as malaria. I think this may have been the case with my friend. I heard she had a serious malaria that developed into a broncheal infection, and then the coma. I'm no doctor, but it just didn't seem right, based on what I have learned about malaria thus far. Her name was Worochia, she lived in a village about 6 miles from me, was one of my students' moms, was extremely friendly and fun, and she was supposed to be helping us with our girls camp next month. She will be missed.

Two days after I found out about her death, I left village in my "good" transport vehicle. This car, as usual, should only contain about 20 people maximum, and this particular day I counted 30. No joke. It was squished in there. You think there's never enough room for one more, when they stop for THREE more, and every miillimeter of seat and floor space is covered. Even some laps... like mine, because I had a little girl on my lap. She was so cute, though, and instantly loved me and fell asleep on my lap, so I was OK with it even though I couldn't feel my legs. SO... this time of the year the roads are getting worse and worse with every rain. It's just one big mud road with neverending potholes or ruts or what have you. At one point, all 30 of us actually had to get out of the car and walk across a particularly bad area because it was too dangerous or maybe too heavy for the driver to cross it with all of us inside. So, just as we are not far from the paved road, which generally would indicate smooth sailing for the rest of the ride, something under the car makes a loud crashing sound, the car jumps, and then jolts forward into a dirt embankment on the side of the road. Don't know what it was, but we weren't moving anymore that day. oh, and don't worry, no one was hurt. Good thing there was all that human cushioning to protect each other. Lucky for me, someone I knew passed by on the road a few hours later, so I hitched a ride, but everyone else was there apparently for another 4 or 5 hours.

After that, I travelled to the capital, Ouaga, for a wedding, and choosing to take the "very good" bus company. The one that gets you between Bobo and Ouaga reliably within five hours every time. Except when Stephanie is in the car apparently. On the return trip from Ouaga, just one hour into the trip, the car stopped on the side of the road and didn't move again. And for the next five hours, we sat on the side of that road until the "very good" bus company finally sent another bus to take us the rest of the way. Now I know break-downs happen everywhere, and that's fine. But under most conditions, the driver or the staff would make an attempt to tell the passengers what is going on and how long it will be. Well, not in THIS country. Everyone just got off and just started sitting around. No one from the staff thought to give any kind of "sorry for the delay folks, we're having a mechanical problem and a new car is on the way" speech. Or something of the kind. Just waiting and waiting. It's becoming one of my least favorite things to do. But then again, I feel like the patience I should have upon going back to America will be incredible. So long story short, my should-have-been 5 hour trip turned into an 11 hour one.

I guess since then everything is OK. Oh no, this morning I puked and had stomach problems, but I think that's all better. Who knows.

In Bobo, though, a bunch of us got together to celebrate the one year anniversary of the group that arrived a year ago to the BF. That was fun. Oh, and I actually did a touristy thing for the first time in the Bobo area with the volunteers that travelled here from the other side of the country. There is this river that is in a village about 10 km outside of Bobo that contains "sacred" fish. These are catfish, and according to the story we were told.... long long ago, when Bobo was just a small village, there came a time when there was little rain and people were starving to death. Magically, an albino man appeared from the inside of a well, carrying these catfish that were cooked up and apparently saved the village from starvation until the rains came and all was well again. To honor their sacrifice to save the village, there are now "sacred" catfish that live in this village. And they are so weird!!! We walked up to the side of a murky lake, with bread that we bought on the way in, and threw a few small pieces into the water. All of a sudden, these HUGE catfish appeared from under the murkiness to gobble up the bread. They had to be about a foot wide some of them and at least 3 feet long. It was crazy, and they just come right up to your hands and eat the bread. We were told that no one is allowed to trap and eat them, but even if you try, they will never die. You can fry them til you're blue in the face, and they will never die. I guess because they are sacred. I would test that theory out, but I think I have enough bad luck right now as it is. Don't want to invite any ancestral catfish protectors to do me any more harm. Also, when one of the catfish naturally dies in the river, it is given a burial like a human is. And there are a couple of these lakes in this village where there are sacred catfish living. Some of the places require you to sacrifice a chicken before going before the lake to see the fish. Don't know what for, but many times an animal sacrifice is a part of many ceremonies.....So there's a little culture for you.

Me feeding the big old sacred fish!

They were huge!!!

Looking forward to the end of this week because my good buddy Josh Y invited us all for a Christmas in August party in his village, so I'm gonna go up to see my pals and the northwestern part of BF. (except Tyler!!! boo for leaving us, but say hi to my folks for me!!) Hopefully the bad karma is over and all will go well. I'll keep you posted.

oh, and thanks for all the supportive messages people have written. I appreciate it a lot, and it's good to know you are still reading and keeping tabs on me.

I apologize for the crude title, but seriously this past week... in just the few days since I last blogged.... there have been a series of seriously unfortunate events in and around my village. It has been sad, to say the absolute very least.

To start off, I am in Bobo for just a day, as an unexpected trip, because I found out yesterday that a friend from a neighboring village, who I know fairly well, was sent to the hospital in Bobo because she fell into a coma. Apparently, about a week ago, she became sick with a serious form of malaria (it's really usually not that serious), which developped into a broncheal infection, which turned into a severe medical condition, until she fell into this coma. And even sadder than that is what the hospital is like. Imagine being that sick and being in a room that has six cots in it, dirty floors, flies buzzing, and creaking ceiling fans for cool air. I know that she is being taken care of, but I suppose when I imagine being sick and in a hospital, I think of sterility and cleanliness and porcelain toilets and little buttons you can push when you need something from a nurse.

So that was today. But just when I got back to Padema last Tuesday, I found out that another one of the kids from the school I taught at passed away Monday morning. He was this really bright kid, who had passed the BEPC test last year. That meant that last year, he could have enrolled in high school. However he never gained the permission for entry into high school, which I don't really understand the meaning of but I think is something like a lottery of choosing who can and cannot attend school. Anyhow, it meant that he just had to take the same year of school in Padema a second time, even though he already passed the national exam to be done with that year. So, for a second year in a row, this year, he passed the BEPC and was in the process of getting his papers ready for high school. He boarded one of the transport vehicles Monday morning to go to Bobo. One of those beaten down open-backed cars from the 70's or something that loads luggage, bikes, animals, etc on top of it. Anyway, since there wasn't room IN the vehicle, he was told to climb on top of all that clutter, which is normal and something everyone here does,... but just a few miles out of village, they hit some rough spot, and he fell off the car, and died when he hit the ground. Well that made two kids from my school that passed away this year. Not the best news to absorb, especially since I was travelling back to Padema with three of his classmates.

THEN, two days later, I am finishing up my laundry at my house and stringing it up to dry outside, when one of those same cars comes driving into my courtyard. It was bringing the body of the old man that was the landlord of where I lived, that had been living in the same court yard as me since I got to Padema. He had been in Bobo getting treated for stomach problems for a month or so and had even just had an operation. Well, anyway, apparently it was his time to go, so all day the rest of that day, I heard the wailing cries and screams of his very old, little sister, his wives, his duaghters, etc... as they came in from their work in the fields and from surrounding villages, one by one, as they got the bads news. After a few hours, some men started digging at an area of the courtyard about 20 feet from my house, and it seemed that that is where they were planning on burying the old man. Thank the lord, they had to change areas. I don't know why, but if I had to live with him buried just outside my door for the rest of the year I don't know if I could have done it. Muslim burials require that the body be buried within 24 hours, so I saw many of the rituals that go on. For instance, the body must be washed by men before being wrapped in white cloths, ready for burial. There are no coffins, they are just buried right in the ground in these cloths. Also, all of the linens (bed cloths, towels, etc..) of his wives are to be brought out of the house and washed that same day, too. Some other stuff, too, but I don't feel like writing anymore.

So really, is there a curse in Padema right now? Is it me? I don't know, but it has been a sad, weird and crappy six days.

Well after having very little to do for a couple of weeks, this past week was pretty fun! First of all, I travelled to Ouaga for a big party for the group of volunteers that are just about finished with their service (they are the COS-ers, for "Close Of Service" - ers). There were all but 8 volunteers in all of Burkina gathered in Ouaga for day long festivities. That meant that about 58 volunteers partied and shared the hostel, the one big house we call home... in Ouaga. The party was organized by Josh Y and Patrice, two of my buds from training, and they did an amazing job organizing it. And I got to be named head chef, in charge of all food-related matters for the day. The theme was 4th of July/Going to America, since it was just after the fourth, so we had a very American day with very American foods. We started off the afternoon with a kickball tournament on a dirt field. Sector vs Sector... like Health PCV's vs Education PCVs, Health PCVs vs Business PCVs and finally Business PCVs vs Education PCVs. This was a lot of fun, but would have been more fun if we weren't on an unshaded field in 100 degrees. Good thing the pool was right after. Yes, the pool, where we had a chicken fighting tournament. Again sector vs sector. I participated, but I had Tyler on MY shoulders, which was fun for a round or two. Then I almost drowned one round (thanks, Tyler), and the next day I was kicking myself for participating! Sore back and shoulders galore!! Anyway, we then went back to the hostel for a grand BBQ of burgers, hot dogs, and pasta salad, followed by delicious red white and blue desserts, including my Jell-o American flag! Finally we ended the evening at a BOWLING ALLEY (the only one in BF, and quite a modern one at that - no joke) and a club. It was all in all a great time and lots of fun to gather so many of us together in a time when so many of us have absolutely nothing to do. Plus, the new Education Trainees were in town for a seminar so we got to spend a good chunk of time hanging out with them and watching the World Cup Final together. Surprisingly, most Burkinabe seemed thrilled that Italy beat France, even though this is a Francophone country. Aside from Zidane, looks like they can't stand the French as much as a lot of Americans. So anyway, the new trainees seem like a great crew, and two of them came to my village for a site visit as part of their training. Hence the title - Newbies!!

I hate the word "newbie" actually, because when we were trainees, there were two wise-ass PCVs who were supposed to be helping with our training, and one night at like midnight, they were drunk and walking through our hotel area where we were trying to get some sleep in the oppressive heat yelling "Get up, Newbies!!! Time to drink!!." It was very fraternity-like, and since this is not college, we told them to F-off. So, I use the term "newbie" as a joke now.

Anyway, now that you have a random useless story thrown in there, I will go on... SO, as I was saying, 2 of the new trainees came to Padema to visit with me, and we had such a fun time. It made me realize how much I have changed, how much I have learned since being here, how jaded I have become, and how strong my body has become against (some) bacteria and its friends. When you arrive here for the first time as a new volunteer, you are full of optimism and it feels like a big adventure, and everything is new and somewhat interesting and exciting. And I guess I'm waaaaay past that phase, but it was really fun seeing their first impressions of everything. I had them eat with their hands in the Padema marché (market) for their first time, well water with me, wash clothes, and just live the slow, boring village life with me for a few days. Thankfully we all got along really well, and had great conversations. And not so surprisingly, in some of their questioning, I also realized how much I still have to learn after over a year. They lucked out, too, becuse it was so cool, temperature-wise, due to lots of rain. After taking their first transport ride in the back of one of our famous cars... no animals this time, though....we went to Bobo to party it up with some other volunteers before I sent them off back up north to continue training in the hot, hot desert. Sucks for them!

In other news, there are three extremely polite, respectful and helpful boys that live in my court who were always around to help me with around the house stuff... like getting water or killing large Enemies of God, etc... and who were students in the highest grade, troisieme, at the school I taught at. At the beginning of the school year I had promised them that if they passed the national exam, the BEPC, at the end of the year, I would take them to Bobo and treat them to a day or two around town because once you have the BEPC you can continue your education in a high school in Bobo (there are very few in villages) if you are granted entry into one of them. So these are kids who know a lot about Bobo only from their school books, and had only been there once or twice as kids to visit some family members, but never to just walk around and experience the city. So two out of three of them DID pass the test, and the third missed it by ONE point!!! And so as not to discourage him, I invited all three to come to Bobo this past Sunday, to stay until Monday. We slept in the family court of Haoua, the woman who came to America in March when I was home, too. And they got a whirlwind tour of a city that I, the tubabu, know better than them. They got to see the largest high school (that's where they are headed next year) in Bobo, all kinds of theatres and restaurants, I taught them how to use the internet, and we wrote an email together to the volunteer I replaced, who was their English teacher the two years before I arrived. All in all, it was a great success of an outing, and it was fun to watch their reactions to everything and breathe in a world that is so different from the village life they are accustomed to, even though they speak the same languages as those in Bobo. They were SO cute using the internet, and it was hard for me to put myself in the mindset of someone who had never touched a mouse or manipulated a keyboard. Hard, but very worth it, and they absolutely loved it. These are kids that are motivated and proud and really kids who represent what Burkina is capable of. Kids from small villages who work their way through school to make futures for themselves is not an easy task in this country, so I am thrilled that this outing seemed to motivate them even more to do their best if and when they get into high school in Bobo next year. To get an idea of the how many holes the school system has here, these are 18 or 19 yr olds, who just passed the BEPC, which is about the material we learn in 9th or 10th grade. Then again, I had one girl in the grade before the highest one that the boys just finished, and she was only 14. So she may get the BEPC at age 15. It's all kinds of screwy, I tell ya. I'm still struggling to understand its inner workings.

One of our outings in Bobo involved a trip to the GRANDE MARCHE (the big market). One of them told me that he wanted to look at bicycles, so that he'd have one for getting around next year when he is in Bobo. And I think his old one was kind of crappy. So I sort of left them alone with someone they had called, who they said was a brother, to search for bikes. Their "brother" could be anything from a casual acquaintance to an actual blood brother, but in any case, it wasn't a stranger. If I was with them, they'd be sure to get the Tubabu price, which means the real price times 2 or 3. So let me explain a little about the Grande Marché of Bobo. As a reference, in Padema we also have a marché that is once a week and involves merchants coming into the village to sell all kinds of goods, from fabrics to vegetables to pots and pans, to crazy T-shirts that are given to Burkinabe from salvation army-type stores from all over the world. In Padema, it is about the equivalent of one block long, and even though it is only once a week, and they are all used to seeing me, the lone white person of Padema, every single week, they still yell "Tubabu" at me and it is always an annoying, frustrating and tiring day. Now multipy all that by ten and you have what the Bobo Marché is. It is a 3 block by 3 block square of merchants doing the same thing. It’s like a big merchant machine that sucks in tourists and foreigners, whirls them around in fabrics, vegetables, meats, fish, home goods, and spits them out at the other end with less money, a very bad headache, and a huge dislike for the word “Tubabu.” SO, imagine my surprise when my village boys showed up at our meeting place an hour later with a brand new, shiny bicycle! I didn't realize they were actually going to BUY a bike that very day, but I guess I was wrong. And I don't think they got a bad price, so good for them! The one who bought it had come with money his Dad had given him to get that bike, but I didn't know that. Anyway, looks like they got the hang of Bobo rather quickly.

We were supposed to go back to village a few hours ago, but my "good" transport seems to have broken down. We waited at the station in vain for almost three and a half hours before we finally just decided to stay another night.

Not that any of us really mind.

Yes, I'm officially BORED again! Just like last year, the village is completely empty on a daily basis, and since school is out, there is no work for me to do. Everyone in the village is out planting cotton, peanuts, corn, or millet. And the process is not one that I am eager to try out myself, just for the sake of cultural sharing. I'd rather save my strength, now that I am 27 and old! I don't know the right farming words in English anymore, ....well I don't know if I ever did have a large farming vocabulary... but I will try to explain how they till (-is that the word?) the land. Usually little children, as young as what seems 7 yrs old, tend the cows in the fields that drag heavy metal equipment across the field to rip up the earth to get to the soil. In America, I suppose this is what we do with tractors, but again, growing up in Jersey, even though it IS the Garden State, I have no idea how one farms. In Burkina, it is a serious manual labor process. So the kids direct the cows all day long, and once the earth is ready for planting, they (men, women and children) walk row by row, planting seeds. They use a tool called a "dabba" to dig at the earth by hand. The dabba is a wooden bar with a metal axe-type head stuck in the end of it... I guess, that is what we call a hoe, right? Anyway, that is the gist of what is going on in village everywhere in this country right now. Tilling and planting.

I was in Ouaga for the last two weeks, and that was a pretty fun time. The group I went through training with (we're down to 11 PCVs) had mid-service medical exams, and that was almost comic. Sparing all the intimate details, our medical staff requested "samples" daily, amongst other tests. On our last day of these exams, we were sitting around at the US Embassy watching a movie, and one by one our phones rang. First person gets up, it's the nurse, informing him he has giardia. Second phone rings, she gets up, comes back informing us she has blastocytes (still don't know what this is). and so on... this continued until just about all of us (I think we were 7 people sitting there) received calls telling us that some bacteria or parasite is coexisting in our bodies. Not that this phases us anymore, because we all know a little Cipro cures all, but it was pretty funny watching each one of us get up, one by one, to answer the diagnosis phone call, and not a single one of us was "clean." Lucky for me, I had had a bout with bacterial enteritis just before medical exams started, so I was already on the Cipro program anyway. By the way, bacterial enteritis... not fun.

Oh, also in Ouaga, I got to meet two of my fellow PCVs' parents: Tyler's and Josh's! That was really fun, and it made me super jealous, since I have yet to have any visitors.. woe is me... *sigh*.... *sniffle*.... BUT, Tyler's parents were in when we were all in town for the medical stuff, so they took us out to dinner to an amazing place in Ouaga. We didn't even know this sort of place existed in Ouaga, so all the PCV's were blown away. It was what you might imagine it is like when a dirt-covered kid walks into a pristine country club. You know they should not touch anything and probably just wait outside so as not to mess anything up. That's how I felt anyway. And even though Tyler's parents like to brag about Tyler's electricity and pool, they were very nice people. :) It was funny talking to both Tyler's and Josh's parents because they both commented on how meeting us is like meeting characters from a book, since they are religious blog followers. I guess I never thought of it that way, but it's kind of funny.

To answer my one Commentator's question: yes, everyone here is very into following the World Cup. And I have also been pretty into the games. Until recently, the African teams fared pretty well but I don't even want to talk about the USA team! In village, since there is no electricity, people manage to set up color or black and white TVs in common areas, hooked up to car batteries, as everyone crowds around to watch. Sometimes you can get reception, sometimes not. But everyone is pretty into it, just the same. It's fun seeing peoples' reactions not only to the games, but to the way they show fans' reactions on TV from around the world.

I'm going to go make a to-do list now, to try and keep myself busy. Even if the to-do list is bogus, at least I will FEEL like I am doing something.

I guess it is hard to NOT believe what a native African person is telling you when you are in a moment of panic and/or fright, but I shouldn't have thought that it could possibly be true all that stuff about the Enemy of God. And after realizing that new PCV's and their parents are reading my blogs I don't want to scare anyone too badly. Yes, there are a bazillion creepy crawlies here and yes, it is annoying and disgusting. However, the lizard I saw in my house can not give you leprosy. I asked at the local hospital, and while it is an accepted village belief, it is just not medically factual. Shockingly. I think I can also safely assume that his tail will never grow into a second head, either.

Since I have some time on my hands here in Ouaga, I also researched this critter on the internet, and it's possible that what I saw was the Fat-Tailed African Gecko, described as: "....the second best species of Gecko to keep. They have a nice, calm nature making them a great exotic pet...." Here are some more facts about the little guy, if this is, in fact, who I saw...

www.exotic-pets.co.uk/african-fat-tailed-gecko.html

So now I feel just plain awful about having him destroyed. Then again, it was night time, and when you don't know what the hell kind of big, fat, strange creature is staring at you from behind your door, you tend to want to just kill it.

Anyway, thought you'd like to know.

I'll be around in Ouaga for two weeks!! We have mid-service medical exams, then I have a training seminar. I still have that cell phone, for those of you who forgot!!

And for the parents of the new trainees who just arrived, don't worry too much. I probably have one of the most worrysome mothers of all, and she is doing just fine. Possibly a few new grey hairs, but generally still in good health. :)

We are all just fine over here and support each other very well.

Come visit!

My first entire year of teaching is officially OVER!!!!!! It's a good feeling, and I am very happy to be at this point. It feels like a good accomplishment, a good marker, and I am excited to be able to focus on little projects I will be working on this summer - like a girls' camp in Padema and painting murals of world maps on the school walls and some other things...oh, and if anyone knows people who works with solar panels, drop me a note please! We have been in talks of a library with "electricity" (meaning solar panels) for students to be able to study at night. I will do some of my own research, but you never know if anyone reading this will have some info for me as well. And being the "American" everyone thinks I am capable of obtaining anything I want, so my colleagues have sort of indirectly insinuated that perhaps I could work on this goal for next year.

As for the end of the school year, the passing rate of students from their current class into the next year's class is between 55 and 65 percent!! Shocking for me, but normal for Burkina. Those who did not make the grade will either sit through the same grade and all the same classes next year, or they are kicked out of school because it was already their 2nd time trying to pass a class or their grade was too low to even be considered for a 2nd time around. The system is pretty screwed up, in my opinion. But in all fairness, it is also hard to teach kids on the village level because these are not kids who know French as their first language... they began learning it when they began school, so it's their 2nd language, like for me, and some kids speak even worse French than us Americans. This system also creates the huge range of ages of kids in one grade together. It is entirely normal to have 13 yr olds in the same class as 18 yr olds. It was weird at first, but as with everything else, it all becomes relative.

So the class I was "professeur principale" for had 57 students in it - which means that for those students, I had to claculate all their end-of-year overall grades and rank them and fill out their report cards. Of these 57, 31 will pass onto next year, 12 will have to repeat the class, and 14 are basically kicked out of school altogether. It is unfortunate but that is pretty much how the school system works. It's like survival of the fittest. Well, some kids can't come back due to financial restrictions because their families can't afford the school fees (about $60 would cover everything for one year) or if they are a girl, their families may just decide to take them out of school to give them away for marriage. Or some girls get pregnant and quit, too. I had two students get pregnant just at the end of the school year and I didn't see them for the last month of school so it's fairly certain they won't be back next year. However, in all those statistics that are a bit discouraging and hard to accept as someone coming from America, where education is a normal part of every child's life, there are lots of kids who are extremely motivated and who bike miles every day to get to school by 7 a.m. and who excel in school. Those kids have every bit of my respect and they are, quite simply, just amazing young people who are my favorites. I shouldn't play favorites, but I totally do.

Other than that, the extreme heat has been easing up on us. Rains are starting to arrive with hurricane-like winds and violent downpours at least once or twice a week, which means people have already begun going out to their fields to begin the planting season for next year. It also means that lots of crazy, disgusting bugs start appearing out of nowhere again. For instance, those crazy spiders I explained about last year ... the huge, hairy brown ones that are known to travel with scorpions on their backs...the one I had the encounter with my 2nd night ever in village ALONE!!! anyway, I have come across many of them these past few weeks.... But they are not worse than one particular creature I crossed in my house just this past Tuesday night!! Allow me to elaborate on another good night gone bad....

This night was a quiet night... cool breeze, starry skies, and Norah Jones playing on my MP3 player. I had just "showered" and eaten, and my neighbor had come over with her 2 little daughters to chat for a while. After they fell asleep in our laps, she got up to go home (she lives in the same row of houses as me), so we walked back across the terrace together. My other neighbors, who are students - Aziz, Yacouba and Ismael - were outside studying by lamplight, and we stopped and chatted with them for a few minutes, too. Finally I go home, brush my teeth, and as I am closing the door to lock it for the night, I spot a HUGE lizard staring at me from just behind my door, inside the house!! Now, here in Burkina there are gazillions of little chameleon/newt type lizards all over the place and you get used to them scurrying all over your walls and just everywhere... but this guy... he was about nine inches long and very fat and multi-colored orange, black and green like I've never seen before, and with a rounded reddish-gray tail which I've also never seen before. Because I didn't want to scare him into scurrying off into my bedroom or behind something, I cried out "Aziz, viens ici!!!" for my neighbor Aziz to come help me. He runs over and as soon as he sees the thing, he advises me to back away and not get too close. He will kill it immediately. He grabbed my broom and with the handle he smashed down on the lizard, which cut off his tail (which we didn't realize at the time) and prompted him to run off into my shower area! I let out a little scream of panic, and the other two boys came running over to see what was happening. After explaining, the three of them now are hunting down my new roommate, inside and then outside the house where the shower drains.

They find him hiding inside my shower area, behind the rock that is used to block the drain hole to keep reptiles from crawling up in it (obviously an extremely effective method of pest control). Eventually, with the broom handle, my heavy wooden pestle used to grind spices in a mortar, and a large branch, the 3 of them killed it. They removed him from the house and atfer spotting the lizard's tail behind the door I picked it up on a piece of paper and delivered it to the boys to dispose of. That's when I got the even scarier explanation of exactly what kind of creature this was...

In Julah they call it "Allah-jugu" which translates to "The Enemy of God"... why? you may ask... well apparently this beautifully colored animal can detach his little reddish tail and throw it at you like a stone as a defense mechanism when feeling threatened. The tail is full of some kind of poison that Ismael told me gives a person leprosy. Now, I don't really know about leprosy, I'm not a health volunteer, however I don't know if you can get it from the poison of a lizard, but I also don't care to find out.. either way it must give you some kind of crazy skin problem that people are scared of. On top of that, they said that it is a creature that, if left to grow to its full size, will grow a second head in place of that poisonous tail. So it would be a 2-headed lizard - one on each end of him - walking around, scaring all the white people. Now again, I don't know how true this is, but my colleagues have confirmed both of those extremely fascinating facts about The Enemy of God, so I don't really want to ever see one again. The Enemy of God..... in my house... how absolutely wonderful!

So after all this, to really put the icing on the cake of this evening, and as I was preparing to come down from the adrenaline rush and go to bed a second time, I catch sight of one of those crazy scorpion-carrying spiders just outside my house, too!!!!! (he was scorpion free, though)... yet again the cry for help goes out and Ismael came and smashed him to pieces. He told me those spiders are not harmful (I guess that would mean when they are sans scorpion) and that they are simply called "Jean"... like John in English. That's quaint.. just like a friendly, hairy, eight-legged, freaky neighbor, Jean. Right. Go Africa. Still full of little surprises, even after one whole year.

So anyway, who's coming to visit me??????

Just you, me, the Enemy of God and Jean - it'll be fun!!!!

I will be in Bobo and Ouaga a whole lot throughout the entire month of June for various reasons, so it would, as always, be wonderful to hear from someone... ANYONE!!!!

bisous,

poko

Can't hardly believe it, but I am more than halfway through my service! And I just celebrated my SECOND birthday in Africa!! That is just plain crazy... Thank you to everyone who sent me b-day wishes!!! It was great to come to Bobo and feel the love. As for the rest of you... consider yourself B-listed!!! ;)

On Monday (for my birthday) I had a nice dinner with some friends. We cooked up a chicken, a guinea fowl and some wild animal someone killed at some point that day. I don't know what animal it was really, but it had claws and a large, rodent like body, and it sure was tasty in the soup we made. That gourmet meal was topped off by warm wine in a box. I had told my students to bring me gifts for my birthday, too, but only one boy brought me a little box of cookies after class. They were delicious.

I don't really have anything new and exciting to report, but people complain when I don't post for more than a month.. so I am trying to think of what has been happening....

Well.... school is just about finished. I have one last test to give and then the year is FINITO!! (thank goodness). I am glad to be done with the first year. Feels good to accomplish, but also I want to focus on secondary projects and/or changing my job here. We'll see what happens. During this summer break I should be much more occupied than last year - when I had absolutely NOTHING to do for four months upon arrival. My volunteer neighbor (Megan) and I are planning a couple of projects together. One is to paint maps of the world on the school walls, which we have specifications for. Right now there is nothing at all on the walls, so this should be better, right?

The second project is a girls' camp on the village level. Last year I helped out with one that took place in Bobo, with only two girls chosen from each village of a bunch of different villages. This camp we want to have most of the girls from my school in Padema participate, and the camp will be in Padema. So the idea will be for the girls to reflect on their lives up until now, their expectations for their futures, their families' expectations if their futures, and then hopefully expose them to jobs and possibilities outside of the village. Generally, the idea is to encourage them to stay in school and not be enticed to go get married or have babies or anything. If girls are not in school, they are basically given away to marriage as young as 16 yrs old.

The heat is dying down thankfully, and the rains have started. It is an odd time of year because the weather is bizarre and there is a death or a marriage like every other day. Apparently this time of year is a big time for meningitis and other easily transmitted diseases - thereby explaining all the deaths. Also, it is a time when most people get paid for the cotton they had produced the prior year, so they can afford to marry off their children (generally to increase to workforce for field labor for THIS coming year)- therefby explaining all the marriages. So I am quickly becoming an expert in event protocol and benedictions in local languages ... for instance... May God give you happiness, May God give you a wife like a sheep (seriously people say that) or May God give him/her a peaceful rest

Other than that, I'm pretty much tapped out of news... except that I saw my first scorpion in my house!!! I killed him but good!! Oh yeah and those scorpion-carrying spiders are starting to come out at night again!!!! ugh... with the cool rains come the big bugs. yippee.

Bonjour everyone.

Yup, I made it back to BF just fine. And my bags got here one day after me. But they made it back, and that is all that matters. So wow,... Africa is hot! Getting back smack dab in the middle of the hot season really sucks!!! But down in Padema and near Bobo it is much more bearable than Ouaga and the northern part of Burkina (where I had training last year).

Since being back there have been a few depressing events actually.... I apologize ahead of time but this will be a pretty sad blog..

First off, I got back to Padema 2 Mondays ago and was supposed to start teaching the following Tuesday morning. I got to school about 8 am, and found everyone in the process of leaving the school grounds... because one of my students had passed away that morning. His father had come to inform everyone at school, and so all students and teachers obviously left for the day, and the boy's funeral was to take place that morning. He was a student in my younger class, so he was no more than 14 or 15 years old. When I asked what he died from, people just said that he had been sick over the weekend, and his father had taken him to the local hospital, but it just got worse until he finally passed away. No one had an actual diagnosis. Well, I went with my colleagues to his family's court in a neighboring village, and when we got there we basically sat around for hours while the family prepared his body. They cleaned him and wrapped him in a white fabric, and then in another fabric. I was really disturbed before I arrived because I was having a hard time visualizing which student he was, until we got to the family's house where they allowed viewings. He was one of 58 faces I taught in one room, so I couldn't picture him exactly in my mind until I saw him at their house. But even more disturbing to me than that was the appearance the very next day that no one particularly cared any more. Everything was business as usual, and you wouldn't even know something had happened the day before. I mean, I know life goes on, and especially in a place where people are used to children passing away before reaching adulthood, but I guess it was just a huge culture shock for me, after not having one for a while. And that combined with travel fatigue... it was a sad restart. Oh yeah, and the following day I found out one of my colleagues had a miscarriage and then that the bird flu has arrived in Burkina. What a week! Don't worry about the bird flu though. I think it was an isolated case and I haven't heard much about it. And since I don't do much chicken handling or cock fighting, I should be OK.

Aside from those first few days everything is pretty much exactly how I left it. Teaching is OK. I am not crazy about it still... but hopefully it will pick up a little before the end of the school year.... or at least go quickly. And the mango season is back, so that is one good thing. Mangoes everywhere!!! If only there was a blender and some ice cream to go with it, I'd be set.

Happy Passover and Easter!

If anyone wants to send me holiday M&M's I'll gladly except them. They withstand the heat very well!! :)

I am overwhelmed by America. It's culture shock all over again. I swear I thought I remembered what food stores and malls looked like, but being in them again was like going into the future. Or.. I guess coming back to the future... it has been weird.

So not that I am sick of answering the same questions over and over again.... (that translates to: "yes, I am"), but here is a copy of an email I received from my co-volunteer, Cary... it just about captures the feeling of being in Burkina as a volunteer and it is really on-point. Again, thank you Cary for saving me time and energy in writing and explaning all this myself. Now all you people complaining to me that you having nothing to read while you are at work can waste a few more minutes of company time reading this latest blog entry!!!

I've been through a lot of school in the US - 22 years of it, as a matter of fact, but that didn't teach me much of anything that's useful here in Burkina. Here's Intro to Burkina 101. I believe that I'm passed and I get to enroll in Intermediate Burkina 201.

Intestinal Parasites 105: Getting to know your body and when to identify something has moved in and is throwing a party in your intestines. Tips and techniques to identify and treat giardi, blasto, e. coli, amoebas, etc. Laboratory (1 credit): Learn how to prepare your own stool sample.

Basic Hygiene 111: This all-inclusive course begins with a crash course in how to squat and hover over a hole to crap and pee. A special emphasis is put on actually hitting the hole, even though this does not seem very important to the Burkinabe you are living with.

The second part of the course focuses on basic bathing techniques with a bucket of 6-8 liters of water (less than 2 gallons, guys....think about that. You use that much brushing your teeth) and a plastic cup. Covers how to deal with being buck naked and showering under the clear blue sky and fending off bugs while you are very vulnerable and in the middle of your bathing. Tutorials on boiling your water to bathe in the cold season.

The third part of the course is the transition to eating with your hands. The fourth is importance of not actually touching the children here, unless you WANT ringworm. The last part is a comprehensive survey of diseases you will see in your village, including gout (the old ladies who look like they've swallowed a football), nail fungus, and a variety of open, staph infected sores.

Appreciation 100: This is individually tailored for each volunteer and in an independent-study format. Each volunteer is given time to reflect and think of all the things they took for granted in the United States. Each volunteer will keep a journal where they record dreams of the US (salad bars, ice, family, friends, a real bed) and write letters to everyone in the US to apologize for not being more appreciative of them before they came to Burkina. Will be followed up by App 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900.

Burkinabe Culture 101: We like to call this course 'integration'. We're going to throw you into a French speaking culture in temperatures soaring close to 120 degrees, strip you of all privacy, make you sit through classes 8 hours a day, and feed you bizarre foods (you reserve the right to refuse the fried termites, the hunks of meat with the hair still attached, or the chicken feet-we feed those to the kids). Yes, we know you don't speak French. Isn't it fun?

Burkinabe Culture 102: After you integrate into your host family the first three months and learn passable French, we send you into BC 102. Here, you go to an even smaller village, 60-70 miles away from the next closest volunteer, where no one ACTUALLY speaks French. In this tour de force, your job is to become an active member of a Burkinabe community, even though no one is in the village during the summer (they're all in the fields). Yes, okay, we are sadists and this is for our enjoyment more than anything else. Your grade in the class is based on how mentally stable you are after 3 months. Anything short of trying to net invisible butterflies that have stolen all your clothes gets you an A.

Transportation 210: This core curriculum class is an intricate study of how we get from point A to point B here in Burkina Faso. You will be evaluated by the general ability to not blow up and lash out at your chauffeur for thinking that one liter (quart) of gas will get you 50 miles, or to lash out at fellow passengers, even when their baby pees on you. Or their goat that's trussed up bawling the whole trip under your seat.

Teaching in the Burkinabe School System 213: Previously, this class was named "Making Order of Dysfunction" but the Ministry of Education here asked that we change the name of the course. Here, we give you 100+ students in a classroom, an outdated textbook, and a box of chalk. You will independently learn how to teach the elegant sexual and asexual reproductive strategies of algae, the digestive system of a cow, and plate tectonics to hormone-ridden 12-22 year old students all mixed together in the same classroom. For additional practice, see Herding Cats 303: Advanced Classroom Discipline Techniques and Walking on Water 305: Everyday Miracles.

Pharmacology 206: Practical Pill Popping This elegantly designed course makes pill taking an integral part of your daily life. We feed you a nutritionally empty diet and you get to find fun and creative ways to determine which deficiencies you are developing. Seminars in "Why is my hair falling out?" "Do you really need calcium?" "I don't need vegetables in my diet", "More vitamin D than you can shake a stick at", and "Millet: the wonder food". The second part of the course covers all the others: psychosis-inducing anti-malarials, allergy meds, and advanced training in antibiotics (see Intestinal Parasites).

Geography 104: Getting Around Your Market Your market is an endless, confusing maze that sucks you up and spits you out in an unfamiliar neighborhood clear across the village, but it is necessary to deal with if you want to survive in village. Basic instruction in foods (what are the suspicious brown balls and the shriveled plant matter), in clothing (how to buy the good fabric and possible pitfalls in buying secondhand clothes), medications (how to dive through a table full of pills and find the amoxicillin you need), and local novelties (yes, some people want to buy a dried lizard and some cow tails). The important role of commissioning someone to buy stuff for you so they can get the real price and not the white person price is stressed.

Now that you are exhausted of reading, I will update you on the somewhat boring details of what the last couple of days in Burkina were like for me before coming home...

The events that I spoke about in my last blog about all the planning I was helping with for March 8th/International Women's Day events went off OK. As usual, there were ups and downs. On March 6th we had planned to have a day specifically dedicated to the village women. Most of them don't speak any French (only local languages), can't read or write, and just know the lifestyle of caring for a family and working the land. So we thought that a day to speak openly about some issues they may not otherwise have the chance to talk about was a good idea. Events were to begin at 9am. We told the women to come at 8 am so that hopefully it would start on time at 9am. Well....everything didn't start until NOON!! Already a great start, right?? We had invited the woman who is the Director of the closest bank to come speak to the women about the value of having a bank account - how to do it and why to do it. She accepted our invitation, but never showed up. Good thing we had budgeted money for her meal that we had prepared to make her feel welcome! Fortunately, our other two guests speakers came and were wonderful. One woman spoke about fighting against poverty and her experiences in development projects around Burkina (she is fabulous). The other woman was a mid-wife who spoke about family planning and general women's health topics.

On March 7th we had a day that was planned specifically just for the female students of the school I teach at - girls aged 13-18. The girls took a huge part in the planning of this day because they wrote and acted out two sketches and recited poems from memory. They were so wonderful and entertaining... the sketches were about an unwanted pregnancy and a forced female circumcision. Two serious issues, and they somehow made them into rather funny sketches, which in turn opened up conversations between the girls and the women who attended. The mid-wife came to speak again about health issues, and we had a whole panel of successful women from Padema, who have great jobs, sitting in front of the girls, open for questions from the girls- about school, life, girl stuff, whatever.... It was really successful, and I think everyone profitted from the day.

March 8th I actually spent in transit from Padema to Bobo. It took me 8 HOURS to get there because I thought I was getting a good deal at first. One of the cotton corporations had sent a vehicle through Padema that day and I bummed ride thinking I'd have a quick and easy ride back to Bobo (think NO SHEEP OR COWS). Well, little did I know that the driver had about 20 stops to make all throughout the north, west and south of Burkina. Literally, I was at the border of Mali two times that day and to the south about 100 miles from Padema. I left Padema at 11:00 am and arrived in Bobo around 7 p.m.

I finally got on my plane in Ouaga on March 10th! I was so excited, and as soon as I tasted even the plane food I couldn't wait to begin my binging in America!!! By the way I have already gained about 5 lbs in my first week. Thank you to all my food providers! :)

Haoua, the woman from Padema who was invited to a conference at Harvard, is currently staying with my family. She is extremely grateful to those of you who contributed to her spending money while she is here, and because of it, she has had nothing but a pleasant and worry-free experience here. Here are pics of us the day we went to the Statue of Liberty:

I will write again from Burkina. I fly out on March 30th, and I'll update again as soon as possible. I am looking forward to going back and finishing up one full year of teaching... but I am also going back just when the ridiculously HOT season is starting.... not looking forward to that so much.

Thanks to everyone who came out and spent time with me while I was here. And thanks for all the wonderful HUGS!!!! I've been missing those.

First of all, who is leaving these cryptic comments on my Blog? They're worse than those spam comments I was getting for a while, but I need a decoder for yours! I have an idea of who left me that last comment, but I am still decoding the last piece of the puzzle.

I realized that if speaking in French is like the game Taboo, then riding on transport is like Twister. People crack me up on transport because when you have decided where you are sitting, it is like a crime to switch places, or to move to make it easier for someone to pass. People pack in the front area of the bus/minivan, and the back is left open, but cut off due to the volume of people packed in the front. So when the car stops to pick up a new passenger, that passenger has to climb over people and seats to get to the back, instead of people just moving from the front to the back to make it easier from the start. The last trip in to Bobo, there were actually people sitting on other people and one guy who stood for two hours with his neck arched into the ceiling because there wasn't enough space, or because people wouldn't move. And it's not like it's rude to not move. They're just like... "oh, yes I see... you WERE sitting there before I got on, so I'll just put my left hand on this green shirt, my right hand on that blue shirt, my knee up on that guy's shoulder, and my foot in those 3 inches of floor space to get by to an open seat." Whatever... I guess I am just thankful I haven't had to ride in the car with any cows or goats for a while.

School is actually kind of fun right now, because I gave my kids a Statistics project to work on that is pretty interesting, if I do say so myself. I gathered Stats from our health center in Padema, the internet, cotton workers, etc... and am having my kids use that info to create bar graphs, pie charts, and histograms (with the aid of the markers and other supplies people sent me - Thank you!). They are formally going to present their charts to me and a few other teachers in a week and a half. They're really cute, and they are really working hard on them. The topics are: AIDS rates in the world and in Burkina Faso specifically, Malaria cases in the world and in Padema specifically, Number of births in Padema since the school year began and number of births in one year in Padema, the heights of each of their classmates (I provided measuring tape), the ethnic makeup of our class, populations of various countries in the world and stats on world cotton production and consumption. I am so excited to see their finished work. Pictures will be provided when I am home... IN ONE MONTH!!

I am also on the planning committee for the March 8th/Woman's Day celebration coming up. Apparently this is a big deal every year, and this year we started planning a month in advance. We have a lot of good female role models in Padema, too, so together we should plan a fun party! On March 6th we are having info-sessions for the village women on opening a bank account - How and Why to do it; General Development Issues; and General Health Talks on preventative measures against AIDS and other illnesses. They will all be run by people who work in those fields. Then on March 7th we are running a fun day at our school for all the female students. A sit-down open discussion between the working women of Padema and them to motviate them to continue their educations, a soccer match between us, food, prizes (hopefully), and the girls themselves said they will organize some theatre and poetry reading that they will present to us. I am also excited for this.

So all in all, my life right now is all about planning things. Here AND in America!!

OK, this was short but informative. That's what's going on in my 3rd world...

See you oh-so-soon!!

Yes, it's official everyone!! Just like Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall I, too, will be Coming to America!!!!! The plane tickets have been bought, and I will be back in town from March 11-30th!!!!! I am starting to think of the food already, so here is the initial list. Anyone who wishes to accompany me on any of these outings, please state your preferences, and we will make a schedule:

Sushi!!!!!!!!! (Komegashi Too in Jersey City, preferably)

Nino's Pizza in Harrison - Best sicilian pie, and I never even liked sicilian

Eclectic Cafe in Montclair - cakes and coffees... oh, drool....

California Pizza Kitchen - anywhere

Chik-Fil-A

Haagen Daaz - MochaLatta Chill

The Garlic Rose

Indian Food

Thai Food

Mexican Food

and of course... My mom's cooking

OK, I just want to gain 10 lbs basically, and I need YOUR help!!

Now back to my actual life that is still going on here in BF....

After Ghana, I came to Bobo and spent a few days just hanging out here.. pretty much not wanting to go back to village. Nothing spectacular to report from New Yrs. I saw the NYC fireworks on a TV and it made me sad.

School started up again on Jan 5th, and I gave pop quizzes to both my classes the first day. Hahahahahaha! I now know the joy that teachers get in doing this. It's really fun to mess with kids, especially when they are disrespectful. Since then, they have been much better with me this trimester, and I feel more comfortable in class, and I'd say I am generally enjoying it better than I was at the end of December.... when I was HATING it. But kids will be kids, and I will admit that they are pretty adorable. Especially when they are sweating it out on one of my tests.

The holiday of Tabaski was on Jan 10th. I was trying to think of how to equate this to one of our holidays, and Thanksgiving was all I could think of. Except that we don't sacrifice turkeys in our courtyards and then pray all day. So really it's not much like Thanksgiving, except that what Thanksgiving is to turkeys, Tabaski is to the sheep. Oh, the poor sheep. They are slaughtered in just about every Muslim family this day of Tabaski. People buy their sheep and fatten them up weeks in advance just for this holiday. So I ate a lot again, just like Ramadan (the last big Muslim holiday), and went around giving out candy, just like Ramadan. And visited the houses of friends to eat and wish them a happy feast, just like Ramadan. So I guess Tabaski is just like Ramadan, not Thanksgiving.

I think my language skills are coming along OK, but some days I feel like I am playing that game "TABOO" If you don't know this one, it is a game where you are given a word that you need to describe to someone else without using specific words... like say I want to describe a refrigerator, but I can't say "kitchen" or "cold" or "food" etc... It would be like "that big box in that room where the sink and the oven are, that has a light that turns on when you open its door"... that's how I feel when I am talking here. Like I have a limited vocabulary so when I describe something, it is the most roundabout and elementary way to do it. For instance, I was trying to find out the French word for burp, so I had to say "what's that word for that noise that comes out of your mouth when you eat and the gas comes from your stomach and makes that sound from your mouth?" yeah.... that's how I talk. It's even worse in local language because that is truly limited vocabulary. Like, when I go to a lady on the side of the road to buy some tomatoes, it's like "Good morning, tomato lady. I want. How much money? Good. Thank you." yes, Big Fun.

Last week I wanted to give a quiz in one of my classes, and we have a secretary (an old guy who lives in Padema) who types up whatever we need on a typewriter. Unfortunately for me, I asked him on Marché Day (Market Day) to type it up for the following day. My fault for needing it so soon, but also for not remembering that Market Day means that he will be drunk on local millet beer (dolo) until the next day. I thought it was gonna get done, because he had seen me that afternoon and told me that he knew I needed it and it would be ready for my 9 am class. Oh, but he also reeked of beer when he told me. Anywho, I get to school a little before 9 the next day, and shockingly, the quizzes have not been typed up. SO, the school Director offers to hand-write them on carbon- copy paper so we can then hand copy them on the "copy machine." I swear I thought someone put me in a time machine and pulled me back 50 years. I couldn't believe how this copier worked. It literally is on a roller, and you put ink on the roller, and it takes papers one by one and copies them. Well, since the secretary really is the only one who truly knows how to work this contraption, we did not get my quizzes copied, and I rescheduled my quiz. So, this past Monday I was supposed to give the quizzes, and I found out the quiz was typed but not yet copied. So I waited the 20 minutes while he hand-copied the quizzes only to find out the the number 8 on the typewriter didn't print out on the copies. So, by hand, we filled in all the number 8's on my quizzes, and I finally gave the quiz in the last 30 minutes of my 2 hour class. I really like our secretary, and it's not really his fault, but it was just another frustrating reminder of where I am.

I guess that is about all. Not much else... oh, except this list of stuff you can send me, .... since people are asking... :)

St Ives facewash

Bioré face strips (lots of dust in this place)

PEANUT BUTTER (I have a major appreciation for this now)

M&M's (by the way, thank you WENDY!!!)

Peanut Butter M&M's

fruit cups or cans of fruit

Cup O Noodles or Ramen Noodles

Applesauce

Magazines

But if you send me stuff, LITTLE packages are great, especially when accompanied by a letter!! I love letters just as much!!! Please do NOT send drink mixes or school supplies. I have lots of that stuff, and thank you to those who sent it.

OK, that is all for now. Sorry it's been a while.

I'M COMING HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello everyone and Happy Holidays!!!! It doesn't feel much like holiday time for me because I am in AFRICA, but we (me and my fellow Ghana travellers) celebrated as much as possible together. More on that in a minute. First of all, I would just like to let everyone know that Ghana is a beauuuuutiful place! My first impression in Kumasi (large town in central Ghana) was "THIS is a Peace Corps country of service, too??" Everything is 10 times more developped than Burkina, and it just doesn't even feel like the same continent. If you have ever been to Jamaica or other Caribbean resort islands, I'd say it is comparable to that, especially on the beaches. They have take-out Chinese food, paved streets, paint on their buildings (as opposed to just mud) and they speak English ... and that is all I have to know to know that volunteers who got placed in Ghana are much luckier than yours truly. Not that I am bitter.

So.... vacation went like this...

Day 1: 14 hour bus ride from Ouaga to Kumasi. Slept one night in a mission house near bus station.

Day 2: 5 hour tro-tro ride (like a short bus, but much more crowded) to Takoradi, a large city on the southern coast of Ghana. 2 more hours in same tro-tro to finally arrive at the most beautiful beach resort we poor BF volunteers could ever dream up.

At the border we had exchanged our francs (BF currency) for cedis (Ghanaian currency). There are about 16,000 cedis for every 1,000 francs, or about 9,000 cedis per $1. For some reason, Ghana does not have bills smaller than 20,000, so when you exchange your money, you have TONS of bills and you have to walk around feeling like a bank robber because you just have stacks of cash on you in black plastic bags at all times. I changed over like 80,000 francs, so I started out with over 1,000,000 cedis, all in bills of 10,000 and 20,000. It was hilarious actually, but kind of annoying. The entire 10 day trip, including travel, hotel, and food ended up costing me about 2 million cedis, or something like $250. Crazy.

Days 3 and 4: Beach, sun, beach, eating, drinking, relaxation, bliss

We stayed at this place called the Green Turtle Lodge,on the west coast of Ghana, near the Ivory Coast, and no one wanted to ever leave it. It was well worth the two rough days of travel. This place is run by a young English couple, who were nothing but wonderful. Their hotel is an Eco-tourist hotel that has huge mud huts with solar powered electricity in each one, and each guest is responsible for shutting off their own lights or else you won't have any at night. There's other interesting environmental stuff, but it's boring to write about. But take my word, it was very fascinating and very eco-friendly.

So this is the funniest story I got out of this trip. Our second day in wonderful Paradise, I went for a walk with Patrice and her sister up to the nearest little fishing town to check it out. The owners of our hotel had this great, friendly German Shepherd beach dog who began to accompany us on our walk up the beach. Along the way, a few random sheep from the little village were nearby and the dog began chasing them. He settled on just one of the smaller ones, and chased it down, began gnawing on its legs a little, and was just playing with it. But the little sheep was terrified and headed for the ocean to escape the dog. Now the waves in Ghana are really rough and even us humans were getting tossed around in the surf like shells, so this little sheep had no chance once he had gone in kind of deep. We ran over and called the dog out, and then Patrice and I just stood, staring at the sheep, yelling "Oh, man.. that sheep is gonna drown in the ocean!... yep, he's just gonna drown all right...ooh, look at that... poor little sheep.." and so on, like we were announcing a football game. Meanwhile, Patrice's sister, who is visiting from America, sheds her bags and shoes and runs in the ocean to save the sheep. She had to get about waist deep before she could grab it, and then emerges from the water with a wet, scared bundle of a sheep in her arms. So what do Patrice and I do? First instinct was not to go help or anything, but to get our cameras immediately. I think this was just the most proof you could have that we have become jaded in our 9 months in BF, and animals are no more than food to us now. Thank goodness I didn't feel the same way about the dog. I swear I was really concerned for her when she started going in the ocean, and I would have run in to save HER!! I swear... well, I probably swear... but really, can you ever think of being on the NJ shore or something and seeing a sheep in the ocean???

Day 5 (Christmas Eve): Left paradise to go to another beach town, which is much more touristy, called Busua. Not as wonderful, but still nice and we still had the beach. Our first meal was hell, though. We went to a place called Frank's, but Frank was nowhere to be found. A stoned rastafarian named Fin took our order, which took about 15 min in itself. About 30 min later, Fin came out to tell us that at least half of the orders would be impossible because Frank doesn't have the ingredients. Finally Frank makes an appearance a little while later and tells us what he DOES have. Just about everyone's order changed, after we had been there about an hour. About 20 min after this, Frank came out to tell us that he was missing some more stuff and that we should just all eat spaghetti. So, basically that is what happened. A couple people got a couple of different things, and everyone else ate the spaghetti. So, about 3 hours after sitting down, we ate what was served to us (not what was ordered) and we vowed to never eat at Frank's again. And why o why did we leave Paradise?

The rest of the day in Busua was nice, though, and Josh brought his computer so we could watch "It's a Wonderful Life" over and over again, just like in America.

Day 6 (Christmas/First night of Hanukka): Thank goodness Patrice and Josh were on the ball with the holidays because they really turned our morning into a nice Christmakkuh morning. Josh actually brought a Santa suit with him, and Patrice had made stockings for everyone while she was in village, and the rest of us were to bring stocking stuffers. It was really, really nice and fun and probably adorable if you were watching us. Since I hadn't had time to shop before the trip, and it was also Hanukkah, I decided to throw together a mini-Chanukkah celebration at sundown. I had not yet received my Chanuka package from my parents, so I had to fabricate my own menorah. I ran around Busua looking for something useful for a menorah and ended up creating a menorah out of a cardboard-styrofoam egg crate, a blue marker, sand, shells, and candles. It was like being 6 yrs old in Hebrew school all over again. So at night, I lit my candles and sang my prayers and gave out gifts.

We ate a Christmas lobster lunch at a place called "The Lobster Man" and we ate Hanukah dinner at a place called "Dan, the Pancake Man"

Another viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life."

Day 7: On the road again. We travelled from Busua to Cape Coast, which is another touristy location on the beach, and east from Busua about 3 hours drive. On the way, we stopped in this city called Takoradi, where we happened upon a big street festival and parade with everyone dressed up in these brightly colored clown-type outfits at every turn. It was really festive and fun, and we stayed there to take pics and dance and get some culture. Although none of us really ever got the answer to why exactly there was a festival in the first place, but whatever. Culture, people, it was culture.

Arrival and stay at Cape Coast was pretty uneventful, but still nice.

Day 8: Ate good food in Cape Coast and then headed back up to Kumasi and stayed the night.

Days 9-10: Day in Kumasi (shopping, eating, etc..), got on the bus for Ouaga at 5 p.m. Arrived at a town about an hour short of the border at 2 a.m. where we waited for 5 hours until the Ghana - Burkina border opened. Finally made it back to Ouaga at 1 p.m. the next day.

Well, that's about all for me. I am back to speaking French and breathing dust in good old BF. I think I'm going back to Padema today or tomorrow, and I don't know yet what I am doing for New Yrs. But HAPPY NEW YEARS everyone, and I hope you all have a great time partying!! I also hope to SEE you in 2006!!

This entry will not be very long, because I don't really feel like there is too much to say...

School is about done for the first trimester. Whew! Survived the first part, and I am happy about that. Good milestone, and I realized that I am 9 months out of 27 through with my service. Also a good milestone, but it's so hard to believe that 9 months have already passed! So at school, the kids are sort of getting to me, but I just need to find that good balance between being strict and being an effective teacher. I am not fond of the disciplinarian role, so I dig my own grave by joking around with them and being too nice. But if I don't change that, the rest of year will just suck! Anyway, by now, I have given 2 tests to both classes, and this week I just have to work on their averages with them before being free to take off on my trip to Ghana. Yes, I am going to Ghana in just over a week with a bunch of people from my training group. We plan on celebrating the holidays on a beach in Accra. I am VERY excited and anxious to get there!!

In other aspects of my life in village, things are just fine. Some days it feels like Sesame Street, though. I roll through town on my bike with a big smile and greet everyone by profession... like "Good morning, Tailor Friend" "Hello, Mr. Hair-Cutter" "How's the Family, Bread-Maker?" "Afternoon, Mr Butcher" and so on and so on.. as they all greet me like this "Oh, hello Poko, may you pass a wonderful day" or "Good evening, white lady, how's the work?" It is very friendly and cute most days, but some days it is just a little bit too much effort when you want to just pick a loaf of bread or get a coffee. But that is just life in the village.

I was in Banfora, the city with the nice waterfalls, on Friday until this morning because we had a regional volunteer meeting there. Last night we profitted from being there with a little touristy visit to a nearby lake where you can allegedley see hippos. Well it happened to be our lucky day because we DID see hippos yesterday, and were in a boat (well, I'd call it a big wooden canoe with holes in the bottom)that rode about 30 or 40 feet from where they were hanging out in the water. It was pretty amazing and a little scary actually. It's not like the boat had a motor or anything and I won't even bother mentioning the words 'life jacket' so if something were to have gone wrong, the guy pushing the boat along with a long bamboo stick may have had to pull a Superman. But luckily, it all went well. We saw the eyes and ears of lots of hippos, heard them grunt a few times and saw a few of those classic hippo yawns you think of when you think of hippos (probably a sign of danger, but what else do you do except take pics of something like that??). And this was all right around the time of a beautiful setting sun. It was very National Geographic. Here are some pics from other people's cameras.

Superman

This was at dinner that night - I like this pic because I look so tan, but I think it was mostly dirt

argh! I'll have to add more pics next time because SURPRISINGLY, the computer does not want to cooperate with me right now!

So........I am STILL planning on coming home in March for vacation, and I actually have some very interesting and possibly incredible news on that! This is extremely random and very exciting, but a woman from my village who is truly amazing is getting a paid trip to America to participate in a Grassroots cross-cultural exchange/development program at Harvard for a week long conference!! She was nominated by a former Peace Corps Volunteer who worked with her here in BF, and the Committee accepted her!!!! It is so great because this woman really deserves recognition for how unique she is in this culture and how much she has contributed to the development of Burkina Faso, especially in work related to women's groups, encouragement of women's education and the cotton industry. Her name is Haoua (pronounced like AWA). Why this may be also incredible for me is because I am going to see about extending my vacation an extra week to overlap with Haoua's trip so that I can introduce her to my family and friends (when the other returned volunteers in America who also know Haoua aren't swooning over her). Also, the volunteer who nominated Haoua is working on fund-raising for this big trip, because I am fairly sure this is all paid for by donations. I wanted to post that story and info here on the blog to see if anyone reading this has any interest in helping with the fundraising. Or if anyone wants to get in touch with that volunteer to ask how to help, please let me know. Here is the website with info about that Harvard conference: http://www.bbconference.org/

My thoughts about the trip in March are already racing and constant, and I am doubly excited that Haoua may be able to experience America for free and for a good purpose!! As they say here, "My Heart is Happy"

That is all for now. I'll be back in Bobo or Ouaga in a week and then I'm continuing on to Ghana!!!!!! More updates later. And if I don't blog before the holidays, I would like to wish everyone safe, happy and healthy ones!!

Wend na Windgdé Véré!

Aw ni San Kura!