Chez Moi!

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!     

Affectation

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!               

Swear-In!

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!