Chez Moi

An important part of the greeting process in nearly every language and culture in Burkina Faso is some form of the question “How are things  going at your place?”  or “Comment ça va chez vous?”  Thanks for asking!  To tell you the truth, things are going swell at chez moi.

As far as my house is concerned, I feel like the winner of an unofficial site selection lottery that took place without the knowledge of Peace Corps Burkina Faso trainees.   After living in a one room, one window house for 2 months, I have moved to a ridiculous five room mansion: bigger than most of the apartments that my friends are now sharing with 4-6 people.  It’s definitely bigger than any property I will own until I have a decent job in the US (or elsewhere).  It’s a spacious five room / half bathroom house with a porch, a spacious living room, a kitchen, a bedroom, a workout room, and an office.  The kitchen appliances are brand new, the bed is a double, and the house is very well lit and ventilated.

Before you get too jealous, keep in mind that I still don’t have running water or electricity. My kitchen consists of a two higher tables for preparing food, a trash can for storing water, and a gas stove that’s connected to the gas tank below.  No electricity means no fridge, no blender, and, perhaps most importantly, no lights!  The sun sets around 6pm, which leaves me with the decision to cook dinner around 5pm or cook with my headlamp. My “office” consists of a book shelf, a dresser, and a small desk.  My “gym” is just an empty room with a mat on the ground.  The married volunteer couple before me left a double “mattress,” which in Burkina Faso is just a slab of foam on a rickety bamboo bed frame.

When considering the region of Burkina that I was placed in, it would not be a stretch to conclude that either my boss is rewarding me or she assumed that I would terminate my service if my single demand of “not the North” failed to be met.  To put it lightly, the southwest of Burkina Faso is FANTISTICALLY AWESOMELY WAY BETTER than the northern part of country (but don’t tell the volunteers in the north that, because they’ll claim bragging rights and talk about how hard their volunteer service is).  The climate is much more accommodating for a Californian, with temperatures dropping low enough for me to actually be cold at 6am (at least for now).  With higher levels of rainfall, the southwest is cash crop country: mostly sugar and cotton.  Powerful families in the villages profit greatly from the cash crop trade.  There is typically a wide diversity of agriculture in the southwest, with a variety of tropical fruits and vegetables available seasonally.  Most importantly, there are avocados available in my region.  I love avocados.

There’s a market every 5 days at a village that’s directly west of me.  It’s only 1.5 km as the crow flies, but the crow would fly over the ravine and the stream that divides the two villages.  There are a multitude of ways to get across, some easier than others, as I have found during my first week at site. But I’ll save that story for a future post.

In other news, here’s the blog of a fellow Peace Corps trainee (a USC Trojan) who ended her service after one night with a Burkinabe host family. Now pretending to still be in country........

http://www.lolitamunosespinoza.blogspot.com/

Filled with gross generalizations, pictures clearly taken from Google, and to top it off, an extremely condescending tone. In conclusion, graduates of UCLA are of a higher moral caliber than graduates of USC.  Merry Christmas everyone!

Laundry, Burkina style

Shantaram

Greetings from Burkina Faso!

I’ve been reading a lot lately, enjoying the lack of academic studies post-graduation and realizing that without electricity there are a limited number of things to do after the sun goes down (around 6pm). I just finished a book that was recommended to me by my good friend, Steven Somers, and I have to admit it was one of the best I have ever read.   The book is Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts.  I’m going to avoid discussing the details of the plot, but the protagonist, Lin, is an Australian who moves to the city of Bombay, India.  The story is told in the first person from Lin’s perspective.  Although Africa is only briefly mentioned in the novel, there are a number of themes in the book that apply very well to my experience in Africa and my work for the next two years.

During one section of the book, Lin is taken to a hidden market in Bombay where children are bought and sold into slavery.  He remarks:

“I was a stranger in a strange land: it wasn’t my country and it wasn’t my culture.  I had to know more.  I had to know the language that was spoken, at the very least, before I could presume to interfere.”

Lin is observing human trafficking, an economic practice that is morally wrong from a modern Western perspective to say the least.  While his gut reaction is moral disgust, his guide, Prabakar, informs him that the children being sold at the market have been displaced by horrific regional conflicts and are much better off serving in the households of wealthy families.  In the midst of this dilemma, Lin is acutely aware that he is an outsider and lacks the knowledge, cultural experience, and resources that are necessary to stop what he is seeing from happening.  At the very least, he deems it necessary to know the local language before he could “presume to interfere.”  He astutely observes that even if he could single handedly shut down this hidden market, another would immediately spring up somewhere else in the city because the demand for child slaves would still exist.

Many parallels can be drawn between Lin’s experience and the obstacles to public health work in Africa.  It’s easy to observe that there are serious public health problems here, but the process of understanding the fundamental reasons why these health problems persist is often long and tedious.  It requires an understanding of local cultural that is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve without living in the communities where these health problems exist.  There are well over 20 unique ethnic groups in Burkina Faso, each with a unique culture and language. These groups are connected through channels of commerce and share a common history of French colonization, but each of these groups also has a unique set of health needs.  On a positive note, the resources to solve most public health issues already exist in Burkina Faso, but the knowledge, motivation, and organization required to successfully utilize these resources is often lacking.

While the availability of medication and access to medical services are key concerns in Burkina Faso, to simply address these issues would only scratch the surface of the public health problems in the country.  This is not to say that the two are not extremely important to any functioning healthcare system, but the presence of health resources is far from a guarantee that people will use them.  Preventative medicine is difficult to preach and rarely practiced in Burkina Faso for a variety of reasons, but high on list is the fundamental difficulty of producing behavior change among the population.

 Although all of the nurses who work at community health clinics in Burkina Faso are Burkinabe, most are not from the village or even the region that they work in.  Their entire formal education has been in French, but many do not speak the local language of the communities they serve, which can be problematic because only a limited number of villagers can communicate in French.  Government employees are considered “fonctionnaires,” a French term which, in Burkina, has mixed connotations but essentially implies that government employees are a privileged class.  They have graduated from universities in the major cities of Burkina and more money than the average Burkinabe farmer.  In many cases, the Infirmiere Chef du Poste (head nurse) of the CSPS (community health clinic) would rather live in a regional capital and commute to work by motorcycle than live without running water and electricity in the communities they serve.  Physical and cultural separation from the communities that CSPS staff serve is problematic from a public health perspective for a variety of reasons, as it tends to promote a reactive model of healthcare rather than a preventative model.

Sign leaning against the side of the CSPS in Sanga
"AIDS Exists.  Protect yourself with a condom."

The most basic advantage of a Peace Corps volunteer in terms of development work is cultural integration: becoming a member of the community. In the grand scheme of things, the two year commitment of a Peace Corps Volunteer is barely enough to integrate into a community, understand their health concerns, and help to build the capacity of the communities to take initiative and address their own health needs.

Thanksgiving in Burkina

 Thanksgiving in Burkina was amazing!  Among my fellow Peace Corps Trainees there are some amazing cooks that made excellent food with limited ingredients.  Among the highlights were turkey (of course), garlic bread, mac n cheese, and SALAD.  We never get fresh vegetables at meals with our host families, so it was exciting to have a salad.  Desserts included carrot cake, pumpkin pie, and cookies.  I puked after the meal because I ate so much.

 My host family!  I told my host dad  that I wanted to take a picture of the family last night.  This morning, the family got dressed up in their nice clothes for the picture.  I'd like to claim that I haven't taken off my UCLA shirt since the win over USC, but I'd be lying.

The trainees in my language class along with our language teacher, Saliou.  I managed to test into a higher class and reach the level of French I need to become a trainee.  That means I'm starting to learn the local language of my area, Jula.

Hope everyone  had as good of a Thanksgiving as me!

Burkinabe Cuisine

Le Tö – The most consumed food  in all of Burkina.  It is usually made by mashing millet or corn for an extended period of time until it is ground into a fine grain.  Then water and heat are slowly added until it resembles a dough type substance.  Tö can be served with a wide variety of oily sauces or soups.  The sauce will definitely determine the quality of the meal because tö is relatively tasteless.  Red sauce is typically made with tomatoes and fish, beef, chicken, sheep, or goat meat.  Green sauce is made with okra or other types of leaves.  Peanut sauce is made with Burkina style peanut butter, which is basically a peanut paste without added sugar or preservatives (tastes similar to organic peanut butter.

Riz Sauce – Another one of the most common dishes in Burkina.  Riz Sauce (rice with sauce) is served as a bowl of white rice and a separate bowl of sauce.   Usually the choice of sauce (if there is one) is between peanut sauce and vegetable sauce

Riz Gras- Rice cooked with tomato paste and oil.  It tastes vaguely similar to Mexican style rice.  Usually served with meat on top.

Benga- Mixture of rice and arrico (black eyed peas….taste similar to kidney beans).  Benga is typically served with one of the sauces described above.

Ragu d’ingyam-  a broth soup made with  ingyam, a legume that is very similar to a potato

Spaghetti/Macaroni- Pasta with a n oily tomato  sauce, usually made from palm oil and tomato paste

Kous Kous – Once in a blue moon, my host family makes kous-kous.  It serves as a base for a  variety of sauces, but most of them are  tomato based with onions and peppers

Never eat with your left hand in Burkina!  In Africa, your left hand is the “dirty hand” because most people use it to splash water on their under region after using the latrine….the hole in the ground that functions as a toilet (they don’t use toilet paper much here…).  It follows that greeting someone with your left hand is offensive.  In traditional Burkina society, left handed kids would be punished by their mothers until they learned to do most things with their right hands.

Price Breakdown:

Weekly Peace Corps Trainee Allowance – 10,000-12,000 CFA ($20-$24)

Our host families serve us breakfast and dinner. Breakfast consists of coffee or tea and “gato”  which  is basically bread dough fried in palm oil.  It’s actually really tasty when it’s served fresh, but unless you can find the lady making it and buy it on the spot, you usually receive it semi stale.  We’re on our own for lunch.

Riz Sauce / Riz Gras / Omelette- 300-400 CFA ($0.60-0.80)

Goat Meat Brochette – 500 CFA ($1)

Coke/Sprite/Fanta – 450 CFA ($0.90)

22oz Brakina (the equivalent of Bud Light) – 650 CFA ($1.30)

22oz Beaufort (the equivalent of Heineken) – 800 CFA ($1.60)

Hotel Sissilis

22oz Brakina – 850 CFA

22oz Beaufort – 1200 CFA

Hamburger – 2000 CFA

Cheeseburger – 2500 CFA

Fries – 1000 CFA

It’s important to understand that I eat separately from the family every night, as do most PCTs, because the food they serve me has been prepared separately from the food for the rest of the family.  Peace Corps supplies my host family with money to pay for my meals, but the family generally cannot afford to serve themselves the same meal.  Most nights the family eats to, riz sauce, benga, or potates/ingyams  if it’s a harvest day.  I never finish my meal, though, and my host brothers and sisters finish off  the rest of my food.

We all can’t wait to be sworn in as volunteers for a variety of reasons, one of them being the fact that our living allowance as volunteers is WAY MORE than our living allowance as trainees.  Of course, in terms of dollars that means about $10-$20 more per week, but to us it’s a lot!

Demystification

Here's an excellent blog post from a fellow volunteer that I went on "Demystification" with a couple weeks ago.  Basically Demyst was a 3 day vacation at a current health volunteer's site to see how they lived and interacted with their community.   We also  got to see some of the projects that they had  worked on during their service:

"This past week my language teacher told me my French homework was to make a family tree of my host family.  I knew this was going to be challenging for several reasons.  First of all, most of the family doesn't speak French.  Second, my family seems huge and it's very hard to figure out who everyone is.  However, I went back to my courtyard and attempted to do the homework.  I showed my host dad a family tree of my family and then tried to explain that I need to do one of his family.  He called over one of my sisters and we sat on the floor with some flashlights trying to do the assignment.  She was able to write the name of her dad and the names of his three wives.  Then she began to write the names of her 13 brothers and sisters.  After, we were supposed to write the ages of everyone.  My host dad went into his house and a few minutes later came out with a bunch of papers.  The papers were the hand written birth certificates of the kids.  It took me a minute but I realized nobody in my courtyard knew how old they were, the dad included.  After calculating the age of everyone I was able to finish my family tree.  My family has 14 kids, all under the age of 15 and 3 wives.  My host dad is 49 and he is a farmer.  The next day we presented our family trees in class.  Most of the other people in my language group had between 5-8 kids.  I now understand why my courtyard is always loud, busy, and full with kids!

     For lunch this week we found a place that makes omelets.  Everyone was so excited because usually there is just rice with some different sauces.  After lunch I began to feel really sick.  I thought I might be dehydrated but it got progressively worse during the afternoon.  Eventually I threw up and got a ride home to my village.  I tried to explain to the wives that I was sick and that I had thrown up.  I got a pillow and sat outside on a chair.  Later, my host dad came home.  I could tell all of the people in my courtyard were telling him I'm sick.  He said hello and then went to sit on his chair over by his house.  A few minutes later he gets up and brings over his chair.  His chair is more like a lounge chair.  It looks like a pool chair but it's wood.  He brought it over so I would be more comfortable.  This was an incredibly nice gesture because all the women and kids in my courtyard sit and sleep on the floor.  He wanted me to have the chair for the night since I was sick. It made me realize that even if you can't communicate with words, there are other ways to communicate.  I lounged on the chair for a while and then went to bed.  Luckily, I woke up feeling better the next day.  I also spoke to a current volunteer who said that some Americans are allergic to pintar eggs, which are eggs produced by guinea fowl.  So now I know I can avoid omelets that aren't made with chicken eggs. 

     On Wednesday afternoon we traveled to Ouaga, the capital, for the night.  We stayed at our transit house which is basically a hostel for only us Peace Corps volunteers.  It has fans, wifi, a real kitchen, a bunch donated books, clothes up for grab and some beds.  We went out for dinner to a shwarma place and then found a bar with one beer on tap!!!  We drank beers and stayed up late meeting current volunteers who were in Ouaga.  
  
     The next morning we got up at 5 to head out for "Demyst".  Demyst is when we split into our language groups and visit a current volunteer for the weekend.  My language group traveled to Sabce, a village 2 hours North of Ouagadougou.  We are staying with a volunteer named Wendy.  Wendy is a volunteer in her 60's and her site has electricity.  She was a lawyer in the states and decided to do the Peace Corps because she felt her life was too predictable.  She is also a health volunteer and she has been here for two years.  She lives right by the CSPS (health clinic) and her site has about 3,000 people.  She is really cool and it was nice to learn about the projects she has done.  One of the projects I found most interesting was her project with the village elders.  She held a lot of sessions with them about getting older, menopause, dental care, and staying active.  I found this interesting because a lot of the younger volunteers work mainly with youth so hearing about her projects with the elders was so new and different!  Wendy has also had a girls group of about 28 teenage girls.  She talked to the girls about menstruation and safe sex.  In Burkina it is very taboo for mothers and daughters to talk about these types of things.  Prostitution is becoming a problem in this village so she talked to them about that as well.  The reason prostitution is increasing in Sabce is because they recently opened a mine close by.  Men from all over the country come have been coming to work here.  This has caused a lot of problems and Wendy said her village has changed a lot in the two years since she has been here.    
 
     In the mornings we got to go with her to the clinic to weigh babies and watch the nurse and Wendy give vaccinations.  The mothers who came to the clinic today are involved with the Plumpy Nut Program.  This program is for babies who are severely malnourished.  They come in for weekly weigh-ins and if the babies aren't gaining weight, they have to pay to visit the Head Nurse.  Babies usually gain weight from the program and are able to get on a more healthy track.  Wendy says the Plumpy Nut is really popular and tastes like chocolate peanut butter.  Apparently it is a hot commodity and sometimes parents will give it to other kids or eat it themselves, which is why some babies don't gain enough weight.  We saw one 4 month old baby that was 6 pounds.  It was devastating and the baby looked like an alien.  It was completely deformed and unbelievably tiny. 

     Later in the day we got to see the school and attend a session on family planning.  The session was put on by the Head Nurse and it was given to about 70 kids all around 14 and 15 years old.  It was really fun to see their reaction to the different family planning options.  I was surprised that so many kids showed up to listen!  At night Wendy made us spaghetti and salad!  It was delicious and it felt like we were back in the states.  We listened to music and drank some beers and then went to bed outside in our tents.  The rest of the weekend should be fun because today is a Muslim holiday called Tabaski.  They eat a lot of goat on this holiday and the men wear all white.  We are invited to celebrate the holiday with one of Wendy's friends.  She is 13 and Wendy said she is an incredible person.  Wendy has been paying for this girl's schooling because recently her parents cut off the funding.  I'm excited to see how they celebrate Tabaski and will write more soon when I'm back in Leo.  Hope all is well with everyone!  I'm excited to hear about Halloween celebrations!"

-From the blog "NATWORTHY" by Natalie Moore    

And here's a picture that made Todd happy:

Bad News or Good News First?

The bad news: Our bus careened off the side of the road on Monday during a journey from Leo to Ouaga. Don't worry, no one was hurt!!!!

The good news: My site announcement!  Here's the information I've been given so far (which I'm hesitant to develop too many expectations about)

"Congratulations you are going to the village of Takaledougou!  60km from Bobo and 15km from Banfora, the village of Takaledougou is surrounded by acres of sugarcane fields beneath mountain cliffs.  Mangos are seasonal and the community is thrilled to be  receiving their first volunteer.  There are women's groups, youth groups, theater troupes, mango and shea  producers, and musicians who are eager to collaborate and share longstanding cultural traditions, such as an annual festival at the village waterfalls.  Your house has 5 spacious rooms! It is located in the councilor's compound.  You gave a small private courtyard and gardening space."

Sounds like I won some sort of game show right?  Anyhow, I feel very fortunate with my site placement, considering I only requested not to be in the North of the country.  You can find the approximate location of my site using the map below.  (Hint: SW)

Homestay

Living with a family of a completely different cultural has been extremely difficult at times, but also extremely rewarding.  My family consists of my host dad, Abdoulaye, my host mom Mariam, three host brothers and two host sisters.  The oldest is 12 years old. Embarrassingly enough, it took me two weeks to figure this out.   The terms cousin, uncle, aunt, niece, and nephew for all practical purposes do not exist in village life.  The terms son, daughter, brother, and sister are used liberally and not in a literal sense.  Village men refer to all of their male friends as “brothers.”  The kids of a sibling are still considered “my kids.”  To make things even more confusing, families are large and often live in the same area of the village, so the chances that you are actually meeting family members is high.  For example, my friend Natalie is hosted by the chief of Sanga, who has three wives and five kids per wife.  Clearly she has difficultly determining how everyone in her courtyard is related.

Coming into the homestay, I was expecting a similar experience to my homestays with families in Santa Rosalia, Baja California Sur during an exchange program I was involved with during high school.  As everyone learns during Peace Corps service, expectations are more of a curse than a blessing. 

First of all, I was more capable of communicating in Spanish before my homestays in Baja California.  As I mentioned in earlier posts, my host dad is the only person living in my courtyard who speaks passable French. I use the term “passable” because I get this feeling from our short morning/evening conversations that I am slowly surpassing his French capabilities.  Luckily his younger brother, Akim, lives in the courtyard next to us and speaks much better French.  He is patient enough to work through my choppy and grammatically horrific French.  This has helped immensely, although our conversations are all too infrequent.

If not all Burkinabe speak French, what do they speak?  The answer is complicated.  Although there are five main languages (besides French) associated with different regions of Burkina Faso, there are also many languages that are unique to areas as small as 10 square kilometers.  For example, the inhabitants of my host village, Sanga, and most of the villages surrounding Leo speak Nunni, a language that is unique to the region. I have only recently mastered the morning greeting process, which consists of a long hand shake and a scripted conversation of how I’m doing, how the person I’m greeting is doing, how I slept, how they slept, how my family is doing, how their family is doing, and eventually laughter when it becomes obvious that I barely understand what they are saying to me.  

My experience with language in my host community is completely normal in Burkina Faso.  In rural villages, there are often only a limited number of community members that speak French well, and most people communicate entirely in the local language.  Children are taught French in school from an early age, but the children may not retain the language for a variety of reasons. Parents may communicate with their kids in local language instead of French.  Children that do not have aspirations outside of the community may not see the point of taking French studies seriously.  The style of education in Burkina is also not well suited to language learning, as most classes consist of repetition and copying from the board.  However, all government employees must speak French in order to accomplish the administrative aspects of their jobs.  This includes the nurses and other employees of the CSPS (Centre de Sante et Promotion Social), or village health clinics.

Besides language, there are a variety of other cultural differences between Burkina Faso and the US. Here’s a quick list:

-In village, it is important to individually greet everyone that you see, ask how they are doing, etc.  Not doing so is mildly offensive

-In the morning, it is impolite to greet someone who has not yet washed their face (or taken a bucket bath, although Burkinabe find it strange that I take a bucket bath in the morning)

-At first I considered it ridiculous that we had to bring our own bike helmet to Burkina, but now I realize that they don’t sell them here. Most families in village have bikes and motorcycles instead of cars.  No one wears a helmet.  Burkinabe find it extremely comical that Peace Corps volunteers/employees are required to wear helmets

-Babies are often tied straddling their mother’s backs using a 2 m x 1 m piece of colorful fabric called “pagne.”  With babies on their backs, women go about all of their daily tasks, including riding bikes, working in the fields, selling things at the market, and cooking

-Life is considered difficult.  Happiness and sadness, sickness and health, work and rest, life and death: all accepted parts of the life cycle.  There is a belief that people can’t do much to change their situation, they can only make do with what they have.  In French: “C’est la vie” (That’s life)

Some notes on being American in Burkina….

-Anything that an American says/does is considered high quality entertainment, even if they are saying/doing the right thing.  If you can’t laugh at yourself, you are doomed to an extremely unhappy existence.  As such, any self-conscious individuals should avoid Burkinabe villages altogether

-Burkinabe are extremely hospitable and respectful of guests, almost to the extreme from an American point of view.  They insist on carrying my bike and backpack to home when I get back from training, they grow concerned if I only consume half of the two pounds of spaghetti they made me for dinner, and they won’t allow me to do my own laundry.  For an ordinary American, obviously this is quite unusual and most volunteers find it uncomfortable.  I let it happen for the most part, though, because Burkinabe are genuinely happy to help us in any way that they can.  The families that are hosting volunteers are proud to have Americans in their homes and I am positive that we are the subject of constant village gossip.

As I write this post, my young host brothers are seated near my computer, alternating between staring at me and dancing to the music that I’m playing.  Reggae, especially Bob Marley, is extremely popular here, as the music style has important roots in Western Africa. Any American hip hop is also popular here about 6 months after it is released in the states.  Anyhow, it's still way too hot here, but things are going well.  Site assignments are announced on Wednesday, so everyone is pretty excited and nervous.  Internet is in scarce supply, but I'll keep posting when I can.

Todd

Enjoying the simple things.....

In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to convey the ecstasy I experience during my evening bucket bath.  First I need to set the mood.  Put yourself in my shoes for a second.  As I wake up at 6am in the morning, the pleasant 75 degree nighttime temperature is already beginning to rise as the sun climbs in the sky.  Training attire is business casual, which in Burkina just means pants and a collared shirt, but the Socal native in me questions the logic of pants in such a hot climate. I finish my morning routine, eat my breakfast of a couple rolls or something that resembles a squashed baguette, wash it down with some tea, and meet the other trainees in my village to bike up the 12 km slow incline to our training site in Leo.

Although there’s a light breeze as we bike along at a comfortable pace, we are all still dripping sweat by the time we make it to our training site.  At 8am, our training classes start: in an outdoor pavilion if we’re lucky, and in a building we have dubbed “The Sauna” if we have the misfortune of a Powerpoint lecture.  We listen to lectures and participate in training activities until 12:30, when we break for lunch.  By this point, the temperature has risen to at least a humid 90, and we bike/sweat our way to one of the few restaurants in town with electricity (and therefore cold drinks).  More to come on the cuisine in a later post.

Back to training from 2-5:15pm: the hardest part of the day.  Exhausted from the heat, we sit through another 3 hours of class before we are released to bike home to Sanga.  The bike home feels amazing. It’s almost all downhill and the day is finally starting to cool off.  The breeze dries most of the sweat on your face while the sweat on your clothes evaporates, cooling the material against your body.  Looking back, I often see a beautiful sunset over the fields and trees of the region. As I walk into my courtyard and greet my host family, there is only one thing on my mind. Bucket bath.

Truth be told, I’ve been zoning out and fantasizing about my evening bucket bath since lunch.  I didn’t think of much else on the ride home besides what limbs of my body I would give up for a big hunk of medium rare steak.  I fill my 10L bucket from the water jug my family leaves me every morning, take off my sweaty clothes, and carry my soap and my 0.5L cup to the shower. 

Alright so it’s not really a shower, because I am living without running water or electricity.  It’s more like a stall with chest high walls and a drain on one side.  The “bathroom” is formatted like this:

--------------------------------------------------------

I           Latrine            I           Shower            I

I                                  I                                   I

I           O ßHole       I                                   I

I           in the ground  I                                   I

I                                  I                                   I

I           -----------------I----------------

Therefore, it’s similar living in an apartment with only one bathroom in the sense that it would be extremely awkward for two people to use it at the same time.  There are indoor showers in the houses of other volunteers, but that’s a huge disadvantage for a number of reasons which I hope to make clear.

I set my bucket down in the corner of the shower, fill the cup from the bucket, and begin systematically pouring sweet, cold, fresh, water all over my sweaty, dusty, and exhausted body.  It would be hard to determine the exact composition of my sweat, but it’s probably some combination of water, salt, and the oily sauce that drenched my rice at lunch.

After rinsing, I usually take a couple minutes to survey my surroundings over the chest high wall of the bathroom.  When I look back towards the courtyard I might catch some of the kids staring at me or witness the five cows being herded past the bathroom after a day in the fields. When I look out towards the main dirt road I might see locals walking or cruising by on bikes and motorcycles.  A bush taxi (extremely overcrowded van/truck that Burkinabe use to travel farther distances) or two may race by blaring its horn, similar to a train blowing its whistle as it enters a town.  But the sky is my favorite part.  I bathe at dusk, when the sky still retains some of the hues of the sunset and the breeze begins to pick up.

I soap up and rinse off again, ironically cleaning myself better than I ever did at home with running water.  Then I stand around and air dry for a bit, enjoying the freedom of being naked and clean outside, relishing the views, and occasionally reflecting on the amazingly simple living situation I have agreed to for the next couple years.  By now it’s dark and the stars are beginning to fill the night sky.  It turns out that you can actually see hundreds of thousands of those shiny beautiful balls of light when you are living far from the pollution of city lights.

By now I hope I’ve conveyed the ecstasy of my evening bucket bath and improved your day with subconscious thoughts of my naked self in the heart of West Africa. If that wasn’t as exciting as I led you to believe, you can imagine some lions and giraffes around my shower too.

Todd

Initiation: Burkina Style

Well it’s about time for my first blog post from Africa.  Unfortunately internet has been hard to come by since I left Ouagadougou (pronounced Wah-gah-doo-goo or Wahgah when shortened), the capital city of  Burkina Faso, for my training stage in Leo, a regional capital in the south of the country which is approximately 20 km from the Ghana border.

Our time in Ouaga was hardly an experience in the real Burkina Faso.  We stayed in a nice hotel with running water, electricity, and air conditioning. Arriving Monday afternoon after more than 24 hours of travel, we  stayed at the hotel until Friday afternoon, engaging in language testing, skills interviews, and of course…..immunizations.  Since there is no immunization for Malaria, we are required to take prophylaxis, which essentially builds up the body’s Malaria antibodies before a mosquito with the disease actually bites you.  The pills are big, but we only take them once a week.  One of the legendary side effects of the drugs is extremely vivid dreaming, which many experienced, but I have yet to.

Peace Corps requires us to stay with host families for the duration of training to force a complete cultural immersion and facilitate language learning.  We discovered that we were to be split up amongst three villages around Leo: Sanga, Zoro, and Kayero.  As we boarded the buses departing Ouaga for Leo, the reality of the next couple years began to hit home for all of us.  That night was the last in air conditioning for a while, which is worrisome when the weather is supposed to be cooling off  and it still hits 95-100 consistently in the afternoon hours.  Up until Friday, it had been like a college freshman orientation, meeting like minded people in a comfortable setting and discussing the upcoming years with optimism.

As each group was dropped off in their respective villages, we participated in a brief pairing ceremony, after which the family patriarch showed us our home for the next two months.  The “house” set up in Burkina villages varies, but generally follow the same pattern in the southern region of the country. Anywhere from three to ten small mud brick buildings are centered around a courtyard, which functions as a common space for the family to eat, work, and play as well as a storage area for the family’s valuables.  In rural Burkina, “valuables” are the family’s animals, which almost always include cows, chickens, roosters, and donkeys.  With slightly less frequency families will also keep sheep and goats.  As you can imagine, sleeping past 5 in the morning is virtually impossible with Noah’s Ark right outside your window

My first night in Sanga was a rude awakening as to what I can expect for the next two years.  My room is a 10x10 meter mud brick building with a tin roof, a small metal locker, and a bed with a mosquito net.  The floor of my room is cement, and covered with a permanent layer of dirt.  During the day, the sun heats my room to blistering temperatures, especially because I close and lock the door while I’m at training.  That night the temperature in my room never dropped below 80 and was closer to 90 until 12am.  I slept a fitful three hours and spent the rest of the night reading.  Contrary to popular belief, roosters do not wait until dawn to start kackadoodledoodling.  I heard some as early as 3am, while the  two in my  courtyard  politely waited until 5am to sound the wake up call.

  

Today was a long day of training.  We discussed homestay experiences, which were extremely similar across the board.  The most common difficulties were the language barrier (most members of Sanga families, except for important males, speak a regional dialect and lack the ability to speak beyond basic French), the heat (cannot be emphasized enough how terrible it is…..especially for the girls that were told by host families that they must close and lock their metal door), and feelings of isolation.  The second half of the day consisted of lunch at a local restaurant and a bike tour of Leos.  We’re expected to bike to and from training in Leos every day (about 12 km each way on a dirt road) which I’m fairly certain I will enjoy.  Leos is a bustling city by Burkina standards, with several bus stations, a Gran Marche (big market) an internet café, and a hotel with a pool.

Anyhow, I’ve managed to avoid any serious illness so far, which is more than can be said for our fellow Peace Corps Trainee Chris, who took ill in Ouaga and hasn’t made it out to Leos yet.  A girl who also happened to be from Los Angeles dropped out of training today.  I was not surprised.  She checked 3 heavy bags that she couldn’t even carry herself, partially because she was barely 5’ and partially because of “back problems.”  She wore heels the entirety of the time she was in Burkina and we were all wondering why she thought she could handle living in the developing world for two years.  Did I mention she’s a Trojan?  GO BRUINS!  Ha but seriously there’s still another Trojan in my training class who is an awesome, determined women and I can’t imagine her dropping anytime soon.  In fact, the ration of women to men in my training class is about 5:2, which is pretty common.

Don’t come to Africa if you hate bugs.

Until next time,

Todd

10/14 Update:  Sleeping outside in my bug hut was amazing.....between the beautiful starry sky and the blissfully cool temperature, I slept like a baby.  The dog still growls and barks at me every time I move in bed. Not sure how to  win him over.

Here Goes Nothing

Well here goes nothing.  I arrived in Philadelphia for Peace Corps registration and “staging,” which took the better part of today.  Then I’m off to JFK with the other volunteers Monday morning to board a flight to Brussels, Belgium. From Brussels we’ll board our flight to Burkina Faso.

Am I prepared?  It’s hard to say.  I have my bags packed (a daypack and a bigger backpacking pack) with most of the things that I think I will need.  I’m still in denial that I will be living outside of the United States for 27 months.  Definitely still in denial that the majority of that time will be spent without electricity or running water.  I’m sure if I could see into the future I would be way more worried, but for now I’m blissfully ignorant, which is enough to get me on the plane to Africa.

As of now, here’s a brief list of the things I’m worried about the most

1)      Language- Burkina Faso is a former French colony, so the officially language is French.  Unfortunately, my experience with French is limited (spending 5 weeks in Paris doesn’t exactly result in fluency).  During my 3 months of pre-service training, however, they will have extensive language training.  I’ll also be living with a family during the training period, so I’ll be forced to communicate in French. There are also 5 main regional dialects, one of which I may start learning once  I know where I’ll be placed in the country

2)      Climate- Burkina Faso is extremely hot and extremely humid.  Living in beautiful Southern California all of my life hasn’t exactly prepared me for muggy tropical heat, especially with the lack of A/C in most African countries.   I hope I can adapt quickly….the thought of falling asleep in 95 degree heat and 70% humidity is worrisome

3)      My stomach/intestines- It is rumored that Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) in Burkina Faso have the highest rate of gastrointestinal problems during training.  I was reading the blog of one guy who contracted E.coli an impressive three times during his three months of training.  Not exactly comforting……

I could probably make this a much longer list, but it would serve no purpose.  I’m constantly reminding myself that when I applied for the Peace Corps, I wanted a public health position in sub-Saharan Africa, which is exactly what I got.  It’s one thing to read a textbook or article about Africa, and another thing entirely to experience it.  I want that experience.

My last meals in America consisted of dinner at TGI Fridays, drinks at the hotel bar, breakfast at Chipotle, dinner at California Pizza Kitchen, and drinks at TGI Fridays.  Yeah….they didn’t exactly put us up in the most exciting part of Philadelphia.   Did some good ol’ American sports betting tonight. Placed a bet with a Saints fan  and fellow PCV, Christina, that the Chargers would win. Needless to say, Drew Brees has an NFL record, the Saints have their first win, and I’m down $10.

I promise to keep this updated blog updated as often as I possibly can, which I admit may not be that often.  I won’t be preaching, making sweeping political generalizations, or guilt tripping those who choose to read.  I hope this will serve as an interesting, entertaining, and honest record of my adventures in West Africa. Feel free to sign up for an email notification when I have new post (probably the best way to keep up with me)