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)