Happy New Year!

I can hardly believe it’s already 2011!  Gosh that feels weird to write.  It was even weirder to spend my first New Years in…  6 years? not with my sister in South Carolina.  I was a kind of quite night, but still a fun New years.  Josh and I traveled down to the other side of the country to spend New Years with friends in Gaoua, a small city in the South-West.  A small city, but it still has running water, electricity, paved roads, and street lights, so not really that small of a city.  There, we met up with Shannon, Kyle, Austin, and a new health volunteer named Hailey.  We sat around until dinner time asking the new girl (her stage arrived in mid October) about what had happened back home since we had left and listening to new music.  All of us but Kyle had only been gone 6 months (Kyle a year), but being in the US seems like ssoooo long ago.  We were also eager to hear any new, or new to us, music that she had.  Finally at around 7:30 we decided as a group that we were hungry and called for a cab to take us into town.  While we waited for our food to be ready Hailey and I went out to stock up on sparkling wine, because what’s new years without a little champagne?  We ate a delicious dinner and I was amazed then the spaghetti came out with real cheese on top! (there is no cheese in this country…  Where did they get it?!)

After dinner we went back home and hung out some more until midnight.  A couple minutes till someone realized the time and shouted it it was almost the new year, we had to get ready.  We poured our glasses with champagne (rouge sparkling wine, it’s the only thing we could find), and as we tried to count down the time realized that everyone’s watch said a different time.  Not having a TV or watching a ball drop, having no way of knowing what the real time was, we made a group decision to just count down to zero and call it good.  Three…  two… one…. Happy New Year! 

After the New Year’s toast the men went outside to smoke cigars and try to be manly.  The conversation was mainly about football and sports, it was kind of funny.  Finally at 1 Josh and I decided it was late and we needed to go to bed.  We went to grab our bikes to head back to the hotel, only to discover that once again I had a flat tire.  We tried our best to pump it up just to get us home (hey, it worked on my Birthday), but neither one of us could pump the tire at all (The pumps we were given are real fickle and can be hard to work).  Fine, we’ll just walk our bike home.  After 5 or 10 minutes of walking we decided to try something we see Burkinabe do all the time- one person pedals while the other sits on the back of the bike and pulls the other bike along.  For reasons I now can’t remember, there was no way I was going to be the one on the back holding the other bike.  So I climbed up onto Josh’s bike (it’s a man’s bike and a lot bigger then mine) and tried to pedal while he sat on the back.  Nope, not going to happen.  Back to walking. 

When we were almost home, Josh was stopped by a Gendarme as we passed a bar.  He may have tried to stop me too, but when I’m walking out at night I put blinders on and walk with a mission to get home, so I didn’t notice him until he stopped Josh behind me.  “Give me money”, he said to Josh.  Taken off guard Josh relied “what?”.  “Give me money!” the police man said again.  He had clearly had a little too much to drink.  Thankfully another man saw this and intervened, and Josh quickly walked away telling me to “walk fast” before the Gendarme had anymore ideas.  We were both glad to finally get home and go to bed.               

Merry Christmas!

True to Christmas form, as soon as Josh, Lauren, and I woke up on Christmas morning we chowed down on the left over eggrolls.  We lazed around for a bit until Josh heard the Catholic choir start singing and we went off to church.  The Catholic church is just up the street from his house and was jam packed full of people.  There were about a hundred people huddled around the outside of the church and another 50 or so under a big baobab  tree across the street.  Apparently this is the normal church size for them.  Someone needs to come build them a mega church!  Josh has gone to the catholic church before, but there is never enough room and you can’t hear the service from outside, so he prefers the smaller protestant church across village.  

 

They had just gotten started by the time we got there, so we tried to sneak in the back.  But being the only two white people there, it’s a little hard to sneak in, and everyone turned around to check us out.  Or really, to check me out, since they are use to Josh coming to church and were curious to see who his femme was.  We sat down in the back row and tried to blend in.  The church was small and everyone was packed in.  There was a man upfront asking questions about the Christmas story to the congregation and giving bonbons to whomever answered, he explained to us in French.  I would have tried to answer them, since Josh had read me the Christmas story form Matthew and Luke just that morning, but I honestly couldn’t tell whether the man was speaking in French or local language.  The local language there is different then my local language and the French accent was slightly different too.  After the Q&A, the choir began to sing and everyone stood up to sing along.  The man who had lead the questions came to next to Josh and translate into French for us, since all the songs were in local language.  He explained that someone from each neighborhood of the village was going to come up to the front and lead the congregation in a song, however there are only 4 neighborhoods in the village and way more then 4 people went up to sing.  There was a drum or two, sort of like a bongo drum, that accompanied the singing.  For each song everyone stood and swayed, some people clapped their hands, a couple men had shakers, some people got down and boogied- there was a certain dance move for the women and one for the men, and some of the men got real into it, shacking their butts like a Ricky Martin video.   I don’t want to sound rude, but it was sort of hilarious.  I only recognized one of the hymns, when a big, well dressed women lead us in “Joy to the World” in French, all the rest were African hymns.  After about a half hour and all the people had stopped filtering in I realized that all the women were sitting on the right side, the children in the middle isle, and all the men on the left hand side of the church.  There was a man standing in the back who sat people as them came in, moving children around to make room for adults.  I was sitting on the left side with Josh, and wondered why they do the separation and what kind of cultural taboo I was causing.  No wonder everyone stared at me when I (we) sat down.  I said something to Josh and asked if I should join the women on the women’s side, but he insisted that I should stay right there next to him.  I’ll know better next time. 

After an hour and a half Josh leaned into me saying we should leave.  All the singing was still taking place, we had left Lauren home alone, and were expecting another PCV to come at any time.  I wanted to stay, but he said we’d be there at least another 2 hours, so thinking of dinner I agreed.  Outside we greeted the pastor, who had stepped out to salue  us, we thanked him and he thanked us for coming. 

Back at the home front Lauren and Shannon were waiting for us.  Josh and I went over to the chief de village’s house to wish him a joyeux noel and fetch the turkey.  After giving Josh the mission of getting us a bird earlier that week, he had asked the Chief where to find a turkey.  The next night when he went to the Chief’s for dinner, the Chief surprised him with a giant turkey, saying “I got you the biggest one I could find!” The Chief looked after the turkey for us until we were ready to kill it.  None of us had ever killed a bird before ourselves, so I encouraged Josh to ask for help.  I was thankful when the Chief sent 2 of his sons along with us.  Josh was determined to try is hand at butchering dinner, so he pinned down the bird as we had watched Chris do at Thanksgiving.  He had received a Swiss army knife from his parents for Christmas and was eager to use it, however the bird was big and the knife blade was small and it didn’t work as well as he had hoped.  After a good couple minutes of the bird not really bleeding out and still gasping for air, the three of us girls brought him a bigger, really sharp knife and insisted that he use it.  Finally one of the Chief’s sons stepped in and with one quick swoop slight the throat the right way. 

      

After it bled out the girls had the hot water ready and the cluster of children we had attracted were eager to pluck the turkey for us.  Fine by me.  Josh wanted to try and gut the turkey himself, but I was not about to have the intestines nicked and ruin Christmas dinner, so with my encouragement he asked his neighbor to help.  We watched carefully though, so next time he can do it himself (when we’re not hosting a big dinner for other people…)   He then light the charcoal, put potatoes in the bottom of a huge marmite, and put in the bird as I made up the first butter (well, Blue Band) baste. 

Three hours or so later the bird was ready, just as the girls finished up the rest of the cooking.  Josh had largely been in charge of cooking the bird and I have to give him props, it turned out very well.  We set the table- mashed potatoes and gravy (thank you, Aunt Vicki, for the gravy mixes!), stuffing, salad, challah bread, cooked beets and carrots, and, of course, turkey.  It was everything I had been dreaming of. 

           

Once we were all stuffed Shannon pulled out her Christmas surprise.  She had received a gingerbread man decorating kit in a Christmas package, so the three of us girls decorated gingerbread men.  Then to bring Christmas day to an end, I brought out the in-French storybook about a snowman that Aunt Sharon had sent me.  We passed the book around and took turns reading a page or two.  Here is Shannon reading to us in French.  And with that, to all a goodnight.    

  

My Golden Birthday

This year I turned 24 on the 24th, my golden birthday, and my first birthday in Burkina Faso.  I knew it was going to be a Burkina kind of Birthday when I woke up to a flat tire.  Lauren and I were making the journey to Josh’s site that day, so we meet up in out district capitol the night before in order to catch the early morning bus to Ouaga on the 24th.  Happy Birthday to me, I have a flat tire.  Luck for us , the closest bike guy was enjoying a Nescafe out front of his hanger.  He hadn’t set up shop yet, it was only 6 a.m. but at least he was there.  Actually, it was his son or an apprentice, and two white women with a flat tire was a little too much for him at such an hour.  After me trying twice and Lauren once to explain to the boy that there was a hole in the tire, we gave up and just let him pump it up with air.  At least this would get us to the bus stations on time to catch our bus. 

The trip to Ouaga went smooth as usual on our bus company of choice, KGB.  They are new to the area so the bus tend to not be as full, and the buses are yellow, American, Blue Bird  school buses, complete with signs still to  in English.  It’s like riding the bus in elementary school, only with chickens piled in the isle and 10 motos and a goat tied to the roof.  I’m not joking, once we debarked in Ouaga we realized there was a Billy goat on the roof, typical of transport in BF. 

         In Ouaga we made a pit stop at the beloved Marina Market to get all the Western foods needed to make a Christmas feast.  I was bound and determined to make eggrolls for dinner, my birthday wouldn’t be complete with out them,  and went on a mad search to find egg roll wrappers.  Finally, after searching the entire store (I couldn’t ask the store staff, because how do you say eggroll wrappers in French?) I spotted them in an out of the way fridge on my way to the checkout counter.  Alas, my Birthday dinner was saved! 

After buying everything possible for a delicious Birthday/Christmas dinner Lauren and I met up with Josh and headed to the gare to catch a taxi brousse to his site.  Now a bush taxi is roughly the size of a 12 passenger van, or slightly bigger then the Nany van, with 4 to 5 rows of bench seats that hold 25 to 30 people.  It’s a tight squeeze, however people get off and on along the route so numbers are constantly in flux.  Also, there aren’t exactly set leave times, the taxi waits until it is full to leave.  We got lucky and only had to wait at the gare 2 hours for it to leave. 

The 3 hour bush ride took over 4 hours because of an off road detour, and only the first hour was on a paved road, but we made it in one piece, including 11 of the 12 eggs we had carried on our laps in a plastic bag desperately trying to keep them from breaking.  We arrived at the city closest to Josh’s village just as the last rays of day light were fading, and, as to be expected, my tire was completely flat again.  We hurried to catch a bike repair guy before they went home for the night, but were too late.  Josh did the best he could to pump up the tire with my Peace Corps given bike pump and we prayed it would get me home, and, thankfully, it did.

It was past 7 by the time we finally made it to Josh’s house and we were all tired and hungry.  Lauren and I wasted no time in starting dinner.  Making Nany’s eggrolls in Burkina Faso on a gas tank stove with no electricity was a challenge, but it had to be done.  It was all coming along pretty well, until I got to the rolling.  The wrappers need to be refrigerated until use, and, well, after the 7 hour journey from the store to site they had dried out.  Also, they weren’t the square wrappers I was use to, but were triangles.  I got a little innovative with wet paper towel and raw egg and made it work.  Then came the issue of the oil- when I told Josh I needed enough oil to fry eggrolls plus some, he didn’t quite understand how much oil that entailed.  That’s okay, use a smaller pot and only cook one or two at a time while pushing them under the oil, pouring hot oil over them.  It had to work. 

        While I rolled and Josh fried, Lauren made a delicious soup, a Burkina version of Olive Garden’s Tuscany soup.  As we cooked, Josh turned on his sort wave radio and we caught the Pope’s catholic mass on the radio.  It was comforting to hear familiar hymns and remember that despite the 90 degree weather and being in Burkina Faso, it was still Christmas Eve.  Finally the eggrolls were done and I just needed the sweet and sour sauce and dinner would be complete.

        A huge Thanks to all my family members who sent me ketchup packets, to which the sweet and sour sauce would not have been possible.  Dinner was served.  May I present to you my finished stack of eggrolls, not quite up to par with Nany’s, but as close as could get in the conditions. 

Lang IST

Three months into service, sort of the mark of the end of the Etude period, there is In-Service Training.  It is broken up into 3 parts, first December 15th to the 21st was regional based language training, then in January there is a week of tech training and a 3 day workshop with counterparts to make project plans.  Lang IST went a little something like this:  Our schedule was suppose to be the exact same as during Stage- 4 blocks a day, 2 before lunch and 2 after- which, thanks to a great LCF, turned into a block of French at 8 a.m., 2 hours of internet time, Lunch, personal sleeping time, and then a block of Moore to finish out the day.  There were 6 volunteers at my lang IST, the 6 volunteers in my providence from my training group, and having all the down time to hang out with other Americans was very nice, but I will admit the actual learning left much to be desired.  I needed the French practice, but French class consisted of reading a French African fable for homework and then discussing it during class.  The kicker is that there are verb tenses used in written French that are never used in spoken French, so a week of studying passe simple is not going to help me speak to my villagers.  In our group of 5 Moore learners we were at 3 different levels, so Moore class wasn’t that useful either, unfortunately.  However, a week out of village and in a hotel with electricity and a half way flushing toilet was invaluable.  We’ve been in country for 6 months now, which is usually a natural slump for volunteers, and we were no exceptions.  Even the volunteer that lived in the bigger city with electricity and internet at his house and a fridge at his disposal was like “I want to go home”.  So having a week to just complain about everything that is wrong with Burkina was nice (the constant intestinal problems, the lack of vegetables, dairy, and meat on a daily bases, not ever being able to communicate with anyone, constantly being harassed because your white, always feeling awkward, the list could go on and on and on).  The one night that we all got together and decided that life wasn’t so bad after all was Sunday night.  Like Stage, we had Sunday off, so after a lazy morning and a little marche visit we all went over to the volunteer’s house who lives there.  It took 6 volunteers, 2 dictionaries, and an iPhone to get through the fable that was our homework, but after we finally finished Katie made us all a homemade dinner.   4 or 5 boxes of wine and several hours of the internet later, life in Burkina didn’t seem so bad.  Through in a little Lady Gaga into the mix and we had ourselves a party. 

Our week of commiserating accumulated with our final supper.  Hilary was really craving the rice from “the Ghana restaurant”, and despite going there the night before and only getting 2 of the 6 plates we ordered, waiting 30 minutes, and then upon our questioning finding out that the food we had ordered “was finished”, we decided to try it again.  We sat down and ordered, commanded salads and a plate of meat from the salad lady and meat stand out front of the restaurant, and then sipped on our drinks and waited.  After a short time the LCF that ordered To got his food, and we waited a little longer.  Rice takes longer to cook, right? Then our other LCF showed up and we asked to add another plate of rice to the order, only to be told the rice was finished.  Apparently they didn’t feel it was necessary to tell the 6 people waiting for rice that it wasn’t coming.  What are the odds that two nights in a row they would run out of food and not tell us they ran out after we already placed an order?  High, this is Burkina.  We asked what else they had- only To- and after eating salads, pouting, and debating where else we should go to find food (no where really, it was on the late side and food options are limited) we reluctantly ordered the To.  It didn’t take long to come out, a large, cold porridge-like blob of tasteless nothing with cold peanut sauce.  We swallowed down as much to as we could- I tried to pinch off little balls and put them in the bowl of sauce and pray it would be like southern dumplings in stew, which was actually eatable, but unfortunately I was served a disproportionate amount of To to sauce and was left with the choice to eat plain To or still be hungry.  I chose being hungry.  As we finished up eating and playing with the jello quality of the giant To ball and waited for our change from the bill, Hilary decided to make a soundtrack to our lives as Peace corps volunteers in Burkina with Hugo’s iPhone.  First she put on “This place is a prison” by the Postal Service, followed by a Bright Eyes song that has chorus that starts off with “how did I get here,” and when the chorus came on she shouted out at the top of her lungs “HOW DID I GET HERE?!”  A question we’ve all been asking ourselves lately.