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