I know this post is 3 months behind, but a lot of folks at home have asked me what this Peace Corps fair thing was all about. Peace Corps Burkina Faso hosted a 3 day 50th Anniversary fair to celebrate Peace Corps’ 50th birthday and all the work that volunteers do in the BF. The first day started off with a rainy swear-in of a new group of volunteers, and the whole thing ended with a celebration with the First Lady of Burkina and a concert by Floby, a popular Burkina singer. I worked the Food Security booth for all 3 days, handing out Moringa tea and orange marmalade samples, making Moringa doughnuts, and teaching people about the benefits of Moringa and food preservation techniques such as jam making and food drying. I also dressed up as Moringa Woman for a morning. Here are a few videos made by other PCVs to give you a look at the Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Fair! Day 1 of the fair Floby’s Peace Corps Song! This one gives a pretty good overview of the Peace Corps Burkina Faso program

This article so completely describes my Peace Corps experience I had to share it. What the Peace Corps taught me about failure

A special treat for everybody, I thought a video would better portrait when the Bike Tour came to village then a written post. It took some work to get it together, but I hope you all enjoy! Sorry that the quality is so bad, the chief’s son filmed it.

While home in the US for my sister’s wedding I enjoyed a spa day with the bridal party. It was an intimate group, just my sister, my sister’s best friend whom we’d grown up with from our neighborhood, and me. It was the usual pre-wedding package- message, facial, manicure, and pedicure- which I did not mind one bit after a year in Burkina. I actually felt it necessary to apologize to my nail girl for the condition of my feet, which were in sad, sad shape. My sister was in the chair next to mine during our pedicures, and when it came time to choose a paint color I asked if she had anything in mind for her bridesmaids. No, do whatever you want, she said. “Just don’t pick something boring, like you always do! Like clear or something!” she says, just before I ask the lady about some neutral options. She had a point, the novelty of nail polish wore off all most as soon as it had started in my girlhood, just after Nany finally allowed me to take Dana’s and wear it. As soon as I started playing sports I could no longer be bothered with the stuff- it was always chipping off and I had to keep my nails short anyways. As for toes, well, I was just lucky to have toe nails. I went through a nail buffing stage, but upon entering Asheville School it was all I could do just to keep up with the high expectations they have for their students, and well kept nails was not one of them. To be honest, I hadn’t worn nail polish since my senior year prom, 6 years ago. After a slight panic attack as to where to begin I decided to follow my sister’s lead- what color are you picking? All three of us girls picked a deep pink color that matched the bridesmaids’ dresses, watermelon or some fuchsia-esk color. For the rest of the vacation, I have to admit, I couldn’t help but admire my pink toes every time I looked down (She did a very good job). Every shoe looked just a little better on my foot. Every outfit just a little more put together. I felt just a little more feminine, an established adult, a real person, an American. It’s amazing how something so small, so normal, can make such a huge difference. But the real difference came when I returned to Burkina. I held on to those pink toes as long as possible, and each glance at my feet took me back to America, to boating with my family on Torch Lake, to being introduced to Josh’s life in Texas. For just a moment I was still in America, I was a normal American, or maybe just a typical ex-pat. And my feet were stained orange from a red sand beach, not a red dirt desert. The children screeching in my ears were just neighbor boys playing, not neighbor boys constantly asking for something, ready to steal from you at any time. The buzz of bleating farm animals, chickens clucking and donkeys, could just as easily be the buzz of traffic. One look at my toes and I was no longer dirty and gross, in old funky clothes, but transformed to pretty, clean clothes, that dared to show my knee, or maybe my shoulders. For just a moment I felt normal, pretty, clean. I could be anywhere in the world, not just a mud-brick house in the middle cornfields in Africa. Even Josh couldn’t help but comment on my pretty pink toes every time he saw them; so out of place in the Burkina world. And then the moment would pass and my reality would solidify; I was still in the middle of West Africa. I remember packing for the Peace Corps- didn’t bother with any type of hair product and only the bare minimum make-up for special occasions, like swear-in. Didn’t pack any clothes I would normally where in the US, I knew everything would get ruined here. Even disregarded my one usual jewelry habit and didn’t pack any necklaces, and brought only one pair of silver stud earrings, which my grandmother had given me right before I left. Why on earth would you bring make-up and hair gel to Africa? I will admit I even scoffed at the girls who brought hair straighteners to the Peace Corps- What? Are you going to straighten your hair in village? With the current from a solar panel and car battery in your hut? Or the girls who wore make-up everyday- Seriously? Who are you trying to look good for? We’re in Burkina Faso, just taking a shower is an amazing feat. We’re constantly sweaty and dirt stained just from being. I really don’t think your eye-liner is going to make a difference here. But now I understand. This country has a way of wearing you down. Maybe it’s not Burkina, necessarily, but this lifestyle. All your clothes are ruined- dirt stained or bleach stained or falling apart and discolored or a cheaply-made pagne has bleed on your one white shirt. Even the clothes you never wear to keep nice turn out ruined. Just walking from the shower room to the house makes my feet as sandy as if I was walking on a beach, and our courtyard is cement. No mater how are we try, the bed is always filled with sand and bugs (we have a bed net- how do they get in?!). We are always dirty, sweaty, and smelly. My hair is always knotty from wind and sweat, and I just realized I haven’t looked in a mirror in at least 3 weeks. We joke that you can pick a PCV out in a crowd of ex-pats because we will be the ones in village clothes, dirty, and look like we just come from the bush. And it’s true. It’s easy to loose your sense of self-identity here, to loose yourself, your confidence, and just melt into the surroundings. One might need to wear nail polish to feel like a normal human being, to remember there is more out there beyond the huts and millet fields. Maybe eye-liner and make-up is what one needs to feel pretty, to feel like they, the person they were before the Peace Corps, still exists, when everything else is filthy. If that’s what it takes to get through this experience, I understand, and I’m all for it. I will admit that I now have a stash of fashionable clothes in Ouaga, the make-up and hair-curl cream I needed for Texas and Paris, and now I make a point of it every time I’m in Ouaga to dress as Western as possible. Ouaga is a real city, with lots of foreigners; why shouldn’t I look like an adult American women, clean and put-together? After a month the opportunity arose to take off the nail polish. I was at another volunteer’s site and the remover was on the table in front of me. My toes were starting to look bad anyways, but I was still sad to see them go. I briefly thought about re-painting them, but the moment had passed for painted toes. It was time. I still have to thank my sister- thanks to her I realized there is more to nail polish, and beauty products, than just vanity. And maybe I needed that here, too, to get me through the Peace Corps. I followed the lead of my sister’s best friend, a very successful business women, and did a nude color on my finger nails. I thought it looked more professional. But now I wonder what bright pink fingers would have done for me.

It only took us a year of being in country, but finally we planned our first sensibilisation. Sensibilisation doesn’t really translate into English, the Peace Corps calls them awareness campaigns, but it’s more of a short lecture or lesson. Basically, it’s speaking to a group or an individual on a specific, usually health related, topic- sharing sensible information-and it’s one of the main things volunteers do. We had a ready made audience- after weeks of attending baby weighings three days a week I was well aware that these mothers arrive around 8 am, or before, and that nothings gets started until 8:30 or so. It seemed like the perfect platform to give a sensibilisation and get my feet wet in projects in village. We were a bit in limbo project wise, waiting for grants to come in or the school year to start, but this we could easily do now. And the maternity offered an easy topic- infant nutrition. Recently at a dinner with Antoinette she had told us how she would go around village with Jamie, an old volunteer in our village, and talk to people about family planning and other health topics. She practically offered to be our translator and help us do the same. Perfect, we had a Bissa translator. Now we just needed to coordinate with the CSPS staff and pick a date. We went to talk to them on a Monday, hoping to do the sensibilisation on Wednesday. Wednesday baby weighings are the day they give vaccinations, so there are always more ladies on Wednesday. When we arrived at the CSPS there were quite a few people in the waiting room, rainy season had started and therefore malaria season had started. We wanted to run the idea by the Major first, following the chain of command, but when we went into the office only the midwife was there. Both the head nurse and nurse were away this week leaving only the midwife to hold down the fort. There were no baby weighings this week. This news made a small part of me sad- why didn’t they let us know? We should have been called in to help. Josh and I had had discussions with the midwife before about baby weighings and all had agreed that the two of us could do them on our own. We knew the drill and how the books worked, we just couldn’t give any vaccines. But, alas, we were not asked to help. She agreed that a Wednesday would be best for a sensibilisation and we agreed on the following week. When Wednesday rolled around we arrived at the CSPS early and waited for Antoinette and everyone to arrive. That Wednesday also happened to be an inventory day at the pharmacy, so all the COGES members were suppose to come to help. The CSPS staff leisurely motoed up to the clinic around 8:30, all of them taking their motos a grand total of 100 yards from their house to the dispensaire. Ganga, the COGES president and Josh’s counterpart, biked in and started preparing for taking inventory. Finally, just before 9, Antoinette arrived. We had arranged for the sensibilisation to start at 8, so it would not interfere with the midwife’s usual routine. Furthermore, inventory was to start at 8, and as treasure of the COGES Antoinette was a necessary component to keeping inventory and making sure all moneys were accounted for and medicines restocked, so her lateness was, well, annoying to say the least. Antoinette tells us she is ready to give the sensibilisation, but first must real quick say hello to the pharmacist and check in on inventory. We wait another 15 minutes for her, then walk to the maternity together. As soon as we get there she says she must real quick go get Ganga. We wait another 10 to 15 minutes. Meanwhile, the midwife is solely waiting on us to start baby weighings and 60 or more women are sitting/standing around with crying babies waiting to get weighed. Finally she comes back, this time with Ganga. Sib, a nurse, arranges us in a corner and I pull out the nutrition poster I brought for a visual aid. Sib places a stepping stool behind me and I think wants me to sit, but instead I stand on it so more women can see the poster. Antoinette is standing beside me, then sneaks out of the room right before we start. Guess she didn’t want to translate for us. But Ganga was there and he understands us better anyways, so it worked out. Josh gave the lecture in French and Ganga translated, while I made sure key points were remembered and repeated and held up the 3 food groups poster. Sib and the Major, who joined us half-way through, threw in things here and there and reinforced what we were saying. We briefly went through exclusive breastfeeding, proper weaning and complementary foods, and the 3 food groups and basic nutrition. The whole time most of the women looked bored or as if they didn’t understand what was going on, and only a handful were interactive when we asked questions. The actual sensibilisation didn’t take more then 15 or 20 minutes, or so, and I’m not sure I’d call it a huge success, but at least we did it. If just one woman out of the 60+ there learned one thing it would be worth it, but there is no way to know that.

I had been looking forward to this day for a week. Our friend Christina had introduced us to a teacher friend who happened to raise rabbits. It was love at first site. Josh didn’t even have to ask me, one look at me gushing over the babies and he asked the man how much. Since they were babies and we only wanted one, also since the rabbit was to love and not to eat, he said we could have it for free. we had a planned trip to Ouaga in a couple of days, so we made arrangements to come back on our way home in a week and pick out the newest member of our family. For a week I had thought of nothing else. I had a name all ready, Floppins, taken after my sister’s rabbit, Marry Floppins. I prepped the courtyard and even made her a two-story house out of care package boxes, which read “Maison de Floppins” on the front in big letters. We tapped up cardboard on the courtyard gate so she couldn’t hop out under the door. We even discussed potty training her, like Big, so she could come in the house. And now it was finally the day. The anticipation made the 4 hour bush taxi ride seem like a breeze. I scouted out the options and picked a cute little white and brown bunny, big enough to leave mama but small enough to make love me, confident/ strong enough to easily adapt to a new home yet still sweet enough to cuddle with me. My little Floppins. After I got my new play thing it was time for Josh to get his. We had been saving my monthly PC allowance and finally had enough to get a big home purchase- a solar panel and car battery. Josh was almost as excited for this as I was for the bunny. I sat in a chair at the hardware store while Josh talked to the shop keeper about batteries and panels and wires, holding little Floppins close to clam her fears, while people gave me the what-is-that-crazy-white-women-doing-with-a-baby-rabbit look. Wanting a baby animal over an adult is crazy to them, because you can’t eat a baby; petting an animal or showing affection is even crazier. After a while we headed home, Josh’s new toy strapped to the back of his bike, mine riding in my satchel because she was just too big to fit in my shirt pocket. Once home I set Floppins up in her new corner of the courtyard. It took her a minute, but after an hour or so she was eating and hopping in and out of her house like she had always enjoyed a two-story villa. Josh also rather enjoyed the afternoon putting the solar panel and battery together; made him feel like a man doing men’s work. And I have to admit, the set-up revolutionized my life in village. We now had a light for the evening hours and could charge things at will, as long as there were sunny days. That evening I cooked dinner by florescent light while watching Floppins flop around the courtyard. With the flip of a switch Burkina went from one of the shittiest places on earth to live to, hey, this is not so bad. While Floppins adjusted to life chez moi we adjusted to life with (almost) current. She right away started pooping in the latrine, which made it easy for us to clean up after her, all we had to do was brush her droppings down the hole, which also meant she was allowed in the house. She lazed around in the shade and learned to go in her house when it rained. She even adjusted to me and my frequent need to love her. Even Chicken was getting use to sharing a courtyard with her, and they even started eating off the same plate at the same time. Life was perking up. Unfortunately, two weeks later we had to go to Ouaga for a meeting. We debated locking Floppins in the house, but decided there was too much damage she could do there. So we set out ample amounts of food and water, and reinforced the cardboard on the gate. We even locked the gate with a lock and key from the inside of the courtyard so that kids couldn’t open the door and let her out. But, alas, upon arrival home there was no Floppins. There were no signs or hints of what happened, just an empty courtyard, but she was too little to eat, so our best guess is that she escaped from under the cardboard on the gate. It was a good too weeks while it lasted.

After we got home from Ghana it was time to settle into village and establish ourselves both as a married couple, but also Peace Corps volunteers. Josh decided the first step to doing this was to have dinner with people. But first we needed the invite. His first prey was Antoinette, a young women (24 it turns out) with a school-age daughter and a 2 year old son, who is the treasurer of the CoGes of the CSPS and was very good friends with a past PCV here. Getting the invite turned out easy; we saw her in the marche and made small talk, then Josh threw in how much he liked To and how I didn’t know how to make it- Bam! You must come over and learn how to make To. The date was set for May 3rd. We showed up around 5 like she said, just as she was starting to cut up the okra. She gave us chairs to sit in and brought us a box of wine. We were not to do anything in this cooking lesson, just sit, drink, and watch. She talked me through the whole To-making process, including the okra sauce, and than ate it with us, even forming the To balls for us because it was too hot for our fingers. While there were awkward moments, everyone in her family sitting and staring at us, it was quite nice. We learned some about the old volunteer and the projects she did and about the community. For his next dinner venture, Josh decided to invite Ganga, his counterpart, and his family to our house for lunch, which I had to cook. The plan was to make riz sauce tomato. Two days before I was preparing a shopping list and asked some of the girls in our courtyard how they make tomato sauce. I know how Americans make their tomato sauce, but Burkinabe like it a bit different. Well, one of the girls must have thought we really wanted to eat that and I couldn’t cook, so that evening she brought over a pot of rice and a casserole of sauce, which was very sweet of her, but this was after I had already made dinner. We ate what we could and I took notes for when I cooked it, and then we packaged the rest up for tomorrow. Sauce doesn’t keep after one meal, but the rice should be fine for tomorrow. The next day we had 2 neighbor volunteers visit, one of which was about to leave us, and I made such a huge feast of goodbye mac’n cheese that we couldn’t eat anymore that day. Rice should keep for 2 days, right? I started cooking early, well 10 am, the next morning to make sure every thing was ready for when Ganga came. The rice smelled a little funny, but I hated to waste good rice so I threw it in the pot as I cooked up some fresh rice. More water and heat and it should be fine, right? I tried my best to make the sauce Burkinabe, but I think it turned out more American, mainly because there were no hot peppers in it. It was still delicious, I thought. The lunch started off well, we presented our guests with welcome water and a box of wine. Josh made small talk while I finished cooking and brought it all out to the table. Just before serving the rice I tasted it to make sure it was done; it still had a slight smell to it and was slimy like it had been over cooked in too much water. Shit! It was too late now, everyone was waiting on me, I had to serve it. Ganga and his wife ate it fine, but their son just picked at it. In every bite I took all I could taste was funky rice. Everything else went fine and Josh thinks our lunch date was a success, but damn that 2 day old rice! I don’t think they will be coming to eat with us again soon. Also, shortly after that event I learned the reason Burkinabe cook with hot peppers is to mask the taste of gone-off food. To thank Antoinette for dinner we sent her apples we had purchased in Ouaga. This, of course, resulted in another dinner invite. This time dinner started out like the last- welcome water and sitting on a bench by ourselves as the old women and children stared at us- but this time Antoinette told us we must say hello to “the old” (what they call old men), and led us into another courtyard where her husband’s father was sitting, the master of the household. She set out chairs directly in front of him and told us to sit, then left us there. The old man spoke French, but apparently conversation is not a big part of the culture and we sat mainly in silence. After 30 or so minutes we started wondering if Antoinette was coming back for us, which was answered when she brought us a big plate of beans and placed it on a small table in front of us, then left again. Then another women brought us omelet sandwiches, another, the man’s wife, brought out To and sauce, and finally, the man pulled out 2 sodas in glass bottles. First of all, there’s no place in village where you can buy soda in glass bottles; this is how we learned that this man owns a bar in a near by bigger village. Second of all, we’re lucky to find omelet sandwiches in the closest town, much less village. Third of all, how on earth are we suppose to eat this much food (and it’s rude not to eat it)? These people were definitely putting on airs for us, but why? After we ate as much as we could our plates were cleared and Antoinette finally came and sat with us. We talked for a bit and took our leave. We were headed to Ouaga the next day for a meeting, but Antoinette insisted the day we got back we came for dinner again. This dinner was much like the last- was taken to sit and eat with the father-in-law, only thankfully this time we were just served To. I know in this culture it’s proper for guests to eat with the head of the family, but it defeats the purpose of us trying to eat and talk, become friends, with our potential counterpart, Antoinette. We were glad no dinner dates were set after that. Our latest dinner venture has become an exchange. Massie was the women who took in the last volunteer as her unofficial host daughter, and they ate dinner together every night. She is a bit older, 30’s maybe, with several children, including Fatiema who just got accepted into middle school. It took her a little while to warm to us, but after a few occasions of chatting in the marche she invited us to dinner. Dinner went well, not as awkward because she or her daughters actually conversed with us, and we actually ate in the same courtyard as her. Although she did serve us our own bowl of To and sauce and we ate before the rest of the family. We tried to reciprocate and invite her to dinner at our house, but she has to cook for the family and can’t leave. “Just send food”, she told us. And so we did- a few days later Josh made rice and sauce and sent a child to deliver it. Since then, every few days we receive To and sauce or beans in a casserole dish and a few days later we’ll send rice or something back. In between we’ll greet and chat a little here and there. It’s perfect- maintaining a good friendship without all the awkwardness or hassle of leaving home!

Amazingly, getting home from Ghana turned out to be more difficult than coming in. We started off in Anomabu and first needed to get back to Cape Coast. First thing in the morning, after we enjoyed complimentary breakfast, of course, we walked to the road to flag down a Tro Tro (shared van) into the city. After waiting 5 or so minutes a taxi stopped. I was anxious about time so we took it despite the inflated price. We told the taxi man we needed to catch a bus to Kumasi and he took us straight to a parking lot that serves as a bus station. The first bus was full and we had to wait in line to buy tickets to the next. For whatever reason, they don’t sell tickets for the next bus until it arrives. It’s almost as if they are afraid it may never show. The next hour or so is spent waiting in line. We get to Kumasi late afternoon, as soon as we drop our bags at a hotel we head towards the STC bus station to buy tickets for tomorrow. First I call the PC bureau to get the green light to come home; with the recent civil unrest we were told not to come back without clearance. Everything has settled down and we’re clear to come back, however we should avoid going through Po, the main boarder between Ghana and Burkina. Once at STC we ask the lady about the bus that runs from Kumasi to Zabre, the bus we see in Zabre every week, the bus we wanted to take from Zabre to Kumasi when coming into Ghana. Yes, there is a STC bus that goes from Kumasi to Zabre. We’d like 2 tickets on that bus, please. No, you can’t get on the bus here. Apparently the route is from Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire, to our little neighboring village Zabre, Burkina Faso, with a stop in Kumasi, Ghana. You may get on at either end of the route and get off wherever you please, but you can’t get on the bus along the route. Hhhhmmmm, well that throws a kink in our plans. The best we can do, and still avoid Po, is to take the bus to Bolgatanga and get onward transport from there. At first she tells us the bus to Bolga is full, but then sells us tickets anyways. We’re weary of our sold out tickets, but the next morning everything goes smoothly, except the bus is several hours late . After everyone, or almost everyone, has boarded there is a well-dressed lady next to the bus who making a big fuss, yelling at the STC men. It appears that her and a younger woman, maybe another person, were suppose to be on that bus and the ticket collectors wouldn’t let them on. She was furious. I pray we weren’t given her seats. Meanwhile, Josh is miserable. He started to come down with a stomach bug the night before and today has a fever and is shitting as much as the surroundings allow. The STC bus is air conditioned, and they are so proud of that fact they keep it on full blast. We were both freezing. At the one food break along the way we went in search of a sweater or blanket for him, but all we could find was a cheap towel. The rest of the ride Josh was curled up in his towel trying not to poop himself. We arrive in Bolga very late that night, and after Josh has an emergency poop in a field, we head to a cheap hotel. After asking around, the bus for Bawku leaves at 6 am in the morning, so we only have a few hours to get some sleep. As to be expected, we had a little bit of a late start the next morning, plus we only had a vague idea of where the bus station was, so I was happy when the only car on the road we were walking on was a cab. He drove us to the parking lot where all the metro busses left and we immediately got on the bus to Bawku. Any later and we would have missed it. The bus is a metro bus, and it’s exactly what you’d think of as a metro bus, in a big city. There are 2 seats on one side and one seat on the other, with poles and lots of standing room in the middle. Perfect for fitting in a lot of people to get across town. But we were taking this bus 2 or more hours across the country. We were the last on, so we were standing. While still on the metro bus we start asking people about where to go to get a car to Zabre, so as soon as the bus is parked in Bawku a gentleman offers to take us to find a car. Thank God for nice people all across the world! He takes us to a small little waiting area along the main road, really just a wooden bench and a bunch of people hanging around. I hear a woman talking in Bissa and Moore and know we’re almost home. Right away a man says “How are you, my friend?” and gives Josh a big hand shake. It’s the driver who brought us into Ghana 2 weeks before. His car is full, but he tells us to wait here and his brother, also a driver, is coming shortly. The next vehicle that pulls up is a Camion, what the La Rousse dictionary translates as a lorry or a truck; think an open back semi that is mostly used to transport lumber. Josh and I look at each other, then pile in with everyone else before there is no more room. However, in Africa, there is always more room. The bottom of the truck is filled, unevenly,with full rice sacks going into Burkina, and on top is all the women, children and baggage, literally sitting on top of each other. For a while I had a women sitting on my feet, supporting her back with my legs. At another point a small girl was snuggled into me, as if I had my arm around her, all her weight being held up by my arm. All the men sat along the sides, clinging to the bars that make up the open walls of the camion. At one point I tried to count how many people were crammed in, about 40 men, 40 women, and 12 children/ babies. Uncomfortable, to say the least. We briefly stopped at a police checkpoint, probably on the Ghana side since the man spoke to us in English. He asked where we were going, but didn’t care to see our papers. I think he was just amused to see 2 white people traveling on a back road in such a manor. We unloaded a few rice sacks for the officer, and then continued on. This route into Burkina first stops in our closest neighbor PCV’s village, and we actually drove right past her house. I was really hoping she’d be outside and see us, but she wasn’t. I thought about yelling to her as we drove past her house, but decided that might be too weird for our fellow travelers. The camion stopped in the marche and we all piled off. That marche is pretty big and there is a lot of commerce between Ghana and Burkina there; that would be the final destination for most of the people until evening when they would return to Ghana. From there we would take a normal bush taxi to Zabre, where our bikes were, and then bike home. We had to wait for the car to fill before we could leave. It was almost noon, and the marche was just heating up, so not many people ready to leave. It felt ridiculous to be stuck in a village less then 10K from our house, waiting on a car for several hours, but at least we were in Burkina. At least we were home.

I’ve come to the realization that if I continue to play catch-up on my blog I’ll be blogging about my time in the Peace Corps for the next five years. Still, I feel I can’t just leave you in the middle of our vacation to Ghana. So I’ll attempt to stray away from my over-detailed story writing and just summarize some highlights. Busha: Right out of the car we found Frank the Juice Man. He roams the streets, restaurants, and beach offering to make you whatever homemade juice is in season. Luckily he showed up just as we were ordering breakfast at Daniel the Pancake Man’s, and made us some fresh orange juice. The real stuff, just oranges in a bottle, none of this orange sugar water crap they have in Burkina. Daniel the Pancake Man was also a find- It’s a little restaurant setup at Daniel’s house, and he only makes pancakes. The menu has quite the selection too. (Tip for Americans: order the American style or you’ll get crêpes). However, my pick for breakfast foods is the lady working out of window of the Black Star Surf Shop- get the surfers breakfast, seriously the best breakfast I’ve had in Africa (They had strawberry jam and real toast!). I suppose while I’m on the topic of food, I should mention Nana’s Place. Nana’s is a must if you’re in Busua, however I highly suggest you order your food hours, if not days, in advance because he is literally homecooking a meal just for you. Also, he’ll tell you he can make anything on the menu, even if it’s not in season, and then sort of sneakily get you to agree to something you didn’t order. We went for dinner and ordered lobster and shark; he said it’d be ready in an hour. When we came back he had just returned from the market- there is no fridge so you pay him and he goes and buys all the ingredients fresh. We sat outside at a little table and watched him cook along the side of the street- finally eating 2 hours later. He couldn’t buy the shark, so made extra lobsters, at a slightly extra cost, but promised if we came back for lunch the next day he’d have it. We wanted to take a surf lesson at high tide at 2, so we told him lunch had to be ready at noon. When we got there he was just returning from the fishing boats, no shark today, but he had purchased giant prawns and more lobsters. Can’t argued with giant prawns, but the lobsters put us over the price limit we had set for lunch, so we told him we just wanted the prawns. Needless to say, we missed the surf lesson and he served us the lobster as well, however we were able to negotiate their price. Despite the annoyances, the food is amazing and the experience is worth it. And don’t forget to sign Nana’s wall! Fort Metal Cross is in the bustling fishing village next door, Dixcove, and is a pleasant walk from Busua. The fort is owned by a European family who also live there, and while it’s slightly awkward to be touring a historic site and walk in on a family eating breakfast, it’s worth a look; if only to instill the dream of one day buying an exotic Fort. Since it’s privately owned you must pay a tour guide get in, but they are local and seem to know a lot (as far as we could tell…) Butre Butre is a small, remote fishing village that offers The Hideout, a literal hideout that comes highly recommended from Ghana PCVs. It’s difficult to get there by taxi, so Lonely Planet suggests an easy 2 km hike from the Busua beach, which is the option we went for. We headed off along the beach, and when we found a path near the end of the beach we took it. An hour into the jungle, we still had not seen another person, yet we trudged on. The path was just a foot path, not large enough for a donkey cart or even a bike really, and curved around large hills deeper and deeper into the wilderness. Finally I dropped my pack and decided to climb up a mountain to get a better view, surly if we couldn’t see the village or the ocean we needed to turn back. To my surprise, at the top was a woman and her children working the crops they had planted into the side of the mountain. We told her where we were headed and she told us we took the wrong path. She called to the lady working the hilltop next door and that lady told us to come over and she’d take us to the path. She led us out of the wilderness and we discovered the right path was labeled “To Butre,” 50 feet from the path we had taken. Climb up a steep path and you can clearly see the village below, it’s breath taking. The Hideout is perfect if you want to be perfectly secluded. There seemed to be only 2 other groups staying there, and nothing much nearby. However, the beach is a bit step for ideal sunbathing. The Hideout also offers “tree house” lodging, which is pretty much a small room on stilts with a small tree growing underneath it, but they still have a small fan and electricity rigged to them. Worth it just because it’s different. Cape Coast Despite being on the coast, Cape Coast does not offer much in the way of beaches, which is a shame. However, Cape Coast Castle is well worth a visit. If it’s good enough for Obama to visit, it’s good enough for me (yes, his visit is commemorated with a plaque). The true gem of Cape Coast, in my opinion, is Baobab. Baobab is a restaurant that serves hip vegetarian fare that is all organic, and supports Moringa (PC LOVES Moringa!), as well as a great little shop, and now a small guesthouse. Baobab runs/is a children’s foundation which teaches children how to grow organic produce, cook, and trade skills, so all that’s in the shop was made from the students and all proceeds, form everything Baobab, go back into the children. I give the whole set-up a five star rating (Dream job to work with an organization like that? I think so). From Cape Coast, it’s well worth a day trip to Elmina. Take a shared car though, not a taxi, or you’ll pay 10x more! In Elmina is St. George’s Castle, both Josh and I’s favorite. It’s huge, beautiful, full of history, and has a really put together museum. After the tour, go exploring on your own! Across the street from St George’s is Fort St. Jago. The climb up the hill to the fort is steep but worth it. It’s comparatively small and the upkeep is lacking, but you get to explore the fort on your own; we had fun imaging what we’d do with the place if we bought it (Josh’s new dream is to buy a fort). Side note: Han’s Cottage Botel sounds really cool, suppose to be suspended over a crocodile swamp, but not worth going out of your way for. Only the restaurant is over the swamp, and while there are real crocs in it, they are not that exciting. Plus, they have poor service (they messed up our order and then over charged, but it wasn’t worth dealing with them to fix it…). Since Cape Coast is lacking a beach, we decided to go elsewhere for our last day on the coast. The best Lonely Planet could suggest to us was Anomabu Beach Resort, in Anomabu 45 minutes up the coast. As soon as we walked into the place we realized we were way out of our league, and social class. It’s by far the nicest resort I’ve been too, full of foreigners and rich Africans on spring break; with pretty reasonable prices, I’d suggest it to anyone going to Ghana. They do pity the backpacker and offer a tenting option on the beach, literally next to the shore, truly beautiful (one downfall- the bathroom facilities are the changing rooms set up for day users). Word for the wise, as we checked out we discovered the prices are slightly more expensive then Lonely Planet reports, and for the price of a rented tent for two, you might as well get the cheapest room for a couple dollars more.

It took a 2 hour wait at the bus station, a 5 hour bus ride, and a 2 hour taxi ride on a small, pot-hole ridden dirt road into the middle of the jungle, but we were finally there- the secluded, beach paradise that I had been dreaming of since arriving in West Africa. Our home for the next 3 nights was the Green Turtle Lodge, the most impressive eco-resort I’ve ever been to. The Green Turtle is a popular heaven for backpackers, volunteers, and eco-conscious travelers; make reservations well in advance. It was late by the time we arrived, so we trudged in the sand after the lodge staffer, in the dark, until we got to a little round hut on the beach. He unlocked the door with a key attached to a child-size flip-flop and turned on the solar powered lights. Instant wow- the room was something out of a beach resort catalogue- are we really at a backpackers lodge? “Is the room okay?” the man asks. Yes, after living in a mud-brick hut for 7 months, this will do just fine. It is a beautiful round hut with a double bed and a bunk bed, a sitting area, a sink and countertop made from local pottery and shells, a shell lined shower, and an attached WC with a self-compostable toilet, with a toilet seat and paper. Yes sir, this will do. Dinner is finished at the lodge, and there are no dinning establishments around, but luckily the kitchen staff takes pity on us and agrees to make us sandwiches off the day’s lunch menu. Except for breakfast, lunch and dinners must be ordered in advance because all the ingredients are fresh from the local markets and the staff has to go buy what was ordered. It is possible to walk or bike to Akwidaa village, a few kilometers away, and eat street food, but other then that the lodge restaurant is really your only option. Have no worries though, every dish we tried was absolutely delicious; African-gourmet with a western twist at reasonable prices. We ate dinner at a rustic, lantern-lit picnic table on the beach, feet in the sand, palm trees all around, and watched the stars shine over the ocean. Yes, this will do just fine. The next morning we were both excited to see our soundings in daylight. The Green Turtle did not disappoint. It’s got a young, eco-chic vibe without loosing it’s rustic, tropical beach roots. After a stratifying breakfast, in which I had real French-pressed coffee for the first time in 10 months, we got down to business- beach time. We lathered up the sun screen, grabbed a pagne and a book, and promptly took our places on the beach next to a palm tree. And that’s where we stayed until lunch. We ate tropical salads and sandwiches on a bench carved out of a traditional fishing boat overlooking the water, then returned to our spots under the palm tree. It was what I had been dreaming of for months. Around 3 pm I started to get that hot feeling that tells you your skin is burning, and I went back to the hut to get out of the sun and take a look. Sure enough, despite putting on sunscreen 3 or 4 times and trying to be very cautious, the back of my legs were absolutely fried. Not my entire back, which all got the same SPF treatment, just my butt to the bottoms of the back of my knees were bright red- the part of my body that hadn’t seen daylight in over 10 months. Lovely, the one thing I was trying really hard to avoid on this trip. The next morning we decided to explore a little, giving my skin a chance to heal. Our original goal was to head to Fort Princess Town, just under an estimated 15 km away. We rented bikes from the Green Turtle, and when we asked the bike guy he told us the Fort was too far away, but 15K is nothing to a PCV in Burkina. We would take the trail to the Cape Three Points lighthouse, about halfway to Princes Town, and from there would see how we feel about continuing on. We started off, and within 5 minutes the bike had thrown me completely over the handlebars. The brakes were opposite what I am use to on my PC bike, and when I braked for the first time I used the front instead of the back, and over I went. Luckily it popped me almost cleanly over the front of the bike and I landed, like a circus trick, on my feet. With one exception- something, maybe the pedal, was forcible jammed into the back of my knee during the tumble. No cut or broken skin, but a rather large bump instantly formed that was black and blue. The swelling would continue throughout the day, and while it was no serious injury by any means, it turned into the most impressive bruise I’ve ever had, lasting a good 3 weeks. Once I had dusted myself off and regained composer, we started off again. After over an hour of biking in the hot sun and seeing no sign for the lighthouse, we stopped and asked if we were on the right road. We weren’t. Could we continue on this road and get to Princes town, we want to see the Fort? They seemed confused as to a Fort, and no, we were not on that road either. We had to turn back. I became annoyed because Josh had insisted it would be an easy, straightforward ride and refused to pay for a guide. Well, it wasn’t; we were lost and the road was very hilly. We biked back until we hit a junction and asked this time for directions. Finally after another hour we made it to the lighthouse. The lighthouse was a lighthouse, they are all kind of the same, but Josh had never seen one before so I was glad to share the experience with him. The grounds around the light house had a few cool mural-maps of Africa and the world that were interesting; I wonder what NGO or organization initiated that? After our 5 minute tour and a short rest we were driven by hunger to head back to the lodge. Hot and tired we powered through the bike ride home and made in in under an hour, ate lunch, and resumed our position on the beach to nap. The next morning it was time for us to move on down the coast, continue our exploration. I was sad to say goodbye to the Green Turtle. As we packed out and paid we had a lovely conversation with the English owner, charming chap, and he offered us a ride with their truck that was heading to Takoradi, the closest city, to stock up on supplies. We hopped in the back of the truck with a young British fellow who had just finished volunteer-teaching at a school in one of the coastal cities. Not a bad volunteer post at all- a beach paradise in an English speaking country, how much worse could it get?

Hilly, lush, vibrant, and colonialesque, Kumasi has the same look and feel as Nairobi, Kenya. A strange clash of rich, western culture and a rich history of the Ashanti kingdom and traditional culture. Our first stop was the National Cultural Center. The complex houses the Prempeh II Jubilee Museum, which promises a good introduction into Ashanti history and culture. The Museum was small, over priced, and the tour guide rushed us and was more concerned with selling us souvenirs at the end then giving us a good tour. I would have enjoyed it better sans the free tour and just looking at the artifacts and reading about them on my own. A huge disappointment. The rest of the National Culture Center was interesting though; very beautiful and well groomed. We actually saw men watering the flowers and cutting the grass- something that made us both stop and ask “are we still in Africa?” The majority of the grounds house workshops for brass working, woodcarving, potters, weavers, and other artisans, very much like the Artisan Village we have in Ouaga. We leisurely explored and I enjoyed getting a peak of the craftsmen at work, however Josh wouldn’t let me buy anything since he was convinced everything would be overpriced. Nany, I took this picture for you since the pottery reminded me of you! Still wanting to learn more about Ashanti history, the next stop was the Manhyia Palace Museum. The Palace was built for the Ashanti King by the British and the current King still lives on the grounds, which also house other government-type buildings. The museum is restored to it’s original 1925 condition and has several life-size wax figures for Ashanti royalty, which, to be honest, were creepy. The tour was very informative and interesting, this guide being much better then the last, however the guide singled us out right away as the only 2 white people and asked if we were British, then went on to speak unfavorably about white colonialist. We did the tour with a British/Jamaican family and the tour guide kept telling the women how they looked like the Ashanti queen-mothers and their family MUST have originated from the Ashanti kingdom before they were stolen into the slave trade. It was a little uncomfortable. Queen mother, yaa Asantewaa, who led a revolt against the British. The last stop of the day was to the Armed Forces Museum, Josh’s one request in Kumasi. The museum is in Fort St George and, as a museum, was pretty good. The tour guide was very knowledgeable and patient with us and the contents of the museum were very complete. As for the subject matter, well guns and military history aren’t really of interest to me, but Josh loved it.

After changing the date of our honeymoon twice so that I could have a week of intensive French tutoring, our bags were packed and we were finally on our way to Ghana. We had done our research and were assured that a bus leaves from our closest “city” to Kumasi once a week. We had even seen this STC bus with our own eyes and Josh talked to the driver about leave times and all. So we were very confused when we giddily biked into the bus station and found no bus. We asked around- one man seemed confused as to the possibility of a car to Ghana at all, one man told us it didn’t come this week, and one said it would be here tomorrow. Desperate and determined to get to Ghana today, we started asking every bush taxi we could find about where they were going and how we could get to Kumasi. Luckily, the second car we asked was going to a nearby village where we could get a car to Ghana. Not exactly what I had spent hours planning, but as long as we got to the glorious land of English and beaches I was ok. We deposed our bikes and almost immediately left, a rarity around here, to the nearby village where our closest neighbor volunteer lives. There we waited, and waited, for the car to fill up. After an hour or so the driver turned on the car and we started driving- Finally!- only to stop just out side the market area and wait for almost another hour. By this point I had hoped to be hours into Ghana, but, hey, what can you do. When we finally left it all seemed like smooth sailing from there. Josh and I were sharing the front seat and we were squished, but at least we only squished by each other. There was no stopping at the border, we realized we had left Burkina and were in Ghana when I started noticing power lines running to mud-brick houses and street signs were in English. Glorious English! After about a 20 or 30 minute drive we hit a paved road. After 45 minutes to an hour we were in Bawku, where the bush taxi dropped us off and a man was waiting for us with tickets for a bus to Kumasi. Apparently the taxi men work with the bus men and had called ahead for us and a few other people, reserving us spots. We had just enough time to go to the bathroom and try to buy water and a snack, only to realize we only had big bills and could buy nothing, before the bus left. The drive to Kumasi takes several hours and I was glad to get going. Things were looking up. After about an hour or so the bus stopped. Most of the people got off, but not all, and there were food ladies and whatnot on the side of the road. Not knowing what was going on I tried to see where the people were going- was this a check point or a food break?- and that’s when I spotted a boarder guard, and he spotted me. He signed for us to get off the bus. As we walked up to him he asked for our passports; that’s fine, we had gone through painstaking measures to get visas 2 weeks before. He leafed through them and then took us to his boss who was resting in the shade under a tree. He leafed through them and then asked us where our stamp was. I pointed to the visa. No, the stamp, the entry stamp, that you get at the border? What entry stamp, you are the first Ghanaian officials we’ve seen, there was no border? He seemed confused and told us we had to go back, to wherever we came from, and get a stamp. Go back where, Bawku? He told us we had to go back to the border to get our passports stamped, we couldn’t do it in Bawku. I tried to stay calm and explain to him where we had crossed and that there was no checkpoint, no immigrations, no police station, nothing. It is a small road that is used daily by villagers to cross between Ghana and Burkina. We also told him we were Peace Corps volunteers and lived there, not tourists in Africa. He took us into a practically empty, of anything, office building and another man brought out border papers while the boss man made a phone call about the situation. He explained to the phone that he had 2 PCVs that had come into the country on a village road and did not have their passports stamped, could they stamp it there? The phone said no, we had to get off the bus and turn around. You have got to be kidding me! This means we not only have to go back from which we came, but go all the way to Ouaga and back down to Ghana on a different road to the main border crossing to get this stamp, an 8 or more hour detour. I am almost in tears, I just want to get to the beach. Josh asks the officer to help us get our money back for the expensive bus ticket and an officer escorts us back to the bus to talk to the driver. As the officer announces to the entire bus, who is waiting solely on us, that “he is very sorry for the wait, but the white people don’t have their papers in order and have to get off the bus,” the other officer gets a phone call with the authorization to stamp us. Thank God! He leads us back to the office and we fill out a small pink paper that barley asks for anything but our signature and the man stamps the date into our passports. All of that just for this? Good grief! The entire bus glares at us as we sheepishly take our seats, and we’re off. After a few hours, about halfway to Kumasi, the bus gurgles and stops. A break down. Everyone piles off the bus and finds shade along the side of the road; there is literally nothing around, we’re in the middle of nowhere. I’m not too worried though, we’ve done this drill before when our bus was rear-ended or the time we got a flat tire- we’ll wait in the shade while they fix it and in a short time we’ll be on the road again- and I’ve got a book. Worst case scenario another bus will come to get us. We wait several hours and no one seems to know what’s going on. People start sleeping along the side of the road. Josh starts getting worried and goes in search of information. I’m fine, I’ve got the Henry Miller book I’ve been saving just for this trip- I’m good. Josh comes back with the news that they can’t fix the bus, and can’t decide whether to call in another bus or send for a mechanic from Kumasi- either of which is several hours away. I keep on reading. Finally, after an absurd amount of time and far longer then any person wants to be stuck on the side of the road in the middle of a foreign country, another bus rescues us. It takes another 3 or 4 hours to get to Kumasi, but at least we made it there.

A new village means new (and more!) resources. I was delighted to discover that the new village has over 5 boutiques, 2 or 3 of which are open most everyday. The variety of things now possible to buy in village is now infinity greater, even though bigger items (oatmeal, powdered milk) still need to be bought in our closest city, which is 9 km away, and bigger yet items (cereal, olive oil, tuna) still can only be bought in Ouaga. With that in mind, Josh and I made a new wish list of the care package items we get most excited about. Josh insists that all we should EVER ask for is meat and cheese, just meat and cheese, in any form. I’m not as specific, as any and every food item we receive helps me in cooking and planning our daily meals. Here is what we finally agreed on: -Tuna (we can buy Tuna in Ouaga, but it’s just not as good as American Tuna) -Bacon (pre-cooked in a can or box, or even just bacon bits) -Sun dried tomatoes (especially from May to September when we can’t buy tomatoes in country) -Parmesan cheese - Cheese ( harder cheeses keep the best) -Mac ’n cheese -Beef Jerky and the like -Summer Sausage or other pre-cooked types - Lentils, couscous, quinoa, or any other base besides white rice or pasta -nuts (especially pistachios and almonds, NOT PEANUTS!) -dried fruit - Baking Mixes (It’s really nice to make brownies for special occasions, or real pancakes) We want to say a HUGE Thank You! to all our friends and family members who continually keep us well stocked and well fed. We have been truly blessed.

It was 8:20 a.m. when we got a call from the PC driver- “Where are you?” We were at the transit house and had been since 7:30, were we not suppose to meet here at 8? He’d be right over. I continued to franticly try to get everything ready for our departure- one last email to Nany, writing a Thank-you card to Roger in French, fill up our water bottles, gather the left over glass bottles from the wedding, and so on. Since I was running around trying to squeeze in one last thing, Josh helped the driver pack up the car. When I got out there it was a typical conversation- Did you remember my bike, talk to the diver about the bottles, go to the bathroom once last time? Josh assured me everything was set and we hopped in the car. The back of the big PC SUV was packed with our bags, so Josh and I both sat up front with the driver, it was a cozy ride. First things first, we needed to return the bottles from the wedding (Soda and beer bottles are reused here and are worth money, so are very precious to restaurant owners). Since Yassine, from the Bureau, had signed for them with a promise to return I felt very responsible to get them back for her sake. The Driver said the Jardin was out of the way, but assured me he would drop off the bottles for me upon returning to Ouaga. With that, we were off to my site. We talked, in French, almost the entire 2 hours to my village. I was surprised that neither Josh or I dozed off for a cat nap, as cars makes us sleepy. As bad as it may sound, I was also a little sad that we talked and I didn’t get a chance to read my book- I love long car rides because it usually means time to read. And yet, for the life of me, I have no idea what we talked about. Once we got close I directed the driver down the little dirt road that led to my village, and then threw the market area to my house. The big white Peace Corps SUV didn’t attract the attention it did the first time it came, to drop me off, but as soon as we got the house unlocked and started carrying out boxes we caught the eye of all the neighbor children. First we placed all the things I was moving out in front of the house, so the driver could see everything. The kids helped carry what they could from my kitchen to the pile. Then Josh and the driver loaded everything up as I did last minute work. There were a few left over boxes and packing supplies I didn’t use, which as soon as the kids realized I was putting in my burn pit they fought over. One little boy even ripped a box out of my hand as I was walking to the pit. There were a few pieces of bubble wrap that 2 girls started to play with, quickly discovering that the bubbles popped and then popping them all as kids do, which made me smile. Last in was my water filter which was full of water. I offered “l’eau pour boire” to the children, since they came to my door daily asking for a drink, and they jumped at the opportunity to drink the magic Nasara water- clearly it had special powers of the white person. Once we were all packed up and my old house was locked up I gave each kid a goodbye gift- a dumdum sucker- and a postcard to my little friend Angina with my contact information on it. She couldn’t read it and I know it was probably a lost cause, but I’d like to think that I was her special friend too and one day I’ll hear from her. Too bad just as soon as I gave it to her her older brother ripped it out of her hand, interested in the Statue of Liberty printed on the front. The kids were too excited by the candy to be sad that I was leaving. On the way out of village we stopped by the CSPS. The Major was the only one there working. He asked how the wedding was and I gave him my house keys. Alright then, goodbye. I don’t know what I was expecting, but more than that. Next I went to the pharmacy to find Roger. He was behind his desk, as usual, and his check was all bandaged up. A bull had gotten him in the face. I gave him my sympathies and wished him a quick recovery. He asked about the wedding, then I told him that the table he had given me was still in the house and the Major had the keys so he could get it back. I also gave him a postcard with my contact information on it and Thanked him for everything he had done for me. He walked me to the car and said hello to Josh and the driver, and waved as we drove away. Goodbye, little village! We were back on the road, back to Ouaga. This time we talked mainly about the driver- where he was from, where his family lives, etc. We stopped for lunch in a quant little restaurant in Ouaga 2000 that the driver knew of. Then off to Josh’s village. After the first hour and a half that road stops being paved. Around this point I started to worry- I was going to a new village. I wouldn’t know anyone. I’d have to start the integration process all over again. A completely new language, completely new market, completely new CSPS staff, new kids to annoy me. What was I doing? Before I had always been really excited; Josh had made it sound so much better then my old village, and he was already pretty well intergraded. But now I couldn’t stop thinking about how the last 7 months had been a waste. The driver stopped at a police checkpoint, and bought us each an orange while stopped. I didn’t eat it, but the gesture made me feel better. Soon enough we were in the new village. I had been there before, for Christmas, and was filled with excitement as we drove up to the house. My new house. A handful of kids, my new everyday kids, came to the car to help unload and check out what was going on. At least there wasn’t 30 of them this time. We unloaded everything into the courtyard, thanked the driver, and he quickly departed to drive halfway back to Ouaga where he was going to stay the night. I looked around to survey the scene. So this was now home. It was already 5 and I wanted everything inside before it got dark. Josh had promised he had cleaned up the house and prepared it for my arrival, but I’m not quite sure what his definition of cleaned-up was. If it meant put everything in the middle of the floor, then yes, he had done it. The house was a mess (to his credit, it had rained since he had left and rain always makes sand and dirt fall into the house). First things first, everything had to be swept and dusted. I was not bringing my things into a dirty house. Next all the furniture had to be properly arranged. At this point we were both tired. Josh was blindsided- he had expected to come home and have a nice quite evening, our first night in our first home. Upon my suggestion, we sat down outside and ate the oranges the driver had given us while watching the sky turn colors at dusk. We both needed a break and to regroup. I don’t know why, but for whatever reason that was the best tasting orange I’ve ever eaten. Very sweet, yet tangy and delicious. Unlike any other orange I’ve ever seen in Burkina. Then back to moving in. We got everything inside- my extra stuff (mattress, stove) in the outside room we call the shed, my clothes and such in the bedroom, my food and cooking supplies in the kitchen- and unpacked what needed to be unpacked that night. The rest could wait until the morning. I made a soup mix from a care package for dinner, something easy, and we ate it outside under the starts. Took turns bucket bathing, then crashed into bed, exhausted. I was pretty much completely unpacked, everything re-organized and re-arranged in the entire house, by noon the next day. Poor Josh- I came in and took over like a hurricane, he didn’t know what hit him. We spent the next week adjusting to married life. I met the chef and the CSPS staff. He took me to all the nearby markets; there was now a marche within biking distance everyday of the week. We checked out all the little boutiques so I knew where to get things- I can now buy more the just spaghetti and tomato paste in village! Much, much more! Any day of the week! He took me to some of the satellite villages and showed me around. We even went to a general assembly meeting at the CSPS where I met the CoGes (CSPS board members), Community health agents, and village midwives- something I never did in the 7 months living in my old village. We even set up a Bissa tutor and started lessons, and bought 2 pigeons, which were dinner after a couple of days. All in all, it was a smooth transition. Dinner!

Woke up like any other day, just another unbearably hot morning in Ouaga. Only it wasn’t a normal day at all. This day was my wedding day. I took a shower and shaved, threw on some clothes, and briskly walked to the message salon. Josh had booked us both a 30 minute massage and a manicure and pedicure, which I insisted we both get since this country destroys your feet, at 9 am. We got there at 5 till, no one was there. That’s okay, we’re early. 5 minutes passes and no one shows up. It’s only 9 am and people are already fleeing to shade from the unforgiving sun. There is no awning in front of the salon so we seek refuge under a nearby tree. 10 minutes pass, 15, 20. Finally at 9:30 Josh calls the number he used to make the reservation. “Je arrive” the women tells him. Finally 10 minutes later a young women arrives and lets us into the little salon; one room with a curtain that divides the massage table from the sofa area, which acts as a waiting area. She turns on the air and we’re just glad to be out of the heat. She works alone; so much for getting our massages and all at the same time. I go first. The massage is good, relaxing, but really more of a full-body rub-down. Next, Josh was up. As someone who doesn’t have a wonderful masseuse for a sister, and had never gotten a massage before, he described it as “disappointing”. At this point it was getting close to 11, but I was still really hoping for that manicure and pedicure- my hands and feet were in sad shape. As the lady was cleaning up after Josh I asked if it was still possible to get the mani-pedi. She seem a little confused, but it was possible, and she put water on the stove for the footbath. I guess the reservation system didn’t quite work for this lady and her manicure, pedicure, and massage salon. There wasn’t enough time for both of us to get one, but Josh wasn’t too disappointed. Things started off well; she put both my hands and feet to soak. Then she pumiced my feet and gave ‘em a good scrub- then she pumiced, and filed, them again about 5 times with 5 different stones and files- and slapped on a foot cream. All done. Alright, that was unlike any pedicure I’ve ever gotten, but at least my feet were really clean. Then she did the same exact thing to my hands, literally pumicing and filing them over and over. Maybe here their hands get excessively calloused? She seemed very concerned by how pruney my hands got from soaking for so long and didn’t seem to understand what caused it, She apologized over and over. Do African hands not prune in water? I walked out close to noon with very clean hands and feet, and perplexed on how a manicure and pedicure can not include touching the nails at all. I rinsed off the oils and did a quick shave again, then gathered all my things and ran to the Rooney house. While Dan, the SED APCD, was in the US, his wife had offered me her house to get dressed at. Lauren, my witness, joined me. After a quick, homemade Lunch we got to it. A hot shower (where I shaved for the 3rd time that day) and then I got to use a real hair dryer! (Oh, the luxuries of being a real expat!) Lauren did an impressive job with my hair and helped me get ready and Mrs. Rooney was wonderful. We ran a bit late and rushed off to the mayors office. Thierry, the training manager, picked us up in his nice SUV, while Dr. Claude, the HE APCD, picked up Josh and Shannon, his witness, from the transit house. Once at the Maire Central we briefly waited in a blue waiting room until everything was ready. From there, everything is a blur. Dr. Claude acted as Josh’s mom and walked him down the isle, then Thierry walked with me, and Josh and I took our seats at a long table on a platform in the front of the room, along with our 2 witnesses. We awkwardly waited a few minutes, a ball of nerves, not knowing what was really going on. Finally Simon Compaore, the mayor of Ouaga and the presidents little brother, came in and took his place in front of us. First he read over all our personal information (name, place of resident, parents, etc) and asked if 1)we were present and 2) if the information was correct, witnesses included. Then he read us the marriage laws for Burkina, which were all in French and I was to nervous to be attentive. Next was the “I dos”, which was him asking us a question, in French, and us saying “Oui” into the microphone. (How do you normally say it in French?) Then a kiss for the crowd. As we sat back down he put his hand over his mic and asked, in English, if we had rings, which we had. Usually you do that before the kiss; how were we to know? So we put the rings on each other and kissed again. Then everyone signed the paperwork and he presented me with our copies and a “Livret de Famille”, family health book, with instructions to start having lots of babies. To wrap things up he gave us a short speech in English, where he thanked us for volunteering in his country and making it a better place, and told us we were the first American couple he has ever married, followed by giving us the Burkina Faso medal of honor! We Thanked him and shook hands with all who was there. As we walked out of the building the Bureau threw confetti for us and we took lots of pictures. Dr. Claude surprised us with a decorated car to take us to the reception, which was at the Jardin de l’Amitie. The Jardin was way more decorated then I had expected, and our small little reception turned into the normal wedding fair. The food was delicious and came in many rounds. Country Director Shannon surprised us with champagne and a beautiful wedding cake, as well as giving a wonderful speech. After everyone was well feed and thirst quenched, the girls insisted I threw the bouquet, which our witness Shannon caught. To end the festivities we were asked to first dance to an American song, which was a typical song from the 80’s which I’ve heard several times before but didn’t actually know, and then dance to a Burkina song, which we had no idea how to dance to. Thankfully some bureau friends helped us and everyone joined in.

A week earlier I had received a text from Katie, “Come to [our district capitol] on the 9th. No questions.” With no other details, a failed attempt to meet Katie on the road, and a dead phone battery I wasn’t sure when or where I was suppose to be, so I was very glad to run into Lauren as I was walking out of the Post. As we attached our packages to our bikes she says, “So… how long has your phone been dead?”, with an intriguing smile. “Since yesterday. Why? Is there something I should know?” I asked wearily. “Well, we’re on standfast…” Standfast is the Peace Corps’ first step in the emergency action plan; it means is that we’re not permitted to move/travel from wherever we are and we need to report our whereabouts to the office and be ready to act incase of an emergency. For all elections or major planed protests and whatnot, we’re put on standfast; it’s more of a precautionary measure then anything, in most circumstances. Lauren and I biked to Emily’s house, where Emily and Katie are waiting for us. Luckily Katie, Lauren, and I didn’t find out about the standfast until we were already in the district capitol, some of our other friends didn’t make it in. We briefly talked about the standfast and why we were put on it, the recent protests had escalated some, but the gravity of the situation and what it meant for me didn’t hit me for sometime later. We went on with the plan for the night and the party began. The girls gathered around me, “As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this is your bachelorette party” Emily said. The party was to have 3 stages, the first was spa treatment. We made a milk face mask, foot bath, and did hair masks. Filed our nails and feet. All the pampering our limited means could lend us. The conversation was the typical conversations had by 4 girls who haven’t seen another English speaker for over a week, supplemented by the gossip from a People Magazine. Emily made us dinner-Mac ‘n Cheese made from a brick of Velveeta Katie had received- a special treat for all of us. Just as we were finishing up dinner Josh called; it was at this point where I realized what the standfast meant for us- we could not take transport to Ouaga in the morning as planned. This effected him more then me at this point, since his car left at 5 am and mine not until 7. Still, neither of us could leave the villages we were currently in. It took a little convincing to get Josh to agree NOT to take the 5 am car, since there were only 4 cars to Ouaga and 3 of them left before 8 a.m., but we made a back up plan- we’d call the Bureau starting at 7:30 a.m. and hopefully he could get on the 8 a.m. car and I’d take 10 and we’d both get there around noon. Now that that was settled I went back to the party. Stage 2 was a board game Emily created, roll the dice and go so many spaces and answer the question. Some questions were personal (what was your first kiss), some were trivia questions about Josh (what was his childhood security item? (answer: a stuffed rabbit named Bunny)) and some were just silly challenges. The second spot to the end was “Eat some Cock,” and when I got here Emily pulled out a cake she had made in the shape of cock and balls. It was made out of banana muffin mix and homemade frosting, and was surprisingly delicious. Guess there has to be a little dirty humor at a bachelorette party. Overall I was very impressed with the creativity. The game took several hours to finish, but in the end I won. Not sure if it was rigged that way or not, but still fun. Stage 3 was a dance party. A Lady Gaga dance party to be more specific. There is no hiding that I LOVE Lady Gaga (her beats are catchy and perfect for dancing, there is no denying it). We were all tried, as it was already around 1 a.m., several hours past our village bedtime, and none of us were as drunk as you would expect for a bachelorette party. In fact, I don’t think any of us were drunk at all, despite the 4 bottles of Champaign. But they insisted on a dance party, albeit short, and after a few songs we all crashed into bed. I woke at 7:15 to my phone ringing. Josh and I immediately started to get ahold of someone at the Bureau who could tell us if we could come to Ouaga today. 2 days before the wedding and we still had a lot of errands to run beforehand. Finally just after 8, Josh got ahold the the Safety and Security officer- he told us we had to get permission from the country director herself. She was in a meeting and would call us as soon as she could, until then we had no choice but to sit tight. So the party continued on into the morning after. The 4 of us girls drank tea and coffee, ate omelet sandwiches, and perused the latest magazines we had got in the mail, all anxiously awaiting news from the bureau. Finally, just after 11 a.m., Josh called. He had talked to the Country Director- Josh and I, and our 2 witnesses, could come to Ouaga today, but we had to take the next possible car and leave right away. The first possible car for Josh, and only other car leaving that day, was at 2 p.m., and his witness (and neighbor) wasn’t planning on leaving until tomorrow. Josh frantically tried to call her, she has poor cell phone service, and prepared to bike to her village to get her. Thankfully he caught her by phone and she was able to catch their car, 10 minutes before it left. As for me, luckily Lauren was my witness and she was already with me and ready to go. Our bus also left at 2 from the village we were already in. We waited with Emily and Katie; took naps, read magazines, and played with the tattoo mustaches someone had sent Katie. Finally we all went to the bus station and Katie and Emily saw us off. Took my favorite bus, KGB, out of the Centre-Ouest for the last time.

I woke up this morning and did my normal morning routine, only after each step I packed it up. Brush my teeth, pack the tooth brush. Wash my face, pack the face wash. You get the idea. My morning wash station. After breakfast I walked to the CSPS and was greeted by a very joyful nurse. She insisted I follow her around as she did her “work”. I sat in as she did a few consultations and then she got up and declared she was going to the maternity to help the midwife with CPNs (Pre-natal consults) . I was confused by this; it was Wednesday and we’d only ever done CPNs on Mondays. Since I’m virtually useless during CPNs (I can only weigh the women, and even then I seem to mess it up) I thought I would go say hello to Roger at the pharmacy. Once the nurse realized I wasn’t following her like a lap dog, she called me over and insisted I come to the maternity with her. There were only a few women there and not much to do. She asked me to take their tension and Sylvie, the midwife, right away piped in that I can’t do that, in her smite way, before taking the next women into the exam room. “You don’t know how to take blood pressure?” the nurse seemed shocked. Nope, I’m not a doctor. She told me how easy it was and said she would teach me. She talked me through it as she did it on a women, but her explanation was lacking and I still didn’t understand how to do the counting bit. Plus the final numbers they come up with are nothing like what I hear in the states (apparently they drop the first number?). It was my last day in village and I didn’t feel like getting a lesson on how useless I was. Thankfully there were only 3 women there and we were soon done with our work at the maternity. She had me follow her back to the clinic and into the consultation room, where there were no patients to see. She sat down at the desk and wanted to chat. She asked for all the details about the wedding, and then told me she couldn’t come. She had been talking about coming to the wedding all week, so I was surprised to hear this. She had just found out that the national meningitis campaign, where they go house to house, was that week and the Major would not give her the afternoon off to come to the wedding. After our short conversation she leaned back in her chair and fell fast asleep. I didn’t know what else to do and not wanting to wake her, for fear she’s want me to “assist” her for something else, so I sat there as she slept. About 20 minutes later a young man came to the doorway and clapped (the Burkinabe knock). She did not wake up. He looked at me and I shrugged. He clapped again louder. This time she raised her head. “When your work is finished, the Major wants you at the maternity”, there was to be a meeting with all the health agents to prep for the meningitis outings. She said okay, then as soon as he left she put her head down on the desk and fell back asleep. 10 minutes later one of the Community Health Agents came into the room, “we’re waiting on you for the meeting”. “I’m working” the nurse replied. The agent laughed and said something I didn’t understand. “I’m coming” she said. After she left the nurse again closed her eyes. 5 minutes later the same lady came up to the open window and said something I, again, didn’t understand, but I hope it was along the lines of “seriously, come for this meeting”. The nurse took a few minutes to compose herself before walking over to the maternity. I ducked into the pharmacy to talk to Roger before she could tell me to come with her. Conversation with Roger was pleasant. I asked if he was coming to the wedding and he told me no, he was too villageois to come. We proceeded to have a conversation about nothing in particular, where he informed me that the United States had 52 states. When I said there were only 50 states he pulled out a Burkina news paper, which had printed in an article about immigration in Arizona that there were 51 US states. Interesting. Soon it got to be 11, then 11:30, and I started to anxiously watch the maternity for the meeting to end- I wanted to say goodbye to the Major. Despite being my counterpart, I had barely spoken 2 words to him in the last week since he was so absent. Finally at noon Roger told me not to wait any longer, I had things to do and I should go home. He’d tell the Major I wanted to talk to him and hopefully I could catch him on my way out of village that afternoon. I lingered a bit, to show I gave it my best effort, then hurried home to finish packing. I made an easy lunch and then cleaned and packed up my kitchen. Most of my house was already packed, just last minute stuff and cleaning. One of the neighbor boys wandered over, one of the Chef’s sons, to see what I was up too. Typical, he’s a usual, but he usually comes in a pack. As I cleaned up I gave him a bag of plastic bags, which he seemed excited about. He then preceded to fall asleep in the chair I had moved outside while I swept, still clutching his bag of bags. After a little while a little girl came by and saw Cadero asleep. She checked to see how asleep he was, then grabbed his bag of bags and ran away. A few minutes later Cadero’s bigger sister, Angina, came to claim him and take him home. After I was all packed up I piled all my belongings in the corner of the big room, ready to be packed into the Peace Corps car on the following Monday. This drew the attention of the neighbor kids. They watched me for a moment and then sent Angina to me, knowing she is my favorite, coaching her on what to say, “Vous etes partir?” Not quite right, but I understood. “Oui, Je pars” Instead of being sad like one might expect (or hope) the kids seemed excited and ran around asking me for anything I still had out. I gave away old magazines and all the boxes and bottles I had empty and they ran home with their “goodies”. Just before 3 p.m. Roger stopped by to say goodbye and give me the 500CFA I had loaned him when he didn’t have change at the pharmacy. He truly is a good guy. He knew I needed to leave at 3. He informed me that the Major had just left for one of the satellite villages, but he would tell him Goodbye for me. As I loaded up my bike and closed up my house I was bombarded by a few of the usual kids. They asked for candy, and since I had it and was leaving I gave them some. Then they wanted me to take photos. Finally at 3:20 I got on my bike and headed out of village. I was already 5 minutes late for meeting Katie, my PCV neighbor, on the road and I still had to bike 4Km to meet her. Just as I was passing the CSPS I ran into Roger. He told me the Major had just returned, but if I was already late it was okay for me to just continue on, he said with a wink. Sorry, I’m already late. He gave me a warm goodbye and wished me a good marriage, and I continued on, biking out of village for the last time.

It was 8 am and I had just walked into the kitchen to make breakfast when I heard a little girl joyfully squeal, “Bonjour!”. I looked up to see Angina prance into my kitchen. She was alone and about an hour early then her usual arrival time, which is often accompanied by Sonja and her little brother. “Bonjour Angina! Ca va?” “Ca va” “Bien dormi?” “Oui” “Y votre famille?” “Oui” That’s about as far as our conversations go, as she knows very little French and just answers “oui” to everything I say, whether I say it in French or not. She walked over and stood next to me as I measured out the rice. I always use measuring cups and the children seem to be very intrigued by them. I was out of oatmeal or cereal and eggs are out of season, so decided to make sweet rice for breakfast. As I walked over to the water bucket she ran ahead, eager to help, and unscrewed the lid for me. Even as a 5 or 6 year old she knows you have to wash the rice and look for stones before you can cook it. We walked over to the doorway and I swished around the rice water, trying to get all the bugs to the top, then drained off the water. Angina put her little finger over the rim of the bowl as I drained it, careful to be sure no grains were lost. Then the two of us sat on my stoop and searched for stones and unshelled grains of rice. I tried making small talk, but she doesn’t understand a lick of what I’m saying, so it’s mainly just smiles and giggles. As we waited for the rice to boil I thought it a good time to do the dishes from the night before. Angina dutifully took her spot at the rinse bucket- I washed and she rinsed and put away. Just as the last dish was washed the rice was ready, perfect timing. I looked at Angina as I scooped out my bowl of rice and added a little sugar and powdered milk to it; children are almost always in my kitchen as I cook and I often wonder if they expect me to feed them, but they are usually in a group and I’m not their mother. In Burkinabe culture you almost always invite people to eat with you if they are around during meal time, but the children are at my house during most of the day. Not to sound selfish or like I’m depriving the hungry African children, but as a volunteer I simply do not have the means to feed 5 to 10 children everyday. Plus these children are the sons and daughters of the Chief and are in no way starving. Malnourished, maybe, but only because of a poor diet. Before really even thinking about it, I said “Tu voudrais en peu?” I immediately prayed I wouldn’t regret that; I just imagined the children coming in droves asking me for food, just like they do for water or books or candy. I had broken my golden rule, never give the children food or else they will always expect it. “Oui,” she replied. “Get the other bowl” I said in English. Didn’t matter, she picked the other fish bowl off the drying table and brought it to me. I spooned her out a small portion, what I thought was the right amount for a little girl. I had made plenty thinking I’d eat the rest for lunch. “Sugar?” “Oui” “cinnamon?” “Oui”. I’m sure I could have asked her if she wanted hot peppers or vinegar and she would have said yes if I was eating it too. As we walked to my other room I carried both our bowls. I didn’t want anyone else to see her with a bowl, as I’m sure any child that saw would come running. Safe in my room I set up my only other chair facing where I sit and she gingerly climbed up on it. As we ate she was all smiles, this was the first time she had been invited to hang out with me in my room, much less to eat with me. I couldn’t help but notice how awkward the spoon looked in her hand as we ate. Was it because it was a big spoon? Nope, that wasn’t it. Then it dawned on me that this was probably the first time she’s eaten with a spoon. Burkinabe of all ages usually eat with their hands. She was holding the spoon slightly awkwardly and I could tell she was trying to imitate how I was eating. Every time I scrapped the sticky rice into a mass she would to the same. She did pretty well with the spoon, but there was still a scattering of rice grains that made it onto the floor. After we’d eaten I gave her a glass of water to drink and a stack of magazines to look at while I drank my coffee and read a Time I had gotten in a care package. Burkinabe may let their children drink coffee and beer, but I’m not about to let them. It was precious, how grown up she was trying to be. She kept looking up at me with a huge smile plastered across her face. Finally just after 9 it was time for me to go to the CSPS. She helped me clean and lock up. As I got on my bike I looked at her and said “ok, Angina, a plus” “A demain,” she replied, till tomorrow. She doesn’t know what it means, just knows it’s something you say when someone is leaving. I suspect that our breakfast has remained our little secret, as none of the children have asked me for food. She gets a little shy and stand-offish when lots of children swarm the house; I think it’s partly because she can since how overwhelmed and agitated I get when there are 10 or more kids demanding things from me. I think it’s also because she wants to keep the things I allow her to do with me special between the two of us.

The last 2 weeks of January was our Technical In-Service Training. In theory, this training is to give us all the technical knowledge needed to be a good health volunteer. For the first week we returned to our beloved hotel in Ouaga where we lived for 2 weeks during Stage. Home sweet home with (sometimes) hot showers and a flush toilet. The schedule was just like Stage, 4 blocks a day from 8 am to 5:15 p.m. Most of the sessions were fairly useful- how to fill out the Volunteer Reporting Form, where and how to apply for project funding, cross-sectorial work, how to set up a CARE group (a model where you teach 10 women then they each teach 10 other women) and lots of information on doing a HEARTH model (for malnutrition). Some highlights included a fancy dinner at Dr. Claude’s house, our APCD, and the day we spent at a fake beach learning about gardening and getting to swim during the lunch break. It was also amazing just to see and hang out with everyone from our health and SED group (SED also had IST at this time), the first time all of us had been together since swear-in. On Saturday night a large group of us went out to dinner in downtown Ouaga, then met up with more volunteers, and made our way to a nightclub for a little dancing, the most fun I’ve had with friends since the night of swear-in. Monday started off a week in Koudougou, our other home during Stage. The week started off great, we were staying at a mission run by nuns and the accommodations were wonderful including single rooms with showers and delicious snacks during the 10 am pause café. After two days of regular sessions our counterparts were to arrive to learn how to design a project and plan one, basically have a project all set up so when we returned to village we could jump right in. To be most effective, the volunteers got to choose who their counterpart from village should be, someone they were going to work with. Before IST I told my assigned counterpart, the Major, about the formation and asked who he thought I should bring. “Je ne sais pas” he responded, does it have to be some from the CSPS? No, I told him, but it needs to be someone I’m going to do projects with and they have to speak French. He told me he would think about it. A week later I asked him again, saying that the nurse or mid-wife could be good choices, but still he had no suggestion of who would work with me. I needed to tell Dr.Claude so she could send invitations, so I talked to her about it and she said she would talk to my Major directly; perhaps there was a miscommunication. After talking to him he was the one the invitation was sent to, he had been personally invited by Dr. Claude, so I expected him on the morning of the 26th to join me at the workshop. The evening before, while everyone else was receiving phone calls that their counterparts had arrived, I heard nothing. Okay, not that unusual, I’m not exactly buddy-buddy with the Major. 8 am, still no Major and the session is starting. No phone call, nothing. Okay, still not that unusual, he was half a day late to the counterpart workshop during Stage, so this would only be the second time he’s been late to a formation of mine. At 10:30 the second session started and the directors started to wonder where he was. Finally, right before lunch I got a tap on the shoulder, “your counterpart has arrived”. I get up and walk towards the door to greet him, only to find it isn’t my Major at all, but a random guy from village. I recognized this man, he helps the CSPS with campaigns sometimes and I had worked with him during the mosquito net distribution, but I had no idea what his name was. Panicked, as soon as we broke for lunch I went in search of Rob, who was there as a facilitator; he lived in my village for 2 years, surly he knew this guy’s name. None such luck, Rob also recognized him but had no clue what his name was. Finally another volunteer went up to him and made small talk and asked his name for me-Sibrie- a very Burkinabe name. Needless to say, the rest of the workshop didn’t go much smoother. He didn’t seem to understand one bit of project designing- why or what we were doing- perhaps this was because he missed the first 2 sessions, or because he hadn’t read the Project Design Manual that I had given the Major for the workshop. Either way, he didn’t get that each step of the project plan was connected to the last and that they were all for one and the same project. I had to explain everything to him over and over again. To make matters worst, he had a hard time understanding my French, but since he didn’t really seem to understand most peoples French that well, nor could he write French, I suspect the problem didn’t just lie in my language ability. After talking with other volunteers about their experience, it seems that counterparts who were more villageois struggled a lot more then fonctionnaire counterparts and this has to be because of education level. Unfortunately, most of the education system is memorization and recitation, so asking someone without an upper level education “what do YOU think?” is hard for them to answer on their own. Problem solving and creative thinking doesn’t seems to exist at the primary or college education level. I was glad when it was over, and can say that the project we “designed” will never take place.

Before going to Koudougou I dropped off fabric to the tailor for my dress. Traditional Burkinabe white fabric and a burnt orange-ish color for the waist band that was to match Josh’s tie. I took my friend Lauren with me who is a bit of a ball buster, and she made sure the tailor knew EXACTLY how I wanted the dress and took ALL the needed measurements and that everything would be perfect. He told me it would be ready in one week; perfect, I’ll pick it up after our week in Koudougou. I went to see if it was ready on the following Monday. Josh helped me find the shop, since I’m terrible with directions, and then left to fix my bike while I dealt with the tailor. I had a flat tire, again. The tailor recognized me right away, and, with a smirk, asked where Lauren was, who was at the transit house. My dress was ready and he pulled it out of the closet- it was perfect! The embroidery on the waste band, which Lauren had given him creative rights too, turned our beautifully! He led me to his room (his shop was attached to a restaurant/hotel, which he apparently lived at) so I could try it on. I excitedly slipped off my skirt and t-shirt and slipped on the dress, only to find that the side zipper was slightly on a backwards angle and I couldn’t zip it up past my ribs. I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t get it past that point. I took off the dress and tried the zipper, could there be a catch? Nope, it went up fine. Okay, let’s try this again. Is the dress too small or can I just not zip it up? I put it back on and, once again, same spot no-go. I could pull the fabric together so it didn’t seem like I was the problem, at the angle of the zipper I just couldn’t do it up myself. I debated for a second- could I go out and find the tailor to help? What if he had gone back to his shop, I would have to walk through the hotel and the restaurant in my half zipped dress. Plus, would it be culturally appropriate to have a man tailor zip me up on a side zipper when I wasn’t wearing anything underneath? Then I debated calling Josh or Lauren to come help me, but it would take too long for them to arrive, I'd already been in there well over 5 minutes. And that would just be ridiculous-“Hi, I’m stuck in a dressing room at the tailor’s and can’t zip myself up, will you come help me?” I took the dress off once again and tried the zipper. Still good, so I decided to give it one more try. just one more quick try. Third times a charm, right? One more go and if I can’t get it I’ll go find the tailor. I put it back on and gave it one hard tug. Well that did it aright- pulled the zipper right off. Still didn’t go past that one spot on my ribs. I got dressed and walked out, dress in one hand, zipper tag in the other. The tailor looked at me funny. When I told him what happened he said he would have zipped me up, duh, you idiot . Still, he happily replaced the zipper and by the time he was done Josh had returned with my bike. This time when he handed me the dress to try on he told Josh to go with me, simply saying “she needs help”. Josh got the zipper on the first try, of course, and when I walked out to show the tailor he said “voila” and gave me a look that said “you should have just asked for help the first time around”. He tested out the snugness of the fit and made sure it was well tailored before trimming off the extra fabric and loose stings, a sign of a good tailor. I paid 20 mille, about $40, and we were on our way. Next time I’ll be sure Lauren is with me to get me in the dress.

6: I awoke to a dull pain that ran from my ribs to my pelvis along my right abdomen. An all too familiar pain these days. Wonder what intestinal ailment lies in wait for my this time. Refusing to get out of bed just yet I listen to the morning sounds. A loud cry, wailing really, which only breaks for a deep chested cough. My first instinct is that it’s a lost goat, their cries sound eerily like a baby’s, but the cough makes me wonder. Do goats get chest colds? 9: I go through my normal morning routine and am now forcing myself to go to the CSPS. It’s been almost 3 weeks since I’ve been there and I MUST go say hello and show that I’m back from IST. On my way out the door I wonder what is the point, what am I going to do there? My Etude is over so I can no longer spend my time studying the CSPS documents or asking the staff questions for my report, so now what? I suppose I now should be spending my time creating project plans and implementing them, but I only have 4 or so weeks left in this village and what can I really get done in that amount of time without a motivated counterpart? Even if I had a really good idea I would need someone in the village to help me, especially with the language barriers. That’s the Peace Corps philosophy anyways for sustainability, we train others so that they can continue on in our absence. The CSPS staff can’t be bothered to attend a project design workshop with me, much less actually spending time on a project. My time would be better spent studying French. On my bike ride to the CSPS I debate flat out asking the Major why I’m here. Why the village requested a Peace Corps volunteer? Did they not understand that PCVs work WITH the village, not FOR the village? Every project we do is suppose to be with a counterpart to capacity build. We don’t develop the village, we aid them in developing themselves, so to speak. And why a health volunteer? Every time I’ve asked what the health issues are that they would like to address I get empty answers. “Je ne sais pas” When I asked what types of projects they would like to see happen I was told that I’d find out at my IST formation what to do, as if the Peace Corps dictates our projects. Maybe they don’t understand, that’s not how this works. They have to work with me to identify a priority health issue and we work together to combat it. If the issue is not perceived, then behavior change will never occur. It’s like addiction, the first step is admitting your are an addict. The first step is admitting your child in malnourished, that malaria is a serious problem, that diarrhea can kill your baby. To these people illnesses occur and are treated and that’s that. Nothing seems to be of concern or of need of addressing. 10: For the first time I was asked to help Madame Sylvie with baby weighing. I’ve been trying for 6 months, 160 days, to help weigh babies. My interest is in nutrition and my ideal project is with malnourished children. Usually volunteers come away from baby weighing feeling accomplished- they actually did some hands on work- but Sylvie has a way to making me feel incompetent and useless. She is impatient with me, with everyone really, and gets annoyed when I miss a beat. Numbers in French, Burkinabe names, foreign paperwork, her speaking to the women in Moore- we’re not trained to do this. No, I don’t know how to give a polio vaccine or take blood pressure. I’m sitting next to her, writing numbers into each baby’s Carte de Sante as they are weighed and measured, trying to see the charts and scale since it’s easier for me if I see the numbers opposed to trying to hear her mumble them. The growth chart says something like 100% is perfect, 85 and above is good, and the 80% bracket has been whitened out. What should say something along the lines of caution your child is falling behind, bordering malnutrition, now has “normal” scribbled in. 75% and 70% fall into moderately malnourished, below that is severely malnourished. 80%, Sylvie tells me, 80%. Baby after baby is 80%. “Normal”. She doesn’t tell the women what percentile their children are in, nor does she explain how to feed their children healthy diets; she doesn’t say or explain anything at all. Just moves on to the next child. Finally there is a child that is clearly in the 75% bracket. The child hasn’t been weighed in 4 months and from my reading of the scale has lost weight, but according to Sylvie has gained a little. She looks at the growth chart, 75%. I’m looking over her shoulder. She hesitates and looks at the chart again, finds height then weight-still 75%. She says something to the mother and feels the babies legs for swelling. The are speaking in Moore and from the mother’s body language I’d guess she is explaining why the child is under weight – money is sort, it’s not the harvest season, the child is having problems weaning?- Who knows. Maybe she pleads that the baby will be better next time. Sylvie makes a clicking noise in the back of her throat and nods her head in agreement; an okay, I understand. 80% she tells me. No malnourished children for village this week. 13: A flock of guinea fowl scurry along the path as I bike home. A group of young boys play with a bouncy ball in my kitchen as I make lunch. Not my usual lunch-time visitors, but still children I know from next door. I think they like my kitchen because of the cement floor and walls, good for the bouncing. Sometimes they take to just sprawling out on the floor. I think the cement feels cool to them, different from their mud floors. 14: I retreat to my room and shut the door. Shut out the children for a little while. The harmattan winds are blowing strong today and I apparently have allergies. I’m sure it’s from all the dust. Upon returning home yesterday there was a layer of dust over my entire house, over everything. Like in a movie where someone goes into an old abandoned house where white sheets cover the furniture, pick up a book, blow, and a puff of dirt clouds into the air. Only I didn’t have the foresight to cover my belongings in white sheets. I was only gone for 17 days. The majority of yesterday was spent uncovering my life, beating the dirt out of my bed sheets and whatnot. The children have left foot prints on my kitchen floor. 16: After a repose I am ready to face the world again. Plus I am not sure if my tutor is coming today and he always thinks I’m not home if my door is closed. No sir, sometimes I just need some peace and quite. Within minutes a few small children are at my door. “Je demand un bon bon” they say over and over again. In the last 6 months I have never just given away candy, it has to be earned. If you give things out freely then your not viewed as a real person, but as a vending machine. After a few responses of “no, I don’t have candy. I don’t give candy,” I take to just ignoring them. After about 5 minutes they find something more interesting and go away. 18:30: It has been overcast all day and now it too cloudy to see the sun set. No golden hour today, the last strands of sunlight slowly dimming, a warning time to wrap up what you were doing before the darkness comes. Today just grey and instantly dark. I’d say it was going to storm, but the rains won’t come again until after May. The wind is cold and without the sun taking a bucket bath outside would be miserable. Even if I heated up the bath water. My stove will not light and I suspect my gas tank is empty. A lunch time discovery. Shall be an interesting problem to fix as I cannot get a new tank in village. Will tackle that one tomorrow. For now just worry about dinner. In a world where there is no place to buy pre-made food, or fruits or vegetables or bread, what can you eat without a stove?

After New Years Eve Josh and I decided to make a little vacation out of our trip to the South West. It’s a long journey to get down there so we thought we should explore the area a little bit while we’re there. I read over my Lonely Planet, which pointed us in the direction of Banfora. Getting to Banfora from Gaoua was an adventure in its’ own. The Lonely Planet didn’t say much, so in the morning we headed to the gare hoping for the best. Asked around the bus station and was told a bush taxi would be leaving at noon, so we bought a ticket, dropped our bags, and went to find some breakfast. At noon there was still no taxi bus. Josh was getting a little anxious and went to ask the man who seemed to work the gare. First he was told that the bus was coming at 2, then he was told that we should just take a regular taxi for 40,000 CFA. We didn’t have 40 mille. We were short on cash as it was since we didn’t take into account that the New Years fete meant the post/bank would be closed for 5 days. Worried that this meant no bush taxi was coming and that we just lost 10 mille on the tickets, he fetched me and we went to talk to the man together. This time we were told it was coming at 12:30. At one Josh got more nervous and decided to go for a walk. “Don’t worry, it’ll come. This is Burkina…” I said as I continued to read my book. At 2:15 the man came to get us and gather up our stuff. He had us sit on a wooden bench near the loading cars in wait, ready to go, and at 2:30 took us across the street to a bush taxi. Finally, we’re on our way and the taxi loads quickly and departs by 3pm. The taxi van is packed full, but thankfully over half of the people get off at a city an hour into the journey and we get an entire bench row to ourselves for the rest of the 5 hour journey. We get into Banfora a little after 8, hot and completely covered in red dirt from the open windows, and are glad to find the Peace Corps recommended hotel and call it a day. Banfora is a lovely little city with lots of good eats. It is one of the more touristy areas in Burkina, but didn’t really feel that way. People there aren’t push or attack you for being a tourist as they did in places like Aursha, Tanzania, or even in Ouaga. We only had a couple of days so only got in 3 of the sights in the area. The best by far was the Domes of Fabedougou, about an 11K bike ride out of Banfora. We took a wrong turn on the way and got lost in a maze of sugar cane fields, but when we finally found them it was well worth it. Huge rock formations unlike anything I’d ever seen before. We spent the morning walking through the park and climbing the domes. Next stop was the Cascades of Karfiguela, only a couple kilometers from the Domes. The waterfalls were pretty, with 4 different levels of falls, but a waterfall is a waterfall and after seeing so many they all kind of look the same. These reminded of the falls in Appalachian mountains meets the waterfalls in Western Australia. But it was hot and we were ready for a swim. We took the advise of fellow volunteers and found a “secret” waterfall that’s behind the second level. It wasn’t completely private, another man found it before us and was taking a nap at the top of the falls. He has the sweet life. Still, it was the perfect setting and we cooled off in the water before having a late picnic lunch. The next morning we went to Tengrela Lake to see hippos, however the most excitement we got was from crossing a bridge on the way there. The bridge was being repaired and we had been warned by other volunteers that there were men who would try to make us pay a fee “for the reparation of the bridge”. Conveniently, Hippo Lake is just beyond the bridge and several tourists a day cross the bridge. When we came to the bridge we followed school children down the left side to the water where there were a couple foot paths across. We didn’t get very far before a couple of men noticed the 2 white people and stopped us, saying there was a fee to cross. I told them “non, c’est pas vrai”! They were instant, pulled out coins from their pockets to show us as if we didn’t understand, even held on to the back of our bikes so we couldn’t walk away. I lost it a little bit and blew up at them like I had seen Kate do last summer in East Africa when people tried to rip us off, something I swore I would never do. I guess 7 months of people trying to take advantage of you because your white wears on you a little bit. We threw everything at them that we could think of, “we’re not tourist, we live here. we know there is not a fee” “how come your not charging any of the Burkinabe, just the Nasaras?” “if there’s a toll where is the toll station? The toll sign?” “call the police if we have to pay, or should we call the police because you’re falsely charging us?” Nothing was working. Finally we got across the stream and Josh told the men to leave me alone and deal with him, since I had retreated to screaming at them in English. In most cases, people will leave the angry white woman alone, but in this case they weren’t easing up. After about 10 minutes we got on our bikes and were slowly inching ourselves away, and they realized we weren’t getting any closer to giving them money. The ring leader reluctantly let go of Josh’s bike, saying “fine, you can pay on your way back”. A few minutes later we were at the peage for the Lake, but unlike the Domes or the Cascades there wasn’t a sign with the park fees. Again, the attendant saw 2 white people and tried to over charge us. Once we pulled out our carte professionnelles and told him that we live in Burkina and know the cost he changed his tune. By the time we got out on the lake it was almost 8 a.m. and our boat guy told us the 40 or so hippos that live in the lake had left and gone into the woods. Now I don’t know a lot about hippos, but I know a little, and I know that Hippos normally go up on land to eat at night. I’ve experienced this first hand near Hell’s Gate National Park in Kenya. I also know that during the day, when it is very hot, Hippos prefer to be in water. If he would have told us that we couldn’t really see the Hippos because they are only ears and noses in the water, I’d believe it, but I’m not buying that in 90 degree whether when it’s only going to get hotter they are chilling in the woods. I suspect he just didn’t want to go searching through the lake for nostrils sticking out, but maybe at this point I had just lost faith in the good nature of the Burkinabe. We still got a lovely 45 minute pirogue trip on the lake and it was interesting to see the fishermen. We got lucky on the way home- we wasted no time at the bridge and went to the far, far left path. The poll trolls were busy with another group of white people and we got across and on our way without any problems. Despite all the hassles, I’d still recommend Banfora to anyone visiting Burkina Faso. We didn’t see everything and it’s one of the only places I’ve visited that I’d gladly return to.

I can hardly believe it’s already 2011! Gosh that feels weird to write. It was even weirder to spend my first New Years in… 6 years? not with my sister in South Carolina. I was a kind of quite night, but still a fun New years. Josh and I traveled down to the other side of the country to spend New Years with friends in Gaoua, a small city in the South-West. A small city, but it still has running water, electricity, paved roads, and street lights, so not really that small of a city. There, we met up with Shannon, Kyle, Austin, and a new health volunteer named Hailey. We sat around until dinner time asking the new girl (her stage arrived in mid October) about what had happened back home since we had left and listening to new music. All of us but Kyle had only been gone 6 months (Kyle a year), but being in the US seems like ssoooo long ago. We were also eager to hear any new, or new to us, music that she had. Finally at around 7:30 we decided as a group that we were hungry and called for a cab to take us into town. While we waited for our food to be ready Hailey and I went out to stock up on sparkling wine, because what’s new years without a little champagne? We ate a delicious dinner and I was amazed then the spaghetti came out with real cheese on top! (there is no cheese in this country… Where did they get it?!) After dinner we went back home and hung out some more until midnight. A couple minutes till someone realized the time and shouted it it was almost the new year, we had to get ready. We poured our glasses with champagne (rouge sparkling wine, it’s the only thing we could find), and as we tried to count down the time realized that everyone’s watch said a different time. Not having a TV or watching a ball drop, having no way of knowing what the real time was, we made a group decision to just count down to zero and call it good. Three… two… one…. Happy New Year! After the New Year’s toast the men went outside to smoke cigars and try to be manly. The conversation was mainly about football and sports, it was kind of funny. Finally at 1 Josh and I decided it was late and we needed to go to bed. We went to grab our bikes to head back to the hotel, only to discover that once again I had a flat tire. We tried our best to pump it up just to get us home (hey, it worked on my Birthday), but neither one of us could pump the tire at all (The pumps we were given are real fickle and can be hard to work). Fine, we’ll just walk our bike home. After 5 or 10 minutes of walking we decided to try something we see Burkinabe do all the time- one person pedals while the other sits on the back of the bike and pulls the other bike along. For reasons I now can’t remember, there was no way I was going to be the one on the back holding the other bike. So I climbed up onto Josh’s bike (it’s a man’s bike and a lot bigger then mine) and tried to pedal while he sat on the back. Nope, not going to happen. Back to walking. When we were almost home, Josh was stopped by a Gendarme as we passed a bar. He may have tried to stop me too, but when I’m walking out at night I put blinders on and walk with a mission to get home, so I didn’t notice him until he stopped Josh behind me. “Give me money”, he said to Josh. Taken off guard Josh relied “what?”. “Give me money!” the police man said again. He had clearly had a little too much to drink. Thankfully another man saw this and intervened, and Josh quickly walked away telling me to “walk fast” before the Gendarme had anymore ideas. We were both glad to finally get home and go to bed.

True to Christmas form, as soon as Josh, Lauren, and I woke up on Christmas morning we chowed down on the left over eggrolls. We lazed around for a bit until Josh heard the Catholic choir start singing and we went off to church. The Catholic church is just up the street from his house and was jam packed full of people. There were about a hundred people huddled around the outside of the church and another 50 or so under a big baobab tree across the street. Apparently this is the normal church size for them. Someone needs to come build them a mega church! Josh has gone to the catholic church before, but there is never enough room and you can’t hear the service from outside, so he prefers the smaller protestant church across village. They had just gotten started by the time we got there, so we tried to sneak in the back. But being the only two white people there, it’s a little hard to sneak in, and everyone turned around to check us out. Or really, to check me out, since they are use to Josh coming to church and were curious to see who his femme was. We sat down in the back row and tried to blend in. The church was small and everyone was packed in. There was a man upfront asking questions about the Christmas story to the congregation and giving bonbons to whomever answered, he explained to us in French. I would have tried to answer them, since Josh had read me the Christmas story form Matthew and Luke just that morning, but I honestly couldn’t tell whether the man was speaking in French or local language. The local language there is different then my local language and the French accent was slightly different too. After the Q&A, the choir began to sing and everyone stood up to sing along. The man who had lead the questions came to next to Josh and translate into French for us, since all the songs were in local language. He explained that someone from each neighborhood of the village was going to come up to the front and lead the congregation in a song, however there are only 4 neighborhoods in the village and way more then 4 people went up to sing. There was a drum or two, sort of like a bongo drum, that accompanied the singing. For each song everyone stood and swayed, some people clapped their hands, a couple men had shakers, some people got down and boogied- there was a certain dance move for the women and one for the men, and some of the men got real into it, shacking their butts like a Ricky Martin video. I don’t want to sound rude, but it was sort of hilarious. I only recognized one of the hymns, when a big, well dressed women lead us in “Joy to the World” in French, all the rest were African hymns. After about a half hour and all the people had stopped filtering in I realized that all the women were sitting on the right side, the children in the middle isle, and all the men on the left hand side of the church. There was a man standing in the back who sat people as them came in, moving children around to make room for adults. I was sitting on the left side with Josh, and wondered why they do the separation and what kind of cultural taboo I was causing. No wonder everyone stared at me when I (we) sat down. I said something to Josh and asked if I should join the women on the women’s side, but he insisted that I should stay right there next to him. I’ll know better next time. After an hour and a half Josh leaned into me saying we should leave. All the singing was still taking place, we had left Lauren home alone, and were expecting another PCV to come at any time. I wanted to stay, but he said we’d be there at least another 2 hours, so thinking of dinner I agreed. Outside we greeted the pastor, who had stepped out to salue us, we thanked him and he thanked us for coming. Back at the home front Lauren and Shannon were waiting for us. Josh and I went over to the chief de village’s house to wish him a joyeux noel and fetch the turkey. After giving Josh the mission of getting us a bird earlier that week, he had asked the Chief where to find a turkey. The next night when he went to the Chief’s for dinner, the Chief surprised him with a giant turkey, saying “I got you the biggest one I could find!” The Chief looked after the turkey for us until we were ready to kill it. None of us had ever killed a bird before ourselves, so I encouraged Josh to ask for help. I was thankful when the Chief sent 2 of his sons along with us. Josh was determined to try is hand at butchering dinner, so he pinned down the bird as we had watched Chris do at Thanksgiving. He had received a Swiss army knife from his parents for Christmas and was eager to use it, however the bird was big and the knife blade was small and it didn’t work as well as he had hoped. After a good couple minutes of the bird not really bleeding out and still gasping for air, the three of us girls brought him a bigger, really sharp knife and insisted that he use it. Finally one of the Chief’s sons stepped in and with one quick swoop slight the throat the right way. After it bled out the girls had the hot water ready and the cluster of children we had attracted were eager to pluck the turkey for us. Fine by me. Josh wanted to try and gut the turkey himself, but I was not about to have the intestines nicked and ruin Christmas dinner, so with my encouragement he asked his neighbor to help. We watched carefully though, so next time he can do it himself (when we’re not hosting a big dinner for other people…) He then light the charcoal, put potatoes in the bottom of a huge marmite, and put in the bird as I made up the first butter (well, Blue Band) baste. Three hours or so later the bird was ready, just as the girls finished up the rest of the cooking. Josh had largely been in charge of cooking the bird and I have to give him props, it turned out very well. We set the table- mashed potatoes and gravy (thank you, Aunt Vicki, for the gravy mixes!), stuffing, salad, challah bread, cooked beets and carrots, and, of course, turkey. It was everything I had been dreaming of. Once we were all stuffed Shannon pulled out her Christmas surprise. She had received a gingerbread man decorating kit in a Christmas package, so the three of us girls decorated gingerbread men. Then to bring Christmas day to an end, I brought out the in-French storybook about a snowman that Aunt Sharon had sent me. We passed the book around and took turns reading a page or two. Here is Shannon reading to us in French. And with that, to all a goodnight.

This year I turned 24 on the 24th, my golden birthday, and my first birthday in Burkina Faso. I knew it was going to be a Burkina kind of Birthday when I woke up to a flat tire. Lauren and I were making the journey to Josh’s site that day, so we meet up in out district capitol the night before in order to catch the early morning bus to Ouaga on the 24th. Happy Birthday to me, I have a flat tire. Luck for us , the closest bike guy was enjoying a Nescafe out front of his hanger. He hadn’t set up shop yet, it was only 6 a.m. but at least he was there. Actually, it was his son or an apprentice, and two white women with a flat tire was a little too much for him at such an hour. After me trying twice and Lauren once to explain to the boy that there was a hole in the tire, we gave up and just let him pump it up with air. At least this would get us to the bus stations on time to catch our bus. The trip to Ouaga went smooth as usual on our bus company of choice, KGB. They are new to the area so the bus tend to not be as full, and the buses are yellow, American, Blue Bird school buses, complete with signs still to in English. It’s like riding the bus in elementary school, only with chickens piled in the isle and 10 motos and a goat tied to the roof. I’m not joking, once we debarked in Ouaga we realized there was a Billy goat on the roof, typical of transport in BF. In Ouaga we made a pit stop at the beloved Marina Market to get all the Western foods needed to make a Christmas feast. I was bound and determined to make eggrolls for dinner, my birthday wouldn’t be complete with out them, and went on a mad search to find egg roll wrappers. Finally, after searching the entire store (I couldn’t ask the store staff, because how do you say eggroll wrappers in French?) I spotted them in an out of the way fridge on my way to the checkout counter. Alas, my Birthday dinner was saved! After buying everything possible for a delicious Birthday/Christmas dinner Lauren and I met up with Josh and headed to the gare to catch a taxi brousse to his site. Now a bush taxi is roughly the size of a 12 passenger van, or slightly bigger then the Nany van, with 4 to 5 rows of bench seats that hold 25 to 30 people. It’s a tight squeeze, however people get off and on along the route so numbers are constantly in flux. Also, there aren’t exactly set leave times, the taxi waits until it is full to leave. We got lucky and only had to wait at the gare 2 hours for it to leave. The 3 hour bush ride took over 4 hours because of an off road detour, and only the first hour was on a paved road, but we made it in one piece, including 11 of the 12 eggs we had carried on our laps in a plastic bag desperately trying to keep them from breaking. We arrived at the city closest to Josh’s village just as the last rays of day light were fading, and, as to be expected, my tire was completely flat again. We hurried to catch a bike repair guy before they went home for the night, but were too late. Josh did the best he could to pump up the tire with my Peace Corps given bike pump and we prayed it would get me home, and, thankfully, it did. It was past 7 by the time we finally made it to Josh’s house and we were all tired and hungry. Lauren and I wasted no time in starting dinner. Making Nany’s eggrolls in Burkina Faso on a gas tank stove with no electricity was a challenge, but it had to be done. It was all coming along pretty well, until I got to the rolling. The wrappers need to be refrigerated until use, and, well, after the 7 hour journey from the store to site they had dried out. Also, they weren’t the square wrappers I was use to, but were triangles. I got a little innovative with wet paper towel and raw egg and made it work. Then came the issue of the oil- when I told Josh I needed enough oil to fry eggrolls plus some, he didn’t quite understand how much oil that entailed. That’s okay, use a smaller pot and only cook one or two at a time while pushing them under the oil, pouring hot oil over them. It had to work. While I rolled and Josh fried, Lauren made a delicious soup, a Burkina version of Olive Garden’s Tuscany soup. As we cooked, Josh turned on his sort wave radio and we caught the Pope’s catholic mass on the radio. It was comforting to hear familiar hymns and remember that despite the 90 degree weather and being in Burkina Faso, it was still Christmas Eve. Finally the eggrolls were done and I just needed the sweet and sour sauce and dinner would be complete. A huge Thanks to all my family members who sent me ketchup packets, to which the sweet and sour sauce would not have been possible. Dinner was served. May I present to you my finished stack of eggrolls, not quite up to par with Nany’s, but as close as could get in the conditions.

Three months into service, sort of the mark of the end of the Etude period, there is In-Service Training. It is broken up into 3 parts, first December 15th to the 21st was regional based language training, then in January there is a week of tech training and a 3 day workshop with counterparts to make project plans. Lang IST went a little something like this: Our schedule was suppose to be the exact same as during Stage- 4 blocks a day, 2 before lunch and 2 after- which, thanks to a great LCF, turned into a block of French at 8 a.m., 2 hours of internet time, Lunch, personal sleeping time, and then a block of Moore to finish out the day. There were 6 volunteers at my lang IST, the 6 volunteers in my providence from my training group, and having all the down time to hang out with other Americans was very nice, but I will admit the actual learning left much to be desired. I needed the French practice, but French class consisted of reading a French African fable for homework and then discussing it during class. The kicker is that there are verb tenses used in written French that are never used in spoken French, so a week of studying passe simple is not going to help me speak to my villagers. In our group of 5 Moore learners we were at 3 different levels, so Moore class wasn’t that useful either, unfortunately. However, a week out of village and in a hotel with electricity and a half way flushing toilet was invaluable. We’ve been in country for 6 months now, which is usually a natural slump for volunteers, and we were no exceptions. Even the volunteer that lived in the bigger city with electricity and internet at his house and a fridge at his disposal was like “I want to go home”. So having a week to just complain about everything that is wrong with Burkina was nice (the constant intestinal problems, the lack of vegetables, dairy, and meat on a daily bases, not ever being able to communicate with anyone, constantly being harassed because your white, always feeling awkward, the list could go on and on and on). The one night that we all got together and decided that life wasn’t so bad after all was Sunday night. Like Stage, we had Sunday off, so after a lazy morning and a little marche visit we all went over to the volunteer’s house who lives there. It took 6 volunteers, 2 dictionaries, and an iPhone to get through the fable that was our homework, but after we finally finished Katie made us all a homemade dinner. 4 or 5 boxes of wine and several hours of the internet later, life in Burkina didn’t seem so bad. Through in a little Lady Gaga into the mix and we had ourselves a party. Our week of commiserating accumulated with our final supper. Hilary was really craving the rice from “the Ghana restaurant”, and despite going there the night before and only getting 2 of the 6 plates we ordered, waiting 30 minutes, and then upon our questioning finding out that the food we had ordered “was finished”, we decided to try it again. We sat down and ordered, commanded salads and a plate of meat from the salad lady and meat stand out front of the restaurant, and then sipped on our drinks and waited. After a short time the LCF that ordered To got his food, and we waited a little longer. Rice takes longer to cook, right? Then our other LCF showed up and we asked to add another plate of rice to the order, only to be told the rice was finished. Apparently they didn’t feel it was necessary to tell the 6 people waiting for rice that it wasn’t coming. What are the odds that two nights in a row they would run out of food and not tell us they ran out after we already placed an order? High, this is Burkina. We asked what else they had- only To- and after eating salads, pouting, and debating where else we should go to find food (no where really, it was on the late side and food options are limited) we reluctantly ordered the To. It didn’t take long to come out, a large, cold porridge-like blob of tasteless nothing with cold peanut sauce. We swallowed down as much to as we could- I tried to pinch off little balls and put them in the bowl of sauce and pray it would be like southern dumplings in stew, which was actually eatable, but unfortunately I was served a disproportionate amount of To to sauce and was left with the choice to eat plain To or still be hungry. I chose being hungry. As we finished up eating and playing with the jello quality of the giant To ball and waited for our change from the bill, Hilary decided to make a soundtrack to our lives as Peace corps volunteers in Burkina with Hugo’s iPhone. First she put on “This place is a prison” by the Postal Service, followed by a Bright Eyes song that has chorus that starts off with “how did I get here,” and when the chorus came on she shouted out at the top of her lungs “HOW DID I GET HERE?!” A question we’ve all been asking ourselves lately.

December 11th marked the 50th anniversary of Burkina’s independence. To celebrate the day, there was a big parade in Bobo-Dioulasso and the government asked the Peace Corps to be apart if it. Peace Corps recruited 25 volunteers to march in the parade, luring us with free transport to Bobo, free housing, “work-related leave” from site so as to not count as our allotted TAC days, and a promise of free meals from the 50th anniversary committee. To march in the parade required 4 days of parade practice, so essentially is was a free week long trip to Bobo- Yes please , sign me up! [Side note: there was originally a 2 day “International Volunteer Day” event that was to happen the weekend before the Independence day fete that called for 75 volunteers to attend, extending our stay in Bobo to 10 days, but the event was mysteriously canceled a day before our departure to Bobo.] Those of us that had to travel through Ouaga to get to Bobo all met up Sunday the 5th around noon in Ouaga to endure the 5 hour bus ride together, almost loosing one during the one “10 minute” rest stop to grab dinner-to-go. As the bus started to pull away all the Nasaras started yelling to wait and a white man took off running after the bus. We got into Bobo after dark and were taken to “the apartment” where the rest of the volunteers were settling down to bed. The apartment is a 3 bedroom house that is located right across the street from the PC Bobo Bureau that apparently is empty and can be rented out. Very convenient for us. There were 3 double beds, all taken, and a pile of mattresses and Burkina-style pillows, which are more like couch cushions. There was a dash to claim a mattress and floor space, but since it was late and not clear what was free, we scouted out tent space on the porch, snagged pillows and called it a night. Would rather sleep in a tent outside then packed in like refugees on the floor, although it reminded me a lot of sleep at tournaments with the Ultimate team. Monday morning parade practice started bright and early, around 6:30 am. “Practice” consisted of milling around near our designated parade spot, then being put in our marching lines- tallest to shortest both horizontally and vertically- but the Gendarmerie, followed by more waiting around and seeking out water and snacks, randomly being called back into our lines only to wander out again in search of shade, and then finally at around 11:30 we learned how to march. We walked about half the parade route with sporadic Gendarmerie and other military men along the way screaming “Gauche, gauche, gauche, droite, gauche” and calling out those of us who were off and fixing our lines as we marched along. Now the Burkina march step is a mix between a band step and a normal walk and very closely resembles the hyenas marching in the Lion King, including the swinging, straight arms. After learning how to march, we were corralled back to our starting point and had to walk the whole parade route again, which was a 2 to 3 mile straight shot down the road to the football stadium. We were told that practice would end at 11, and by the time we finished the first test run it was past 13:00 and we were all hot, thirsty, hungry and champing at the bit to leave. Thankfully once we reached the stadium we were given water and told we were done for the day. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday’s parade practice wasn’t that much different. Tuesday we refused to go so early, since on Monday we were one of the first groups there, only to be yelled at by the Gendarm in charge of us for being late, so Wednesday we settled on getting there between 7 and 7:30. All the days consisted of mostly standing around, leaving our area to find food and shade, being told to come back and stand around, and then having a few “media” practices. Before the actually parade the President and the media would drive down the road past us to their places in the boxed-in bleachers, and all the groups marching were to be standing at attention in perfect lines facing the cameras. Naturally, this required several run-throughs each day where military officials would drive past us in hummers and correct our lines or tell us to take our hands out of our pockets or whatnot. Then we would file into the road, usually have to back up a block or so, switch lanes in the road, then maybe back up some more, and then finally start marching towards the stadium, stop and wait for 5 or 10 minutes, march again, randomly switch lanes again (it seemed like the officials couldn’t decide which lane was the best placement for the marchers), pause some more, then as we approached the viewer’s stands and the band military officials would start shouting out “Gauche!” to get us in step, we would pass the important-peoples bleachers and then fall out of step as we finished the rest of the parade march and ended at the stadium where they gave us water and we waited for the Peace Corps car to rescue us. Lucky for us, Thursday was to be a full parade practice requiring that we bring no bags with books and music, which we had started to bring to entertain ourselves for the hours of just standing around, and had to wear the clothes-toed black shoes that we had been told were a requirement. Who brings close-toed black shoes to Burkina Faso? Only a handful of the volunteers had them so most of us had to buy hideous black, late 80’s style heels from the marche and Thursday’s practice was the debut of our fabulous new shoes. Once we got there on Thursday we realized that almost none of the Burkinabe groups were wearing black shoes, only the American’s were fool enough to fall for that. I was lucky enough to find black flats, but most of the other girls walked the second half of the parade barefoot and carried their shoes because of the blisters already forming. Saturday was the big show. All the groups marching were given one of several 50th anniversary pagne designs and the group was to get matching outfits made. For the Peace Corps, girls had simple completes complete with a foulard (traditional head wrapping) and the boys had simple outfits that looked like a pajama sets with white “International Volunteer day” hats. Here is Josh and I modeling our parade gear, getting ready to head out for the parade. Luckily there were a few girls that knew how to tie up the foulard, which was a whole pagne wrapped on our heads. We arrived at the parade grounds by 6 am, before sunrise, and anxiously waited for things to get started while eyeing everyone else's outfits. This is the Gendarm that was assigned to be our grill sergeant. Thankfully he was really nice and patient with us. Here is a group shot before the parade activities started. Corps De La Paix American looking snazzy in our matching completes. Before anything started we were given water and a box of sugar cubes by the parade committee. When asked what the sugar was for, they told us to eat it before the parade to help us march well. Apparently the breakfast provided by the Parade Committee was a box of sugar. We waited around until 8 when we were called into our lines, then waited another hour until around 9 when we were told for real to get in our lines. Around 9:20 a convoy started to pass by, first an SUV full of military men heavily armed, then a few other cars with perhaps important people, then a green hummer with President Blaise Compaore standing in the back. He didn’t wave like a beauty queen, just firmly stood and looked at us as he passed by. He was literally about 15 feet in front of me, the closest I’ve ever been to a President or State official, it was kind of cool. After his car was another SUV full of heavily armed men, one with his AK47 sticking out the window ready at a moments notice. Once the President sat down in his seat, we filed out into the road and got ready to march. This was almost exactly like practice- stand and wait, move back, wait, walk forward a bit, wait, switch lanes, switch back, wait- But everyone seemed to be in a joyful mood. We were sandwiched between “the community of foreign people” and the “Lebanese Community” and the three groups traded off cheers, singing of our respective national anthems, and dancing as we waited for the parade to start. We were even joined by a few festive parade goers like these boys who were decked out in full body paint and these women were in white face and came around to the groups to dance and pump them up. There was even men on stilts. For a second, it almost seemed like a fun parade and not the strict, military-esk parade that it was. When the parade started it went exactly as practice had gone, including the pauses and switching lanes, but we all marched in perfect step before the president. Once we got to the football stadium we tried to watch the end of the parade, but unfortunately we were more towards the end and didn’t get to see that many groups. I tried to get photos of the more interesting groups before we B-lined to the Peace Corps car to take us home and out of the uncomfortable completes, but could only really get these two. The first is of two Peuls girls. The Peuls are knowen for being herders of cows and sheep and the women for selling the milk in calabashes, so as the girls walked the carried the traditional stacks of calabashes on their heads. It was really cool to watch, but unfortunately they were too far ahead of us to get a photo of them walking. These men on horses were really interesting to see as well, all decked out in traditional dress. I’m not sure which ethnic group they were, I couldn’t find their banner, but I’m guessing they were Peuls as well. A few of the men had traditional drums on their horse with them and they all trotted to the beat of the drums, very cool.

I made the journey to Kathy’s house for Thanksgiving, my roommate from stage. She lives in a fairly big town that on a map looks to be maybe an hour to the east, but traveling in Burkina it takes 5 hours and two buses with a layover in Ouaga. When I got to her village I was amazed at the paved streets and electricity. She, herself, lives in a beautiful home inside a family compound with electricity, a running water shower, and a toilet! She recently bought a mini-fridge for her house, so she could have ice for gin and tonics- Oh, the perks to being a Small Enterprise and Development volunteer. Kathy hosted 5 out of the area volunteers for the fete and her site mate. We got there mid-afternoon and sat on her porch for a while drinking refreshments and catching up. Finally at dusk we decided we should start making our Thanksgiving feast. Sadly, no turkey. But we had a hen! Thanks to Chris and Kathy, I got my first butcher lesson. Chris started us off by cutting the hen’s throat and draining it. The blade of the knife wasn’t as sharp as one would hope, so it took a little doing… Then you put the bird in just boiled water, to loose up the feathers, or something like that. Kathy and I plucked her. The feathers came out easy and it was actually kind of fun, in a bubble-wrap-popping kind of way. Yes, that’s the head I’m holding. We were going to throw it away but were told to keep it –“someone will want it”. I don’t want to know what for. Then Kathy did the honors of eviscerating it. I didn’t pay too much attention to this because it grossed me out, but I know she cut in from the back by the spine and then just kind of cut the insides out, being careful not to nick in intestines. And that’s how you clean a chicken! Around this point Burkinabe started to show up at Kathy’s house and I discovered that she had invited all the people she works with as well as all the people her site mate works with for the fest- around 10 Burkinabe besides us American- and dinner was just getting started. Needless to say, I spent most of the evening in the kitchen with a bottle of wine tending to the cooking while Kathy and the others played hostess. Fine by me, I dread making small talk in French, but this also means I didn’t actually get a plate or really eat any of the meal. It was fine though, we had a nice quite Black Friday and made an even better meal for just the 7 Americans, including Israeli salad and stuffed green peppers! Yum! It was a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by friends. The sunset from Kathy’s house and Josh and I pause for a photo after he watched me rip apart the bird. Happy Thanksgiving!

I pulled out my camera this morning to pack it for my Thanksgiving trip to Kathy’s house, and decided to snap a few photos from my house. Just a few updates from village. I’m still trying to hide the fact that I have a camera from the children and from the villagers- everyday I hear “I demand water to drink, I demand a book, I demand this or that…” from the children, I don’t want to add “take my picture” to that. So I had to snap these in secret from my window. I felt a little like the lead man in “Rear Window” spying on my neighbors from my window, but you got to do what you got to do. First, here is an update on my house. I finally got some furniture! Bought a bookshelf for clothes and a mattress. Rob brought me a chair since his PC tour is almost over, and Roger brought me a small table which I use as a little desk. The kitchen has received only one improvement, the most amazing fry pan in the world, but nothing to write home about. My house is finally starting to come together as a home. And here are a few pictures from my window. The millet and sorghum have been harvested so I can actually see the neighboring compounds. The first photo is a man putting new thatch on his roof. Apparently now is the time to make thatch, and everyday there are men weaving thatch under the big tree in central village. The second is children passing my house as they walk to school. Then there is the Cheif de village, that’s him in the orange hat under the tree. A new Gourounsi radio station just came to our area, so every morning he and a group of men sit under his tree and blast the radio, which I can hear perfectly from my house. I don’t know this woman, but she stopped to talk to another woman (you can’t see her, she’s in her courtyard) on the path while walking by. I love this picture because it’s everyone Burkinabe woman- bright color pagne skirt, carrying things on her head, and lots of sass. And the head lady! I found out she lives in the compound behind me and was lucky enough to catch her in action! This is her walking into her house. Lastly, my best friend Angina, the little girl and has asked if I’ll be her mother and if she can sleep at my house. She came to see me off this morning.

It wasn’t quite Thanksgiving yet, the weekend before, but Katie had made a pit stop on her way home from our district capitol to chez moi. I’m on her way home, sort of, only ~8K round trip off the road, but after biking 30k to town and back what’s 8 more kilometers? She had gone to the post and picked up 5 care packages- yes 5- it seems the post had been hoarding all the packages sent to her in the last 3 months and delivered them all at once. I had recently been living off of care packages myself, since it seems the well has run dry and the village marche has all but nothing to offer- boiled potats, or white sweet potatoes, and if I get there at the right time and am very lucky, watermelon. While our marche is always small, right now is in between harvests. Since Katie had an abundance of delicious things to share, we decided to make a mini- Thanksgiving feast. Someone had sent her a brick of Velveeta cheese, so we made real mac ‘n cheese with collard greens (a very lucky find at the marche, and the only time I’ve been able to find them) and watermelon for desert. While we were cooking we were both bubbling with the anticipation of eating Velveeta macaroni and cheese, and once the food was prepared we couldn’t sit down fast enough to eat. We both sat in silence as we gobbled up the delicious meal. Once we had gone back for seconds and all but licked our plates clean, the conversation picked back up. We both admitted that in the States we never ate Velveeta, too processed. I, like my grandmother, am weary of orange cheese- just seems unnatural. Nothing in nature is that color. But in Burkina, a brick of Velveeta is like a brick of gold. A gift from God. I have dreams about Velveeta cheese. At home and on a local level, I am all organic and natural. I’m the girl who would only eat locally produced, organic, free-range, hormone-free animal products for the last year and a half before the Peace Corps (I question the health benefits from main stream American meat and dairy industry), but now, if you can find a way to send me any kind of meat or cheese I’ll love you forever! Now, I couldn’t be more thankful for food science and the ability for foods to spend weeks being shipped in over 100 degrees and still be editable. Pump those chemicals in if that means I can receive it in Burkina! So this Thanksgiving, Katie and I are thankful for processed foods, and our loved ones that send them to us!

The last time I was in Ouaga I was walking down the street and saw a Michigan T-shirt hanging from a stall of a street vender. I didn’t go to U of M, but I still got a little excited, a slight feeling of familiarity and recognition, from spotting the shirt. It might not be my school, but it’s still my state. I get that same twinge of excitement whenever someone talks about Asheville, NC, or a shot of the reflecting pool and the Lincoln memorial are portrayed on TV or in a movie and I think “Hey, I played ultimate there!”. Well, now Burkina has joined the ranks of places I call home and get excited when they get a shout out in the media. Unfortunately, the media I spotted Burkina in was a Foreign policy magazine issue on failed states. It seems that every year the magazine puts out their rankings on the top 60 failed states in the world. How is a state determined to be a failure? It’s based on an index of 12 indicators- demographics, refugees, illegitimate governments, brain drain, public services, inequality, group grievances, human rights, economic decline, security forces, factionalized elites, and external intervention. My beloved Burkina Faso was ranked the 35th failed state in 2010. Not too bad, we are better off then Haiti, Iraq, and North Korea! And according to a world map titled “mapping crisis,” Burkina is “In Danger”, but that’s better then being “Critical”! Lets just say that Peace Corps volunteers have their work cut out for them- this is definitely a country that needs us and we can feel good about working here. Unfortunately, Burkina was mentioned a little more in the issue. In a article by George B.N. Ayittey titled “The Worst of the Worst,” he goes through all the men in charge of the failed states, saying that they are dictators and ranking “the worst of the worst”. Blaise Compaore, president of Burkina Faso, in power for 23 years to date, was placed as number 18. Ayittey writes: “A tin-pot despot with no vision and no agenda, save self-perpetuation in power by liquidation opponents and stifling dissent, Compaore has lived up to the low standards of his own rise to power, after murdering his predecessor, Thomas Sankara, in a 1987 coup.” If this is true, it would seem rather unfortunate for the Burkinabe as this is an election year and, on November 21st, Blaise was reelected for 5 more years. I’m not allowed to follow politics in BF, as a volunteer, nor do I have a political opinion. Politics has never been my cup of tea anyways. This is in no way my own opinion, nor am I routing for or against Compaore; I give the respect any political leader deserves- It’s a hard job. I am only reiterating what I read in a Magazine for my friends and family, this is only that one authors opinion. I was one of the people who had never heard on Burkina Faso until a week before I got my assignment, and I know most of my family knew very little about the country, so now whenever I see it highlighted in the media, for good or bad, I feel it is good to educate those who are invested in my life here. The election was rather anti-climatic. Campaigning was all but non-existent with a few meetings here and there and some posters decorating the bigger cities. There was a campaign part in my village but I was not in town for it, not that I could have gone anyways, but afterwards a bunch of my petites were sporting Blaise gear. As a PCV, we are not allowed to be involved in politics in any form; we’re not even suppose to associate with US military for fear that it will be thought we have a political agenda. The day came and went like any other day and Blaise was reelected to no one’s surprise. Voting took place at our local school, but I had a flat tired so I didn’t leave my house and in downtown village there was no excitement. The only sign of the election was a dyed fingertip that I spotted when Roger came to help me with my bike- I believe either you vote by dipping your finger in ink and giving a fingerprint (this could be because some people can’t read or write their own name, so a fingerprint is the alternative to a signature) or you have to dip a finger in dye to mark that you voted, I couldn’t quite understand what Roger said. But elections wise, everything was quite on this front. For more information on failed states or the articles I read, please see Foreign Policy July/ August 2010 issue.

While I waited for my bus in Ouaga I couldn’t help but take notice at the little girl sitting next to me. She was eating gato, fried bread, with her stuffed animal rabbit. Much like little girls do, she would offer the bread to the rabbit, pretending to feed it, and then stuff it in her own mouth. It very much reminded me of a scene very common in America, a tea party, but seemed vastly out of context in Burkina. I couldn’t put my finger on what was so strange about the situation, until at last it hit me- the little girl had a toy. A made for the purpose of child’s play, store bought toy. Children in Burkina don’t have toys. I’ve never even seen toys in stores- there’re just not sold here because they have no real useful purpose. Children make their own toys, playing with things adults deems useless. I was once visited by a band of about 5 boys under the age of 5, or rather, I came home one day to find them playing in my yard. Each was adorned with a empty sardine can with make shift wheels made out of wire, attached to a long string- Burkina’s version of a toy car that the boys could pull around. Once I said hello to them they scampered off in the direction of their compound, their “toy cars” in toe. I’ve seen another version of this pull cart, one with a small box as the body and wooden wheels attached to a pagne string. I can’t imagine someone actually making the wooden wheels, I’m sure they are a byproduct of something else, but they don’t really go round anyways. The boys drag along the box car behind them nonetheless. The children literally get the scraps of what their parents can’t find a use for. A common practice at the CSPS is to give a child a pill packet or empty medicine box if they start to fuss. Just something to distract them. The pharmacy usually has a stack of small, empty boxes that the pill packets come in bulk in. One day a male toddler was given a box that use to hold vaginal sediments to calm him down after a shot. The child pranced around proudly with his box, which was labeled in English, so only I was amused by the sight. But the child that really touched me with his use of “trash” was Little Man. It was a busy morning at the CSPS and I had just finished taking temperatures. I sat down on an empty bench, facing out into the entrance, and found Little Man staring back at me. He was just wearing the neon green pants that go under his neon green boubou, the traditional Muslim getup, without the top and was plopped down in an old medicine box that was just big enough to fit his little body, feet hanging over the edge, in the middle of the CSPS front courtyard. From the look of him you’d think he was in a lazy boy. I smiled at the sight of him and he gave me a big, white smile back. Throughout the morning I watched him play in his box, pretending it was a car or maybe that he was flying, occasionally he would move around and sit in a different position, and wherever he went the box was sure to follow. That morning, he was just a little boy with his box. A very plain and simple box. It reminded me of my own childhood, when Nany gave me a box from a new fridge or stove, and we made a house out of it. For days and weeks I played in that box until it couldn’t sand any longer and Nany claimed it for the burning barrel. Incidentally as I was leaving the CSPS that morning, I saw Little Man’s grandmother in the box, one side had been ripped down as to create a lawn chair. He was perched on her lap. Children here are a sentiment of a simpler life- there are so many things in the western world that are truly unnecessary, they just add clutter to our lives. Children’s toys for example- sure they serve a temporary purpose, but interest level has a short lifespan and it quickly becomes a garage sale item. After all, aren’t children just as amused by the trash?

Even the best laid plans tend to be foiled in Burkina. Buses never leave when they are suppose to, you never know when something will or will not be open, things never happen on time or sometimes they will be early, and you can almost always count on meeting times to be an hour or 2 (at least) later then projected. (I learned this in my first week in village, when Katie and I hurried to make the 2 hour bike ride to the district capital for an 8 o'clock meeting that didn’t start until almost noon). We’ve come to call this being “Burkina’d”. It was Monday November 15th, and I was preparing to leave Ouaga after a weekend of meetings for the Food Security Committee. The routine for leaving the city is pack up, go to the post to withdraw money (the Post office is also the bank), grab lunch, a quick trip to Marina Market for all grocery needs not found in village, and catch the 14 hundred bus. I was running a little late, being distracted by one last episode of Mad Men, and got to the post between 11 and 11:30, only to find the power in the city was out, therefore I could not withdraw money. Having no other choice since I didn’t have enough money to pay for my hotel room otherwise, I waited. And waited. And waited. Finally at close to 14 hundred the teller told us that they were closing early for the fete, tomorrow was Tabaski (a big Muslim holiday), and so she took our phone numbers down and gave us the money, without checking anything, and said if there was a problem when the power came back up she would call. Thanks, that’s really nice of you, but you couldn’t have done that 2 hours ago so I didn’t miss my bus? I suppose not. Guess it’s another night in Ouaga. Tuesday everything is going well; find a place that is open for lunch, and head to my bus a little early. Only no one is there. Now, I’ve asked a head of time, and was told buses run every day of the year, but my bus stations isn’t looking good. Thankfully there is an attendant there who tells me that the bus isn’t running until 17 hundred because of the fete. Great, so much for not traveling or biking home in the dark, but oh well, I really need to get back to village. So I sit at the gare with a book and wait. The 17:00 bus leaves pretty much on time, everything is going well, until we get to my stop. Or at least I think it might be my stop- nighttime has fallen and every small village along the road looks the same in the dark, a few thatched shacks on the side of the road. Usually the bus attendant calls out telling you where we are if he knows someone is getting off there, but I hear nothing, and we barely stop for even a second before the bus keeps going. I stare out the window for something I recognize- finally I see the Mosque that is the turn off for Katie’s house and run up to the front of the bus to ask them to let me off. By the time the bus stops we’re just outside of the village where Katie lives. No worries, it’s just a 20 or so minute walk back into town to her house, where my bike spent the weekend. At least it’s a beautiful night, big, bright, almost full moon. I get to Katie’s and we chat for about a half hour or so while she feeds me the food she had been given/ made for the fete. It seems that Tabaski is a big excuse to eat a lot of food, kind of like Thanksgiving. Finally around 19:00 or so I start strapping my bags onto my bike for the hour ride home. Before I go she hands me a bag of mutton that a neighbor had given her, she is a vegetarian, and says something to the effect of, “here’s some conciliation for being Burkina’d,” in regards to not being able to get home in time to celebrate the holiday in my own village. Sweet, meat is vastly missing in my diet. By the time I get home it’s late and I’m tired. I throw my bag down on the floor and put the meat and other food items on the kitchen table, since I don’t have a fridge. Bed quickly ensues. Wednesday I get up and do my normal village routine- get dressed, eat breakfast while reading newspaper articles sent form home, and off to the CSPS. Most people are still feteing, and the President on Burkina is campaigning in our district capitol, which a good number of people were attending, so it was a quite morning. I leave the CSPS a little early because cheese and crackers (from a care package) and a magazine are sounding really good right now. While reading I realize how sleepy I am in the midday heat, and take a nap. When I woke it was 3p.m., obviously too late to make lunch or I’ll ruin my appetite for dinner, so I go about my day. Finally at 18:30 the hunger pains start nagging me and I head to my kitchen. As soon as I open the kitchen doors this smell hits me in the face. I had forgotten about the mutton. I hadn’t been in the kitchen since 8 a.m. when I made oatmeal and coffee, it’s the first time I’ve had my hands on real meat in this country, and I forgot I had it. Balls! There was no way I was going to waste my one chance for real protein, so I set off to salvage what I could. First step, try to hack it off whatever bone it was on. Not easy, now I see why people here cook bones and all. I also tried to cut off any parts that looked a little discolored, a little greenish, or a funny texture. It all smelled bad, but I was desperate for meat. There was voice in the back of my head that told me to boil it, that’s what is done here with meat, but I had this vision of chunks of juicy stir-fired meat that I couldn’t shake. I put everything I had that could possibly make the meat palatable into the dish: my last garlic and peanuts, spices, even my precious quinoa, and thoroughly cooked the meat trying to cook the bad out of it. Finally I sat down in my chair under my hanger to eat by candlelight. The meat still tasted funny. I sadly forced a few bites down, unfortunately the bad had leaked all over everything and the hole meal tasted like rotten meat. As I sat, hopeless, a dog meekly poked his head into my hanger. I’m rarely visited by dogs, maybe he could smell the mutton. Dogs aren’t fed here, they live off of “table scraps,” so they are always hungry, and this dog looked about as sad as I felt. With a feeling of defeat, I picked out the rest of the mutton chunks and threw them to the dog, which greedily gobbled them up without a second thought. I was unwilling to surrender the entire meal, and forced down the potato chunks and quinoa, fully knowing that I would most likely feel sick afterwards, which I did. This was my first experiment with Burkina meat, and it ended rotten. Oh Burkina, how you got me again! Side Note: I couldn’t actually get an explanation of what Tabaski is a celebration of- I know it’s 40 days after the end of Ramadan and is either the end or the beginning of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Also, white sheep are sacrificed. If anyone can tell me more I would love to learn about it!

This evening, on November 7th, I had my first trash disposal incident. I had been warned, but I didn’t quite expect this. I had heard horror stories of volunteers coming home to find children playing with feminine products on their fingers like Edward Scissorhands. Katie, my neighbor, had had her trash bag ripped out of her hands to then watched the children tear the bag apart in the middle of a cornfield. But I am lucky, I have a burning pit for my trash. My burning pit is a cement square that comes about waist high. It had filled up with water during the rainy season and I just noticed yesterday that it had finally dried up, creating the first time since at site that I could actually use it. It was just before dusk and “burn trash” was the last thing on my to-do list for the week. I had been putting it off because there was a crowd of children at my house all afternoon and I didn’t want them to get any ideas, but then in a moment of weakness I thought maybe they were too distracted by the American magazines I had given them to notice me. Plus my trash bags were the black plastic bags that are used for everything here, and didn’t exactly scream “I’m full of trash”. I was wrong. As soon as I walked out of the house with the bags I caught their attention. One girl took one of my bags out of my hand as I walked to the burning pit. She tends to insist on helping me do everything I may be doing- laundry, dishes, sweeping- and she seemed to be rather calm as she walked with me so I thought she may just want to carry the bag for me. Then a little boy hopped up and sat on the edge of the burning pit, feet dangling in, and asked for my second bag of trash. I thought maybe for a second he was going to help me, show me the proper way to burn trash. Kids get really excited to burn things is the states, why wouldn’t they get excited here as well? He immediately dumped out the bag and then hopped into the pit and started rummaging. Instantly there were 4 other children in the pit with him and several leaning in over the sides, they ascended on the trash like vultures. Oh no, I thought, this is my worst nightmare. Wrappers and plastic bags were flying everywhere as they tore threw the trash like ravenous animals. There was one little boy who kept asking me what everything was, or was from- a potato chip bag, cardboard from the fry pan my grandmother sent me, even the wrapper from a pad. They found old tuna cans and literally started to lick them clean. One of my favorite girls found the wrapper from the parmesan cheese my grandmother had sent and turned it inside out and was licking it- now I finished that cheese about 3 weeks ago, making that cheese residue almost a month old. Some of the stuff in the bag had been their since my first week at site- about 70 days ago! Great, I’m going to get the children sick. They are going to get food poisoning from my trash. Power bar wrappers were licked spotless. Any food wrapper was considered a bonbon. The cheese covering from baby belles was chewed like gum. Tin tuna cans were taken. One girl was especially pleased over a dead pen. An old and very dirty toothbrush cover, which I had used on my toothbrush for everyday for 4 months, was literally fought over. Plastic and pieces of cardboard from packaging were taken. It was incredible. After about 10 to 15 minutes and me saying “ok, ce fini!” several times, I finally got them to stop and get out of my trash pit. As soon as all body parts were out of the way I started lighting it on fire for fear that they would try to grab out another treasure. Just as I started the fire a mother came by and looked on for a minute. I’m fairly positive if it wasn’t already light she might have dug in to see what she could find as well. While the children ran home with their goodies, hiding them for each other so nothing would be stolen from them, I spent the next 5 minutes walking around my yard picking up all the trash they had thrown out and about. Needless to say, next time I will wait until no one is near my house to bring out the trash.

In a recent letter from my grandma she asked if the village health care clinic was an actual building, which made me realize that I often use acronyms or French words that don’t translate well and might not fully explain them. Yes, there is an actual building for the clinic, 3 in fact. Let me introduce you to the Centre de Sante et Promotion Sociale, or CSPS for short. I’ll start with the pharmacy, since it is the easiest. The pharmacy is a small, one room building a short walking distance from the rest of the CSPS buildings. It’s an open room with long countertop splitting the room in half, and sitting on the other side behind a desk you will find Roger, book keeping or playing on his new fancy blackberry-type phone. There are 3 large shelving units behind the counter with stacks of medicines lining them and then several boxes full of meds on the floor around Roger’s desk. The pharmacy keeps stocked in the most common medicines, but anything too strong or not as common has to be purchased at the district medical center, 18 KM away. Also, the stoop of the pharmacy seems to be the only place in village that I can sometimes get a bar of cell phone service, sometimes, on a good day. Next there is le dispensaire. This is where I spend most of my mornings. The design of the building is 7 rooms and the waiting area that form a square with an open-air area in the middle. I have no idea what the point of the open part is, but there is a tree and it’s not used for anything. Once you walk into the building you enter the waiting area, naturally, where the walls are lined with built-in cement benches. The building is supposedly cleaned, there is a janitor lady, but I’ve never seen her there. It’s not overly dirty, but I wouldn’t call it clean either. Cob webs cover the walls and bugs are everywhere. Since there are so many flies and ants and little flying things, you can almost always find at least one toad hopping about in and out of rooms. And there are probably so many flies because babies aren’t diapered and pee at will. Sometimes mothers will wipe up the pee if it’s on the bench, but not likely and never off the floor. Baby pee is viewed as nothing unusual here or something to fret over, I’ve even seen mothers let their babies play in/with their pee. Also, it is not uncommon for a chicken to wander in and about. To the left of the waiting room is the consultation room. There are two filing cabinets that hold all the CSPS documents, and examination table, and a desk. Generally, the malade will come in and sit in front of he desk and tell the infirmier their symptoms. Their temperature will be taken, if it’s a baby the nurse will feel its’ belly, once in a great while they will be weighed or blood pressure will be taken, and then a script will be written for something. I have seen a few malaria tests betaken on toddlers, but I’m not sure how often this is done, certainly not all 100 something cases a month. To the right of the waiting room is the petite surgery room, where injections are given or wounds are bandaged. However, if an IV is being put in (for malaria, usually) then that has to be done outside where there is more light, since there is no electricity in the CSPS. This is usually done out back, where people can’t watch. There is a room with beds in it where people with IVs or that are really sick can lay down, most often used by mothers with sick children. This is the room where the “come lady” and her grandson, “Little man”, lived with her husband for well over a month while he recovered from a head injury. (They have since left the CSPS, much to my dismay as I enjoyed playing with Little Man, but the husband came in today to get his would checked on. He gave me a big hello and Fulfulde greeting. It feels good to be recognized warmly.) There are also several other beat up mattresses that get laid out on the floor wherever there is space on a busy day. There is a room that seems to only be used to house the car battery that is hooked up to the solar panel and for sick overflow, a storage room, and then 2 rooms that aren’t used at all for anything. Down the path from the dispensaire is la maternite. I’ve only been in the maternite a handful of times, so I don’t know it as well but it seems to be almost the exact set-up as the dispensaire. There is the consultation room for consults pre-natal, which has no other equipment besides an examination table, a filing cabinet, and a desk for the accoucheuse. I’ve helped with CPNs twice- the women are weighed, height is taken, sometimes blood pressure is taken, then they lay on the table and their bellies are felt up (a stethoscope may be used, I can’t remember), and then a bunch of stuff is recorded in a notebook for the CSPS and in a booklet the women keep, tests that may or may not have been taken. Other rooms of the maternite include a birthing room, a recovery room which just has a few beds in it, and a storage room that has the CSPS vaccination fridge in it. The fridge is hooked up to a gas tank, but I don’t know how that works. The other rooms of the maternite remain a mystery to me, and I’d like to keep it that way (there are lots of stories of volunteers assisting with births, no thanks!). If you keep going down the path you will find the CSPS staff houses, and I have to say they are the nicest houses in village. They were build by the same NGO that built the CSPS, so they are real, legitimate houses made out of real building materials. Not too shabby. And so this is the CSPS, where my work is based out of. Every morning is spent in the waiting room, where I sit and greet people and take temperatures. I make babies cry. Daily. But I’ve seen them cry at the infirmier when he takes temperatures as well, so I like to think they are just afraid of being poked at, even though I know some are afraid of me because I’m white. Recently I’ve been passing the time by looking over old CSPS documents and gathering information for my “Etude de milieu” report. We’ll see how I spend my days once I start doing projects.

On Tuesday, October 19th, 2010, I did the best thing I could have done for the children of village. No, I didn’t teach them to wash their grubby little hands or read and write; I had my first Ultimate Frisbee lesson! Their interest had been peaked the Sunday past, when a fellow volunteer visited me and, much to appease me, he asked if we could throw around the disc. He was more amused by me then the actual act of playing catch- it had been almost 3 months since I had touched a disc and I was practicing my throws and steeping out, “taking it seriously” as he put it, and the whole time he said I had a huge smile on my face and was as giddy as a school girl. What can I say, I love Ultimate. Subsequently, throwing out in my front yard we became the village attraction. It took no time at all before ALL the children gathered around to watch. Even men passing by on their bike or women walking from the center of town to their homes with big basins on their head would stop and watch the two nasaras make fools of themselves with the disc. It was a lovely Sunday Afternoon. It was the following Tuesday, and I had finally just gotten a small group of girls to leave my house for a little peace and quiet, when a boy around the age of 10 came to my doorstep and asked to lancer and did a flicking motion with his wrist. Well, okay. Who am I to deny someone the joy of throwing a disc around? Soon we had gathered a crowd of children. Two stood out as having real potential with their throws- the boy, Sergio, and a girl named Ida. Sergio had a good start on his backhand, just needed to flatten it out, and when I showed him and gave in instructions in English he still seemed to understand. Ida’s first instinct was a flick, so I showed her the proper way to hold the disc and to keep her forearm level with the ground. I realize now I was thinking too big, as then Ida and Sergio tried to help each other and other children learn to throw but would fight over the right way to do it and confuse the two throws. After that I decided to just let the children get use to the disc in their hands and slowly I would critique their throws. We played for about an hour, mainly Ida, Sergio, a few other little boys and I, but others would step in and give it a try. Then as dusk approached and it became harder to see the disc Sergio caught it and brought it over to me, thanked me, and did a little curtsy-type bow that they are taught in school. Then all the other children followed suit and said goodbye. The next day Sergio came back by himself and asked to throw. We had a good bit of time just the two of us before the masses joined and I think he liked it this way, because I could actually throw it to him and he could learn from me. We did only back hand throws and I didn’t have to instruct him at all, he just observed me and followed exactly what I did, a mirror image. It struck me how incredible it is that so much can be taught through non-verbal communication, although it made me a little nervous since I don’t have the best throws in the world and I’m not sure he should be copping what I do. Still, it was very cute; he started to step out a little when he threw and even picked up the little up down flick of the wrist I do before each throw (which I know a lot of Ultimate players do, but I’m now wondering if they should do it). After a while a small group of children, including Ida, joined us and then at dusk we called it a day. Thursday, Sergio showed up at my house just after noon asking to throw. I think he was thinking it was earlier then usual and we could get in some throws before everyone else came, but I was thinking it was dreadfully hot and I wanted to nap. I told him to come back at 17 heure. About an hour or so later, while I was writing a letter home under my hanger, he came back and asked again to throw. No Sergio, I said dix-sept heure! Pas encore! I don’t want to come off as mean, but the children CONSTANTLY ask for things, and if you don’t set boundaries they will walk all over you. Finally, at 5 till 17, Sergio came back and said it’s time. We got in a few throws the two of us before 3 other little boys joined. They stood in the line and I would throw to each of them in turn and they would throw it back to me. Then Ida and another girl I did not know came for the marche to join, so I tried to make a circle so we could all play. The circle idea took a little minute to catch on, as the children, it seems, are more use to forming lines, and even when they got the circle concept their was an order and we had to throw to the same person each time. Our throwing pattern made a perfect star. It’s interesting to pick up on how structured their schooling is. A man coming from the marche, or dolo bar, stopped to watch for a second and then thanked me for something (playing or putting up with the kids?), saying “ce bon!”. I have, in a way, become the afterschool program for the children. As the sun started to set our circle dwindled to 4 and we moved close together and passed to the person next to us. Perfect time to practice my push pass, a short throw I never mastered in college. It made me think of another fellow GWU Ultimate alumni who taught himself how to flick the disc full field with his toes while in the Peace Corps. Yup, I can now understand exactly how he had the time or the circumstance to do that. Then when it got too dark to see I said it was enough for the day. I got the usual thanking and Sergio said same time tomorrow? We agreed, 17 heure we would play catch. Then the swarm of children, there had he 10 to 15 who were too small to play sitting around watching, all wanted to shake my hand and say goodnight. “Bonsoir! Bonsoir! Bonsoir! et a demain!” Unfortunately I got a last minute call to meet up with the other regional volunteers on Friday for the marche and a visit and missed our 17 heure Frisbee time. Since there are no formed groups in my village, no women’s group or community club, starting a children’s club could be a perfect avenue for me to do projects. Yes we can play Ultimate, but first let me teach you how to wash your hands and why, etc. They all come to my house everyday anyways, might as well use it to my advantage. However, since I missed that Friday and on Saturday I wasn’t feeling well so I gave Sergio the disc but I sat out, he quickly discovered playing with children who don’t know how to throw is not near as much fun, and then Ida got a bad cut on her leg and couldn’t play, and since then my Frisbee club-to-be has been dwindling. I’m still hopeful though, I’ve just got to pump up the interest again!

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who has sent me things. THANK YOU! All the letters, magazines, clothes, home goods, and, most of all, all the food items. I have been truly blessed with wonderful friends and family and am unbelievably grateful for everything I've received. I’ve been at site for 47 days now and feel that I finally have a pretty good grasp on what my resources are here and how/where to get things. While getting simple things, like toilet paper, can be a challenge and requires planning far in advance, I’m learning that everything I really need to survive can be found. However it takes some work. I live in the bush, quite literally. To get to my village requires a 4-7K bike ride on a bush road that, when it rains, can be impassable in a car. The marché in my village is usually really small, around 10 ladies, and on a good day I can get okra, eggplant, and tomatoes. I have to bike 7K to get to a larger market, and about 16K to get to the best market around, which offers whatever is in season and some simple food staples, such as powdered milk and margarine, and a selection of African home-goods (nails, small mirrors, etc). Anything that is more Western, like cereal or jam, or that you would want nicer then is offered at the marché, has to be purchased in Ouaga, which can be expensive (for Burkina), and requires quite the trip. That being said, I’ve been getting lots of questions of what do you need/ what can we send you. Here are some care package suggestions. The number one thing is food items- I’m a fat kid at heart and LOVE to eat, which is a problem here since getting food is a hassle and the diet here is extremely limited and bland (Would you like beans and rice, or beans and rice?). Also I divided up the list into items I have not seen in Burkina Faso, or are extremely rare, and items I can find, but are a different brand/ just not the same as in America, and things that would just make my life a little bit better -none of which I desperately need, but would love to have sometimes. I know the list is a bit long, but most items are adapted from the generic “care-package” list. Plus I have a lot of time to think about and crave all the foods I miss. Things I can’t buy here: Brownie Mix Sun dried tomatoes Dried or dehydrated fruits or vegetables (Banana chips and dried apricots are a favorite, berries would be amazing) Granola bars/ breakfast bars/ energy bars/ bars of any kind Granola Trail mix Beef Jerky Parmesan cheese Salsa con caso/ nacho cheese (I’ve been lucky enough to have 2 dinners with another volunteer who had cheese in jar/can, and it made the meal so much better) Cheese, really any type or form Vanilla Any type of garlic spice Basil & Oregano and the like Spices: Lemon pepper, cumin, Mrs. Dash or All Spice, Taco, anything that makes food delicious Sauce/gravy/dressing/spice/ any type of flavorings Nuts (NOT peanuts, pine nuts would be amazing) Hair things (bobby pins, headbands- not to be fashionable, but it’s hot here and I have to do something with it) Things I can buy here, but not American Brands: Salsa (I LOVE Tostitos Mild, so if there is ever extra room in a flat rate box this would make my week!) Cake Mix (for birthdays/holidays or breads) Condiment packets ( can buy condiments here, but there is no way to refrigerate after opening) Quaker oatmeal squares/ delicious cereal Instant oatmeal or grits (strawberries and cream or cheesy grits are my favorite) Flavored drink mixes (I like the ones that have protein or something, so I feel like I’m adding more than just sugar to my bleach water) Mac’n Cheese Tuna in a bag (the tuna creations and steaks are infinitely better than anything here) real Peanut Butter (not “All Natural”) Things that would just make life a little bit better: S’more Pop Tarts (they aren’t good for you, but they are delicious…) Grains/carbs other then white rice, couscous, or macaroni (Israeli couscous, quinoa and orzo would be a welcome change!) Candy/sweets (dark chocolate doesn’t seem to melt!) “Just add water” type mixes (these have been wonderful!) Soup packets (I’ve been craving Miso) Bread mixes (banana, pumpkin, corn bread) Instant mashed potatoes maple syrup cookies Magazines of any sort (They are like currency to PCVs) Any interesting news articles (I can’t even get radio signal in village, so I’m totally in the dark) Clothes Magazines (to take to the tailor as models- I especially like Anthropologie and Urban Outfitters) Good Books Dr. Bronner’s magic Soap Any Burt’s Bees product Stationary and envelopes Any delicious, simple recipes (especially for eggplant or okra) Goodies for a Thanksgiving dinner, especially canned pumpkin (I’m planning ahead, because I love to eat) Note on Packaging: Unless you are sending anything extremely light, I strongly suggest a flat rate international box. Also, taking items that are individually wrapped out of their outer packaging can save space, such as drink mixes or granola bars.

I was sitting in the waiting room of the CSPS, doing my new job of taking everyone’s temperature, and couldn’t help but admire this Peul woman sitting with her baby. She was very tall and slender, as most Peul women are, and she had exquisite soft yet defined facial features. I couldn’t help but thing, “America’s Next Top Model could do wonders with this women”. Yet there was something off, and I didn’t know what it was until she stood up and I realized that she had abnormally large breast… that hung around her stomach like a pool float. I couldn’t help but analyze the situation the hole rest of the time she was at the CSPS- She was skinny with such large boobs that if they were in the right spot she would be a life size Barbie. But her boobs sagged so low she actually had to life them up when she adjusted her pagne skirt. Her child, about a year old, could lay with his head in her lap and breast feed. This made ne notice all the boobs in the waiting room- I see a lot of them. I mean A LOT. Breast feeding here is used like a pacifier at home- if a baby starts to fuss just wave a tit in it’s face. Women walk around all the time with a boob out, just chilling, for her child to grab at any time. Or sometimes they will be peeking out from under neither her shirt, like a game of peek-a-boo, and she may walk around like that (Why bother with a shit at all?). And the children know that they can just go up to their mother and latch on, holding a tit like they are sucking a water balloon. I’ve even seen some babies prod and pull on their mothers breast, like they are trying to milk her into their mouth. One little girl at the CSPS the other day was actually suckling on one tit and tweaking the nipple of the other. Every couple of minutes she would switch boobs. If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve seen more boobs in the first month I’ve been here then most 17 year old boys. And it’s totally no big deal for me to take a babies temperature, via the armpit, while it’s attached to a breast, or for the Major to examine a baby while it’s still on the boob. Breast feeding is the best thing for the child, so it’s good it;s so widely accepted here, but it’s slightly odd that women are not allowed so show their kneecaps, but going topless it totally fine. And bras? Who needs them?! The only women here that wear them are wealthier women that may come from functionaire families or really young mothers, like my age or younger. No doubt that is because this is the demographic that would be most interested in Western culture. This leads to a lot of very unfortunately shaped breasts. One women bent over the other day to tie her biega on her back and her one breast flopped out of her shirt and hung there perfectly shaped like a sausage link. It was all I could do not to stare, but it was long and perfectly round and looked exactly like a bratwurst. Most women have unbelievably saggy breast, which remind me of my sister singing “do your boobs hang low” when we were children. You know how usually you have to hold a baby up to the breast, well not here. They have to lift the boob to the baby as it sits on the lap. Older women’s breasts hang on their chests like deflated balloons, stretched out and drained form a countless number of children. And there is hardly a trace of breasts at all on grandmothers, they’ve almost completely been dissipated. No wonder I look so funny to these women, My ta-tas are in the anatomically correct position.

It’s hard to say that I’m really making friends in village, since I can’t speak the same language at 90% of the people around, but I’m making “friends”! Here is a run down of the most memorable people in village: The Major of the CSPS (the CSPS is the village health clinic), my counterpart, is a serious but friendly man. He is middle aged, I’d say in his 40’s, and is a very hard worker. He is nice and very patient with me and my French, but doesn’t really go out of his way to make conversation or anything like that. I think he is a bit introverted, and leaves me to do my own thing, which is fine by me. That said, he is quick to smile and will crack jokes, sometimes. There are two other immediate staff members at the CSPS, Emanuel and Sylvie. Emanuel is another nurse/doctor type. He is not as hard working as the Major, probably why he’s not the Major, and seems to get annoyed with people sometimes, but he is always nice to me, in a when-I’m-busy-don’t-both-me type of way. He seems slightly more extroverted and when the CSPS is slow he tries to make conversation- usually an English/French lesson. As long as the CSPS isn’t filled with lots of sick people, he’s a good person to ask questions to and enjoy. Sylvie is Burkina’s version of a mid-wife/OBGYN, and is always beautifully dressed in a Comple, a full outfit made out of pagnes. She seems the type that does not want to do any extra work/seems a little annoyed that she has to work at all. She often has to fill in and do the Major/Emanuel’s job if one or both of them are away. She is generally nice and patient with me, but I get the impression she views me as more work when I am sent to help her in the maternity, because of language barriers. As a women working in Burkina she seems to has a tough, no bullshit exterior while she is working but lightens up a bit if patients aren’t around. She is also the only functionaire woman in village, that I’ve really meet. She passed me on her moto the other day, and she was in front driving while a man road on the back. Now this is something you rarely see in the States, much less Burkina, so I’ve decided she must be a badass. Roger, the pharmacist, is the person I could actually call my friend. He’s the one person I interact most with, as he’s the person that helps me with everything. He is young, mid to late 20s, and has a great smile and happy personality. Everyday he comes to my house to help me get water (You try carrying a 20L water jug on your bike!) and sometimes he brings me things that you can’t buy in village and have to “know somebody” to get, like eggs and guava. He speaks a little English, took it in school, so between my French and his English we can usually hold a decent conversation/ he helps me understand what the hell is going on most of the time. I’m very grateful he is around and so friendly, but I pray that he really is married, not that it matters here, and his “gifts” are not something I need to worry about. Then there is Allen, Claude, and Ellie, the three guys that help with some stuff at the CSPS. I don’t see or interact with them much, but they at least speak French and know my name, so when I do s'ee them we can at least have a superficial conversation (i.e. greet each other). It’s nice to hear someone say “Bonjour Ashley” on the street then always “nasara”. There is one young woman I’ve meet, older then me but not by a whole lot, who I hope get to know better. Her name is Sally and we met at the Major’s fete. She speaks very good French and has a list of American friends I believe she said she worked with, meaning she is well educated and must either be a functionaire or come from a functionaire family. She also had her nose pierced(!), however she is Muslim so it might be a religious thing. She speaks Fufalda and was sad that I did not, so I’m guessing her ethnicity is Puel, so the nose ring might also be a Puel thing. I’ve only seen her one other time and I believe she lives in a satellite village, but she is one of the only women I’ve meet that I can really speak to, outside of the CSPS, and she is very nice, so I hope to run into her again and become friends. I don’t know anyone else’s names, so I have given the people that I recognize and like nicknames. First there is the "Sassy Grandma”. The first time I meet this women she came into my yard as I was dumping a bucket is dish water and asked me why I was wearing a bar. No joke. At least, I think that’s what she was saying- it was all in gestures, since she speaks Moore, but she did something like folding her chest up and confining it and making the why motion and pointing at me- so clearly asking why I wear a bra, right? Well, lady, so my boobs don’t look like yours. The next time I saw her she tried to say something to Katie and I in Moore and all we got was eye, doctor, and money, but she spoke with such sass that I expected her to snap her fingers and say “oh, no you didn’t!" Last week I passed her coming out of the maternity with a brand new, white baby that she proudly showed me. (Note of observation: when white babies are born, they are pink. When black babies are born, they are white.) Now I’m pretty sure that was not her baby, unless she is the skinniest pregnant lady ever, hence “Sassy Grandma”. She is a hoot. Then there is the “Head Lady”. I’ve only seen this lady a hand full of times, but every time I see her she asks why I’m not carrying things on my head. usually she asks why I am not carrying my water jug on my head (as translated through Roger). Are you crazy, lady? I can barely life a full water jug, much less put is on my head. And then I saw a 10 year old girl carry one on her head… The last time I saw her she asked why I had nothing on my head and told me that she was carrying sticks on her head, and she was, in fact, carrying a woodpile on her 70 year old head. She has a big toothless smile and I love seeing this old woman. Next there is the “come woman” (come means water in Moore, pronounced like comb). I think her husband is currently living at the CSPS with a bad head injury, and she has been there to care for him. I’ve seen her there everyday for about the last 2 to 3 weeks, and she is always followed around by a 4 or 5 year old “little man” whom I presume is a grandson. He is rather cute as well, a shy yet self assured little boy. When there are people in the waiting area is a bashful, but when no one is around he warms up to me. I think he is bored at the CSPS all day everyday and just wants someone to play with. The first time I met “come lady” she was highly amused that I carried water with me in a nalgene and then kept offering me her water because she knew I wouldn’t/couldn’t drink it. Everyday for the first week I saw this women she would greet me and then rub her arm and point at mine and then make the “leaving” hand gesture. I can only infer something about me being white and either when am I going back or why did I come. Anyways she always jokes about me being white, like how babies are scared of me, and now anytime I have any marks on my skin, like the heat rash I’ve acquired on my neck, she always points it out. She seems really amused that there is a white girl living in village. I actually have no idea what she’s saying ever, besides the greetings, but she seems completely good natured and always seems happy to see me. I have 2 favorite older men. First there is my “Moore teacher”. This man has been at the CSPS everyday for the last good while, and I think his daughter or someone is there with malaria. He only speaks to me in Moore, even though I’m pretty sure he secretly speaks French well. He tries to teach me something new in Moore every time I see him, often several times a day. I’ve got head, stomach, hand, nose and mouth down. He’s very friendly and really appreciates my efforts. My second favorite older man I don’t really have a name for, but he really amuses me. He is very tall and sturdy, in his 60s or 70s, and reminds me of an African “Big Bob”. He always wears long pants and a long-sleeve button up, despite the heat, and wears a nit winter hat loosely on the top of his head and carries around a messenger bag from some vaccination campaign USAID did that always appears to be empty. He always stops in the side of the path to shake my hand and smiles big with is missing nubbins for teeth that are always orange from Kola nuts. Then there are all the “petites”. There are a lot, a lot of children that mill around my house all the time. And often there seems to be one or two new ones that I don’t recognize, a new face. There are a couple that I don’t mind in a small group, but more then 5 gets to be too much and makes me feel like a sideshow attraction. There is one little girl that doesn’t come around that often, but I love running into her. I call her my “African Ava”. She is about baby Ava’s age and has a very similar, adorable personality. Without sounding racist, She actually looks a bit like a black version of Ava. I just learned her name is Emma, and doesn’t “Emma and Ava” just sound like they should be friends and play princesses together. I could actually see her twirling in a princess dress, but I doubt she has ever seen a TV, much less knows what Disney is. My favorite petite is a 5 or 6 little girl that is named Angle or Angela or some form there of, and is at my house most often. She is the granddaughter of the Chief de Village, and therefore lives in the neighboring compound. She is too little to speak any French and doesn’t speak Moore, so I literally have no way of talking to her besides sign language. She is very sweet and cute, slightly shy, and always smiling at me. She is happy to just sit next to me in my courtyard while I read or write, which I like opposed to other children that try to ask me for things or want to show me things or speak in some language at me that I can’t understand. She is usually accompanied with one of two other little girls, one of which is named Kristine, but she is my favorite. There is also one little boy, maybe 7 or 8, that I get a kick out of. He speaks a little French, so we can communicate a tinny bit. He seems a little mischievous and is full of personality, but in a fun way, like the kind of little boy you can tease and play with, but know that it’s all in fun and when you politely ask him to leave he will. I have a hard time getting the petites to leave me alone sometimes. And then there is my mouse, Jared. When I first found him I thought he was kind of cute and told him not to run away from me. I even would leave him my leftovers in a tuna can, thinking if I gave him food he wouldn’t get into mine, and we could be friends and I’d call him Gus and he’d sing to me and make me a dress for the ball. False. So I named him Jared instead, after my favorite Pike Floyd song. Now every night when I lock up my kitchen I play the “What will Jared Eat” game, a game I use to play with Big Bunny only I was actually trying to feed Big, and take everything I think he will eat into my other room. Attempt number one to get ride of Jared failed- I mixed up a rat poison and foods he usually eats concoction and left it out for him, but he just ate the cheese off the top and moved on to eat my tomatoes on the table. There are tons of other children and people, but those are the ones that stand out. It will be amusing to read this in two years and see what my thoughts are about these people and all the new people I’ve meet.

My life, it seems, has turned into a series of FML moments. (For my family who isn’t up with pop culture, FML is an expression used when something awkward, ironic, or bad happens to you but in a comical way. Kind of like “my life is a joke”) The joke that there should be a Peace Corps FML website started during Stage when a couple of my friends and I biked 5k to our favorite “American” restaurant only to be disappointed that everything we actually wanted to eat was “finished,” then we biked another 2k to find internet, during which time we got caught in a rain storm. My friend Austin was wearing blue printed pagne pants that he got made here in Burkina, and the dye from the fabric started running and staining his skin blue, inspiring this comment, “I just biked several miles to eat laughing cow cheese smeared on a stale baguette and then get caught in a torrential downpour causing my goofy-ass, badly tailored pants, made out cheap made-in-china pagnes, to literally turn my balls blue, in the middle of West Africa- FML!” It’s true, as PCVs we’re constantly put in situations what are strange, bizarre, and totally ridiculous to the average American, leading us to ponder is this seriously my life? It was confirmed that my life is now a joke on 13th day of being at site. It started off just as any other day- woke up at 6 a.m. to the sound of the Chief de Village’s wives pounding corn in the neighboring compound, got dressed, ate my cornflakes and powdered milk, and was to work at the CSPS just after 8 a.m. Despite the CSPS “opening” at 7:30, the staff straggled in around 8:20. After helping prepare the supplies for the trachoma campaign we had been doing that week in all the surrounding villages, I was told that the satellite village they were going to today was “too far” (12K- less then I have to bike to buy groceries) and the route was pas bon, and I was to reste ici for the day. I suspect they just didn’t want to wait for me to ride my bike while they were on motos, but I needed to go to the marche in a neighboring village anyways so I was fine with not going. After about an hour of sitting awkwardly in the consultation room watching the Major see patients, he told me I should go to the marche now, because today was the end of Ramadan and he was having a fete at 12 or 1 this afternoon. Alright, that sounds like a plan; so I hopped on my bike and start the 7K ride, not thinking too much about the midday heat. Now my trip to the neighboring village was two-fold: first of all, I desperately needed a washbasin so that I can finally do laundry, and secondly I needed to confer with Katie, the volunteer that lives there, about going to the district capital on Monday. After about 45 minutes to an hour of peddling, I roll up to Katie’s house, only to find it empty. I had rode past her CSPS on the way and didn’t see her bike, so I knew she wasn’t there… balls! I wait about 10 minutes hoping that she’d show up, I’m hot and sweaty from the ride so I finish off the last of the water that I had brought and I search for cell service, which you can usually get at her house, before I give up and bike over to the marche- maybe she’s already there? Once I get to the marche I’m disheartened to find that the marche is also empty. Then it occurs to me that today is the end of Ramadan, this area is predominantly Muslim, and all of the venders are probably within that huge group of people I saw flocking to the mosque on my way into town. My Major is Muslim, and has lived here for years, couldn’t he have tuned me into the fact that everything closes down for the end of Ramadan before sending me on my way? So I turn around and head home, empty handed, completely failing at both things I had biked there for. I got just to the outskirts of Katie’s village and finally picked up just enough cell service to receive the text she sent my the day before, telling me that she would be out with the trachoma campaign in the morning and that I should come in the afternoon. Perfect. Wish I would have known that before i left for my failed mission. As I’m biking into my own village I run into Roger, the pharmacist. I tell him where I’m coming from and he immediately tells me that there, in fact, would not be a marche today because of the Ramadan fete. Hmm… so that common knowledge… I asked him about the Major’s fete and he told me he’d come to my house between 12 and 1 to get me and we’d go to the fete together. Great, less awkwardness for me! I get home just before 12, down some water and wash up a bit, as I’m a sweat mess, and wait for Roger. And wait. And wait. Finally at 1:30 I get a little anxious about being late to the fete (maybe I miss heard Roger say he’d come get me?), and start to make my way over to the Major’s house, which, mind you, I’ve never been to before and only vaguely know where it is. I get to his house with relative ease and discover I’m the first guest that isn’t family there. okay, so I came over a half hour late and was still the first to arrive; I’ll keep that in mind for next time. I’m ushered into the house and asked to take a seat in the living room with the Major, while the children and some people I don’t know sit outside. The Major’s wife serves me beesap (delicious hibiscus flower juice), chicken, and prawn chips and I am told to eat, alone. I am relieved a few minutes later when the other 5 men that work at the CSPS/ help with sorties arrive and join me on the couches. I’m so excited to eat meat, haven’t done that in 13 days, and the chicken looks real good, but I reserve myself from looking like a fat American in front of my new colleges and try not to inhale the entire plate in front of me. I limit myself to only 5 pieces, comparable to what the men took. As I’m sitting, silently, in the Major’s living room, listening to the men talk and me not understanding a word, I realized 3 things. First, there were no other women in the house, except his wife who was cooking and serving us. At one point, Alice, the lady who cleans the CSPS, came and ate inside, but not in the circle we were in. Second, I realized this was a preview of the next 2 years- me with a bunch of men, in a man’s world, feeling awkward because I can’t understand what they are talking about. This shall be a fun adventure. Third, about 30 minutes after being there and eating I realized that something wasn’t settling right in my stomach and I was going to be sick, not vomiting sick, but sick none the less. Almost immediately after eating I could feel it in my entire GI tract, from my esophagus to the anus. My stomach felt like a rock and I had gurgling in both my upper and lower intestines, everything felt bloated, and I could feel my esophagus, which I think is heart burn? After about 2 hours of sitting, silently, very uncomfortable, I excuse myself, primarily because I need to bike as fast as I can to my larine. After hovering over my latrine for a few minutes I looked at my watch and realized I really needed to go- I needed to bike out to the main road to make a phone call, and if I waited much later I’d be biking home in the dark, which is a death wish on my road. I had planed to meet another volunteer in Ouaga that weekend, however we were doing the trachoma sorti at the CSPS and I needed to push back our plans a couple days. Seeing as today was Friday, I really needed to firm up those plans. I pop some Pepto and get on my bike. On the bush road to the main road, a man passes me on a moto and stops. I, like a normal person, turn my head to see why he stopped, and the next thing I know I run into a tree stump and am being hurled over my handlebars. It was like a scene from a movie when a man passes a pretty girl and turns to stare and runs into something, only I just wanted to know why he had stopped just behind me. I didn’t suffer any bad injuries, just a bleeding toe and my right thigh had been ejected into the metal handle bar and had a nasty burse already forming. As I picked myself up and got back on my bike I couldn’t help thinking how this day keeps getting better and better. Finally, after the 4K ride on the bush road and then another Kilometer on the main road to actually find cell service I am able to make my call, all the while thinking “this guy better really appreciate this phone call, I just went over my handlebars while biking 5K to make it AND my intestines feel like they are dying.” After a less then 10 minute call, I turned around biked the 5K home. Now there is one part on the bush road I call the swamp monster, because anytime is rains the whole large section turns into a swamp and is almost impassable. You his this part of the road and it literally eats your bike. I’ve only made it through is part without getting stuck in mud or wading through a puddle a handful of times. So of course this time I try for the driest entry point and immediately the mud is too thick for me to peddle through. So I get off and drag my bike to the nearest spot with firm looking ground, only to discover that in the process of getting stuck my chain fell off my bike. It’s already getting pretty dark and my stomach is gurgling, but this seems like a perfect for a bike lesson on how to put the chain back on. Nothing notable happened that evening, I cooked dinner and got ready for bed, until about 9 p.m. when I got the urge to run to the bathroom. It was pitch black out and I barely had time to grab my head lamp and the very last of a role of toilet paper, but I made it. When I tried to exit my latrine, however, I realized that in my haste I had pulled the latrine door too far shut and now the out side latch was stuck in the doorframe. I pushed and I pulled and did every little jiggle I could think of, but that door was not opening. I half expected to spend most of my night in the latrine anyways, but couldn’t I at least get some more toilet paper first? At this point I remembered that my headlamp battery was in the red. This is just great, I’m going to be stuck in my latrine all night with no light and no toilet paper. I thought to myself, “ok, let me get this straight- I woke up this morning to women pounding shit next door, I made a 14K round trip to a closed marche with no Katie, then I went to a fete where I got sick off the food, to then get thrown over my handlebars on the 10K round trip just to make a freakin’ phone call, and now I’m stuck in my latrine… FML!” Out of sheer panic I yanked that latrine door so far back that broke off the outside latch and bent the tin in a way that has still not recovered three weeks later.

The descriptions I was given of my house seem pretty accurate, and I will try not to be too repetitive here as I have already described bits and pieces of my house. But I know everyone at home is curious to know what my “hut” is like. First, it is not a hut. The inside: I was pleased to find that the top half of my walls were painted a teal color, which really helps to brighten up the place. These pictures are of my smaller room. As you can see, or maybe not, it’s still a pretty good size. As you can also see, I have no furniture except my “bed”, which serves as an interesting challenge since I can’t readily buy furniture in village and I can’t very well bike furniture to my house. Can you rent a donkey cart for a day? My hanger area is just outside my bedroom door. It’s a decent size, about the size of my little room, and I can easily keep my bike out here during the day and sit in the afternoons to catch a slight breeze or keep the petites from crowding my front door. The square looking thing in the corner is a rabbit pen! Or an attempted rabbit pen. Rob had a rabbit that he was given as a gift to eat and decided to keep, and Roger built him this pen for the rabbit (it originally had a tin roof). Unfortunately it was not kitty proof, and the rabbit’s first night in the pen he was attacked by a cat and died (which is odd since I have yet to see a cat in village, maybe because people eat cats around here). I’m not sure what I’ll make of it, since I cannot bear to lose another rabbit after Mr. Big, but for now the children like to sit of it when they come to stare at me. There are two downfalls to my hanger. The first is that there is no door. This means I cannot shut the petites out. I’ve been trying to teach them that if I am outside, they may be under the hanger with me; this is not all that bad, sometimes they sing or play games for me. But if I am inside they may not be under my hanger, and, for the love of God, they cannot crowd around my door and watch me. This has been hard to convey since I cannot shut them out and since only a few of the older ones speak a little French, most do not even speak Moore, and I cannot ask or explain to them my boundaries. Shooing them away works sometimes, but often is confused for a twisted game of peek-a-boo. Not having a hanger door also allows animals to wander about at will. When it rains I often have goats or dogs seeking refuge under my hanger. While I’ve never seen a cow or donkey actually under my hanger, they are often in my courtyard and I have to skirt around them to get to the latrine. Also these little guys often come to visit a lot: The other downfall to my hanger is that I have to go out and around it to get to the kitchen, since my rooms are not connected by a doorway. Unfortunately there is only one entrance to my hanger, and it’s not in the direction of my other room. My other room, or the big room as I often refer to it as, is quite large for my standards: I tried to take a panorama of the whole room, but could really only get about half. Buts lets just say I’m pretty sure you could fit all of Katie’s house in my big room. As you can see, the big room is nearly completely empty. Thankfully Roger brought me tables, so I’m not cooking on the floor, but it’s still pretty comical to cook in the big empty room. The down sides to the big empty room, besides being empty, is that there are no real windows and no screen on the double door or the ceiling vents, meaning bats come at night. I don’t mind them though, they eat the mosquitoes, that also come in at night. Hence sleeping in the little room. I am starting to mind, however, Jared, my mouse, who also comes in at night. He was alright, kind of cute, until this morning I found mouse poop in my Special K, which cost more then 3 or 4 dinners and I can only buy it in Ouaga, which I’m not okay with. Biting into my tomatoes and cheese is one thing, but NOT the Special K! Anyways, back to my house, I have high hopes for the big room, once I figure out how to get a big kitchen table and maybe some chairs. It would be perfect for hosting holiday gatherings, like Thanksgiving (Except for the whole biking-in-all-necessary-supplies-since-I-can’t-buy-anything-here part). Just outside my house is my latrine and douche. There is not much to it- on the right is the latrine and on the left is the shower area. They are separated by a cement wall. The latrine, as you can see, is just a hole in the ground. The douche looks exactly the same, only there is no hole in the ground. Instead the is a hold in the base of the back wall, so that the bath water can drain out. The whole set up is actually not that bad. I mean, yes, a toilet is a treat, but squatting under a full moon and a bright nights sky has it’s upside too. And I love to bucket bathe just at dusk, when it’s still hot from the day so the cold (a.k.a.room temperature) water is delightful and I get to watch the last of the day’s light turn orange and pink over the palm trees. (view from the kitchen) Right in front of my house, or I should say just down the path, is the marche and dolo bar, which happens ever 3 days. It’s just past that building with the blue door that claims to be a telephone (there is no electricity here… how can there be a telephone?), where you can kind of see the stick and thatched roof hangers. On a good marche day I can buy eggplants, corn, okra, tomatoes, and limes. I’ve also seen hot peppers, what they call “local eggplants,” and I once saw cabbage and these small yellow round things that I’m not sure if it was a type of melon or squash. Next time I think I will buy one and experiment. The marche ladies only speak Moore, so buying from them includes a lot of pointing, nodding, and them picking the correct amount of money out of my hand. The dolo bar (bar as in log benches under thatched hangers) is always popular on marche day, but despite the only butcher being in the dolo bar I try to avoid that area. I haven’t quite the courage to try the butcher, perhaps because he is drinking dolo while cutting up unidentified meat on a rock slab outside, or to try the dolo (local beer). I’ve been told there is also two boutiques in that area, that look exactly like the building in the photo with the blue door, with the very, very basic necessities, but I have yet to go to either. Other then that I only have two neighboring compounds. To the front left of my house is the Chief de Village compound. I’m not sure how many people live there; there seems to be a swarm of children and maybe his son, who is at least in his 40s, and every morning at 6 a.m. there are 2 or 3 women out front pounding something in giant mortars and pestles, I can only assume for To. The Chief himself is an older gentleman, somewhere in his 60s I would guess, and seems to always be sitting in a chair under the big tree on the left in the left-hand picture below, wearing a bright orange hat (the hats that are not hats that Muslims wear, I can’t think of what they are called). He and most of his family, including a number of the children that often find themselves in my courtyard, only speak Nounie. My other neighboring compound is off to the back left, and I have yet to meet them or figure out who lives there. They keep to them selves, or maybe it’s empty? I couldn’t get a photo, but I snuck the Chief’s house from my window. While I don’t really have neighbors, I’m still right in the middle of “town” because I’m near the marche and right off of 2 heavily used paths. I can’t share what the outside of my house looks like because I don’t want anyone to know I have a camera, but I do enjoy the fact that there is actually a sign out front that it is a cereal bank. The CSPS is a short bike ride away, and there is a primary school that is also a short bike ride away. My village itself is very small, around 800 people, but the CSPS serves about 10 other neighboring villages as well. The first week I could find a bar or two of cell phone service, but now all the spots I found seem to be dried up and I’ve resorted to biking 5K to the main road to make any phone calls or send a text message, and even then the reso is not great. I am, however, very lucky to have close PCV neighbors. I see Katie once or twice a week; we started visiting each other every Sunday to have lunch together and make upcoming plans, then I try to make it once a week to the marche in her village, since it is bigger then mine. We also head down to our district capital about every 2 weeks, more or less, to go to a grand marche and the post, as well as seeing 2 or 3 other volunteers. Overall, Village is not a bad set-up!

August 29th was the big day, the day that each volunteer both looks forward to and dreads, the day the Peace Corps SUV unpacks all our belongings and leaves us, alone, in an unfamiliar village in the middle of an unfamiliar country, which does not speak English. I was the second volunteer of three to be unloaded from my car. When Lauren and I left Katie, standing in her courtyard with several men fussing over her house, I felt a slight pang –“oh no! I’m next!”- and had to take a few deep breaths to fight off a slight panic. It wasn’t long before the Land Cruiser turned off the main road and into the bush. We seemed to be on that dirt, pothole-filled, road for a good bit of time, and while I was filled with nervous anticipation and excitement, all I could think about was This road is going to be fun to bike on… good grief! No wonder all the cars here are off-roaders! Finally we pulled up to chez moi! It is a good size, government built building (meaning it’s built out of real construction materials and not mud-bricks), with high ceilings. It’s right in-between a “road” and a heavily used path. My burning pit is right next to my house, but as it is the rainy season it is filled with green stagnant water. my Latrine and shower is just off to the right of the front of my house; neither of which are the nicest I’ve seen, but certainly could be way worse. As soon as the car pulled up we were swarmed by 20 or so “petites” and a couple women. They didn’t say anything, just stared at the two foreign white chicks and were probably wondering which one of us was moving in. Finally after a short wait the Major (my counterpart) came with the key to my house. Since I live in a cereal bank facility, I have 2 rooms, one small and one large, that are not connected. The Major only had the key to the little room, which was to become my bedroom since it’s the room with windows and screens on the door. We unpacked my things from the car, the driver changed the lock on my one door, he gave the Major a little spiel about how “I was now his daughter” (or something like that, it was in French), gave me a little pep-talk where he kept repeating “du courage”, I gave Lauren a huge goodbye, and then watched the Peace Corps car drive away as 20 or so strangers stared at me. It was all over in the blink of an eye. The Major told me to sit down under my hanger, but the only piece of furniture Rob had left me was a broken chair, so the Major sent a man to fetch a chair. Once he returned the Major, this man, and I sat in my courtyard for what seemed like forever. It was past noon and I was tired, overwhelmed, and starving, but we sat, mainly in silence, with a crowd of children watching us, I’m guessing waiting for the key to my other room to show up (which apparently was with someone in another village). Another man came with a 20L jug of water, then left and returned with a baguette and 2 cans of sardines for me. It was only slightly awkward and uncomfortable, especially when the men started talking about my bike (the PC gives us pretty nice, brand new Trek mountain bikes). Finally then men left me to settle in, after about an hour or so, …but not the petites. I went inside my room and set up my lit pico (woven cot) and started to organize my belongings. I couldn’t put kitchen or food items in the kitchen, because that door was still locked (it’s PC policy that your stove cannot be in the same room you sleep, so by default the big room was the kitchen), so I just created a “kitchen pile”. I also didn’t have any other furniture, so I couldn’t unpack my clothes. So really “unpacking” consisted or moving piles of things into other/more piles of things, all while a group of children watched me with curiosity with their faces pressing against my screen door. We had been told that we had to set boundaries with the children from the very beginning, but me being timid and quickly learning that the children really don’t speak French, I didn’t know how to politely ask them to leave my hanger. After one older girl tried to actually open my screen door I had had enough and told them “Bilfu” (Goodbye in Moore) and closed my metal door. Finally alone, I didn’t know what else to do but curl up on my bed that take it all in (a.k.a. nap). A few hours later I head men talking and commotion outside. I took a little peak and someone had come with the other key. I didn’t really feel like more awkward interactions in broken French, so I kept my door closed and hoped they didn’t need me. After a little while, and after the commotion seemed to simmer, I built up the courage to face life. Also, I really had to pee. Only one man was left, the one who had brought me water and the food, and he was sweeping out my autra chambre. I soon learned his name was Roger. He gave me the key and showed me how to lock the door (the door handle is… almost finished), and also set up my gas tank and stove (which is on the floor, since I’m sans table). Then he asked if I needed anything else and bid me goodnight. The rains soon followed- good omen or bad? It was already dark and actually making dinner seemed like a daunting task at that point in time, so I ate a meal bar from a care package I had just received (THANKS MOM!) and curled up on my bed with my head lamp and a book. What a day!

After our final Moore class, after the last French technical session, after a talent show, after our last dinner at the training center, after packing for the second to last time, we headed into Ouaga for our swear in ceremony! On my 74th day with the Peace Corps, I became an official Peace Corps volunteer! We arrived at the US Embassy a full hour early. We did a quick little run through of what we had to do and then were urged to sit in our seats and wait. and wait. and it was dreadfully hot and we were all starving and in need of water (or at least I since the timing of the thing hit where there was just enough time for breakfast but not for lunch before we had to get ready and bussed out). Finally after everyone arrived and were seated the ceremony began. There were a good number of important people there, including representatives from some of the major aid organizations in Burkina Faso, like US AID, and the US ambassador and the first lady of Burkina Faso. All the current PCVs that had helped with our training were there and also some other PCVs that just wanted to come. Our Country director spoke, and then a few volunteers gave speeches in their local language, then some other speeches, and then finally we took the oath. The oath is the same oath of service to the US government that the president takes when he swears into office. And the a few other speeches and a dance troop, and then all the new volunteers are presented to the important people by standing in a line, a very long line, and everyone shook our hands one by one, including the first lady!, as they entered into the reception area. After the ceremony was over we all made a mad dash into the reception hall to find a bottle of cold water (and maybe a glass of champagne…) and the finger foods that were floating around. There were a couple cakes with the Peace Corps/Burkina Faso emblem on them that i was lucky enough to get a piece of and were delicious. The reception only lasted a little over an hour, that that was all it took for the drinks to run out (the food ran out with in the first 15ish minutes), and once all the dignitaries left there was lots of picture taking and we started to get a little loud and silly. Promptly at 19:00 our Country Director shooed us towards the Peace Corps vehicles that were waiting for us. Once back at the hotel the celebration continued. For whatever reason our dinner plans at a nice restaurant were canceled in favor of ordering pizza, but I didn’t mind because this was the best pizza is all the BF (it had real blue cheese on it!). Then after much attempt to get people mobilized, a large group finally made our way to downtown and to a restaurant/bar/hookah bar/ really delicious ice cream place to kill a little time before the dance clubs opened up. From there we went to a club that happened to be only Peace Corps volunteers and we all flooded the dance floor. It was a blast to meet the current volunteers and see all the new volunteers open up after weeks of training. After a little time there most of the club decided to change venues since the DJ kept talking too much. What was suppose to be a short walk (we were being lead by old volunteers that knew the city) turned into what seemed like forever, but we finally made it. This club was jammed pack with Burkinabe. There were a lot of men and a few couples, but also quite a few prostitutes. This was a down and dirty club in the BF (one girl had her purse yanked out of her hand, but she got it back), but was a ton of fun. I was sitting at the outside bar with friends drinking a water (no seriously, I was sweating balls dancing in the hot club and only wanted water) and two of my guy friends who were sitting on the other end of the bar alone were approached by 2 prostitutes, it was really interesting to watch. It’s good to be reminded that even though we are a bunch of American's and we’re all together, we’re still in the middle of Africa. Inside the club all the PCVs grouped together and danced like crazy. The music was just right, even the melody of the 3 world cup songs that was played over and over again. The clubs here don’t start until midnight, and don’t seems to shut down until dawn. Finally at 4ish I looked at my watch and thought “oh crap, I got to go to bed”, and joined a group that was headed home. Tomorrow is a big day- I had to buy all the necessary things for my house as I get shipped off to site early Sunday morning!

Today is August 13th, 2010 and my 53rd day as a Peace Corps stagiaire. Today on my bike ride into the center I saw a man transporting a pregnant goat on his bicycle. The goat was laid out with its’ back resting on the front bar of the men’s bike frame, head on the handlebars, and all four feet tied together with the man holding them with one hand as he steered the bike with the other. This was not a motor bike, but a plain old peddling bike on a dirt road that was not particularly lacking of pot holes. With a very pregnant, full size goat. It was reminiscent of the man I saw last week who was tying two large, adult pigs to the basket area over the back tire of his bike- After 2 years here I will have seen everything. Today was my third day of learning Moore, my local language (well, local as in my village is a mixture of 3 different ethnic groups that speak 3 different local languages. Moore is just the one the PC has deemed most useful for me to learn since it is most widely spoken throughout Burkina). Hurray, I finally scored intermediate-mid on the LPI French test last Saturday and I can start local lang! Just think- it took 6 weeks in the Peace Corps to get to about the same level in French that it took four semesters in college and 3 years in high school to get to in Spanish- I don’t know if that says more about me, the Peace Corps, or the American language system. Anyways, today I had Moore class. Our class is a great group of Nick, Lauren, and I, and my favorite LCF. Favorite because he is an English professor, which is very convenient for me. All three of us took Spanish before the Peace Corps, so our class, which is taught in French, is a strange mix of French, Moore, Spanish when we don’t know the word in French, and English when we’re just plain desperate. Oh yes, learning a new language in a language you barely know is fun. Today I got To and fish surprise in green leaf slime sauce for dinner. My roommate is gone for 5 days for “tech week”, so is stead of cooking a separate dinner for “La Blanc” they gave me what the rest of the family was eating- to be eaten a lone at the dinning room table while the rest of the family sits and watches TV and waits for me to finish before they can eat. I understand that it seems silly to cook a separate meal for just one person, and I really don’t want to be more of a burden then I already am on Maryato, but To and fish surprise? Any other local dish would have been better. Let me explain- To is an almost tasteless mush that is cheap to make and a staple in most Burkinabe diets. It is kind of the consistency of cold mashed potatoes or that weird porridge stuff Nany use to make me eat as a child. It has the taste and nutritional value of cardboard. To in itself is not horrible, and if served with the right sauce (read delicious sauce) can be a totally acceptable meal. However, fish surprise is never good. The fish here (that I’ve seen thus far) is very very fishy and they simmer the entire fish in the sauce for hours, leaving all the nice little bones, and head, and tail, and fins, to surprise you in your mouth or throat when you accidently swallow them. Add this to an unknown green leave sauce that is slimy, like cut okra had been cooked in it but no okra could been seen or tasted, and tastes much like it looks. Needless to say I am counting down the days until I get to my own house and can cook for myself. Today I received news from home- Bunny was taken to the vet to get her butt shaved and apparently “Little Miss” Big Bunny is actually Mr. Big. How did the adoption agency, who got her fixed, mess that one up so bad? (Big adjusting to (his?) new home in MI, compliments of my mother) Today was just another typical day in Stage.

Monday, August 9th, was the golden day of Stage- Site Announcements for Small Enterprise Development, Girls Education and Empowerment, and Heath trainees! The entire afternoon was devoted to the event and the APCDs for all 3 sectors came to give us the glorious news. First they gave us candy to butter us up for the people who would be disappointed by their sites. Then a huge, floor to sealing, cover the entire wall, map of Burkina Faso was produced. One person from each sector, in rotation, was called up to the map, given a little man with their face on it, and told their village name. After placing your little man on the map, we were given a road map of BF and an envelope with our site descriptions. The little men were color coded by sector, so we could easily spot everyone. At the very end yellow Secondary Education men were added, since they are part of our Stage but arrived in country 2 weeks before us and have already received their site placements. Much to my delight and surprise, I was the second person to be picked out of a hat and placed on the map! While most people had a general idea of where they were going to be, because they knew what their local language, I had no hints or clue. The hole country, minus the no-go zone in the north, was fair game for me. I couldn’t be more excited about my site placement! I’m exactly in the region I had secretly hoped to be- relatively close to Ghana and an easy bus ride to Ouaga for when I need to go into the city for a break in village life/ to restock. Also, I’ve heard that my region is green and beautiful and hopefully will produce a good amount of fruits and vegetables. I will live in a very small village, under 2,000 people, but don’t live far from a bigger village with a good market and hopefully an internet cafe and electricity (hopefully being the key word here). My house stands alone, opposed to a family compound, and is 2 rooms with a private douche (shower in French) and latrine. Not inside, of course, and indoor latrine and douche is unheard of in village. I also have a small overhang and courtyard area just outside my door. I’ve been told that the CSPS is very “cohesive” and strong and that my counterpart is pretty easy to work with. The best part is that I’m decently close to my best girl friend from Stage and really close, like bike just for the afternoon close, to 3 other PCVs. Yay, Friends! Who are American and speak English! Another huge added bonus is that I’m replacing a volunteer who is actually working Stage as a PCV Facilitator. He singed on for a 3rd year, so his first 2 must have been pretty good… right? I grilled him today to tell me about my site- apparently my house was originally built for grain storage, so I have one normal size room and one large room without windows and a high ceiling! My courtyard is not fenced in, per say, but is pretty off the beaten path and visible from the chief de village compound,where the chief spends the majority of his time sitting outside in his courtyard, so it’s very safe. He says the view from my door is just beautiful, which I’m very excited for. Also, there is a burning pit on the side of my courtyard so that I can burn my trash, which is great news since trash disposal is a big issue here (i.e. the ground is a trash can here). Rumor has it that cell service is not good in my village, so that will be a challenge. Rob also gave me a run down on some of the projects he did and gave me some ideas for what I may want to do. Another bonus to being a second generation volunteer is that the village/ your counterpart sort of has an idea of what a PCV is actually there for (not just to give $) and how to use them in the community. Also I can learn from what the previous volunteer has done and what worked well, and hopefully pick up where he left off on some things. He has worked a lot with moringa, which is a wonder leaf that is very, very nutritious and grows really easy here, and I’m more then happy to pick up his projects with that, as moringa is something I was hoping to work with anyways. I plan go get more ideas and information out of him over the next week before he leaves. Overall, I’m very, very happy with my site placement and cannot wait to get to site and settle in. Now that we all know where home will be for the next 2 years we are all pretty ready for Stage to be over… but we’ll see if I still feel that way once I’m dropped off is a tiny village and no one speaks English.

Ok, so this is the second time I’m changing my blog name, but I’ve finally found a quote/ title that I actually really like. I wasn’t sold on the first two titles, but I think I found a winner. It came to me via a card that a dear Aunt gave to me before I left for the Peace Corps, and which I didn’t open until a month into training. When I finally opened it, the card and message was so powerful that I instantly knew that was meant to be my blog title. After my Peace Corps adventures I plan to keep using this as a travel blog to keep my family updated on my life as I go where ever fate shall take me, and I feel this quotation goes along well with my outlook on life and aspirations for my future. Well, and my love for travel. So I go confidently in the direction of my dreams, which right now is in Burkina Faso, and I pray to live the life I have imagined. Thank you, Henry David Thoreau, for your elegant words.

On Sunday, July 18th, we left the luxurious life of free wi-fi and air conditioning to get back into a smaller city and home-stays. The new training site isn’t as charming Ouahigouya, but maybe I just haven’t warmed up to it yet. We spent the first couple of nights dorm style, conveniently at the center, before moving back into home-stays. This time around, we were put 2 to a home-stay, since finding 77 (yes, our numbers have dropped. We’ve already lost 2) new home-stays in less then 2 weeks would be insane. I’m impressed with finding 30-some homes for all of us. The idea was to put an advanced French speaker with a beginner French speaker to help with the learning process, but as it turned out I was placed with Kathy, a delightful women from Texas, who is only a level above me. It’s working out just find, however, as we can both help each other struggle through interactions with the family. Our house is infinitely nicer then home-stays in village. Like we hit the jack-pot. I traded in my mud-oven for a modern, cement house with electricity and a porcelain toilet (with a seat and toilet paper!). Albeit, they don’t have indoor plumbing so we fill the tank with a bucket of water. Still… I’ll take it! Every evening after dinner we sit on a couch and watch the news from the satellite TV. We even have electricity in our room! Take it, bucket baths under florescent lights in a tile shower room does not compare to the bucket baths under the moonlight in my own private latrine, but I’m not going to complain about the move. I mean, if this place had running water it could pass for a house in Flint, and not one of the condemned ones! Well, at least from the inside, not including the barn-yard animals that are crammed into courtyard. If only our houses at site would be like this! Which I know would never happen, so I’m soaking up the electricity and flush toilet while I have it. Our Pere came to claim us at the adoption ceremony and he is a jolly older gentleman who is constantly smiling and, thankfully since our French leaves much to be desired, he talks with his hands. I instantly had a good feeling about this living situation after meeting him. We didn’t meet our Mere until the next day, but she is much his equal. There are three girls living in the house, I'm guessing between the age of 10 and early 20something, and we’re not quite sure who they belong to. I know the family has 5 children and 3 of them are off working/at university (a doctor, a pharmacist, and a sociologist), so we’re not quite sure were the extra girl in the household comes in. The eldest girl has a son, 11 month old Avrium, who is the cutest baby in all of Burkina Faso. There is also a nephew, who lives is the shed-like building in the courtyard, in between the chicken house and the mutton pen. All together, it makes for a cozy home, but is still slightly uncomfortable as Kathy and I feel like an imposition to the family, as we are essentially helpless in this lifestyle. The eldest girl seems to be in charge of caring for the nasaras, since she does all our cooking and entertains all our crazy questions on life in BF. Last weekend she even taught us how to make beesap, which is this delicious juice made from hibiscus flowers. Daily life has remained much the same, only now every morning we get up and eat breakfast at the table alone before the ~3ish K bike ride to the center and then after a full day of sessions (beaucoup de Francais), and perhaps a French tutoring session, we ride back to our home where we bucket bathe inside before eating dinner alone, doing homework, and going to bed. My new nugget of knowledge is that riding a bike is a skirt is very, very hard. Any length, from floor to just below the knee, will fly up above your knees while riding. No matter how you sit or what you do. After a month of living in West Africa and not seeing my knees or any thigh in that time, even a little knee action seems scandalous. My first attempt in a full length skirt failed miserably. Within the first 5 minutes of riding my skirt got caught in the back break, not even the chain, but the break, which resulted in a pretty good size tear in the back of my skirt. Then my ride was completed by getting caught in the chain which stained my skirt with mud and grease. To top off the experience, this happened first think in the morning so I had to wear my humiliation the whole rest of the day including when I met all the visitors that came to our house to see us. As for other news, last weekend we had our second language test and I placed into intermediate low! I was please to jump from novice low to inter low in just 4 weeks, but it still wasn’t good enough to find out my local language. I’m fine with keeping in French and not starting local language yet, God knows I need the French, but with knowing your local language comes knowing the region and culture your going to live in. So it was a little disheartening to miss out on the excitement of everyone else (the inter-mids and higher) finding out their local lang and their culture and who their neighbors will be and the buzz that came with that. Next Saturday we have another LPI test so hopefully this time I’ll place in inter-mid and finally join the group of privileged information, however this won’t be as exciting since we are scheduled to get site announcements on that Monday, August 9th, anyways. Generally speaking, I am doing well. I can hardly believe we’re already been here over a month. Training is going well and I’m learning a lot, but they are long days, 6 days a week, and even free time in host families feels like work battling the French and awkwardness of living in someone else's home. We’re all tired and training is wearing on us, but only 4 weeks to go until swear-in and slowing down. We’re over the hump. We’re all pretty excited to get to site and be on our own schedule, which may not include getting up at 6 am or eating fish sauce at every meal. This weekend is both my family reunion in Michigan and my favorite ultimate tournament in NJ. So my thoughts and heart is with all my friends playing beach ultimate in at wildwood and all my family lounging on the clear blue shore on Lake Michigan. Oh, how I dream of joining you on the beach.

Today I had my first successful solid poop! This may seem like a graphic, or silly, thing to feel the need to update my friends and family on, but at this point in my life this is a huge victory. There are 4 trainees here, that I know of, that have either picked up a bacteria or parasite, and intestinal problems is something we battle daily. In a world where it’s a struggle to even satisfy your most basic needs (the other day I tried to order a veggie sandwich for lunch and got rice with oil), finally having some normal bodily function is a huge deal. It’s all about the small victories in life. After days of constipation, days of stomachic spasms and nausea, bouts of diarrhea, days without pooping at all, poops that are soft serve or the consistency of baby poop, a mixture of half and half, and days where I felt like Brittney Murphy (I think?) in the move Speed where I would get the bang and run to the bathroom only to be disappointed with a rabbit terd, I am proud to report that on Thursday, July 15th, I had my first normal, successful poop in Burkina Faso. It took 23 long days, but we finally got there. I’d like to thank the delicious food at Restaurant Chinese and my good friend Nestcafe, who undoubtedly played a big role in this win. However, only hours after this success I drank the welcome water given to us when we went to interview a local family on their daily schedule. So now I play the waiting game… *It was too good to last. Far too good. Not sure if it was the Welcome Water or something else, but right after breakfast on Friday I found myself running to the bathroom. This was followed by nausea, drive heaving, severe stomach cramps and fear of having it come out both ends at once. Every time I eat something my stomach cries. This continued all day Friday, Saturday, and, yup, on into Sunday. One more day of this and I get to submit a stool sample into the PCMOs (Peace Corps Medical Officers), which will be fun… ** I got lucky and things calmed down a bit on Sunday and I had a completely peaceful Monday, but then Tuesday my stomach started rumbling and I could feel something brewing. I feared the worst. Sure enough, after dinner I started to feel the bang and had an explosive evening. Was even woken up in the middle of the night to poop, and continued to be miserable all day today, Wednesday. Finally at around 7:30 pm, after about my 11 “bowel” movement of the day and after 2 hours of going every 15 to 30 minutes, I talked to Jean-Luc (one of the PCMOs). He suspected a bacterial infection and immediately started me on antibiotics since it’s lasted 6 days. Tomorrow I submit a MIF kit (stool sample), which was a lot of fun creating… to verify what is wrong and hopefully be able to cure it. I’ve never been so sick of pooping before in my life. *** On the 9th day of diarrhea I feared that the antibiotics did not work, especially on the 10th day after I had finished the meds and was on my 5th trip to the bathroom. But on the 11th day things looked hopefully and, thank God, the 12th day was good. Finally back to normal. It took 2 seconds to drink the water and 12 days to undo the damage. Well, at least I’m past my first African illness, hopefully smooth sailing from here!

On Thursday, July 1, all 79 of us trainees had a community meeting. It was the last class session of the day and meeting started out with the normal “lets discuss the good and the bad that happened this week”, followed by some details pertaining to the upcoming forth of July party. I was dreading the 10K bike ride back to village when the next announcement was from Congo, the safety and security coordinator. It had been exactly one week since we arrive in country, and he causally announced that a threat had been received that kidnapping of an American had been planned in or around the Ouahigouya area and that no one would be returning to village and we were all being consolidated to the hotel. No big deal, but all the heath trainees would be driven to village to gather all our possessions and then join the GEE, SE, and SED kids at the hotel. After waiting about an hour for the cars and drivers to be ready, we were instructed to leave our day bags at the training center (because of limited space in the car) and head to village. We were escorted by 2 BF police men in the car, and went to each house one by one to get all our stuff. I was the first stop, and I had no idea what the driver told my host family, as they spoke in Moore, but no questions were asked. My host father and the driver came with me to my room and helped me shove everything I had unpacked back into my two packs. We weren’t exactly rushed, but the driver eagerly hurried me along. Then off to the next house. Once back at the hotel we (79 trainees plus any volunteers who were in the area) all sat down to a group meal of spaghetti before retiring to bed. I was lucky and and got a 10 person dorm-style room with 8 other health girls and Sam. Some of the other sectors were stuck with mattresses on the floor of a large dining room, but what do you expect when trying to house around 100 people on such short notice. We finally got to sleep-in in the morning and breakfast (bread with jam and tea/ nestcafe) was from 8-10. We were told to have everything packed and ready to leave by 10, but it wasn’t until 12 that we actually left the hotel, where all of us caravanned together in PC busses out of the Ouahigouya area to a safer part of the country. We arrived that evening to an even nicer hotel with air conditioning and wifi, which we would call home for the next two weeks. Evacuation was really no big deal. There has never been an incident in BF and treats are extremely rare, that’s why this one had to be taken seriously. All that really happened is there is a grey area near the Mali/Niger boarder that is no-go zone for American workers, and that no-go zone grew, slightly, including the area where our training center was. We were just re-located. Burkina Faso is still a safe place, and the Burkinabe are not a part of the danger, just the some people in Mali/Niger that we have to be careful of. But it was still a crazy and exciting hiccup at the time! That Saturday we got the day off, so a group of us went into town to eat some delicious cuisine and see the city. Then on Sunday we had a huge 4th of July party at the International School. There were two fields, so there was a game of soccer and then a game of ultimate, which I was thrilled about. There was a delightful pool, which most of the afternoon was spent in. The school even had real toilets and toilet paper! Around noon there was hamburgers and potato salad, and the country director surprised us with a real American style cake. A day by the pool with cold drinks; we couldn’t ask for a better 4th of July! On Monday we started back into training, which was now held at the International School. There is nothing to complain about having class there: the water fountains are filtered and cold, there are European style toilets and paper, and the classrooms have air-conditioning. Yup, this is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, we are moving to a smaller city on Sunday to finish out training and get back into home stays, but life was good while it lasted. Another added bonus to the school was there are about 5 giant tortoises that roam the campus. This little guy decided he wanted to join our French class: Last weekend all the health trainees went on demystification, which is a fancy word to mean we went to stay with a Health PCV at site for the weekend to see what life is really like in village. Us 4 Sissamaba girls traveled 2 hours east to Koupeala, via public bus, to spend the weekend with Sara. It was a lot of fun and great to see what an actual PCV site looks like. Sara has a really cute 2 room house (with electricity!) that she has painted and decorated really cute. She shares a family compound with one other lady, and has a dog, kitten, and 3 baby chicks. Being in her home made me really excited to get to my own site. We got to tour her CSPS, as well as the center for malnourished children, and a hospital. We also got to watch her give an HIV/AIDS sensibleation to a group of peer educators, which was a good look into what we will be doing in the future. We watched the world cup finals at her neighbors house and got to experience the dolo bar (dolo is a homemade millet beer) and learn how dolo is made. The dolo culture is interesting, but I will save that for when I get to site, since I’m sure the dolodrome will play a key part in integration. That pretty much brings you up to speed on life in the BF. This week has pretty much been more of the same- a lot of French, longs training days, getting use to the food, quoi quoi quoi. Tomorrow, Saturday the 17th, we have a half day of training and then the afternoon off before moving to our new training location on Sunday (I’m not allowed to give that location, currently). So I will leave you with my highlight of the week- A group of us health volunteers decided to celebrate hump day on Wednesday by going into downtown and taking advantage of the good food while we still could. About 10 of us went and had the best Chinese food one could ask for in West Africa at Restaurant Chinese. This place is owned and run by real Asians, so it was pretty ligit. Best damn wanton soup I’ve ever had.

Alright, I’m going to try to pick up where I left off last night. After the adoption ceremony I walked to my home-stay with my host mother and a following of children. It was unclear, probably because I don’t really speak French or Moore, who all the kids belong too, but there seemed to be at least 20 under the age of 15 that lived in my family compound. My host father, who is the only member of the family who I can sort of communicate to in my broken French, went on a head on his moto. Once we arrived home I was immediately shown to my room, asked if it was ok, and then left alone. My bags were already in my room, since they were dropped off earlier that day, so I spent a little time fiddling around with my bags and whatnot in my room since the family had left me to myself and I didn’t know what else to do. After a few minutes I went out in my courtyard and sat down and almost immediately was swarmed by an army of children. They pretty much just stared at me and then a few brave souls attempted to speak to me. It took me a good five minutes to realize they were speaking French, not Moore, which I’m not sure says more about their French pronunciation or my French comprehension. However, even after this realization I struggled to get anything more across then “Je m’appelle Ashley”. Soon my host father came and told me to “leve”, as it is part of their culture to wash before eating dinner. My host mother brought a bucket of water my “shower” and I was given a large cup and set off to the bucket bath. My first bucket bath was slightly awkward because the privacy wall didn’t even come up to my shoulders and couldn’t tell if it fully covered me when I stepped away from the wall. Also there was a very small piece of wood that was covered in black plastic in my shower area, and I couldn’t figure out what it was used for (a stool maybe?). But I was pleasantly surprised that the water was warm and in the end embraced the full bucket bath while enjoying the sunset in the African horizon beyond my latrine. After my bath I attempted to venture out into the family courtyard to try and interact with the family. I was welcomed with lots of greetings and blank stairs and only made it a few steps past my courtyard. I let my host father know that I didn’t speak French very well, like he couldn’t tell, and I believe he told me that his children are learning French in school with me. I tried to tell him he had a beautiful home, but that didn’t quite come out right at all and he just stared at me. After an awkward pause he called to his wife to bring food and lead me back to my courtyard. After the food arrived – yams - he told me to pour oil over then and salt them and sat me down in the chair in my courtyard to eat. I tried asking if i should eat here or with the family, but that failed. Then he left me to eat my salted yams alone, in the dark, with only the light from a small lantern to keep me company. It wasn’t long before the lantern caught the attention of all the local bugs, and I was soon joined by this huge scorpion-looking monster bug. I’ve never seen anything like it; it wasn’t a scorpion, but I have no clue what it was, and it seemed to be charging at my feet. Of course I jumped and screamed and I’m sure looked like a fool to these Burkinabe. That crazy American girl who doesn’t speak French and runs from harmless bugs… It didn’t take long for me to finish eating, one can only eat so many salted yams, and then I sat for while debating what I should do now/waiting for someone to come back. During this time random people would wander in to greet me. Some younger men, who would shake my hand and then turn around and walk out, and some older gentlemen and older women, who would try for a longer formal greeting and got a kick out of the few Moore phrases I knew. Finally my host father came back and sat on a log in my courtyard. After a few minutes of silence he asked if I was finished eating and if he could take my left-overs to his family. Then he took my plate and walked out. I sat alone in silence, praying for Appo (my language and culture facilitator) to come check on me. Finally he came and help me put up my bed net, and then him and my host father said good night and left me to my own in my little mud house. It was getting late (like 9 o’clock) and I didn’t know what else to do, so I spent some time unpacking my suit case into the Peace Corps provided trunk before attempting to go to bed. Attempting, because it was a million degrees in my room and I didn’t get more then 2 hours of sleep at a time before waking up in a pool of sweat. At 5 a.m., just as it was starting to cool down and I had finally fallen asleep, my host mother came to wake me to get my water bucket. She brought me shower water and when I didn’t immediately go to the shower to bath, she came back to tell me again that the bath water was ready. So I enjoyed a hot bucket bath under the light of the moon in the early dawn hours. Then she brought me breakfast, plain baguette and Lipton tea, before it was time to head to the CSPS for training at 7 a.m. Night two pretty much went the same, only a little less awkward and a little more hopeful. This time, after returning home from training my host father sat with me in my courtyard for five or ten minutes before telling me it’s time to bath. We attempted to talk, I asked what he did, but then couldn’t understand the answer. This time for dinner I was given a huge plate of white beans, and again told to douse them in oil and salt. After dinner I got out my French homework and sat in my courtyard to do it. It wasn’t long before I had a group of kids around me watching me as I translated sentences in English to French. Some of the older kids were reading my words as I wrote them and reading my French notes, which impressed me but makes sense since they were learning French in school. Even my host mother, whose name was Miriam I found out, came to look me over for a bit with the other girl who may or may not be the second wife, before she shoed the kids away to let me study in peace. Then bed time, and luckily it was cooler and rained so I could actually get some sleep. The morning repeated it’s self almost exactly, only this time I was served yams for breakfast. That night we were staying at the hotel in Ouahigouya since everyone had to be at a medical session the next morning, and I hate to admit that I was a little relieved to not go back to home-stay. It’s not that I didn’t like my family, but the lack of communication made it difficult to interact and the whole of it was uncomfortable. Plus, the hotel had air-conditioning.