I suppose it's been a while, hasn't it? My Dad pointed out a couple of days ago that the link in my most recent post no longer works, so I suppose it's time for an update. The link is no longer active because we have finally raised enough money for the Béléhédé library, which is, of course, wonderful news to pass along. Through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, GlobalGiving, individual donations, and a generous grant from Friends of Burkina Faso, we have secured enough funding to go ahead with the grand opening next month and ensure that the library has enough money in reserve to function for at least a couple of years while FAVL continues working to transfer financial responsibilities for its libraries to the local government. I couldn't be more thrilled that this project has finally come together and the final steps, including buying books for the library, should be a lot more fun than hitting people up for money, however necessary that has been to ensure the project's success. So, thank you to everyone who has donated, and rest assured that, for the foreseeable future, I won't be harassing you with any more fundraising requests.

Now for another important update. As many of you may be aware, there has been significant unrest in Burkina Faso over the past couple of months, which came to a head last weekend when various contingents of the presidential guard, army, and police, as well as students and merchants, mutinied and protested over certain grievances, which resulted in the dissolution of the government. Burkina has a parliamentary system, so dismissing his cabinet is a perfectly legitimate step for President Blaise Compaoré to take. He has named a new prime minister along with a couple of other cabinet positions over the course of the week and we are expecting the rest of his new appointments to be announced soon. As volunteers working here by invitation of the Burkinabè government, on behalf of the U.S. government, we are not supposed to air our personal views about a host country's politics, so I won't do that here. I just wanted to reassure any of you who may have been worried over the past week that I am fine and feel completely safe at the moment. Peace Corps has handled the situation remarkably well and, other than a few tense moments last weekend, I haven't been terribly worried about my personal safety. As I write this, both Ouagadougou and the rest of the country seem calm and I am hopeful that they will remain so.

I don't anticipate having to leave the country before my planned Close of Service date in late July, for which I am thankful. While I know I've groaned at times about not having enough work to do, these last three months promise to keep me very busy, what with the opening of the library and a vacation to Senegal next month, which I've been looking forward to for months. So... fingers crossed, the current political situation will be resolved and I can continue on as normal for my last three months of service. While I haven't been great about updating my personal blog over the past few months, I more frequently update the FAVL blog, so if you're interested in reading more about what I'm up to, check out FAVL's website: .

The Community Library project in Béléhédé is well under way. Alou has been overseeing renovations of the building, which are just about finished, and I'll be sending up money for paint, furniture, and the finishing touches next week. One of the FAVL activity and project coordinators will be training him at the end of the month to handle all of the duties of a librarian and we hope to be open within the next few months. While we have enough money to buy the first batch of books, I'm still hoping to raise another $2,000-$4,000 so the library can be as well-stocked as possible before I head back to the States this summer. To that end, I've put the project up on the Peace Corps website - if you'd like to donate, please visit the link below!

Béléhédé Community Library

I woke up grinning on January 1st at the thought that I'm going home this year. While I've wondered many times over the past year and a half whether time could possibly move any more sluggishly, I'm pretty content with its current pace. The holiday season was well-spent with friends here in Ouaga, down in Bobo-Dioulasso (Christmas), and up in Yako (New Year's Eve). I couldn't decide until the morning of the 24th whether I was going to spend Christmas here in Ouaga by myself or head down to Bobo to meet up with friends. Because Emilie's and my house here in the capital has really come to feel like home, I was tempted to open the last window of my advent calendar in bed Christmas Eve and read myself to sleep by candlelight. In the end, however, I decided that even if I couldn't spend the day with family I should probably spend it with friends and not alone. So, I managed to get one of the last bus tickets available and headed South that afternoon to meet up with a group of about 10 other volunteers in Burkina's second-largest city. I knew it was the right decision as soon as I showed up at the apartment the other PCV's had rented for the occasion, as I arrived just in time for stocking-hanging, Christmas carols by candlelight, and stories of favorite Christmas memories.

For the first time in memory, I was the last to wake up Christmas morning and coffee, cinnamon buns, and scrambled eggs were already being served. We opened presents secret Santa style and watched Love Actually. The rest of the day was spent talking to family on the phone, preparing a Christmas feast and just hanging out in good company. We capped the night by wandering over to Bobo's attempt at a public Christmas tree lighting, which was more of a giant, bizarre abstract light sculpture which attracted a strange crowd of characters (not including us).

I stayed in Bobo for a couple of extra days after Christmas in order to attend the wedding of another volunteer's friend, whom I'd met on another visit down South. Weddings here generally last for several days, so we chose an evening to join in the celebrations and showed up not quite knowing what to expect. What we walked into was a crowd of 200-300 women, all circled around Meduse, the bride. They were taking turns entering the circle and dancing up to Meduse to present a gift, one by one. Rachel and I hoped we would be exempt from the dancing since we were Nasara (and I was the only man), but no luck - we were called upon and awkwardly took our turn center stage, dancing to the deafening howl of hundreds of highly amused Burkinabè women. Special times....

After a few days back in Ouaga, I headed up to celebrate New Year's Eve with another group of friends in a town about an hour and a half north of the capital. Not a terribly eventful celebration, but fun nonetheless. There wasn't much to do in town, so we hung out at the Red Cross drinking Brakina, one of the local beers. Apparently the only service the Red Cross there offered was from the bar. We went out to a nice dinner at a restaurant with tables strewn among a garden, hedges and gazebos. The highlight of the night by far was dancing with a few children in the gardens. My partner, a toddler of about 3, fell asleep in my arms as we glided around a gazebo. She tired me out sufficiently that I fell asleep at my friend's house well before the proverbial ball dropped.

I'm back in Ouaga now, settling back into something of a routine. We have a guest from the States in town, a professor from the University of San Francisco who will hopefully be working with Reading West Africa and FAVL this Fall. Emilie and I have been showing her around Ouaga for the past couple of days and tomorrow morning we'll be leaving bright and early for a tour of FAVL's libraries down South. We'll be gone for about a week, touring the villages, talking with the librarians and implementing a monitoring and evaluation system for the libraries.

It was a weekend of holiday festivities here in Ouagadougou. Saturday night Emilie, Elisee, and I went to the home of our friends Yann and Carolaine for a pool-side Christmas barbecue. We were gorged on merguez sausage, carrot soup and grilled duck. Since it's getting a bit chilly here once the sun goes down (chilly meaning... mid-80's?), we opted to dance instead of swim the night away.

The following morning after too much fun and too little sleep, we rolled out of bed to host a holiday brunch at home. Emilie deserves most/all of the credit as she did all of the set-up and cooking, with me pretending like I knew what I was doing as her sous-chef. The sister of a fellow volunteer had just arrived from the States and held the title Guest of Honor, which meant that she got to bring bagels, cream cheese and lox from the States. We also whipped up scrambled eggs and hash browns and put out the remains of our most recent care packages from home. I was thrilled that I could play Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas in the background knowing that, if anyone were to complain, it was at my discretion to dispose of them. Only a few snarky comments were made, however, so no one got the boot.

No more festivities until next weekend, so it is time to hit the gym to recover and prepare for the final onslaught of cookies, candy and holiday cheer.

On an unrelated note, I just want to thank everyone who has made a donation to Friends of African Libraries in the past couple of weeks. Thanks to your generosity, we are well on our way towards reaching our fundraising goal for the month! We still have a ways to go, but are confident that we will get there by the end of the Open Challenge on December 22nd. Check us out on GlobalGiving: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/summer-literacy-camps-in-burkina-faso/

Emilie: Did you see that stand selling tacky Christmas decorations by the side of the road?

Charley: YES! Can we stop and buy some on the way back from the gym?

Emilie: YES! And since they were also selling statues of the Virgin Mary, maybe they won't try to rip us off like everyone else does.

Charley: Doubtful.

We may have been scammed a bit, but can you really put a price on fake miniature Christmas trees when there isn't a real Fraser Fir or Scotch Pine available on the entire continent? Our house is now colorful and tacky as can be for the holiday season. All that's left to do is teach Sadie how to pull a sleigh.

I haven't had a great internet connection for a few days, so this isn't my promised update about my parents' visit to Burkina or our trip to Paris, but I will do my best to get to it this week!

This is a quick request that you check out Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL)'s project page on GlobalGiving. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm now working with a small NGO here in Burkina that helps manage small village libraries. Every summer they run reading camps for elementary school students in several villages in Burkina and Ghana. To raise funds for next summer's camps, we are taking part in GlobalGiving's December Open Challenge, which is an opportunity for us to earn a spot on GlobalGiving's site, giving us access to huge donors and bonuses for our projects if we reach certain fundraising goals. Even if you aren't able to donate, just taking a minute to check out our page and sharing it with friends on facebook will help us reach our goal! Fundraising is not my favorite part of the job, but I'm realizing how vital it is to keep small NGO's like FAVL up and running.

If you have a couple of spare procrastination moments, please check out our project page:

http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/summer-literacy-camps-in-burkina-faso/

Well, I suppose it has. The Sandman's predictions have indeed come true and I'm now settled in a new home South of Peace Corps Burkina Faso's no-travel zone. Getting used to living in a city has had its ups and downs, but overall things have mostly been looking up since the big change. While I'm incredibly grateful for my experience living in a small village, I think I've realized I'm a city boy at heart. I loved being able to read for hours a day without distraction and I don't know that I'll ever read that many books in a year again, but the pace of life (and work) was too slow for my tastes.

My new house:

Now that I'm working with an NGO in a city, I always have things to do, even if I'm still not on a 40-hour week. A quick rundown of things I've done since starting work with Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL) in September - helped lead a weeklong reading camp for 25 elementary school students in southern Burkina, helped organize and lead the first northern Burkina FAVL librarian meeting, did literacy research in Ghana for a week, helped organize a fundraiser here in Ouaga for FAVL, continued preparations for the new library in Belehede, and co-wrote a grant proposal to introduce LED technology to several villages here in Burkina.

Mask Making at FAVL Reading Camp:

I've also been able to stay in touch with friends and counterparts from Belehede, even though I haven't been able to return except for a rushed trip to collect my belongings and puppies (escorted by Peace Corps for security). I attended a week-and-a-half long training here in Ouaga with two counterparts to learn how to run Coaching 4 Hope camps. Coaching 4 Hope is an organization that teaches kids about HIV/AIDS through soccer games and drills. I haven't played soccer since I was about 10, but I don't think I embarrassed myself too much, and my counterparts had a great time.

The following month (September), I was able to co-lead the Model Girls Camp that I was supposed to run in my village before evacuation scrambled all of my plans. Our Country Director was incredibly supportive and managed to secure funding for me to transport 40 girls and 4 adults from my village out of the no travel zone to Ouahigouya (where I trained for the Peace Corps oh-so-long-ago-now) for a week of camp. We used some of the drills we learned at Coaching 4 Hope to teach the girls about HIV/AIDS in the mornings and we spent the rest of the days talking about family planning, planning for the future, what it means to be a role model, health and nutrition, and playing games and doing arts and crafts activities. It was a full week and I was incredibly thankful to the Peace Corps for helping me to move the camp to a new site so I wouldn't have to disappoint my community.

Learning about Gender Roles and Coaching 4 Hope at Model Girls Camp:

The only sad news of the past few months is that Kit, one of my dogs, died last month. I'm not sure what happened, but my neighbors found her body in their courtyard behind their house last month, after she had disappeared for a couple of days. We'd been told during training that it's highly inappropriate to cry in public here in Burkina Faso, which at the time I didn't foresee ever being a problem, but that was a challenge.... It took Sadie a while to get over it, but she seems to be doing pretty well as of late. According to my roommate, "Sadie's actually acting like a normal dog these days!"

Since this is getting long, I'll break off with one last photo and continue later with an update about my parents' visit and my trip to Paris - it's nice having internet on a daily basis again after having to bike 40km to use a computer.

Sadie, having enjoyed Thanksgiving too much, recovers:

I suppose an update is long-past-due. A little over a month ago I went to visit some friends out East in Fada and we hit up some of the local "tourist attractions" which included a giant tree that once-upon-a-time a warrior goddess charged up, mounted upon a steed (maybe?) and a "mountain," which took us an arduous 5 minutes to hike. The highlight, however, was going to have our futures foretold by a local sand reader, who predicted that 1. I would be moving to a new site for my second year of service 2. My boss would come visit my site 3. My love life looked bleak for the near future, but someday marital bliss and Happily Ever After awaits. I had a feeling that what he said was Truth, mostly because of the spirits watching over him (circa 2:20 in the video).

Things are a bit up in the air at the moment, but it looks as though he may have at least been right with prediction #1. While I can't yet say for sure, it seems very likely that I will be moving to Ouagadougou for my second year of service to work directly with FAVL, the organization my village is collaborating with to build our community library. The final details haven't been hammered out, but I'll probably make the move in late August or early September. I've already had meetings with FAVL, the Girls Education and Empowerment director, and the Peace Corps country director, all of whom have been supportive of the plan. I'll let you know when everything's in place, which will be much easier to do once I have frequent access to internet in Ouaga. While it will be sad and difficult to say goodbye to my village, there are extenuating circumstances which are pretty much out of my hands. The great thing about working in Ouaga, however, is that it will actually be easier to get the library completed and I will be able to continue working directly with Béléhédé, through FAVL, even if I will no longer be living there.

Right now I'm down South in Bobo, visiting other volunteers, celebrating my friend Jillian's upcoming wedding, watching the World Cup (and being shocked yesterday by the Netherlands' upset of Brazil and saddened by Ghana's loss), and enjoying the much cooler and greener part of the country. I was planning on heading back to Ouaga on Monday after celebrating the 4th down here, but I may stay a bit longer since I have a meeting with the FAVL librarians in a nearby village on Thursday, and it doesn't make much sense to make the 5 hour trip back to Ouaga only to turn right around in a couple of days. We'll see....

My big exciting news for the month is that my village is on-board to create a community library! We've been talking about the project for months and it's finally gaining momentum. Last week my counterpart from village and I visited with the Burkina branch of an organization called Friends of African Village Libraries (FAVL - it makes me think of Fieval Goes West). The organization helps small villages create and manage libraries, including one that recently opened in the village of one of my nearest Peace Corps Volunteer neighbors, Emilie Crofton. (http://pobemengaolibrary.blogspot.com/)

Here's a video of her library opening this past month:

Community libraries are crucial to promoting literacy in a country with the lowest level of literacy in the world (only 35% of men and 15% of women can read and write). Much of the problem is due to a lack of access to reading materials. In Béléhédé, one of the only sources of literature is text books at the elementary school, of which there aren't even enough for all of the students. A community library would not only provide reading material for the students, but for the literacy centers in Béléhédé, where older kids who aren't able to travel to secondary school and adults in the community come to learn the local languages, Koronfé and Fulfuldé, as well as French. The literacy centers are popular, particularly with women from the village, but the centers face the same problem as the school: lack of books.

It took Emilie about a year to get her library up and running, so I'm anticipating a similar time table for the library in Béléhédé. My counterpart, Alou, and I have already begun looking at buildings that can be refurbished for the project and started preparations for a library committee. While the village provides the building and someone to be trained as a librarian (Alou) and FAVL helps refurbish the building, trains the librarian, and provides on-going management and oversight of the library, fund-raising mostly falls to me. I'll be working on starting some small income-generating activities with the library committee so that the community is a part of the fund-raising process, but I'll also be doing a whole lot of grant writing and brainstorming to raise the rest of the needed funds. The goal is $10,000, of which we've raised $1,000 so far (thanks Mom!).

A lot of people have asked if they can send me anything or help out with my Peace Corps Service in any way, so if you'd like to donate, that would be a wonderful way to support the work I'm doing here. I definitely encourage you to check out FAVL's wonderful website - www.favl.org - for more information about the organization and the work that they do. And here's a breakdown of how a contribution would help:

10$ - Covers the purchase of 2 new African novels or other reading materials

$50 – Pays for the six month subscription of a nationally-read newspaper for the library

$100- Covers the librarian's salary for a month

$500 – Pays for the purchase of bookshelves, tables and chairs

$1,200 – Covers the cost and installation of solar panels for a library

Donate by mail with a check to:

Friends of African Village Libraries

P.O Box 90533

San Jose, California 95109-3533

Be sure to earmark the check to Béléhédé

For more info, definitely check out FAVL's and Emilie's websites:

www.favl.org

http://pobemengaolibrary.blogspot.com/

Hi! I'm in Ouaga, but heading back to village in a few hours so only have time for a quick update with a few photos.

Garden and reading club are both chugging along and give me something to do every afternoon and evening. Water is running low, so I'm crossing my fingers that it holds out until I can harvest my corn in a week or two.

My friend Boukary drawing water from the well in my garden:

The moat (or irrigation ditch...) surrounding my garden:

Kit distracting one of my reading groups:

Reading club:

Soap-making unfortunately didn't take off as well as I'd hoped. The women keep telling me that people aren't buying it, but they also never have it out with them in the market, so I'm trying to convince them that they need to actually display the product if they want people to buy it.

Hot season is HOT. I don't usually look at a thermometer, but I glanced at one a couple of weeks ago and it was at 115F. After about 10 a.m. it's really too hot to do anything besides sit in the shade and try not to move until it starts to cool down around 5.

This vulture is convinced that I'm dying of heat stroke and stalks me in my courtyard:

One of the nurses asked me to go with him to do an HIV/AIDS training at a school in a nearby village, which was really exciting. I didn't really know what to expect and it ended up being mostly a lecture on Abstinence, although when I asked the nurse if we could talk about condoms and safe sex he was OK with it - thankfully I'd thought to bring a couple of condoms. While it didn't go over as smoothly as I'd hoped, it was good to at least see what education the kids here are getting so that I can better prepare for future talks.

Some camels chilling outside my courtyard:

Another afternoon in the garden:

One of the women who tends the garden next to mine:

This cow hanging out by my garden would have been under water a few weeks ago:

Sadie and Kit hiding from the sun under the shade of my Papaya tree:

Attack!:

OK, that's all for now. Sorry for such a scattered update, but I'll be back in Ouaga in the middle of April for a week attending a conference on maternal and infant health care with a woman from my village and a bunch of other volunteers, so I'll have time for a longer, more coherent post!

Back in Ouagadougou to take the GRE and, sadly, to say goodbye to a friend who had to return to the States. While I'm not thrilled about either of these situations, at least I can get another update in!

To my great relief, things finally started to pick up a bit once I got back to site. I returned with a list of ideas and possible activities for the community, which received a mixed response. While nobody was opposed to any of the ideas, the indifference with which they were received by some was rather a letdown after the effort I put into the brainstorming. I still couldn't quite figure out what the community wants me there for if they don't want me to work with them. Unfortunately, I get the impression that many communities just want their very own American to show off and boast about, regardless of whether the American actually gets anything done.

Thankfully, the school director was one of the few who was very receptive to several of the ideas and he quickly helped me to get a reading club started with the CM1 class (roughly 4th grade). The CM1 teacher broke the students up into six groups and now every day a different group comes over to my courtyard for an hour and we go over their reading book together. Even though it's only six hours of work a week, it's a start and was much needed to make me feel like I have a reason for being there. Each group has about 10 students and I would estimate that about a quarter of the kids in each group can read. Most of them just look at the page and have no idea how to process the information they see there, unable to sound out even the most basic words in French, the language they've been taught in for the the past 4-5 years. Needless to say, it'll be slow going, but the wonderful thing is that they're motivated (even if only by the candy I give to students who volunteer to read), and even the worst readers will raise their hands and give it a shot. And even more encouraging, the few can read always step in to help those who are struggling, guiding their fingers to the right spot on the page and helping them sound out the words.

I also started a small income-generating activity with some of the women in my village. I brought back with me from Ouaga supplies to make liquid soap and had an impromptu training session with a group of 8-12 women in the marketplace. We made about 30 bottles of soap, 10 of which sold within the first 24 hours. Sales slowed after that, but Monday was our big, once-every-three-weeks market day, so I'm anxious to hear how business went. If it went well, we'll whip up another batch.

Other than those two activities, January's exciting developments were my acquisition of two puppies and new garden. I've been trying to get both a dog and a garden since I got to site, and both finally came together within days of me getting back to Béléhédé.

A group of kids showed up at my house one morning holding two puppies. I thought they were offering them both to me, but they told me I had my pick of the two and that the other was already promised to another neighbor. I didn't know how to choose, so I just pointed to the closer, bigger of the two. I dubbed him Zizou and spent the afternoon trying to get him not to be terrified of me, with little success, though by the end of the afternoon he finally seemed at least a bit comfortable with his new home.

Later that night, as I was getting ready for bed, I heard a knock on my courtyard door. The moon wasn't yet risen, so when I opened the door I could barely make out a person's silhouette, while off in the distance I could hear a moto engine idling and see its headlight amongst the trees. The silhouette thrust something forward and when I looked down, there was puppy number two. I was taken aback and tried to think of something to ask or say, but the person just handed the puppy off and retreated into the night.

Zizou and Ajax spent several days warming up to me and then they played a devil of a trick on me by turning out to be girls. After a couple of people verified this (the same people who verified that they were male when I first got them), Zizou and Ajax were scrapped and a couple of days later I settled on the names Sadie and Kit.

So, my abundant free time in January was directed towards playing with the puppies; planting corn, tomatoes, green beans, pees, carrots, cabbage, lettuce, basil, and peppers in my garden, which is really just a strip of my landlord's garden next to the dam, which he was nice enough to share with me; watching the Africa Cup of Nations matches on a generator-powered TV in village; reading and biking.

I'm in Ouaga until Monday morning, which means I'll have internet access for a few more days. After that, it's back to site until at least late March, so I'm not sure when the next update will be.

Well, I suppose I've probably written enough over the past few days to make up for the dearth of updates during the Summer and Fall, and here's a last bit before I head North tomorrow morning. I'm packed up and ready to return to village, crossing my fingers that I pass through Djibo while the post office is open so I can pick up the packages and letters that have been gathering dust since my last pick-up in November. While it's been great seeing friends and traveling a bit, it's hard to justify being away from site for so long. If while in village I often feel that I'm not doing what I came here to do, I know for a fact that I'm not doing it when I'm hanging out with other Americans in the frat house that is our Ouaga crash pad. I have to come back for a couple of days next month to take the GREs, but other than that I'm hoping I can make it all the way to June or July without leaving home for more than a day or so.

I'll leave you with a couple of last photos of a dinner that our country director hosted for us at his home during our in-service training the week before Christmas. I lucked out big time with the other 15 Girls Education and Empowerment Volunteers that the Peace Corps threw me together with in Philadelphia; maybe every group bonds like ours has, which would be wonderful, but can I go ahead and say that we're the best? Well, it's my blog so I'm gonna go ahead and say it: we're great. My frustrations have been eased by having a whole group of amazing people here who are going through the same thing and dealing with the same issues, and who are only a text message or a 2 hour bike ride + 5 hour bus ride + bush taxi or two away. I'm crossing my fingers that if I close my eyes and think of snow, I'll be able to survive my first hot season in Burkina, which will start warming up in a couple of months.

A few more photos of my first Fall in Béléhédé:

I got to explore some non-Burkina West Africa after our In-Service Training, during a week-long Christmas vacation. For a couple of months my friend Coleman and I had been planning on going to Togo and Benin, but we forgot about the actual planning part and wound up with a truncated trip to Togo, sans the final Benin leg. We left Ouagadougou around 6 a.m. the Sunday before Christmas on a Greyhoundesque bus, iPods fully charged for the ~twenty hour trip (which was much more bearable than the forty hour trip we'd anticipated). The only real excitement on the way down occurred when we reached the border, where we had to buy visas as we hadn't bothered with that step in advance. We were hurried off the bus and down the road, told that once the bus went through the checkpoint it would keep on going whether we were through or not. Thankfully our white skin was a green flag and we were whisked to the front of the line and through the visa process without hassle. It was only when I decided use the bathroom (read: bush at the edge of the parking lot) that the bus almost left without me, forcing me to cut short those plans as well.

There was a startling shift of scenery once we crossed the border - green things growing everywhere, hills, paved road, sure signs of development - the trip was eye-opening to the different degrees of development within West Africa; being in a country with ports makes an immeasurable difference. Lomé in particular was like like a looking glass, as there was still the riot of noise and color and poverty of Ouagadougou, but it had a glossier sheen, or at least fewer vacant lots. I hate to say it, but the grass really was quite a bit greener. We got in around one in the morning, found a hotel close to the bus station, and called it a night (though not until we had broken the one fan in the room...).

The next day we spent wandering around Lomé, checking out the market area, bookstore, and beach and sampling Togolaise cuisine. Attieke, egg and bean sandwiches, and Fufu topped the list of favorites and the local beers clearly outclassed Burkina's Brakina and So.B.Bra, though we found no bar or club to rival Ouahigouya's Baobab or Ouaga's Mitatas and Calypso (to be fair to Togo, we weren't really looking).

We spent one more night at the hotel and then took a taxi east towards Benin (so close, yet two whole visas away) to a little town on the beach called Avépozo. We got out at the sign of Chez Alice, which one of our guidebooks had recommended and which should have been a red flag signaling a tourist trap. From the East African Art to the imported butterflies (well, we suspected) to the two monkeys tied to a tree on permanent time-out, everything was out of place for where we were in West Africa. There were a handful of older Germans who didn't seem to be together or altogether there, and who we didn't see anywhere else but on the grounds of Chez Alice. The whole place gave off a strange faux-African hippie commune vibe that put both of us ill-at-ease. The beach was only a short walk away, however, so we made the most of the afternoon, had some great FuFu, Awooyu, and Fan Lait on the main drag of town and crashed around in the waves. One of the reasons we'd chosen Chez Alice was for the cheap camping rates and we spent the night awkwardly camped in the courtyard shared by all of the hotel's guests.

The next morning we walked down the beach a ways to a swimming spot we'd found the day before, a steep strip of sand sloping towards the ocean, at the top of which was perched a handful of cabanas and beach chairs. We threw down our stuff on an empty seat and jumped into the surf, my clumsy New England ocean style not quite adequate for the West African waves, which resulted in several painful body slams against the sand. After the beat down I went back up to the chairs, where I was approached by someone who told me we'd have to pay to rent the chairs unless we wanted to stay at their hotel. Neither seemed terribly appealing at the moment, so I grabbed our stuff and plopped it down on the near-deserted beach. Only after another swim did it occur to us that maybe the offer was worth considering, as we were less than thrilled with our current set-up. We asked the attendant if we could take a look at their cabins, which was probably the best decision we made the whole trip.

Each cabin was stripped down, no show simplicity, with a small courtyard and a bin of water for bucket bathing. The price was great and it took us all of a minute to decide to switch lodgings. After lunch and another battle with the waves, we collected our stuff from Chez Alice and moved into our new almost-authentic African paradise, where the only other guests seemed to be from Togo, Burkina, or other nearby countries. For most of the time we had the whole place to ourselves and vacation finally felt like Vacation. I couldn't have pictured a more idyllic location and the hours stretched on and on as we settled into a blissful repetition of swimming, eating, sitting, and reading. It would have required at least another week for us to grow weary of the idle isolation.

We finally got around to thinking about planning our vacation, now that we were well into it. The big decisions were what to do for Christmas and how to go about the Benin visa situation, as we had to leave Togo by the 26th and we weren't planning on going back to Ouaga until the 29th or so. Because we hadn't gotten visas in advance, we would only be able to get a 48-hour pass to Benin, necessitating an extension that would have been nearly impossible to obtain due to the holidays. We called Peace Corps friend Christina, whom I had replaced in Béléhédé and who was spending a third year volunteering in Togo, about an hour north of Lomé. I'd been hoping to visit her since we met during my site visit in July, and she had extended an invitation, but we felt bad about taking her up on the offer on such short notice. She was adamant that it was no trouble, however, and as she was hosting several other Burkina and Togo volunteers, it promised to be a festive holiday even if it wouldn't include the usual trimmings of family, snow, cookies, and card games by the fire. Christmas day plans settled upon, we decided to spend one more night in Avépozo, giving us one last perfect day at the beach, capped off with a Christmas Eve sunset over the Gulf of Guinea and a large dinner complete with a couple of dusty bottles of French wine that we'd found in the back of the hotel's bar.

After a night of sleep broken by bouts of drumming from revelers on the beach, I awoke to the first Christmas that didn't involve rushing down a flight of stairs to see what Santa had spread beneath the tree. While it was sad not being able to share the day with family back home, it was a beautiful morning and after wandering around town for a bit, we finally found someone to open up shop and prepare an omelette breakfast for us. While everyone in Avépozo seemed to still be sleeping after a night of celebration, once the eggs and coffee started cooking, we quickly found ourselves in good company and we had the feeling our chef was almost-glad to have been awakened, as he was in for a brisk Christmas business.

After breakfast and one last swim, we hailed a cab and headed back to Lomé, where our last hope of making it to Benin was dashed when we went to the bus station and discovered that the bus schedule wouldn't work out with our tentative itinerary; the only feasible option was to buy tickets back to Ouaga for the following morning. It was hard to feel too disappointed as the trip had been perfect up to this point and we still had a party with friends to look forward to. So, after lunch we hopped in another cab and headed north to Tsévié, where Christina is spending her third year as a Peace Corps Volunteer, helping to incorporate and implement Life Skills lessons into school curricula and after-school clubs. I lucked out and got to share the front seat with the driver and one other passenger, while Coleman got stuck in back, packed in with a boisterous bunch of women from Ghana, who had somehow managed to get drunk on their way from a Christmas morning church service and who spent the hour-long trip fondling Coleman and demanding vows of marriage. I turned up the volume on my iPod and listened to Mariah Carey belt out "All I Want for Christmas is You," while enjoying the view of lush green vegetation and ignoring Coleman's laughter and screams for help from the back seat debauchery.

Christina came and picked us up when we got into town and took us back to her beautiful home, where we were greeted by Kait and David, friends from Burkina, along with some new friends from Peace Corps Togo. After bathing (I forgot to mention how humid Togo is; I think I actually prefer the higher temperatures of Burkina, since the heat is at least dry heat - the only time we weren't sweating was when we were actually in the ocean) we spent the early afternoon lazing about and catching up, sharing vacation tales and discussing the differences between volunteering in Burkina Faso and Togo. We finally got around to the festivities, placed an order of beer to be delivered, and started dinner preparations. Afternoon slid into evening and beer into wine and conversation into carousing, interrupted only once by a quick beer run, which was a party in itself as Kait and I decided to have an impromptu dance party with some Togolaise women and children in the neighborhood. While it was slightly humiliating to be shown up by a 7-year-old's dance skills, I had more fun in those 15 minutes than I often have in a week and it was definitely a highlight of the day's events. We had considered going out dancing, but were having such a good time (and such good food!) at Christina's that we decided to stay in and continue the revelry in her courtyard. Sometime around midnight I finally called it a night, covered myself with a pagne, and crashed.

While I'd never anticipated a Christmas like this, I couldn't have asked for a better first one away from home and family. Christmas Eve on the beach in Togo was the complete antithesis of cold, snowy Water Valley holidays on the family farm, and I've never before spent Christmas day with people I hadn't known my entire life, but somehow it all felt about as right as it could have felt. I was even able to talk briefly with my family back in Marblehead before my phone cut out, which never would have seemed like a sufficient Christmas present when I was a kid, but was more than enough this year. While traditions change and toys and family both get old, only the latter is irreplaceable and worth holding onto as long as possible. This year I was also blessed with new friends and experiences, so I couldn't have really asked for anything more. (If anyone from the Peace Corps is reading this, however, I am still asking for a job description and some work!)

The next day we all sweated our way through the humidity back to Lomé, and Coleman and I boarded a bus back to Ouagadougou for another week of vacation and one more night of celebrations to welcome in the the new year. It was a long bus ride back, with a 4-5 hour stop at the border - Coleman is a magical wizard of languages, even at 6 a.m., and managed to make many new friends by breaking out his newly-learned Jula, while I can only manage cranky at that hour - but we slid smoothly back over the border, even though our visas were slightly expired.... As we left behind the greenery, the well-paved roads, multi-story buildings, and other signs of development and headed north past vast open planes, mud huts, and herds of cattle, I realized that far as this country has to go to join the developed world, and little as I may be able to contribute to that process, I am very happy here and here is home for now. People here understand the importance of friends and family in a way that many Americans fail to fully grasp, and though there is a shortage of any number of things that Americans deem essential, there is almost never a shortage of people to look after you whether you're in need or not.

Anyway, to draw this to a close, I hope all of you who might be reading this are surrounded by good friends and family during the new year. If you happen to be far away from most of them, keep your eyes open for new friends - they're everywhere!

Here are some photos of a day I spent out in my friends' sesame fields:

"Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other, adds fresh embarrassment. The use of words is to express ideas. Perspicuity therefore requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriated to them. But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas. Hence, it must happen, that however accurately objects may be discriminated in themselves, and however accurately the discrimination may be considered, the definition of them may be rendered inaccurate by the inaccuracy of the terms in which it is delivered. And this unavoidable inaccuracy must be greater or less, according to the complexity and novelty of the objects defined." [A. Hamilton, The Federalist Papers]

I'm sitting stumped in Ouagadougou, unsure how to begin this first update since I left for Peace Corps staging in Philadelphia last June. Since the beginning was almost 7 months and 5,000 miles ago, it seems like starting there would be a rather onerous undertaking, tedious both to write and to read. Even my last journal entry was 3 weeks ago, a chunk of time that included a hot dusty bike ride through the Sahel, my first night away from my village in over 3 months, reunion with other Peace Corps friends, a week of in-service training, a trip to Togo, Christmas on the beach, and dancing late into the night with friends and strangers to celebrate the passage into a new year and a new decade. I'm afraid I have no idea how accurately to describe the complexity of the experience so far, due not only to the imperfection of my faculties and the obscurity of my role in Burkina Faso, but also to the fear that sharing honestly about the experience will leave you with the impression that ample disappointments have undermined the hopes and expectations which I expressed in my first post last June. So, while hunting for some adequate words with which to catch you up, here are a few photos:

First glimpse of the continent:

Celebrating the end of Ramadan with friends in Béléhédé and Swear-In at the American Embassy in Ouagadougou with the other new Volunteers:

Last Prayer of Ramadan at the Mosque and Friends in Village:

Molly is a Rock Star and Jessi & Tyler won the award for best matching local outfits at Swear-In:

My house and view from the school in our training village:

Kids swimming at the dam and two women from my summer host family:

A neighbor in village and Leslie & my clashing shirt and tie at Swear-In:

My host brother's son and a puddly view of Komsilga after the summer rains:

Group Bonding activity (they were fun for the first week of training...) and a rainy day in Komsilga

My hut in Komsilga and biking up the trail to my family's courtyard:

Women pounding millet in Béléhédé and Marita presenting the chief of Komsilga with a present at our end-of-the-summer celebration:

Kids in Komsilga:

More kids in Komsilga and some trees straight out of Dr. Seuss.

Fun at school in Komsilga and Mikey says good-bye (or hello?):

OK, here we ge go...

After 10 weeks of nominal training, the highlight of which was living in a hut in the courtyard of a wonderful and generous host family in the small village of Komsilga, 12km outside of Ouahigouya, I officially swore-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer at a ceremony at the American Embassy in Ouagadougou. During the ceremony I gave a speech in Koromfé, the local language spoken by the predominant ethinc group of Béléhédé, the village which serves as home until August of 2011.

I spent the Fall settling into Béléhédé, which is situated in the hot, dusty, northern province of Soum. Though the village lies in the Sahel, there is a dam which has permitted trees to flourish and add some green to the plains of red. The village is home to about 5,000 people, most of whom belong to the Koromba ethnic group, some of the first settlers of Burkina. The other main ethnic group, the Peulh, mostly live in the bush around Béléhédé, where they tend their flocks. Cultivation and animal husbandry are the main industries and I'm surrounded by fields of millet, sorghum, corn, peanuts and sesame, as well as donkeys and flocks of sheep, goats, chickens, guinea fowl, and the odd camel. There are also elephants abroad, wandering the frontiers of Burkina, Mali, and Niger, although I have yet to see one.

Our first three and a half months (September-December) were supposed to be focused on getting to know our community, building relationships, observing classes at school, and learning about Burkinabé culture and customs. Thankfully I was able to make friends quickly, as I'm the third volunteer at my site and people are accustomed to having a random American wandering around and not quite comprehending the way things work. I have a small group of friends that often comes over to my house in the afternoon for tea and a group of small children that often comes by to color and read (or pee in my courtyard...). Highlights of the Fall included celebrating Ramadan and Tabaski with my community, which involved going to the mosque for the final prayer of Ramadan, going from house to house with friends to break the fast with chicken and rice, and handing out candy to kids.

Many mornings are spent watching classes at the elementary school, which is the only school in village. Kids who pass the middle school entrance examination have to find lodging with family or friends in Tongomayel, a village 20 km away, or Djibo, 20 km farther down the dirt road. Unfortunately, most families don't bother with these arrangements due to costs or the perception that formal education is relatively unimportant, and thus elementary school is as far as most kids go with their education. Which is supposedly where my work comes in....

Up to this point there hasn't been much work, which is my biggest frustration with the Peace Corps. While I know that the simple act of sharing daily life with people is a wonderful way of establishing communication and understanding between Americans and people of other countries, I often get the impression that that is all the Peace Corps expects of me. We were told during our recent in-service training that simply leaving our house is a success; after two years of service here, I hope I will be able to say that I did more than go for walks and drink tea, much as I enjoy both of those activities. I'm crossing my fingers that things will start picking up now that we've finished our settling-in period.

When I head back to site in a couple of days, my main goal will be to start a girls club with the CM2 class (equivalent to about 5th grade), either a reading or a soccer club. The soccer club will require me to remember how to play the game and to suppress memories of the championship match of my U10 season. I think I can manage both. I'll also be leading a series of community needs assessments and planning sessions, which will hopefully get people in my village motivated about working together for the next year and a half. I want to propose a community library and resource room during these workshops, which would be a huge undertaking, but one which other Peace Corps volunteers have pulled off and which I think is a feasible goal for my village.

I also started giving English lessons on a local radio station during the Fall with a couple of other volunteers in Djibo, which I plan to continue through the Spring. My favorite part of the lessons is trying to teach colors with phrases such as, "Michael is holding the blue pen." Keep looking at your radios, kids. The country music that we play during breaks is pretty special as well. Another favorite activity that takes up a too-small-chunk of my time is helping out with vaccinations at the local health clinic. My only fear is that every child in Béléhédé under the age of 1 is forever going to associate their first painful, traumatic experience with the goofy looking white man who was actually only responsible for the record-keeping, not the shot-giving.

I'm running out of steam and being chided by friends for having spent too much time on a blog post, so now we're going to move into list format!

-Malaria is not pleasant: the hot, soupy disquietude of my bowels while my temperature shot up to 105 degrees was a disturbing sensation that I hope I won't ever have to experience again.

-Corporal punishment is also not pleasant, but I'm afraid that is something I will be witnessing a lot more of in the elementary school. While thinking of ways to broach the issue with teachers at my school, I'm trying to remind myself that it was a common disciplinary tactic in the U.S. until very recently and is something that takes time to change.

-I have two Papayas: one a tree, the other a kitten. I probably spend more time watching both grow than I spend working. Sad, but cute.

-The only upside of not having much work is that I have hours and hours to read every day. I'm currently working on The Federalist Papers, just started Fathers & Sons, and am looking forward to starting Moby Dick and Les Misérables when I get back to site.

-I spend too much time thinking about the future and will be taking the GREs next month, even though I probably won't be heading to grad school until the Fall of 2012.

-I'll be running a camp for elementary school girls at the end of the school year with a bunch of other volunteers, which should be great fun and provide at least a solid week or two of full-time work!

-Don't leave milk sitting out for more than a day or so, especially when daily temperatures routinely hit 90-95 degrees in the middle of winter.

-If you're interested in a vacation to Ouagadougou or elsewhere in West Africa sometime in 2010 or 2011, get in touch! I can't pay for your plane ticket, but I can put you up for free in a non-air conditioned house without electricity or running water. Think about it.

-I don't go on facebook any more, so if you've tried to contact me that way, I'm sorry for not responding; it is enough trying to keep up with e-mail with such sporadic computer access! Feel free to e-mail me, though, at charles.casler@gmail.com.

-And finally, I love getting letters! If anyone want to correspond via snail mail, here's my address:

Charley Casler

B.P. 204

Djibo, Burkina Faso

West Africa

I've of course left out many things I was planning on saying, but that will just have to teach me a lesson about updating this thing more than once every 7 months. I don't have internet in Béléhédé, but I've heard rumors that there is now one computer with a slow internet connection in Djibo, which is only a 2 hour bike ride away. So I'll try not to be so neglectful in the future.

Happy New Year!

"...when the horizon swims blue, green, emotional--then Mrs. Jarvis, heaving a sigh, thinks to herself, 'If only some one could give me ... if I could give some one....' But she does not know what she wants to give, nor who could give it her." [V. Woolf, Jacob's Room]

The first time that I can remember attempting to answer the question of why I wanted to join the Peace Corps was during the spring semester of my freshman year of college. In the volley of aspirations, ideals, fears, and beliefs over dinner with several of my closest friends one evening, I ventured that I might join the Peace Corps after graduation. At the time, graduation was just as unimaginable as any of our post-college plans, and we were told repeatedly by Adults that there was truly no need to be thinking about such things so early into our college careers; nonetheless, post-college plans seemed a prevalent topic of conversation that Spring. While my plan to go into the Peace Corps didn't seem to me more unreasonable than anybody else's plan, my desire (or quite probably the way I expressed that desire) nevertheless evoked the ire of several of my friends, and in the ensuing debate over the merits of such a plan, the phrase, "waste of a Yale education," was lobbed in my direction. Boom.

Whether it is because I am stubborn or determined or for some other reason, I don't like being told what is "right" or "best" for me to do with my education, my time, or my life. I very much appreciate guidance, suggestion, and sincere debate about these matters, and I spend a lot of time arguing with myself about the ethical and moral implications of my actions, but something goes off when someone matter-of-factly asserts the merits of my decisions.

Over the course of the following three years, I was blessed with many friends who were just as uncertain as I was about the underlying reasons for, moral and ethical merits of, and possible effects on others that their post-college plans might engender. For a group of young people often described as "Generation Me" or the "iGeneration," I have witnessed among my peers an almost pandemic-concern with doing something for the "greater good," and a palpable fear of encroaching on others' rights to enjoy an autonomous and happy life. I guess I would conjecture that maybe one reason we are sometimes seen as selfish is because we are constantly wanting more than what we have (please don't shoot me, Captain Obvious). As patriotism has soared over the United States of America for the past few war-torn years, pride and skepticism have been strange bedfellows (nestfellows?), with many skeptical young people in this country trying to reconcile the desire to be proud of who they are, which despite our many faces includes an American identity, with the understanding that there are many people around the world who look at us, at best, disparagingly. So the question has become, "How can I strive to be happy and get what I want out of life, while at the same time ensuring that others have exactly the same possibility?"

Fast-forward three years. College drawing-to-a-close, senior essay being written, life decisions being made, doubts hovering over all. Do I still want to do the Peace Corps? Yes. Why?

Because my first memory of trying to answer this question doesn't include a memory of giving a satisfactory or reasoned response, but instead centers on hurt feelings and bruised egos, I've spent a lot of time pondering whether my continued desire to do this is mainly in reaction to that conversation once-upon a freshman year. Am I really just a stubborn, selfish person whose behaviors can mostly be explained away as a desire to prove other people wrong? While I have a tendency to self-doubt, I finally decided that this is not the case. While I don't deny my sometimes stubborn tendencies, I firmly believe that my primary reasons for wanting to do this are selfless, even if many secondary and tertiary reasons for so wanting seem to have strong whiffs of Me. Even these, however, are not necessarily bad reasons: wanting to grow, wanting to see a bit more of what the world has to offer, wanting to gain experience, wanting to test oneself are not necessarily bad things, even if they can sometimes have deleterious consequences for others if one is not careful and aware of the ways in which his personal expansion is affecting others.

Now, does a selfless desire to help others really justify me inserting myself into other people's lives? Unfortunately, human history provides countless case studies of people showing up in a new place and saying, "I come with good intentions." Despite the fact that many of these people have shown up with intentions that they sincerely believed were good, countless among them were nevertheless misguided, or naive, or unprepared in ways which had disastrous implications for the well-being, culture, and stability of the people upon whom they impose themselves. So, good intentions notwithstanding, should I be doing this?

My final decision that, yes, I should be doing this, hinges on the fact that the Peace Corps only goes places where their aid and services are requested. They only send volunteers to countries that have asked for their assistance, and to communities where they are welcomed. If someone extends his or her hand and says, "Please help," then I feel justified in extending my hand in reply and saying, "I will do my best, though that may not be enough."

So here I am, 23-years-old, with a college degree, a year of post-college work experience, and, thankfully, people whom I believe in who I think believe in me, waiting to depart for the Peace Corps in 10 days, where I will serve in Burkina Faso, attempting to help increase enrollment, retention, and success rates for girls in rural primary schools. Whether or not my efforts will affect any long-term, positive changes in the communities with which I'll be working obviously remains to be seen, but I can only hope that to somebody other than myself, these 27 months will be valuable. Though I have yet to figure out what it is I truly want, or can give this world, and whether there is anything more to receive than the momentary experience of existence, I am for better or worse burdened with the inability to stop wondering: "What [is] shaped by the arms and bodies moving in the twilight room?" (Jacob's Room)