FML

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.