The second trimester is coming to an end, which means calculating averages and filling out these giant report card things for each student and signing my name about 1000 times. But all is going well and I'm amazed at how quickly time is passing.

My village tour guide, Mikailou, and I have been keeping up the village hopping, and as with the first time biking drunken in the dark with chickens, the last village we visited proved to be another interesting adventure. We went to this village called Kodomba, about 8 km from my village. As usual, we biked, but this time it was against the wind the whole time and I've never been so exhausted from a bike ride (even when biking 40 km to Bobo). It was sooo hard to pedal into the wind. But, we eventually made it and our first stop was of course- a dolo bar to refresh our energy. So, after drinking a calabash of dolo, we started wandering the village. It was market day, so there was a lot of hustle and bustle going on. I ate pork which was delicious (sadly there is no pork in my village). Greeted a lot of people, drank a little bit of dolo, and was given a chicken (only one this time). Then, we decided to go to the barrage to see if there were any elephants, which I was of course told there are every day at 2 pm. We went to the barrage, talked to some kids who wanted to take us out in the canoes (the canoes filled with water by a small leak and every two minutes they took a bowl and scooped it out), but my tour guide declined so we sat and waited on the elephants for about an hour. No elephants. We left the barrage to say goodbye to his friend in the village who is a hunter in the forest next to the barrage. He said we had to go back, the elephants were there in the forest, and I needed to see them. Ughhh, try to understand that every time I go to Kodomba they tell me there are elephants and I never see them, so I was slightly frustrated and just wanted to go home. Somehow, I found myself biking into the forest with the two men. Eventually we left the bikes and started walking, and one guy said "look there they are!" I was pretty sure it was probably just a cow rustling around and I couldn't see anything. So, we tried to get a better angle (the forest is really dense there). Finally, from about 30 meters-ish (I'm a bad distance estimate, it was fairly close), I saw an elephant trunk swing and the ears flapping back and forth. It was an elephant!! I must admit now that I became giddy and excited like a little child. I thought it was really cool to see a huge elephant in the forest with me on foot. So, I wanted to get a picture of course, so we tried to get a little closer to see well. There were two elephants that we could see. As we started approaching, all of a sudden one of the elephants started charging at us. I swear. Imagine being on foot in a forest and all of a sudden an elephant- a freaking elephant- starts running at you. All of it took place in about 2-3 seconds, but in my mind it was seriously slow motion: The guy to my left took off toward the left, the guy on my right took off to my right, and so of course, I started to run too, hearing the brush rustiling behind me under the elephant. I realistically probably only ran about 5 steps, but in my head I was certain that I was going to die by the giant foot of that elephant that day. As quickly as the elephant started running, it stopped, turned around, and began to retreat. The three of us collected again, the men said how bizarre it was and that elephants are never like that, and asked if I wanted to try to get close again to get a good picture. Heart pounding, nerves on end, I said yes without hesitation. We tried, but unfortunately, the elephants kept walking away, and we couldn't get a good picture. Oh well, it was still really amazing. (I've put up a picture I took in the forest just before running away, notice you can not really see the elephant)

The next day I went to the hippo lake (about 22 km from my village) with another friend from village, Solo. We took a canoe out to get a good view of the hippos. There were maybe about 10 or 15 of them that day, and it was again really cool. Solo got a bunch of fish from the fishermen and we had it prepared and ate it by the lake. It was delicious. The hippos were really cool too, and I did get some pictures of them with their bird friends in the lake, fortunately no near 'when animals attack' experience happened here. I am seriously scared of hippos. There were a lot of these tiny flies that bite though, so I left with about 50 bites on my legs from the knees down. It was terrible. The first picture was taken from the canoe in the lake, the second is of me with Solo and a giant hippo head.

Smart sports fans all over the world (one of my students):

Another student dressed up for dancing that took place every night for almost 2 weeks shortly after the new year.

(She also cooks for me once a week and makes a delicious peanut sauce.)

This week I decided to visit a neighboring village about 8 km from mine called Dorosiomasso with a friend of mine, Mikailou (in the picture with the chickens). So, we biked to the village on a basically non route that ran through a rough area of brush with basically no landmarks to know if you're heading in the right direction. It was an interesting ride, as he biked rather fast for an older man and I struggled to keep up with him. Anyway, when we finally arrived after about 35 minutes I was relieved. Upon arrival, we met up with a teacher from that village so that we could go visiting a bunch of people who live there. So, we started with one of the chiefs (this village actually has 3 it's so big), then went to several other families homes to say hello. At one home was the family of a couple of my students, so I talked to them for quite a while and of course we drank Dolo (locally made beer), and then they gave me a male chicken. All day basically everywhere we went my male friends drank liquor that was given to them by the families, so after stopping by several families in just a couple of hours, my hosts were getting rather liquroed up. So, we went on with our chicken in hand and continued promenading the village. When we got to the house of the second chief, we stayed for awhile, the guys drank some more liquor and dolo, and the chief gave me a second chicken, a female this time. So, I thought, great. I have 2 chickens, we can go back to village and make a feast for several people.

So, as sunset was approaching, I kept suggesting we get started on our way back, since neither of us had a light, the road back to village was actually a non-road, and my host to get back had become rather inebriated. But, the saying goodbye's took a long time, and by the time we actually mounted our bikes, each with a chicken hanging upside down by the handlebars of course, the sun was quickly approaching the horizon. 8 km really isn't that far on a bike, but with my guide in his state, crashing his bike twice in the first 10 minutes of riding, I could see that it was going to be a long ride. 15 minutes into the ride, the sun was gone and the light left over was fading, as the chickens banged their heads against the bike on the rough terrain. 20 minutes and it was dark; not much progress had been made. I pulled out my cell phone which has a small flashlight on it (and had only one bar of charge at the time) to help light the way, but that light is rather weak. So, after about 20 minutes, now in the moonless dark, my guide crashed a third time (the path was really rough), this time breaking the tie that held his chickens feet together on his bike, realeasing a squalking chicken into the wild. So, he got up from the ground and went after the chicken. After a minute I realized that if I wanted to get back on the road to get home, I would have to dismount my bike and help catch this chicken. But, catching chickens isn't something I have a great deal of experience with, so I wasn't much help at first. Persistance paid off as eventually we cornered the chicken in a tree and were able to trap him. Mikailou took him back to his bike, I went back to grab my bike with the other chicken, and then I suggested maybe we walk for awhile. So, we walked the rest of the way back to Satiri (my village). It took about 40 minutes of walking, miraculously my cell phone flashlight held out so we had a small light to help. We got on the wrong path once, but my guide quickly realized that it didn't look familiar. It all looked exactly the same to me, desertlike ground spotted with trees and shrubs- I wouldn't have been able to find my way back in broad daylight. When we got back his wife had to waiting for us to eat. I said the next day she should help me prepare and cook the chickens, and they said no, I couldn't eat them. Since there is a male and a female, I have to raise them and have chicken babies. So, for the time being, my friend is keeping my chickens for me since I don't really have a place for them, and he keeps mentioning that "whenever you need your chickens just come by and get them."

And yes, my hair was braided in the chicken picture and yes, I'm aware of how ridiculous it looked. It took 2 women and a girl 3 hours to do it; yesterday it took me about 5 hours to undo the disaster.

This Monday was Tabasky, pretty much the biggest holiday of the year here. It was a lot of fun, everyone ate sheep and wore new clothes and danced the night away. Then, on Tuesday it was back to the grindstone again with a 7 am class...but wait! For some reason that nobody at my school could explain (and nobody knew about until that morning actually) there was no class alll week. So, after the teaher's debating this for about an hour and the students standing around waiting for the ok to go home, it was made official by a call from someone who said it was true, and we all went home. Normally, I would be excited that classes are cancelled for a week and I can relax, but I was supposed to give 3 tests this week that I'm now screwed on, and relaxing quickly turns to boredom here.

So, not a lot new. This week I went to hang out with a friend in my village who has a pet monkey (pictures to come eventually, I always forget my camera when I go there). This monkey is super scared of me and always makes this horrible menacing face to me to try to get me to leave. Luckily, she is on a short chain on a tree. But, this particular day, my chair was apparently just slightly too close to the tree, and I didn't notice because she wasn't growling at me like usual. Then, all of a sudden, after me sitting there for about 20 minutes, she lept at me and slapped me and started freaking out! Fortunately the chain ripped her back and all she could do was scratch my arm a little bit- her teeth look sharp and I really don't want to experience them! It pretty much scared the crap out of me my heart was pounding and then she was growling and making these scary monkey attack faces at me the rest of the time I was there. Now that it's over it's a little bit hilarious, but at the time I was admittantly terrified.

I was also hit by a moto this week while riding my bike in Bobo, the damage to my body is minimal, just an enormous black bruise covering my right hip and butt. Guess I'm lucky, could have been worse. And then yesterday, I was pooped on by a chicken. And I have about 30 bites of some kind on my leg, not mosquitos or fleas...bedbugs maybe? If bedbugs, hopefully it's from sleeping in Bobo and not from my bed. It's been an interesting week. I guess at least I have my health!

Gotta get back to village today to try to get at least a little work done this week, prep for tests and lessons and such. Hope the holiday's are treating everyone well and the cold isn't too overwhelming, I really wish I could be there for Christmas, it's strange to be away for the holidays!

Despite not liking, almost hating cats, I now have a new best friend. He started out as just a mouse catcher, he was only supposed to be functional, but then I gave him a name- Wada, it's Jula for wild cat (like a lion or tiger)- and he's just so adorable, that he turned into a pet, and now I think he's great. I actually didn't want to leave village this weekend because I was/am worried about him. But, I left a big bowl of milk and some fish for him, and the litter box is empty, so he should be fine for the one day I am away from home.

I gave 4 tests the past two weeks, math and biology in 5eme and 6eme class, which means I have 400 papers to grade (137 is the current tally in 6eme, 65 in 5eme). I also gave a quiz in each class, so that's another 200. I'm about half way done and have spent about 7 hours grading I think. The students handwriting is horrible, and their French is pretty bad too, so it's really difficult to decipher what the papers say. The 6eme class may make me go crazy, every day I try something different. I gave them a pop quiz the last class because they talked so much, but that's more of a punishment for me because now I have to grade 137 quizzes. A kid stuck his tongue out one day, so I made him come to the front of the class and stand with his tongue out for several minutes. I mock them, take away their break time, give quizzes, but 137 6th graders are just too many to have in one room at one time. It's a disaster.

This week I took some pictures with the kids in my courtyard by setting the timer on my camera. Now they think I'm magic. When I went to get in the picture they were all confused, then after a minute the flash went off and they all cheered and laughed like it was amazing. Then, one kid brought me the baby and told me to do it again holding the baby so she could be in the pic too. So, I did it again, everyone cheered, and I got some pictures with the kids. Then, the baby pooped on me. It was disgusting. There are no diapers here. It was bound to happen, but I had let my guard down and was no longer paranoid every time I held a baby, so I was completely taken by surprise.

Yesterday I went and worked in the fields with the people in my courtyard. I cut a bunch of red mil, which is used to make dolo, something like a local beer. The family doesn't drink ever, and they have harsh words to say about people who drink, but apparently it's ok for them to sell mil to other people so that they can get drunk. I'm not judging really, I just think it's kind of bizarre.

I also took a couple of pictures of my big 6eme class. They thought it was great. I told them that I had family and friends at home who wanted to see what the class is like, and I wanted to send a picture. After the class, a girl came running after me as I was riding away on my bike, and gave me a note. The note says hello and thank you to my mom for letting me come here to help teach them. There are some days when I want to beat them with a stick (which one of the other professors actually does), and other days when they are really great.

So Obama won, which makes everybody here happy. It’s weird though. Most people in America can't find Burkina Faso on a map (or have never heard of it even), but everyone here knows that there is a huge election going on in America. Really everybody, not just the people in cities, or just the functionaires (teachers, police, etc., the people who speak French basically). There are tons of people in my village who don't speak much French, have no electricity, but yet they still know about the election in America. They listen to news on small battery powered radios. I'm impressed, and happy about the new president.

I'm in the process of putting up a bunch of pictures, so if that works at a decently quick pace, I'll have lots of new pictures on photobucket.

I'm really bad about keeping up with the blog, but it is kind of hard to get done sometimes, and I've been pretty busy lately with the school year in full swing and all. It's great though, I prefer being busy to having absolutely nothing to do like the first month I was in village. Now, I'm teaching 6eme and 5eme math and biology, 6eme is roughly the equivalent of 6th grade, and 5eme 7th to 8th grade (although there are a few giant kids in my 6eme class who must be about 16 years old, but this is common as a lot of kids repeat grades here). I feel like I should briefly explain how classes work here, it's slightly different from the states. There are 4 classrooms lined up side by side at my school, one for 6eme, one for 5eme, one for 4eme, and one for 3eme (6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd level, which is kind of like 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade- backwards from the American system). Each grade level is not broken up into several classes like it normally is in America, so all of the 6eme students have class together, all the 5eme, and so forth. I mention this because I'm about to say that there are 133 students in the 6eme class. That's 133 6th graders, all in one classroom, all at one time, with me at the head trying to keep them from completely going crazy, much less actually teach them anything. It's pretty much a circus everyday with them. The students sit 3 or 4 to a desk, and there is only one aisle I can walk up and down. When I call students to the board to do problems, often they have to walk on the desks to get out of their rows. It's a little crowded, and often very loud. The 5eme class is only about, maybe 50 students, I'm not sure exactly. It's much more calm and much easier to teach them. I find class with the 6eme students almost a daily struggle right now. The last time I had class with them I told them that each time I had to tell them to be quiet I would add one minute to class. I added 18 minutes, but then halfway through the class it started raining. This may not seem like a big deal, but with no electricity, when it rains it's dark, and with a tin roof when it rains it's loud. So, basically the students couldn't hear what I was saying or see what I was writing on the board. Luckily, the rainy season is pretty much over so this won't be a problem too often. I ended up having to cancel the rest of class, but I made the students come in an hour early the next day to make up for the half hour we lost and the 18 minutes I added for their bad behaviour. I hope next time I don't have to do that again, it's as much of a punishment for me as it is for the kids. It's funny though, I would walk up to the board and make a big slash mark every time they got too loud and then they would start eating each other alive and getting all mad at each other. I'm just disappointed the rain kind of put a damper on my discipline that day, but hopefully the students will be better next time.

Village life is great. Right now I came in to Ouaga for the weekend. I really have no good reason to be here other than the fact that the World Series is shown at the American Embassy, and I want to catch a game. I get to use the great wireless internet at the Peace Corps transit house, and spend a lot of money on food, but at least it's good food. It's actually kind of nice to just get away for a few days and relax with some semblance of normalcy.

So, I'm thinking about constructing a garden for my school. The kids have school lunches available (not yet, but hopefully within the next few weeks), but their school lunch really has little to no nutritional value, and if they had a garden, we could grow some tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc. to supplement the lunch. The problem with the garden is that it costs a little bit to get started, a fence has to be built (cows and goats roam free around my school grounds), some supplies have to be bought (watering cans/buckets, seeds, manure, insect repellant so the plants don't get devoured), and a small amount of labor may have to be paid for the fence. I know there are several people at home who seemed interested in helping out with this kind of thing, but I hate to ask people for money. It doesn't take a lot to go pretty far in Burkina, so if there happens to be anyone interested in helping out with a project like this, please send me an email (ashleyh001@aol.com) and I can let you know more details about it. Also, if there were any extra money after the garden, there are several students at my school (actually it's more than several) who lack things like notebooks, pens, and rulers and stuff like that, so any extra money would go to buying things like that for the students. I will be happy to send a detailed email of plans to anyone interested in helping out, or just anyone curious about what I'm trying to do, but I prefer not to put up all the info here.

I'll be around Ouaga today and tomorrow until Sunday morning, and I have skype capability now, so if anyone wants to talk to me (for free!) and you have a skype username (free to get one if you don't) all you need is a microphone (or camera/microphone) and we can talk for free across the ocean. It actually works really well. Gonna go get some juice or something delicious and cold that I can't get in village, so that's a good update for now I think. Oh yeah, I sent in my absentee ballot today, hope everybody is planning to get to the polls soon, from what I hear a lot of people already have! Thanks for all the great birthday love from home, I got lots of cards and packages, and I (and my friends in village) love to get mail (the kids love m&ms, and stickers, and empty boxes, pretty much anything). Thanks so much!

Oh yeah I keep forgetting things..the picture is of some kids in my courtyard playing with these giant beetles the find in the fields. I came home from class one day to find the kids swinging these things around on little pieces of string, and upon closer inspection I saw that it was a big bug. They tie a string around it's neck or leg, and the beetles fly around and they hold the end of the string. It's like a kite. They call it "mouton" which is French for sheep, which only confuses me more than the fact that they're swinging beetles around on a string. Ok, really going to get something to drink now. Sadly, I left my nalgene bottle in a taxi. I was rather attached to that bottle, but life goes on.

It's been awhile, but now that I'm living in my village it's not so easy for me to update, seeing as I have no electricity, running water, or internet cafes anywhere in my village. But, I'm currently in Bobo, which is my nearest city with amenities (42 kilometers), so I'm trying to do a blog update, post a bunch of pictures (www.photobucket.com my username is ashleyinburkina, you can search me and see all the pics), and make contact with the outside world while I'm here. I'm assuming everyone is dying to know what a day in the life of me is like, so maybe I'll start there:

6:00-6:30: Try to ignore the roosters and women pounding grain in my courtyard.

6:30-7:00: Give up trying and drag myself out of bed.

7:00-9:00: Bucket bath, breakfast (usually tea and maybe bread, or banana if I can get one, or twice when I could get eggs French Toast!), then go draw a couple of buckets of water out of the well for the day and drag them, one by one, back to my house, and get a container of pump water for drinking (I filter it anyway, but one day I saw a little red worm swimming in my filter from the well water, so I quit using that for drinking).

9:00-lunch: Talk to the family a little bit, throwing a couple of Jula phrases to impress them, then I sit around and read (I finished the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy already, after 3 weeks) or study French or Jula, maybe go bug hunting- I've killed 9 roaches, about 50 spiders of variable scariousness, and at least 1000 obnoxiously loud crickets, or just stare at the wall for a while, Then, I go out and buy some tomatoes and maybe bread, and make bruschetta, or maybe if I have tuna a tuna sandwich, or peanut butter and jelly, or whatever I can find.

After lunch: More staring at the wall, maybe go talk to the police a little, or the other teachers, or my family, or anyone who speaks French, try not to focus on how incredibly bored I am, get supplies for dinner, read some more.

Evening: Dinner of fried rice, or pasta, or maybe some delicious fish that a lady in my village makes. By about 6:30, it's too dark to read, so I go sit outside and drink tea or coffee with my family. Eventually, when I get bored, or tired, or just sick of the mosquitoes, I go in, read by my little light hooked up to a small battery I bought, maybe stare at the all some more, then to bed and sleep, just to start all over again the next day. I have never been so excited for school to start. I need something to do!

Lately I've been biking a lot to pass the time, and the other day I actually did something very exciting. I took a bike ride to my hippo lake, which I thought was 8ish km from my village. But, after 8 km (I have a small km counter on my bike), I ran into another village, and thought it must just be a few km more. After about 11 km, I was starting to wonder if I took a wrong turn, but I ran into 3 fishermen who were on their way to the lake, so I kept going with them. After about 14 or 15 km, I asked if we were getting close, and the fishermen said only a few more kilometers. So, since I had already gone 15, thought a couple of more wouldn't hurt. Finally, after 22 km, I reached the lake, where there were no hippos and I couldn't even see the lake because it was so swampy around it that I couldn't get close. So, I biked 22 km there, 22 km back (44km equals about 26 miles!) to not see hippos. But, it was a beautiful ride, and there was a beautiful forest. I have some pics going up on photobucket for anyone who wants to see. I look forward to going back in the dry season when the hippos are actually there, and I heard there are elephants that pass through the forest too, so I'll have to keep my eyes peeled!

I'm kind of missing home, so all the letters and cards I recently got were much needed and appreciated, so thanks to all the ladies that my mom works with, I really am grateful. Don't know when I'll get back again, but school starts October 1st, so I'll try to update after that to say how the school year is going. I'll be teaching 6eme and 5eme (that's like 6th and 7th grade) math and biology, and the 6eme class has over 120 students in it! We'll see how that goes...

I have a new address!

Ashley Hess, PCV

S/C Corps de la Paix

B.P. 1065

Bobo-Dioulasso

Burkina Faso

I walked to the internet today; I usually ride my bike but it's nice and thought it would be fun to walk, gives more time to talk to people on the way by, which is always interesting. What I didn't expect is to have a herd of kids follow me all the way, about half a mile, walking a couple of steps behind me giggling every time I turned around to speak to them. Now that I arrived at the cyber cafe, they are sitting outside shouting in bonjour!s occasionally and giggling again. The girl who runs the cyber cafe just yelled out and ran them off. Kids are so funny. A couple of guys also offered to accompany me, and a girl rode by and called me madame, she must be a student. I don't feel like a madame, seeing as I am only 23, but at least I'm getting some respect.

Been keeping very busy with model school. I'm having a lot of fun teaching, now that I'm not afraid of the students anymore. I can understand their French almost all the time, and I think they understand me a lot too. They other day we talked about bones, and I brought in a skeleton (something i won't be able to do in my school where I will be teaching, we have no supplies like that there). They were very impressed, and loved knocking on it's head and pointing out all the different bones. When I asked them to name something that has calcium in it to keep your bones strong, the first response I got was Blue Band! which is a brand of butter here in Burkina, the only brand of butter I have seen, that somehow doesn't have to be refrigerated. I thought they would say milk or yogurt first, but at least they were know something with calcium in it. A couple of days ago I received a package from home, in it were peanut butter m&m's, and of course a few other things (like tuna, which I'm desperately trying not to eat yet, but it's very tempting), but most importantly those. I opened the box in language class, so I shared (hesitantly, these are a precious commodity) with my fellow trainees and our teacher, who is Burkinabe. I assumed he would think they were delicious, but he popped one in his mouth, chewed once, and stopped with this face of complete shock. Probably like the first time I took a bite of tô, He said it was good, but he didn't take any more after that first one, so I think he wasn't impressed. I thought everyone would like peanut butter m&m's, oh how wrong I was. My host mom liked them a lot though, that was good to see. My host dad and brother went away for the week a couple of days ago, so now it's just my host mom and me, which is pretty cool. We watch soap operas and the olympics; I wish it were more of the latter, but at least I get to watch a little bit of olympics. I bought some really pretty material for a dress and today my mom accompanied me to the tailor, so on wednesday I'll be able to pick up my dress for the swearing in ceremony. Not really sure what it's going to look like, hopefully it turns out ok. The other day we worked in groups and split our classes into boys and girls and talked to them separately. We asked about their daily routine, then we asked them what they thought the others did for a daily routine. One girl said for part of the daily routine of the boys, that they slap the girls, The girls here do soo much freaking work, and the boys do a lot of "resting." When one of the boys was saying that they work really hard, one of the girls in class reached over and slapped him. It was hilarious, but of course out of line. It was unfortunate that another of the teachers in class threw her out, if it had been only me I probably would have turned a blind eye. The boy is a brat, I've had my moments of wanting to slap him too.

Only one week until I go to Ouaga for swearing in, then I finally get to move to my site and start being a real volunteer! I can't wait!

Wow it's been a big week. Last week model school started, which means I'm teaching 1 hour lessons 4 days a week to real Burkinabe students in real French. Whoa. Terrifying. But not really, it's actually kind of fun. The kids I teach are the equivalent of 6th grade, so they like to talk a lot and correct me every time I get anything wrong in French, but in Burkina you can yell at the kids and even tell them to shut up, and it's culturally acceptable! So, I yell a little, but I'm a horrible disciplinarian, so sometimes when I yell and they listen, I start to laugh and have to turn around to the board and start writing so they don't see me giggle. I'm really bad at this. The first day I taught I kept asking my class "tout le monde est fini?" I was trying to ask if everyone had finished writing what was on the board. But, the way I said it I was actually asking if all the class is dead, it's kind of like the difference in is everyone finished versus has everyone finished. Now that I've got that straight... Today, I had to teach about sexual reproduction of flowers. To 6th graders. In French. And, 6th graders are 6th graders all over the world, so there was plenty of giggling every time I said sexual reproduction, or bisexual flowers, or anything like that. Quel désastre.

This week I also ate a ridiculous amount of meat. We found a pork place, which I ate at several times. Then, Saturday, I ordered a steak (think much smaller than a real steak, with onions and a lot of oil), and after I ate the steak I decided I wanted another. So, I split another with someone. That night, I ate half of a chicken out of a bag. Mmmmm. So my body right now is on protein overload, which means I pooped all day yesterday. C'est la vie.

Yesterday morning, I was out doing my laundry (which takes about 2 hours). As I was scrubbing my hands raw cleaning a pair of pants, my 3 year old host brother came out, brought his potty chair right next to me, looked at me and said "je fais le caca." Which means, I am pooping. Then, he proceeded to sit right next to me and poop for about 25 minutes (I am amazed at his patience, I don't think my nephews at home could sit on the toilet for 25 minutes), occasionally telling me that he was pooping, and asking me what I was doing. I love his portable potty chair, and how he keeps me company as he goes.

I have posted some pictures on the web, if you go to photobucket.com and type in my username which is ashleyinburkina, you can view all the pictures I have posted so far. It takes quite a while to post, so there aren't a ton, but I'll be adding occasionally throughout my stay. I'll try to list it on this blog every time I add pictures.

I am learning Jula, and we have this great Jula book that is full of wonderfully entertaining proverbs and benedictions and "useful phrases", so I thought I would include a few of my favorites.

An ka kolonji nyanaman min. Let's drink clean well water!

Ala ka saga muso d'i ma. May God give you a wife like a sheep.

A ye nyamogoya dabila. Avoid promiscuity (A "useful phrase" in any language, haha)

N'i ma gere boo ra, i nuun t'a suma men. If you don't approach excrement, you won't smell it.

I fari bi gwan wa? Is your body hot? (i can't wait to ask somebody that.)

Fun stuff, the book is full of interesting conversations, about how to politely turn down marriage proposals and stuff like that. Anyway, I'll try to get some more pics up in the next couple of weeks, there's not too many right now. This week I get to give my first exam, which I have to write, so we'll see how that goes. Tomorrow's some kind of holiday, something like a Burkina independence day, so no school for the students, but of course I still have classes. I can't wait for training to be over!

I know it's been awhile, but keep in mind I am in Africa and sometimes it just isn't convenient to get to a computer. I have been away for the last several days visiting the site where I will be spending the next few years, and there isn't any internet in my village, or electricity, and I have to pull my water up from a well (but actually I will probably get some kid to do that for me). But, I am located in the beautiful southwest region of the country, where the rain is plentiful and from what my host mom tells me there is grass everywhere, and the mosquitoes are as fat as flies! She was right, there is a ton of grass, and I counted over 30 bites on just my legs, so I am a little miserably itchty right now. I'm just waiting for the malaria to hit. But, I'll take the mosquitoes since it means I get more rain, so it is cooler, and tons of beautiful trees and grass and even some mountains/hills. Going to the southwest is kind of like going to paradise, but of course that's "paradise" relative to Burkina. But, I will live only 7 km from a huge hippo lake, 40 km from Bobo, the second largest city in Burkina so lots of stuff and internet, and not too much farther is a waterfall where I hear one can easily contract schistosomiasis, a horrible thing to have. My house is pretty big in a huge courtyard shared with a family of 25 to 30 people, my village has a market each Friday, and there is a little buvette across the street from me that has a generator so the have cold beers and soda (jackpot!). A bush taxi to Bobo takes less than an hour, unless something crazy happens, which it usually does. Last week I was in the back of a bush taxi with three goats, one who kept licking my toe and the other who pooped everywhere. Then, we stopped to load some eggplants, which filled the entire back of the truck, so the goats went on the roof and I sat on eggplants with my feet straight out for the rest of the 45 minutes to Bobo. It seems like the bush taxi is always an adventure; I think I will be riding my bike to Bobo as often as possible.

The French is coming well. I just tested into the intermediate high group, so I've already reached Peace Corps requirement for staying in country. So, since I finally feel like I can take a breath and relax on the French a little, I of course have to start working on another language-Jula, the language spoken in my village.

So yeah, I finally ate tô. It's really bland, kind of the consistency of jello, but white. It's too bland to be offensive to the taste buds, but then you put this sauce on it that is the exact consistency of snot. So, I literally gagged down an entire plate. It's eaten a lot, especially in village, like everyday, so I hope I can get used to it.

I am holding off on listing the things I would like to have for the school year. This week we start model school, where we teach class in front of actual students, so I will get to know the cirriculum a little better in the next month or so, and then I will have an idea of what I could use. I also don't really know what resources my school has, but I'm pretty sure they're slim to none. My school has 4 classrooms, one for each grade level, and there are about 100 kids in each grade. And only 3 teachers, including myself. So, maybe in a month and a half I will have a better idea of what type of things I could use for my students.So the first pic is of the spider that lives in my room. I'm afraid to go near it, so it just hangs out in the corner and I make sure to tuck in my mosquito net really well every night. The other pic is my little host brother, Faris. He dances around my room all the time. Maybe I'll ask him to kill that spider. The other pic is of a glass of dead flies. Catching flies in a little bit of beer is a favorite Burkina pasttime. It may seem disgusting, and at first it kind of made my stomach turn, but it's incredibly satisfying to see all those flies who land on your food and rub their front legs together so sinisterly, trying to spread e. coli to every person they can, dead in a glass. Don't think it gross, you would enjoy it too if you were here. I am going to try to load all of my pics onto kodak or something in the next few days, and I will put a link if I can get that to happen, but it takes too long to put them onto the blog.Yesterday I had a ton of mail, and it was sooo exciting! Thanks so much to my mom and dad (who send me mail all the time), Aunt Ruthie, Aunt Janie, and Aunt Lou for the card, and Jake Cherry for the postcards from around the world.

Hello again! Hope everyone had/is having a great 4th of July weekend. Yesterday we had a bash for the 4th and it went really well and was a ton of fun. We celebrated the 4th American style, well as American as it could be in Burkina, substituting mango pie for apple, of course. We feasted on the sheep that was given to us by the village chief, and it was amazingly delicious. Hamburgers and meat sticks...yummm. We also made mashed potatoes, sweet potato fries, fruit salad, and even had watermelon. There were cold beers (although mine was warm) and delicious limeade. It was definitely worth the 3 hours of cutting vegetables and prep. My hands may be blistered, but my stomach was satisfied. We even listened to the national anthem, well at least a jimi hendrix style version of it. Then, we had some local musicians play music for us and it was an amazing time.

Not a whole lot new has happened. I met the neighbor's little boy, he is one year old. When he saw me, he screamed in horror and clung to his mom. Everyone thought it was hilarious, of course, so now whenever he is around someone picks him up and brings him over close to me to hear him cry. I have to admit, it is a little funny, but I feel kind of bad for the kid. Apparantely I am a very scary white girl. I went and saw a movie with two of my neighbors a couple of nights ago. That was pretty fun, although the movie was West African made and in French and the quality was pretty lacking. I also got about 30 mosquito bites, and drank water out of a bag that I am about 95% sure was safe for me to drink, so I may have contracted malaria or some gastric disaster, guess we'll see in 2 to 14 days. My health is good now, although I had a rough couple of days this week. I won't go to into detail, I'll just say I am very glad I got to perfect my aim over the hole before I got sick.

Today I was sweeping my room and my mom yelled at my dad and said look at ashley, she knows how to sweep, then she told me I sweep like a Burkinabe. She got a kick out of it. I guess up until now I have been sweeping like an American. I really like my host family, they are amazing. I think I am going to try tô for dinner tonight for the first time, my mom was telling me about it today. I am excited/nervous, I will let you know how it goes.

Well I have been on the computer for almost 40 minutes and it is pretty slow to upload these images, so that's it for today. The one is of my bedroom, I sleep under that very hot mosquito net every night, and you can see my bucket for my bucket bath on the floor. I have my own clothesline, that's my pagne hanging up, it's something the women wear when walking out to the shower, although my shower is in the house I still use one. The pink thing hanging is the Burkina version of a loofa. I think it's better than the American version. The next picture is of me and some other volunteers, Jen, David, Amy, and Chris, preparing the sweet potato fries. I am willing to bet that you have never seen a sweet potato as big as the ones are here. And the last is the guys who played for us on the 4th of July. They are amazing. I would love to be able to play that xylophone thing, it is really cool. Next time I will try to upload some more images, apparantly people are too bored without picture distractions, but the uploading is really slow going. Happy 4th of July! If anybody has the time, I can't say how exciting it is to receive a letter here, so feel free to write. It's really expensive to mail to the US from here (it costs the same to mail one letter as it does to eat lunch for 2-3 days) so I'm not promising to write back, but I will try if I have enough extra money.

So my assignment in French class was to go to the post and ask a question then come to the internet cafe and read an article in French...which took about 20 minutes so now I have free time to do nothing. Not a lot new class every day then struggle to talk to my host family every night. They do have a 3 year old little boy who talks to me all the time and doesn't quite understand that I don't know what he is saying. He's fun though, he wants to play instead of eating or getting a bath just like my nephews at home! There is also a 12 year old boy that lives in my house who is my host dad's brother. He is so nice he helps me figure things out when I am really confused. Like last night, at dinner, there was this spicy pepper in the sauce and my host mom was asking if I wanted some. I said yes, then no, then I finally said I would try a little. They kind of looked at each other and smiled then she put a little on my rice. I took one bite and was burning hot I think I said ohhhhh and they cracked up. I only live with my host family for the three months of training, then I go on to a site where I may live with another family or I may live on my own. My family is great despite the language barrier...this weekend my host mom is going to teach me to cook something...I hope it's rice with this delicious peanut butter sauce that stuff is soo good. Everyone says they lose weight in the Peace Corps...not me. I'm eating very well and am still healthy.

Yeah, there are some local beers here. The one I have tried so far is called Brakina, tastes like any lite beer really. In general, I'm way to tired at night to go drink a beer, like last night some people went out but I hung out at home with the family and went to bed at 900. Maybe on the weekend I'll be able to hang out, or if I finally adapt to getting up at 530 and staying up past 900. Last night there was a ventriloquist cricket in my room that sang allll night. I woke up about 15 times. I couldn't find the cricket anywhere but I kept hearing him in my room; he is soo loud.

It was a sheep that was given to us by the chief, not a goat. We took the vilage chief a chicken and some Kola nuts (they kind of taste like you are chewing on wood, supposedly if you eat them you can get kind of drunk, I don't know I only tasted a little bit of one). In return, he gave us a sheep. Sheep and goats look just alike here, something different about the tails I think. So, I think we are going to feast on our sheep on the 4th of July. I can't wait already; I really miss good protein. My time is almost up, thanks for the comments I was really excited to see them!! It's so good to hear from people back home. Hope everyone is doing well, somebody give my puppy a hug from me. I'm thinking about adopting a puppy when I go to my site...then if I brought him back to the states he would have to be quarantined for like 6 weeks...but it would be so nice to have a dog if I live on my own. hmmm..I have a few months to decide I guess. That's all for now!

So I have been in Burkina for about 12 days now and i am still alive, no need to worry. However, I am still not used to this French keyboard so it is very difficult to type- excuse my mistakes. It is really freaking hot here, like unbearably hot sometimes, but somehow everyone bears it. I am settled in with my host fa,ily now, and they are very very nice and very patient with my french. I was placed in novice-high french class (yay- all those french classes and rosetta stone finally paid off). I found out I did 48 hours on Rosetta Stone, which was the most in my group of 31 volunteers so yay for me. I did not get a prize though, bummer.

I have already gotten a lot of questions via email, so I am going to generically list anszers here. Yes, it is hot. Ridiculosly hotter than Miami. It is so hot that I wake up several times every night drenched in my own sweat so much that i could literally wring out my clothes, so hot that I drink about 5 litres of water per day and only pee twice, i sweat out that much. For this, I am in good co,pany though, as all the volunteers seem to sweat profusely.

No, I have not been sick yet. I am one of the few who has not been sick though, so really I am just wiating for my turn. Burkina ranks number 2 of 25 African Peace Corps countries in number of cases of diarrhea, so I am pretty sure my turn with GI problems will come soon enough (Mali is the number 1 African country in case you are wondering).

The food is nothing to complain about, it is actually very good. Usually, pasta, rice, or couscous in a tomato sauce for dinner with meat in it. Last night I had rice with a sauce made from peanut butter, and it was really good. Generally, breakfast is bread with mayonnaise or butter, and for lunch I have an omelette sandwich, for exa,ple.

A normal day in my life: wake up at 630, if the roosters will even let my sleep that late; they usually get started crowing around 530. Bucket bath, mayo sandwich with tea, school-about 4 hours of language studies per day and 4 hours of tech (medical, Burkina school systems, teaching, etc.), home, bucket bath again, homework, try to carry on a conversation in french with my host family, dinner, maybe watch some french tv, then bed around 930 or 1000. The days are exhausting.

Yes, I pee in a hole. No, it is not that difficult to do. And I really enjoy my bucket baths; after sweating all day I look very forward to going home and bathing.

I do filter all my water, and I take malaria pills weekly (malaria is the number 1 cause of death in Africa. In the world, 3000 people die from malaria every day). I also sleep under a mosquito net every night (which allows no air to flow and makes the night even hotter).

I am not sunburned I have about 15 mosquito bites, I bike several miles per day, and the family I am staying with is fantastic. I am having a great time (so far, but like I said I have not gotten sick yet) and I am really looking forward to teaching in three months. My french kind of sucks, but I can really see an improvement already. My family has electric and a fridge, so I have cold water, which is way more valuable than gold to my right now. I really miss everyone back home, and I am still waiting for my first piece of mail to get here (they have handed out mail several times-nothing for me yet). Hope all is well at home! Hopefully I will eventually be able to post some pictures but for now that is way to difficult to do in my one hour of internet time.

Thought it was about time I got this blog set up since I only have 4 days until i leave for Philadelphia for staging, so here it is. On June 8th my Peace Corps Burkina Faso adventure begins in Philadelphia for a three day orientation/staging event. From there, I fly to Burkina Faso for an intense three month training. During this, I will (hopefully) learn French, which I will use to teach secondary science education, and another local language to be determined. The Peace Corps assigned me as an education volunteer in Burkina Faso, probably because I took three semesters of French in college (French is the official language of Burkina Faso although it is mostly used in schools while another language is spoken in the homes from what I hear) and did a small amount of tutoring over the past few years. I'm feeling very unqualified lately for this assignment; three semesters of college French has proven to be fairly useless, and tutoring a few kids one on one hardly qualifies me to teach an entire class of students. But, I guess that's what that intense three months of training is for. How hard could it be to teach 100 students, in French, with little to no supplies...right?

I'm sure it will all work out. I am really excited and a little stressed at the same time right now...I feel like it is inevitable that I will forget something important that I'm supposed to do before I go. For now, I just wanted to get something up so people can keep track of me if they want, and so I can put up an address where people can write or send care packages (either of which will be greatly appreciated). For the first few months I'm in Burkina, you can write me at:

Ashley Hess, PCT

S/c Corps de la Paix

01 B.P. 6031

Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso

Letters should be no problem to send or receive, but if anyone wants to send a care package, you must make sure to write Airmail and Par Avion on the package clearly, maybe even several times and in red ink. Bubble envelopes are highly preferred to boxes if possible, as it seems that it will cost me to receive a box but less for just an envelope. Postcards must be sent in an envelope sealed or they will probably never get to me. Looking forward to the many letters that I'm sure everyone is going to send :)

That's about all I've got for now. Only 4 more days to cram as much French as I can into my head and as much stuff as I can into my 2 suitcases. Au Revoir!