Banna is a Jula verb (usually requiring an auxillary verb) that means, contingent on context, "finished," "completed," "no longer available" or "dead." So a banna can be taken to mean:

Its finished

There isn't any more available

He's dead

She's dead

Nothing left

Its over

...which may be an apt title for my very last blog post, as my Peace Corps experience = a banna.

It was a good run. I learned a lot about myself during the experience and feel fortunate to have had it. I didn't accomplish the goals I'd set out to achieve, but then again the unrealistic nature of my goals wasn't apparent until many months into my service.

In many ways, I wish I could have done more for the amorphous conglomerate known as the people of Burkina Faso. But I'm happy that I developed some relationships with a few people at least and hopefully changed their perspective or shared something insightful with them.

In case you're wondering, yes I would do it again if I had the chance! Wholeheartedly.

I wanted to leave you with a link to a published case study from Leeds School of Business but the study group I worked with didn't make corrections and so its not published on their website :/

However there are some other Peace Corps case studies posted here and you can just interchange the country name with "Burkina Faso" and business with "Cashew Processing Collective" and hopefully it will provide some insight into my experience here.

Thank you, Peace Corps Burkina Faso and people of Burkina Faso! N bi i ka fanw fe!!

I’ve been busy lately.

With the help of my counterpart, I’ve been administering surveys to cashew farmers, exporters and transporters for a study commissioned by the West Africa Trade Hub. This study is the one that took us to Ghana in November and aims to analyze the income multiplier effect of exporting goods like cashews, shea butter and handcrafts out of West Africa. These products can be sold with very high margins abroad but garner very little for the producers and value chain within West Africa. It’s been a fascinating look into a trade microcosm that’s been swirling around me and I’m glad that I take a deep dive from the periphery.

I’ve also been helping to plan the Close-of-Service party for the group of PCVs that are leaving this summer. Friday’s the big day and the party will be quite the Soirée Rubix. Stay tuned to Facebook for pictures! We have exactly 100 confirmed RSVPs, meaning nearly every PCV in country will be attending.

One thing I’ve been pondering in village is what my role is in terms of sharing my culture and Western knowledge and to what extent it’s appropriate. For example, the other day I rode my bike past a group of children that were excitedly running back and forth through a cloud of exhaust coming from a stationary motorcycle. The kids were laughing and it looked exactly like American kids running through a lawn sprinkler on a hot summer day. Adding to my horror was that an adult man was revving the engine for them so that a continuous stream of exhaust was being funneled towards the children. I wanted to stop my bike and say “Hey, guy, you’re literally going to kill those kids’” but I wasn’t sure if this was appropriate. There are (obviously) no emissions standards here, and people breathe in large black clouds of exhaust all the time and don’t consider it harmful. Plus, where would I draw the line on being a butt-in-sky? Would I tell a mother to stop beating her child in public because we don’t do that in America, despite wide cultural acceptance here? Would I advise my fellow patrons at a restaurant to wash their hands with soap prior to eating? Would I storm into people’s houses to see if they were sleeping under mosquito nets to avoid contracting malaria? These have always been delicate areas for me as I have conviction in the righteousness of my knowledge on these subjects, but I’m not here to be a naysayer or Debbie Downer either.

Yeah, that’s right Erik – you totally got served after you challenged me about blog updating in the Numb3rs comment. Lets see you dance, sucka!!!

PS- Sorry, I realize this reference is hella dated, but its still cutting-edge in Burkina.

Nearly all ready-made clothes worn by local folks are secondhand from Europe or America. The most obvious example of this is t-shirts. T-shirts are a scourge upon the secondhand and Salvation Army shops of America, as anyone who has tried to find a decent one at those places can attest. I think I’ve already blogged about the hilarious t-shirt sightings I’ve seen, such as “Cheerleaders are Athletes Too!” worn by a man, “Moms United for Safe Driving” worn by a man, “Sackler Family Reunion 1998 West Virginia,” etc.

Recently I was talking to a fellow PCV who recounted a story of running into another PCV wearing what appeared to be an ironic t-shirt. Here’s the exchange:

PCV A: (Reading his t-shirt) What’s Ben Folds Five?

PCV B: It’s a band.

PCV A: Oh, did you get that at the marché?

PCV B: No, its from America.

PCV A: Wow, that sucks!

Cellphone calls are ridiculously expensive in Burkina Faso. There are three providers and I’m not aware of any that offer an American-style plan. One buys recharge cards and depending whether you are calling landlines, within network or between networks, calls can cost anywhere from 150 – 400 CFA per minute. That translates to $0.31 – 0.83 per minute, which may not seem ludicrous, except when you recall that I make $7.30 per day, and I’m considered inordinately wealthy according to local standards. So, those who are literate (a group that includes nearly all Peace Corps Volunteers) choose to text. I think it also helps that the vast majority of volunteers here are young-un’s, and we all know how much generation W loves to text.

Here’s a sampling of some of my favorite text messages, with identifying details removed to protect the innocent:

4/9/09 8:42 PM: “I would kill to play Scrab. I somehow spent 3 hours in a trance like state peeling off the ‘guaranteed wax’ sticker from a pagna. No exaggeration.”

5/10/09 7:38 PM: “Where did u get ur info that ***** is really religious? We need to know b.c **** only wants 2 bl** him if he is.”

8/1/09 2:41 PM: “You could also use 1 extra liter of shea and 2 of palm oil. Also, I made out with ****’s counterpart.”

8/20/09 8:46 PM: “I hate no one except my peuhl crush’s husband. Lets go to that weekend bar Atlantic.”

8/21/09 6:32 PM: (in response to my text letting this person know that we got our quarterly allowance from Peace Corps) “Holy sh**! We have money! I guess I can relax a little and stop eating plain rice with vitamins for dinner.”

8/30/09 10:52 AM: “Oh my gosh ***’s courtyard is out of control yest there were bird having sex and today it’s a bird threesome!”

9/3/09 4:47 PM: “You’re right I can’t say no. My site mate wants to be running buddies and I don’t but I just keep making excuses instead of saying no. I need tony robbins’ help.”

9/7/09 12:31 PM: “(Cyber café) is supposed to be back up and running this week. I hope its true. I haven’t read about hillary clinton in over a week. What’s she doing? I don’t know! Ah!”

9/7/09 8:15 PM: “Yes. I just pricked my own eyes with needles in a fit of jealousy. My neighbor is writing this text for me because I can’t see.”

9/9/09 6:30 PM: “What? Is she even still alive? All I’m saying is if ur gonna try 2 sex on a bike the best bet is fixed. And fixed boys R always in2 their emotions & skinny jeans.”

10/22/09 8:14 AM: “once I tried dressing up like a british nanny to infiltrate my ex wife’s house and ended up burning my fake boobs on the stove. So now I stick to angry emails.”

10/22/09 2:03 PM: “Oh I didn’t know msc was gonna be that kind of conference. I can’t wait to creepily watch other people make out again.”

10/28/09 5:07 PM: (after being sideswiped by a truck) “got in bike accident and hurt my foot. Going to bureau”

12/09/09 8:54 PM: “Hi. São Luis, Maranhão.”

12/12/09 6:53 PM: “yesterday mike told me I could get kazoos at the boutique next to the ‘woso muso’.”

12/19/09 10:37 PM (during Hanukkah celebration): “a big shalom of l’chaim! to everyone. Don’t outside ***** w ur jewish history trivia.”

1/5/10 2:19 PM: “Sadly his enthusiasm for our love has completely turned me off. How does one properly backpedal?”

1/21/10 12:22 PM: “Was picking my nose so noticibly/deep that a burkinabé just gave me a lotus. What have I become?”

1/22/10 6:14 PM: “Forgot to thank u for getting me off that moto last night. Im an idiot.”

1/28/10 10:30 AM: “Been sitting arnd waiting 4 what usually ends up being a faux RDV. All talk here. Very little walk.”

2/1/10 7:42 PM: “Also, confucius says, the gentleman is not a utensil. Think about it.”

2/2/10 5:56 PM: “Dangit! How did you find this out? You should be an investigative reporter like hank philippi ryan.”

2/4/10 5:50 PM: “I enjoy the image of u standing on the road of oro just txting. That’s all. Please do let bike dude w no legs knw im single & at the ready.”

2/18/10 6:31 PM: “was that a beep or a call? Was out running. Think im going to die. Its too hot for humans here. Baah!”

3/2/09 2:37 PM: “also will there b karaoke at cos parT? I’d like to sing mika’s ‘grace kelly’ I think it ‘ll improve my odds of fetching 100 mille at the auction.”

3/5/09 3:36 PM: “I’m at a lunch with over 60 fonctionnaires. ***** (village counterpart) put on cologne 12 sprays and put charcoal on his face to cover a blemish on his face. Help me”

For a while I’ve bandied about lots of blog ideas but I can never quite materialize them into something longer than a couple sentences. It may be because I’ve now been a resident of Burkina Faso for 16+ months so I’m afflicted with Donkey Cart Syndrome, a phenomenon that my APCD illuminated for me. I’ve become habituated to things that erstwhile would have been interesting or novel but I now find mundane and quotidian… like donkey carts. Probably most of you have never seen a cart being pulled by a donkey on the street alongside cars and motorcycles, but I see these so often that I no longer see them, get what I mean? It translates into not being inspired enough by differences to blog about them. I’ve also now settled into a routine, so life now no longer seems any more interesting or newsworthy. The above notwithstanding, I know I’m not Burkinabé and will likely never feel truly “one with the people.” Everyday, without fail, I’m treated as a curious spectacle, with people yelling “white” or “Chinese” at me. It’s mostly children who do so, but it’s certainly not limited to them. Homogeneity is completely infused in the culture, as I think is common with most collectivist societies. Yet its still hard for me to grasp why people here don’t understand that the question “Where are you from?” would be met with so much less hostility than “Are you from China or Japan?” My immaturity makes me want to respond to these overtures with “Hey, Nigerian!” or “Are you from Uganda or Togo?” but I manage to hold back. There are certainly some aspects of life here that I embrace, like the willingness of strangers to help one another without question or pause and the repos, which is a break from 12 – 3 every day. But the country has to break at that time because it’s too hot to do anything else. It’s already over 100 degrees daily here, and I still haven’t gotten used to the stifling heat. What I think I’m not fully conscious of is how I’ve changed since moving here, and I don’t think that will be totally apparent until I move back to the US. Some things are obvious – I can already see that my perspective has tilted in ways like understanding that I don’t need so many “things,” and this is probably heavily influenced by the dearth of mass marketing / advertising. I know well enough not to snap or hiss at restaurant waitstaff for their attention in the US, although it is de rigeur here. Same with nose-picking in public. But I may be tempted to answer my cellphone during a meeting or class when I get back, because having lived here, my attitude has gravitated towards “What’s the big deal?” and away from “That’s so rude!” I could ramble on forever, but I’ll just leave you with an old African proverb: “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have The Facts of Life…”

The literacy class I lead for women from my host organization is going well. We’ve ramped up from learning to read Jula to learning French. French is a very difficult, unwieldy language to teach, particularly when the language of instruction is one that is rather foreign to the instructor (i.e., it’s hard for me to teach French in Jula because my Jula is halting and everything I say is in the lowest common denominator).

Yesterday’s class topic was French numbers. I interrupted a pre-planned lesson to switch abruptly to numbers after I asked the women for their phone numbers, and one woman had memorized the sequence of the numbers but didn’t know what number translated to “quatre-vingt cinq” (85) and neither did the woman sitting next to her. During the lesson, as I was writing “50 – cinquante,” on my flipchart paper affixed with masking tape to the side of a wall, one of ladies asked me how old I was. I don’t know if they thought I was 50, but they didn’t seem that surprised with 28. There were 5 people in class that day, and their ages were as follows (in seating order): 42, 25, 51, 35, and 41. I don’t mean to sound overly privileged but it never fails to amaze and confound me that these women have lived for so many years, raised children, worked at jobs, led meaningfully busy lives, etc., without being able to read or write. It’s really impossible for me to imagine it.

It’s not uncommon for women to bring their children to class, maybe because our class is pretty informal – it’s just me writing on paper taped to a wall in my counterpart’s chicken-strewn courtyard. Or maybe because the concept of childcare is less liberal than in the West (i.e., take your own kid everywhere) - in all but the most professional settings, women bring their young children to work until they're old enough to roam the streets alone (around 4 or 5 years old). Dave and I once attended a session of a state-sponsored literacy program where the teacher breastfed at least three times without stopping her lecture. One of Dave’s English club students last summer had to bring her baby to class a few times, and Dave admitted it was incredibly disruptive, as the mother had to attend to her baby throughout the class and all of the other students wanted to take a turn holding the baby.

Let’s play a matching game that’s both fun and helps me to share some cultural norms of my host organization. Match the age of the woman to the hint below!

The ages are 25, 35, 41, 42, & 51

-Which woman attended a madrassa as a young girl, which enables her to read, write and speak Arabic but not French?

-Which woman brought the youngest child (

As mentioned in an earlier post, Dave and I went to Ghana for a conference and a few days of vacation. Ghana itself is a fantastic country and I would recommend all of you visit it, if you haven’t already. Because we went primarily for the conference and not a vacation, we only nipped at the surface of all that Ghana has to offer. I’ll take you through quickly.

We started off in Accra, the capital, where our conference was held. We lucked out by having the conference in Osu, a very vibrant commercial neighborhood filled with lots of restaurants, bars, supermarkets and even a Pierre Cardin store! We ate at some great restaurants (Indian – Haveli, sushi /Japanese – Monsoon, Vietnamese – Chez Lien, Fried chicken – Papaye, Lebanese – Venus, Italian – Mamma Mia, Irish – Ryan’s, Mexican – Champs, breakfast pastries – Frankie’s). Not to mention all the terrific Ghanaian street food that we also enjoyed, like Jollof rice and plantain chips. We attempted to get Korean barbeque but it was closed both times we went. It’s true that we didn’t hit any museums or guided tours, but we still felt like we got to know Accra pretty well. Foodies like us don’t really need much besides… you guessed it, food! We were so preoccupied with food that we didn’t take any pictures. You’re not really missing out on much. Can you picture a densely populated urban area? OK, that’s Accra.

The traffic in Accra is epic. Every other car is a taxi, which was wonderful for getting across the city. I stepped out of the hotel and was able to get door to door service; in Ouaga, one has to walk to designated taxi pick-up points, which usually adds 10 – 15 min to any trip downtown. Traffic was normally backed up at all times in the day, and I noticed that most cars only had one person… like the US. Rarely did I see a motorcycle, which was interesting. Motos outnumber cars by a large margin, I’d guess about 5: 1, in Ouaga, and this more exaggerated in increasingly rural areas.

Dave and I also spent a few days at the beach. We stayed at the Axim Beach Resort, which was wonderfully serene and peaceful. The resort itself was meticulously maintained, with manicure lawns and pruned palm trees at every turn. The resort has a private beach, and the ocean was wonderfully salty and warm. There were two restaurants at the resort that were a bit overpriced but presented a better proposition than schlepping into town, which was quite a hike. We were there on Thanksgiving and I ate two fresh lobsters, which was a good compromise over turkey. Enjoy the photos that we actually remembered to take at Axim!

View from our porch

Another shot of the view from our porch

Dave maxin' on the porch

Yes, this is also a view from our porch (jealous yet?)

This is what we look like in front of the view from our porch.

Dave and I are waiting for lunch in this picture. He's trying to move away from the drinks because some people have said all we ever do in our pictures is go to restaurants and bars.

Dave hits the beach in biz casual clothing.

While this little guy admittedly looks delicious here, he was quite gross in real time.

That's me!

Me again!

Drunk on sunshine and white sand.

Those are my legs.

View from our beach chairs.

The resort used solar panels to heat the bathing water, which was totally awesome.

Sleepin?

While in Ghana, I was really struck by the number of signs everywhere. Every store had a sign. Every street had a stack of signs indicating businesses on that road. Every rotary had thousands of signs for businesses and agencies. Many stores name themselves after religious (mostly Christian) expressions, like “Innocent Blood hair salon” or “By His Grace chop bar.” At first I thought the signs were jumping out at me because of the religious themes, but then I realized it’s because of the dearth of signs in Burkina Faso. Rarely are business labeled, and usually the business function is indicated through pictures (buzz-clippers painted on the wall of a barber, a chicken on the wall of a butcher) rather than words. It made me wonder whether Ghana has a higher rate of literacy than Burkina’s dismally low rate (just above 21%) and if so, how and why?

Dave and I changed some US money at a bank and received our money all in 5 cedi bills, which is a lot!

I wanted to save you from this but I just had to mention how much waiting we had to do to get to Ghana and back. I’ll try to make this painless, but I need to say this in order to excise the frustration that’s still lingering from all of our waiting:

- (start time: 7 AM) 2 hours at the first bus station, then the bus company transferred us and two other passengers to another bus station

-3 hours at the next bus station, then the nearly packed bus drove to another bus station in Ouaga

-2 hours at the toll to leave Ouaga, as the bus had broken down

-Only 1 hour at the Ghanaian border, amazing

-30 minutes to fill up with gas/ pray at the gas station Mosque just after crossing into Ghana

-1 hour while were broken down on the side of the road

-Numerous 15 – 20 minute stops at countless roadblocks along the way

-1 hour when we reached Kumasi, as Dave and I had to change buses (time-check: 6 AM the next day)

-Almost 2 hours as we waiting for a tro-tro (shared taxi) to fill with passengers to get to Accra (arrival time in Accra: 12 PM)

- (start time: 11:30 AM) Leaving Accra to go to Axim (via Takoradi), we got to the bus station for a bus departing at noon. However, because that bus wasn’t full, they canceled it and we had to wait for the 2 PM bus, which left closer to 3 PM

-Arrival in Takoradi after 6 PM. We waited a little over an hour for the tro-tro to Axim to fill up. When we finally get to Axim, the tro-tro drops me and Dave off on the main road. We walk 2 km to the resort, in the dark (lame).

-When its time to leave Axim, checking out of the hotel takes almost an hour.

-Leaving Takoradi back to Accra, the bus is delayed almost an hour.

-Leaving Accra back to Burkina Faso, the bus leaves an hour and a half late (start time: 12:30 PM)

-The bus breaks down just outside of Tamale, still over 200 km from the Burkina border, around 2 AM. A replacement bus comes at 8 AM.

-We get to the Burkina border at 1 PM. We wait for the customs officers to finish their repos at 3 PM, glance at a few boxes under the bus, declare the fee, and finally we can leave.

-Dave and I finally get into Ouaga at 6 PM

My patience for waiting and lateness has grown infinitely since the day I decided to stop sweating the small stuff. Because in Burkina Faso, and I’m guessing also Ghana, time isn’t money. Efficiency isn’t the end goal. Embracing these concepts is my cultural olive branch.

Plus, I don’t mind waiting if it means that I can play on a private beach or eat exotic foods.

Friday, December 11 was Independence Day here in Burkina Faso, the 49th annual. Some interesting facts:

The actual day that independence from France was declared was in August, but August is prime cultivating time since it’s in the thick of the rainy season. Sources we spoke to said that people wouldn’t leave the fields to celebrate Independence Day if it were in August, so the powers that be found a proxy date in December somehow.

Our host dad was made to celebrate Bastille Day when he was in grade school, which I found completely shocking.

People celebrate by marching in parades all over the country. This year, the regional parade was held in our village. All week people had been “practicing” marching along the main road. One of our fellow PCVs from a neighboring village agreed to march in the parade with his association. He told me his friends wanted him to march with his arms extended, like Frankenstein (seriously).

Oh, and we saw a cute monkey at the parade.

My colleague Casey is managing a project here where needy schools and other institutions here in Burkina Faso can get computers cheaply from the US. To make a long story short, there was an unexpected cost associated with shipping. The amount that we’re short, $2,500, is how much we need to raise to get the computers. Casey has generously donated $1,000 from his readjustment allowance (note that our readjustment allowances are only $6,000) and Dave and I are also making a small contribution. Much like companies that buyback shares, I love that Casey is donating over 16% of his readjustment allowance from Peace Corps – now that’s putting your money where your mouth is!! I know that times are tough in this economy, but if tomorrow morning you know you’re going to buy a $6 latte, can you instead maybe contribute $5 to this cause by donating here? Increasing computer literacy is such a worthy cause!! Thanks and happy holidays!

Loyal readers are familiar with Jacqueline, our courtyard sheep whose incessant nighttime braying used to drive me bananas. Earlier this year she was blessed with a daughter, who I named Caroline. Caroline was born beautiful, with a sleek shiny coat of downy black and white fur. I remember when she, as a miniature sheep-ly wonder, took her first timid steps, not long after she was born. Her first days were filled with wobbly periods of standing, then collapsing on all fours.

Eventually she was deemed old enough to leave the courtyard under Jacqueline’s watchful eye. The kids in the courtyard were responsible for dragging Jacqueline out to the periphery of the soccer field where she would chew on grass and bleat loudly. Caroline dutifully followed, and walked in circles around her mother during the day, practicing her hops and bounds. Her adorable, carefree antics melted my heart.

When Dave and I returned from Ghana, we noticed that Jacqueline and Caroline weren’t tied in the courtyard. At first we thought that they were just spending time out by the soccer field. Then we realized that while we were away, Tabaski had occurred – although normally male sheep are sacrificed, so that didn’t seem to be relevant. We noticed that feed was still being put out in the usual spot in the courtyard and telltale sheep droppings were still present. Finally, Dave asked family members about Jacqueline’s disappearance. He was given the following information:

-Our host mother, ~58 years old: “Jacqueline was from the Sahel, so she wasn’t accustomed to the cold weather of our region. She caught malaria and died.”

-Our host nephew, 6 years old: “Jacqueline’s neck turned too much so she died.”

-Our other host nephew, also 6 years old: “Jacqueline caught a cold and died.”

-Our host cousin, 12 years old: “Jacqueline got strangled by a rope, caught malaria and died.”

-Our host brother, late 30’s: “Jacqueline ate a plastic bag and died.”

The real victim here, of course, is Caroline. I realized this when I finally saw her, while I was out running in the soccer field. I didn’t recognize her at first. Her sleek coat was now a matted, wild-looking shag rug. She was bigger and moved awkwardly. Seeing her wandering the periphery of the soccer field, alone, clumsy made me think about whether she, as a sheep, was traumatized by the early passing of her mother. When her mother was alive, the two were inseparable. If Caroline wandered too far away from her mother, it was as if she suddenly realized this and ran right back to Jacqueline, bleating the entire time. Even when Jacqueline was tied up in the pasture and Caroline unfettered, she never left Jacqueline’s side.

And now, much like Bambi, Caroline has to walk alone. It made me feel sad to see Caroline looking like a sheep’s version of a homeless schizophrenic, wandering around with a crazed look in her eyes. The family allows her to roam during the day freely, knowing that she’ll return to the courtyard where she was born, the only shelter she has ever known. They think she returns for the familiarity and free food and water. But I wonder if she’s looking for Jacqueline. Is a sheep capable of developing the same complex emotional bonds that humans cling to, and if so… is Caroline suffering?

I recently listened to a “This American Life” podcast where a hedgehog owner from Janesville, Wisconsin admitted that her hedgehog, after multiple surgeries to remove cancerous growths, is now on anti-psychotic medications. I want to believe that animals don’t have the capacity for the complicated emotional machinations that humans suffer through, but I think I want to believe that because I don’t know how I could help animals otherwise.

In case you can’t tell from the explosion of blog posts hitting your Google readers, it’s been a while since I last posted, and I’ve been trying to catch up this week in anticipation of a trip to a nearby big city, where I can use gobs of free internet at a regional Peace Corps bureau. The internet connection at both of the cyber cafes in our town have been down since August, which is frustrating because we built up quite a dependence on it during the year leading up to that point. The Peace Corps is about sacrifices, and I guess if my esteemed colleagues can spend 2+ years without electricity and getting water from a well, I can deal with traveling 75 minutes in a nice bus on paved road to an internet connection.

Dave and I had unfortunately been gone a lot since August. During the actual month of August, Dave had to spend a week in Ouaga with the President and Treasurer of his association at an accounting workshop, which comprised part of the terms of the ridiculously large grant he secured from US Congress’ African Development Foundation. The very next week, Dave and I helped as coaches/ lecturers at an Entrepreneurship Conference that I already blogged about.

We went back to site for two weeks, went to Kat’s site for a few days, returned to site for another two weeks, then left for our first US vacation where we were witness to cousin Cathy and Kevin’s long-awaited wedding and spent three weeks eating sushi and Starbucks and enjoying the wonderfully sumptuous meals prepared by our families and ubiquitous high-speed internet. We also went to a Sounds concert, which was definitely one of the best shows ever! Driving a car, going to a mall, taking public transportation, using an ATM – I savored every minute of these previously mundane tasks. How I would relish that type of “banality” today!

We returned to Burkina in early October, went back to site for a week and then headed back to the capital for mid-service training, where we officially became 2nd year volunteers. Yes indeed, it’s been over a year since we first stepped off the plane in the middle of the night, dazed but overtaken with curiosity about our impending lives in Burkina Faso. On the way up, we spent a few days visiting our friends Chris, Brekke and Aaron in Koudougou, the third largest city in Burkina Faso that features a marché that has received architectural accolades from the Aga Kahn foundation. Our mid-service conference was only supposed to last three days, but on the last day Dave was sideswiped by a truck while riding his bike down a busy street and sprained his ankle. His accident upstaged the Peace Corps Medical Officer’s proclamation that I’d been exposed to tuberculosis and now needed to start a 9-month prophylaxis treatment. We had to stay in Ouaga for two weeks until Dave’s ankle healed enough to get medical clearance to return to site. Ouaga is a carnival of cheeseburgers and air conditioning, and I really enjoy it in small doses. However, the fun quickly morphs into headaches and stress after a few days. Living at a hostel, despite its abundance of flush toilets and hot showers, gets tiresome. And while I loved being able to eat at Chinese, German, Lebanese, American, Italian restaurants, we burned through money very quickly (one meal exceeded our combined “wages” for a whole day). It’s also significantly hotter in the capital (10 - 15˚ F cooler) and the bulging population forces the city to have frequent brown-outs and water outages.

Needless to say, our trip back to site was a happy one. Unfortunately, the day after our arrival, Dave got a call informing him that he had to return to the capital in three days to attend a ceremony for the aforementioned Ridiculously Huge Grant that was to be presided over by the Prime Minister. Despite his internal fury, he returned to the capital with the President and Treasurer of his association for the ceremony, only to be told on arrival that the Prime Minister had the sniffles, thus precluding his attendance, thus cancelling the ceremony. A few days later he was back with me in Orodara, when we got word that we were invited to a conference in Ghana hosted by West Africa Trade Hub (part of USAID) to help them with a field study in analyzing the income multiplier effects resulting from increased exports out of West Africa. Getting Ghanaian visas, a 2 day process which can only be done in Ouaga, and to Ghana in time for the conference start (Busing to Ghana takes over 24 hrs), we had to leave site the next day. We stayed in Ghana for 12 days, returned to Ouaga for a meeting and then finally back to site in early December.

We’ve been back almost a week now, thank goodness, and we’re staying put until the holidays. I never thought I’d be so relieved to take a bucket bath or do my dishes out of buckets- the creature comforts of home, no matter where home is, can’t be replaced. Its funny, one of the aspects of private sector life that I was eager to leave behind when I joined the Peace Corps was business travel, but I guess I’m traveling more now than I ever did at my last job. Maybe that’s why Peace Corps is the toughest job I’ll ever love.

In early September we were invited to help our good friend Kat with her girls’ camp in a rural village near Banfora. Kat’s site is about 50+ km from our site so we decided to bike, after having heard from other PCVs like Colin and Sara how pretty the dirt path between Orodara and Banfora is. To prepare ourselves for the longest bike ride we’ve ever taken, we packed 5 liters of kool-aid and charged up my iPod. In retrospect, we probably should have brought the handy portable bike repair kit issued by the Peace Corps, but these things are only clear in hindsight.

The road itself was not well traveled so only a handful of cars passed us during our journey. We braved some fierce inclines and the threat of rain with small payoffs along the way, like Dave’s monkey sighting or gliding down a hill with the wind at your back. We passed many small villages nestled in picturesque vistas, waving children and donkey-powered carts and finally came upon Beregadougou, which loyal readers will recall is the village that Josh and I hiked 2 km from Amanda’s village to reach with hopes of cold beer and grilled pork. Kat had instructed us to get directions to her village once we got to good ol’ Berega, and the responses we got were along the lines of “take a right up there, then a left after that.” Some of the many direction-givers accompanied us part of the way; one led us through someone’s courtyard where we were surprised to be greeted by enormous turkeys grazing.

Despite our best efforts, Dave and I found ourselves in a maze of corn and sugarcane fields and relied on the kindness of passing strangers on motorcycles to prod us along towards Kat’s village. Now, the directions resembled this format: “Go up a little ways, and then take a right at the corn. You’ll continue down that way, pass three lefts, and then the next left is marked by a plaque. Don’t take that left, but bear right at the fork in the road after that. Then pass two lefts and a right, and take a left after that. Follow the cornfield for about 5 km. Then you’ll be there when you see a sign.” While desperately trying to faithfully follow instructions, I started mini-panicking about getting lost in the labyrinthine sugarcane fields at night and being forced to camp amongst lizards and field mice.

When I had nearly lost hope as the sun dipped below the Sindou Peaks, I saw a figure with pale arms biking towards us. It was Kat! She had ridden out to find us, which was fortuitous because I’m sure I would have been building my shelter out of leaves within the hour. We followed her back to her village, which is easily the prettiest PCV site in all of Burkina Faso. Although her site is renowned for being home to the famous waterfalls of Banfora, I was particularly struck by the intricate framework of canals and rice paddies weaving through her village. Kat explained that in the 1970’s, a group of Chinese volunteers came to her village and constructed the canals and rice paddies, since her village was unique in having a consistent water source (i.e., the waterfalls). They labored prodigiously for 15 years, then left. The villagers still cultivate rice to this day, and Kat actually lives in the house that the Chinese used to inhabit.

One of my favorite parts of visiting PCVs who live in decidedly rural areas is how villagers treat them like Big (Wo)Man on Campus. Inevitably, as we rode through the village towards Kat’s house, Kat was bombarded by greetings in Karaboro, the village’s local language. While I don’t mean to seem insensitive, it sounded like she kept saying “boogem, boogem boogem.” I’m sure that’s probably what they think American English sounds like too. Kat gave wonderful Homecoming Princess waves to her adoring crowds, young and old alike, and we meekly followed, cowed by the multitude of her ravenous fans. She introduced us to the mayor, who gave us a toothless wide grin and vigorous handshake, and to the village boutique-operator, Karim, who had earlier, in anticipation of our arrival, given her a gift of two sodas (for me + Kat) and a warm can of beer (for Dave).

After the informal meet-and-greet, we soldiered on to Kat’s house. I didn’t know what to expect; I remember when we were all first deployed to our sites, hers was the one that was reputedly infested with bats and crumbling infrastructure. She had, however, done enough remodeling to make Bob Villa proud, which we could see once we arrived. Kat’s house was beautiful! It was in the middle of a field with palm trees, and quietly sat among chirping birds and ambitious corn stalks. I brimmed over with jealousy upon parking my bike in her garage (actually an abandoned room) and entered her home. Her house with its high ceilings and exposed beams featured a spacious hallway that connected a living room/ kitchenette, bedroom with large bay window and indoor shower room with a vanity area repurposed from a sink.

My attention was suddenly diverted towards a plate of chocolate cookies that Kat had prepared for me and Dave. Normally I’m not into chocolate but the 50 km bike ride left me famished, and I easily gorged myself with several dozen cookies. Kat had made “too many” cookies and planned to share the leftovers with her neighbors, but unfortunately Dave and I took care of the surplus and left them out in the cold. That was the first of many alimentary delights that Kat prepared – she is truly one of the best chefs I’ve ever met and her culinary creativity knows no bounds. She even figured out how to make fresh spring rolls with homemade sweet and sour sauce, a meal I still remember fondly today.

While the nights were filled with spirited conversation and candlelight bucket baths (Kat’s site has no electricity or running water), we toiled during the day at Kat’s girls’ camp. Kat and two coaches from her village had participated in a workshop put on by a British NGO called Coaching for Hope where soccer coaches are taught how to infuse lessons about HIV / AIDS into soccer drills and training. The girls’ camp focused on teaching girls soccer skills and AIDS information in the afternoons and Kat led sessions on hygiene in the morning. Kat had previously led village workshops on hygiene with older women, and they told her how much they liked the sessions and asked her to teach their daughters, which is how she decided to do a girls’ camp. Dave’s and my contribution was to lead a session on nutrition and help with some icebreakers.

Over 50 girls attended the camp in the small cramped classroom of the school house (luckily, we were in the school building with a roof; the other school building doesn’t have one, unfortunately), but the girls were so attentive and well-behaved that the group never seemed unwieldy or rowdy. The morning sessions moved at a dynamic pace and the afternoon soccer sessions were quite a sight to behold. While soccer is undoubtedly the most popular sport in Burkina Faso, it’s rare to see females play. Seeing the multitude of girls running drills and playing together on the field without boys was really cool, and I saw inspiration in the eyes of some of the younger female onlookers.

In other Peace Corps countries, girls’ camps are called G.L.O.W., which stands for Girls Leading Our World. That appellation couldn’t be more apt in Kat’s small village, where the girls fiercely attacked the soccer ball, acted out skits where they assert themselves to save their lives against a deadly virus and learned about how small changes they affect in their daily lives could pay big dividends health-wise later. Building confidence while imparting valuable knowledge is where it begins; these girls becoming role models in their villages is where it takes flight.

In late August, Dave and I applied to be official volunteer coaches for APSIP, a 12 day workshop for University of Ouagadougou students interested in entrepreneurship. The participants were split into 6 groups of 5 – 7 people and asked to develop a business plan for an entrepreneurial idea. To help them, the workshop featured lectures on topics ranging from basic accounting to marketing to tax aspects. At the end of the 2 weeks, the students presented their elevator pitch to a jury panel. The group with the most highly rated business plan won certificates (for some reason, certificates are a really big deal here). In previous years, the winning group also received seed money to launch their idea, but unfortunately this year funding wasn’t available.

The US Embassy sponsors this workshop and normally participates, but given the Embassy’s transitional period they didn’t provide a physical presence this year. The Peace Corps felt strongly enough about this workshop that they provided lodging and per diem for 4 small enterprise development volunteers to help direct the workshop. Matthew and Chris, MBA, helped out the first week and Dave and I took over for the second week.

The workshop was comprised of communications (lectures) and small group work during which Dave and I would roam from group to group to provide individualized coaching. The APSIP participants were university-educated and spoke French with a sophistication rarely encountered in the province, which forced us to modify our approach and perspective. (At site, the populations I work with most frequently are illiterate women or high school students.) Dave and I also delivered our own communications; he presented on the topics of product life cycle and commercialization of new products while I discussed marketing and branding.

Saturday was the day of reckoning, the day that the students presented their elevator pitches to the jury panel. I served on the 3 member jury and voted on the proposals. Each idea was scored on a scale of 1-5 with multipliers for each category (innovation, feasibility, marketability and presentation). The groups presented and prepared complete business plans for the following ideas: An industrialized version of Soumbala (locust bean), a dried grain used to replace bouillon cubes in cooking. Normally produced artisanally (i.e., by hand), the group wanted to produce soumbala on a large scale and in different formats, such as powder and liquid. Currently soumbala is sold in balls of clumped beans by independent producers. Modernized pork husbandry. Pork is also normally raised artisanally (i.e., small-scale animal raisers keeping a few pigs at a time). This group wanted to build a warehouse for a large quantity of pigs and synchronize the breeding so that there would be a continuous stream of supply of pigs for slaughter. Although a majority of Burkinabé are Muslim, there’s a significant Christian population, and these people eat pork like its going out of style. The group argued that the current supply of pork is unreliable and insufficient. Modernized chicken husbandry. This group wanted to combine different “races” of chickens to create a super breed that was more resistant to disease and better tasting too. They planned to target hotels and restaurants as primary consumers. I wasn’t sure what kinds of chicken were superior to others, but I docked points for potential racism. Onion preservation. Because onions become scarce at certain times of the year, this group wanted to dry and preserve onions in order to provide the market with a continuous year-long supply. They also planned to gain customers by offering lower-priced onions during the scarce periods, when prices are normally elevated. Bissap tea bags. Bissap is a tea brewed from red flowers that is consumed regularly as a snack but in large quantities during holidays and festivals. Normally one purchases the dried flowers and brews them at home. This group wanted to process the bissap into tea sachets for single-serving brews. Their biggest obstacle would be convincing customers that the ready-to-serve bissap would be more desirable than purchasing soda pop. Moringa vitamin supplements. Moringa is a tree that thrives even in the harshest climates whose leaves are rich in nutrients and vitamins. This group wanted to harvest, dry and create power from the leaves and then package it into a pill as a vitamin supplement. This group planned to commercialize their product with parents and nurses. Who would you have voted for? The winner was…

….Wait for it…..

….ORAMO! (The name of the Moringa product, which was an amalgam of orale and moringa)

I was highly impressed with the caliber of ideas and the motivation of the students. Their dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit gives me hope for Burkina Faso’s economic future. All too often, people in developing countries reach the highest echelons of education only to emigrate to a developed country. While life may be more comfortable for them abroad, they have so much more to contribute to their home countries. Progress happens slowly and the pace can be frustrating, but it won’t happen at all if the brain drain continues. It made me happy to see the Burkinabé university students analyzing the local market and trying to innovate within cultural bounds. An emphasis on education helped many previously developing countries become economic powerhouses, but it only works when that knowledge is not exported out.

The USPS is really stepping up their marketing game, a fact I noticed today when I went to the Allston post office to mail a small package. The woman helping me gave me 76 different options for shipment (priority mail? delivery confirmation? insurance?) all of which I declined. The total came to $1.73. Before accepting my cash, she asked "Do you want to open a PO Box today?" While I appreciate her offer, it made me wonder if people ever open PO Boxes on a whim like that. Whoever does that must be ultra-sensitive to suggestion. If you are one of those people, let me know, as I also have some things to sell you.

My brain can only handle two languages at a time, English and another language. Today I saw my uncle and he said "your shoes look nice" in Korean. I replied "Merci," but mid-way through saying it I realized it was French, so it came out as "Meh-she," which roughly translates to "what time?" in Korean. Oh well.

Today I also watched the Simpsons on Hulu and have the following observations:

1. The writers are clinging to the edge of Relevance with their fingertips

2. Edna Krabappel sounds different - is it a new actor?

3. Homer talks slower than usual... old age?

4. Slow creep of "Family Guy" style zingers in the mix

5. Continuity issues - Milhouse has a blackberry at the start of the episode, then an iPhone later. What gives?

6. There was a joke about the movie "Back to School," which is as dated as my CFA teacher quoting "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" a couple years ago. Also Rodney Dangerfield's voice is clearly Duffman. What gives?

I have a lot of love and admiration for Liz Swenton right now. If you know her, you know why. Send positive energy her way. xoxo

PS - My and Dave's families are awesome. Thank you for making this such a comfortable and easy vacation.

As announced on many major news outlets earlier, this week Dave is away on a business trip to the capital, leaving me home alone, Macauley-Culkin-style. It feels weird not having him around. The house feels foreign and strange, yet it still offers all the comforts of home. Because I don’t have an office to show up to every day as I did in the States, I’m more acutely attuned to how alone I feel without him. There’s lots of silence in the house and I move around effortlessly without tripping over Dave (our house is a bit small). I sweep obsessively. There aren’t many dishes to do. I run the errands that Dave usually takes care of, like checking the post office box or buying the day’s vegetables at the marché.

All week I’ve been tested in trials and tribulations that would have normally been relegated to Dave. Some events weren’t too dramatic; they just sort of … sucked. I knocked over the fan, breaking a drinking glass, while I was trying to get my bike inside for the evening (Dave and I usually bring the bikes in together). I started a small kitchen fire that was quite scary for 3 minutes- it was an oil fire, so I doused the flames with powdered milk. Our courtyard family decided to clean out a shed, producing 5 dead mice, which the children had laid out in a row by size and were going crazy to fondle (the trial there was having to have to catch a glimpse). However, it was during the first two days that I waged an epic battle, a fight for the ages. It was so heroic that the History Channel may film a documentary on it. Brace yourself.

On the first night at approximately 9 PM, I was innocently sitting on the couch, reading a magazine and enjoying rap music from the mid 90s, when a cockroach had the nerve to start flying about and knocking up against my clean dishes. I was stunned by his gall; according to Wikipedia, they’re supposed to shy away from light. The nerve of that rude, non-rent-paying cockroach – how dare he act against the nature of his species! At the time I was more scared than offended by his actions, so my response was to promptly go to bed in the privacy and security of my bug tent. I am ashamed to admit that I left the light on in the living room all night because I was scared of the cockroach and I thought this might blind or kill him (don’t ask me what logic I used there).

In the morning, I got up early and prepared the house for fumigation. I sprayed the lethal bug spray in quantities large enough to keep a large sheep (don’t worry, Jacqueline was not hurt in the process) and then left the house for half an hour and bought some lovely tomatoes and yogurt. When I returned, I aired out the house and decided to chill for a bit on the couch. Out of nowhere, that darned cockroach decided to strut across the carpet, as if he owned the place! You can’t even imagine the furor that burned through my eyes and trigger finger. I grabbed the toxic spray again and bombarded him; only then did he decide to start freaking out. I chased him around the house, assaulting him with spray the whole time. Finally he climbed into our shower where I gave him 7 direct blasts to the face. Some might cry foul and claim that my force was excessive enough to make the LAPD blush; however, it was clear that the winner of this battle would lay claim to the house – I had to protect myself. And I didn’t want to host the damned thing Metamorphosis-style because I’m not Franz Kafka.

At last, he rolled over and stopped waving his limbs. I took that to mean that I’d won. I celebrated the end of the zero-sum game that resulted in my victory and his death; my bloodlust was quenched. I lifted up the drain cover and used a stick to shove his body down the drain. I think being in that close of contact with the roach was among the most traumatic parts of the whole battle (the stick was only 3 feet long).

I thought the hunting and killing of the cockroach, a true journey of personal growth for me, would have made me a bit bolder and ready to stare down any critter that dared show a wing or tentacle in my domain. However, I am disappointed to report that I am the same wuss that I ever was and literally afraid of my own shadow (it has made me jump quite a few times over the past week. I wish I was kidding…). I guess I won the battle, but not the war. Mission accomplished?

Do you recall the skits on the Dave Chappelle Show with Paul Mooney? Well, this is going to be totally different, in that I will share observations by local folks unfamiliar with American culture. This is the first installment in a continuing series.

Question 1: What does the sign say?

Dave is watching RAW (pro-wrestling) with various members of our host family. The patriarch sees a sign in the crowd and translates it for the others: “Batista est noir.” (The sign read, “Batista is back”)

Question 2: Who is that?

Dave gives a copy of an American newspaper from January 2009 to one of his colleagues (they want the newspapers for functional uses, like wrapping hot food). There are two pictures of Steve Jobs on the cover, showing him before the rapid weight loss and after. Dave’s colleague asks who it is and he explains that it’s the chef of a computer company and that he has lost weight due to illness. His colleague asks Dave to tell Steve Jobs that she wishes him “bonne reétablissement!” (“Get well soon!”)

Question 3: Who is that? pt 2

Dave again gives a copy of an American newspaper to a colleague. Inside the pages there’s a picture of Bruce Springsteen. His colleague asks if that is a musician. Surprised, Dave confirms the colleague’s conjecture and tells her he is a famous man. The colleague asks, “That’s a man?”

Question 4: Not really a question, as Dave points out

Dave is training a colleague on how to use a computer. They power up the laptop and the Windows welcome screen appears, with the word bienvenue. Dave’s colleague excitedly replies to the computer, “Merci!”

Question 5: Who do I resemble?

Coming home one day, one of my neighbors, a high school student who is also in my English club, stopped me on my bike saying, “I found someone who looks like you in the American magazine you gave me.” I inwardly sighed, thinking it was just going to be an Asian woman, and when she produced the magazine, it was… Kristi Yamaguchi! What a shocker. My neighbor then turned the page and said, “And he looks like tonton (“uncle”) David!” The picture was of Ben Affleck. Then, a few weeks later, the same neighbor approached Dave with another American magazine and said, “This man looks like you!” It was Matthew McConaghey.

It’s not uncommon for me to see a girl in her early teens who is in the late stages of a pregnancy, or to meet women my age and older who cannot read or write. It’s also fairly routine to hear about forced marriage or girls accepting gifts from older men in exchange for sexual favors. While these stories have all become ordinary, they still shock and upset me. I know I cannot change the behavior of predatory men or parents who don’t encourage their daughters to go to school, but I felt that not doing anything at all was in essence accepting these realities. One thing that I thought I could help affect was the behavior of the at-risk population, namely the young girls. Girls’ camps have long been undertaken by PCVs and I thought that it would be the perfect vehicle for me to try to instill the skills that these girls could “arm” themselves with against the risks that lay ahead of them.

The curriculum of the girls’ camp was based on Life Skills, a set of exercises designed by the Peace Corps to build and strengthen communication, decision-making and relationship skills in at-risk populations. The theory behind Life Skills is that the target audience usually already has all the knowledge about risks like STDs and unplanned pregnancy, having being taught in school, religious institutions, etc. However, these groups lack the communication and decision-making skills, self-esteem, etc. to utilize the information they already have. The theory is illustrated by girls standing atop a cliff of information trying to cross a sea of risks to another cliff that represents a healthy and positive life. The Life Skills they learn help them to build a bridge to the other side while avoiding the risks that await them.

With the schedule planned and having received a small grant from the Gender & Development committee and donations from the community, I set forth with choosing the participants. I originally intended to take 20 girls between the ages of 12 – 15, with half coming from my cashew group and the other half from Dave’s mango group. I ended up taking 22 girls aged 11 – 20, and sadly I actually had to turn some away. We worked on Life Skills, soap making and health topics Monday – Thursday from 8:30 – 4:30. Here’s a quick summary of each day:

Monday: Bridge Model, developing communication skills, identifying passive & aggressive behavior, delivering assertive messages, personal hygiene, liquid & hard soap making I

Tuesday: responding to peer pressure, understanding consequences, developing decision making skills, theatre best practices, nutrition, liquid & hard soap making II

Wednesday: unplanned pregnancy, delaying sex, crafting and practicing responses to peer pressure, healthy relationships, self-esteem, HIV/ AIDS modes of transmission, condom demonstration & negotiation

Thursday: short-term & long-term goal planning, setting objectives, positive role models, career paths

Friday: skit rehearsal, closing ceremony

On Friday, the final day, the girls rehearsed speeches and skits in preparation for the closing ceremony. A closing ceremony is a cultural practice here, whereby the workshop participants can celebrate the end of the training and show the fruit of their labor. The girls were very excited to perform in front of their parents and community. I was really proud of their public speaking skills at the ceremony. Earlier in the week, they could barely speak in front of the other participants. By the closing ceremony, they were all speaking confidently and loudly in front of the audience of family and strangers.

Execution of the girls camp, as you might imagine, was a lot of work. However, I was lucky to have the help of several other PCVs in the region; without them, I am sure the camp would not have gone as well as it did. Kat and Dan led the soap demonstrations, Kat led the theatre training, Sara led the hygiene session, Lori led the nutrition session, Colin led HIV/ AIDS and Addie led the career paths discussion. In addition to all this work, everyone, including Dave, acted in numerous skits, led many warm-up exercises, and facilitated countless other sessions as well. I was really happy to have their help and impressed by their professional comportment. The girls also really enjoyed getting to know them and really warmed up to them quickly.

It’s hard to gauge the success of workshops like this. If any of the participants end up avoiding unwanted pregnancies, peer pressure and HIV/ AIDS, it would be hard to credit the girls camp with a direct influence. However, I do think that the camp did help boost the confidence of the participants and familiarize them with concepts like communication and decision making skills, which are almost never touched on here. I’m not sure if they will for sure use a condom if they choose to have sex as teenagers, but I strongly feel they have a better chance of doing so now that they’ve seen a condom demonstration. I also believe that practicing the delivery of assertive messages makes it easier to do in real life. These were all skills that I received in school that I took for granted, but looking back I now realize how important they were. I hope the same happens for the girls from my camp.

Dave and I were invited to a wedding and thus introduced to the wedding customs of Burkina Faso. I think at least a few of the customs have been either influenced or appropriated from French culture. While I think this wedding would have been different out in the “bush,” it was still a sight to behold.

9 AM, Saturday morning, Dave and I arrived at City Hall and sat in a small-ish conference room with about 75 other guests. We could hear the music blaring from blocks away. The entryway to the room was lined with two rows of women wearing matching white t-shirts, baseball caps and jeans. For some reason, there are women dressed like this at every fancy celebration (for example, international women’s day and mango day ceremonies). The groom was seated at the center table with a witness (presumably his father, guessing from his age and looks) and soon after the bride. Her witness was already seated and appeared to the groom’s mother. Then the music ended and the mayor entered, wearing a fancy government sash. He verified their names, ages and birthplaces of the groom and bride and then set off on a long speech about the ground-rules of marriage from the perspective of the state and also culturally. The couple then signed the marriage license and exchanged rings. Before befitting the other with the ring, the groom and bride held up the rings for all guests to see. Then they stood and knocked heads three times (hard to visualize, but they face each other and touch the left sides of their foreheads, then right sides, then left again) and after head-knocking the groom snuck in a kiss on the lips of the bride (very taboo but everyone cheered!). Then the bride and groom left the room through the pathway of baseball-capped women, who threw confetti on the happy couple. Pictures were taken, and then everyone headed to the Catholic Church for the religious ceremony.

The participants at the church service included almost everyone from the City Hall ceremony (including Muslims) as well as congregants of the church and others from the neighborhood. A choir of about 30 people started coming down the aisle, all dressed in normal clothes (normal for West Africa anyway) and singing a song that was a cross between a church hymn and traditional African song. The bride and groom followed closely behind them and then they all sat the front. For the rest of the ceremony, the choir would stand and sing songs every 10 – 15 minutes or so. The priest said a few words at the outset and the bride did a reading from Corinthians at the pulpit. Then the priest gave a very, very long mass from the altar. Rings were shown to the audience and exchanged again. Instead of vows, the groom asked the bride, “Do you want to be my wife?” She replied, “Yes. And you, do you want to be my husband?” Thankfully he also agreed. Directly after they were presented as husband and wife, the priest baptized the couple’s 5 year old daughter, which took another 30 minutes. After more singing, the ceremony was finally over (total ceremony time: 1 hr 45 min). Then the groom and bride walked up and down the aisles of the church with the choir, singing and dancing, and people got out of the pews to join the dance procession.

The reception followed at a nearby hotel bar. Guests were seated in rows and there was a head table for the couple and their family. The meal was rice and meat inside a Chinese restaurant take-out box. Then there was an announcement about gifts, and everybody stood in a line to give wedding gifts, while someone announced the gift givers’ names on a PA system. Then the crowd dispersed and it was all over.

PS - Just found out that Wagz got married!!! So congratulations to him and Mrs. Wagz!!! Yay for love American and Danish style!

Dave and I had a lovely time in Pô, a mid-sized city near the Ghana frontier. So what led us to trek to a shady border town that requires an 8 hour bus trip each way?

We were enticed by the opportunity to help our good friend Dan with training workshops he had planned for a women’s association in his village. Over three days we helped Dan teach 60+ women about liquid soap, hard soap and mud stoves.

The participants were ecstatic about the soap and most were also psyched about the mud stoves. They were also so friendly and open, it was great to work with them.

We spent a few days there so we were afforded the opportunity to stay Chez Dan in his lovely bachelor pad.

His house offered the ultimate in swank accommodations (well, swank for the developing world anyway)-

ceiling fans, shower, firm guest mattress.

Dan also gave us a tour of the city and everywhere we went we heard his fans yelling “DANIEL! DANIEL! BONJOUR!”

We also enjoyed lovely Ghanian bread, which we ate in copious amounts.

This is what tô looks like; the casserole on the right contains one of Burkina Faso’s many delicious leaf sauces, sauce oseille (sorrel leaf sauce). Someone who is truly bien integré will scoop up some tô with one’s right hand, form it into a ball, dip it into the sauce and pop into one’s mouth. You can also lick your hand / fingers if the sauce is truly bonne. For the uninitiated, tô is a stiff porridge that tastes like unflavored gelatin. It is made from pounded millet or corn flour.

This is Jacqueline, our courtyard family’s sheep, and her daughter Caroline. The sheep came home unnamed and Dave asked what its name was, so the family named her Jacqueline (it should be said Jzah-keh-leen). Jacqueline one day had a baby, and I christened her Caroline. They are very cute and enjoy eating our vegetable scraps.

Dave with his English club. Doesn’t he appear scholarly and authoritative?

Dave and I spent some time at the garderie (essentially pre-school) and shared a bit of American culture with the eager children.

One adorable little boy was so excited by our talk that he fell asleep.

Can you tell which one is Dave? Those lovely ensembles are made from pagnes celebrating Burkina Faso – United States friendship.

Amidst the celebrations for the 4th of July, all of the Small Enterprise Development volunteers from our stage got together and held a “SED Conference,” where we each presented the projects and work we’ve pursued in our respective villages since March, when we were all together for Interim Service Training.

Remember my earlier post about the mystery of the gnawed avocado? Dave, in his infinite wisdom, was convinced it was a mouse and purchased a mouse trap (shudder) for CFA 400 ($0.80) from the local hardware store. He set it out with some peanut butter in the back room and I waited with my heart in my throat. Two days passed with no action. I suggested he move the trap to the front room, where our kitchen is, and he agreed. The first night, the peanut butter disappeared but the trap did not go off. I had definitely seen cockroaches before and I thought that perhaps it was them that ate the avocado and peanut butter. After all, the cockroach would be too light to set off the trap but could maybe eat peanut butter. Dave dutifully consulted wikipedia at the cyber cafe the next day and sure enough confirmed that cockroaches do eat human food.

The next night, Dave set out more peanut butter and the same thing occurred, food was gone but trap was still hinged and ready to spring.

I thought that was the end of it, and thought I could be brave and live with cockroaches. According to wikipedia, they shy away from light, and so that meant we could cohabitate without facing each other, which was cool with me. I abandoned plans to get a cat.

Last night, unbeknownst to me, Dave, the cunning engineer, spring-loaded the trap so that any light touch would set it off (he tested it with a piece of paper). This morning, he announced matter-of-factly, "We got a mouse." I nearly had a heart attack, and had to hide in the back room in the fetal position until he was able to get rid of the mouse in the field across the street. I'm not sure if the mouse comes in at night and leaves somehow after gnoshing, since there are no droppings in our house (is that TMI?). I can't even look at the box in which the mouse trap came without wanting to throw up.

So what is the point of this post? The point is that I am a total wuss, and I am so supremely grateful for Dave's manly will and ability to trap and rid our home of mice and other pests. Without him, I might not have made it this far in my peace corps service. Seriously. Dave has had to get rid of countless worms, lizards, spiders, centipedes, etc. and is so wonderfully magnanimous about it. So please leave lots of accolades for him in the comments.

PS - Thank you Mama Gene for the peanut butter, sorry that we gave some of it to the mice.

A bunch of volunteers met up in Banfora this past weekend to celebrate the independence of the greatest and most glorious country, the United States. After the big fête, I went to Takaledougou to help Amanda with her girls’ camp. It was a lot of fun and very informative for the following reasons:

First, Amanda’s village has no electricity or running water and it was interesting to experience that firsthand. I was surprised at how quickly I became used to it. It was also very romantic taking a bucket bath and cooking dinner by candlelight.

Secondly, Amanda’s village is really lush and pretty, brimming with green everywhere. There is a giant gorge at the edge, and across the gorge is a village with electricity. Josh, who was also helping with the camp, and I hiked 2km across the gorge to get a cold beer.

Lastly, Amanda’s campers were really adorable and spirited. It was also good to see how they reacted to some of the Life Skills exercises, since I have similar ones planned for my own camp. During one exercise that differentiated between idealist and realist images of women, the girls had some interesting takeaways. I asked them to each say one ideal attribute of women as opposed by society that was good and one that was actually an image destroyer. A selected sample of responses:

“Il ne faut pas voler des gens. Il faut être poli."

(You must not steal from people. You must be polite.)

"Il faut être le meilleure cuisinère. Il ne faut pas faire prostitution."

(You must be the best cook. You must not do prostitution.)

"Il faut être gentil. Il ne faut pas saluer les gens."

(You must be nice. You must not greet people. (This little girl didn’t really understand the exercise.))

A few months back, during an email exchange, a former colleague noted that it was interesting that I was teaching my women’s group to read and write in their own language, especially in light of my being less than fully conversant in this language. I’ll admit that when I originally envisioned joining the Peace Corps, I thought that my work would be more aligned with my finance background, which I felt made me relatively unique among prospective volunteers. In fact, my nontraditional profile was a major factor in applying to the Peace Corps; I reasoned that there are millions of kids like me with the same aptitude and training all vying for the financial brass ring (cushy VP job on the MD/partner track, stock options, 5 week vacation), so wouldn’t it be good for me to join the Peace Corps and diversify their volunteer pool, where I would be a little more distinctive than I was in finance and consequently add more value? I fantasized about taking a fledgling micro-enterprise by storm and building it up into a sophisticated multinational concern through collaborative work with my eager host organization, facilitated by my high level of fluency in French and 7 years of experience in the private sector. (Yes, unfortunately that is a representative sample of my fantasies; I’m boringly tame.)

The first nomination I received from the Peace Corps was to be a high school English teacher in West Africa, which I rejected. I felt that my unique skills would not be optimized by being a teacher, especially when there were business-related volunteer positions available, at least in theory. I reasoned that while I could certainly teach English, there were probably scores of other applicants who could also teach English, so I should focus my efforts on getting an assignment that took advantage of my particular background and training. Maybe I was being too obstinate, but I thought that if I was going to devote 2+ years of my life to living in the developing world while concurrently getting off the finance track, that I should at least be doing work about which I could be passionate. I was ecstatic when I got a second nomination to be a Small Enterprise Development volunteer and happily accepted.

Now, 6+ months into my service, I find myself working with a cashew processing organization where my main contribution is teaching the members, all female and adhering to conservative Muslim lifestyles, how to read and write in Jula, (a local language). At the outset it looked promising; they had requested a volunteer who could help with accounting and the President, my counterpart, was very dynamic. However, as I got to know my group better, I realized that truly getting to know them would be difficult- meetings were overly formal and less than informative. I had to balance unfaltering persistence with sensitivity so as to not annoy the group members in my quest to get them to open up. Little by little, I learned about the group; that they engaged in international trade and had respectable annual gross revenues; the cashew processing procedure; the interpersonal dynamics between the bureau (President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer) and the rest of the group members. I also learned that only two members of the group spoke French; the rest only spoke Jula, except for 2 members who attended a madrassa and could thus also speak and write in Arabic. Having been one of 3 volunteers in my 32 person stage whose incoming French skills were deemed “advanced,” it was a little heartbreaking to accept the fact that my French abilities really couldn’t help me in achieving success with my group.

I think with every venture I’ve undertaken, be it a new job or class or extracurricular activity, the excitement and rose-colored preconceptions that precede the new experience inevitably dissipate and take shape into something unexpected. I think this is also true for many people. Once we realize that what a venture truly is, rather than what we hoped it would be, we make decisions on how to cope with the reality as presented, and these decisions are an integral part of how we experience these new ventures. With my cashew processing group, it would have been natural for me to be disappointed with my inability to use my finance background and French skills, and when I first came to terms with this, truthfully I was a bit disappointed. However, I also decided that I could still add value, just not in the ways I had expected. While I am helping a little with their business issues, my primary activity with them is teaching them to read and write. Maybe this activity is something that I’m not unique in being able to do, but the point is that there’s a job to be done and I’m the person who will do it. Besides, at this point, whenever I try to work on business-related coaching, I can really only work with the President given her skills in French and leadership. Hopefully by teaching the other members to read and write in Jula, and later French, I will be able to instill confidence in them which will make them more active in managing the organization. I also feel the rapport with the group members growing with each class and I feel they trust me and open up a little more each day (we meet for 2 hours a day, 4 times a week). They don’t call me Madame anymore; they call me Tènè (my local name, which means Monday). My women are much more relaxed around me and even try to joke with me in Jula, even though I don’t understand most of what they’re saying. Maybe next year we’ll be at the point when I can infuse our lessons with basic economics and supply chain theory, but we’re not there yet, and I’m glad to have something to which I can look forward.

My other pitcher of lemonade is my summer enterprise club with high school students. At first there were 90 students interested in joining the two clubs that Dave and I were each going to manage. Eventually this whittled down to 50, then 30, and now Dave has 8 students who devotedly attend his classes and I have 6. The point of the summer enterprise club was to teach the kids about money management and entrepreneurship with the goal of them raising enough money to pay for their school fees in October. We’re lucky in that we live in a city; in the villages, the kids would be out cultivating from sun up to 9 PM and thus precluded from joining any club. The first couple times, I met with my group 1 hour per week and talked about marketing and income generating activities they could undertake. Then my students asked if we could increase to 3 meetings per week since they’re not doing anything else this summer, which I happily accepted. At the end of June, Dave and I combined our classes and taught them how to make liquid soap. (Soap is a very popular commodity in BF.) We finished the soap on a Friday; by Saturday, all of my students had already sold their entire stock. Liquid soap also has some of the fattest margins of all the proposed income generating activities (50%) so we’re really happy our students have taken to it. The kids are also interested in learning how to make hard soap, so we invited an expert from Banfora (fellow PCV Kat) to come down and show the kids. She has a hard soap recipe that garners a 33% profit margin, but I think the kids could make up for the smaller margin with bigger volumes (again, people really go crazy for soap here). I am also working with a small group of neighborhood kids on an English club, which is still more of a lemon than lemonade for me. The kids wanted to stay active during the summer so I couldn’t refuse their ambition. We also meet about 4 – 5 times per week for hour-long sessions. It keeps me busy and the kids appreciate it. Those are my regular activities. We also pursue some one-off activities, like helping out with girls camps put on by some other PCVs in the region, working on community infrastructure grant applications and the planning of our own girls camp. Additionally we have some projects on the back burner that we want to pursue in the next couple months. My Peace Corps service so far is nothing like I expected it would be, but it’s certainly shaping out to be a satisfying, thirst quenching experience.

Picture a baby, a white one, in the US. The parents are lovingly coddling the baby, while it slurps and babbles adorably. A black person approaches the baby, and the baby reacts by screaming in terror and clawing at its mother to get away from the stranger. In the US, we would recoil in horror at such a scene, label the baby ‘racist,’ and blame the parents for the baby’s reprehensible behavior. Now picture the scene in Burkina Faso, but reverse the races of the family and approaching stranger. The response to the baby’s reaction, by all participants, is laughter and howls of delight. Except that when that stranger is me, I am faking the laughter to save face, because I still can’t understand why the baby thinks it should be afraid of me.

As many of you know, I am an American of Korean descent. I have rarely experienced overt racism in America, probably because my generation is extremely concerned with being politically correct. My time in France was certainly more speckled (people saying things like “I have never seen a Japanese girl who could speak French”), but here in Burkina Faso it is the most pronounced. People frequently yell “Chinoise,” “Japonaise” or “Blanche” to me on the street. Although I don’t characterize myself as any of those, I’ve become used to hearing it. When in a conversation I will correct people and say that I am American, which doesn’t necessarily mean white, but I don’t respond to drive-by name-calling. Once, while visiting the grand marché in Bobo where I was repeatedly pummeled by racial epithets, my friend Brekke became increasingly irritated and annoyed by the harassment and asked me if it was a frequent occurrence. I told him that it happens so often that I don’t react anymore; he was so incensed that he couldn’t keep himself from reacting.

I try to keep an even-keeled reaction whenever I am profiled by my white skin or Asian face. Babies scream in terror at the sight of me, children incessantly call me out on the street, women will without warning grab and caress my hair, etc. Even the most good-natured and well-meaning people have gaffes that don’t mean much here but would be extremely awkward in the US. For example, a Japanese NGO came to visit an organization I work with, and unsurprisingly during the visit there was a lot of chatter in Japanese. A woman who I consider one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and spends a lot of time chastising kids for calling me and Dave tubabu (white), who has repeatedly identified me as American to other Burkinabé and urges her fellow countrymen to not see us differently just because of the color of our skin, asked me if I could understand what the Japanese NGO workers were saying. She knows that I am American, and that I am of Korean ancestry, but couldn’t help herself but to ask. It was a little cringe-worthy but I handled it gracefully.

In my opinion, the most prominent downfall of being a lighter skin color than the Burkinabé is price negotiation. Very rarely will I be offered the “real” price for an item, and I am genuinely shocked when the first price offered is not grossly inflated. You would think that, conversely, when vendors give the white price and not the right price that I wouldn’t be too upset… but I still am. Even 9+ months deep into living in Burkina Faso, I still get angry when people double or triple the price of an item just because I’m the one asking for it. I guess I can’t blame a vendor for trying to make the most money possible, but I feel that pricing differentiated by race is, well, racist. Just yesterday I tried to buy a new cooking pot and the sales assistant called the owner to ask the price, being sure to specify that a chinois muso (“Chinese woman”) wanted to buy it. The price he offered was predictably triple the actual price and I was so annoyed that he had to specify my race in inquiring about the price that I didn’t even bother to correct him about not being Chinese and just left.

It’s not all negative, however. Sometimes Dave and I are accorded privileges solely based on our whiter skin. Dave and I were once at a cell-phone store and joined the end of a 40 person line for customer service. Upon seeing us, the manager insisted we cut the line and we were served by the next available agent. Another time, Dave, Brandon and I crashed a high school cultural ceremony, where the organizers insisted we take seats near the VIPs instead of standing in the back with other crashers. However, these incidents make me even more uncomfortable than the negative ones. Maybe somehow I feel it’s more honorable to be treated like crap due to the color of one’s skin than to be regaled and benefit from it.

I also heard a story about a volunteer who became friends with the transport driver in her village. He knew her name was Rebecca (or whatever) and called her Rebecca to her face all the time. Once she looked at the passenger manifest for the bus and saw that he noted her as nasara (‘white’ in the Mooré language) and not Rebecca. She was really angry about it, but not totally surprised either. I think the main consequence of Burkinabé identifying us by appearance is that in doing so, they continually distinguish themselves from us. Whenever they characterize me by my appearance, what they’re really saying is “You are different than me, and that is the most important thing about you.” I know it’s unrealistic to think that I might someday blend in with the Burkinabé, but I really dislike how they keep drawing battle lines between me and them. We don’t share a culture, but we’re not totally disparate either. As JFK said, “we all breathe the same air.” An important part of success in the Peace Corps is integration within the community, but it’s a two-way street. I can speak Jula like a pro, wear the loudest African clothes this side of Mali and eat tô thrice daily, but if people refuse to see past my race its hard to convince them that we’re more similar than not. I’ll definitely keep trying, but it’s thus far been an uphill battle.

I am dying for some Tuna Helper (the brand with the smiley gloved hand). I will reimburse anyone who sends me a case. For real!

This morning, Dave found a scary-looking bite mark in an avocado that we left out on the counter overnight. Consequently, I think we have a scary critter living in our house. Dave searched the house with a flashlight but came up with nothing. I am trying to convince Dave that we should get a cat, even though we’re both really allergic.

Yesterday Dave and I went out to dinner al fresco with Leah, another PCV who lives in town, and beetles kept flying at my neck and waist and biting me. Earlier in the day an ant bit me on my heinie while I was sitting on a stoop.

Like any industry or other group of people pursuing similar exploits, the development clique traffics in distinctive trends, language and pastimes. And, like the new kid in school, my adjustment has been rough at times. I joined the freshman class of Grass Roots Development High School as a transfer student from Investment Advisory Academy, where overpowering market forces and modish capitalist ebullience infused the halls.

It’s hard for me to forget “my American past” because my experiences in the private sector helped to shape who I am and dually represent who I was prior to working. My parents instilled an entrepreneurial spirit in me from a very early age, and now that philosophy is a driving force in my type-A personality, work ethic and interpersonal skills. I never expected anyone to hand anything to me and was wary of anything that smelled of a “free lunch” (leftover sandwiches from client meetings notwithstanding).

Back to the present in West Africa, one cannot ignore the extent to which grant awards are an entrenched part of development culture. Grants are an accepted facet of development work that is more pervasive than iPhones or skinny jeans at a high school. It’s a difficult proposition to resist – developed countries are brimming with funds and developing countries are destitute in comparison. So why not shift some of that wealth to well-deserving causes in needy countries?

Because grants are not capacity-building or sustainable, that’s why. Voilà, the crux of my internal conflict about grants and their effect on recipients. Grant awards ram against my capitalist / free-market-force belief system. I truly believe in the discipline and motivation spurred by the interest and principal repayments of a loan and feel that some important lessons are lost when these go away. What incents a struggling co-op to improve its productivity and profit margins when they’re being financed without recourse? The burden of repaying a loan with interest is a powerful inducement to a business to prudently invest the loan principal and institute practices and changes that assure a good yield on that investment, especially given the cost of interest. To paraphrase Hemingway, you’re just laying out a sushi buffet when the fisherman could be learning to catch his own nigiri.

Still, I want to acclimate with the right crowd at Grass Roots Development High. I’ve shed my corporate wardrobe (though other PCV’s still say I look corporate at times, and that Dave dresses like a Young Republican), friend-ed the mavens on Facebook and dutifully followed protocol by getting into the grant game. Despite my misgivings, on behalf of my association I applied for and was awarded two grants by the US Embassy. The first grant is a donation of approximately $1,000 worth of pagnes celebrating US – Burkina Faso friendship, which the association will sell and then use the proceeds to purchase a buffer stock of cashew nuts. The second grant is to pay for a training session on achieving export quality nuts. Hopefully that training session will give the association the knowledge and skills to successfully apply for an ISO certification, which in turn would open up the very lucrative European and North American cashew markets.

Don’t get me wrong, I do recognize the value of these grants and am thankful that the US Embassy has the funds to promote women’s and micro-enterprise development within Burkina Faso. However, a part of me wonders how long it would have taken my association to build up funding for these two end-goals themselves and also if realization of these goals would be more meaningful if they were forced to fund them out of their own coffers. Yet, grants are an ingrained expectation here that can’t be erased suddenly, and I imagine that’s true for the rest of the developing world too. Infrastructure grants are one thing* but grants for a private sector enterprise are something else entirely. While I don’t think I would have been ostracized by the cool kids at Grass Roots Development High, I certainly would not have felt right by my association if I denied them the benefits of free money due to stubborn principle of my own unabashed righteousness. I’m here in Burkina Faso, sweating profusely and eating terrible food, because of my desire to help them, not to experiment with my own theories on development. If my being here was about me, I might as well transfer back to Investment Advisor Academy, or whatever’s left of it.

*Be on the look out for an exciting future blog post about classroom construction for which I am trying to secure financing!

Recently I led my first series of formations, teaching Dave’s women’s group how to build mud stoves. Mud stoves are an example of Objective 1.2 of the SED project plan for Burkina Faso, which is to train target population members in or improve their standard of living through the use of appropriate technology skills. The “technology” part of that goal is in the sense of the application of practical knowledge. The “appropriate” part is that the technology makes sense within the context of culture and resources. Mud stoves represent an improvement over the most widely accepted method of cooking, which is to place three rocks on the ground in a triangle and light a fire between the rocks, with the pot atop the rocks. Wood is fed to the fire between two of the rocks, but this method also allows fire to escape out of the other two sides of the triangle, thus wasting lots of heat and consequently lots of wood. The walls of the mud stoves insulate the heat and direct it exclusively towards the pot, which allows the operator to use less wood than the traditional stove. The advantages of using less wood are tri-fold: less money spent on wood, less time allocated to retrieving wood and environmental benefits (less deforestation).

During the first session of the formation, the women gathered 4 pails of dirt, 1 pail of hay and 1 pail of fertilizer. These were all mixed together with water and then left in a mud-like consistency in a pile covered with straw and a tarp for one week. During the second session of the formation one week later, the women sized three rocks and planted them in the ground according to the measurements of the pot they planned to use with this stove (unfortunately the mud stoves are not scalable). Then we formed the mud into logs and built a circular stove around the triangular rock foundation. We continually used the pot to measure the stove to make sure it would be properly insulated. Once satisfied with the construction, we smoothed the sides of the stove with water and covered the stove with straw to protect the stove while it dried and hardened, a process which takes about a week. Next, the women had to build a mud stove on their own with the remaining mud to ensure they understood the process. To my surprise they chose to build a huge stove for a pot with 3 times the capacity of the model we used for the first stove. They did a great job and proved themselves to be quick learners and expert masons.

The next day, the stoves had dried enough for us to cut the door on the stoves, which is where the wood is fed into the hearth. After the next 6 days, the stoves had dried completely and were ready for use. All told, 15 women and 1 man were trained in mud stove construction. I worked especially hard to prepare all three formation sessions in Jula, using a combination of a guide from an environmental agent in Bobo, an activity write-up from a SED volunteer from a few years ago, a French – Jula lexicon and a (limited) English – Jula glossary. I wanted to conduct the formation in Jula with this group of women because they spoke both Jula and French, which meant that we could revert to French if they couldn’t understand my Jula. Thankfully that scenario only happened a few times, but now armed with the corrections I can perform these formations with groups that do not speak French, which generally are the populations who can benefit most from appropriate technology.

Awni barra! (“Good work” in Jula)

Check out our guest blog post on communication, information dissemination and social networks in Burkina Faso at the March PR blog. I don’t want to exaggerate, but it’s pretty amazing.

The village of one of our closest PCV neighbors, Colin, recently experienced a ruinous fire. Because our courtyard dad is the mayor of his village, Kangala, we heard about it hours after it started. Kangala is about an hour’s drive from Orodara and has about 4,000 residents, all of the Senoufou ethnicity (except Colin). There had not been any rain in Kangala for quite some time, rendering very dry conditions. Lightening struck and started a fire that ultimately burned 52 houses and over 200 granaries (people here usually have small granaries in their courtyards where they store food for their family from one harvest to the next). Ultimately 468 people were affected by the fire. Fortunately, no one was injured. The fire started in the afternoon, when all of the adults were out in the fields cultivating and the village children were out climbing mango trees. The wind carried the fire from one neighborhood to the next. Putting out the fire was made more difficult because the village gets water from pumps and wells, resulting in a great effort to get relatively paltry amounts.

Dave and I had the opportunity to visit Kangala to encourage Colin and the other residents of Kangala and take pictures. Colin has been busy helping to hoist tents sent by Action Sociale (social services arm of the government) and clear rubble from the fire. We also visited with the prefet of the village, who could not stop glowing about how helpful Colin has been in the effort to help those affected by the fire. In fact, most of the people we visited with lauded his efforts to help, such as helping villagers to transport water during the fire and cleaning up after. Naturally Colin was very humble about the whole affair. I was very struck by this sentiment that he shared with us: “When the fire first broke out, I grabbed a bag with things from my house that I thought were important [passport, camera, money, etc]. Then I saw all these people in their courtyards throwing water on their granaries.”

Almost of the homes, granaries and animal shelters are built from mud bricks with thatch roofs of straw. The fire spread via trees and roofs, also burning the contents within the structures. The consequences of the fire are serious. First, food stocks intended to last until September (the harvest season) and personal possessions (including cash, since banks are not used) were burned in seconds. Secondly, the season for straw ended in April, so very little straw is available to rebuild roofs, and that which is available is very expensive. Normally people repair straw roofs in March and April, when straw is plentiful, and then cultivate in the fields from sunrise to late night daily from May to September. As you might have inferred, those who had straw roofs burn probably also had their cash savings burn too.

The government and various aid organizations have been sending tents, food supplies, personal effects and cash. I’m not sure what else needs to be done at this juncture. The scene when we visited, 5 days after the fire, was calm.

Flames leapt from the house on the right into the open vents of the windows of the cement house on the right, burning all of the contents in the home.

These yellow tents are the FEMA trailers of Kangala – people whose houses burned now sleep in those tents.

The foreground shows a porcerie (pig pen) that was burned, also unfortunately killing all of the pigs inside. Those who raise animals for a living store the bulk of their personal wealth in animals.Granaries are the circular structures.

Health PCV Colin and his counterpart, Siaka.

Our courtyard dad’s extended family.

I would be honored if you would come over to our home today to see how we are… Somewhere in one of the PC manuals, it was written that a PCV’s mother encapsulated her daughter’s dwelling as such: “It looked like she lived in a gas station.” Every PCV home is unique but ours is probably more gas-station-like than most. In this country where mud huts with leaky straw roofs abound, I am wildly happy about that.

Come on through the courtyard to our porch! Watch out for that unripe mango in the top right corner of the photo. It is attached to a lovely mango tree that unfortunately attracts hordes of mosquitoes and bats at night.

This is our lovely porch where we park our bikes during the day. Straight ahead is our bedroom window. Come on in, the door’s open!

Here’s Dave, screening entrants through the screen door. Tell him you’re with me and he won’t hassle you.

Now we’re in the foyer of our manse. The kitchen is to your right. But where’s the water filter?

Oh, there’s Dave with the water filter – he’s just refilling it so we can have parasite- and amoeba- free water to enjoy.

Here’s a view of the kitchen, easily the hottest area of the house when the stove is on, at which point we rename the area “Clinton.” This is also the laundry washing station and utility closet.

The long view of the kitchen features the prep station / dish drying rack in the foreground. Let’s take a look at what’s on the prep station to see what we’re having for dinner tonight.

It looks like we’re having a vegetable pasta casserole with mangoes for dessert.

Look at those glorious fruits and vegetables! We bought all of those fruits and vegetables for 825 CFA, or $1.65.

We’re now leaving the kitchen and heading into the parlor.

This is the parlor where we entertain company and take in the evening journal with tea and warm scones. You can also see the computer upon which I compose the blog posts that you all love so much.

More parlor action. We just had our weekly bridge game with the Konatés in this room, so lovely.

Adjacent to the parlor are the entrances to the East and West Wings of our manse. This shot also shows one of our most prized possessions, an electric fan that runs approximately 22 hours / day. It is undoubtedly the hardest working member of the household.

As you can see, the entrance to the East Wing is next to the entrance to the house in the foyer. Hey, is that a tin roof? Let’s take a closer look.

Wow, what a tin roof! If you’re thinking it looks like it mercilessly traps heat in the house and is thunderously loud when it rains, then you are a genius!

We have entered the East Wing. On the right side of the annex, it looks woefully bare during the day.

However, at night it comes alive as a bike parking lot. (Everyone in Burkina brings bikes and motos inside the home at night to avoid theft. I like having a safe bike but I really dislike tracking dirt and donkey poop from the road inside my otherwise pristine home.)

The East Wing also serves as a laundry drying area, as evinced by lavish number of laundry lines (3). We probably only needed one line, but we couldn’t resist spoiling ourselves!!

You know you live a luxurious life when you own a king-size bug tent that you sleep in every night. What makes it a teeny bit less opulent is the fact that it precariously perches on a twin size mattress.

Here’s the bedroom window, which you saw from the outside earlier. This window is amazingly engineered in that it lets in absolutely no breeze, but does not filter any of the chicken / children squawking from the courtyard beginning around 5:30 AM.

Now let’s explore the West Wing of our lovely home. As you can see, many adventures and possibilities await!

Directly to the right of the entrance is the indoor shower room. Actually, since we don’t have running water it’s just a tiled, walled off corner with a floor drain which doubles as a hand-washing station. Can you guess which towel is Dave’s?

Around the corner from the shower room is our library. It proudly contains the second largest collection of English-language books in West Africa.

Here you can feast your eyes upon the window in our library, beneath which our laundry collection pile quietly awaits Thursday, laundry day. To the left you can catch a glimpse of our dressing area. We considered installing a California Closet, but ultimately decided it would be too bourgeois for our international development lifestyle.

Our dressing area is the place where we dress and tress for success to impress and outshine the rest. We use the mirror on the left to make sure we look gorgeous before stepping out of the house each day, and thank goodness it hasn’t failed us yet.

As you can see, the study is just a few paces from the dressing area. Isn’t our home a cozy one?

The last stop on our tour is the study, where we feverishly design trainings and workshops on appropriate technology and best business practices for the masses. Thanks for visiting our house today! Feel free to stop by anytime for a glass of warm, bleached water and … oh, you say you need to stop by the bathroom before heading out? Well, then just follow me outside…

Do you see the door on the right out there? That’s our latrine, padlocked for our exclusive usage.

We keep our very precious stock of toilet paper in the purple bucket. The storage of TP here is actually why we have the padlock – there’s a high street resale value for TP. The latrine is not completely unpleasant… during the day. At night there are lots of cockroaches crawling around and excelling at harassing the unlucky user.

Thanks for visiting us! Come back soon now, ya hear?

A couple months ago, everyone and their mother was posting notes on Facebook telling 25 random things about themselves. I won’t flatter myself by pretending you are interested in 25 factoids about me, but if you’re reading this blog I will venture that you are indeed interested in 25 things about Burkina Faso. Let’s compromise and make this a post about 25 things that have happened to or near me in Burkina Faso since the last time I posted. Dave and I recently spent the weekend in Bobo to escape Lô, an annual mask ritual in Orodara. I had to flee because women are not supposed to leave their courtyards while this festival is occurring. I’m still not clear on why women are shunned during this festival but it has something to do with not catching sight of male rites and masks. Some say that a woman would die if she saw the Lô. Our courtyard mom told us that in actuality, while this probably wouldn’t happen to me because I’m a foreigner (see Amanda’s post on the third gender), if I were to accidentally see part of the festivities, (they occur in secluded areas so I’d really have to seek it out), someone might try to poison me next time I was out drinking in public. So Dave and I thought we should err on the side of caution and consequently left town. If you think Lô sounds bad, you should be glad that you don’t live in Zogore like our fellow PCV Aaron. They have an annual Fête de Frapper, which, contrary to the name, does not sound like a party at all. During this fête, anyone who is not originally from the village of Zogore gets beaten. Boo for xenophobia!Okra is now in season and I have become acquainted with and seduced by the wonderful sauce gombo. I wish I could post a picture but somehow it was always gobbled up before I had the chance to pull out the camera. I tried to think of a description that doesn’t make it sound vomit-rocious, but the most honest way to depict it would be to admit that it’s totally slimey and a little fishy. But oh so delicious!Dave and I are starting Summer Enterprise Clubs with students from a nearby high school. After middle school, students must pay to attend school, and average fees for a year of high school amount to CFA 50,000 ($100, or about 25% of average income per capita). Our aim is to help and encourage these students to pursue small income generating activities over the summer to fund their schooling fees. We also want to teach them about personal financial management, small business management best practices, etc. About 89 students are interested so we are going to split into two groups whereby Dave will lead one club and I will lead the other. Do you guys remember the episode of Sex and the City when Charlotte tries to convert to Judaism but the rabbi keeps playing hard to get? Well, that’s sort of how I feel about trying to work with the local CSPS (Centre de Santé et Promotion Sociale, government-run health clinics). The head nurse has not responded to my myriad attempts to offer my services to weigh babies, help with vaccinations, etc. Its puzzling to me that anyone would turn down eager, enthusiastic, free labor. The APCD for Health volunteers recently stopped by Orodara and suggested I leapfrog the head nurse by going to the district medical head-honcho to request work assignments. I felt a little uncomfortable about this approach so ultimately I didn’t pursue it. I did get in touch with the Bureau de Charge de Vaccinations at the District Health Center and hopefully by the end of the month I will be helping out with the Polio vaccination campaign occurring throughout West Africa.Story #5 reminds me of a huh? factoid about Burkina – tuberculosis, polio, measles, all those diseases that children in developed countries get vaccinated against are still problematic in this region. It’s really a shame and quite sad. The vaccinations are available but for some reason not all of the children get reached, particularly those out in remote villages. LIt finally happened. I fell off a bike and landed face first in the dirt and ate sand. (Violet, stop laughing.) It happened during the aforementioned weekend in Bobo. I was riding a loaner-bike from the Bobo Peace Corps office whose frame was a bit large for someone of my stature. I was following too closely behind Dave and knocked against his tire, which caused me to lose my balance. I couldn’t hop off the bike because it was too gigantic, so I had to go down with the ship and eat dirt. I only had minor cuts and abrasions, but of course this happened on a busy street so everyone was all aghast at the delicate tubabu taking a tumble. Some very nice people came over to help. One guy even brought a water sachet over so I could clean the dirt out of my bloody chin and hands. I was really touched by that gesture because sachets of water cost money and people are really conscious about spending money, no matter how small the amount. Nary has a day gone by without me being asked if I am from China or Japan, or people calling me Chinese or Japanese. People bluntly ask “So, are you from China or Japan?” and I respond that I am from America to their shock and awe. This is actually something I have gotten accustomed to since my semester abroad in Paris way back in 2000, but its still pretty annoying to deal with all the time, especially when people refuse to accept that I am from America. Instead, they formulate this wacky theory that despite my “Asian eyes” I am actually white; thus they are satisfied that they have solved the conundrum of how I can look the way I do but be American. I am usually too taken aback to correct them. One of the other PCV’s is of Mexican descent and has experienced comparable situations. Apparently, most people in her region are not familiar with the concept of Hispanic people. She told me that people approach her, a bit apprehensive and confused, and ask, “Are you Chinese?” The Fishsticks episode of South Park is one of the funniest ever. You’re probably thinking, ‘what does that have to do with Burkina Faso?’ and what you don’t realize is that there are many closeted fish in the sea surrounding Burkina Faso. I will be holding a formation (training session) on making mud stoves with a group of women next Monday. Teaching appropriate technology to host country partners is one of the objectives of the SED project plan in Burkina Faso. Mud stoves are improved cooking stoves that use less wood and are thus more economical and better for the environment. Hopefully it will go well and I’ll be able to train more groups over the next couple weeks. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll even blog in detail about it.My hair is now an awkward length that is too short for ponytails but too long to not be bothersome in the extreme Sahelian heat. So secretly at night I have been wearing my hair in braided pigtails. As Wagz said to me in 9th grade, “You just don’t look your best in pigtails (wince).”Dave is really good at catching mosquitoes that invade our home and threaten my health and happiness. He can catch them single-handedly. He can also turn on his ninja-senses to detect when one is lurking nearby. He’s pretty amazing.I am officially addicted to lying on our couch in front of an oscillating fan. It’s not even a real couch, but a lit pico with a hunk of foam rubber on top covered with a bed sheet. I don’t want to tell you too much about laying on the couch, since it might unfavorably color your impressions of what I’m doing here in Burkina Faso.Some Peace Corps blogs that I read prior to arrival proclaimed that female PCV’s gain weight and male PCV’s lose weight during their service. I scoffed at this, wondering how anyone could substantially gain weight in a desert-like climate with little food diversity, or why gender would even matter. Even when the wife of the SED APCD, herself an RPCV from Niger, reiterated as much, I scoffed again. And now that scoffing has come back to bite me in the ever-blossoming derrière. Dave is getting really thin (Helmut Lang has been calling him to the catwalk for his summer collection) and I am…, well let’s just say that I’m glad I brought a lot of drawstring pants. I’ve been blessed, or cursed, to not be afflicted with many of the gastro-intestinal problems plaguing other volunteers, and consequently haven’t lost any weight that way either. We’re trying to team up with a Burkinabé NGO to help with health sensibilisations in satellite villages. It’s a little tricky because they often travel there by moto and PCV’s are generally not allowed on motos (some PCV’s have moto privileges, but Orodara is too big a city to justify such honors). Tomorrow they are going out to a village via car that they borrowed from the hospital (huh?) so hopefully it’ll work out. I’ll let you guys know… or will I?Inside the seed pods of the Neere tree, the seeds are encased in a chalky yellow spongy matter that is deliciously sweet! To partake of the natural goodness, open the seed pod and remove a portion of the spongy yellow stuff therein and pop it into your mouth – the yellow stuff will melt away and leave you with the neere seeds. These seeds are called soumbala and once crushed / ground with a mortar and pestle, sun dried and washed, they can be used to flavor rice, soups, etc. Here they are used as a natural alternative to Maggi cubes. Its mango season and all the kids are running around with large pole-vaulting sticks to knock mangos out of the trees and slurp away. I actually got beaned in the head one night walking back from the latrine by a low-hanging unripe mango from the tree outside our front door. (Violet, stop laughing.)One day I bought bread at the bakery and they didn’t have any bags into which I could put the baguette. This is pretty common (they usually wrap a small piece of brown paper around the middle of the bread as packaging) but this time I forgot the reusable shopping bag I usually tote (thanks Aunt Judy!), so I had to ride my bike home with the baguette flopping out of my hand. Children called out the following phrases to me during my ride home: “White one! White one! Some bread!” “A unit of bread!” “White one, I want bread!” “Come, let us eat the bread together!” It was the most bizarre taunting I have experienced yet.I’m desperate to ameliorate my abilities in Dioula. I’ve been studying but the progress is slow and unrelenting. Its very frustrating because speaking French is so natural for me, but not being able to speak Dioula keeps me separated from a population that actually needs me, IMHO. What’s really maddening is that the same word can have several different unrelated meanings, depending on the context. For example, the word “Kòò” could mean articles, to wash, back / behind, or river / pond. Kòkò means salt. “Kòrò” could mean old, big or next to. I am learning some good lessons about patience.Here’s a recipe that I’ve been using a lot recently from “Where There is No Microwave,” the Peace Corps-issued cookbook. Grill onions, garlic and sliced habanera peppers in a pan with oil. Boil spaghetti noodles. Once cooked, drain the noodles and leave some water just barely covering the top. Add onions, garlic, peppers and a couple heaping spoonfuls of peanut butter to the spaghetti pot. Mix and boil down. Eat with great joy.Another food-related tidbit. Did you know that I manually pick out tiny pebbles from rice every time I prepare it? Usually the bugs are easy to pick out because they float to the top of the water while I’m washing it. The dark rocks are easy to see against the white rice but difficult to grab with my clumsy fingers. It takes a bit of work and patience but it’s worth it to avoid breaking teeth later.Usually toddlers and young children are scared of me when they see me, but today I was able to play with a very cute 8 month old chubby baby for an extended period of time. A woman sitting near me told me that the baby wasn’t scared of me because she was too young to recognize my white skin (and apparently its inherent dangers).Going to Tunisia last month made us realize how West-African-ized our French is becoming. We confused a lot of people in Tunisia with our foreign colloquial expressions and mannerisms. For example, in Burkina, if a street vendor tries to hassle you to purchase something, one can say ça va, meaning “no thanks, I’m good.” A taxi driver was trying to lure us into his cab in Tunisia, so Dave told him ça va, to which the guy replied ça va très bien! Another example is that here in Burkina, it is pretty rude to not ask someone how they slept upon greeting them in the morning. At breakfast in Tunisia, Dave said good morning to the waiter and asked if he slept well, and the waiter responded with a bewildered look. My erstwhile Parisian accent is slipping away and becoming very Burkina-fied, which is good because now people here can understand me (unlike when I first arrived) but questionable for the long-term.More and more I find myself embracing a Buddhist-like calm in letting go of my desire for possessions. When I first arrived here, all I could think about was the material items I didn’t have but desperately needed. Now the thought of amassing more possessions is burdensome, especially when I consider the legwork in locating such items and the hassle of bargaining the price with the vendor. Whenever possible, I try to do without. I wonder if I will still feel this way when I return to the US and enter a Marc Jacobs storeWow, if you’ve made it this far, I’m proud of you! This was certainly one of the longest posts yet. I’ll end this post on a positive note with an inspirational quote from Dave: “What?”

David and I just enjoyed a lovely vacation in Tunisia and I’ve posted the pictures here. The weather was amazingly cool and moderate, the food was delectably flavorful and the sights were a marvel to behold. We really enjoyed Hammamet, Tunis and Carthage and would recommend it to all types of travelers – young, old, single, family, etc.

Thanks to our parents for their generous support.

The population of Burkina Faso is comprised of over 60 ethnic groups. In Ouahigouya, we lived with a Mossi host family, one of the largest ethnic groups (“Burkina” means “upright people” in Mooré, the language of the Mossi. In case you’re wondering, “Faso” means “land” in Dioula). Here in Orodara, our host mother is Mossi but our host dad is Siamou, an ethnic group heavily represented in this region. After the Siamou, the two other most populous ethnic groups in Orodara are the Senoufou and the Peuhl. The latter was at one point a nomadic group known for raising cattle to such an extent that if Peuhls are around, one can be assured that fresh milk is also available. I’ve found the Burkinabé to be prolific language speakers as it is not uncommon for someone to speak 3 or more languages. For example, our Orodara host mother speaks Mooré, Dioula, Siamou and French, and is attempting to learn English (“Lay-doo,” she calls out to us when we’re leaving for the day).

With all of these ethnic groups slowly melding into one identity, Burkinabé, high schools throughout the country annually host a “Jour Culturel” (Cultural Day) so students can show ethnic pride by dressing in the traditional clothing of their ancestors and share these institutions with their classmates and members of the community. The ministry of education created this day not only to impart traditions, but more importantly so that modern youth would remain conscious of their ancestral history. We were invited to take part in the celebrations at the local Diongolo Traore high school. Following are some photos we snapped of different ethnic groups within each class performing skits representative of their cultural heritage.

Siamou children posing for a photojournalist from a local newspaper (I stepped in at the right time).

Siamou skit about marriage. The “old grandfather” (second from the left) is Toussaint, one of the children from our courtyard. Check out those acting chops!

Siamou skit featuring hunters. The student on the right shook his fanny while walking to make the shell belt jingle. Also note how, in a stunning reversal from early 90’s policy, children are now *encouraged* to bring guns to school.

Peuhl skit. The girls carry calabashes filled with milk to represent Peuhls as both cattle herders and merchants. The Peuhl boys walk softly and carry a big stick.

Peuhl dancing. I love how the ornate dress of that ethnic group. If you can’t tell, the girl has cowrie shells in her hair and black makeup around her mouth.

Dave and I might stage our own cultural day where I will wear a hanbok and Hello Kitty backpack and he will don an Armani tux and hold a Kielbasa sausage.

Last week during our Interim Service Training in Bobo we ate real ice cream. That alone is pretty special given the paucity of frozen foods here in Burkina Faso, but what made the experience even more special was that I could see cows grazing in the backyard of the ice cream store. Now that's fresh!

Ed. Note – Martin Scorcese is an academy award winning director who has won critical and audience acclaim for classics such as “Raging Bull,” “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “The Departed.” He has kindly agreed to show previously unreleased clips of his newest masterpiece, “Scenes from an African Courtyard,” with readers of this blog. Enjoy!

PS - Mr. Scorcese filmed these scenes a while ago but I didn't have the bandwidth to post them until now. Patience RIP

Sorry about the slowdown in posting recently. Things have been picking up steam, we’re cooking with gas, firing on all cylinders, etc., which have precluded from the steady stream of posts to which you’ve all become accustomed.

I had a Volunteer Action Council (VAC) meeting up in Ouagadougou, the timing of which coincided with the FESPACO film festival, so Dave and I trudged up there for three days of films, friends and fancy food. The VAC meetings were only a minor portion of the days so we were able to hang out with our beloved fellow PCV’s and catch a few films as well. There were no criteria for the movies we saw, just that they were screening at a convenient time and location. The films I saw were “Behind the Rainbow” (documentary about post-Apartheid politics in South Africa), “Amour Sex & Bicyclette” (film + documentary about love in Burkina Faso), and “What Lola Wants” (Egyptian – American film about belly-dancing and women’s subordination in Egyptian society – the two topics were unrelated in the film’s plot). I also saw a series of short films, most of whose message or objective I didn’t really understand. The first short film, whose title had something to do with Kamil’s father died and committed suicide six times, was very artsy and incomprehensible to me. I loudly exclaimed after, “What was that all about?” and seconds later the director was at the front of the theater, thanking everyone for viewing his film, remarking how he had long wanted to get this film made, what a triumph it was to be screened at FESPACO, etc. Whoops. I hope he didn’t understand English. We also had a lovely dinner at Dan, the program director for Small Enterprise Development, and his wife Tanja’s house where Kat made delicious pizzas with a special secret Sardinian tomato sauce and played ping-pong, foosball and pop-a-shot basketball. I also got to hold Dan and Tanja’s wonderful daughter Leah for an absurdly long portion of the evening.

When we returned from Ouaga, our courtyard dad told us that our beloved courtyard puppy, Patience, had passed away. We were incredibly shocked by the news. He said that he came home one day and Patience was “gravement malade, en train de gigoter” and then he had to be put down. Our courtyard mom said that she tried to administer worm medication to no avail, so she believes he was poisoned. But who would poison a lovable, loyal pup like Patience? I am still reeling and totally nonplussed. He was an affectionate friend, fierce protector and unabashed playboy who should have lived to see his first birthday. Patience is and will be greatly missed.

International Women’s Day, March 8, is a national holiday here in Burkina Faso and each year special pagnes are designed to properly celebrate. Dave and I bought 3 pagnes and had matching outfits made. He will probably be mad at me for posting the picture, but what can he do, he’s stuck with me in Africa for the next couple years. Orodara was the regional host for Women’s Day this year and so a large ceremony was held in town that was attended by regional VIPs, including the governor. The irony of the ceremony was that most of the featured speakers were men. Dave followed the local Women’s Day custom by preparing lunch while I laid on the couch in front of the fan.

A few days thereafter, Dan the program director for Small Enterprise Development came by Orodara to check out our site and even slept over our house. Our counterparts hosted an exquisite and wide-ranging, all-inclusive dinner (supplanting the pesto and bowtie pasta he had brought for us to feast on) and we had short meetings with each association the next day. I feel really bad for him as it was unbearably hot the night he slept over, and our little house doesn’t get much of a breeze. (You know its really, really hot if I proclaim it to be hot, as I’ve been living in Africa for a little over 5 months now.) He was the consummate professional and did not complain. The night after he left, we were awoken by the sound of feral cats viciously fighting and making bloodthirsty killing sounds on our porch, so I’m glad he wasn’t around for that.

The day after, we had to prepare for visits from a US-government sponsored agency targeted toward African development, as Dave’s and my organizations are applying for grants from them. The application is quite extensive and requires a good amount of research and explanation. It is not unlike RFP’s that I coordinated at my previous job, but at least in those instances the information was available, somewhere within the bowels of the firm – the challenge there was to locate the gatekeeper of the information and gently prod it forth. In this instance, the information requested may not exist at all (in that it was not maintained throughout the years) or the request is American in nature and difficult to respond from a Burkinabé perspective. Despite the perceived difficulty, my organization is motivated and excited, which in turn makes me motivated and excited. The visit went well and we are looking forward to doing a deep-dive into the process. Working on the application with my group reminded me of a story that a professor from college used to tell about her former life as a bank loan officer for small businesses. She really enjoyed that job because fledgling entrepreneurs would come into her office and eagerly weave stories about their hopes and dreams into their business plans. I felt I could relate as I was working with my group to describe how they want to expand their business with the grant money, if awarded.

Next week we start Interim Service Training (IST), which entails 3 weeks of, you guessed it, training. The first week will actually be here in Orodara, and a nearby volunteer will join Dave and me in intensive Dioula classes, to be proctored by one of our most beloved staff members from stage. The next two weeks will be in Bobo and Ouaga for technical trainings, a workshop with our counterparts, and an NGO fair. Hopefully I will have some good stories and pictures for y’all thereafter.

Recently, one of the girls in our courtyard caught a glimpse of our laptop computer. I saw her face change upon seeing it, and my heart fell. Before we came to Burkina, the materials from the Peace Corps advised that while a computer was not necessary here, many volunteers found it helpful – and cautioned that “a computer is an enormous symbol of wealth in Burkina Faso; if you reveal that you own one, it will affect how people view you.”

Nearly everyone here already thinks that, by virtue of being American, we are wealthy. And it is somewhat true – by Burkina standards, we are relatively well-off. The Peace Corps pays us a healthy living wage and we don’t hunger for much. However, people here always assume that we have giant swimming pools of money back home and that American trees sprout silver dollars. It’s hard to continually convince people otherwise. I find myself getting quite defensive about money and it makes me very uncomfortable because I don’t like talking about money. It’s not as uncomfortable for Burkinabé because they always relegate themselves to saying “I don’t have the means for (insert conversation topic here).”

At times it’s hard to share my American culture with host country nationals (2nd goal of Peace Corps) without concomitantly drawing a contrast between our different financial situations. It seems like every aspect of American vs. Burkinabé culture that comes up in conversation centers around wealth disparity. “You have machines to wash clothes in America,” or “High school is free in America,” or “You have too many socks,” or “Is that an iPod? How much does that cost?” or “You owned a car in America.” It’s hard to explain that all of these things are considered normal in America without further bolstering their vision of an endlessly opulent “land of the free.”

Sometimes children on the street will randomly stop me and ask me to give them money. Today, a group of children yelled out to me, “Hey, white one! Give us a soccer ball!” (I was not carrying a ball). Occasionally the children in our courtyard will pat Dave’s pockets down, LAPD style, searching for candy or cookies (He has never carried candy nor cookies in his pockets).

It sounds weird but a lot of times I will lie about possessions or experiences I’ve had because I feel like there already so many barriers between myself and Burkinabé due to disproportionate financial situations. I want to appear more accessible and live at “their level.” I don’t know if that’s the best way to go about my two years here, but I find it more comfortable than the alternative. Other PCV’s have had similar experiences – for example, someone recently talked about how people in his village have only been to Ouagadougou (the fancy, modern capital of Burkina Faso) once in their lives or never, so his having gone in twice in the past month (for official Peace Corps meetings, mind you) shocks them beyond disbelief. I think he might tell them he has to go to a funeral or something the next time he goes (in a few weeks) to downplay the visits.

All of this has had me pondering whether the level of wealth the general population of a society enjoys is intertwined with their culture and/or identity, or if they can be separated. Clearly the perception of America here is one of infinitesimal prosperity, so is a poor American a countercultural one? Also, how would the Burkinabé culture change if there was a prominent middle class? Would people still eat tô all the time, which is cheap but nutritionally inferior to other starches, or would they trade up to more rice and pasta? Is America’s wealth the reason why literacy is so high compared to Burkina? Or is America wealthy because the literacy is so high?

The same girl who saw our laptop had earlier engaged me in a conversation about employment in the U.S. She said, matter of fact-ly, that there are plenty of jobs in America, and anyone who wants to work, can. She complained that here in Burkina there isn’t work to be had. I wanted to tell her my true thoughts, which is that America is a generally a meritocracy whereby people who work hard to develop marketable skills and close information gaps to find employers who are hiring have a reasonable chance of finding work. However I didn’t want her to infer that Burkinabé don’t have marketable skills, because I didn’t mean that at all, but as I said earlier, its hard to present American culture without concurrently implying a contrast to their culture. So I just changed the subject (employing classic indirect communication skills) and asked her what type of work she wanted to do. She said that for a time she was making good money braiding hair, but her husband did not “accept” it, so she had to stop.

After that conversation, I could not stop thinking about how her husband’s inability to “accept” her efforts to generate income affected her family, in terms of having money to feed, clothe and educate the children, her confidence and independence, etc. Could a dual income household helped to pull them into the middle class? It is relatively common for women to have to ask their husband’s permission to do most things, even to give birth at a state-funded clinic (in lieu of at home). Clearly this is a cultural aspect of family dynamics, but is this also tied into the culture’s prosperity, albeit tenuously?

Any sociology majors out there want to opine in the comments?

Dave’s women’s association, Wili Ka Tama, was one of two groups chosen to be graced with a visit from the governor of the Haut-Bassins region. There are only 13 regions in Burkina Faso, putting the governor pretty high up on the hierarchical ladder. After week-long cleaning and preparations, the day was finally nigh. We essentially waited all day and then suddenly the governor rolled up in a convoy of six white all-terrain vehicles and an entourage 15 deep, not to mention 6 photo & video journalists who covered the event.

Dave’s women’s group posing behind a display table of a sampling of their products. Can you find us in the picture? To the right is Dave’s counterpart’s husband, and to the right of him is an “eccentric” fellow who drifts by and hangs out with the ladies while they work. He drifted into the picture. The woman wearing light blue on the right is a 73 year old who always tries to steal Dave away from me. She is getting closer with each attempt.

The governor, in the blue jean shirt, checking out the display table and speaking with Pélagie, our courtyard “mom” and President of Wili Ka Tama. I think in this picture he was arranging to purchase some Fonio.

Dave takes a breather from the hustle and bustle of the governor’s entourage checking out the display table.

Wili Ka Tama’s workshop is located close to a soccer field, and the excitement of the governor’s visit attracted a small crowd.

Luckily, there was a super-daunting gendarme with huge machine gun to menace the children and prevent them from overtaking the event.

The governor’s entourage kept the ladies busy with sales and marketing efforts while he toured the inside of the workshop.

And then, just as suddenly as they had come, they left, in a hurry, on to their next destination.

Orodara was one of the four sites in Burkina Faso that hosted a workshop to train host country national counterparts (4 / volunteer) on AIDS awareness and prevention techniques. On the last night of the 3 day workshop, Dave and I hosted a fun get-together to unveil our pad to the other volunteers from the region who participated in the workshop. We discovered that melted truffles + fried plantains = delicious, and that palm wine smells like eggs after a few hours. Amanda won the martyr award for frying all the plaintains.

Michael’s knee, Lori, Kat, Abby, Sara

Abby, Sara, Leah

Dave, Colin, Michael

Given the cryptic comment "Alvin Tostig is, in fact, Levon's father," I am more puzzled than ever. Are you Cecil Adams?

Readers, please share your guesses in the comments...

Thanks for making this an interactive blog!

(Ed. note - another blog from the hottest hunk in Burkina Faso, Dave!)

I arrived in Burkina Faso on October 15th, hair freshly cut, after my final visit to “Mr. Edward’s Barber Shop” on the corner of Harvard & Glenville. My hair had been in the hands of the owner, Richie, for just over eight years. Upon my departure, prices had just risen to $18.00. I am sure that those of you loyal to your barber or stylist understand that you gain a certain comfort level; expectations are in place and you pretty much know how your hair will turn out. I had not yet considered that someone else would be taking on this task in Burkina Faso.

As the holiday season approached, things were getting a bit mangy so I asked my host brother in Ouahigouya where he gets his haircut. He said he would take me one Tuesday after his finished school and I finished my training courses for the day. We ended up going on a Saturday afternoon. The family’s barber, was located in the grand marché of Ouahigouya. The marché itself is very large; think of a huge outdoor flea market or swap meet with vendors all trying to sell you their wares. The barber shop was a tiny stall tucked behind the bike parking lot on the outer rim of the marché. We sat down together, seventh in line.

My usual cut in the US was getting the sides and back shaved with a #3 attachment and a trim with scissors up top. As I was waiting, I was thinking about how I would convey my desired cut in French. Most people in Ouahigouya, especially students and business owners, speak French, but my host brother could help translate into Mooré, the local language of Ouahigouya, if need be. When I was finally in the barber’s chair, I was informed that the barber did not know how to cut white people’s hair with scissors and was skilled only in the use of electric clippers. The way you pick out your haircut is via a series of numbered photos on the wall. Most of these photos were of average people but there were other posters with severely sun-faded pictures of celebrities. For example, there was one called “NBA KUTS” with pictures of Michael Jordan’s head from every angle. You could also pick the style of a number of other NBA stars from the early 1990’s. An adjacent poster displayed styles, as modeled by Nelly, for any occasion. My options here were: “BAD BOY NELLY,” “SMOOTH NELLY,” “SOPHISTICATED NELLY,” and about five other Nelly iterations. The haircut in each Nelly photo was exactly the same, the only variation being his clothing for each situation.

I went with “#46” off the regular guys poster which was just a short to long fade. The barber used eight different attachments as he worked his way around, seemingly hair-by-hair. It was one of the longest haircuts I had ever received, but I appreciated the attention to detail and it came out looking exactly like Mr. #46. After the cut, the barber ripped off a piece of Styrofoam to wipe my neck and behind the ears, removing any leftover trimmings. The floor was littered with small pieces of foam. Now for the tense part of any commercial transaction here: price negotiation. I had asked my host brother the true price of haircut and he said he pays 300 CFA (equivalent to $0.60). When I asked the barber much the cut cost, he consulted with some of the other employees and came back with a price of 1000 CFA ($2.00). This is still $16.00 less my cut in the US, but doubling or tripling of the Burkinabé price is very typical bill for foreigners to receive here. My host brother intervened and the two began a discussion in Mooré that left both seeming annoyed with the other. The net result was a charge of 500 CFA, the extra 200 CFA above the true price being for a beard trim. I paid this without further objection. Still it was good to know the price range for when I would be out on my own. I now had a baseline.

Orodara…

A few weeks after our move to the permanent site it was time for another cut so I asked my new host brother, also aged 17, where he gets his haircut. He recommended a coiffure near the post office so I stopped there one morning. There was a woman seated in the barber’s chair and her baby was on her lap getting a cut. Another guy was waiting on the bench, next in line. He asked me what I was doing here as if I had a choice of services to select from. He then told me that the barber here does not have electricity so he would not be able to cut my hair. As I began to say that it was not a problem, the barber than chimed in to the same effect and said I would be better served going to another coiffure, just around the corner near the bus station,

There was no coiffure near the bus station. Not on the side of it, not in it, nor across the street. The bus station is right at the center of town at the major intersection so it would not be missed. I continued to ride down the hill, back toward our house, remembering another sign I had seen for a coiffure. I found it and entered, finding one guy in the chair just finishing up. Luckily I heard him pay, the barber asking for 200 CFA ($0.40). I now was prepared to pay a little more for the beard trim, but certainly not the 1000 CFA starting price given in Ouahigouya.

This barber used a tool I had never seen before. He had the attachments from electric clippers attached to scissor-like metal shears. As he cut away at my hair, he changed scissors rapidly to vary the length, all without electricity. He did not use electricity until he took clippers at the end to clean up my neckline and beard, reducing the beard to nothing more than a day-after shave’s worth of scruff. The electric razor was extremely sharp and dug into my neck, feeling like a cheese grater. I also ended up with some mid-1990’s long thin side burns. Then he shaved the point of hair at the center of my forehead, giving me a fuzzy shaved hair peninsula in the middle of nowhere. I think the intent here was to straighten my hairline, but I remain unsure. After getting Styrofoam-wiped, it was time to pay and he asked for 200 CFA. I left the coiffure with a pretty good Burkinabé haircut, finally having paid the Burkinabé price. With an extra 300 CFA (minimum?) in my pocket, I could spend an extra half hour at the cyber café, sharing this story with you.

Addie, Meredith & Brian swimming at Hotel Jackson. We were supposed to go see the waterfalls, but it was a 30 km bike ride roundtrip and so we’ll do that “next time.” Note that we are too poor to stay in the huts surrounding the pool, so we pay $4 to use the pool.

Sara, Kat, me and Dave chillin’ near Kat’s room at Hotel Canne à Sucre. Kat has not slept in days due to an infestation of bats in her home, but looks great anyway!

A meal at the one of two non-African restaurants in Banfora, a Japanese restaurant whose name escapes me.

Hanging out in the second of Brad’s two courtyards (secondary ed teachers seem to have the best houses among volunteers). Not pictured: bonfire, Brad’s tile floors, flush toilet, indoor shower, huge kitchen, etc.

Brunch at the second of the two non-African restaurants in Banfora, an American-style restaurant charmingly named McDonald’s.

With the help of my lovely assistant Dave, the winner of the raffle from the ”who are you?” post has been chosen...

However, Dave and I were so pleased with the bravery of those of you who decided to “out” yourselves as followers of this blog that we decided to reward each of you who identified yourself in the comments with a (modest) consolation prize. I need mailing contact information for Alvin Tostig, George, Mary, Jamie and Kat – email me at mylee2881 at yahoo dot com. Tim R and Wagz, let me know of an alternate mailing address if you don’t want me to send your prize to your work addresses (as I don’t have other mailing addresses for you). Please allow 3 – 5 weeks for delivery, which includes a buffer for our busy schedules and also for slow African mail delivery.

Oh, and I think there are more of you lurking out there (Denny? Violet?), so I might do another raffle in the near future, stay tuned.

While I am cognizant that Burkina Faso will probably not be the next Turks and Caicos, some of you expressed erstwhile interest in coming to visit Burkina Faso. Dave and I would love to have visitors and we even have a lit pico upon which you can sleep at our house. Orodara, the mango capital of Burkina Faso, also features the lovely Hotel le Prestige, a Western-style hotel that is easily one of the fanciest in the region but still would probably be a 2 star according to US standards.

First and foremost, here is a non-inclusive list of reasons to come to Burkina Faso:

-Is there even a slight possibility that you would ever again have someone to visit in Burkina Faso, especially anyone as lovable as me and Dave?

-Life here is very cheap by US standards, so while you might have to spend a bit more on a plane ticket, once you’re actually here you will spend very little money.

-There are great nature sites to see, such as the waterfalls and hippo lake of Banfora.

-The Burkinabé are renowned for their welcoming and friendly disposition.

-See wonders never before seen by most American eyes, such as butter and mayonnaise that don’t require refrigeration, pigs and goats wandering the streets and teapots not being used to serve tea (actual purpose to be revealed upon arrival).

Here is what you need to know in planning your trip:

-Before you leave, you will have to start taking Malaria prophylaxis. Volunteers here take two kinds, Mefloquin (weekly dosage) and Doxycycline (daily dosage). I have heard that Mefloquin is a bit more, shall we say, prophylactic.

-Your doctor will probably recommend that you get a whole other slew of shots / vaccinations to prepare for your visit here. We had to get Hep A, Hep B, rabies, inter alia.

-Travel health insurance is strongly recommended. If you have to get air-evacuated back to the US for a sudden illness or other medical emergency, the cost can go north of $25,000.

-One must fly through Paris to get to Ouagadougou. Air France is the only US Government approved airline that flies here. I’ve heard a lot of volunteers use Air Maroc sans problème, except that they only fly to New York and Montréal in North America.

-The bus trip from Ouaga to Orodara is approximately seven hours. Five hours of the trip is in an air-conditioned bus. Of course, if you came to visit we would retrieve you in Ouaga and escort you down to Orodara.

-There isn’t an abundance of “touristy” stuff to do here. Dave and I primarily spend our time working on sustainable development, planning lunch and dinner, reading and playing scrabble.

We seriously would love visitors! No stay too short or long. We’ll be sure to have plenty of fresh mangos, papayas and avocados on hand in anticipation of your arrival.

Sorry that there has been a precipitous decline in photos posted on the blog since we’ve been shipped out to our permanent site. During training it was no problem to take lots of goofy photos of us Americans hanging out, but here in Orodara I am trying to give off more of low-key impression. I feel that taking lots of photos would make me appear to be more of a tourist than a member of the community. Additionally, I’ve heard that many Burkinabé are a little sensitive about photo-taking, so one generally has to ask before doing so. I may try to discreetly take some photos soon, but don’t hold your breath.

Merci pour votre comprehension.

January 31 has come and gone, and thus I am eagerly waiting for my parents to mail me my W2’s so that I can file taxes for 2008. I am not a masochist, I just enjoy looking at how much money I made (or didn’t make) over the year and taking care of these things early. Looking at the tax tables, apparently I will not have to file taxes for the next two years of Peace Corps service, as the monthly accruals for the readjustment allowance will staunchly place me below the poverty line, and with the global markets tanking, capital gains and dividend income from my modest portfolio seem unlikely. The Peace Corps provided each volunteer with hard copies of 1040 forms, but since I live in a mid-sized city I’ll be filing via H&R Block online. The “toughest job I’ll ever love” is a little bit easier with the advent of modern globalization.

I’ve heard countless people over the years complain bitterly about how much they pay in taxes, though my experience might have been more intensified given the time I spent working in finance. While I agree that it is painful to part with money, I never considered the money earmarked for taxes to be mine anyway. I’m probably not in a high enough tax bracket to really feel the pinch, but I was always under the impression that the rich never paid much in taxes anyway (on a percentage basis).

I have not gotten a formal introduction to the Burkinabé tax system, but here are the informal clues I’ve gathered:

-The IRS-equivalent buildings are usually in great condition and emanate an aura of largesse and power.

-Burkinabé dislike using external accountants because they don’t want people to know exactly how much money they are making, including the government (I guess professional discretion doesn’t exist).

-Small businesses are assessed a flat tax, payable weekly. The amount is determined by a local government agent and has no correlation with the amount of revenue or profit actually earned.

-I believe there is an annual tax due from small businesses that bears some relationship to the income earned, but I’ve heard that the rate is excessively high because accounting records are incomplete at best (see bullet #2 above).

Generally, it seems that the American taxation system is more favorable to tax payers than that of Burkina Faso. Additionally, Americans can see the fruit of their tax dollars and feel the effects in their daily lives, and I’ll wager that many of you take these “fruits” for granted (as I once did). A smattering of examples of your tax dollars hard at work:

-Paved roads. In Burkina Faso, more roads are unpaved than paved. I can assure you that Six Flags cannot compare to riding in a ramshackle bus down a dirt road. Public transport on an unpaved road is way more turbulent, jarring and at times nerve-wracking.

-Mail. To receive mail, one must rent a post box at a post office (i.e., there is no mailman to deliver mail to your door). Most villages do not have post offices, thus requiring travel to a nearby city or regional capital to retrieve mail. Additionally, there is a fee for not picking up packages within one week. You can opt to have mail sent poste restante, but that also levies a fee.

-Clean water. The tap water here, if you’re lucky enough to have it, is polluted and loaded with yummy amoeba like giardia. Myriad Burkinabé have warned me not to drink water here because it is sale (dirty), and subsequently knocked back a big ol’ gobelet of untreated tap water. I’ve heard that people who live in village and collect water from a well (or pay to use the village pump) can actually see things floating in the water. Now, you’re probably thinking that, hey, water in America isn’t free. Well guess what, the Burkinabé also pay for their water too, dirty water at that, and it seems to be more expensive on a relative basis than in the US.

-Trash. I remember my family paid for trash pickup in the suburbs, but in the city Dave and I put our trash in a dumpster or on the sidewalk and once a week a magic truck would come by and whisk it away. Here, people just throw it anywhere (literally) or burn it. I have become used to seeing trash strewn everywhere, and occasionally wading through when walking.

-Police. At a recent training session, the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator confirmed that sometimes when one calls the police, they say they don’t have enough gas in the police car to drive over and investigate the scene of a crime.

-Public transportation. Non-existent. In major cities like Ouaga and Bobo, green-colored taxis take people to a limited number of destinations, and often stop to pick up other passengers along the way – the taxi rides are a flat fee (based on destination) and that way the drivers can maximize the profitability of each trip.

I admit that I am over-dramatizing the situation a bit in order to make my American readers feel more warm and fuzzy about paying taxes (if that’s possible). There are two sides to every coin, and I will say that:

-Lack of paved roads doesn’t deter the Burkinabé from being mobile in most cases, it just takes them a little longer to reach their destination.

-It is probably better for the environment to not have door-to-door mail delivery (no fossil fuels consumed by delivery trucks, less trees killed for envelopes). Also, the post office guy in Orodara, Thierry, is very nice – when he sees me or Dave out in town, he will yell to us that we have a package waiting at the post office.

-I’ve heard that women gathering at the water pump in village is a social scene (think Gossip Girl without blackberries, or your classic water cooler vista from an American office). Also probably better for the environment, since everyone is more conscious of the water they use and consequently waste less.

-With regard to trash, I can sincerely note that people here have less trash than Americans. I’m not referring to recycling – just that items are less “packaged” in general and the Burkinabé are loath to throw anything away that could be salvaged. Almost everything can be repaired or repurposed. Very little is wasted.

-The police here are generally very friendly, professional and nice. I don’t think in the US the chief of police would invite a foreigner to visit the station (maybe under duress) and shower them with praise and tell them that their presence enriches the community. I’m pretty sure that INS and the Office of Homeland Security don’t allow that scenario to occur too frequently.

-The lack of public transportation has actually worked out well for me, since I have no choice but to ride my bike everywhere, forcing me to exercise more in the past three months than I have in the past three years. Also, crammed Burkinabé taxis are better for the environment since more people ride in fewer cars (in theory).

In conclusion:

-Pay your American taxes with a grateful smile.

-Living in Burkina ain’t so bad, and I don’t even have to pay taxes while I’m here!

Just curious.... who is reading this blog? Identify yourself in the comments to be automatically entered into a raffle for a free prize from Africa...

Merci

PS - Your devoted attention flatters me!

In the lead-up to arriving in Burkina Faso, I remember many people asking me all about Burkina Faso and what life would be like there. After ascertaining where Burkina Faso was located, people frequently asked what food would be like. I always replied with a verbatim recitation of the description I had read in the welcome packet from the Peace Corps: “A Burkinabé specialty is tô, a paste made from millet flour that is served with delicious leaf sauces.” It was the type of situation where you think you have a vague semblance of an experience by having memorized peripheral details about it, but in actuality your eyes are not opened until undergoing the experience, and then your eyes can never be closed again.

Now, by way of background, when Dave and I were living in the US we rarely cooked for ourselves. For me, lunch in the financial district was a veritable cornucopia of options and rotated between a variety of lunch spots, such as the fancy salad bar, Chilean sandwich shop, sit-down sushi restaurant, Indian food stand, Korean buffet, Italian pasta place. Dinner was equally a rotary motion, a United Nations of take-out options, if you will: Lebanese, Korean, Thai, Italian(pasta and pizza being important distinctive factions), Japanese(sushi and shabu shabu also splintering off), Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Cambodian, Malaysian, Spanish tapas, Barbeque, New American, Burmese, Vietnamese , etc. (Allston, Massachusetts is pretty diverse in its food offerings.)

During the 10 week training in Ouahigouya we had breakfast and dinner prepared for us by our host families, and we were able to eat at a restaurant of our choosing for lunch. Now, some people love to cook for themselves and would have been devastated by this setup. Obviously, Dave and I were pretty used to having people prepare food for us and were pretty stoked about not having to worry about cooking for ourselves. Yet, something I failed to consider was that the fourth dimension of my culinary penchants (after convenience, cleanliness and cost) was predicated on choice. Burkinabé do not crave variety in food offerings, and their taste buds are very specific in their likes and dislikes. As I soon discovered, they generally only like to eat a starch (tô, rice, pasta) with sauce (tomato, peanut, and of course “delicious” leaf varieties). Finding a restaurant outside of this well-ingrained norm can be challenging and expensive… and essentially non-existent if you are attempting to do so in any location aside from a major city.

So now that Dave and I are at our permanent site with our own gas range and cantine stuffed with care package food (thank you all!) it has been a delight to cook for ourselves. Somehow, the opportunity to diversify food options outweighs the offensiveness of preparing food and doing dishes. As I previously mentioned, our living situation is a bit exceptional, as we have lots of fresh fruits and vegetables available on a daily basis in our city. However, our options are nevertheless a bit constrained because of seasonality- the produce in season right now are onions, tomatoes, zucchini, parsley, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage and green peppers for vegetables and oranges, watermelons and bananas for fruits. Occasionally we have seen okra, potatoes, carrots, avocados and mangos, but not on a regular basis. I realize now how miraculous American supermarkets are, as you can get pretty much any vegetable or fruit whenever you want and you’re never constrained by silly things like “seasonality.” If someone wants strawberries in the dead of winter, gosh darn it, Whole Foods will go all the way to Costa Rica to get them for you with such facility that only the exorbitant price will indicate the lengths they’ve gone to.

The produce here is a bit of a blessing and a curse. Because there are no industrial-sized farms here in Burkina, all of the vegetables and fruits are for the most part locally produced and consequently wonderfully fresh and crisp. Overpriced organic food in the US doesn’t come close to the taste. However, because fertilizer is expensive, I hate to admit this, but sometimes raw sewage is used in its place. Therefore, we have to bleach all of the produce for 15 minutes and then rinse with treated water to make them safe for consumption (and mentally palatable). Bleaching is a small price to pay for the, well, small price we pay - CFA 50, or 10¢, will buy 4 heads of lettuce, for example. 20¢ will augur 3 lbs of sweet potatoes. Onions are a bit more expensive, normally priced around $1 for 4 large purple onions, though I would usually use only ½ of an onion in any one meal I prepare for two people. The breakfast baguette Dave and I share costs 25¢. The $8 / day salary that we each receive goes a long way in the food department.

Despite that, cooking for ourselves has not been easy. I would liken the process to those word games where you have to spell as many words as you can from a limited combination of letters. The limited times when I was forced to cook in the US, despite the bountiful treasure trove of food at my disposal, I would invariably make the same thing: orechette with broccoli rabe. As you might imagine, I was a bit ill-prepared to cook here but somehow we are managing to get by. Believe it or not, the difficulty of cooking is greatly exacerbated when you have no refrigerator, microwave, or oven. Dave has been very gracious about my concoctions but at least we don’t go to bed hungry. In the meantime, if anyone wants to send us any burritos via DHL, we would be most grateful…

Dave and I recently got a slew of overdue care packages (thank you all!) and in one from my parents I was very happy to get a week’s worth of Wall Street Journals from mid-December. The newspapers were quite astonishing to read– I knew the financial crisis was bad, but I didn’t realize how sanguine and dramatic it had become. Here in Burkina we live in a bubble since we don’t have a TV and thus only get news snippets from rushed glances at Yahoo and NYT articles at the cyber café or in spurts via BBC on shortwave radio (when we can get the signal). I wish I could say my move out of the asset management business was planned with a prodigious amount of insight, but it was actually just coincidence, however lucky it might have been. The worst recession in my lifetime was during the George HW Bush years, so my mind is having a hard time wrapping around the current economic predicament, especially since my perspective has been reset to a more African one in recent months.

I feel fortunate to be inoculated from the economic carnage by virtue of being in a developing country. While life is hard here for local people, times aren’t much more difficult than usual; everything is pretty much the same, relatively speaking. There is some concern over food security and rising input prices, but for the most part life goes on as usual. Children continue to play barefoot in the streets and women hawk fried dough by the side of the road. As is commonly said in these parts, people get by. Dave and I are also getting by here; actually, our lifestyles are opulently flush with cash relative to most Burkinabé. We didn’t live overly extravagant lives in the US but all the same I think the economic slump would have put a noticeable crimp in our lifestyle. Some ex-colleagues just informed me of layoffs at my old company, about 10 – 20% globally. Yikes. As I wrote to a friend recently, one of the nalgenes I use here was a giveaway from work in early 2008, proudly celebrating $1 Billion in revenue in 2007 from our department alone. Oh the times, they are a-changin’!

Countless articles in the aforementioned WSJ’s indicated that many companies had to decide between layoffs or decreasing compensation across the ranks. Both are sticky situations. A “creative” solution at Credit Suisse was the decision to pay some bankers a substantial percentage of their 2008 compensation in the form of illiquid assets such as junk bonds, mortgage-backed securities and corporate loans. Ouch! My feelings are conflicted between compassion and indifference for the CS bankers. On the one hand, it is indeed painful when one is accustomed to receiving a certain amount of money and having a dramatic drop occur. Especially since these people have probably invested a great deal in personal development in order to reach the professional echelons they’ve achieved and probably worked as hard this year as in previous years, if not harder, but were walloped by untimely economic malaise. On the other hand, I am reminded of the South Park episode about the music industry’s battle against Napster-esque services. In explaining how musicians have suffered from illegal downloads, someone says something to the effect of “Britney Spears used to own a Gulfstream V jet, but because of illegal downloads, she can now only afford a Gulfstream IV.”

A few weeks after arriving in Burkina Faso, I read an editorial in a local newspaper about the effect of the global financial crisis on the country, or lack thereof. Some high-ranking European official was extolling Burkina’s luck in not having any exposure to complex derivative financial instruments and not having a developed enough stock market so as to be coupled with the global markets. The editor took umbrage at this backhanded compliment, asking why Burkina Faso should be excluded having a seat at the table of financial sophistication in the first place. Since reading that article I’ve been pondering whether Burkina is actually better off or if the old adage comes into play, “Be careful of what you wish for – you might actually get it.” Is it better that the Burkina economy is mostly uncorrelated to the global markets and thus saved from the carnage enveloping the developed world? Or would it have been better for them to be more developed in the first place, experienced a bit of the champagne and truffled “good life,” and to now be suffering under the yoke of coupled markets? And why is there no unique, satisfying answer to these questions?