Also, this. Kitten needs a name. Gender neutral if possible, as I do not know his or her sex.

(Warning: if you're a vegetarian, or very concerned about the welfare of goats, or have never been to a butcher shop, you might not want to look too far in this post. Just saying.)

I have said this before, but Tabaski is my favorite holiday here. (Although there's apparently a fete in December for the king of this region that is held here in Tema. I'm told it's the best party of all. I'm stoked.) Goat sacrifices, bags of popcorn, and the fabulous fonctionnaire tradition of going from house to house, eating chicken and drinking at each stop.

The fete this year was very fun and... authentic. I saw my village pray together outdoors (too many people to fit in the mosque), I watched my host dad sacrifice a goat, and then I was gifted an entire leg of this goat, with miscellaneous organs, to somehow cook and eat.

Village prayer time.

My awesome host mom (my dad's First wife) running the family boutique.

Left: A host aunt. She speaks a little french, so we hang out. Right: My host dad's second wife. After I took this picture she ran around showing it to all the other women to show how pretty she looked.

Anndddd... here's the goat. This is the after picture. I did not take a "before" picture, nor did I take a "during" picture. I don't know if this is gruesome or not- after seeing it every day at the market, I'm pretty well desensitized to, well, most things. And yes, I ate one of those legs. In a stew. It was delicious.

(Translation: I went en brousse- uh, into the bush.)

A couple of weeks ago, I took advantage of my no-teaching-on-fridays situation (which I created for myself when I set up all the teacher schedules for my school) to hang out with my host moms! And by hang out, I mean go into the bush and help them harvest crops. Because that's how they roll.

I was initially going to just go with them, check it out, then bike back home for lunch, but there was a complication.

Turns out it was a little further and a little more challenging to get there than I had anticipated. So instead of trying to head back alone (they wouldn't have let me anyways- they'd have accompanied me home then would have had to go back again) I just decided to hang out there. Fortunately it was a cloudy day, so my lack of sunscreen only caught up with me mid-afternoon, when I covered myself with a cloth and hid under a tree.

My host... aunt? leading us to the field with her super new baby.

My host dad's second wife holding up what we were harvesting. They're called chouma in moore, pois de terre in french and who knows what in english. Possibly chickpeas? They're pretty delicious. We harvested all day, breaking only for lunch. I could show you a picture of what we ate, but it's not much to look at. Leftover To (millet flour pounded and cooked into a gelatinous solid), put into a bowl of well water and mushed by hand, then eaten/slurped. Delish.

Sleeping baby.

The super fun neighbor lady who came over at the end of the day and helped sort the chouma. This is one basket of many. Side note: I'm a pretty awesome harvester.

We biked home at sunset, and I got to feel awesome when I was greeted with a hero's welcome by all of my family and neighbors. "What? The nassara* went en brousse?" "Yeah, OUR nassara's name is Balguissa**. She went with us and harvested all day. She's a mossi***."

*Nassara = whitey

**Balguissa is my village name. Unfortunately, it's really caught on with my village. It's pronounced bahl-gee-zuh. Soo pretty. (My full name is Balguissa Sankara. Half my village are Ouedraogos, half are Sawadogos, and a couple of people are Sankaras. A really famous revolutionary/president, Thomas Sankara, came from my village. You can look him up.)

***Mossi is the ethnicity in my village. I'm so legit.

First, let's start with a photo update. Remember all those beautiful pictures of Tema I put up last time? (Hint: they're in the post below this.) This is what my village has become, one month later.

I suspect this is going to be a long dry season.

the hill.

New site, new site! So exciting. After getting back from Turkey (amazing, ask me later) I spent a week and a half in Tema, furnishing my house, sewing my fashion show dress (that's another story) and generally hanging the heck out with my host family. My courtyard is private, but it's surrounded by the courtyards of one big family, and I've been getting to know them one awkward/delightful interaction at a time.

Sylvie, my cherie. She gets me water.

It's pretty much everything I've been wanting. My ladies speak only moore, so I've been trying really hard to work on mine. They're so excited with everything I say, and we actually manage to communicate pretty well (hand motions are the most useful things ever invented.) I've tried my hand at pounding millet (they laughed at me and took away my pounding stick) and grinding flour with a stone (I'm kind of awesome. They were all very impressed. Then a six year old girl took my stone and showed me up.) I get offered red To with green sauce for breakfast, then the kids give me ears of feed corn all morning long that they've grilled themselves.

Mural a Spanish dude painted on my school last year. Quite nice, no?

A group of french people came last week to visit Tema because their town in France has partnered with our village to build school buildings and teacher housing. They're really nice, and when they came the village threw them a little fete with chicken, goat, spaghetti, and drinks to which I was invited! So much eating.

Waiting for the frenchies.

Baobab trees GALORE!

Pretty much all I've done so far has been to greet everyone (Everyone) in my quartier, hang out with my family, explore on my bike, and furnish my house. It's really chill and fun and I like my neighbors and my principal a lot. And tomorrow, I go back to get ready for the school year! It's gonna be good.

I'm so excited. So so so. Last weekend I finally went to my future village, Tema, for a quick visit before I move up there permanently. I had heard a few conflicting things about it, and I had become resigned to the idea of it being a sort of larger village than I had hoped for. AND THEN.

I went. It's about a two-three hour trip from Ouaga, first on a paved main road and later on a fairly bad dirt road. You then come to Bokin (everyone always says Tema-Bokin because they're so close.) That's where the bush taxi stops. After that is a five kilometer bike ride to Tema, which wouldn't seem like much except for the HILL OF DEATH that you have to surmount to get there. It's like someone looked at this row of cliffs, decided they wanted to get over it, and built a track straight up. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. Apparently cars are capable of making it over. But my mountain bike tires were spinning under me because they couldn't grip the dirt properly as I tried to go up this hill. I already know this hill will be the bane of my existence this coming year.

Okay. So I made it up the hill. Then, as I gasped what I imagined to be my last breaths, I looked down over... Tema! It's rainy season, so everything's deceptively pretty, but I thought it was just lovely. And teeny. Teeny teeny.

Things that I know about Tema:

Population: 973 (To be fair, that's from last year. My counterpart estimates that they're probably over a thousand by now.) 973 new best friends for Carolyn!!!

Number of quartiers in town: 3. One is the chief's quartier, the traditional king of the whole region. One is the president of the parent's association's quartier (and my quartier!) And the third is for... everyone else, I guess.

Number of teachers at my school: 4. Including the principal and myself.

As I just mentioned, I'm living in the quartier that's composed of the president of the PTA and all of his extended family. They just completed construction on my new house. I have my own courtyard but I'm very close neighbors with everyone, so I'm envisioning lots of family time. (Plus, it doesn't look like they speak a whole lot of french, so I anticipate a sharp acceleration in my Moore learning. Due to necessity.) My house is... quaint? I'm trying to think of adjectives other than teeny, Leslie is helping me. It's two rooms, and I can't accurately judge their size except that they're small. Combined, I estimate that they are smaller than my living room right now. Yeah, definitely. I was dumb and for like the first time ever I left my camera in Bagre, so pictures will be coming in September.

Other things. There are tons of baobab trees in Tema Bokin, which I love. I'm hoping for lots of monkeybread juice, which is made from baobab fruits. I'm also hoping that this juice will be cold, because they just brought ELECTRICITY to Tema! I didn't think I wanted electricity, but then I realized that yes, obviously, I do. They're electrifying my house right now. Fan!

The market is every three days, but it's in Bokin. So all produce will require a 10k bike ride. Ending in that hill. But the market's supposed to be really good.

That's going to have to do for now- I really only spent about three hours there, and one of those hours was biking. Another was hanging out with the chief. I'm sure I'll have plenty to tell after I actually live there for a few weeks, which will start after my vacation to Turkey!! August 25: move out of Bagre. August 27: Turkey vacation. September 13: Move to Tema.

I'm excited.

There is a person at every school called the "Surveillant General." This man is in charge of discipline at the school, so if you kick a kid out of class you send him to the dreaded Surveillant. Or in our case, Le General.

Le General is this tall, skinny, chain-smoking guy who comes up with the most creative, funniest insults you can imagine. According to him, he used to work as a bush taxi guy in Ghana and later as an elephant poacher. While I would normally call BS on that, he does speak some Ghanaian english and knows an awful lot about the price of elephant tusks. He is also Super nice and tries to teach me Moore every day.

I say all this to preface a couple of anecdotes about Burkina schools. Or maybe just my school. Or maybe just the General.

One day, I was planning to give a test in the afternoon. I had given the test copy to the secretary to type up (on the typewriter) and print out (on the... hm. I just tried to google search what this machine actually is and failed. It's not on wikipedia, at least not under "obselete printing techniques" or "ancient printing methods." My friend just suggested "printing press," but I'm pretty sure that's not right. In any case, it's the machine where you put in the typed sheet with the purple carbon copy, then you turn the crank for however many copies you need. That thing. ...Dictograph? No.) So she had printed out my copies in the morning, then left for the day and locked her office. I showed up in the afternoon to find my students waiting, and no way to get the test. I could have written it on the chalkboard except that the secretary had my original copy too. I walked over to the General's house to see if he had a key. He didn't, but he grapped a set of random keys and we set out for the office. He proceeded to show some unusual expertise in the field of lock-picking. Apparently if you use a similar key and jiggle it a lot and lift the door at exactly the right time, you can pop open the lock, as he then demonstrated. It took about fifteen seconds. On our way back to his house with the copies in hand, he jokingly requested that I not mention this particular skill to anyone.

Another day, maybe even that same week, I was sitting on a bench next to the office during a break between my classes and I heard a loud BANG from somewhere close by. Looking around, I didn't see anything, and assumed it must have been a malfunctioning moto somewhere. Several minutes later, however, who comes striding through the school grounds with a rifle and a dead bird? Le General.

[Alright MOM, I'll write an update. Although, you know, while I rarely have internet access I almost always have phone access....]

The school year finally ended, after a bonus week of striking just in time to destroy my testing schedule. I don't think I've written about the striking situation that's been going on since... February? There was an entire month without school, then a couple more weeks of strikes close to the end of the third trimester of this year. It wasn't pretty, but we did manage to finish out the school year. All the disturbances had an impact on the national exams- this year's success rate was pretty low. My school's passing rate was something like 35%, which, although pretty normal for rural Burkina, isn't too hot. The typical response of adults in village is "It's the kids' fault, they never study." Although this may be true in some cases, I might venture to say that the MONTH AND A HALF OF STRIKING might also have something to do with it.

One of the lycee kids, Abasse, who has kind of adopted me as his "tantie" (aunt), took the exam this year and totally got a kick out of coming to my house, acting super sad, and telling me that he failed, when actually- fake out!- he passed. After I consoled him by being sympathetic and saying "ca va aller" many times, he relented and told me the truth. Jerk. A few of my favorite students from last year came by to tell me they passed, but there were a lot who didn't get it this year. (There are still options for those who failed- they can retake the school year and try again next year, either at our school or at the bigger school in town or another one elsewhere. If their parents will pay.)

There's still the BAC coming up in a week or so- based on the French system, it's the exam to pass high school/get into university. The amount of studying kids (or adults) put into studying for this exam is unbelievable. There are students who just sleep at the high school now, because they study so late into the night.

As for my summer, I've been in and out of site a lot. There's nothing going on in village, so I've been doing a lot of workshops and trainings in Ouaga and elsewhere. This past month I did a TEFL training (in case I teach english next year), a workshop on how to help run a reading camp a friend's NGO is doing in August, and am now here for a GAD meeting (abbreviations!) It's keeping me busy, but I'm pretty sick of bush taxis at this point.

(The last time, I was basically curled up in my seat because of the rice sacks and chickens under me, the seat was a covered plank of wood, the lady next to me was sleeping on me, as was her baby, I couldn't drown out the Burkinabe rap music with my headphones, and there was a pervasive smell of butchered meat coming from the seat behind me. And the shocking part was that I didn't realize that it was a particularly bad bush taxi experience until I got to Ouaga and realized that my clothes still smelled like goat meat.)

I'm using a friend's computer, having left my power cable in village, so I'll end here. Look out for more updates, with anecdotes on teaching and consolidation parties!

Remember this?

The cattle market, plus the man at the market selling "medicaments"?

Fada is pretty much just the coolest place ever (when it's not being blocked by tanks.) I went again with a couple of good friends who are leaving soon, and the aim of our trip was to have our futures told by a sand reader. It's very traditional, and still popular- apparently many African leaders in the area use it to make important decisions (doesn't that make you feel optimistic? But hey, we did it too....) We biked over to the sand reader's house in the early evening. He wasn't there yet, so we hung out with his family as the cows and sheep came home and the kids took their baths. Finally when it was dark out the sand reader came home. While the rest of the family watched TV on a small set they brought out in the courtyard, we went over and sat on a mat on the sand. He sat next to the mat and had us take turns asking questions and having our futures read.

One of us would come forward and put our hand on the sand. Then he would draw patterns and lines in the sand, and would interpret what the sand was saying about us. Colette was told that wherever she worked (boutique, auto repair...) she had to be the boss; Bovard was told to sacrifice a medium, white, four-legged sheep; and I was told that I will marry an older man, but I'll only find love if my father prays for a husband for me. (Get on that, would you Dad?) Overall, I mainly just felt it was one of those cool experiences you should take advantage of when available. It was dark, the courtyard was quiet, the sand reader's cute family was hanging out, and the process of drawing in the sand and interpreting it was super soothing and pleasant. And then we all got to go out, eat fried chicken and analyze everything he'd said.

My ambulance repair proposal was finally approved! That means that it has gone up on the Peace Corps website, so anyone can check it out and donate if they want to. And it's only been a week, and it's already more than ten percent paid for!! Thank you!!!!

This is the earlier blog post I wrote describing the project initially:

http://adventuresagogo.blogspot.com/2010/09/maybe-please.html

Since then, the village paid for the ambulance to get new tires and for it to be towed to the mechanic in Tenkodogo. Hopefully if I can raise these funds it will be repaired in a matter of weeks! Then we can start the education campaign around the region that will tell people about the ambulance's availability, when you should call an ambulance, and giving them different ways to get in touch with the clinic to have them send the ambulance.

Here's the link to my project on the Peace Corps website:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-151

Or you can go to http://www.peacecorps.gov/, click on Donate to Volunteer Projects, and search anything about me- country, home state, name, anything that you know, and my project should come up.

Thanks for checking it out- and thank you SO MUCH, those of you who have donated. I really, honestly hate asking for money, but this is what my community came to me with as their most pressing need, and I promised to do what I could.

Welp, guess what I decided! If you're a member of my family, I'm sure my parents have already shared the terrible news: I'm staying a third year. I don't know that it's much of a surprise- I've been thinking about it since I started applying to the Peace Corps, honestly. I just wasn't sure in what capacity I'd want to stay. I could stay in my village, doing the same thing for another school year, I could work with an NGO in a larger city, I could transfer to another country and use my teaching experience in a new setting... so many options! And what I decided on is not at all what I initially expected, but I'm sooo excited about it.

I had been planning to work at the teacher's college, teaching sessions about how to include Life Skills in the classroom. But then I realized what I've been learning for two years: teachers stress me out. I have teacher friends, and a lot of them are lovely, welcoming, helpful people. Others, however, are extremely frustrating, and the functionnaire (government employee) complex of hating living in a village and not being friends with villagers can get very oppressive. It's a weird community, and while my job idea was theoretically good, the practical aspect of working entirely with functionnaires would have been... awful.

So then I thought about what I like about being here. I enjoy teaching, and I love my students. I've also been realizing how limiting it is not to speak local language very well. I want to be friends with little old ladies who don't speak french, but the language barrier keeps me from forming real friendships with them. I haven't needed to speak Moore to be a good teacher or to do side projects, so I haven't had the impetus to learn it well, but I want to.

Here's my plan. I'm going to move to a small village to teach in a newly opened school. The school is smaller, hopefully with smaller class sizes, and I'll be able to teach almost any subject they need me to teach- math, physics, chemistry, biology, or english (and they definitely need teachers- there are zero physics/chemistry teachers right now, and only one math/biology teacher.) The village speaks Moore, which I already know a little, and I'll spend the next five months studying it so I can integrate quickly. I want to live in a courtyard with a family, without electricity (who'd have thought, right? I love my fan!)

I'm really happy with this decision for a few other reasons as well. PC Burkina was going to get 33 new education volunteers this summer, but it's been cut down to 22 so there aren't going to be enough to fill the planned sites. I already have a lot of experience in teaching and I feel like I understand life here pretty well now, so I think I'll have a very effective third year and can make a significant impact in a small village. And lastly, as cheesy as this sounds, I know that I'll regret it if I leave now. I just... like it here. I don't want to leave yet. It's a perfect opportunity, and I'll never have another time in my life when it's this simple to spend another year in Africa. Instead of going home and bumming around for a year while I apply to graduate schools, I can do it here! More adventures! A gogo!

I'll get a month's paid (ha) leave in America, which I'll probably take over Christmas, so I'll be able to visit people then. I also promised my mother I'd get a phone with internet if I stayed a third year, so I should have regular access to email and facebook and Suzanne's blog (seriously, what else is there? Not even kidding.) Plus, this just gives all of you an extra year to come and visit me!! I promise you a real village experience.

Now, for a brief update.

Schoolwise we have a little bit of an unexpected vacation right now, so I'm profiting by spending an extra day in Tenkodogo. I never get to hang out here really- I'm always just passing through- so as soon as I leave the cyber cafe I'm planning to do some intense marche shopping. I need blonde weave (gotta get my hair did) and new shoes. Then, tomorrow, back to village to start painting my World Map on an outside wall of the high school! That's... going to take a while. I'll keep you updated, but it's not sure that it'll be done before April.

Whenever school starts up again, I'll be able to finish doing my school-wide sex-ed sessions that I mentioned last time. I started with the youngest girls (6th/7th grade) and the oldest boys (9th/10th grade), the latter with help from a couple of male teachers. Good thing, too, because those boys... oof. Some things are universal, and one of those things happens to be teenage boys. Not something a young, single, limited-french-speaking american girl can exactly handle on her own, as I have learned through doing World AIDS Day lessons with these hooligans (I also learned that mixed groups are a DISASTER, which is why these are totally separate.) The girls, on the other hand, were shy and cute and amazed by everything I told them. Periods? They had no clue. And when I finally got them asking questions, they had plenty. I'm excited to work with the older girls, and to scare the rest of the boys with pictures of STDs.

I should also mention the ambulance project. It's still not done yet, unfortunately- there are some more hoops the Ouaga office is going to make me jump through, including meeting with the community and writing a completely new budget. But hopefully once I fulfill all these new requirements I'll get approval right away, and once I do I'll start pleading for help from friends and family.

The end! I probably won't have internet again until the last few days of March when I go into Ouaga for our "close of service conference." We don't actually finish our service until August, but this is a preliminary attempt on the Peace Corps' part to get us ready for life outside of Burkina, where there are such things as working hours and resumes. Yeah, good luck with that, guys.

Okay, yes, I bribe girls with nail polish and fashion magazines

Then I teach them how to use my camera

And let them use my mirror to primp

And take their pictures.

So yes, I may be reinforcing certain gender sterotypes, bribing girls, and luring them in by letting them play with my stuff, but I'm pretty okay with that. It means they like coming to my house, they have stuff to do so we end up having fun conversations, and when I do life skills activities with them they listen and participate. And they bring their school notebooks so after we have our club I help them with their homework. I might not have the most organized, intentional girls' club in Burkina (which makes me a little insecure sometimes) but we have fun, and I love it.

Burkina flag fingernails!

This bus company is called KGB. It uses yellow Bluebird schoolbuses and its logo is this alligator, with wheels. I dunno, all that put together just makes me so happy every time I think about it.

And this is how they load buses here- there's a rack on top where they tie motos, as well as bikes, bags of rice, and goats. Here is a goat being put on top. As you might imagine, he was less than thrilled about it.

The Zongo brothers separating their rice harvest- grains fall, husks fly away. I tried to help (not pictured.) I hope the sound works- that was my favorite part. The metal shovel going into the pile, scchinckk, and the rice being thrown into the air, flwhoosh!

I think I have reverted to being a five year old.

THIS is how cold it was here in January. Pants, sweater, fleecy hoodie, scarf, every morning. I would often try to find creative ways to wrap the scarf around my head. And biking to school at 6:30am was even worse. It was FREEZING, sometimes as low as 68 degrees!! Ridiculous. And I loved it.

Now, it is hot. It is hot already. It started in January, and for the past week and a half it's been around a hundred degrees in my house every day. Hot season is supposed to start in March. This is unconscionable.

I was trying to think of other anecdotes or interesting things to share, and was mentally complaining to myself that I've done so very little lately. This past Sunday in particular, I felt very boring because I stayed at my house the entire day grading math tests. But as the day progressed, I realized just how many visitors I get. I was visited by M Seagda, who came to talk about the ambulance repair grant, two of my girls' club girls, who dropped off a book they borrowed and asked for help on a presentation, M Drabo, my pseudo-dad, Leopold, the painter who's going to paint two of my rooms (seafoam green and yellow- ridiculous, yes) Marie, a neighbor girl/friend who came to do physics exercises, and my favorite vegetable lady, Pauline, who stumbled on my courtyard while looking for a different house. All unannounced, all before 3pm. So even on days when I feel completely lame and isolated and never leave my courtyard, I still have visits from friends, neighbors, coworkers, all sorts of people. It's quite nice now that I'm used to it, and I'm sure I'll miss it when I go back to America.

Il ne faut pas devancer l'iguane dans l'eau Don't go into the water before the iguana

My favorite proverb so far. Folks here have tons of 'em, for all occasions. This one means “don't put the cart before the horse” (which they also say (but in french)) but sounds far cooler. It comes from when you're, you know, trying to catch an iguana, because if it falls into the water it'll stay there without moving and you can catch it. But if you go in first, it won't follow you in and you'll never be able to get it. Just something to keep in mind next time you go iguana hunting.

Hooray!! Finally. Pictures!

Fishing boats in Dix Cove

Sunrise on the beach

Old colonial buildings

Cape Coast Castle

Yaayy Ghana!

*Imagine that you're seeing exciting, dramatic pictures of waves crashing on the beach and brightly painted fishing boats with multicolored flags waving in the sunset.*

Sorry, the whole point of this post was initially to post pictures from Ghana. But the internet here at the Peace Corps house here in Ouaga isn't letting me do that. So... update?

I'm here, in Ouaga, on my way back to village from our trip to Ghana. We went to the beach for two weeks and it was lovely. I probably gained five pounds and got a wicked tan. It was excellent. Then on the way back I got to do the only really touristy thing I wanted to do- visit the Cape Coast Castle, a major slave castle on the Gold Coast. It's the one the Obamas visited on their trip to Ghana (not why I wanted to go, but I did see the remembrance wreath Michelle brought, molding in the slave dungeon.)

Christmas was great- we had roast pig and hot chocolate and listened to Sufjan Christmas albums and played Christmas scrabble, Christmas Bam, and a very fun Swedish stick-throwing game. Hopefully I'll be able to put up the pictures of us wearing Christmas sweaters and ski hats with our swimsuits on the beach.

Now I'm headed back to village to start the second trimester, for which I have prepared... not at all. It'll be okay. I think. Teaching should be fine, and I'm optimistic about being able to do projects I've been planning, like painting a world map at the high school and doing sex-ed classes with the students at my school (they seriously aren't taught Anything until 3eme, which could mean that they could be 18 or 19 before they learn about the stuff we're taught in 6th grade in the US.) Oh, and finally submitting my ambulance grant proposal. (Almost done. M Seagda is working on getting some more data from the head doctor at the health center, which has taken a while because they've been super busy with vaccination campaigns.) Hooray, projects!

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot. The most exciting part of being in Ghana: FanIce. It's like a rectangular pouch of ice cream. Here in Burkina we have FanChoco and FanLait, which are delicious, but they're not FanIce. FanIce tasted like.. generic grocery store vanilla ice cream that you buy in tubs and feel horrible about eating because they're so bad for you but Delicious. Burkina has nothing to compare. Even the fanciest ice cream you buy in Ouaga is nothing compared to this amazingness (and it's only 50 pesoes! 30 cents?) Like, . I bought it literally every time I saw it for sale (carried on someone's head in a wooden box or in a cooler attached to the front of a bike with the trademark Fan horn honking), which was... often. Like, I ate a lot. Possibly five sachets a day, when I could get it. ... May have contributed to the five pounds.

So, I've been here since last June, which adds up to... what, a year and a half? That means I have nine months left of my original 27 months in the Peace Corps. That's... weird. I don't know if I like that.

Anyways, I've noticed a couple of things lately in village that make me recognize how some of my perceptions have changed since coming here. I'm far from being fully integrated- I still use toilet paper, I can't bike in pagnes, I buy fancy canned foods and lentils when I go to the city- but my outlook on life has definitely changed, and I thought I'd list a few ways in which it has. Things I no longer notice (Yes, antithetical premise. But I'll try.) French Okay, a little. Mainly when people have weirdo accents and talk super fast. But most of the time, I forget if I'm speaking french or english. Bucket baths Refreshing, very eco-friendly, does the job. Latrines Whatever. Just bring a plastic bag if you need to puke- that hole's a pretty small target. Biking to school Hey, maybe I'll pop over to school to talk to the secretary. And maybe again this afternoon, then I can swing by the marche. That adds up to 28km? Well, sure. Call to prayer I no longer wake up at 4am to the sound of the scratchy mosque loudspeakers and the early morning animal noises- although I definitely notice if I've been up all night and hear it and realize how little time I have left to try to sleep. Fetching water I actually think this is really easy now, because of the faucet they put in near my house. Compared to biking a kilometer to pump one bidon (jug) of water and attaching it to my bike and trying not to fall over on the way home, this is a breeze. It takes me twenty minutes start to finish to get three bidons of water, which lasts me at least 3-4 days (unless I do laundry, which takes a whole jug by itself.) Garish pagnes What do you expect? It's a pagne. Awkwardness Part of every single interaction of every single day. Embrace it. (Although I'm slightly concerned about remembering how to interact with people when I go back to America. Friends and family, be forewarned.) Concrete floors What else would there be? Requests by strangers to take them to America/trade bikes/marry me/take my clothes or jewelry/teach them english. I'm a pro. I know now to just say “Sure, no problem” or “Next time” and laugh, and never ever follow through. Not having internet I don't even remember what to do on the internet. Is there anything besides email and facebook? Oh right, this blog. Maybe, what, twitter? That's a thing, right? The heat Yeah, I notice it, but it's no longer a Thing. It's obviously going to be hot out, but there's nothing to do about it. And I'm much more used to it than I was before. (Hey, right now it's 97 in my house and I'm not even sweating- whoo!) Seasons I forgot halloween. And I keep wondering when I'm supposed to start listening to Christmas music. After Thanksgiving, right? Which is... this week?

Things I do notice: Exciting foods at the market Lettuce! Bananas! Hey, it's watermelon season again! Wait, is that a sweet potato?? Yes, I'll take twenty. Airplanes A small biplane flew over my village the other day, and it took me a full fifteen seconds of wondering where that noise was coming from to consider looking up. There aren't even any jet trails in the sky- my sky is en route to nowhere. Baby animals I can't help it- I think it's getting worse. My chicks are so fluffy and cute, my neighbor's puppies play with the baby goats, and baby donkeys are even more adorable than grown up ones. They look like grey, fuzzy My Little Ponies with awkward skinny legs. Stairs The Peace Corps office in Ouaga has four floors. And the resource center that the volunteers use is on the top floor. As there are NO other stairs in my life, this now presents a physical challenge of olympic proportions. (By the way, I also forgot that elevators exist. Can you imagine? You get in a box that takes you up at the push of a button. But that can't really count as something I notice, because I honestly believe that there may be literally no elevators in Burkina Faso. I have never seen one here.) Short skirts SO shocking!! Inappropriate! Cover your knees, girl!!! Where are your parents?! Pagnes I want to buy That rare subtle or cool print that makes me think, “I could wear that in the states, right?” (The answer should always be: “No, Carolyn, you cannot.” But I still dream....) Extremely garish pagnes (that I want to buy) Cell phone pagnes! Roller skates! Chickens! Awesome. Being called Nasara (whitey/foreigner) I pretend not to notice to discourage the practice, but it's like if someone calls my name- I always notice. And I never like it. Caffeine Tea's okay, fancy the de chine's okay, coke's okay. Coffee will give me a massive migraine and keep me up the entire night. Laundry I still hate it. Dirt on chairs, bush taxi benches, etc. Because I know I'll have to wash my clothes later if I sit on dirty seats. And I still hate laundry. So I get out my rag and wipe down the seat, like a true Burkinabe. Sexism I think I'll always be hyper-sensitive to sexism from now on. It's so terrible here and I get so mad about it that anytime the smallest incident occurs or someone makes an offhand comment, I'm ready for a fight.

Many, many conversations here involve discussions about wak. Aka magic. I don't usually do too much talking during these sessions, mostly because I can't get a word in edgewise. My teacher friends sit around for hours, preparing and drinking this strong mint tea that I love. During this time, they often take turns telling stories about mysterious happenings that they either witnessed or, far more often, heard about. I myself have heard some of these same stories in several different versions. I don't have any stories of my own to contribute, so I just sit there and listen and occasionally someone will comment about how I don't believe them.

I'll admit, often I may have a look of mild skepticism on my face (I swear it's not my full-on skepticism face- if you know me, you know the one), and that's totally a product of my upbringing and education. I think about the scientific method being applied to these situations, or even just alternate explanations, and don't quite understand why everyone's so eager to ignore other ideas and revel in the idea of genies and sorcerers. But then again, many very well-educated people believe in miracles, which also inspire skepticism. I try not to discount everything or dismiss it out of hand. But when someone says that a rainman can make it rain during a drought, I want to ask if this man has ever turned down a commission, along with questions about barometers and trick knees that ache before the rain. I usually hold my tongue, because my friends are perfectly willing to acknowledge that things like this don't happen chez les blancs so I can't understand.

Yikes, I totally don't mean to sound snotty. I really love hearing the stories, they're always entertaining and occasionally mystifying. Even while my brain is working on theories of what really might have happened I'm fully enthralled because people here are such good storytellers.

A friend told me the story of his father and uncle. His father was a very successful man and moved away from his home village to work. He would send money to his parents (my friend's grandparents) and "grande famille" under the care of his brother. He would include specific instructions on what the money should be used for, like building a nice house for their parents and other good things of a similar nature, and the brother kept him updated on all the progress he made. Eventually, my friend's father wanted to go back and visit his village and family. So he told his brother he was coming and started to plan a trip. Unfortunately, he suddenly became ill and had to cancel. Some more time went by, and he tried again, planning the visit with his family. Again, he got violently sick and couldn't go, but as soon as he cancelled the visit he felt better. This happened a couple more times, and he was getting frustrated. He went to a number of doctors and none of them could find anything wrong with him. So one day when he was feeling well he impulsively decided to go to his village. When he arrived, he found that his brother had not done any of the work he had said he'd done. The brother had simply taken the money for himself, using it for motos, women, and other things he wanted. My friend's father was furious, and swore he'd take action against his brother. That very week, though, before he could do anything, he died.

My friend is convinced that his uncle was paying a sorcerer to keep his father away from their village, and eventually had him killed, to protect himself and the money he stole.

That is just one story of the dozens I've heard, and it's the most memorable because it was a pretty good friend who told it to me, it was his own father, and he said his father could afford to go to good doctors, all of whom said he was healthy. That's one of the more mysterious stories I can tell offhand. I'll try to remember more for later posts, if anyone's interested.

I'm not saying I believe in wak (despite the constant barrage of anecdotal examples), but it might be something like my theories about miracles- just because I think there are physical explanations doesn't mean they're any less real or any less important for the people involved.

Okay, brace yourselves for the most amazing early birthday present ever:

Ka-BAM!

Isn't it beautiful? I'd been talking for ages about getting a sewing machine for myself, due to my enthusiasm for (albeit not necessarily skill with) couture and frustration with tailors in village. I was getting kind of tired of stabbing myself with sewing needles trying to sew by candlelight during power outages. (True story. I really wanted to wear that dress!) And then a (*cough*) friend came to visit and brought me this!! Via bush taxi. Yeah.

Now I just need to figure out how to make it work....

Chicken had babies!! Four made it out of the egg, hopefully they'll last a while.

This is the sad story of my failed bricks. My friend offered to make mud bricks to build a chicken house, so he got the materials and spent two evenings making a million bricks next to my water faucet. They were all done, just needed a couple of days to dry.

Key word is "dry." What are those? Oh, those are rain clouds. Generally something I love with all of my heart, but not so good for mud bricks. It rained that very night, and all my lovely bricks melted. We might try again another time, now that there will absolutely be no rain for at least, what, six months? I guess that's an upside to dry season....

Just a quick update today! School started, and I'm teaching the same classes as last year- 6th grade math and 8th grade physics/chemistry, and this past week was wonderful. I really have a good feeling about this year. I feel like I know what I'm doing, the students are excited (yes, I know it's only the first week, but still) and I'm going to have a lot of fun teaching them. And it feels really good to be back in my village doing actual work again.

I only came into town today to pick up a package (and got two!! Thanks Mom and Grandma Gayle!) so I'll head back soon, but I wanted to thank everyone for your interest in the bike tour- it turned out SO well, raising 4500 dollars (ha, of course this french keyboard doesn't have a dollar sign) for Gender Equality projects. Here's a link to the pictures from the tour! I grace several of them.

("sap sap" means "really quick" in Mooré)

A gang has formed in my neighborhood. The most awesome gang ever. It's this band of boys, maybe eight, ten years old (with a couple little ones tagging along on foot) who ride their donkeys around my house and the fields nearby. They have races, fall off, get thrown off, spend twenty minutes trying to get a donkey to go the right direction, and generally just have a wonderful time. One day they even made themselves matching shiny green kung-fu headbands for their racing-around activities. I assume they're the boys who are supposed to herd their families' cows around the village, but I'm not sure. Whoever they are, they have a blast.

I have NOT forgotten your request, Whitney, to put up pictures of food textures, as weird as that is. So here's an example? I mean, I took some pictures of a lunch I ordered in a restaurant (mostly because, as you can see, the presentation is SO FANCY!) It's couscous with peanut sauce, which is quite a nice meal here for a lunch place. Usually you get poorly-cooked short-grain rice with a watery sauce, and bonus pebbles thrown in for extra crunch, but this was very tasty.

Sadly, I didn't get to spend as much time in Ouahigouya this summer as I'd hoped, so no pictures of chicken in a bag (even sadder: I didn't get to eat chicken in a bag.) I'll keep trying to remember to take pictures of my food, though, in the seconds before I devour it.

Okay, this is what I've been working on this summer. It's not quite a plea for money, it's a plea to let me use you as a contact that I submit with my project proposal to Peace Corps so that I can publicize this project. (I need to give five contacts to the Peace Corps- possible donors, but no commitment involved- before they will accept my application. If they accept it, they then put my project on the PC donations website for everyone to see.)

Here it is.

I'm trying to fix my village's ambulance. The ambulance was initially provided by an organization in Bagre, a group of rice field owners who often fund community needs. They built the high school, recently added a science laboratory, and a few years back provided this ambulance. Unfortunately, there was no plan in place for its upkeep, and it is now in really terrible shape.

I believe I've mentioned the transportation situation of my village. Bush taxis make for lovely adventures, but don't quite make for good transport of seriously sick people. Neither do motorbikes, regular bikes, or donkey carts.

The health center in Bagre is small, with very little equipment. Seriously, when I asked what they have, they told me otoscopes, and a really bright lamp so they can see children's veins and hook them up to IVs. Complications during childbirth are a huge problem here, and there's not a lot that can be done unless it's at the hospital. And the hospital is in Tenkodogo, 45km away.

So the community has organized a committee of health personnel, the village chief, and other well-respected personages of Bagre to try to fix the ambulance. They have begun going around the area, asking each family for a donation, and have already raised 150 000 francs. But the project is going to need significantly more than that. Mr. Seagda, the agricultural officer for my region, came to me to see if I would be willing to try to look for outside funds to help with this project, and I said I would try. (He understood that there is no guarantee here, just that I'll do my best.) I've worked with him before, and so did Liz, the volunteer before me- he's a really motivated, well-respected member of the community.

One source of funding is through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, which works through the PC website. If you check it out, you see that there are currently about a hundred volunteer projects up right now, and you can read about each project, see how much money is still needed, and donate if you'd like to. So it's not dependent solely on friends and family of each volunteer (although they certainly help)- anyone can contribute.

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Again, this is not a plea for money (not yet. Maybe someday, if my project is approved.) I just promised my community that I would do all I could to help them repair their ambulance, and am trying to follow through. And I honestly think this is a worthwhile project. There's a plan in place to raise funds on a regular basis for future upkeep of the ambulance, and we're going to go around the area telling people how to contact the ambulance, in what situations it's important to call, and educate them about other services available at the health center as well.

Sooooooo...... if you'd be okay with me putting you as a contact on my application (again, no real commitment here, but the Peace Corps might pester you a little bit for donations... I don't know how much,) then I would be so grateful if you would tell me. I would like to get this submitted soon, if possible, and this would help me a ton. If you have any questions about details, let me know, I will Gladly respond.

Oof, I really do apologize that this is my second post in like a month that talks about how I (aka projects in Burkina) need money. I promise it won't happen again for a while.

This is at my bush taxi station in Tenkodogo- apparently it was done by a Togolese artist. I'm amazed by it every time (I spend a LOT of time at my taxi station), and finally made myself whip my camera out in front of all the taxi guys to take a picture.

Aaaand... the Marlboro man. On the back of a semi truck, with eagles. That's more like it.

The very few pictures I took of the bike tour. This is everyone leaving me behind in Fada. I was kind of okay with that.

Ew. I am extremely gross right now. A hazard of bush taxi travel and really greasy bike chains that come off the gears. I smell like sweat and petrol and my hands are black. Good thing this keyboard is too!

I'm in Tenkodogo after having accidentally done a couple days of the bike tour. I had been planning on doing part of it, and then for a while I wasn't sure I would want to leave site this month, but then things calmed down in Bagré just as the bike tour happened to come through Tenkodogo. Sooo... I came up here on Tuesday, rode with everyone to Koupela (~50km) on Wednesday, then got talked into riding to Fada N'Gourma ("Fada") on Thursday, which was another 80-some km. It was surprisingly not that painful, and the weather was lovely, and I got to eat more chicken than I have in probably the past year. I had a great time and I'm kind of sad I'm not doing more of the tour, but I'm also kind of glad I don't have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning. No, really glad. But if you want to follow what my hard-core friends are doing, Rachel is updating the bike tour blog every day! (The link should be a couple of posts down.)

Today I'm planning to do some grocery shopping (eggs, lentils, tuna, bread... the luxuries of my life) and then head back to Bagré to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Happily, this will involve copious amounts of food, since everyone's been fasting for the past month. Bonne fete!!

Living here, I ususally have an attitude of adventure. This fact is evidenced by the title of this blog, and... every post I've ever written. I think of my time here as exciting and different and very... other. My PC friends and I joke a lot about being in the Peace Corps in Burkina versus "real life" at home, and there's certainly merit to that. There are things about the culture we've grown up in that are so different from here, and since we've only been here a short while and will only be here for a year or two longer, obviously the states seem more normal than Burkina. It's easy to live in a sort of temporary mindset. And the adventure attitude helps me deal with a lot of crazy, frustrating stuff that comes up every day, like the disasters that are bush taxis or the frequency of stomach problems or the unbelievable heat of March and April. It can be an extremely useful tactic.

Unfortunately, things can happen that show you exactly how real-life this experience is. My Proviseur (high school principal) passed away last week, and while I wasn't super-close to him, I'm quite close to his wife, kids, and niece. The family lives next door to me, and has been a sort of surrogate family this past year. They're incredibly lovely and generous people, and this has devastated their lives. (This was totally unexpected- a freak illness. He was 49.) I went back to village to see them when I found out, and it was absolutely heartbreaking. I'm glad I went, though, because they are moving away and may not be there when I go back again tomorrow.

I'm not looking for sympathy for myself- I'm doing fine. And sorry to put up such a bummer of a post. But this is what has been going on with me, and it's a pretty major thing. I don't know exactly how it will change the next year or so of my life, but it absolutely will. In a very practical way, it will change my neighborhood and the people in my life. In a less tangible way, I think I'll be taking this next year somewhat more seriously. Not that I didn't take this past year seriously, just... more so. Or view my time here more soberly? I'm not exactly sure what I mean. But I do have a better understanding now of the "realness" of my time in Burkina. Just like anywhere else, maybe even more so here, life is very real, and it can suck unbelievably.

So, you are reading this blog, which means either

a: you like me, at least sometimes

b: you are related to me and feel obligated

c: you are interested in africa and peace corps-style work

d: you were searching for helmeted guinea fowl and ended up here.

If you are one of those for whom either a or c is true, or b and you're feeling particularly obligated today, you may be interested in opportunities to support the work other volunteers and I are doing here in Burkina!

I'm on the Committee for Gender and Development, which is one of the only sources of funding for small-scale volunteer projects that promote gender equality. If you do a girls' camp or a maternal health workshop, there are not a lot of sources of funding available, and volunteers often pay expenses out of their (fairly meager) living allowance. So we fundraise to be able to give this money directly out to volunteers for their projects! And the most recent, most awesome fundraiser that we (okay, Marita) came up with is a bike tour! Volunteers are biking around Burkina- almost 1200 miles total, and we are hoping for sponsors! I am not personally an official biker, but I'll definitely be tagging along for a couple legs of the tour, and not only am I a member of GAD, I'm also a (hopeful) applicant for funding!

It would be awesome if you would help us out, but it's even cool if you just check out the website and see some of the work other volunteers do. Plus, I'm in the GAD family portrait on the main page. And those are my friends in all of the other pictures. Don't take my word for it! duh Duh Duh

http://burkinabiketour.blogspot.com/

These birds are the bane of my existence. They are called "pintades" (which I heard for a long time as "pin-tards," for which I feel a little guilty, particularly because I think it's more apt.) They are also known as guinea fowl- helmeted guinea fowl, to be precise- and they are the loudest birds I have ever heard. They belong to my neighbors and roost in a nearby tree and are super fast runners so you can only catch them when it rains and their feathers are wet. I'm used to the donkey noises (I still honestly love donkeys: I think they're hilarious) and I'm used to the call to prayer broadcasted every morning from 4-4:30, but I don't think I'll ever be used to these birds. As my birdwatching book puts it so poetically: "Commonest call a series of hard, raucous notes interspersed with grating rattle chek-chek-chek krrrrrr chek-chek-chek...."

This is the clutch of eggs one of my neighbors' chickens laid in my yard. Mme Ouedraogo came over later and replaced some of the chicken eggs with pintade eggs. This way the chicken will nest on the pintade eggs and grow little pintades (you can guess how thrilled I am about that) which is necessary because they don't raise their own eggs. Which is the reason behind a superstition here: if children eat chicken eggs, they'll grow up to be thieves, because the chicken actually cares about her eggs so it's like they stole them. (True for fetuses too- if a pregnant woman eats chicken eggs, her baby will be a thief. Watch out.) Pintade eggs, on the other hand, are fair game.

Whoooa sorry!! I guess it's been over a month since my last post? Tous mes excuses. The main reason, and the reason why this post is going to be so short, is that my camera has once again given up the ghost. I took a number of pictures, including shots of: the pintades (the birds that make so much noise by my house), local food, even the market, but I need to find the means to get these pictures out of the useless hunk of metal that used to be my camera. And hopefully I can find a new way to take pictures, otherwise this blog will turn into a bad novel instead of the vastly more entertaining picture book that I'm going for.

I am currently sitting under a fan in a high school computer lab, waiting for the rain to stop. (I would not normally want it to stop, ever, except that I happen to be very hungry.) I'm working training again this week which involves observing the trainees teach summer classes at a local high school. I'm quite enjoying helping with training- the trainees are great and I feel useful- but I am definitely excited to get back to Bagré next week. It's been three weeks and it's time to go home.

The rain stopped!! Time to eat some goat brochettes.

Hooray! Bagre's getting pretty again. I got back to site after being gone for almost a month and I had flashbacks to my very first site visit, almost a year ago. (We've been in Burkina over a year now- just feel like I should mark that milestone.)

To fully enjoy the loveliness of my world now I've been doing a lot of biking around; that also may have something to do with the fact that I have nothing to do at site. That may seem weird to folks at home (how can you not have anything to do? You're in the Peace Corps in Africa, shouldn't you be like feeding starving children or something?) Okay, maybe. But my role is as a teacher, and the school year is over, and everybody is out in the fields cultivating all day. I'm hoping to do other projects later in the summer after I get back from being a trainer (be ready: pleas for funding are forthcoming) but right now I am just kind of hanging out and waiting to go up to Ouahigouya. Oh, and watching a lot of World Cup with my neighbors.

End note: There is simply NOT a lot going on in my world right now. And these blog posts are just going to keep getting lamer. I'd be happy to take suggestions- if anyone has a topic they want to hear about I can pretty much talk about anything at length.

To finish off this round of posts, I just wanted to mention that I've started a little project that I've had as an idea for the past couple of months. I'm attempting to photograph the paintings used in advertising here in Burkina. There are pretty standard ones, as for coiffeurs/coiffeuses (hairdressers) who want to show the kind of work they do. And then there are some that are just unequivocally weird and fabulous, like this one that I think is advertising a tree cutting company? I hope? Not quite sure why rabbits are involved....

I only started a couple of days ago, so prepare yourselves for excitingness to come.

Pictures from last August (ps, Burkinabe do not think it's cool to smile in pictures.):

Euro, Malika, and Alima

Fatao (he was NOT happy that I was leaving them)

Another post! Aren't you excited.

Last week, while in Ouahigouya, I got to visit my host family!! Euro (Ousmane), Alima, Fatao, and Malika are doing Very well. Malika is getting over malaria (or "pallu" here, which may actually be a number of maladies, but they just call it all malaria) but she's bigger than last year and after a while got used to having me there again. She even smiled at one point! That's quite an unusual occurrence with Burkinabe babies, usually they cry when they see a white person (amazingly entertaining for the mothers and observers, less entertaining for me.) And Fatao is hardly any bigger. I told him how big he was getting (lie), and Alima was like ha, nope, he's the same size. But he's still super cute and awesome. And my host dad is going to take the BAC this June!! He's an elementary school teacher, which only requires that you pass 10th grade and then do teacher training, but the BAC (from the French system) is MUCH harder and a huge accomplishment. I so hope he passes- he's great.

This has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was cool. This is a student of mine who broke his arm, and this is how they splinted it.

Quick post- I'll write more later, probably. No, definitely.

I am back in Burkina after going to Americaland to surprise my friend before her wedding. It was AMAZING: the wedding, seeing people, and eating everything I've been craving for the past year. I think, literally, everything. And then some.

Like I've been telling people, I haven't had any culture shock going and coming back and I think it's just because my mind can't process the idea of both of these incredibly disparate worlds existing. So I was in America mode, and now I'm back in Burkina mode. Maybe there'll be some problems when I go back to village. We'll see.

I just came back from a week of training and session-planning for the new group of volunteers coming this summer, since I'll be one of the trainers (basically for the month of July.) The first round of trainees comes in this week; they're the Secondary Education sector and therefore have two weeks more training than any of the other sectors. Arrival: Wednesday. There have been no new volunteers for an entire year (my group is still the most recent) and I have to say, we're all pretty excited about new people. So... welcome, new trainees!!! Good luck with staging and the first bit of time in country. I promise it'll be okay.

I started teaching! I am now Madame Glidden. I think I'm going to really enjoy my classes. The kids are pretty good (it is only the first week, after all,) and I've gotten to do a couple of extremely basic physics demonstrations with a peanut butter jar of water, the bottom half of a coke bottle, and a gutted bic pen. Air! It's all around us.

It turns out that I am in fact only scheduled to teach 9 credits this year. 4eme Physics/Chemistry, which is 4 credit hours a week, and 6eme Math, which is 5 credit hours a week. Initially I was not thrilled about this. I mean, I feel kind of useless and pathetic in comparison to the other teachers, and I also want to be an actual help here. The community is paying for my housing, and I want to sort of earn my keep. But as I've gotten used to the idea I've gotten more and more excited about the time I'll have to do secondary projects.

It seems like it's kind of arbitrary the way the Peace Corps chooses certain people for certain sectors. I was pretty confident I would get a health placement, but they put me in teaching science. And coming here with the Girls' Education and Empowerment volunteers, I was kind of jealous of the freedom they have to meet a specific community's needs, whether it's with girls' clubs, creating community libraries, or pretty much anything they come up with. And the training for us as teachers was kind of limited- we didn't learn very much about working in the health sector or in girls' ed, just how to teach. Which, obviously, is the priority. But we already have certain advantages as teachers- an established role in the community, a connection with students and parents, an open forum in the classroom- which make it a lot easier to empower girls and educate about health. So I'm really hopeful now for the potential to do a lot of cross-sector work, with clubs, working with the health center, or anything my counterpart can think up. I don't know how well I'll be able to make that work, but I think that even if teaching takes up all my mornings, that's still a heck of a lot of time to use for other things.

Okay, so I got an email last week saying that there was a WHO polio vaccination campaign going on across all West Africa the upcoming weekend, and encouraging volunteers to go to their local health center (CSPS) and see if they could help. So, I did. And the majeur, the head of the CSPS, let me go with him and another worker to do vaccinations in some of the villages in Bagre! I didn't do a whole lot- just tallied the number of kids who got vaccinated and their ages, but I got to wear a super cool “kick polio out of Burkina” shirt (but in french, bien sur) and follow their moto on my bike (does a body good) and make children cry- both because of the vaccine, and because I'm a monster. Which is especially true in the bush, where they've definitely never seen a white person before.

The vaccine is only two drops, taken orally, which is amazingly convenient. And most of these kids have been vaccinated before, in shots they received as babies. But here people tend either to not know about vaccinations, or are reluctant to get their children vaccinated- just like in the US, there's a lot of misinformation about vaccines, and people blame them for any illness the kids get after receiving them. So campaigns like this are often a way to try to catch people who've fallen through the cracks.

Again, I didn't do much, but it was a fun kind of experience, and I got some pictures, and visited some compounds hidden way out in the bush, and hopefully I'll be able to work with the CSPS a lot more in the future. Although, the majeur asked me out afterwards- that complicates things a little. If I can navigate that cordially, then maybe I'll still be able to work with the CSPS in the future.

My garden! Look at these fabulous baby tomatoes. I'm desperately hoping that they make it.

Liz, the volunteer before me, planted this garden at the beginning of the rainy season- June maybe? And now I have boatloads of cucumbers. There were some less successful crops- the corn was very sad, the peanuts aren't looking so hot, and the watermelons were a bust. But there are about a dozen promising tomato plants, I already harvested the beans that were growing, and I just discovered mint in a corner of my courtyard! And of course, the bissap takeover. There are some trees, too- a couple of good little mango trees, that may be producing by the time I leave, and two moringa trees which are huge already. Moringa is like this magical tree that lots of NGOs and agricultural and health projects promote. It grows incredibly fast, in difficult conditions, and the leaves are incredibly nutritious. I'll get you the pamphlet. But it's nice to have some big trees around my courtyard- it makes it feel more homey.

Classes start Thursday! October 1. I'm pretty excited to start my job and feel purposeful for the first time in a month. I mean, I understand that the Peace Corps wants us to have time to integrate into the community, get our bearings, maybe have a little time off after the overscheduled-ness of training, and I've certainly enjoyed it. I've been cooking, baking, painting, drawing, sewing, biking, yoga-ing, reading, lots of very nice things. But I've felt more integrated over the past few days, since I started seeing my coworkers and other teachers have moved into my neighborhood, than I did the entire first few weeks.

So there are six teachers at my school, with a couple more coming for just a few classes. And there are 412 students registered so far, in four grades (with one grade split into two classes because it's so big.) And there is a total of 136 credit hours to be taught. I personally feel like a huge bum, because I am currently scheduled to teach only 9 hours at that school, the middle school (although that's still in question- I'll likely get at least one more class!) while other teachers have up to 5 distinct courses to teach. But it is my first year, and I'm basically unpaid- my money comes from the Peace Corps, so as far as Burkina Faso is concerned, I'm a volunteer. That's how I justify it at least.

It's possible that the number of students versus teachers has caught your attention. Well, schools here tend to have classes that are somewhat on the large side. Like, in 6eme, which is the large grade with two classes, the director of my school limited the number of students to 96 per class. Meaning that I'll go into a classroom of 96 students with nothing but chalk and my lesson plan, and try to teach them order of operations. Hm. At least my physics class will be smaller- only 64 students have registered so far. But again, teaching materials equal chalk and whatever I bring in to class. No lab out in the bush! I'm planning on lots of science fair project-type experiments... baking soda and vinegar volcano!!! I expect it to be a big hit.

I came back from Ouaga last week to a lovely surprise: my bissap bushes were blooming! Okay, it's more like a bissap forest. But I don't want to cut them down until they mature and I can harvest the flowers to make... juice!I think “bissap” is the moore word for hibiscus. That's what I was told. But I think I've heard people call the leaves of the plant (which are edible and are often put into sauces) “oseille,” which according to my dictionary translates as sorrel. So I'm just kind of generally fuzzy on the topic. Anyway, the flowers wilt leaving behind the base of the flower, which grows into a sort of fruit. You collect those and boil them down into these small red grains that can then be made into juice! I'm very excited about the prospect. And if my crop is as bountiful as seems likely, I'll definitely be sending some of the grains stateside to spread the Burkina love around. Oh, and I'm pretty sure you can make bissap wine, too, which tastes dangerously like the juice.

Don't you love it? That's the view out my back window. The african cows are kind of great. The little kids (like, tiny kids) bring them over to the fields around my house every day. The kids also bring donkeys sometimes, and occasionally they have donkey races. I'm usually pretty uncomfortable around large animals, but the cows here are really docile, so even if I have to ride my bike through a herd of them crossing the road they'll just stop and make a space for me. And now the great ambition of my life is to ride a donkey. I think my neighbor boy Danny is going to take me out to his family's rice fields in his donkey cart, which is... awesome. If it happens, you're going to see about a trillion pictures. Get ready.