Sunday, August 15, 2010

Day 53

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?

100_0083   (Big adjusting to (his?) new home in MI, compliments of my mother)

 

Today was just another typical day in Stage.      

Site Announcements!

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! 

P8090044

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.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

New Blog Name

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.    

Day 39

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.