Lil' village gangster gossip

October 14th, 2012--Lil' village gangster gossip

This morning I found myself barreling down a bumpy dirt road, gripping the front passenger's seat of a shiny blue SUV with pink and purple silk ribbons streaming from the bumpers.  I asked our driver if that wasn't his wife in the car that we had just paused to talk to and he replied shortly, "Yes. The fifth."  I was, and still am this afternoon, exhausted from this man's marriage extravaganza to his latet wife, which has broughht his total to six (Rumor has it tht one of his wives left due to some intermarital trouble; wonder what it could have been?).  And what an extravaganza this marriage was.  You would think having done this five (or six) times already would make him les inclined to really throw down, that maybe he would rather have a quiet ceremony with only friends, family, and of course the other five wives and fifteen children. But oh no, not this one.  Apparently this wasn't just a marriage--it was a political power move as well.  Bum bum bum!

Our man of many wives, who I shall call Amadou, is brown, tall, and has hair that is mostly salt and a little pepper.  Attractive, but not enough to convince me to be his seventh wife (that man doesn't exist).  Amadou started out in the cotton business, smalltime, like many Burkinabe farmers looking to make a buck.  Amadou apparently started to really make it big, thus calling in the vultures to descend upon his good fortune.  This fortune was also sought by shady means, however, including the distillation and distribution of what I'd have to call moonshine (oh man does it burn!).  This, like in the states, is NOT legal, and thus brought Amadou several days behind bars in Dedugu.  These bars could not contain such gangster power as was manifested in this one, however, and through a bit of palm greasing in the strategically powerful and right palms he was free in a conspicuously short time.  This little success deserved nothing more than magnificient moonshine party, an excellent opportunity to make all kinds of friends all over town, though not the police that arrested him, although they were invited too. 

His other jail term  was far less amiable, however.  After making big bucks in cotton and moonshine, he decided to move on to bigger and better things, namely the selling of quality seeds to the government of Burkina Faso, and he felt that everyone else should also jump on this money boat.  "No" was not an option in response to his business proposition, and allegations soon started to pop up that he was responsible for the burning and destruction of cotton fields all the way down to Banfora.  Not a good way to make friends; but, a good way to make money and gain, most importantly, power.  This little battle between his majesty of the seeds and six wives and the cotton growers has chilled, but is by no means over, as evidenced by this most extravagant wedding to luck lady number six (or seven, depending how you look at it). 

Walking into this wedding, I was scorching under a midday sun in a new outfit of handmade cloth, black cotton with lizards and animals crocheted into the weave.  I felt I had walked into some medieval African games.  Regional music with balaphones and drums burst from the speakers inside a huge concession of packed earth, hemmed in by huge two story houses, factory style (one for each wife and her children, and one for his lordship Amadou).  A dance troup flocked in the center, decorated in handmade clothes, furs, hats with mohawk shaped fringe, and jingly attachments, perfectly choreographed, sinewy muscles shiny black under the sun.  At the end of the concession, his majesty sat in an uplifted stand, covered in purple and white fake silks, ribbons, and roses.  At a long table, the mayor and all the other officials of the municipality accompanied him to his right, while his wives sat decked in shiny purple dresses, hair twisted and kohl arching over their eyes, to his left.  Thousands of villagers camped out in the shade next to the houses, watching the spectacle in the center, like spectators in an arena.  This was only a distraction until huge bowls of rice teetered out of somewhere on dozen's of ladies heads.  Men with heavy plastic crates followed, with Brakina and Beaufort (local mediocre beers), and Fanta. He, incredibly, fed and watered everyone. No moonshine, (fortunately or things probably would have gotten really out of hand), but wine, dolo (millet beer), brakina, and whiskey streamed in constantly, and soon the dance party was ON.  I am happy to say that the people of my village are still talking about my dance moves. I'm sure that's a Peace Corps goal somewhere.  I only made it until about 10pm, however, until I had danced myself away and puddled on chair fast asleep under the stars.  We eventually moved inside, though that couldn't stop the bass, which raged until 7 am with plenty of party people, from entering my ears andd head and dreams  all night.

The next morning the whiskey, wine, and beer came out with breakfast and was tucked away quick as a wink.  Who would have known Burkinabe could be such party animals?  So, many thanks to Monseigner of many wives and his power play.  I think it was successful, if sexist.

An old man's funeral

September 29^th—

Victorine's father, the man with the feather in his ear, died last night.  I remember thinking the other day that he would probably die while I was here.  They took him to the doctor yesterday because his stomach was bothering him.  He told Victorine and I before that that he wasn't feeling well, hurting all over, in his joints especially.  He had lost weight,  so that his skin hung on his shoulders, shiny and taut from the weight of all the rest of his skin pulling down on itself.  They told me yesterday that he was sick but that it wasn't serious—just an IV drip.  

I went over to their house by myself this morning, as everyone with whom I would normally go to such an event is part of that family and was already there. Justine, Victorine's sister, this old man's daughter, was despondent and bleary eyed, lost.  Deni, Victorine's brother, was digging the huge grave with a dozen other men, burying big tree pillars in the ground to make a hangar.  I saw Micheline first, Victorine's sister, and wished I had more words to tell her how sorry I was.  I kicked off my sandals and went into the house where he laid on a gaudy green plastic mat, a hand woven blanket covering his long form, and the smell of parfum hanging on the air to cover up another smell. 

I could see the shape of his nose through the blanket, which made me think of his droopy eyes above it, sagging with age, and his ears being tickled methodically with a feather shaft, much to my amusement.  His wife sat beside him, her ethnic scars, normally visible all over her face, now hidden in the dim light of the room. She emitted sighs as if trying to figure out how to deal with this.  I wondered how long they had been married

—it could easily have been over 50 years, beginning before Burkina Faso was even Burkina Faso.  I already felt teary eyed and choked up before going in their house, but as soon as I saw Victorine, I started to shake uncontrollably and only barely got out a “Fo” and “Alla ka heneyala” (Sorry and May Alla give him a cool grave), before I couldn’t speak.  I felt my face twisting and twitching in the deluge of tears and I felt acutely embarrassed and somehow presumptious to cry here, as if I, as an outsider, could be “in” enough to feel such real remorse over the death of this old man whose name I don’t even know. 

I remembered the old man in Mali who told me that the death of a really old person is a loss to the whole community, a wealth of knowledge like a library, suddenly gone.  I thought of a huge old tree with thousands of rings in its trunk, cracking as its sinews and fibers snapped apart brittley, and crashing with a rumble on the forest floor.

Follow-up

Who knew what a rockin’ party this funeral would turn out to be?! The first two days were solemn with lots of tears and blessings.  Hundreds of people streamed in from all over Burkina Faso to pay their respects and give blessings to Victorine’s family.  But that doesn’t mean they didn’t also throw down.  Dozens of animals must have been slaughtered this week, a hundred of kilos of rice consumed, thousands of blobs of to.  Victorine’s family bought beer, fanta, dolo (local made millet beer), sopal (a really gross liquor that’s like fire going down your throat). 

 I think I drank my weight in dolo this week, really.  I kept accidently getting drunk.  I was waiting for lunch to be ready, so I was of course taking up all the offers of a free calabash of dolo to entertain myself (and others, admittedly).  Three calabashes into waiting on Wednesday, and I found myself chasing the headcook with a stick, telling her to get to work, "Everyone's hungry!" I hollered, to peals of laughter all around.  It didn’t take long for her to snatch that stick out of my hand and start pointing it in my direction (don’t worry, all in good fun, no battle wounds to speak of). 

I would take a little sieste to sleep of the dolo effects at 3pm after finally eating some riz gras (kind of like Spanish rice) and then not waking up until 5pm—by then the day is almost done!  So, I walked down to give my blessings and say hi at the funeral, only to be offered another calabash of dolo.  Drunk again! Damnit! How does this keep happening?! But who can say no at a funeral?! Not me.  Clearly.

The idea behind all the merriment is that this old man lived a full long life, something that deserves celebration.  In the states, the big expenses of a funeral (I believe) are buying a place for the departed in the soil, a box to set inside that place, a stone to mark the place, and a reception for friends and family.  Here—it’s the reception that costs all the money.  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for hundreds of people for over a week.  Whew.

Anyway, I’m hoping for a more sober week. But only sort of.

Some little tid bits!

Magical realism is a genre of literature of which I’m a big fan.  These authors take normal people, places, and objects and cleverly spin them into characters, settings, and symbols in a way that leaves the reader wondering whether the writer is telling fiction or reality, a fantasy or just a fantastic event. 

Here are some I found in my adventures for your reading pleasure!

-My arms and hands and thighs and neck and face ached from pulling weeds away from the roots of the millet in my association’s field, and my women had been warmly giving me grief about my lacking work skills for some minutes.   I sat fuming in the shade of a shea tree, scouting the ground for its little green, sweet, and avocado-esque fruits.  A little girl in a torn dress, the roses on it barely visible through the embedded dirt and grime, stood transfixed just outside the shade, staring at what appeared to be nothing.  Other little girls and boys crowded over soon too, myself included.  Little silver wings rose like bubbles from a hole in the ground, an endless stream floating out in a fan, one after another after another.  The kids all started to reach little dirty hands out to catch them, jumping and skipping in the shimmering cloud.  An old fula lady (an ethnic group whose people have paler skin and more narrow features) grabbed at one too, and caught the skinny flying insect’s silver double wings between thumb and pointerfinger, pushing them back to expose a fat rear.  And then she bit it right in half and told me through the mouthful that they were termites, of course inviting me to dine.  I let her enjoy the bounty on her own.

-Late at night with a big, shining crescent moon, I heard noises outside my house.  I figured it was either Merlin, my cat, who would begin mewing raucously if I didn’t open the door, or a neighborhood hooligan, who could also begin mewing raucously if I didn’t open the door.  I opened my screen door, letting the light from little Malian oil lamp spill outside, and my visitor stared up at me, with a croak for a greeting—a little transparent tree frog, sitting perfectly attentive and waiting for my attention on my doorstep.  Or to get stepped on.

-I found a friend from a nearby town on a voyage from my village to Bobo, my final destination Ouagadugu.  On arrival at the station in Bobo, however, I realized with a sinking feeling that this was not the right bus station for going to Ouaga, and sat annoyed thinking about paying for a taxcab.  Not to worry, my new galant friend, 70 years old, rusty bike in tow, offered to show me the way on foot.  All concern about arriving there late and missing the bus quickly dissapated as this little old man zoomed out of the station, taking me through parts of Bobo I never would have found on my own.  Red dust billowed up from the feet of lanky soccer players on a battered field ; we jumped gullies of stagnant green water and plastic bags, hopping out of the way of motos darting down the barely paved roads ; four lines bore the weight of a hundred huge lengths of purple, red, orange, yellow, and blue  freshly died fabrics between the limbs of mango trees ; a little hill showed us the the sun drenched city’s battered buildings and roads clogged with donkey carts and women with big bowls of cakes for sale on their heads ; faster and faster this little man flew, and all the suddenly we arrived, and he was gone .

-I rode in line down a skinny dirt path with four ladies from my association, making the short trek out to our fields to plant soy bean seeds under a sun already toasting my skin at 8 :30 in the morning.  We passed the gnarled baobob wedged between the two paths, fabled, as all baobobs are, to capture the souls of harmless victims into their vast water-holding trunks.  A kapok tree’s roots stood out house-high further on, looking as if years of rain had washed down them and dug out long pits and rills that descended down below the earth.  A forest of eucalyptus met us next, with trunks bone white, narrow, and tall enough to touch the sky, their long leaves wispy and faded green (a former government program here in Burkina supported the mass plantation of eucalyptus, later finding out how detrimental they are to all other trees around them).  We were welcomed at the field by a little creature with a human face, a child’s hands, little pointed ears and a tail, tied around the waist to a juvenile tree—a monkey, knee-high, and rearing to escape.  Up the tree, down the tree, smashing down plants with little howls, eyes roaming the scene as if its humanoide friends might be in seeing-distance.  My attempts to entreat him with little noises and leaves were met with cold shoulders and very obvious avoidance of eye contact, much to my dismay. 

Just a little taste of my encounters ! Hope you enjoyed--

As I side note, I'll just add that I now find myself a business manager in the cosmetics industries. Sort of.  The women's association I am working with and I have started making a mosquito repellent cream.  It uses the leaves of very wide spread tree here called the neem tree, shea butter, and soap.  It has been selling like crazy! I have been finding myself suddenly a traveling vendor, walking through the market with a big basket of little plastic bags full of the taupe colored cream, explaining its benefits in mosquito, and thus malaria, prevention, as well how lovely it is for your skin as well with shea butter! I coupled selling the cream with a presentation on Malaria at the maternity in town (where babies are born) with slightly overwhelming effects--I feared being squished under the press of mamas and babies trying all buy cream at the same time before we sold out.  Everybody wins! The village is healthier, the association makes money, and people will learn that malaria comes from mosquitos, not mangos and corn like so many think (an interesting affect as these fruits veggies coincide with the beginning of rainy season which is when the mosquito population also swells). Wish me luck!

A new door and a montage

Tractors, house implosions, freaky bugs, grand markets, new kittens and chicklets, I've had a little taste of it all the last few weeks.

Life in my little village in Burkina has been suprisingly busy and I am very thankful for that!  I began work with a new association, which is where the tractor comes in.  Flipping through my journal, I appreciate my enthusiasm for feeling like a queen riding along on a big blue tractor for an hour, like a queen atop an elephant.

I've also had what I considered a rather comic event with my house unfold.  The rain has been intense here what with it being rainy season and all.  This is a blessing, I suppose, as it is now necessary to look up at everyone's millet and corn around town.  It also has another rather unfortunate side effect--the destruction of houses made of very lovely absorbant bricks.  I was very excited for the first day of the huge market on August 7th, as everyone had said there would be venders from all over, including Mali, Senegal, Cote D'Ivoire.  I planned on buying all the most exciting things of course--a watering can and some watermelon seeds.  Woohoo.  Some had mentioned, passing, that it often rains on this day, as this market happens every three months and always falls in August.  Ok.  Lil rain.  I won't melt.  This was the most rain I have ever seen, for hours.  I slipped into the market for only an hour, between showers and found the road a sloppy mess, my shoes and feet soon just as bad with a new coat of red slimy dirt from toe to ankle.  And then it rained more that night.  I noticed some little cracks on the wall and was told not to worry.  In the night, I awoke to sounds of falling sand, or something, and it was either the ants and termites at it again, or else my new cat, Merlin, playing her sick game with innocent (albeit disgusting) cockroaches again.  I finally dragged my self out of bad and saw mud chunks has fallen a little from the wall and did the responsible thing--crawled back into bed.
Then it cracked with a terrifying smoosh of wet brick on cement floor.  In my panic, I considered getting back into bed again, but decided that it could be worse to wake up to goats and sheep nibbling on my millions notes of things to do, or worse, a Burkinabe peering down at me through my green mosquito net wondering how I had slept through such nonsense. The damage was done.  A huge gaping hole, eight feet tall and 10 feet wide had appeared in my kitchen wall.  A new door to the street behind where neighbors with flashlights soon gathered.  However could this EVER happen to our Dear Toubab!!?  Well, it did, and my shower and hangar too.  So, at 4 a.m., after a lot of head shaking and comments on the size of new door, my sweet homologue, her sweet husband, and my sweet neighbor dejectedly carried all my sweet crap to a neighbors house for an hour so the goats and people couldn't get it. 

I spent 3 days living awkwardly in the house of my neighbor, who was very gracious, although I am sure he was avoiding me as much as possible.  His doorless shower had me in a panic everytime a chicken made their way into the house uninvited to ungraciously steal some millet grain.  C'est la vie!

All's well now though and my house is all put back together with diligence of male members of my organization, Combimi.

In other news, I accidently got myself on a date with a toothless 40-year-old taxi driver from Bobo, who, turns out, wasn't kidding when he said he may come through my village.  I have to work on my nodding and smiling tactic when I'm not sure what people are talking about.  This made for a very awkward day that began with the giving of six loaves of bread and ended with many offers of a tour service for the Banfora area.  I'm thinking not.

I also sampled a delectable platter of caterpillars courtesy of Micheline, my homologue's sister.  What a good Peace Corps volunteer I am.

I also planted 25 moringa trees with my association, which are probably in the process of being eaten by goats as after many explanations, drawings, and not-so-quite anger on scence, we still lack a fence to protect them. 

I witnessed the murder of a poor little pincushion, a tiny little thing found in the field, my first time I think to see a porcupine up close and personal.

I've been sweating it out in the millets fields with my ladies, much to their amusement and, usually, to mine.  I'm just a toubab, what can I say?  But they're all jealous of my garden with its sprawling pumpkin vines, okra, tomato, and multi-colored carrots.  So I guess I can handle the jibes.

I found Ramadan, the end of days of fasting (not nights, may it be noted), a rather surprisingly prosperous holiday for myself. What I was given:
  Milk
Tiga dege na (peanut butter sauce) Twice!
3 balls of shea butter for my lamp
Zame (rice dish)
Little fried dough balls
Two packages of spaghetti
3 mil (about $6)
One tomato
Three african eggplant
A handful of bubblegum
A packet of pineapple cookies
And a chicken, which I was expected to cook for dinner but have decided to spare for eggs.

After the eggplant, I realized this was like Christmas and Halloween in one, kids tricker treating and everyone giving presents.  Very nice. 

That's all I have time for for now!  Thank you for reading!

Ferocious storms and neat bugs

As I am currently unable to sleep due to the clatter of raindrops on my tinroof and the loud, deep grumbles of thunder rattling my cot, I'll share how I spend my days and some neat discoveries instead.

My new house in Burkina has the tell-tale blue walls of a Peace Corps home.  The blue is broken up by brown, mud termite trails and hollows that go straight through to the outside where hundreds of large, industrious ants work all night scooping sand out of the wall and dump it unceremoniously onto my floor and belongings.  The sound of dry mud falling grain by grain on plastic is a bit of a strange one to wake up to in the night. Equally strange are the tings of the colony of grasshoppers which have invaded my house bouncing off every possible surface, including the metal pots and pans and little gas stove  that sits in my cooking room.  I much prefer the hum of the grasshoppers legs, usually a dozen working in chorus on the melody.  I've woken more than once with my ears ringing from the din.

I've been making my rounds around my new town, visiting everyone.  I think my favorite was meeting my homologue's father one morning, who was decked out in an old faded rain coat and a knitted hat.  He has to be 85 years old, and has enough wrinkles under his eyes to prove it.  His eyes themselves are yellow with age and move slowly, and he looked at me slowly as if trying to figure how I had possibly come to be in his village and house.  He greeted me in Jula as if he had cotton under his tonge, slow and muffled.  After a short struggle with small talk, he slowly pushed himself up and hobbled over to a certain wooden beam and very intentionally pulled out what appeared to be the shaft of a feather.  He wetted the end of it this with his mouth and then meticulously scraped out his right ear with it. He then commenced the same ceremony again, back in the ear, then carefully put back the feather exactly where he had gotten it.  I laughed a lot.  He didn't seem to mind.

I've come across two interesting bugs.  The first I thought was a moving fruit.  I was sure it was a migrating strawberry. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was some kind of amazing spider, all red, with a furry butt that is an exact replica of a wild strawberry with legs that can fold  in like a hermit crab. Don't worry, I took pictures.  The other bug discovery happened at night, in the dark.  I was putting away my mat before going to bed when I saw a glowing streak on the floor.  The same glow had also contaminated the underside of my rug I soon saw.  On closer inspection, I realized I had accidently killed a centipede of some kind and, turns out, their guts are glowy.  Gross, but cool.

I think the storm is drawing to a close. They are so violent here when they start.  I saw one in Ouagadugu that seemed to turn the whole sky red with dust.

A la prochaine...

A little collection of events in a new village

Well, I have now been to my site! I arrived back in Ougadougou after an 8 hour trek on Sunday afternoon.  High lights of my site visit:

-I met the prefet of the district (some one that does something important in terms of law and justice and all that, though I'm not exactly sure what), who immediately tumbled some mix of jargled sounds at our first meeting at a little cafe in the bus station.  So, I asked, about this tumble, a very rational question--what language are you speaking? Logical, as I had been navigating through four all morning (French, English, Jula, and Buamu, another regional dialect).  He said, in perfect French, "No, no, that's my name." Of course all the other official people were present too, perfectly placed to join in the eruption of belly laughs that ensued.

-My arrival to my village was not greeted by drums like I expected but rather by a smiling, rather-pale-for West-Africa-gentleman with a balaphone, an instrument in appearance like a homemade xylophone, replete with gourds, hemp string, and sticks for banging.  For some reason, it sounded out of tune to me though, a little too low, creating a weirdly macabre interlacing of rhythms.  I could imagine dancing skeletons, like Dia de los Muertos in Africa.  Weird, but still cool.

-The road, all four hours of it on the way to my village, in the Peace Corps car, was most adequately described as hundreds of miles of washboard.  The car rattled, I rattled, the bags rattled, it all rattled.  At one point I wondered if perhaps the car would rattle itself to pieces while still actually moving forward, like a comic version of Newton's Laws of Motion (the first to be specific).

-My site is more of a "city" than my village in Mali was.  And by city, I mean that there are several boutiques, little restaurants, a niiicce bus station, quite a few people (couple thousand for sure), and a variety of religions represented, including Islam, Christianity, and Animism.  Not to imply there is anything to crazy, like electricity or some such nonsense.

-I found myself at a major soccer tounament, like the biggest one of the year and the biggest one in the district I'm sure, on Saturday afternoon.  I strolled with my new friend of 24 hours, Monique, across town, past kapok and mango trees, and by all her friends (she's 23 and in school), to the field, pouring sweat from every inch of me, but keeping the corners of my mouth tucked upwards as much as possible in a permanent grin.  Odd looks ensued as soon as we reached the crowd, further enhanced by surprise after I spoke a little Jula.  We walked right over to an important looking tent, still mostly empty.  It soon filled with all the officials I met the day before, including the mayor, cozy as can be on plushy recliner, and, of course, the prefet, by whom I had made a fool of myself.  Then, the announcers set up shop, right in front of Monique and I.  And the cameras started to pan their way, my way.  And I realized just what a funny white spot I must look like in this big black crowd.  Being a weirdo for hours is exhausting, turns out, and I slept like a big white rock that night.

-I am working with a women's association that makes goodies like shea butter, leaf mixes for sauce, and diollo, a vinaigre-y, warm, millet beer served out of a calabash (like a gourd half) that most defintely Not grown on me yet, much to the associations amusement at pinched face upon drinking it. 

So, it was good.  I'm happy and I think I'll be happy.  It's not Mali, but it's neat and I'm excited to try it out.

Wish me luck!

Two more weeks in Ouga till I go back.

Bye for now--

Site Visit take two

Well, I'm up for another round of seconds tomorrow--site visit! This should be rather interesting.  Things I know about my site: it's not far from Bobo, a city that by all accounts sounds more charming than Ougadougou; it's on a main road, which means that 15k bike ride I was getting used to in Mali is now a relic; they speak Jula, which seems to be a broken and mumbled version of Bambara; and, last and most importantly, they are STOKED to be getting a volunteer, evidenced by extra-delicious to and raucous drum playing at every Peace Corps showing in town according to officials.  Oooh tomorrow should be quite a ride!

I'm sure there will be many memory triggers on this site visit from my time in Mali, as many things will likely appear the same, at least at first glance.  Yesterday, I visited another volunteer's site south of Ouga and felt the bittersweet pool of familarity in a place that's not mine.  I have been working (well, really more like wading through French) with a group of business owners, government workers, and Peace Corps homologues the last three days on something called PAC (already forgot what the acronym stands for).  Basically, Peace Corps invites these Burkinabe to grill and compliment Peace Corps according to its different elements.  It was a good moment for me to fully realize all the ways Peace Corps can work.  This includes: education on nutrition and sanitation; helping people sell local natural resources sustainably, including shea butter, baobob, dried mango, moringa powder, soap, etc.; working in schools as crazy American teachers; digging, deepening, or fixing wells; helping farmers get more harvest; aaaaand the list goes on. But, the newest cool one I just found out about is...making tofu! Amazing! It's not ACTUALLY that hard! And with its making villages get better soil (soy beans are nitrogen fixers, which can be hard to come by), a great source of protein and other vitamins, and some income generation.  Win win all around.  And now I can make a kickin' stir-fry. Lovely.

Being in this volunteers village, using a latrine again for the first time in months, smelling to sauce on my hand as I muffled a crowd stopping sneeze at an inopportune moment, and watching this volunteer navigate through five languages reminded me of what I'm getting my self into...again.  I've been living a Burkina-bourgeoisie life in Ouga these last few weeks, what with the running water, electric lights, and eating utensils. I'm excited, and humbled, to jump back into a life without such frivolities (I know my Nanny is cringing reading this). It won't be Mali again, but I'm sure I'll find new ways to love it here.

See you next week-
A la prochaine!

Peace Corps, Take Two--Aaaand, Action!

The last few days have been a whirlwind!  I arrived in Ougadougou (pronounced WAH gah dew goo--really like baby coos when broken down phonetically), Burkina Faso (pronounced bur KEEN a FA sew), in West Africa on Thursday, June 6th, with a crew of 34 completely shiny new future Peace Corps volunteers.  Before our touch down in Ouga, as Ougadougou is affectionaly called, I met all of these new trainees in Philadelphia for another round of the exact same prepartory staging event I completed just 6 short (and yet so very long!) months ago.  It was pretty strange to look around at everyone, imagining their anxieties and excitement so vividley, as a recent veteran of the experience.  As the news of my celebrity status started to trickly through the group, the questions started to seep in.  I enjoyed every minute of it!

The celebrity status has only gotten better since arriving in Burkina.  All the conversations with the Peace Corps associated people here has started out normal, with some odd looks at my broken French skills, followed by someone else's mention of my Peace Corps Mali evacuee status, and then either a look of renewed respect, or, the real pleasure, a rush of greetings in Bambara. Yaaayy! They speak Bamara, the lanuage I was learning in Mali!  Well, actually they speak Jula, which is very similar to Bambara.  I think my French is going to have a real shot at blooming here as well.  I rarely used it in Mali, but here it is used all the time.  It's great!

Burkina seems to be similar in many ways to Mali--the soils is a rusty red, the women wear the same decadent, multi-pattern and multi-colored clothes, kids still stare up moon-eyed at white faces, and the heat still swirls around you in a dusty hug. I am so happy.  I feel like I am coming home, a very strange feeling considering how short my time in Mali was and how many difficult growing pains I had.  I'm really excited, I feel prepared and recharged, and I'm totally thrilled to get to my site in a couple of weeks and dig in! In the meantime, I'll be desperately working on French and pouring over objectives and goals at the bureau. Woohoo!

Let's hope Burkina is a little gentler with me than Mali...

Be in touch soon! Bon nuit from Burkina--

Alex