The Mystery of the Sign…and other projects I had nothing to do with

As any (honest) Peace Corps Volunteer will admit, a significant amount of things happen in your village without you knowing about them in advance, especially if you’ve been gone for any period of time. But even when you are at site, sometimes things just happen without you.  From a development perspective, this is encouraging.  If Burkinabe in your community are taking the initiative to address their needs and set up things without you, they are proving that they are capable of utilizing resources already available in the community to accomplish their goals.  If the national government has intervened in your community, it shows that (at least to some extent) the Burkinabe in charge of things are actually working to address the numerous economic and health issues faced by the largely rural, poor population of the country.

On the other hand, foreign entities can also have an impact on your community.  These NGOs often intervene in communities without first consulting the local population.  An NGO might intervene to address an issue that they view as a hindrance to development, but if the community does not share that view, the project will not achieve any real change.  An NGO might fund a series of health education events, providing resources that wouldn’t otherwise be available in the community.  They accomplish their goal of x number of education events or spend all of the funds allocated to the project.  Then they leave.  While x number of community members were “educated,” this approach is completely unsustainable. When the funding runs out and the NGO leaves, no one continues their work.  An NGO might fund the construction of a water pump in a community to improve water access. But when the pump breaks (as everything in Burkina does), community members won’t be able to or won’t consider it their responsibility to repair it.

As Peace Corps Volunteers, our role is supposed to be different, as we are charged with the task of improving our community’s capacity to address their own needs.  If our communities demonstrate this ability, it should be considered success.  In theory, our projects are supposed to empower host country nationals and give them ownership of the project, ensuring sustainability. However, this is an extremely difficult goal to accomplish. So when things happen without us, our suspicions are aroused.  In the past month, there have been a number of these types of suspicious happenings in my community.

Ibrahim’s Theater Presentations

The day after I returned to site in October, I caught up with my community counterpart, Ibrahim.  He informed me that the next day he had organized a theater performance in the village and would like for me to come.

Some background:

Since I arrived at site last December, Ibrahim has been working on a project based out of Banfora (15km away) organized by OXFAM Canada and an NGO called the One Drop Foundation.  The goal of the project is to improve sanitation and hygeine in the region through theater performances, latrine building, and waste management.

Throughout the months of January, February, and March, October, and November Ibrahim was a member of the project’s theater troupe, which traveled to many of the villages in the region.  They traveled with a stage, sound system, lights, and a generator provided by the project.  The performance was the same every time, with a plot concerning a village that had polluted their water supply and had to deal with the consequences.  The performance was extremely impressive and drew relatively large crowds for each performance.   

In January, Ibrahim organized a community trash pickup and a theater performance for the primary school kids in Takaledougou.  For at least two weeks of each of the months April-September Ibrahim attended trainings in Banfora (regional capital 15km away) on various topics related to theater and performance, paid for by the project.  In August, four latrines were installed in the main area of my village.  In September, four trash cans with the Oxfam logo were also installed.

Back to the present:

As far as I knew, Ibrahim hadn’t organized a theater performance in village since the larger performances ended in March.  This particular theater performance was held in the central area of Takaledougou during the day.  The whole play was basically an argument between two couples about where the proper place to shit is (a lot of yelling in Jula).  After the performance, Ibrahim called up individuals from the audience to put on the clothes of certain characters and ask them what they what they would have done instead.  It was a great way to encourage the audience to analyze what they had seen and evaluate whether they had learned anything. However, as with most of the Burkinabe theater performances I’ve seen, people immediately started leaving once they realized the performance was over and they were going to be asked questions.

Ibrahim working the crowd

Clearly it was a really impressive event to set up in village, so after the performance I congratulated Ibrahim. We talked for a while and he explained that he wanted to invite me to another theater performance in a satellite village, but it had been canceled. When I asked why, he said that the project didn’t have the funds available yet so they were postponing the performance.   He then dropped the bomb that each theater performance costs this organization 60,000 CFA ($120) when you add transport, a sound system, oil for 4 hours of the generator (most performances are done in villages without  electricity), and payment for actors/employees.   To put this in perspective, entire Burkinabe families live on less than 1,000 CFA ($2) per day.   I get paid about 140,000 CFA ($280) per month, which most Burkinabe would consider a massive amount of money (cue laughter from my gainfully employed friends).

Proof that Burkinabe love theater performances

Obviously this project has done some great things for the people in my community. It has given Ibrahim countless hours of theater training, built four latrines near the main part of my village, as well as encouraged Ibrahim to set up trash pickups and theater sensibilizations.  Not to mention the project has temporarily employed a few members of my community and paid them handsomely for their work.  However, this NGO has also complicated my work in village.  First of all, my main village counterpart is almost always busy working for this organization, making it difficult to work with him on other projects. This is especially frustrating because he is an amazing counterpart and I haven’t found any other community members that actually have the time or desire to work with me on health education projects.

The organization has also temporarily provided Ibrahim and the rest of the theater troupe with resources they would not otherwise have easy access too, such as a stage, a sound system, and a generator.  Now Ibrahim is of the opinion that he needs a sound system for every theater performance that he does in the future, which is simply not true. This has made it extremely difficult to work with him on any theater related projects because the resources Ibrahim thinks he needs don’t exist in the community.

The Mystery of the Sign

Three days after returning to site in October, I woke up to find that this giant sign had been installed next to the highway that passes by my village.

This translates to “Development Project of Agriculture Financed by the American People.”  The sign carries the logo of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an initiative of the American government that assists developing countries in reaching the “Millennium Challenge” goals of the United Nations.

The chief of the village happened to drinking coffee at the same place as me, so I decided to ask him where the sign had come from.  He explained that some people had showed up the day before with the sign and the manpower/tools to install it.  They had tried to put the sign next to the highway in one location, but he had told them it wasn’t possible because it blocked a pathway next to road.  So they ended up installing the sign a little bit further down the highway.  The chief of the village had no idea what “Development Project” the sign was referring to and suggested that it was probably something in Banfora (15 km away).  After some research it has become apparent that no one in my community knows what the sign refers to.  It was probably installed there because cars have to slow down for the toll booth next to my village.

Cinomade

Four days after returning to site, a Burkinabe organization called Cinomade came to my community.  I’d never heard of the organization before, but it was actually really impressive.  They set up screenings of HIV/AIDS educational videos that were filmed and edited by Burkinabe in the southwest region of Burkina.   They spent the day before the screening walking around my community interviewing people about HIV/AIDS. For the screening, they set up a large projection screen at the primary school complete with a sound system and a generator.

They played back some of the footage of the interviews during the day and the Burkinabe loved it.  Then they showed the first of 3 of the videos they had made called “War of the Sexes.” The entire film was composed of interviews with over 40 individuals asking their opinions on what members of the opposite sex look for in a sexual partner and who is to blame for the spread of STDs.   Married women generally agreed that they can’t control the actions of their husbands and that unfaithful men were to blame.  Young women said they look for men who have the means to support a family, but pointed out that a husband with money can do whatever he wants after marriage.  Young men said that women won’t pay attention to them if they don’t have money and that promiscuous women in search of money were responsible for the spread of STDs.  Older men said they actively sought out younger sexual partners to reduce the risk of getting STDs.

After the film, the facilitator asked audience members to get up and offer their opinions on the questions posed in the film.  This resulted in a lot of young men standing up  and speaking into the microphone.  I was extremely impressed that a woman had gotten up in front of everyone to argue with the men, but I realized that this woman was from Cinomade.  After nearly 45 minutes of heated argument concerning who’s to blame for the spread of STDs, I grew pretty skeptical of the value of the discussion. Finally the director of the primary school got up and made an important point.

It doesn’t matter whose fault it is that STDs spread, it is the responsibility of both sexes to be educated and take measures to protect themselves.   A couple minutes later, the generator ran out of gas the event came to a grinding halt.

I left the event with mixed feelings.  The organization was successful at getting people to talk about sex and HIV/AIDS, which are very sensitive issues in Burkina Faso, but their focus on the “War of the Sexes” seemed counterproductive. It’s valuable to acknowledge different perceptions of sex between genders, but it’s hard to imagine that anyone walked away from the event understanding the importance of what the primary school director said.  The event was also poorly planned, with the generator shutting off in the middle of a speech by the head nurse of the CSPS.  In typical Burkina fashion they started the substantive part of the event 1.5 hours late.  Therefore, they weren’t able to show or discuss the other two films the organization had made, which may have tied together the loose ends left by the “War of the Sexes” video.

Interestingly enough, parents in my community didn’t care if their kids were present for these conversations regarding sex and HIV/AIDS, including a condom demonstration.  Whether they actually wanted their kids exposed to it, they figured their kids wouldn’t understand most of it, or they acknowledged their inability to keep hordes of kids away from a giant movie screen is a mystery to me.

Conclusion

While I’m happy that these projects (with the exception of that sign) are benefitting the people of my community without my involvement, each project is frustrating in its own way. 

Ibrahim is an incredible Burkinabe, but I haven’t been able to work with him on projects for months now because he doesn’t have time and I can’t provide the resources that the project in Banfora provides, namely sound equipment and a stipend. 

The project funded by Oxfam Canada and the One Drop Foundation is the perfect example of a project that doesn’t assess community needs before intervening.  The organization is focused on the public health issues of sanitation, hygiene, and waste management.  No doubt these are problems everywhere in the developing world, but if the community doesn’t view these as public health issues, they will not change their behaviors.

No one in the community thinks the plastic bags strewn about on the ground are a problem. They are going to continue littering even when trash cans are installed and a theater performance tells them not to.  The main message of the regional theater troupe’s performance was to avoid contaminating the water supply.  Not once was hand washing, the core component of hygiene health education, mentioned in any of the theater performances.  The four latrines that have been built in the community are clustered together in a central “marche” area that isn’t residential.  It is highly unlikely that someone not using a latrine before would hike to the central area of town before taking a crap.

And that sign.  I could go on for days about that sign, but let’s just say it’s hard to be seen as a legitimate representative of the American people when I can’t even explain what that giant sign is referring to.

Alas, my vacation to Ghana was canceled at the last minute due to injuries my good friend sustained during his travels, but all is well. I’ll be spending Thanksgiving in Ouaga with my entire training group (G27).  We’ll be eating turkey and drinking awesome home brewed beer! 

Let me explain. At an “Oktoberfest” event last month I met an embassy employee, Chris, who brews his own beer.  I sampled his Imperial IPA at the event and immediately fell in love.   I’ve considered brewing in Burkina, but concluded that it was impossible largely due to the fact that most beers need to ferment for 1-2 weeks in the low 70’s.  In Burkina, the temperature fluctuates between 90-120.  When I asked him about this, he admitted that he has a room in his house dedicated to fermenting beer and he keeps the air conditioning on full blast 24/7.  I cringed a little at this revelation, but decided to forgive him because he brews great beer and he’s super nice.  The guy offered to brew us beer whenever we wanted as long as we gave him advance notice.  For Thanksgiving, he’s brewing us a vanilla coffee porter and some girly fruity beer (that I’m going to publically proclaim is way better than the porter).  Unfortunately, he’s already married.

I also met the new US Ambassador at this “Oktoberfest” event, mistook him for a  Burkinabe, told him his English was really good and asked him what his job was.  Apparently my friend Amber was giving me all sorts of non-verbal cues that we were talking to the Ambassador.  I never learned to speak non-verbal female, which I had considered advantageous until that moment.  The new ambassador actually worked for Peace Corps in several African countries.  He’s the first African to immigrate to the US, become naturalized, and return to Africa as a US ambassador.  Needless to say, Peace Corps Burkina is enjoying a lot more attention from the embassy now.  The “Swear-in” ceremony of the new stage will even take place at the US Embassy in Ouaga!

At "Ouagktoberfest" with the US Ambassador to Burkina

To recap, these projects are frustrating, but at least things are happening.  Except for that sign.  Ibrahim is done with the Banfora project for now, theoretically freeing him up to help me with the Grassroots Soccer programs I want to get off the ground.  We’re working on translating the English manuals to French.  I met the only person in Burkina who brews good beer and fell in love.  The US Ambassador probably thinks I’m

a)    an idiot

b)    a drunk  

c)    a clown

d)    all of the above

And lastly….Happy Thanksgiving!  It’s times like these that I miss my family and friends the most, but I’m surrounding myself with friends, beer, and food which will hopefully dull the pain.  I can’t even begin to describe how thankful I am to have grown up with where I did and with the people I did.  Sending love from  Burkina……might take a couple months to get stateside.

One Year Later...

October 8 marked my one year anniversary of arriving in Ouagadougou, which means that I’ve spent over a year in Burkina!  It feels good to say that.  So I’m going to say it again.  I’ve spent over a year in Burkina!  More than 365 days!  Over 8,760 hours!  But who’s counting……

My training group (G27) one year ago.  We were so blissfully ignorant....and clean....

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I was selected to work as a Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitator (PCVF) for the training of the new group of health volunteers. I spent my one year anniversary in Burkina Faso welcoming the new trainees of Group 29 (G29) at the airport.  In true African travel fashion, their flight from Brussels was delayed and redirected through Togo and Cote d’Ivoire before finally arriving in Ouaga at 8pm, 5 hours late.  I gave them each a cold bottle of water before they got on the bus to the hotel.  I hope that bottle of water made them feel better about Burkina. I know it comforted me when I first arrived in an “there’s cold bottled water somewhere in this country” kind of way.  The group consisted of 21 Health trainees and 10 Community Enterprise Development (CED) trainees.

G29 (Newbs)

We spent the first week at a convent (nuns run hotels) in Ouaga taking care of a lot of administrative stuff and letting the trainees adjust to Burkina.  I’ve obviously spent too much time in this country because I was unreasonably excited that the coffee breaks had cold sodas and chocolate croissants.  I also excitedly told trainees there was a restaurant with ice cream close to the convent.  They smiled at me and responded with a sympathetic “Oh honey...we just came from America” look.  I looked at the other PCVFs and we exchanged an “Oh honey….just you wait” glance.

The trainees quickly realized they were out of their element when we conducted a session focused on living with host families in village.  Topics included how to take a shower out of a bucket and how to defecate in a hole in the ground.  We also tried to cover most of the cultural faux pas that they might commit when first meeting their host families, but ended with the advice that “Oops I’m a stupid American” is sometimes the best excuse.

On Friday, I traveled with trainees two hours south of Ouaga to Leo, where the rest of their training takes place.  They were taken immediately to their host villages and participated in a small “adoption ceremony,” introducing them to their host families.  Thus commenced the most awkward night of their lives. Except for the guy who’d done Peace Corps four times already.  He probably wasn’t too surprised.

Clearly the trainees experienced an overload of Burkinabe culture from the moment they were adopted into their host families, but I’ll just focus on the highlights of the first couple weeks. After a scramble to find TVs in their host communities, the trainees were lucky enough to be able to watch the Burkina national soccer team defeat Gabon for a spot in 2014 World Cup!  They also got a day off to celebrate Tabaski, an important Muslim holiday, in their villages.

Rather than bore you with the contents of the technical training sessions I helped facilitate, I’ve decided to dust off a gem that Hallie and I worked on when we first got to site.  During those months of insane boredom and unbridled enthusiasm for the three goals of Peace Corps, we developed a project plan that addresses all 3 goals while simultaneously following the Peace Corps “Community Development Cycle” model.

Project Plan: Casual Fridays

Sample of a project plan to implement casual Fridays at the Takaledougou CSPS.  Plan follows the community development cycle as advocated by Peace Corps

Where Are We Now?

Baseline Data Collection

·         Observations of dress code at the  CSPS on different days of the week

o   Record numbers of men, women, and children who are casual vs. formal

·         KAP Studies - focus groups designed to collect information on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of a particular segment of society

o   “Casual” KAP Study

§  Knowledge

·         What is your definition of casual?

·         How is casualness transmitted?

·         Are there any negative physical or psychological effects of casualness?

§  Attitudes

·         How do you feel when you are casual?

·         How does it make you feel when others are casual?

·         Is there stigma against those who are casual?

§  Practices

·         On what occasions is casualness practiced?

·         How many times per week would you consider yourself casual?

o   “Friday” KAP study

§  Knowledge

·         What day is it today?

·         How many Fridays are there in a month?  A year?

§  Attitudes

·         Does Friday feel different from other days of the week?

§  Practices

·         What do you do on a typical Friday?

·         What do you wear on a typical Friday?

Where do we want to go?

·         Priorities

o   After a needs assessment, many community members identified the formality of life in village as a key concern

o   Formality was seen as necessary to maintain order, but societal norms were too strictly enforced resulting in the exile of community members who expressed their casuality

·         Ideas

o   Dedicate one day per week or month to casualness

o   Convince community leaders to be more casual, resulting in trickle-down effect that reduces  discrimination against those who are casual

How do we get there?

·         Project Design

o   Goals

§  Promote casualness

o   Objectives

§  Increase community acceptance of casualness

§  Increase number of community members expressing casualness

Execute Plan

·         Casual Friday took place at the CSPS on October 25, 2013

How did we do and what did we learn?

·         Evaluation

o   Over 100 community members showed up to the CSPS in what could be defined as casual wear on Friday.

o   GREAT SUCCESS!

Keepin it casual on a Friday.

The Peace Corps T-Rex Development Cycle.  Often confused with the Community Development Cycle...

After nearly two weeks of straight work, I finally got a Sunday off.  I decided to bike to my former host village, Sanga, and visit my former host family.  I was happy to discover that they recognized me.  I also confirmed my suspicion that my host dad speaks barely any French.  During training, I thought that maybe my pronunciation was just bad, but it became extremely obvious about one minute into our conversation that he had no idea what I was saying.  I also got to see my favorite kid in all of Burkina, my host brother Bouba.  He’d grown about 6in since I last saw him, but he was still the same awesome baby, following his dad everywhere and trying to imitate everything he did.  Leah, the trainee who is now being hosted by the family, and I traded stories about the family.  I found that she already knew the names of more of the kids than I ever did.

Working as PCVF was an extremely stressful experience.  The job requires one to achieve a precarious balance. On one hand, I was treated like a member of the training staff, assisting with session planning, facilitating those sessions, and helping coordinate logistics when necessary.  On the other hand, the trainees saw me as a personal problem solver, an expert on volunteer life in Burkina, and their advocate to in relations with the training staff. Therefore, they approached me with every concern and question that came up during the first couple weeks of adjusting to Burkina Faso.  I was happy to help, but it was overwhelming at times.  It was clear to me that I had adjusted to the work schedule of a Burkinabe village, which allows for much more relaxation than a Peace Corps training modeled on an American work schedule.

However, the PCVF experience was extremely valuable.  I was constantly reminded of how much I’ve learned and grown as a person during the year that I’ve spent here.  It was hard to believe that I had showed up to Burkina with no knowledge of French or Burkinabe culture.  It was also obvious that by now I’ve accepted most of the hardships of life here, because I found some of the trainees’ complaints pretty ridiculous.   My solution to most problems here is to do my best to address them, but at the end of the day putting my headphones in, closing my eyes, and bumping some good tunes. Trainees weren’t always happy with my answers, but I promised myself that I would stay honest because they deserve the truth.

For example, during one session the following question was posed to me: “How many hours of productive work would you say you do each day?”  I explained that the concept of work as a volunteer is completely different from working a 9-5 (or 8-8) job in the States.  I consider any time that I spend with the people in my community “productive work,” because part of my job is cultural integration.  I may not be doing actually health work every day….or even every week….but if I’m interacting with people in my community then I’m doing my job.

In conclusion, one year down, one to go.  New volunteers, new friends.  Casual Fridays.  Ghana in November. 

Cape Town Doesn't Count As Africa

After spending 10 months in Burkina Faso, I was definitely at a low point of my service.  From June through September is the “rainy season” in Burkina Faso, during which it is close to impossible to accomplish anything meaningful in village.  School is out for the summer, but every able bodied adult and child in rural Burkina spends most of their time in the fields, planting and cultivating their livelihood.  During these months, I didn’t feel like I had any work to do at site that would make any difference.  I helped out at Camp G2LOW, which was a great experience, but it also reminded me of the difficulties and frustrations of organizing projects with Burkinabe counterparts. I helped out at the mosquito net distribution, but I didn’t really do anything that the Burkinabe health center staff couldn’t accomplish without me.

I felt trapped in Burkina and it was difficult to see light at the end of the tunnel of my service.  My only solace was that the other volunteers in my training group were feeling exactly the same way, although the “collective suffering” trope only goes so far when you aren’t seeing the fruits of your labor and don’t have much to take your mind off it.  The one thing that kept me going was the knowledge that on August 19, I was finally leaving the country of Burkina and traveling to one of the best cities in the world, Cape Town.

I arrived in Ouaga two days before my flight just to be safe.  After a fun night with my good friend Liz and her visiting boyfriend, I woke up with a nasty Burkina hangover (yes these hangovers are WAY worse than American ones).   That morning, I heard no less than five horror stories about volunteers being screwed over by the very airline I was taking.  Needless to say, I freaked out a little bit.  Ok fine, I had a minor panic attack.  I knew that if I didn’t get on that flight out of Burkina at 6am the next morning, I would be devastated.  As such, I thought the best idea was to show up at the airport ridiculously early and make sure there was absolutely nothing I could do to improve my chances of making it on that flight.  How early is ridiculously early?  16 hours.  I don’t think I’ve made it a secret that this country makes you do insane things.

But sure enough,  at 4am I made it past security, got my ticket, and boarded the flight with a huge smile on my face. To get to Cape Town from Burkina, I flew north to Morocco, boarded a flight to London, and then flew London to Cape Town nonstop.  If you look at a map, you can see that this is a ridiculous flight path, but flying between countries in Africa often requires at least a stop in Ethiopia, if not Europe.  In the past, I did not enjoy airlines or airline food.  After 10 months in Burkina, I couldn’t have been happier.

I arrived on a gorgeous morning in Cape Town, which I was to learn isn’t the norm for the winter months.  Immediately after getting to the hostel and storing my bags, I searched for a breakfast place.  At 8am, I sat down and enjoyed a classic South African bacon-egg roll (one fried egg, bacon, tomato, on a delicious roll), an amazing cappuccino (one of the ones where the foamed milk on top is a work of art), and a milkshake.  I then proceeded to take a cab directly to the closest beach and spent a couple hours walking on the sand and admiring the ocean.

 

First Beach in 10 Months

You may accuse me of being a sap, but there was an emptiness inside me for the past 10 months that I could never fill.  I’m lucky enough that my village is near a stream, so I get to see running water pretty frequently, but it definitely doesn’t give me the same feelings as the ocean.  The only thing that came close filling the void was my visit to the waterfalls of Banfora, but it still wasn’t the same. I know my love for the ocean has something to do with its vastness: how it extends to the horizon and you can never see the other side.  It’s humbling and comforting in a “Don’t let the little things bother you,” and a “That one annoying kid/coworker who pisses you off every day would probably have to be rescued by a lifeguard,” kind of way.  I also know that the power of waves has something to do with it, because I love surfing and have never been particularly impressed by beaches without waves.  However I also like the color blue, I’m a big fan of water, and I’m generally partial to reflective substances, so it might  be nothing deeper than that.

One of my favorite teachers at UCLA was an amazing man named Teo Ruiz.  His specialty was medieval history of Spain and Portugal, which I honestly didn’t really care for.  I’m pretty sure the only worthwhile things to come out of Medieval Europe were the centralization of human government and a society on which  the Game of Thrones could be based on.  However I was addicted to his passion for teaching, his sense of humor, and his habit of having profound revelations in the middle of his lectures.  One such revelation came while he was discussing the geography of Spain and how it influenced the development of the vastly different cultural groups the country.  To illustrate a point he made about the coastal regions of Spain, he mentioned a year long period he had spent living in the middle of rural Spain.  While he admitted that he loved the beautiful rural countryside, he would get extremely restless and ill-tempered every month or so. When this occurred, he would rent a car and drive 7 hours to the nearest coast just to see the ocean.  The ocean calmed him, reminded him of where he came from, and the happy uncertainty of where he might be going.  It seemed logical to me at the time.  I, too, love the ocean. But the significance of his story didn’t completely hit me until moving to Burkina.  A year later he received an award for accomplishments in the Humanities from President Obama. I realized I should probably take this guy seriously.

I could write short novel about my experience in Cape Town, but in the interests of time (and your sanity) I’ll stick with the highlights.  Just keep in mind that anything as marginal as consistent electricity, a cool climate, and running water were pretty groundbreakingly awesome for me.

Taking a break halfway up Lion's Head hike

The geography of Cape Town is, to put it lightly, incredible.  The city is on a peninsula, maximizing the amount of ocean front property and beautiful coastline. The city itself is dwarfed by a large plateau called Table Mountain and a large rock outcropping called Lion’s Head.  The hike up Lion’s Head was precarious, but the views from the top were absolutely incredible, with steep cliff drop offs to the coast below.  The hike up Table Mountain was much longer, but the views from the top were arguably more incredible (if possible) due to its higher altitude.  My first hike up Table Mountain was on an incredibly clear day, which afforded amazing visibility. My second hike was prompted by a call from my Cape Townian friend, Tom on a cloudy morning during which he informed me that there was snow on top of Table Mountain and he was picking me up in 10 minutes.  As we were hiking up the rain eventually turned to snow and Tom was blown away.  It seems that the only natural beauty that Cape Townians lack is snow. To be fair, seeing snow on the top of Table Mountain along with amazing coastal views was incredible.  We built a small snowman and had a snowball fight until we couldn’t feel our hands.  Simply put, the existence of such a beautiful city is a point on the scoreboard for the existence of a higher power.  I think the pictures speak for themselves.

View from the top of Lion's Head

Pondering the mysteries of life on top of Lion's Head. How did this particular lion get lucky enough to watch over Cape Town?  Why is he facing away from the ocean?  If a lion and a shark got in shallow water fight, who would win?

If the city of Cape Town isn’t amazing enough, you can always get out of town and visit some of the hundreds of wineries in the region.  I was privileged enough to go on two wine tasting trips, the first with my friends from the hostel and the second with my parents.  For someone living in the Burkina for the past 10 months, wine tasting is a mind blowing luxury.  The amazing wines of South Africa paired with homemade cheeses and chocolate were nothing short of orgasmic.  During lunch of the first wine tasting, which consisted of butternut squash soup and a South African braii (barbeque) meal of honey mustard chicken and a delicious sausage, I noticed that some of the tour members were feeding their leftovers to the Great Dane puppy (if you can call a dog that big a puppy) and the two wiener dogs.  It occurred to me that those dogs had most likely been eating better than me for the past 10 months.  This moment of self-pity was quickly erased when our football linebacker of a tour guide claimed to be on a diet and gave me his honey mustard chicken skewer.  The second wine tour was pretty rainy, but at one of the wineries I happened to taste the best champagne of my life.  I proceeded to coerce my parents into buying me a bottle (it was only $10) and upon our return to the hotel I chilled the bottle and drank it while soaking in a warm bubble bath.  In that moment of clarity, I realized that the question “Why does living in Burkina Faso suck so much?” can be answered with the philosophical concepts associated with “chilled champagne” and “bubble baths.”

I was also lucky enough to go on two surfing day trips.  The region around Cape Town is littered with incredible surfing spots.  The peninsula on which the city sits gets hit by just about every crazy storm swell coming out of Antarctica and the Indian Ocean.  Based on swell direction and wind, one can choose from west facing breaks, east facing breaks, south facing breaks, reef breaks, beach breaks, point breaks, and everything in between. If I didn’t have a guide to drive me around and choose the spots, I would never have found the amazing waves that we surfed.  Not to mention I would have been putting myself in a lot of danger, as each spot had to be surfed in a particular way and the waves were always twice as big as they seemed from the beach. What blew me away is that the spots we were surfing were almost always empty.  In California good (and bad) surfing spots are always incredibly crowded, making surfing a considerably more frustrating experience.  Maybe the sheer number of surfing spots spreads people out more.  Or maybe it’s the cold water, fickle wind conditions, and sharks that make Cape Town less surfer friendly.  Whatever the reason, I was more than happy to have my pick of the waves coming through.

Surfing trip west of Cape Town.  Table Mountain in the background

View of Lion's Head from Table Mountain

View of Cape Town from Table Mountain

The people I was able to spend time with during my trip were incredible.  After my first day, I happened to run into three girls from Chicago at the hostel, Jacqueline, Charlotte, and April.  April happened to be a returned PCV from Zambia!  I ended up having a lot of fun with them over the next six days and they were incredibly kind, especially considering I had just met them.  I’d like to think we were pretty good friends by the time they left.  The South African who took me on my surf trips, Tom, was also an amazing guy.  He was a 22 year-old born and raised in Cape Town, spending his youth surfing, playing water polo, and lifeguarding. It sounded pretty familiar.  I think he got sick of me telling him that he grew up in one of the most amazing places in the world.  I was also lucky enough to see my parents for the last five days of my trip.  The months that we spent apart melted away quickly, especially after they determined that I was healthy and relatively sane. The amazing food and wine probably helped also.  It was hard to believe that I had spent so much time away from home and it reminded me how much I missed the rest of my family and friends.

Mom and Dad!  My generous vacation sponsors.

Jacqueline, Charlotte, April, and I at the hostel

I was also lucky enough to meet with the organization Grassroots Soccer during my time in Cape Town.  The organization is similar to Coaching for Hope, using soccer as a tool to educate youth about HIV/AIDS, but GRS is unique in the sense that they have worked with PCVs in South Africa to develop a program specifically for use by volunteers in their villages.  They have also developed a malaria education program, which is much more applicable to Burkina Faso because HIV/AIDS prevalence is lower here than most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The health education materials they offered me during this meeting were logically organized, creative, and….well…amazing.  They were 100x better than any health education materials I had ever been offered  by Peace Corps Burkina itself, which was both impressing and depressing.  Quite possibly the best part about Grassroots Soccer is that the Director of Peace Corps partnerships is a former  volunteer from Zambia and completely understood  all of the difficulties of getting the Peace Corps country offices to accept anything remotely new or different.  We swapped stories about our Peace Corps experiences and she admitted that Burkina sounded worse than Zambia, although they are much more similar than they are different (severely impoverished, landlocked, in Africa, etc.).  I’ve made it the main goal of my service to implement the GRS programs in the villages of my site and spread the program to other volunteers in my region, running a series of camps that we can help each other plan and implement.  For more information on the program they have developed for PCVs, check out the link below:

http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/where-we-work/peace-corps-communities/

                                                                                                   

Coming back from vacation, I honestly felt proud of how much time I had spent in Burkina.  Although from a work perspective I haven’t accomplished much, I’ve also learned more about myself and grown as a person.  After my meeting with Grassroots Soccer, I felt like I finally had a larger purpose to my service.  My vacation also reminded me that while living in Burkina is extremely difficult, just being in the developed world, even in a city as amazing as Cape Town, didn’t automatically make me happy. In fact, seeing young people out at restaurants and bars having a good time made me miss my good friends even more than I do in Burkina.  It also made me appreciate the friendships I’ve made with some of the other volunteers in Burkina. These friendships are the only reason I’ve been able to keep an even keel in a country that gives you reasons to be annoyed, frustrated, and depressed every single day.

Looking forward to my next vacation to Ghana in November!