So this is the end. After my two years in Burkina I'm packing my bags again, this time for Mali. I don't feel like I've really gained the distance yet from my time here to have any epiphanies revealed- and I get the sense that if I try to give some some kind of summary I risk dissolving into platitudes. Anyways, I think I'll start with a few quick stories about what I've been doing here in the last few months.

First, after nearly a year of planning, budgeting and logistics we've actually succeeded in creating a library in the big L. To speak frankly, I'm truly pleased with how it turned out. Unfortunately, I lost quite a few pictures from the early stages of the implementation, but take my word that the whole project turned out to be quite monumental. When 2 months ago we cracked open the doors on the building bequeathed unto us by the Burkinabe government the only inhabitants were dead bats; the only furnishings rotten onions; the only coloring on the walls that ubiquitous 2cm thick layer of orange dust that coats all things neglected in this country. After we swept the 3 times, destroyed all the wasp huts, and washed the entire building we set ourselves to the task of drawing our world map. The help of 10 students and the surveillant with primed the walls, drew are grid and painted out the important parts of the planet earth (Micronesia and Polynesia were excluded because seriously). You can judge for yourself weather it looked good or not (see below) but I was pretty happy with it.

As for the books I think we managed a pretty good mix of moder African authors, comic books and teen reading to try to cater to the student body. I got a nice set of spicy reads from some Ivorian authors that include title such as "un voyage d'amour" and "la tentation". They all have covers of scantily clad teint-clair girls (light skinned) being embraced by well chinned lovers. Nothing is beneath me if it gets the kids to read. I also got a nice collection of classics such as Dumas, Guy de Maupassant and Satre. I'm really hoping we'll see some improvements in the test scores of the students over the next few years. A lot of the resources are catering towards test review both directly and indirectly.

Furthermore, We equipped the library with a nice set of tables, chairs and desks to really create a space for private study away from the crazy pressures of home life. All told I'm pretty happy about how the project went. The community really responded well and seemed enthusiastic; they gave me a chicken and a traditional outfit as gifts for the opening ceremony.

Also a note to the donors: I will thank all of you formally- I've bought all the postcards for the personal thank you's but as it's hella expensive to send leters (and print photos for that mater) I'm running late. You can expect them to come in July when I get back to the states. But in the mean time, all of you should know I've done my best to connect you guys to the students by telling stories about you and explaining the reasons why you've donated. I should also apologize to the republican donors for our decision on what to name the library.

In other news on the 29th I ran the Ouaga-Laye marathon which was pretty memorable. We started in centre ville and turned around the airport and the grande marche before heading off on the road to Ouahigoya. Thankfully it wasn't too hot that day and the organisers managed to get people running before 6am. Last year the runners didn't start until after 8 which as you can imagine was pretty terrible for people finishing around 12. I'm not really sure why they decided to hold it at the end of the hot season- it seems like they are enough challenges to training in Burkina without adding 48c temperatures and no more food (it's been finished since the heat started) to the mix. Anyways I had a crew of peace corps friends that followed me pretty much the whole way in a 4x4 which was really nice, and girl that was first among the women last year ran it again with me this year. I was pretty poky but i refused to walk any of it- even if walking might have been faster than my jumping-in-place manner of jogging. That night I had perhaps the best meal of my peace corps service which included fried calamari, leg of lamb, garlic mashed potatoes, ice-cream and a Manhattan.

I've prepared my bags for Mali and honestly I'm ready to go. I'm definitely going to miss my friends (burkinabe and american) and some aspects of life here, but honestly I feel the need to move. I know that all of my gripes about life here (corruption at the local level, lack of initiative from the burkinabes, scorpions in the shoes) probably are gonna be just as bad in Mali, but I think there's something revitalising about moving. I moving at a precarious time because both here and in Mali there is a new stage starting up and I have a chance of being overlooked during my transfer. I'm not too worried about though because honestly I don't feel like I'm going to need that much support coming from my background here.

I managed to pull off 'intermediate high' as my score for my final language test in Jula. I was pleased with that but not my score of 'advanced low' in French. I blame the fact that many of the questions were quite bizarre. I should have the foundation I need to learn Bambara quickly in Mali

It's world cup time now and I've been watching the games with my mates here. The US/England game was pretty stressful as I knew that our continued sovereignty hung in the balance.

I also got caught in a dust storm on my way back to my house the other day. I happened to have my camera on me so I took some pretty nice blair-witch footage. Hope you all appreciate it!

Anyways, that's it. I'll write another post once I install myself in Mali.

K'a sira diya

So I guess it's time again for my seemingly semi-annual blog report.

Things are coming down to the wire as I round the midway point on my last year in burkina. I hesitate to use the word legacy, but it would seem that my overall impact on the big L will make it self known over these next couple of months. This really hinges on two things: the successful implementation of the library and the performance of the troisième class on the BEPC. I certainly have other objectives to meet before the school year is up (tree planting project with 6ème, painting a few world maps, running the Ouaga marathon) but in all honesty I feel like those objectives are secondary.

The recent progression on the library grant happened startlingly quickly. Upon returning from Benin, I got indirect notification through my Mom that the grant had gone through. After that the funds came in very quickly thanks to the generosity of many, in particullar my god parents who ended up footing nearly half of the project bill. Unfortunately, the initiative that the donners showed was somewhat curtailed by the gelatinous process of getting the funds actually transfered to me. Rarely am I brought to the understanding that my final employer really is the United States government; the bloated, comatose leviathan which expedites nothings save war. But anyways I can't really complain. I'm taking advantage of this time to organize my A-team of painters for the world map project, inform myself with the librarian pro-tips and make sure that all my vendors are still in business. God willing, there should be a functioning library in the big L by the start of the third trimester.

As for getting some good test scores out of the 3ème class we seem to be on track. I'm about a month ahead of schedule on the official program which I think is a good call as many things could come up to cut out time in the remaining months. Unfortunately, I have come to understand that to be perfectly blunt, I'm not qualified to teach this class. Most of this stems from my imperfect communication skills (usually forming phrases too technical and inaccessible for my class) but also I have to note that in the united states we are bred to be specialists and not generalists. When I know the material (IE antibody-antigene interactions, microbiology etc) I bombard my students with information far beyond what they need. When I don't know the materail that well (the digestive system), I tend to give awkward explanations that are too general. But beyond this, the most difficult aspect is the fact that I have not ever taken this course and have never gone through the Burkina Education system. All the other teachers have the benefit of being able to teach to the test- only the facts that can earn their kids points. I however attempt to summarize what information I gleaned from the various state published resources but I'm working against that handicap.

Also there are tons of examples where I am forced to make a decision between teaching what I know to be true and teaching the facts published by the state. For instance I know that the lymphe and the interstitial fluid are two entirely different substances, and I know that the heart is NOT indefatigable. I oft start off on one tac (such as teaching what's published by the state) and then forget what zany statement they profess and switch back to what I learned. Meanwhile the kids are terribly confused as I have given them to separate conflicting explanations to one of the several thousand concepts that they have to memorize.

I'm sure that there are plenty of teachers in Burkina that are less qualified than I (either through incompetence or indifference) but I want to be among the best. I guess come June we'll see how the grades stack up.

In other news I recently finished "Atlas Shrugged", Any Rand's magnum opus. Final rating 5/10: she had some good points, and the angle of the book was strikingly novel in our current climate but honestly it could have been 200 hundred pages (au lieu de 1200) and she would have gotten the same message across.

I've come to the understanding that movies are now made in three dimensions in the states. It's disappointing to discover that the future happened while I was away.

I'm writing a short story in french in the style of Guy de Maupassant. It's part of a rivalry with a fellow volunteer- we both find are selves . He's writing his story in English however because he isn't as prestigious as I. My story draws heavily form my conflicted feelings towards my catholic upbringing, along my experiences as a fish vendor in Marseilles.

It's looking more an more like doing a third year in Mali is a sure thing. I leave the details for another blog post but it seems I've nabbed a pretty good gig.

Anyways, I'm working on a hosting solution for my photos so those should be up pretty soon.

END TRANSMISSION

Writing this blog is a constant battle for me to escape the locutions of a college kid on study abroad and actually speak frankly. It's rather difficult to be candid, but I do try.

I'm going to skip detailing how much easier this year has been from linguistic and cultural stand point. Even if it's not always evident you really do acquire skills being here. I should mention that on the flip side, my growing comfort with the language and growing accustom to the environment has led me to act rather cavalier at certain moments. I express boldly my disbelief in black magic, and my lack of respect for the local offices of Chef and Prefet (I respect the people, just not the positions they fill). There are plenty of people in the United States that believe in magic (de facto) and respect the office of the presidency, and I would scorn them roundly for this given the chance. The difference is, in time gone by I never would have rebuked a burkinabé for the same beliefs. I should note that I'm not an asshole about it- but if someone tells me that there are traditional healers that cure AIDS with shay butter, I candidly say I do not believe it. I recognize that I could be wrong- I really do, I just seem to have lost my ability to keep a subtle tongue.

In better news, I'm at least 8 times the teacher I was last year. I am moving along at a much faster pace than last year and I feel like the kids understand more besides. The 6ème class was split in two, which is a welcome change from the 140 student nightmare of last year. I will hopefully be doing some planting projects with them at the end of the year as the rainy season approaches and right now we're working on scientific logic. 5ème is better than 6ème last year but they're still pretty squirrelly and discipline eats up a good chunk of every class. I ended up kicking 4/5 of the class out last time because their grades were so bad on a recent test. I've started giving them an updated version of the chapter on "la démarche scientifique" (the scientific method) that I gave last year. The content is trimmed down in some places (not so anal about the difference between une hypothèse and une prédiction) and beefed up in others (added the lectures on the difference between induction and deduction and tons of exercises on how to apply scientific logic to everyday questions). If I can get them to actually study there lessons it should work out. For 4ème I'm actually not even using my own lesson plans this year. I happened upon the notebook of a PCV in 2002-2004 and it is in all honestly phenomenal. Frankly, I know nothing of geology and having an expertly crafted book as a reference really helps. It's not even the authors French that amazes me, it's their ability to somehow take the archaic, convoluted and sometimes asinine burkinabé program and create comprehensible lessons while at the same time introducing enough totally novel content as to make 4ème SVT a truly dynamic course. In 4ème I’ve also decided to give only pop-quizzes, no tests. You can imagine how the students felt about this. Then finally 3ème which is definitely the challenge course for me. The students themselves are much older (with perhaps one third of them being my seniors) and about half of them being redoublants (which is to say this is at least their second time in 3ème). In addition all of they are extremely prideful of the fact that they have arrived at the last step of the CEG thus have ego's that are completely out of control. The result is a class that is extremely critical combined with a program that is fairly complicated. The objective of course is to prepare them sufficiently so that they succeed on the BEPC (which is a way of saying succeed in life, because almost all jobs require this test). Thankfully I do have the advantage of possessing at least some background knowledge in the subject.

Besides that, I recently celebrated Tabaski in Lanfiera which was pretty amazing. Chez le director, I ate a delicious medley of grilled chicken and green beans. It brought tears to my eyes. At the home of Masa tché (the chef), we ate endless mutton. And then of course I prepared food at my house with the aid of my sons (pictured). It was garlic mutton with soup and bread. I think we actually prepared better food than our king.

Speaking of kings, I have corranated myself. I demanded that the classes 6ème through 4ème begin treating me with exceptional politeness, and as such have to address me as either "votre excellence" (your Excellency) "votre altess" (your highness) or the most frequently used "masa ba" which is the Jula word of "great king" or "lord" and is also the word that Christians use for Jesus. It's just so satisfying to hear a kid respond emphatically "Oui, Masaba" to a question. They have all become my squires.

I just recently heard that travel is outlawed to Niger right now for peace corps volunteers. I find this vexing as I was planning on going there for christmas break. We'll see how that plays out.

I'm approaching the half way mark of September, and the abrupt realization that school will be arriving precipitously and along with it the end of my international playboy approach to Peace Corps that has defined this summer. Soon my days of burning through cash dancing 'en boîte' in ouaga will grind to a halt and be replaced by grade calculation and bandit fustigation. It's bizarre how I looked forward to the school year starting up for the past 3 months but now that I stand on the precipice I feel hesitant.

I definitely can't say I've accomplished everything I wanted to this summer, but I have used these last few weeks to amass the resources necessary to be effective in this coming year. I acquired a good set of resources for 3ème SVT including past lesson plans of other volunteers and practice question from old BEPC's (the test for which I am preparing the students). In addition to that, if god favors me I shall have my peace corps partnership library budget finished before the end of September (wasn't it august before?). I've got all of the vendors that I need to talk to lined up, it's just a mater of implementation now. As someone once said "all we need now is a little energon, and a lot of luck"

I do think I've gotten better at Julakan this summer too. Not as much as I would like, but every little bit helps. I also have learned how to say a number of colourful phrases such as:

N bi na n ka juguw kan tigèn Allah togo ra=

I'm going to slit the throats of (can also mean butcher) my enemies in the name of God.

N b'a fé ka ni sunguruba ni songo teremi=

I want to discuss the price of this prostitute.

Also some insults:

I fa foro! =

Your father's cock!

Apparently that is insulting. If I heard that in English I would just be confused.

I would also like to think that my French has gotten better this summer. With my trip to Gaul, and also the extra reading time I've definitely acquired a bigger vocabulary. I've also perfected throwing down absolutely nasty subjunctive phrases -eg. "je cherche quelqu’un avec qui je puisse parler facilement" (you best believe you use the subjunctive there!). I don't know if I ever gave my book review of "La Nausée" by JPS but in any case it was awesome. After finishing it I just walked around for the next week thinking "MY LIFE IS ABSURD". I'm currently reading "La Chute" and it’s distinctly a little trickier, but I bought a reading guide for it at a library in downtown Ouaga which should allow me to unravel the internal irony. I'm still making flash cards like a maniac- their number has to be in the thousands.

I may have had a personal lifetime high recently. When helping my new neighbours in tougan settle in, I went to a Flobi concert. For those of you unfamiliar with Burkinabé artists, Flobi is a youthful musician that was catapulted to fame after the public discovered him on "Faso Acadamie", the Burkinabé equivalent of American Idol. When gathered around the stage awaiting the concert, we had the unfortunate (or soon to be show fortunate) occasion to be overtaken by quite a wrathful storm at the moment of his arrival. Being a good natured chap, he still put on the show despite the fact that seemingly 200 people crowded under the hanger of his stage in order to escape the storm. This reduced his available dancing zone (or as I would say performance space) to only about one meter squared. For those of you at home this is NOT SUFFICIANT to effectively execute a burkinabé booty dance. The plus was I was only centimetres away from his majesty the whole night. This culminated in a moment of complete rapture when the man himself (YES, i mean FLOBI!) in seeing my obvious enjoyment at the spectacle, pulled me out of the crowd to dance with him. I rocked my whiteness with complete abandon and everyone seemed to enjoy it, above all my mates in Tougan.

Finally, I've recently begun a pretty substantial bike trip. It's between Ouaga and the Big L, a total of about 350k. I'm stopped in Ouahigouya currently where I get to hang out with my host family and live it up per usual. Yesterday I was in Yako and tomorrow I'll be in Tougan with the aforementioned new neighbours. They're pretty neat folks, and as a married couple it's already clear that their experience will be vastly different that mine. Not worse or better, just very different.

Anyways, sorry I couldn't really find any pictures that corresponded to this blog post. I know just text can make your eyes bleed. I’ll make the next post spicier.

Since my return from France life has been more or less moving at a snails pace here in burkina. A common complaint amongst the teachers here is that there is nothing to to during the summer because our job is done for the moment just as everyone else (read: the cultivators who take advantage of seasonal rains) are just starting to get busy. As I've mentioned before, you try to fill this time with secondary projects or you can be like me and just sit around and memorize passages from voltaire and La fontaine.

In all seriousness though I've felt like I've been spinning my wheels quite a bit with my secondary projects. While the ultimate responsibility of course lies with me and my ability to do work, I'm still at a loss for what I could be doing differently. People really don't seem that motivated and also the lack of Internet (or really any kinda communication) in the Big L makes discussing book prices with ouga retailers a logistical nightmare. As a result I've been spending a ton of time here in Ouaga just to fill the time and attempt to apply myself, but it seems that despite that I have very little to show for my efforts. I know my principle job is assured, so I can always fall back on that, but honestly how lame would it be to have nothing to show for a 4 month summer vacation?

(the adventure begins! cracker pictured= Nick Rossi)

Fortunately, I have been able to take advantage of some of this free time to tour the country more. A friend of mine named Adeline invited me to a reunion of her entire ethnic group in the south west of Burkina Faso towards near Banfora. I just got back from it and in retrospect, it was a pretty amazing trip to say the least. First up, the environment of the Banfora region by comparison with the north is just fantastic. Unlike the north, the southwest does not resemble and overcooked pancake. In the mornings, I could just stare endlessly at the green seas of sugar cane that were bordered by red rock cliffs coated with dark green vines. This panorama was rendered all the more beautiful by ghostly waterfalls of mist that poured over the cliffs and collected around the sugarcane below. This region is also blessed this time of year with a stable blanket of clouds which serves to keep the temperature around 70 and eliminate the oppressive burkinabe sun. Did I mention this is also the region that furnishes burkina with mangoes and palm wine? It really is heaven on earth.

We also did tons of fun things on the trip. Between soccer matches and languid chats over dolo, I got a chance to see my first authentic Animist ritual performed. It was a communication with the dead in which rites were performed while sacrificing a chicken. The maternal grandmother of Adeline was more or less leading the ceremony and she did so by demanding her deceased mother for benedictions before partially decapitating a chicken which would used as a medium for the response. Apparently the benedictions were delivered, as after struggling for quite a while to re-attach its head the chicken settled on its back (a good thing).

Each night was spent dancing until dawn to both live music (balafon/djembe) and standard Burkina club hits blasting over amps turned up to 11. As I was the only white person at this reunion of about 300 people I developed my usual crowd of observers during the dancing. Apparently watching me dance is very interesting. While I did feel awkward about it when I first got to burkina, at this point I just live it up and show off all my nutso American moves.

Another cool thing we got to do is wander around in the sugarcane fields. I felt pretty incompetent when I attempted to eat the sugarcane though. Ripping bark off with your teeth is one of those things I feel that westerners naturally suck at. I just handed my branch to Adeline and in a matter of seconds she tore through the outside. It was slightly disconcerting to watch, much like when burkinabe open bottles with their teeth, but I tend to think i'm just being a white dandy about the whole thing and these things probably don't do any real damage.

(Our bus got stuck in the mud for a bit so we hung out on a bridge and ate sugarcane- Adeline is to the left, the white person is me, and in the center was Adeline's super grim, laconic friend who after 4 days of me forcing the conversation's progress, asked if I was french :/ )

The main event of the whole trip ended up being a rendez-vous at the Banfora Cascades. While the are no Niagara falls, it was quite the party that we ended up having there. The cascades are a series of pretty cool waterfalls that overlook all of the Banfora basin. I had a pretty cool time just chatting people up and lounging by the water. Even if the water itself was super sketch and probably gave me hepatitis it was totally worth it. It's crazy how much you miss bodies of water when you live in a country like burkina.

(My surrogate brother fro the trip is to the left- he's called Roje. Note: it doesn't seem that burkinabe get the rule that your supposed to look like you're having a good time in pictures- I try to make up for it by having a SUPER GOOD TIME)Anyways, that was more or less my trip. I'll be returning to the Big L shortly to really begin 3eme lesson planning (yes, i'm not avoiding it this year). Hopefully I'll be back in ouga in early September to compile some critical thinking exercises for SVT. Kofe ke-

So I've been back in Burkina for about a week and a half at this point. I have to say that my trip to france was just about everything I could have ever wanted in a vaccation. From the fantastic food and the phenominal art, France was a welcome repsite from the asetic gauntlet of life in Burkina. There were culture shocks of course, but I probably would have freeked out a lot more had I gone to back to the United States.

I have to say that the highlights of the trip were probably the food, the art and seeing my folks. My top art gallery of the trip must have been le centre de george pompidou in paris. I simply adore modern art and while we got a ton of great exposure all through France, I have to say that I found the work at george pompidou to be the most striking. Other than that, the food item of the trip would have had to have been Camenbert (and other cheeses). I ate some kind of cheese with every meal which was deeply satisfying. The wines were also great- even if you were like me and refused to pay more than 3 euro for a bottle.

The french in france was plesently similar to that of burkina with the exception of a local expressions and no local language words mixed in. Also I must note that after I got over the initial shock of the fact that nobody would return my salutations, I found that everyone in France (even the parisians) could be very nice. They really can't rival burkinabé hospitallity but in comparison to the denizens of the US they were quite pleasent. Burkina has been pretty good to me since I returned. My closest neighbor, a third-year volunteer named Brian McCoy, got married in Ouahigoya. A good time was had by all and I was the first one to start dancing after the married couple of course. I was bold enough to attempt to bike to OHG despite the fact that the rainy season had begun. At Kiembara, 50k outside OHG, I was slapped with the wrath of posiedon. I huddled in some guys house for about 3 hours until a bus came by that could ferry me the rest of the way. Since my return I've been principly occuping myself with studying Djula and French and working on a couple of secondary projects. I've really amped up things on the Djula front and I hope to have a few days this summer where I speak nothing but it. French has gotten a boost too since my library has undergone a massive augmentation thanks to the trip to france. Currently reading, La Nausée by Sartre. As far as secondary projects go, things could be going smoother. The distance from Ouaga is one barrier for me in getting things accomplished efficiently, but the far greater problem is the apathy in my community. No idea of how things are going to wrap up yet. An unfortunate turn of events also just took place. The battery on my Ipod died and not 4 days later I found out that the neck on my mandolin is snapping due to the the climate change. As a result, In one fell swoop I was deprived of all music at site and will be so until my Ipod completes it's epic 4 month voyage to and back from the states. I'm considering just going to Ouaga and buying a guitar as I already am starting to lose my mind. It's funny how attached to my ipod I was. You would think that going into the bush would make you less materialistic, but in the end I desired my ipod more strongly that I have ever desired any object ever before in my life. That said it will probably do me some good to be without out it at least for a bit. Anyways per usual this post leaves a lot to be desired (orthographie not the least of which) but it keeps marching on-

So while I deal with some apartment shenanigans, I've got some time to kill writing a blog post. Anyway, France has been a nice mixture crazy fun and just plain crazy. It's been evident to me from the start that France is a nation out of its mind. I say this honoring the fact that I hail from the most insane nation on the globe: the united states. Simply in lieu of "America's Next Top Model" and the French have chosen luis vuitton. That aside, France has been great. The most glaring difference between here and Burkina is cool weather. My first 5 minutes after my arrival at Charles de Gaule marked the longest I had gone without sweating in about 4 months. I was actually quite chilly the other day on my walk to the Sacré Coeur. Besides that, France has been a nonstop visual delight since my arrival. When I landed at CDG I actually felt like I had been catapulted about 200 years into the future. The stainless steel glass structures of the airport were a welcome departure from the mud brick, thatched roofed house of Burkina. I say this with love in my heart, but Burkina is not a pretty place. The burkinabé people are physically beautiful and their culture is a paragon of hospitality and warmth, but it would be quite the kind lie to say the country they live in is anything but ugly. Honestly I had forgotten just how rich countries in the developed world are. I walked through a cemetery on my first day in Paris and it was remarkable how just about every sepulcher was more elaborately ornate and all together pleasing to the eyes than any given building in Burkina. When a nation can houses its less than outstanding dead people in dwellings more elaborate than the kings of another country, you know there is a wealth disparity.

Another thing I might note is the culture shock. Parisians and the denizens of my community are quite different. That's not to say that Parisians seem to fit the stereotype of being overly pretentious, arrogant elitists- They just seem 'modern'. They listen to their ipods on the metro, they don't say high to people on the street.... they live highly individualistic, private lives. As a tick from my time in Burkina I can't pass someone on the street without saying hi to them (even if it's 10 people in 30 seconds) and yet no one seems to seems to say high to me back. Well I shouldn't say no one- The black people say hi to me back. I can only imagine that this is due to the fact that many of them are probably immigrants or decedents of immigrants from west africa and thus carry on some of the cultural traits of that region. I've actually chatted up quite a few of them and met a few Ivorians, Sénégalese and even a Burkinabé.

Its funny that while I met a couple Americans at the hostel, I definitely feel like I related more to the west Africans I chatted up. Maybe Its just because I'm at a different point in my life than many of the Americans I met- maybe it's because the idea of "OH SHIT BRO EURO TRIP WE'RE GONNA GET TANKED" doesn't really appeal to me. Anyways this was kind of a hurried blog post but I've got a phone call to make. more updates soon with a picture dump.

The end of my first school year and with it first year hear in burkina is quickly approaching. I must say it doesn't feel like a full year has past. During our in service training at the beginning of our term I recall some elder PCV warning me about boredom in village. I must say that in no way have I found this to be true. Not only do the months go by quickly, but each day always seems to come up a couple hours short.

I must say that I have far from mastered every aspect of burkinabé culture. I continue to make the occasional misstep and the actual rule that I violated remains recondite. For instance when explaining to someone that I went and bought some tigankouro (it's like rice and beans) for myself during lunch, on of my friends burst out "you went and bought it yourself! you didn't send a kid to get it for you?" and I responded "yes... is that bad?" he in turn responded "of course it is" as if I had done the most unnatural thing in the world.

On the other hand, I've definitely come a long way on the road to becoming a veritable burkinabé villager. I dedicate a solid couple of hours each day just to saying high to people, and my recent success in Djula/dafine has allowed me to communicate with more people than ever before. On of the things that has amazed me most about language learning is how variable your day to day performance can be. While it should be noted that I have no proclivity for language acquisition, and as such some of this inconsistency could be explained by that. However it remains quite bazaar that there are days when I can executed phrases which employ the figurative use of complex vocabulary, and other days I can't even seem to manage the pronunciation on the simplest benediction. Even with french there are days I talk like a hybrid of La Fontaine and Zola and other days when I feel like i just started speaking french.

In other news I recently acquired a predilection for Caterpillars. When I was in bobo I picked some up and have taken to preparing them for myself and my friends. Most of my neighbors don't care that much for my american dishes, the have applauded my preparation of caterpillars as some of the best they have tasted. The picture tagged is of one of my good mates, Seydou, chowing down on a recent preparation.

My art club is reaching its final performance as well. On the docket we have about an hour long one act, a couple dance pieces, a piece of poetry, and a couple songs. To be perfectly blunt this whole process my end in disaster, but I still think it should be fun for the kids.

I'm all registered for the GRE and wrapping up the affairs for my trip to Paris as well. While I do love my community, it will be nice to get out for a bit.

I'm winding down on the home stretch (mixed metaphors what?) of my first year here in Burkina Faso and while once again I find myself unable to articulate much of my experience here, suffice it to say that I still find the world around me worthy of the highest, most poetic adulation, even if I am incapable of expressing it.

We here in the Big L just celebrated quite the Fete- but this time it was a Christian one. As I may have mentioned before the Big L is approximately 4000 percent mulsim, so I ended up going to a nearby village to party the Paques (or easter as it is called in cracker speak). It ended up hitting two catholic masses- one on the eve, the other the morning of- both of which were entirely in Djulakan. While my Djula definitely has come a long way since my arrival, I still have a very hard time sorting through the content of things like sermons or other complex topics. I was quite reticent at the event as I didn't want to draw too much attention to myself (being the single white person there made this nigh impossible but I still tried). I don't like being scolded for not going to church every Sunday and Christians in general and burkinabé-christians in particular are quick to do that. It should be noted that Burkina is the kind of place where a Muslim will fulminate a christian for not going to church, not because he's doing some disservice to god, but rather because he is withdrawing from the community. I, who am a total misanthrope and hermit by burkinabé standards, try in vain to set aside a good chunk of each day to doing things by myself. Anyways, attempting to obviate being sucked into another time demanding community was my reason for being reserved at the fete. I realize that I sound quite asocial, and I am, but I do spend about 90 percent of my waking hours either working or chatting with people. It's pretty clear that if I want to preserve what time I have left to myself I have to be quite aggressive in pursuing it.

Any way besides the masses were quite fun. I learned a couple new djula phrases and rather enjoyed the periodic paeans of the the melodically challenged but rhythmically godlike church musical group. Listening to the sermon and getting about every 5th word reminded me of the fact that all Islamic prayer gatherings are exclusively in Arabic (god's language) which very few villagers speak. On top of that, music is strictly forbidden anywhere near mosques. All in all, I think being Muslim is a pretty tough job.

In the post mass, me and my fellow teachers had quite a feast of spaghetti and fish along with a never-ending supply of dolo. Quite good.

I gave my fellow teacher a lesson in greek phrases including those used around Easter and got an equivalent lecture in Djula.

Shortly after Easter, I negotiated another party. We recently got another addition to the crack squad of savy, motivated functionaries at the Big L CEG. He's supposedly here to manage the funds of our school but as far as i'm concerned he's really just a narc sent by the government to spy on us. First of all, if you're educated and you are pro government in burkina that you are obviously on their pay role. None of my fellow frontier teachers have much love for the burkinabé government- its wanton prodigality and hypocritical rehtoric is quite the turn off. And as for myself, I am quickly becoming a supernova of disenchantment fueled populist political outrage, and due to that, I have know love of governments, foreign or domestic.

Despite all of this, in the traditional burkinabé fashion he was given a hearty welcome. And I, grasping for any reason at all to have a party, found out that his birthday was fast approaching and procured hearty cuts of lamb and 2 bottles of wine with all deliberate dispatch. Like any party that Nick Rossi is behind, this one knew not dearth nor want. Everyone left feeling quite satisfied.

The end of my first school year and my trip to France are both coming up very quickly. I'm so excited so see the home of Camus (ok maybe not algeria) and Sartre. Not to mention, to be in a country where you can find cheese outside the capital.

Supporting Caste by Propagandhi and A People's History of the United States by Howerd Zinn. I've I kept in contact with you at all recently I've probably ranted about both of them for far longer than you wanted. Well guess what! It's not over!

First up, I really don't get that much new music here so it was quite a treat when I negotiated the download of the latest propagandhi album. Once again, I have to thank the woodbeck house for the itunes gift card- one of the many exceedingly insightful gifts they sent me. I'll skip the analysis of the album, the conclusion is it rocks. Supercharged anti-imperialist punk is the perfect soundtrack to my day (read: memorizing vocab, washing clothes, fetching water, deciding where to sit).

Second, A People's History is just a delight. Zinn's writing is clear and thoughtful and while he addresses populist themes throughout the work, he never comes across as preachy or overly empathetic. The work comes across as surprisingly sober without losing any of its readability. Long story short- Its a great book to be reading now that i'm living outside the united states and I've got the time to reflect on what the country means to me and in what way I am connected to its legacy.

On the school front things are going as hectically as ever. I was a little too bold in adding classes that were not in the program at the beginning of the year, and as a result i'm a bit behind in 6ème and 5ème. So to fix this problem I ended up adding 2+ hours to 6ème and 1 hour to 5ème every week. The kids are not too happy and as a result I've become even more draconian in class.

I should note also that now that I've had time to reflect on my trip to Bobo I have to say it's within my top ten favorite cites on the globe. Its got a really laid back feel and seems really accessible. I'm sure I'll make it back there again sometime this summer.

In other news I'm studying for the GRE and I'm not too worried. Compared to the stack of over 400 french vocab flash cards generated from "L'assommoir" by Zola, my current stack of 20 English words does not seem that intimidating. When I take the test however I will be coming out of a rather transport situation, and in a new country so there will be other concerns.

Well I suppose that's about it.

An bina kay donni

So happy birthday Mohammad (I really hope this casual opening does not incite demonstrations in saudi arabia). Yes it was the birthday of the prophet recently and the big L celebrated in it's own unique way.

I'm a big fan of parties in general and religious ones in particular, and this one did not disappoint. When my budy Adama invited me to the mosque at 10:30 the other night I was quite excited. He explained that everyone gathered there livestock, bikes and motorcycles and circled the mosque for a bit, and then after that everyone read the Qua'ran until dawn. I was not too thrilled about the Koranic readings, but the first part kinda sounded like a fourth of july parade and I was all about it. So before I left for the event I made sure that I was looking fresh in a respectful way. I was prepped to bow in reverence.

However, I realized upon my arrival that this event was not at all how I had imagined it. First off, this circling of the mosque was not the solemn mournful procession that I expected and would be fitting for an Islamic holiday. Rather, It was a completely chaotic tumult of man and beast hurtling at top speed around the temple. People were mounting there bikes, motercycles, cows and donkeys and then proceeding to drive them as fast as possible around and around the mosque. The fact that few of the bikes had breaks and the livestock particularly appreciated this process guaranteed that the madness would reach pretty astonishing levels. About every 20 seconds there was a collision. Some of them were pretty minor, such as when a young burkinabé decided to pop a wheelie on his bike before loosing control and hurtling into the crowd of onlookers. Others were a little more serious, such such as when 800 pounds of bull decided it didn't really appreciate the game and opted to start rushing against traffic, goring motorcyclists and fellow animals as it went. There were also some other brave souls that had the gumption to enter into the fray on foot, sprinting for their lives amidst this chaos.

I found this whole process endlessly entertaining, especial when one considered that it was to be followed shortly by koranic readings and solemn prayer. At the party, there were some pious, long beard types that disapproved of this kind of behavior on such a day but I think people like that are lame. I think a little bit of socially condoned madness is good from time to time.

So in an effort to save 2500cfa (5 US dollars) I opted to ride my bike to my site from Ouahigoya. The ride was a glorious 135k of sun bleached gravel punctuated only by the occasional mosque. It it totally depressing to see that much of the burkinabé country side in one day as you begin to realize that it all looks the same. The landscape is composed of 3 main ingredients at this time of year: dehydrated vegetation, dust and sun. However, the good news is I found perhaps the best bread and coffee in all of burkina faso. Located at kiembara, a town about 45k from ouahigouya, one can find absolutely divine café au lait and the BON pain which feed the body and nourish the soul. The people in that village however spoke samo so I can't comment so much on the make up of the town. It's still amazing to me what barriers language present in this country. Even though I speak french decently and djula passably there is still a large portion of the country that I am entirely incapable of communicating with, not to mention the problems that exist across boarders. For instance, a random American would have an easier time getting around in Ghana (an anglophone country) than the vast majority of burkinabé even though burkina shares a boarder with Ghana. It is no wonder languages such as french and Swahili are expanding so much in africa, it is so convenient to have a common tongue.

Forgot to mention that when I was in Ouahigouya I started looking into grad schools. I'm pretty sure I'm going right back into the fray upon my return to the states but not quite sure what program. I want to work french into my degree somehow but it seems as though it might be a bit too ambitious (read: suicidal) to try to pull off a french major and a microbial engineering masters. There is still some time left to decide though.

So presently i'm in ouahigoya where i'm typing up a quarterly report about my work at the big L. Apparently peace corps washington needs to keep tabs on me to make sure I don't abandon my classes for arms dealing or drug trafficking. The report is full of some rather fun questions like "are you a) very well integrated b)somewhat integrated etc". I totally understand why they have to do it but all in all it does seem silly.

The upshot is I actually have quite a bit to write down on this report as more and more things have been coalescing on the work front. My art club is starting to take off in a manner of speaking. It seems to simultaneously be completely out of control and also quite a bit of fun (a suitable summery for all my school associated activities). We are narrowing down to sketches to be performed and we have also composed some poetry together. I was a little slow on the ball with regards to national womens day (march 8th) and unfortunately our performance will not be ready by then. I'm thinking if we wrap it up towards the end of the 3rd trimester we can throw a pretty off the chain party for the school. I would like to incorporate as many branches of art as possible while keeping theater at the core (it seems to be what they feel the most comfortable creating on their own).

The art club is pretty fun but I have also set my sights on a few more practical objectives. First and foremost I have decided that before I leave BF my site will have a proper library. The rate at which students devour my books that I lend out is really only a taste of what dire need for resources there is in my community. The bulk of my students seem to be in the same position as I am with regards to french level and yet they have none of my resources for improvement. I've started working on a grant with the help of my director that would bring together both funds from within and without a the community (it's called peacecorps partnership and is a pretty common avenue for projects like mine). I'm hoping to have the grant done before the end of the school year so i can work on it over the summer.

I've also received a small grant to buy some musical instruments for my school. It's not a whole lot but it should be enough to buy a couple djembé and a balafon which is an increase of infinity percent of the the musical resources of my school.

Hopefully the upshot of all of this is my site will get a little bit out of me being a volunteer. Learning french and djula and studying are, at their core, selfish activities and while it's important for my sanity to devote some time to those things each day, I hope to do a lot more 'volunteer work' over the next year.

...is the thought that usually goes through my head as many burkinabé businessmen look on in utter astonishment as I type in this internet café. While I rarely get more than 60 mew (is that the paws unit?) on this godless french keyboard they still think i'm pretty cool.   Anyways usually when I sit down to type one of these infernal posts I really don't have anything to type about. I think back over my week and few events seem to rise above the sea of banality. This is not the case this week! I have (at least in my mind) a most fascinating and singular story to tell.   As some of you know, roaches have been quite the plague of my peace corps experience thus far. I find them in my books, I pull them out of my pockets when looking for change, if I had cereal they would be in the cereal.... suffice it to say that they are (or rather were OMINOUS FORESHADOWING) a problem.  The point after listing to the audio book form of mobey dick for about 3 hours I was seized by a kind of monomania. No longer would I suffer the roaches. I knew that hunting the roaches individually would never work- they are individually hearty and far to crafty to be tracked one by one. I knew I had to render my vengeance on the source.  While my latrine is kept rather tidy on its surface, it's dark heart harbors a festering writhing pile of ever-multiplying roaches. I knew that here and only here would it be possible to purge the lot of them collectively. I opted to nuke the site from orbit as it was the only way to be sure. On my next visit to tougan I bought not one but TWO cans of 'rambo' insecticide with which I was to make manifest my hate. During the following day I worked quickly under the sunlight which the roaches so feared. I carefully blocked up every potential crevasse and hole on my latrine as to not allow and escape routes for the roaches. Then, with one and only one hole left uncovered I proceeded to empty both cans of insecticide into my latrine. As soon as they were dry I quickly covered up the hole making a fully sealed chamber of death, I then stepped back and waited. After about 3 minutes a faint rustling could be heard on the other side of the main cover. The rustling grew louder very slowly until suddenly as if hell itself was boiling over a swarm of acid covered roaches streamed out of the sides of the cover. I recoiled in horror as the tortured roaches ran desperately away from the latrine. While Rambo is evidently not the most expedient insecticide (it took a good chunk of these roaches 6 hours to die) it does get points for the amount of suffering it seems to render unto these vermin. Lying on their backs twitching until nightfall, the masses of roaches prayed to their gods for deliverance. I granted them none.

So trimester two got off to a pretty good start I have to say. For my birthday I got together with my friend zackaria to prepare perhaps the greatest meat roast off this decade. It started with the standard ingredients of mutton, onions and tomatoes and then on top of it I put some southwestern green-beans that I prepared separately. Each part was quite savory, but the totality of the feast was truly something more than the sum of it's parts. I then invited about 9 of my friends to take part in the meal's ingestion. By the end of it we were all quite sated- Not to mention my directeur fronted two cases of beer for the party which was quite the addition.

A part from that I've been a lot more ambitious with my schedule than last trimester. I've split 5ème into 10 groups for individual attention in addition to there allotted time. I've realized that If i want to give them a halfway decent take on the scientific method I have to add more hours to 5ème's schedule. A part from that, I've gone about the business of forming an art club at lanfiera where the kids will have a chance each Saturday to come and do a variety of art projects with me. The first week was origami and it was more of a preliminary thing, while this Saturday will be the first official meeting. We'll be working on drawing in general, and perceptive in particular. They love drawing straight lines with their rulers so I think this will be a natural progression for them.

Besides that I've also taken a little more ownership of what exactly I teach them. As the confidence with my french has improved (and I've acquired more tools) I'm now able to stray a little bit more from the prescribed lessons and teach them material I deem to be important. Obviously if I were teaching 3ème (an examination year) I wouldn't have much flexibility but as it stands I basically can do whatever I want.

So presently I write from the glorious burkinabe capital of Ouagadougou, where I enjoy constant electronic stimulation and steak sandwiches. I'm here to take part in some rather boring training meant to reinvigorate my interest in teaching critical thinking and establishing secondary projects. Defiantly the highlight of this trip has been receiving the buildup of packages at the peace corps bureau. I think this might have been the first official time that my birthday and christmas were officially combined for one super holiday. The presents were magnificent. I got a wonderful mix of pragmatic and purely pleasurable gifts which included a nice collection of audio books and a french text from my mom along with some music and whatnot. My Aunt sent two boxes filled with the most wondrous treats and practical tools imaginable also. The eulbergs and woodbecks also sent things that were just beyond awesome, thus making this Christmas the best ever. I thought opening presents had lost some of their appeal from their childhood heyday, but this Christmas totally turned things around.

I might also add that in the typical Nick Rossi tradition I also bought a present for myself. I purchased le petit robert french dictionary, which is basically the foremost frenchy french dictionary that exists on this planet. I spent an insulting sum on it. As one method of comparison I could say that I could buy450 meals in village for the price of the dictionary (and if anything that's and understatement- If i bought medication for villagers with the money I probably could have saved someones life). But I could also say that it was cheaper than the lion's share of books I bought in college, and I'm sure I'll use it more so I have no regrets.

But yes again I must thank everyone that sent me things (im forgetting as I write this but I really do enjoy everything I got and I thank you for taking the time to send it) . I know that I'm supposed to be moving beyond consumerism, but American things are just so great- it just wonderful to have tools to do your job and fun things to enjoy your free time. I will also be giving a lot of this stuff to my community when I leave, so I can kinda justify it right? (no i can't).

In any case New Years at the big L was also a blast. I partied at the house of my prefect with the other functionaries in my village. I must say that no one at my site dances like the teacher crew (myself included). Some losers started going home at 2am but me and my bros stayed and danced until at least 5am. We are also more talented- I would like to add that. The food was also great- It was grilled mutton on a bed of vegetables which included tomatoes and green beans which recently came into season. Also the bread never ran out which is a rare thing at events like that.

I'm planning to pick up some good things here in ouaga to cook back at site. I think i might do something with apples as they can be found here (apple crisp or an apple tart perhaps).

Last night a group of peace corps folks prepared a Mexican feast here at the transit house where I currently reside. It was just beyond everything. It's funny that when Americans think about food they miss from the states they don't think of American food, they think of Mexican food.

Well in any case I'll be leaving again for village this saturday. I've got big plans for my classes, my extra-circulars and my personal studying so I'm quite ready to get back to it.

So in my laziness I have neglected two compose a blog post for far too long. Quite a bit has happened since my last entry and I'll try to conjure up as many colourful anecdotes as I can to illustrate that.

First, I have had the pleasure of partaking in several totally awesome fetes over the past month. The first was thanksgiving which was just beyond everything. I decided to head over to Titao, a medium sized town about 45k from ohg where a glorious party was hosted by the Roses- the only married couple in our stage. About 10 other crackers where there from throughout the northern territories and a good time was had by all. While I suppose it was nice to chat in english and check up on the progress of my comrades, the real highlight was the food. On the day of thanksgiving proper I believe I tasted the suckling meats of beef, chicken and swine- In addition to seemingly endless supply of beer and sweet potatoes. On top of this, I actually got the chance to slaughter my own chicken and oversee all the meat preparation. I've whined about this before, but seeing the animal from living to prepared meats is somethings we don't do enough of in the states and I found it quite satisfying. Anyway all in all that fete was quite good.

The next party was Tabaski- the Muslim celebration in honor of Abraham. The deed that is honored in particular is when abraham was willing to slaughter his first born son because god commanded it, but in seeing his resolve, god granted abraham a goat to slaughter in place of his son. All the Muslims in my village take time on tabaski to slaughter goats and pass around the meat to the neighbors. I began the gorging in kassoum, a nearby village, where I tasted goat, cous-cous and fried plantains (the west african response to turky, mashed-potatoes and cranberry sauce). When I returned to the big L, I was greeted openly with the various component parts of goats and more rice than I could stomach. This was all fine and good but it turns out tabaski has somewhat of a price. For the next couple weeks I had about 6 groups of children coming to my house each week demanding "SANBAY-SANBAY" which literally means each year, but figuratively means give me something. After shelling out about 2000 cfa over the first week I ended up saying "feuille ti'n fe" to most of them (I have nothing). I also had to listen to one of my neighbors bitch and bitch about how I didn't give her anything the day of the party. I would take her remarks to heart except she also demands that every time I go to the marché i bring her back something. She's a wench.

After that was basically the wrap of the of the school year. I calculated the grades for the first trimester and most of my classes did tolerably well. 4ème did a little too hot, and 5ème didn't really preform to the Pasteur institute level that I demand from them. There will be a lot more experiments next semester so I hope my childs are ready to have their minds blown.

Finally, the most recent and most notable event I just finished. I am currently on my way back to site after a most amazing trip to Mali. I met up with a few of my northern comrades on Monday her in ouahigouya and picked up a couple of stray Benin peacecorps volunteers while we were at it. We decided to travel to Dogon Country which is the site of a absolutely magnificent spot to hike and a very interesting people- the dogon. Our guide named Oumar was a dogon that grew up in Endé , one of the towns we visited. The best way to see dogon country is decidedly on foot so with Oumars guidence we shaked our way through villages allong the dogon ridge, snaking our way up and down rocky terrain at about 15k per day. It was a much more touristy spot than most of BF (scratch that - any of BF) so we saw plenty of honkies along the way- which for us is a kind of attraction. It's bizar, but I and many other peace corps volunteers can be downright unwelcoming to European and American tourists. I don't really no why, after all I'm only about 6 months less green than they are, but we do like to be condescending towards fellow visiters. In any case the trip was amazing. The terrain and culture was just lovely and our guide was something of a carecter. He spoke english after a fashion, but it basically consisted of american idioms that he's picked up from previous tours. I don't think there was a morning that didn't start without Oumar belting out "it's fawking cowld!". He was also plenty knowlagable about the local traditions and magics. We toured many menstruation houses for women because at least according to him menstruation is like an extremely powerful antimagic, and shamans of yester year would sequester women to protect their magics. I think animism might be the opposite of empiricism.

The hiking was also really nice. I have to say at times the climbs rivaled the stairs of cirith ungol, and Oumar was quick to remind us of the visitors and even tour guides that had bought it on the dogon cliffs.

All told it was jut a great trip and the price of 150 us dollars is really hard to beat. I'll be heading to Ouaga pretty soon for a little bit of training after the final party of the season- newyears. Any way I'm running a little low on time so I guess I'll try to write again soon.

Once again I set myself down to write a blog post and every passing observation I have made during my week that I felt was worthy of note vanishes from my mind. So i'm left just typing words to that will hopefully coalesce into clever anecdotes. In any case Barack Obama just one and as far as I can tell the entire African continent is rejoicing. It became quite evident in the lead up to this election that the burkinabé view barack as one of their own- not an African american at all but a full blown son of kenya. I had an interesting chat with one of my gendarme friends about ethnicity and nationality. His whole premise was that beyond anything your nationality is dependent upon that of your father; where you were raised and what your behavior is like has little impact upon the essence of your national identity. In his words: it's all in the blood. It was an interesting idea to a child of an immigrant nation and I quickly brought up that (for arguments sake) that my grandfather came directly from Italy thus was my father american or italian? And in turn what was I? He quickly responded that due to this line of descendence I of course was Italian, not American. This was far from what I expected as I know he thinks of me as american and perhaps it was just a bit of burkinabé jocularity but I do think it speaks to the reason why the burkinabé (and perhaps much the rest of africa) relate to barack. He's proud of his heritage and any in the opinion of many burkinabé I've talked to he's African by blood.

In general I am quite amazed by the reaction over here surrounding the victory. In the words of the director of my school "this puts into evidence that the united states is the greatest democracy in the world". His words, not mine. Not to mention that essentially the only international news I get here is from the French perspective (the nation that perhaps criticizes the bush administration the most openly in Europe) and they have just been ridiculous with their praise for barack. On news report I watched was entitled "The end of anti-americanism". Another band of traveling French tourists was quite eager to buy me drinks of celebration in Tougan. It really does make you happy that this decision seems to have integrated us so well into the world community.

In other news I'm still cruising with the Jula. I've acquired another tutor, who is the servaente at my school. His name is Djiabati and he is quite the expert grammarian. I'm now pulling about 5 hours of private tutoring in Jula each week for the price of about 1 dollar per hour. I'm really excited to be learning the language for real. Salutations are nice but there is no substitute for a unbound conversation that doesn't follow any abstract pre-rehearsed dialogues.

I should also say that I've re-imagined myself as a baker here in Burkina. My hand crafted dutch oven and I have already produced three delicious cakes and I am planing and throwing together some banana bread when I get back to the big L. The only thing I'm in want of is some honest to god betty crocker frosting out of a can. So for all you people wanting to break the global frosting apartheid feel free to ship some this way to the developing world. I have completely abandoned recipes and now prefer to bake directly from the balls. That involves heavy handed use of cinnamon, eggs and whatever butter substitute I can track down around here. In any case gonna try to beat the sun going down so I'll catch you latter.

So I administered my first test about two weeks ago and I gotta say, all things considered it went pretty smoothly. I gave my 5ème and 6ème classes there first test on saturday morning (which is apprently the prefered time for test giving) with the help of my servante (the disciplinarian at my school). Between the two tests I generated about 200 exams to be graded. I really tried to make the questions as straightforward as possible to facilitate grading which is funny, because it seems as though simultaneously the students were trying to write as sloppily and indirect as possible to complicate my grading. There is a funny habit by all burkinabé students which is to dictate on the test the actions that they take. For instance on of my questions might be a standard true or false question, but instead of writing true or false next to the number 5 for instance they will write "I respond by true or false to the question that you have asked me on non-flowering plants. I respond: true" I'm actually going to add a bonus class to both 6ème and 5ème which will be entitled "how to answer questions on a test". Minimalism will be the word of the day. This bonus class will come in addition to the cell bio and evolution supplementary lectures that I'm adding to both classes. I've found the fact that the basic unit of biology and the fundamental theory of biology to be both alarmingly under-covered in the curriculum here.

In other news I'm on my way back from visiting my second closest neighbor, Andrea, in Yaba. She's a math teacher who's already been here for a year. Probably the highlight of my trip was the pecan pie that we crafted in her dutch oven. Stateside, I'm not that big of a fan of the pecan pie but here I probably could have eaten two of them. It was a glorious cake that was almost akin to a thick carrot cake in consistency and had a rich honey flavor. Also as a result of this trip, I'm pulling a total of 160k on bike over a 72 hour period which I'm pretty proud of.

In book news I've just finished perhaps my favorite book that i've ever read. It's called "all the pretty horses" and it's by Cormac McCarthy. Both in content and use of language I found it to be exceptional. It managed to be heroic and sentimental without being stupid which is quite the feat. On top of that it had wonderful descriptions of Texan and Mexican food that was quite appealing to my stomach. I also hit page 100 out of 1400 in the french biology text that I imported from france. I'm staying on track for my 30 page a week goal with it so I should get done before the end of time. I'm also reading don quixote in french which I guess is one step closer to spanish than english? In any case there is a lot to distract me from grading papers which might be my least favorite thing to do in the world.

In anycase I'm going to track down a big plate of liver and intestines that is sold down the street so till next time.

So I guess the school year has officially started. I gave my first couple of classes on Friday and they were quite underwhelming. I have at this point prepared about 2 weeks of classes and I was biting at the bit to get started into the swing of things. However, like most things in the BF the school year is slow to start and generally pretty relaxed. For instance, I was strongly advised by one of my fellow teachers not to give any factual information during the first week, and instead just have a formal chit-chat session with the students. I explained to them where I came from and why I'm here, and as far as I could tell they weren't listing to anything I was saying, they were just starring mouths agape thinking to themselves "oh my god look at that cracker". I have no fear that the novelty of my complexion will wear off fairly quickly and that this pleasant passivity will be soon replaced by the normal chaos of a burkinabé classroom. That said, I am looking forward to this next week when I get to add a little content to my lectures.

I was rather nervous leading up to this week as my homologue was not in town and I still was unaware of what my schedule would entail. However, once the whole teaching staff arrived in the big L (about 2 days before classes started) things unraveled quite well. I expressed my doubts surrounding 3ème and general concerns about the year to my homologue and the directeur and I wound up with a pretty light load. After a long talk with Koné my homologue I opted out of 3ème and they're actually getting an svt teacher from another school to trek out here 4 hours per week to give that class. Koné really put things in perspective before helping me make that decision. He explained that I should just stick to the simple task of improving my communication before

jumping into a class as hard as 3ème. He said to just take the countless hours that I would be devoting to that class and just throw them into learning french and just general communication. This will give me time to work on erasing some of those fossilized errors that seem to be so ingrained in my language.

Being an immigrant is hard and I think perhaps harder if you're expected to be some sort of town intellectual. After all, the job that I have is not only a well paying sought after occupation in burkina but also one that requires an education that is substantially beyond the reach of the average burkinabé. When they see me waltz in and begin teaching with only the most tenuous grasp of the french language its seems only natural that they would have their doubts. I may have said this before but I often times feel as though the average villager mistakes a grammatical error in french or Jula that I have committed as evidence of full blown incompetence. Undoubtedly I know many words and far more concepts that will be forever beyond the reach of the villagers without educations, but I still can't get over the fact that when I screw up a salutation or my french falters in general that I seem incapable of doing my job in their eyes.

That might seem a little melodramatic, I mean to tell you the truth I doubt anyone scrutinizes my language the way I do. I just hate to have a notion invalidated because I lack the tools to properly express it.

In other news my fellow teachers are awesome. Basically we're all 20 something males who love to drink beer and bullshit. They definitely are a breath of fresh air for me, as I was definantly in want of some other teachers both as solid french speakers to practice with and people to explain to me just how the whole school in BF thing went down. In all honesty they're really funny guys and Im looking forward to just hanging out with them. They are also great to practice french with and they don't hesitate to correct me when I make a glaring error. The english teacher here is completely hilarious- When he speaks in english to me he very much sounds like a drunken english man. The english part because thats the brand of english they study here and the drunken part because he basically throws paragraphs of indistinguishable syllables at me at a time. You can tell he's really well studied, but you can also tell that native english speakers to practice with are not very common around here. I've got my first tutoring session with him tomorrow and I'm quite excited about it. He and I are thinking about started and extracurricular english club where he would do crammer lessons and I would just talk.

I've included this picture of my house from the inside in case you were currious.

Oh god i'm broke! You'd think that eating benga every day (about 2 dollars for one weeks worth) and biking to tougan to avoid bus fair would afford me a sense of economic security... but allas! I'm quite the spender. It really comes at the expense of two things: First if I feel like buying something will help be study/be a more effective teacher I seem powerless to resist it. For instance I spent 6000 francs today on notebooks (about 12 bucks worth) and gave my school director cash to pick up another set of biology books while he is in Ouaga (just for comparison with the one I inherited from babet). I also bought a battery that I hooked up to one of babets old lights to enable me to enjoy the western comfort of a different sleep schedule than the sun. The second of course is partying. This month of September is a chance for all peace corps teachers to just spend time integrating into the community and not necessarily be bogged down in lesson planning and test grading. So to that end, I make an effort to go out every night with my burkiabé friends. It's pretty cool because people usually don't let me pay for much as I am the guest, but due to my modest salary and to me kinda over furnishing my house I'm still in the red.

One awkward thing is that in the course of my leisure with my friends I very frequently run into my students (or future students as I have yet to teach them anything). The thing is one of the points that was hammered into us at stage was that we need to be adult and super professional around our students at all times to maintain sense of respect, in and out of class. So when one of your students happens to be the gal that is serving you booze, it becomes quite the tricky proposition. Not to mention that there is no real way of telling a student from a non student based on age as I might have students as old as 25. I always dress professionally and never make an ass out of myself, but I would prefer to know if a student was listening to me talk so I could use more proper french and not the hurried, error prone conversational stuff I throw around with my friends.

I'm still trying to design a sustainable work out routine here. I really like the bike rides in for internet, they are quite satisfying. I've also been in talks with a local metal worker that said he could build me (upon my request) a set of gymnastic rings that I could use to fight the losing battle against losing every scrap of muscle from my body. Working out is very meditative for me so I hope to build a satisfying routine.

Well i guess that's all. I'm not sure if anyone reads this but if you do comments are always loved. I really like to know what's up in MPLS.

till next time-

Everything in the Big L continues to go smoothly as I continue my quest to gain a passable understanding of the French language and settle into my new home. I'm really diggin the chance to have so much independent study time on my hands. Even after the substantial portion of my day devoted to gathering water, saluting the neighbors and other burkinabé essentials I still have gobs of time to read and otherwise prepare myself. There is a kind of lurking dread in the air in anticipation of the comming school year- I really want to give my kids a good education - more than that I want to give them an inovative and orignial look at biology that they can't get from a text book. If i'm struggling with language I won't be as flexible with delivering my content. I've also been hanging out with my burkinabé mates as much as possible just to acquire more rapidity and confidence in my daily language- I want to be able to engage my class, not just unload a lecture on them, and it seems like being able to maintain a personal conversation is a nessisary precursor to that. I would like to say my days progress like a rocky montage except in lieu of beef-punching sequences you have pouring over grammer books and French/julakan dialogue.

I've been rolling around with my friend Zackaria the most who was one of Babets really good friends. He's super patient and generally pretty cool. His 30th birthday is today so tomorrow he's coming over to my place for some fried bannana cake and american coffee (not to be confused with the dreaded crystalized nescafé they drink here).

In Tougan today I've met up with my two closest neighbors, both teacher like me but Math instead of SVT. They're both pretty rad and it's not a chore to hang out with them in the least. Today i'm biking both to and from tougan making in sum a solid 84K. My body may have completly devoured itself but I will not surrender it to a sedintary existance until im under the earth.

Eating is still going quite well, I've taking to doing the whole fusion act with west african meets itallian. I'm fond of prepping rosa sauces and pesto for my benga.

Not to mention that pasteries are still my strenght although i've replaced the oven for the deep frier as calories usurp all other demands here.

I get the sense that half the words in these blog posts are spelled like their french homologues and for that im sorry.

So after 3 months of stage and the headache of Ouaga I am no officially at site. More appropriatly I'm writting this from Tougan, the local capital of my village because it will be a cold day in hell when the Big L (what I affectionatly call my home of 1000 people) gets internet. I must say again it's just wonderful here. My home is quite the palace by Burkinabé standards. Babet had the whole thing worked on in anticipation of my arrival- which was extreamly selfless on her part as she was on her way out of the country at they time. The whole house is cemented and has a wonderfully constructed hanger under which I can enjoy the cool breeze free from the opressive west african sun. I've also brought my coustom table and chair and a lit pico (basically a cot) which was constructed by a handicapped association in Ouahigouya. These pieces of furniture augment the already substantially fournished home that I inherited. One of the custom piece of furniture that Babet had constructed for here was a wonderful book shelf which i've already begun to fill with pilfered books from the Peace Corps and US Embasy libraries.

I've begun just doing the meet and greet thing with the neighbors. Everbody is extreamly nice here. The only downside is prolonged chats en route are obligatory. There can be no salutation from a distance, I always have to hop off my back shake hands and go through lengthy exchanges in Jula or Francais. Oh a little anectdote about Burkinabé salutations. The initial moments of any engagement are highly ritualized here. For instance there is an initial exchange back and forth between party A and party B. An english equivilent might look something like this:

A: hello how are you?

B: Hello! I am fine thank you. And you?

A:I am fine as well. Beautiful day isn't it?

B:Yes it is. I hope you have a good day.

A: I wish the same to you, Goodbye.

B: Goodbye.

Ok so maybe a little a little dramatic but there are equivalent conversations in Jula except they never vary. In fact these initial exchanges are so habitualized here that they be quite hilarious when one party (for example me, the nassara) doesn't really get how they go. In fact the knoledgable party will keep going on the same conversation path even if the other person doesn't really know what is going on. For instance, if the above conversation was a Jula chat and person B was a cracker like myself the conversation might go something like this:

A: hello how are you?

B: Hello! (oh shit what do I say next?) I am fi...

A:I am fine as well. Beautiful day isn't it?

B:Yes! The day wishes...

A: I wish the same to you, Goodbye.

B: ...

And at each point where it was my turn to contribute something the opposing party would wait 1-3 seconds and then continue with the next step in the conversation regardless of whether or not I had fufilled my role. At the end of the exchange, that's when the real discourse begins but these cultural exchanges are nessisary and must precede any other conversation. They sometimes don't even notice when iv'e jumped ship on a conversation path and will continue despite that until it's finished. The Burkinabé of course find this endlessly funny and I do too. The plus side to this is it gives me only a few opening dialogues to master and after that I can run away before the real conversation begins thus creating the illusion of fluency.

But for the most part the friends i've made at my site are all french speakers. One of the guys in Lanfiera is the owner of a fish grill (I may have discussed the benifits of being close to a barrage before) and goes by the name of Zachaaria. He took me the other day to go check out the barage (aka man made lake) and to see where he get's his fish from. The Big L is in general a lot greener than burkina in general and the closer you get to the barage the greener it gets. As we approached the lake the terrain began to resemble a mix between american heartland and east asia rice patty. A twisting path led Zachaaria and I through a corn fields that would rival southern illinois before dumping us into an marsh like rice patty with oldgrowth tree scattered amoung it. It truely was an experience after the sahelian city of Ouahigouya.

This was a pretty rushed blog post but so it goes. Hope to have more luck next time!

(my younger host brother and I doing as we do)

So with a few last good byes and a few sachets of shared gin I parted ways with Ouhigouya. I now am currently residing in the socio-political-economic hub of Burkina- The great city of Ouagadougou. It is indeed a bizarre experience returning to the grinding machine of a modern city after appreciating close to a monastic life for the past 3 months. It seems harder to think in this environment - the air is thicker here and there is a constant hum. I'm happy that the whole process of prepping for my affectation will be a brief process.

I can't express how unreal this city is. In a land of subsistence agriculture I can go down the street and buy frozen ice cream. The below picture is an above shot of the Marina Market- Ouaga's foremost food emporium. The expression on my face is one of confused excitement but that mood quickly changed when the nature of the place began to sink in. The notion of food being sold in a building, let alone organized in little rows is something unimaginable. Every PCVF (basically camp councillor for us stagaries) has told me that I will really miss this taste of the west after 6 months at village, but some how I doubt that. I cannot express how much I simply want to train in my solitude. I don't want to ride in cars. I don't want to shop in air-conditioning. I don't want to have the comforts of the states.

At the same time I can not be completely critical of this city. I can buy french poetry and note cards here. I can use the Internet here (thus revealing myself as exceptionally hypocritical with the method I chose to deliver this tirade) and through this, connect to the world. In Ouaga, there are tools available which are simply beyond the means of people in village. I just wish that these tools were available without the environmental and spiritual price tag city life. Striking a balance between the enabling, empowering qualities of modern life with its darker side is something I'm really working on here. I still enjoy my Ipod, I still use computers but I also recognize the link between consumption and brutality (thank you propagandhi).

So I'm only about 2 hours away from giving my last test in model school. I've been teaching 3émé for the last 2 weeks and I have to say it has been a awesome- the material has been interesting, the kids have been engaged and I have begun to relax into the cadence of teaching in Burkina. Its actually kinda bittersweet that stage as a whole is finishing up. On the one hand I can't wait to get to site and on the other I had grown accustom to the pace of stage. It will be extremely exciting to be the only white/English speaker for 30km but I also might miss a couple of the crackers I have met here. So it goes as they say. Regardless, the next couple weeks are sure to be entertaining. We've got some model school closing ceremony shenanigans on Friday and after that just a weekend of parties until our squad heads back to Ouaga for our pre-site departure wrap-up and swearing in ceremony. I've ordered a burkinabé outfit to wear to the official stuff (it's really more of just a shirt, and an extremely campy one at that- It was made out of a religious print that has little picture of Jesus with sheep on it; to western eyes a good deal of burkinabé mens clothing looks more than a little ridiculous so instead of fighting it I decided to design an outfit that was completely over the top).

I've also ordered a table and chair to be delivered to my site. I have decided that all I need to feel happy in this world is a well built table, a chair at the appropriate height in relation to that table, and a text book. Throw in some free wieghts and running shoes (which by the way I have already begun designing a bush-weight room for my site) and I would be in ecstasy. I have begun working through the 7éme edition of Biologie by Campbell and it is just fantastic. There is something just too satisfying about working through a college biology book in french (I feel like it is the perfect fusion of scientific and linguistic intellectual endeavor).

I am also trying to form a general idea about what secondary projects I want to work on at my site. I'm set up to teach all 4 grades of SVT (science de la vie et de la terre) so that will run me about 20-25 hours of class time a week depending on how many extra classes I demand out of my students. I would also love to continue the girls club that Babet started. This seemed to be a great thing that the community really got behind. It might be kinda hard for me to continue it à cause de my Y chromosome, but I figure if I team up with another one of the female functionnaires (well educated government employee) I might be able to pull it off. I might also just warp it into a youth club with a female empowerment bent. The idea that I am most behind however is starting a music club at my site. As far as I know, no other volunteer has done something like that in burkina faso and given my irrational interest in creative expression in general and music in particular I am really excited about it. Musical instruments are very hard to come by in the poorer parts of this nation and I think an enterprise like this would play to my strengths in a way that a girls club or a forestry program would not. Despite the lack of available resources for music here, the love of music is simply overwhelming. I have yet to see a burkinabé not start singing and dancing as soon as live music starts. I think it would be a beautiful thing to start a music program over here at 1/20th the cost of an equivalent program stateside. I might also add that I have yet to see a female musician here so having a focus on female empowerment through music would be awesome.

I'm in the process of sorting through grants now and Im going to talk to some venders in Ouaga when I go down there to see if I can ballpark instrument costs here. I'm thinking at this point I want to get a couple djembe, a couple other local instruments and some really durable training instruments for the masses - perhaps 20 some recorders or equivalent wind instruments. All of that should not run me more than 600 American- the price of any one piece of percussion equipment that any American high school band possesses.

By the way, I'm going to try to spend more time working on these blog posts in two aspects. I have a profound understanding of my limitations as both a writer and a photographer so try not to expect to much out of these post, but hopefully through my efforts I will be able to improve their content (albeit slightly) over the next couple of years.

à la prochaine

So this week I began my first totale autonyme in-class teaching. For my first training group I have been handed 4ème A which is definitely a challenge. First things first, its Geologie. Now I don't know about you guys but the last time I had a geology class I was in the 8th grade. Its good training though because I will be having to teach it at site and really nailing the differences between ingnée métamorphique et sédimentaire before I get shipped off will be sure to help me. Also 4ème A is probly the most unruly of all the model school classes. While only numbering about 60 kids, is still about 60 percent bandits. The outlaws that compose the class know no fear and can smell uncertain teaching and shoddy french about 8 miles away. I started out this week a little too bold. I was totally in love with the notion of introducing critical reasoning and empirical thought to a land that seems to value facts over concepts. Unfortunately I was quick to understand that without class room stability you have nothing. My first couple classes were really well put together and really encouraging of critical thinking (I had tons of analogies and connections, I might add that I basically threw the text book in the garbage for them too- its a poorly written piece of shit that has no regard for logical form) but my in class delivery was way too soft. However, all that changed on Thursday. I told about 7 of my secondary ed bros that I was laying down the law that day so I got a whole crew of people of to come and observe me instill respect into the unruly mob. Not only did I just look super pissed the whole time (according to my fellow teachers) but I earned the award for being the first person in Stage to kick someone out of class. Unsurprisingly, on Friday they were quiet and attentive. On top of this, i managed to over the course of the week teach them about the formation of basalte and the mind blowing notion of how we're all floating on a sea of molten rock. They also got the connection that silice poor lava flows have different viscosity that silice rich ones, and also yeild different rocks. All in all Im really proud of my class. Im giving them a test on Thursday so hopefully they do well on it. Friday's class is devoted entirely to them stating objections to my test and me responding. Hopefully that goes smoothly. I am tempted to make the test a little easier to accommodate that but we'll see.

Till next

So things are moving pretty fast over here in OYGH. I just got back from a massive weak of counter part work shop and site visits. So to summerize, every volunteer is set up with a homolgue (basically a burkinabé person that is from your community and ideally has a similar job as you, in my case my bro is a physics, chem and math teacher- yeah we're a little understaffed in my neck of the woods) and mine bus'd it in from home to come into oahigouya for a little meet and greet. His name is Koné and he is a counter part to me in every sense of the word. Not only is he a great local rescource and a well conected amiable guy, but he is also a relaxed easygoing counterpoint to me the tightly wound overly passionate workaholic. We met on monday and had a few to many icebreakers and not enough content schedualed on the part of the peace corps for that day. However, that mild frustration paled in comparisson to the frustration of the tuesday which was an intire day devoted to VIH/SIDA sensibilation (hiv/aids ed). Don't get me wrong there is not a microbiologist in the world (not even a bacterio centric one such as myself) that would diminish the importance of HIV AIDS ed. HOWEVER, this day set out to enable the counterpart and the PCV to work together on eliminating HIV/AIDS in the community and did nothing but provide the victems with 9 hours of content-less lectures. Bah! The one shinning moment for me was when the asked the masses if they could name some oppertunistic infections which afflicted AIDS patients. My hand was up so. goddamn. fast. Anyways that aside the next day was an alright series of community meetings and orginzation for the site visit! Site visit was a chance for me to travel with my homologue to the the place I would be staying for the next two years. In addition to my counterpoint, I had the great babet (the gal who ran SVT-life science at my site before me) and Brigitte (a PCV whos site was too close to OYHG and thus wanted to go to a place that would require a little more negotiation of transport).

Anywho we Borded the OYHG bus and it was a site to say the least. In another life, this bus was perhaps a moroccan tourist liner but through several inheratances, the harsh mistress of time and the demands of burkinabé life it had warped into what can only be regarded as a burkinabé bus. It had about twice as many people as there were seats 12 happily breast-feading children and about 1 chicken for every two people. It was awesome. However, the full experience was somewhat diminsished when the announced that they would be sending two busses instead of one in our direction- our crew now had places to sit. It was still a magnificent experience watching the burkina country side fly by while the boldest of drivers flored it over dirt roads all to the soundtrack of cote d'ivoire hiphop at max volume. Our main stop was in my regional capitol (i will refer to it as T -for whatever reason Im not supposed to put my locations). T is a great place, It has probably the best youghurt in BF along with damn good bread and functional internets. Its a great place. Not to mention that babet introduced me to her entire crew including Ali who is probably the most "legit" (and I mean that in the strictly west coast gangster sense) guy in BF. He owns basically everything. In fact her whole crew there is hella awesome. We only lingered there for a couple hours before heading off to my site which I will refer to as L. Similarly my site is amazing. As we progressed towards it we noticed the greenery and diverse birds that signaled the temperate climate and the nerby bodies of water. It really is a different world in L, my counter part warns that it will all change once the dry season roles around but for now it is green, open and beautiful. Speaking of the openess, when I got to babet's house (soon to be my pad) I was struck by just how striking the environment is. Its kinda like my antonia prarrie- it has that romantic openess. My house is on the edge of my tiny tiny village (across from a family which has one man, 8 wives and 28 kids) and it has a view straigt west that spans across an open plain and into a far-off perimiter of trees. My first night there I watched a storm advance over this plain. It was truely picturesque- the setting sun, the dust spirals before the storm, the backdrop of lightning illuminated clouds- it defied discription. Im kinda running out of time at this cyber post so Ill try to hurry it up. My site was also wonderfull beside that though, and thanks to the nerby barage I enjoyed honest to god fresh grilled fish both nights I stayed there. I can't tell you how much agreeing with my site meant to me.

Anyway with that out of the way Ive got Model school this week which is sure to be a treat. I get a chance to enjoy burkinabé and PCVFs teach some classes. To finish this off Im including a nice picture of my life science crew. Till next time.

So last week I found out where my eventual resting place in burkina faso would be. While I don't think I'm suppose to say exactly where it is I can assure you that is located in the north west corner of the country and very far away from much of anything else. To tell you the truth this is exactly what I wanted to hear. I really wanted to get the BF village feel while I was here and Ouahigouya (where I currently reside) seems to be just a little too big. Also despite its small size my village is going to be near a barrage which means that it will have some of the only fresh fish in Burkina Faso along with nearby rice patties and hippopotami. I'm also to be the only SVT teacher at site which means I'm going to be teaching every life science class the have including the dreaded 3ème. The reason why 3ème has a little more pressure than the others is that at the end of that year they have to take a test which will determine whether or not they can advance to the next stage- their performance determines whether they can advance or not. In fact this is such a responsibility that only 2 PCVs teach this class in the whole country- and none have in their first year. The only reason why I plan on doing it is that I will be replacing a woman named Babet (a god among mortals who I will talk more about later) who was "strongly encouraged" to teach the class simply because the students had no other option and if they wanted to have any chance at all of getting further education someone would have to teach it. This means that the pressure is on for me to learn French. I already train at least 2 hours a day (Outside of the normally allotted training periods which are substantial) but I'm hoping to kick it up a little including more work with the actual scientific text that I will be expected to teach from. There is a lot of material to cover and my vocabulary is insufficient at best at the present moment (not to mention my use of pronouns and prepositions is pretty sad, not to mention that despite my complete knowledge of que/qui usage I still consistently make mistakes). On top of this I have begun to integrate JulaKan (the local language of my region) into my training regiment. Its a wonderfully simplistic and auditory delightful language compared the convoluted European nightmares that I'm used to. One quirk of the language is that you lower your voice as you ask questions which can be rather confusing when alternating between french and Julakan. I'm also already thinking about what secondary projects I want to start up at my site. On thing that is sorely lacking fro the curriculum is a strong evolutionary focus. I am decidedly of the opinion (as most biologists are) that nothing in biology makes sense outside the context of evolution. Bringing that into my education as much as possible will be a focus of mine. I'm hoping on starting a science club that will focus on evolution, Malaria, and HIV/AIDS sensibilization. I also hope to continue the Girls Empowerment club that Babet started. Its going to be a lot of work to integrate myself well into the community, teach and do all this secondary stuff as well but I hope to fit it all in eventually. Don't get me wrong I'm still really relaxed at present moment, but I am concerned about the increase in stress once I get to site.

So I basically decided to have an entire blog entry devoted to what I eat in the glorious land of burkina faso. I will have some highlights and some lowlights but all in all I will try to give you a fair picture of the muchies which I eat. First off, we have the delicious to. It really defies description so I included a picture of it with a fabulous baobab leaf sauce. To the left you can see it in all of its rubbery glory. This is what I eat most days out of the week for dinner. Onto my typical Luncho. I randomly hit up sandwich shops around town which can include delicious 'meat' sandwiches or vegetable nonsense. There is also a lovely woman that makes the tastiest avocado sandwiches which I indulge in from time to time. Actually today I had one of the best luncheon experiences here. I munched a delicious plate of benga (translation; beans) with a demi baguette which was crazy retarded good. After that I went and snagged a mango and a couple of sachets of arachide sucre (thats what i call them i dont know the local name but they are basically sugar covered peanuts). It was so incredibly satisfying and it ran me about 350 cfa in total which is about 90 cents. For Bfast I usually just much some bread and boire some nescafe. very simple but it gets the job done. As for some of the high points. We recently had a fourth of July party that was simply amazing. The Mouton that we disassembled for the party truly was the highlight in my opinion. Mohammad, our butcher an all around party engineer put together a brilliant 4 spice rub for it that simply blew my mind. On top of that we had like 7 other courses that were totally phenomenal including tabbouleh, sweet potato fries and mango pie. I also assembled a seriously questionable lemonade that included a 3 dollar bottle of gin. All in all it was a good night.

So the rainy season broke its respite today and the brilliant heat of Burkina Faso recommenced. While Minnesota itself is a land of extremes I must say that Burkina really puts it to shame. The storms here are truely magnificent. The first one this season was preceeded by a wave of dust that could be seen 2 miles away. Watching the dim flashes of lighting through a wall of dust was truely awe inspiring. It really struck me a something that would be a more common sight on arakis than earth.Food here is continuing to grow on me. I've only recently gotten a semblance of my former hunger back and right now it's treating me well. I've begun to scarf some ungodly portions with my host family (much to there pleasure). All in all though, i have to say that things are continuing to go extremely well. I have to say that all things considered I find life much easier here than in the states. Not to say life is easy here (though none of us live in hobiton therefore I don't think any of us truely have an easy life) but honestly when you compare the inhumanity of the undergrad science work it really isnt that bad. Dont get me wrong, I loved my work in the states. The difference is that in the states i never felt like I finished anything well; I never fufilled my own expectations. Here its totally different. The only things I have to do are learn french and work on my cultural intergration. I never have to stay up all night, I never have to say no to fun for the sake of work (and more often than not saying yes to fun is fufilling my goals), I never have to have to break my back when Im hungry sleepy and frustrated when i could do it twice as efficiently the next morning (the lack of constant deadlines is really nice), I also dont have to sell my plasma to pay for groceries. I might also add that i can spend two hours studying every night and still have time to watch an episode of the daily show and practice my mandolin. Having freetime every night is a luxury I didnt have in the states. I had to take music classes (such as music theory and class piano) because I knew that unless the It was an assignment I could never afford to dedicate time to it. here, I can play mandolin whn I want to without feeling gulity. I also can get a full 8 hours sleep here regularly. I am awoken at 5 am every day by the pigs and the muslim call to prayer but its really not that bad because I can afford to go to bed at 9 (unlike in the states where I was always going to bed with something un finished). Again we dont have starbucks or airconditioning here but we do have humanity.

So things are still ca va allering over here as i continue to press on with my work in french and crosscultural adjustment. There is still tons of work to be done with french, if someone is good with french I basically can articulate 70 percent of the ideas i have in my head to them. However, if the person is not so good with french (as many burkinabé are) then the proposition becomes a lot trickier. In other news I have joined the Salle de Musclulisation (sp?) which is the only gym in ouhigouya and also probably the shadiest weight room in the world. Its basically in two rooms of an appartment complex and is filled with a mixture of soviet era weight machines and giant posters of schwarzenegger circa 1970. So needless to say the place has a lot of charecter. Also I might add that for the 3 us dollars a week I pay I also get a personal trainer which means someone clap along to every set I do and then applaud wildely when I finish something (its really quite complimentary). Seriously this guy is like the burkina faso luke carleson on speed he is so goddamn enthusiastic. In addition I have taken up the role of local rancher by feeding the goat that our peace corps group was given as a gift by the cheif of Ouhigouya. It took me a long time to figure out what to feed him but basically he prefers the shell of millet that has been pounded into oblivion ( called cardcoudaga in mooré) and also random green things. Im trying to fatten him up for for our 4th of july extravaganza. This whole thing has made me very excited to have a ranch of my own when I get to site. Im planning on buying a couple of my own animals and raising some livestock. Ive found out here pretty quick that nothing makes a party like an entire animal being eaten. Anyways Ive got a wish list up and running so if anyone is feeling generous I totally would be in your debt.

By the way allemagne is my host dads team so it really exciting around the Meda houshold right now.

So with my illness kicked to the curb I am totally loving it here. During the phase I'm in right, now called stage, we basically are going through language and cross culture boot camp. I have 5 hours of language lessons (plus of course the 24/7 education of living in a french speaking country) plus a couple other miscellaneous classes on health education (ie malaria prevention, water filtration) or cultural quirks each day. It can be really frustrating and slow moving work at times (in 40+ degree heat in a land without shade anything can be frustrating) but for the most part I'm happy with my progress. My host family is continuously astounding me with their grace and hospitality. I tried 'toe' last night which is essentially pulverized and re congealed gelatinous rice with sauce. I liked it but i preferred watching the turkey Croatia game with my host dad and drinking brakina beer. Imight also add that they haven't let me help at all with the house work yet. c'est dommage.

So I finally have begun the peace corps stage ( think agoge) experience. I really have to say that this experience so far has been simply amazing. Two nights ago I moved in with my host family that i will be stayingwith for the next three months. I cant emphasize enough how much xenophilia they have shown me. They fed me and made sure I was well attended the whole time, plus they were also very engaging and it was easy for me to express myself en francais to them. This might have been in part because they were both teachers and used to dealing with neophytes. My host dad teaches french and english and loves german football. In fact, the first conversation i had with him spanned two hours and consisted of nothing but beer and football (soccer). I thought I could have had that conversation in the states just as easily har har. Anyway food was great but in my zeal to be an appreciative guest i ate way too much and made myself sick. The word for to vomit in french is vomitir by the way. but anyway i really do like it (did i mention my fellow trainies are awesome?) our host familly also has a cat which I nicknamed Ahab for the way he stalks the geckos that infest burkina faso. I have seen him wall jump time attempting to grab those bastards but alas they elude him. sorry for spelling on this one by the way keyboards still a prob

bonjour!

so this is my first blogpost from burkina and the french keyboard might be messing me up a little so bear with me. This country (or at least what ive seen of it) has been amazing; the food is fantastic and the people are gracious. Later today i take off for ouahigouya (wah+hi+goo+ya) where i will begin my training. I am really anxious to begin as i still have a lot of work to do= it may not supprise you guys that i feel more comfortable studying/doing work than lounging about. anyways ill try to write again soon

Just came back from my yellow fever vaccination and I'm getting ready to quit this hotel. My bags are packed and je suis tres impatient pour voyager en france, et apres ca, Burkina. The next 25-30 hours are sure to be hectic (i might have to serenade my co-volunteers with a little impromptu mandolin during our 8 hour layover at the Charles du Galle airport) but I'm still excited.

By the way a note for Ben: we talked a ton about definitions of 'development' yesterday and I really wanted to hear the Mac IS definition. There are quite a few anthro majors here by the by.

Also a note for Sam: The only other person from Minnesota here is actually a math major. The only book he brought was a book titled "MATHEMATICAL LOGIC" - I felt as though that's about as hard-core academia as you can get.

Anyway, I should be in burkina by 7 on Wednesday (local time, which is also GM time +O, So Rozi and I will be on the same schedule) so I might have a chance to post something on Thursday.

Till then...

I lack the emoticon for how exciting this day has been. The first step on my travels is complete and I am writing from Philadelphia- effectively navigating an airline system that has proven to be less than hospitable to me in the past :/ Anyway! I've begun to meet my coworkers and they all seem extremely personable and all bring their own very interesting characteristics to bear. My roommate is a half-swiss biology student that is going over to teach IT. He just got back from his term of obligatory service in the Swiss-Army (no joke that is a real organization) and ran right into service in Burkina. Everyone else has extremely colorful pasts as well, not to mention accents. I seem to be the only person with a generic "US City" accent- it seems as though it's all Bostonians and Montana natives. Our first day of orientation went really well; it was a little dry and I was a little exhausted but it was still fantastic. Philly is also a nice bridge to Burkina in that it is the perfect mugginess to get used to wearing pants in. I really like the focus on sustainability that the Peace Corps takes; the focus on creating programs that the country can maintain without foreign help is really commendable. Also, I found out a factoid regarding the Peace Corps- the budget is around 300 million. For those of you keeping score at home that's less that one B2 bomber (737 million to 2.2 billion). At first I was really disheartened by that but they explained that the Peace Corps does not rely on financial sprees to accomplish their goals and in fact other non-profit organization rely to heavily on temporary flushes of unsustainable cash. Filling an environment with an influx of temporary wealth does nothing to solve the real problems associated with these countries. Instead, the Peace Corps chooses to field determined (albeit poorly funded) volunteers to use local resources to accomplish the goals. All in all the day was very good and I'll try to have more soon on the specifics of what I'll be doing.

Bien venu tout le monde et bonjour! This is my first post of what will hopefully be a long and fruitful blogging experience. I'm still state-side at the moment and going through the last few hectic checks of my bags before heading off tomorrow at 7am for philly (and then for ouaga 3 days later). Thanks to everyone for all the last minute well-wishing- I had quite the time in 'merica during my last few weeks. Anyway check back for hopefully more colorful posts.