Peace Corps Dave

New post, new design

2011-11-21T07:22:00.002-05:00

I hadn't played with Blogger's templates in quite some time. They've got some nice ones! This one seemed like a good fit. I also removed the striking of "Peace Corps" in the title. As the current Country Director mentioned to me, just because I returned (for a given value of "returned") doesn't mean I'm not part of the Peace Corps family anymore.

Fair point, and it's a good lead in to today's post, which is the story of an event that happened during my service that came up in discussion last night. The discussion was about resistance to change.

One day, I visited my neighbor Pete in Boulsa, his site and my provincial capital. I went there every couple months to get supplies like mayonnaise and margarine - things I couldn't get in my own village. Pete was always a great host, and with few exceptions I generally spent a night or two there when I went. We often ended up cooking something that I wouldn't have the ingredients for in village and he wouldn't have the energy to do alone (I think we can all agree, cooking for one is really a hassle). This particular day, we decided we wanted hamburgers. That wouldn't have been possible weeks earlier, but one of the kiosk restaurants in town had recently purchased a meat grinder and was selling sandwiches. I headed over to bargain over the price of ground meat.

When I get there, it's some guy I'd never seen before. I roll up, we go through the usual salutations, and I ask him if they have meat today*.
"Yes," he says, "we've got some today."
"Great!" I reply. "I'd like to buy some."
"How many sandwiches do you want?"
"No, sorry, that's not what I meant. I just want to buy some meat. How much would it cost for the amount of meat you'd put into two sandwiches?"
He gives me a panicked look. "We don't sell meat. We sell sandwiches."
"I know," I respond gently, "but you could just sell me the meat too, right?"
"No. We sell sandwiches."
"Listen," I say, "You sell coffee here. With the coffee you use bread. So it's not like you won't use the bread I'm not buying. You'll still make your profit. You don't have to sell me the meat at cost, mark it up the same way you would for a sandwich**, and in fact you even make a little more because I don't want you to cook it!"
"Not ... cook ... no ... br - no, sorry, we don't do that."
"Please? It's really easy to do."
"Ok, I'll go ask the owner, I guess, but I think he'll say no."
"Thank you!"

He disappears around a corner, and reappears a few minutes later.

"No, sorry," he says, "I can't sell you the meat like that. I can only sell sandwiches.***"
I'm pretty frustrated by now. And hungry. "Well, that doesn't make any sense, but since I can't change your mind and I need to eat, I guess I'll buy two sandwiches. How much?"
"Sorry," he says, "but I can't sell you a sandwhich."
"WHY THE HELL NOT?"
"We're out of bread."

*Note to anyone thinking about living in West Africa: this is ALWAYS the first step when ordering something at a restaurant. It drove my brother nuts when I visited home and at nearly every restaurant we went to, he'd ask me what I wanted and I'd tell him my first choice and my three backup plans in case they didn't have that. "David," he'd sigh, "yet again, I assure you, they have it."

**With a bit more understanding of the inner workings of business here, I realize how hopelessly unlikely it was that the server would have any understanding of the kiosk's pricing model. In fact, there's a 90% chance the owner himself didn't really track it; he probably set the prices based on what someone somewhere else was charging and assumed that at some point he'd realize his profit. This is a typical amount of bookkeeping for many of the illiterate/mostly innumerate entrepreneurs here, and is one of the biggest constraints on small-scale economic growth. If I joined the Peace Corps again, it would probably be as a Small Enterprise Development volunteer.

***I also realize in retrospect that there's a very good chance the owner was nowhere around, and the guy just went around the corner for appearance's sake. Third partying me when no third party was available. Ah, l'Afrique.

Two stories

2011-09-03T17:31:00.002-04:00

Nothing much to report from me. Work is going well, having fun with friends but haven't done anything spectacular (though my birthday dinner was yummy and my birthday presents very nice), looking forward to spending the holidays with family. So instead, this update I will give you two stories from other people.

A Tuareg in Canada

I recently met a Nigerien (note: "Nigerien" means from Niger, "Nigerian" means from Nigeria. An important distinction should you meet someone from one or the other, as they are very different countries) Tuareg who has spent the last several years in Canada. For his first couple years he worked at a nature reserve filling a function somewhat similar to a forest ranger - just patrolling the park, making sure the people visiting and camping were accounted for, nothing illegal happening, that sort of stuff. His colleagues were a few Canadians and another African immigrant.

Well, a few weeks go by, and winter has fully struck. It's some number of degrees below zero, and someone is getting lazy. The manager calls all the rangers in and says, "Look, I know you're cold, but someone is crapping behind the office without going to the toilets and that's just not gonna work. Who is it?" He's looking kind of pointedly at my friend and the other African. My friend says, "Look, I know why you think it might be us, growing up without plumbing, but if you think after living my whole life in Niger I'm going to go outside and take off any one of the five layers I'm wearing in this insane weather and let my balls get within 20 inches of that snow, you're out of your damn mind." At that point, one of his Canadian colleagues 'fessed up.

An American in Burkina

This one could have happened to me, but it didn't. So, a PCV I know is walking along in his village when he spies a little girl selling ... something. He asks her what it is, and she says it's samsa, which is a fried bean dish that is very common here. He doesn't think it looks like samsa, but she insists that it is, and anyway he likes trying new and interesting foods, so he buys 50CFA worth (about 10 cents, which doesn't put it in perspective, so instead I'll say about the normal cost of one full meal in village). He's sure it's not samsa, but he's excited about trying a new food and brings it to his Burkinabé friend to find out what it is and how he should cook it. His friend laughs and tells him that he's just bought 50CFA worth of mud! The little girl had just been sitting by the road playing, pretending to be a food vendor, and when the weird white guy came around asking what she was selling, she told him. How was she supposed to know he'd actually buy some?! White people ARE crazy. Sure enough, that evening, her dad came by his house to give back the 50CFA and apologize.

Edamame Adventures part 2

2011-07-27T17:25:00.002-04:00

Today I spent the morning filling out forms for a federal background investigation. Then I spent the afternoon in meetings. Until 7pm. Not the sort of day to make you glad to be leaving work so late, though I've had worse. Then I get outside and I have a flat.

It's difficult to describe how that made me feel. I've been sick for over a month, nothing serious but constant low-grade unpleasantness. I'm tired. It's been a long, long day. Work has been extra demanding, extra draining, extra futile it seems sometimes, and here I have a flat, and thanks to my friend buying me a full-size tire for a half-size spare, I have nothing to replace it with. I have already turned down two dinner invitations tonight because I want nothing more than to go to bed, and now this. Ugh.

And then two guys, Ousmane and Ibrahim, offer to help me out. Before moving here if that had happened (and let's face it, in the U.S. it wouldn't have) - I'd have said no. I'd have felt weird...less of a man I suppose*...accepting help for such a thing. I should be able to change my own tire. Heck, I help OTHER people when they need their tire changed.

That's not still the case, and I don't know if that's more because I live here or because I wear a suit to work now, but now if someone offers to help my response is more along the lines of, "Hell yeah, that sounds GREAT!" So I said yes.

But the real turning point in the evening was when I made a conscious effort to enjoy what was happening. One of the great things about this country, something that sets it way apart from the U.S. and even apart from the rest of West Africa, is the "on est ensemble" culture. These guys were helping, not because I seemed helpless, not because they expected a return on it, but because hey, we're all people with problems, and if I can help you out I will and if someone else can help me out in turn, they will. So rather than just doing the typical American thing of either chasing them off (see previous two paragraphs) or just accepting their help and maybe throwing them a few cents, I decided to buy the guys a beer and sit with them. Sure, I was tired and just wanted to be home, but the culture here is all about recognizing other people and I've been losing sight of how important that is too often lately.

So a night that started with an inconvenient flat tire ended with two new buddies, Ousmane and Ibrahim; I know where they live, I know where they come from, I know about their kids, I know about their dreams. They know about my work, they know about my love life, they know about my history.

What a good night.

*I also only thought "gender roles" were a consideration when casting a play, but that's a post for another time, I suppose.

Edamame Adventures part 1

2011-07-03T15:59:00.004-04:00

In my last post I told you about my new car. She now has a name, Edamame. For those who might not know what that is, it's a Japanese preparation of soy beans. The idea was to play off of both her country of origin and other things Volunteer friends might be jealous of. I was kind of partial to Unagi, but I got outvoted.

So far, she's mostly been in Ouaga, excepting trips to my girfriend^*'s site, which is on a main road and an easy drive. Yesterday we took her up to a friend's site to the north for a 4th of July party. Roasted pig with barbecue sauce, macaroni salad, and copious amounts of beer - a good time was had by all.

The adventure part came on the ride back. We had just gotten in to the outskirts of Ouaga when we came upon buses and trucks lined up along the road. And then in the driving lane. Being a proper Ouaga driver, I didn't let this dissuade me, and we began driving in the oncoming lane to get a better look at what was going on. We eventually discovered that the road had been barricaded.

Now, when we first came up to the barricade, small cars were still going around on a dirt strip to the side of the road (less a frontage road and more the seating area of restaurants, but whatever). But for all my bragging above about being a proper Ouaga driver, I was loathe to drive us through a mob of people when I didn't know what was going on, especially given the protests over the last 5 months, so I had turned around to find a place to stop and ask around. Apparently, the folks in the neighborhood got fed up with the condition of the road, and as a resident explained to us, decided to "help" the government see the importance of repairs. He encouraged us to take the road around, that we would be fine, and to "n'hesitez pas." Unfortunately, we already had hesitated, and by the time we got back that side strip had also been barricaded.

So we went back to find our friend who had said there was another but worse way around. He pointed out the road, and we started. We didn't get far. The condition of the road was terrible, and it's entirely possible I left a bit of Edamame's paint on a wall when I had to come up the side of the road as close as I dared to avoid a mud hole. We asked a guy a couple blocks in where we could turn to get to Ouaga, and he told us that there wasn't a road our car could take. So we turned around to find our friend again.

We didn't find him, but someone else had pointed out a different road on the other side of the highway that we might try. Except by "road" I really mean "alley with a ditch running down the middle." And by "ditch" I really mean "place where running flood water has carved out a randomly meandering path." I saw that as ... not a great option. We asked some guys if they could show us how to get around, and while some claimed there was no way, one of them said he knew how we could get out of this, and he'd show us if we followed him on his moto. We agreed. The drive started out on roads that were clearly not intended for routine car use, but weren't so bad for all that. After a while, we started catching glimpses of other cars and 4x4s trying to find their way, but our guy never brought us quite the same way as them - he was better, and got us ahead of them. But it wasn't all coming up roses for us even so. The road got bad. More mud holes. Twice I had all my passengers get out and waited for the stretch of "road" (this time more like "pond") to clear out so that I could get some momentum and minimize my chances of getting stuck in the mud (like a 4x4 in front of me on the other side of the road we saw). We made it through the neighborhood and eventually ended up in an area that was neither being cultivated nor lived on, because it was all uneven rock. I finally did get stuck in a mudhole, but at this point there was no traffic, because we weren't anywhere remotely resembling a road, so at least it wasn't too stressful. And my passengers + guide pushed me out in no time anyway.

As it turned out, the scariest part of the drive wasn't mud, nor traffic, nor mobs, nor worrying about bottoming out on uneven terrain. It was the last part of this rocky formation we were crossing, where we had to cross a narrow strip between two gorges^**. Just wide enough for the car and either side sloping off and gravel-covered. I was a little worried we'd end up sliding off. But not worried enough to balk, and we made it.

I hear the demonstration didn't last long, and we probably could have waited it out and possibly even done so without losing any time (our detour to get around this 500m stretch of road took over an hour). But hey, it's a heck of a story.

^*The first time I've used that word on this blog. It should at least explain the "outvoted" comment above.
^**Ok, "gorge" is a bit much. But we're talking a good 5- or 6-foot drop onto rock; these weren't just drainage ditches.

I have a car!

2011-06-02T04:48:00.002-04:00

An old beater, but it's nice to feel less exposed when I'm driving around at night. I still use the moto during the day because I'm much more comfortable on it in traffic...and I've been wondering what that says about my approach to driving. Of course, the fact that the car is a manual transmission - as they all are here - doesn't help; I've never had a manual as my main mode of transportation other than a couple days when my car was broken down and my brother-in-law loaned me his. Interestingly enough, that was in Atlanta, and the traffic here reminds me of Buckhead around the mall - a mass of people ignoring traffic laws in the hopes of getting one car-length ahead, with the aggregate result of slowing everyone down, even those who have gotten ahead.

A friend asked me yesterday if I got it for the same reason she did - that she didn't feel safe on a moto. I said yes and no. Like I said, I'm totally comfortable on the moto in traffic, so no. But should I happen across soldiers who have decided to take to the streets shooting in the air, I'd feel much safer in a car, so yes.

It's funny the way my friend E brags to people back home about the car. Imagine, in the U.S., your friend in high school getting the first car of any of you. And it's a lamborghini. And it fights crime. That's the level of excitement we're talking about here. For a 1987 Nissan Sunny, a car which my friend Carson was kind enough to research on Wikipedia: "In 1996, Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear fame) declared the Nissan Sunny to be the 'worst car in the world, ever' and destroyed one by flinging it from a trebuchet pulled by a tractor." Thanks, Carson! People here LOVE the car. I bought it from the consular, and embassy employees have particular guidelines about things like this, one being that they can't make money on the transaction. So he sold it to me for what he paid for it a couple years ago. The reader is at this point unimpressed; he or she is thinking "So what? You should have paid LESS, not more!" But gentle reader, to fully understand, you must take into account two more facts: 1-here, an old car means a car that has proven it can survive, and 2-the car is an import from a country where they are sold much cheaper. I bought the car for about half of what most used cars go for here, and it's in much better shape. All of the local hires at the embassy, knowing the price rule, hounded the consular to sell them the car, and when he sold it to me instead (another guideline - Americans get first shot at your stuff when you're leaving) they fell over themselves letting me know that the moment I wanted to sell it they were available. Anyway, being in the gray area of a consultant for the embassy rather than a direct hire, I'm not bound by the same guidelines, so this car can easily be thought of as an investment, not just a ride.

All that said, immediately after getting the car I had a problem with the battery. The previous owner drove the car every day, but after getting it I let it sit several days; like I said, I still prefer my moto. And then found the battery had died. The experience of getting it started again is definitely worth recounting here:

I drive my moto to my friend's bar to ask where I might find a mechanic in the neighborhood. She isn't there, but her 14-year-old helper is, so I give her my helmet (she gets a huge kick out of that) and she hops on the back of the bike to show me where to go. We get to the garage, they say they'll call the mechanic, and I bring 14yo back to the bar where she works (just had to emphasize that again). By the time I get back to the garage, an available mechanic has been found, and I tell him that my car won't start and that I'm pretty sure it's the battery, so he finds another battery and hops on the back of my moto. I take him to my house. He tests the old battery by putting a wrench on each node and touching them together. No spark. He takes it out, hooks up the new one, and does the same thing. Huge sparks. I note that he is not wearing gloves. He seems unconcerned. He has me start the car. It works. He expresses his opinion that the old battery is out of acid, and unscrews the tops to several cells to show me. It is not out. He proposes a second hypothesis: the acid is "weak." To test this theory, he DIPS HIS FINGER IN THE BATTERY ACID AND THEN HE TASTES IT. I hurriedly point out the tap in the courtyard so he can rinse off, and privately note that I now understand why his fingers seem slightly stubby. He tells me that he was right; I choose to believe him without replicating his experiment. He puts the old battery back in, connects the nodes between the new and the old by holding two wrenches across them, and tells me to start the car. I express concern again (he must think I'm one heck of a namby-pamby) that the resulting shock might ruin my screened-in porch as he is hurled through it, but he assures me that he is "ready." I start the car. It works. I drive him back to the garage, where they tell me I should drive around now to recharge the battery and replace it soon. I ask the owner of the garage how much I owe. He tells me to just give the mechanic whatever I feel like. I give him about two dollars, which is more than I would normally pay for 20 minutes worth of work with no new equipment being installed (similar work on my moto would cost about 40 cents), but I feel like it's worth building goodwill with the neighborhood mechanic. Though I'm walking a fine line between "goodwill" and becoming "that white guy that we can charge three times what we would everyone else." Both the mechanic and the owner express amazement at how good a shape the car is in, given its age. Then the owner turns to me and says, "Did a white guy own it?" I say yes, and both give the universal grin, nod and sigh of a mystery explained.

So, I mentioned above the soldiers. They're still at it. And everyone is tired of it. Really our threshold has gone way up; you don't hear people expressing fear anymore, just irritation. I won't go on a rant here, tempting as it is because it won't solve anything. I'll just leave it at this: it is still the case that foreigners are not being targeted for the most part, and there is definitely not an anti-Western sentiment. In fact, for the first time ever, last night a Burkinabé expressed concern to me that the riots may prevent foreign investors from funding development in Burkina. So don't worry too much.

My computer moves in mysterious ways

2011-04-16T10:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday morning my computer decided it no longer felt the need to access any site that uses https. Upshot: No gmail, no facebook, pretty much no access to anything requiring a login. So I've been able to follow what's going on but not able to comment. Today I finally remembered that I still had Kait's old computer. It's on its last legs, but I got it running long enough to catch up on messages.

And now my computer is randomly working again. So I'll try to update while I have a chance.

Yesterday

Today

The news wires are making a big deal out of Blaise "dissolving" the government, but that's less of a big deal than it seems to westerners. After every presidential election, the government is dissolved and new ministers are appointed; rather, most of the ministers are re-appointed, but those who didn't perform to the President's satisfaction are replaced. In other words, this dissolution is a sign that heads WILL roll, but it's not quite the drastic move it may seem.

This is an ugly situation. But I am ok. So far my neighborhood has remained calm. And in case any family of current volunteers are reading this, as usual Peace Corps is taking excellent care of them, and anyway none of this has spread outside of Ouaga.

If anyone wants to get in touch with me, let's assume email won't work since I don't know what caused my connection problem nor do I know what fixed it. Facebook should be reliable since I changed my connection settings, but as always the only sure bet is to give me a call. +226.75.90.71.83

Du courage to all of us.

Events haven't warranted

2011-03-17T03:38:00.003-04:00

All has been calm since Tuesday, and what actually happened on Tuesday remains unclear. The students gathered in Zogona/Zone du Bois, but the military made it very clear that renewed demonstrations were not welcome. That there were injuries is certain, and I have a first-hand report of shots fired in the area...but the extent of casualties isn't being reported anywhere. Not too surprising given the treatment of journalists during the Friday march (Anglophones: I think that bit only showed up in one of the French articles I linked. At least one journalist says police struck him and took his camera; others have claimed they were chased away).

For some reason, all the news outlets seem to think that the University closure is the biggest part of the story, but while that's a big deal (though I recently read that the universities haven't been functioning for a year anyway because of unofficial professorial striking; frustratingly, I can't find that link again), it overlooks the equally important closure of ALL schools. This is ... indescribably unfair.

The life of a student in Burkina Faso is HARD. I had students who biked 15km every morning to come to class. Some of them didn't really have any family in our village, so their options at lunch were to bike home or go hungry - they certainly didn't have the money to buy food. In theory, the school had a canteen to serve lunch to just that population; in practice, said canteen was open for about a week and a half of the school year. Many of the students had no one to speak French with at home, so they barely spoke the language they were being taught in. Above the homework we professors gave, they have penurious chores, like hauling water 2 km or more in calabashes on their heads, or in certain seasons getting up at 3 in the morning to work the harvest. Often sick from malnutrition or contaminated water, students who miss class face more than just the loss of points for whatever assignments happened to be due that day - they will likely also receive a penalty deduction of more points. That can be avoided by going to the doctor and getting a note - but when you're sick, biking 15km is not an attractive option. And on top of all of that, many of the students aren't getting any support at home - a sad fact is many students are not only not encouraged to attend school, they are forced by their families to drop out so that they have more time to plant the fields, or work in their father's shops, or help their mothers cook for the passel of young children in the courtyard.

That's not all the challenges. Just some of the major ones, enough to make my point. Which is this: if you see a student in your class, they REALLY WANT TO BE THERE. And now every student in the country is being told, "No, there's a danger you might stand up and demand that police officers not beat you to death, so we're just going to nullify all the sacrifices you made this year to get to get an education. After all, it's not like an educated populace is good for the country, anyway!"

Apologies. In the next post I'll take a step back from the editorializing and get back to letting my friends and family know what's going on.

Quiet today.

2011-03-14T07:38:00.004-04:00

An impressively thorough report on Friday's protests. Even for you non-francophones, check out the video at bottom to get some idea of the scale of the march.

It's hard to know what will happen tomorrow. The report above says there will be a meeting at the university. The professor I met yesterday said the teachers would demonstrate. Various expats I've talked to have said that they've heard the students will try to march again, specifically to take the road that they were prevented from taking Friday (which would have led to the police headquarters). Some say it's calm today because they're all regrouping.

Updates as events warrant.

It's not over...

2011-03-12T07:22:00.002-05:00

Friday was quite a day. We had an interesting moment in the office as I and two of my coworkers compared our reactions. Without revealing who was who, as we watched smoke rise in the not-distant distance, one of us expressed annoyance at the logistical problems being caused by road shutdowns, another nervousness at the prospect of widespread violence, and the third excitement for the Burkinabé people asserting their rights.

The short version.

The long version (fair warning, some of these links are in French):

Despite my assurances in my last post, all has not been quiet in Burkina.

As I mentioned there, it all started on Feb. 22 with the death of a student in police custody in Koudougou. The police claim it was illness, the students claim it was brutality. I have no independent information to confirm or deny either cause; I can only say that either is entirely credible.

From there, protests quickly spread, many following the Koudougou example of violence and the burning of government buildings. The word on the street here is that in at least 20 towns buildings have burned. I sat down with a Burkinabé friend, and between the two of us we could list 13 of which we'd heard news reports or first-hand accounts:

Koudougou, Kongoussi, Kaya, Ouahigouya, Léo, Boura, Koupela, Pouytenga, Diapaga, Gourcy, Dori, Yako, and one I can't remember.

Above that number, I can name several more where I know there were protests or riots, but I don't know whether there were injuries or damages: Tougan, Sabou, Bogandé, Boulsa, Fada, Bobo, Tenkodogo, Gaoua, and Po.

In short, this thing is big. In response, university students in Ouaga planned a massive "peaceful" march for last Wednesday. However, other groups wished to join in (unfortunately, I've lost the link to that story), so the march got moved to Friday. There was also some disagreement about the route to be taken.

Yesterday, the roads were lined with police. The students marched, peacefully as planned, up until the intersection where the two routes (one proposed by the protesters, the other by the mayor) diverged; at that point, the students that tried to take their chosen route were teargassed. The smoke we saw from my office was the result of tire fires, which the students lit along their entire route - driving from work last night and back in this morning, I noticed at least a dozen charred spots along the roads (one exactly 2 blocks from my house!). From friends scattered around Ouaga, I heard about similar fires in Zone du Bois, Zogona, Zad, and possibly Pissy.

Other than that, I didn't hear about any injuries until this morning, when I stopped by my aforementioned friend's kiosk. In my neighborhood at least one kid was injured when another selling drinks hit him with a bottle. The news reports say there was at least one death yesterday, and that protests continue around the country, though I saw nothing driving into town.

There will be more Monday. While sitting with my friend, a fellow who works at the University joined the conversation and expressed in no uncertain terms his and his colleagues' anger with the government, both in general and specifically with their handling of this situation.

Last week was the students. Next week, the teachers. It's not over.

I admit it. Of the three of us in the office Friday, I was the nervous one.

Who knew I'd post LESS once moving to Ouaga?

2011-02-26T06:46:00.002-05:00

In the news:

Egypt is awesome. Gaddafi (or whatever spelling is currently in vogue) is a terrible human being. Cote d'Ivoire is on the brink of civil war. And in a surprise move, the New York Times has actually chosen to give Burkina a bit of coverage. Naturally about violent protests. I hasten to add that they are a) far from here, b) not related (directly) to the unrest in other countries, and c) demonstrably not in great danger of spreading (there was already a sympathy protest here in Ouaga that was entirely peaceful in nature).

In other news, I have a new address. I can finally stop using my Volunteer friend as my mule (for all the good that's done; my brother sent me something a month ago and she still hasn't gotten it).

David Duckworth
06 BP 10539
Ouagadougou 06
Burkina Faso

I now have about 10 minutes left to actually talk about my life. Fortunately, I have little enough to say...

The job goes on. Soon I will be entering negotiations for a second year. Both my boss and I will make a good faith effort to come up with something, I think - I like the job and she likes how I'm doing at it - but it is entirely possible she won't be able to come up with enough money for staying here to be the right career move for me. So we'll see, and that's all I can say on the matter at this point.

Two weeks ago I played poker with a mixed crowd of embassy and missionary types. I lost. Depressingly quickly. The next game is tonight, so hopefully I'll perform to a somewhat higher standard. That was pretty much the first time I'd hung out with anyone other than PCVs. Which is neither here nor there, just the way things are.

I now have a pool table at my house. I've had a Wii for a while. I'm on the brink of getting internet. Soon all the Volunteers will love me! I'm not above buying friends, don't judge me.

And now I'm out of time. I'll close with one of my new favorite quotes; it's great for both its cynicism and its perverse vanity:

"I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." - by Johnson, Samuel

New Year's Update!

2011-01-07T05:01:00.002-05:00

Apologies to the parents, who requested I do this, well, actually on New Year's.

Further apologies to any reader who may already have seen my description below of New Year festivities, since I've used variations of it in a couple emails.

Happy New Year! My best wishes! May God grand you lots of prosperity, health, and all the good things in life!

Saying something resembling the above is more or less mandatory in this country the first time you see someone after Jan 1. Until at least about March. It is also typical-almost-to-the-point-of-being-rude-if-you-don't to send text messages with something like that to anyone you may not see in that time frame. My favorite this year came from my best student last year, one of the few I had who moved on to high school this year:

Je vous envoi un chèque de 100 ans qui je serai payé à la banque de santé,situé sur l'avenue prospérité,rue de la paix,porte du bonheur,guichet 2011.Bonne fète.
(For what it's worth, I didn't teach his French class. Don't blame me.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Spent Christmas in Bobo. Two years ago I spent New Year's there. This time we didn't go out to a fancy dinner and show, though; we cooked. We also each introduced everyone in the group to one of our Christmas traditions. I hope my mom will forgive me for the one I chose: I made peanut butter balls. I think she will, considering that there were almost nothing like the ones we make at home. The peanut butter was the local stuff (no sugar, preservatives, emulsifiers...just ground peanut and oil), and the chocolate was melted candy bars - no semi-sweet baker's chocolate to be found here! Nothing I could use to temper it! Which meant I had to keep them in the fridge. But they tasted yummy all the same. We also did Secret Santa pagne stockings. I received a new cap that I love (the attentive reader will notice that I got a hat last time I was there, too...new tradition?), in a stocking my mom would love - it says "Jesus est né" all over.

Did little during the lull between the holidays, and loved every minute of it. I went to work for a couple days and taught myself a bit about MS Excel pivot tables, but mostly I just goofed off. For several days, my friend E stayed in Kait's* room (yep, that's still how I refer to it. I've even heard some of my friends refer to my place as "Kait's house"!), so it was a lovely week of good company and no responsibilities.

Then New Year's itself rolled around. And in all honesty, I was considering skipping it. It's not at all my favorite holiday, staying up that late seems more like a chore than anything else these days. But I'm glad I didn't, we ended up having a crazy good time. Every time we hit a snag in the plan, it turned out to make the evening EVEN BETTER:

BAD: We couldn't find a cab.
GOOD: But the bus stopped for us even though we weren't at a stop.

BAD: But the bus wasn't going where we planned on going.
GOOD: But It was going to a different nice restaurant.

BAD: But it's a restaurant usually very full of tourists and with a snooty yet inefficient staff.
GOOD: But even though there were very full, the staff was on the ball, seated us right away, and was on top of our orders the whole night.

So from there we decided to go to our favorite bar, a little place run by a French guy who loves Americans and always has jazz or motown playing.

BAD: It was 1130 and they don't open 'til 1 AM.
GOOD: But he served us anyway, and we rang in the New Year shooting tequila with the owner.

Then, we decided to go dancing, by which I mean the pretty girls decided to go dancing and we guys decided that following them was better than drinking with each other.

BAD: They picked my absolute least favorite club.
GOOD: But there were no hookers in sight (seriously, that's why I hate that club, it's just depressing, I tell anyone who will listen that the hallway to the bathroom reeks of cheap perfume and broken dreams), the music was higher quality than usual, I danced with a very attractive non-hooker (um...probably, anyway), and there was a group of French guys who were hilarious and wearing crazy wigs. One kept insisting on unbuttoning my shirt.

So that was my holiday. It was a good one. Sorry, no photos - I still haven't visited my old village (shame on me), and my camera is still packed away in one of my trunks. Er, I hope.

*Wondering why in this case I broke my no-name rule? Because Kait is back in the States now, sad face, which means no discussion of her time here is likely to lead to badness. Miss you, Kait!

We'll need ADP, LTP, ESA and DPM to approve the RAP, including an inventory of PAPs, to meet the CP.

2010-12-02T05:02:00.004-05:00

UPDATE 3 Dec 2010: I forgot to mention that the above sentence could also be "We'll need PDA, PSF, DEES and PD⁺ to approve the PR, including an inventory of PAPs, to meet the CP." And it means exactly the same thing in exactly the same order.

⁺It's a question of whether the abbreviations are French or English. The reason I flagged this one is that I got it backwards - I used the French abbreviation in the title where all the others are English, so in this update I put the English abbreviation in where all the others are French. This demonstrates pretty clearly how confusing this can be. Also worth noting is that even when speaking English, I pronounce the string DPM as the French letters.

That's my world these days. Never mind what it means, though in fact in MCC/MCA-speak it's a perfectly cromulent sentence.

For the last two weeks, I've been neck deep in the contract that controls 9/10 of our entire diversified agriculture project. No, scratch neck deep. I've been in way over my head. But, with the necessary parties finally mostly signing off, it looks like I can stop having nightmares* soon. Until the next fire that needs putting out, anyway.

Other than that...well, there isn't much other than that. I've worked every day since Tabaski, though on Thanksgiving I was able to get off a couple hours early. It's been pretty intense. Hopefully, in 4 years we'll look back on the project and see that yes, it was all worth it. Not that I'm currently in the habit of looking four years ahead. It's a good morning when I have an idea of what meetings I'll have after lunch that day.

But things are going well for all that. On the nights I don't have to work late, there's usually a Volunteer friend or two in town I can spend time with. I've gained weight thanks to the much better variety of food in Ouaga, which should thrill my mom no end. Though I need to get a gym membership so I don't gain any more - enough's enough! Finding time to actually use such a membership will be its own challenge, but ça va aller.

Anyway, the short version of all this is that I don't have much to say, I've been too busy working to do much that would spark a reader's interest. Just wanted to update so everyone knows I'm still here.

*Literally. I had a dream in which a friend asked me to join her for lunch. I explained to her that the four-page document she'd submitted to me describing said lunch really needed a lot of work on its timelines and deliverables before I could accept.

In memoriam

2010-10-29T12:20:00.002-04:00

Early this week, my APCD from Peace Corps, Sebraogo Kiendrebeogo, passed away after fighting cancer for several months. He was 40 years old. He leaves behind his wife and two young children.

I don't think I ever really talked about Seb here. I mostly talked about my fieldwork. Oh heck, let's be honest: I mostly talked about myself. But let me tell you about my boss, Seb, who was one of the greatest bosses I've ever had - and I've been fortunate enough in my career to work for some pretty amazing people.

Seb had been a teacher here in Burkina himself before working with the Peace Corps. He then worked with the Peace Corps for several years, first as a technical coordinator for stagiares for both Secondary Education and Girls' Education and Empowerment, and finally as the APCD for Secondary Education. But that's just his resumé. It tells you that he had the knowledge, but it doesn't begin to convey how he used it, how devoted he was to his colleagues, how ardent he was about helping people.

I chose that last adjective with care; I'd originally written "...how serious he was about helping people." Not that he didn't take his work seriously, but it's hard to use the word "serious" to describe someone whose smile and whose laugh were so infectious. And who did both so very, very often. You couldn't stay in a bad mood when Seb was in the room.

Peace Corps is a tough job, and how much a Volunteer enjoys it, and how successful she or he is, depends in no small part on the support he or she receives from the main office. The Peace Corps Burkina office is an incredibly supportive group of people. Everyone there goes out of his or her way to help the Volunteers, often working long hours and well outside of their written job descriptions to do whatever it takes. And even among such a group of supportive, wonderful people, Seb stood out.

Goodbye, Seb. The world's a better place for your having been in it.

Voulez-vous que je fasse une entrée en français?

2010-10-18T04:52:00.004-04:00

D'accord.

Ce weekend passé, moi et ma co-locataire, K, nous sommes allés à Kaya pour rendre visite des amis. Plus précisement, des anciens voisins. Il y a je ne sais quoi de ce province-là qui m'inspire à trop boire...

Quand même, le voyage s'est passé très bien. Nous avions programmé d'aller à la piscine, mais malheureusement ceci était trop sale puisque l'appareil de filtrer était tombé en panne. Et alors, contre le chaleur il n'y restait qu'une seule option : la bière. Dont nous buvions beaucoup. Et puis du vin. Et vu que nous ayons apporté notre narguilé, il nous semblait très ridicule de le laisser inutilisé!

Au travail, ça va. Comme on dit en Mooré, bilf-bilfu, qui veut dire petit à petit. Il y a toujours des petits problèmes informatiques, et on pourrait bien dire qu'il y a toujours des crises de toutes sortes, mais rien d'impossible à maîtriser. Au moins, ce n'est jamais ennuyeux...

Et en parlant du travail, il faut que j'y aille. À tout à l'heure, chers amis.

On living overseas

2010-10-08T10:45:00.002-04:00

I'm posting this from my computer. The work computer that I couldn't get to work on Blogger before. The problem, it turns out, is IE's unreasonable assumption that if it can't load a page in 30 seconds, it can't be loaded. Not that it's entirely appropriate to use my work computer to blog in any case, but hey, I'm on my lunch break. And since no one in this country has administrative privileges to this computer anyway, were I to log off no one else would be able to log on.

I won't be paid for September until mid-October. This would be much less frustrating (which is not to say it would be ENTIRELY without frustration) if I'd had some advanced warning. It has to do with the end of the fiscal year, and the way my contract works...and the fact that I live 4 timezones away from my employer's headquarters. Which is, incidentally, another reason why no one else could use this computer if I weren't - the embassy closes at 1230, so my MCC (remember, that's the American side of the organization) coworkers have left. But MCA (the Burkina side) doesn't shut down, and there's a weekly phone call with the Washington folks at noon their time. 1600 our time...but then, I should save my complaining until early November, when you clever folks in the US (most of you, anyway) go on Daylight Savings and I don't. By the way, did you know, dear reader, that while both the US and most European countries use Daylight Savings, we don't switch on the same day? There will be a couple weeks in late October when I'm only an hour off from Paris time (instead of the two I have been), but am still at the same time difference with respect to home. Sheesh.

The inspiration of the title of this post is the phone call I just had with the lending institution to which I owe rather more money than is prudent thanks to a desire whilst in grad school to be able to pay for things like gas and groceries. Ah yes, our higher education and student loan system is a clever one. Anyway, they called me (actually, my parents) a couple weeks after I closed my Peace Corps service to let me know that my loans would go back into repayment. By the way, kudos to you Citibank for giving me a grace month. It's not enough for many freshly returning PCVs, but it's frankly one month more than I expected. Since, upon answering, my parents very modestly admitted to not being me, the loan officer gave them a rather cryptic message for me (have him call this number, then use this code. Very cloak and dagger sounding, no?). I called the number and gave them the code (which was just a string of letters and numbers; I don't see any fundamental reason why it couldn't be something like, "The raven calls at midnight when the full moon is in view," but then I guess romantics make lousy loan officers. At least from the point of view of the bank), and during the conversation mentioned to them that to avoid such back-and-forth in the future, they should just call my phone here (I might have also made this suggestion because since I'm already paying them so much, I feel no need to pay fifty cents a minute to call them when they have a message for me). They agreed. Hooray, problem solved, pack it in, let's go home.
Or not.
I've been trying for two days to log onto their site and pay. The above-mentioned internet problem reared its head - their site is clearly not optimized for speed - so today I brought my personal computer to work. Because, you know, it's nice having a computer that I can adjust basic things on, like how long my browser will try to load a site before timing out. Or adding printers. (**Side rant. Look, USG, I appreciate good security. I'd even go so far as to say I'm more aware of it than many of your employees. Make me change my password because you know I won't otherwise, that's fine. Restrict my access, that's fine I guess, as long as we're both on the same page that it's a little bit insulting to my intelligence, because if you honestly believe I have evil intent then you know that physical access is everything and after spending 20 minutes of googling I could own this machine even though I know nothing about hacking currently, so you have to either be worried that I'm susceptible to social engineering hacks, or worse, you simply think I'm too dumb to be allowed full access because I'd break something. Whoops, that was a side rant to the side rant. Backing up, what I'm getting at is that it's just silly to run an overseas post where EXACTLY ZERO PEOPLE have administrative access to my computer. I'm not irritated [much] that I can't add the office printer to my laptop myself. I'm THOROUGHLY frustrated that NO ONE here can do it and I have to call someone in Washington so they can remotely access my machine to do something so trivial.**) So I finally manage to load up the page...and I can't see my account info because, it says, I need to update my phone number. Whisky Tango et cetera. I call (more money being spent just so I can be allowed to pay them), and find out - after many, many minutes on hold (yet more money I'm spending just to convince Citibank to let me pay them...hm, do they own stock in my cell phone provider?) - that the problem is my new phone number. It's not in the US. Their system can't handle that.
Seriously.
So, long story short, sorry Mom and Dad, you're going to continue to get phone calls about my loans, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to pay them. Which would leave me getting the phone calls, not you, but they'd be much less pleasant ones.

a long overdue update

2010-09-26T09:47:00.001-04:00

Here's irony: I'm sitting at one of a handful of restaurants in Ouaga
with wireless internet, I have a computer with me, and yet I'm still
updating from my phone. The computer, you see, is work-issued, and
blocks most social networking sites.

WORK
Where to begin? Though I have held real jobs before, my new one is
like nothing I've done in the past. I've been in jobs where meetings
were a success if they stimulated discussion and new trains of
thought. I've been in jobs where meetings were a success if necessary
administrative information was delivered. I'm not sure I've ever been
in a job where a meeting is a success if the sole result is the plan
to have another meeting.
Which is not to say I don't enjoy my job. It's fascinating. And
sometimes surreal, especially for someone a month out of Peace Corps.
Imagine this: two months ago, to get anywhere for work I would either
bike or take a 15-year-old van with the original shocks, crammed with
twenty people, going down a dirt road to get to the next slightly
bigger village. Now if I need to get somewhere for work, I only take
my moto if for some reason the embassy driver is busy. Surreal.
And high pressure. When you've got 5 years to turn half a BILLION
American dollars into structures and systems that will still be
helping an economy develop 15 years in the future, deadlines are
tight. Hence why I have a work computer at my Sunday lunch.
To be fair, said lunch is grilled carp with a savory Senegalese sauce.
Not just rice cooked with beans and oil. Having a paycheck and not
just a volunteer stipend has its advantages.

A shiny new career begins

2010-08-27T19:39:00.003-04:00

So, as you can see from the new(ish) title and the changes to the sidebar, I've finished my service with the Peace Corps. Joining the Peace Corps is one of the best decisions I've ever made, and both because it is so recent an experience and because it is so profound an experience, you'll find I still reference it a great deal. But that's no longer what this blog is about. Basically what I'm saying is I'm too lazy to make a new blog just because I have a new job title. Which is, by the way, "Development Specialist Assistant." I'm pretty sure that's NGO-speak for "newbie." While my contract in that position doesn't technically start for another couple days, I've just spent the last two in meetings getting a whirlwind orientation to the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Washington, D.C., and what sort of stuff they do in Burkina Faso. So it's reasonable to go ahead and refer to this post as my first as a development worker for the U.S. government.

I was both excited and nervous about this job already. My orientation has intensified both of those feelings. The MCC does REALLY cool stuff! That's the excitement part. The nervous part is wondering how well I'll do - because the learning curve is steep, the responsibilities many, the time short. But at least I'll never be bored.

Walk a mile in my shoe
When I arrived in Largo (which is a nice area, but very far from DC center), I asked at the front desk about a shuttle to a nearby shopping center. For whatever reason, their every-half-hour shuttle wasn't running that half hour, and since I like walking anyway I decided not to wait to start the mile-and-a-half walk to the area. After about a half mile, the sole of my right shoe peeled away from the leather of the shoe. Fun! Of course, I could have turned around and halved my time walking half-shoeless, but that's just not my style. I eventually made it to a grocery store where I found Krazy glue and fixed my shoe. After putting it back on, I shopped a bit in the area. As I was checking out at a nearby pharmacy, an older lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me, weren't you walking around with one shoe earlier?" I responded in the affirmative and explained the situation. She said, "Oh, I'm glad I ran into you, because I saw you on the street and I wondered what on earth that crazy guy was doing!"

Fair enough. My blisters wonder the same thing - apparently a month back in the US is enough to lose some of the hard-earned callouses I built up in BF.

On being old
Picture me in a suit and tie, sitting at a Starbucks sipping a soy latté and reading government contracts to prepare for a meeting. I felt so urban and professional! I felt like a real, for true adult!

Then a young woman walked in. She was dressed much as you'd expect a young professional to be. But she looked about 13! I thought to myself, "Surely I'm not so old that someone in her early 20s looks that young. How depressing." A few minutes later I overheard her telling her coffee companion about how 7th grade was going. Whew! I'm NOT so old!

I hate running
Did it in grad school. I lost weight and quit smoking. Running is good for you. But I don't enjoy it. Not at all. That said, there's a really large number of good-looking women in DC who jog. So, if I ever find I just have to take it up for some reason, I'll have to consider moving here to increase my motivation.

Don't jaywalk in DC
Not because you'll get a ticket. Just because you're likely to get hit. Traffic here is merciless. Don't worry, I neither got a ticket nor hit. But I almost got hit by a turning vehicle...a Segway, to be precise. Which made me wonder: since the Segway is supposed to replace walking, which of us had the right-of-way? As always, of course, the answer is the one that would have better survived the collision. Win: Segway.

My favorite tie and my favorite...
It's bright orange. It's kind of shiny. And it always gets compliments. I wore it to my first day of meetings. My favorite comment I got that day was that I displayed "sartorial derring-do." Sartorial is such a fun word!

Not a real post

2010-08-16T13:01:00.002-04:00

I am currently in the US getting fat. I've just received a rather scathing email from my mother informing me that this is no excuse not to update my blog; I can play the passive aggressive game too, so rather than walking into the other room to respond to her, I'll acknowledge that here instead. Just kidding, mom! But as noted in the title, while this may be a reply to her, it is not really the response she was requesting.

Anyway, this post is administrative in nature, which is to say that it's not about my life, it's about this blog. I've updated the "About Me" sidebar to reflect my new employment, and as said sidebar links to an old post including contact info, I've updated that post appropriately.

Du courage a tout le monde, vous qui je ne peux pas retrouver lorsque je suis lá, vous me manquez quand même.

Last post as a volunteer?

2010-07-18T07:57:00.002-04:00

Maybe. I COS soon, and my last week will be filled with paperwork and travel. So this may very well be it. But I had to choose my words carefully - because it almost certainly isn't my last post from Burkina.

In September, I'll start my new job with the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Ouagadougou. This is development work at the other end of the spectrum - big money, large projects, high-level government involvement. It's really exciting work, and a jumping-off point for a real career in international development. My focus will be on agriculture development (mostly with irrigation), though I'll almost certainly interact with the other projects as well: land management laws, road paving, and primary school construction.

Note that while the Peace Corps actively encourages volunteers to blog about their work, as a contractor for the MCC it will be somewhat inappropriate for me to discuss the details of my job. That's not to say they're secretive about what they do; quite the opposite, the way you're money is being spent and how the decisions are made is a reasonably transparent process, as you'll see if you go to their website. But since I'll be working at the interface of two governments, discussing any particulars would just be a bad idea. This is all a long-winded way of saying that if you're interested in what the MCC does, read their website. If you're interested in my personal life outside of work, continue reading this blog. Stalker.

As for my impending COS, what to say? My last two agriculture projects fizzled, due to a bout with dengue fever followed by a schedule of meetings that forced me to miss prime planting time. So I have no projects to wrap up; all that's left for me to do is go home, pack what I want and give away what I don't, and come back to the capital to finish up my paperwork. The sting of leaving is considerably less, since I'll still be in country and able to visit - and able to visit much more easily to boot, since my second order of business (first will be getting an apartment) will be to get a moto.

Of course, I'm excited to get the chance to visit home, though the trip isn't nearly long enough. Still, I should get to visit with a large number of friends and family before coming back. We'll just have to squeeze in as much fun as possible. Part of that fun will be shopping for a couple suits to bring back with me - the dress code for a government job is a far cry from that for a volunteer!

Is this how other volunteers live ALL THE TIME?! Cont

2010-06-19T06:09:00.001-04:00

He says, but that was yesterday. And anyway. It wasn't here, it was in
a village 7km away. I'm irritated. But then, wednesday, there IS
something - African Children's Day, a fête that most regions here
don't recognize, but in our province the NGO PLAN International is
very active in children's education, and they host a celebration. This
year, in my village. Great...except that almost noone knew it was
happening. Rumor has it they donated 1.5 million CFA for the event, of
which about 300,000 was actually spent (none on publicity,
apparently); the rest was skimmed. Even that number seems high
considering what materials were used - two speakers, two tents, and
some milk cans* - but for all that, at least some masks did come back
out for it, so I got some better pictures. Also worth mentioning is
the traditional music they played on those two speakers, which at one
point aired a local stringed instrument playing the unmistakable tones
of "If You're Happy and You Know It."
*Carny games again. Milk can ball toss described previously, though
this one wasn't rigged. Other games: kick a soccer ball through a
tire, grab bags (black sachets, naturally), and walk a wavy line using
a mirror to look at your feet. The kids had fun, I concede that.

I haven't been idle. As I said, these parties interrupted (not a
complaint!) my work. I'm planting my own little field of sorghum and
peanuts, using a soil-preparation technique called "half-moons". I
haven't led any formal classes on it, but seeing the white guy hard at
work is enough to make most passers-by stop and stare, so I take the
opportunity to explain it. So if it works, several farmers will know
how to do it. If it doesn't, well, only the rich white guy wasted his
time and money. Plus this has given me the opportunity to appreciate
just how hard people work here - I'm working a tiny plot, a tenth of a
hectare, and it's exhausting. Mais ça va aller, en tout cas!

Is this how other volunteers live ALL THE TIME?!

2010-06-19T05:33:00.001-04:00

When school ended last year, I was ready to get out of dodge. Most of
my projects last summer were in other cities and villages. Combined
with the vacation I took, I spent around three weeks total in village
between May and October, usually only a few days at a time.
This summer, with so little time left, I'm spending as much of it as
possible without leaving. I begrudge the fact that I'll have to spend
a few days in Ouaga for paperwork and language tests even. Long story
short, this is the first time I've really gotten to hang out and do
projects without the specter of school constantly over my head. And
while I've said for two years that I'm best suited to be an education
volunteer, having a day-to-day job rather than unprogrammed, hazy
ideas of what to do like other volunteers, I'm loving this freedom.
This week, I was working my demo field and 3 times someone came by and
told me about a celebration somewhere. And I did what I could never do
with classes - I dropped what I was doing and went and celebrated with
my community.
The first was a Catholic baptism. Several dozen, actually, of many
ages. The next, two days later, was a Muslim "baptism" - I doubt
that's really the proper word, but that's what people call it. These
happen 7 days after birth (or some other multiple of 7 if the family
can't scrape the money together the first week), in this case a
Tuesday. I wore my boubou, with a muslim cap even. And just to
underline the enviable religious tolerance here, the (Catholic) girl
who presented the infant to the imam was wearing her Sunday best - a
complet with "Christ Is Risen" all over it. The third was ... but
first, a flashback.
Saturday, I commented to a friend how sorry I was not to have gotten
good pictures of the masks at the recent fête. He said not to worry,
the mayor had just announced a second, smaller fête. It would be in 4
days, and some masks would be back. Monday, I mention to another
friend that I'm excited about the fête on Wednesday. Tbc...

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 17 of 17)

2010-06-17T06:59:00.001-04:00

So, getting chased, even getting hit (indeed, to properly greet a
mask, you bow to it three times, putting your hand on the part over
the head in what is nominally a gesture of respect but I suspect has
more to do with helping them not fall when they bow back, then allow
it to hit you), is all part of the fun. Usually.
But this year they were in a bad mood. They hit hard. They spent more
time chasing people than they did dancing, and they chased more
earnestly than usual, too. Some carried knives. It was a bad vibe.
They even hit a couple people hard enough to send them to the local
medical clinic.
We still had fun, don't get me wrong. We went out the morning after
the masks arrived. There were a dozen or so, the number growing all
morning to about thirty by the time we left. Fun, but it was a lot
more intense than usual, and we were pretty much constantly on our
toes to avoid getting hit (with 67% success), not just from the ones
in the dancing circle but from the others arriving from all
directions. So I didn't get any good photos - I tried to take some on
the sly, but only from a healthy distance; I also arranged with one
guy to have one mask he knew meet us for a photo, but my friends were
tired of the heat and the tension at that point and didn't want to
wait. The guy was pretty mad when he found me later.
After my friends left, I went back out in the evening, not even
bothering to bring my camera this time (night shots are harder even
under good conditions; dust being kicked up from dancing and running
and constantly worrying when you'll have to run yourself are not good
conditions). By this time there were 40 or 50 out, and one chased me
hard enough that I lost a flip flop. (That would normally slow me down
on our rocky terrain, but not with that thing coming after me!)
Despite knowing there would be even more before the night ended, after
finding my shoe, I decided I'd had enough fun; by now it was full
night and visibility was low. I'd gotten both my adrenaline fix and my
exercise. What else do you need?

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 16 of ?)

2010-06-17T06:31:00.001-04:00

They're always kind of mean. That's just part of it. I think I've
discussed this tradition before, but just in case...
When a person puts on the mask (and it's not JUST a mask, it's a whole
outfit), they are no longer that person, they ARE the mask. These
beings are neither ancestors nor gods, nor do they have specific
magical powers. All the same, they are supernatural entities, and as
such are sacrosanct. They can do anything and get away with it. No one
will question a mask. And the person inside can't be held responsible,
remember - they aren't in control. In fact, the kids are even led to
believe that there IS no person inside. You can't talk about that
aspect in front of them; it's a lot like Santa Claus. Even most adults
believe the masks are real entities - they refer to them as "living"
in a nearby sacred hill - but they are aware that there are people
inside. And though that person may not be in control, you'll find that
the person's friends never seem to get hurt by his mask. As to who can
be a mask, I've heard two stories - one, that it suffices to know the
person currently inside and offer to take their place (the outfit is
hot and heavy, and when I expressed an interest in trying it out
everyone said I'd just fall over - the point is, wearing it is hard
work, and doing it in shifts is believable, especially since they
often stay out for 24 hours or longer); the second, that it's a role
handed down within a family. Since family ties and close friendships
so often go hand in hand here, these two are not so mutually exclusive
as it might appear at first blush.
So, however it's decided who wears one, the masks come out of their
hill for certain occasions. Whatever the occasion, their actions are
invariably the same: they dance, they greet people, and they hit
people. Everyone will gather around to watch them dance, but they're
always ready to scatter when the masks start running after them,
usually with a stick or knotted rope.
Tbc...

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 15 of ?)

2010-06-17T06:09:00.001-04:00

to keep goats from using my hangar as shelter when it rains and peeing
and pooping all over my porch. Nice thought, but two years ago - or
better, four, for the volunteer before me - would have made more
sense.
The mistiming gets better. They build the whole wall before installing
the gate. That doesn't seem like a problem, does it? Except that the
gate is a wood and tin affair affixed to the walls with mud. Which
means that in order to have any chance at all for it to hang true, it
needs to be well supported and HELD SHUT WHILE THE MUD DRIES. I spent
a whole day having to jump the (brand-new!) wall in order to get to my
own house. By the way, the gate still doesn't hang properly.
But wait, there's more! A week after my forced gymnastics, my hangar
finally gave in to years of dry rot and termites. My porch no longer
has a roof. So it no longer offers shelter to goats when it rains.

LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF MASKS
Finally we get to the vizards, and just so you know, I scanned through
the "V" section of my American Heritage just to find a word to make my
alliteration work. The masks are definitely "lively" (though in truth
the word vivacious to me calls up more the image of teenager going on
her first date than of scary masked men looking for people to hit.
Still and all, they are "full of animation and spirit," that last
quite literally if you believe the tradition), and they do come out
"in the evening," though since they stay out all the next day,
vespertine was a bit of a stretch.
Anyway. I've seen them before, of course. I've talked about them here,
and a long time ago even posted pictures. But this fête is a big one.
I didn't get to go last year because of a meeting, so I was really
enthusiastic about getting to go this year. In fact, I was so enthused
I inspired a couple friends to make the trek to join me.
The two things that stood out at this fête as opposed to the other
times I've seen masks come out (for smaller festivals and funerals):
1-there were a LOT of them, 50 or more; and 2-they were MEAN.(tbc)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 14 of ?)

2010-06-17T05:40:00.001-04:00

RETURN TO BURKINA
A few times while in Europe, I caught myself feeling suprised by how
young kids acted. For instance, at that last mall I remember thinking,
"Wow, if my six year old were still sucking his thumb, I'd be a little
worried." Before that, on the Paris metro I remember thinking a mom
was being awfully indulgent to let her 4 year old use baby talk. It's
not until I get back that I realize how silly I was being (leaving
aside that it's silly of me to be that judgmental anyway) - that
little boy wasn't 6, that little girl wasn't 4. They were probably 3
and 2 respectively - they grew up eating well and thus were twice as
big as what I'm accustomed to seeing here!
While still in Ouaga, a friend asks me to go with her to an artisan's
shop, which it turns out is run by Jeanne, our CD's housekeeper, thus
the woman who took care of Pat the mornings we were in Ouaga. She asks
how he is, then tells me a funny story from his last day, when I was
in Paris. After he got up, she tried to tell him that the RPCV wife of
one of our APCD's had stopped by, but he was still asleep, so she'd be
back soon. But Pat doesn't speak French, nor Jeanne English, so all
she can do is watch helplessly as he leaves.
As an aside, I owe Jeanne a really nice present. As if it wasn't
enough how hard she worked to make Pat's stay a pleasant one, when I
visited her shop she gave me a scarf - her specialty is high quality
traditional fabrics. It's a beautiful pattern, named in Mooré after
the Guinea fowl, as it looks a bit like their feathers.

RETURN TO VILLAGE
Finally! I got back on the 2nd, and don't want to have to leave again
until my COS. But I will - ending Peace Corps service involves a lot
of paperwork, so I'll need to go to Ouaga soon to work on that.
For the last two years, my courtyard has only had a wall around half
of it. Animals have been free to roam through, which is sometimes
obnoxious. Now, with two months left and no new volunteer coming in,
my landlord decides to finish the wall and install a gate, (to be
continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 13 of ?)

2010-06-13T04:22:00.001-04:00

DAY 6 - CONT
and make it at least a LESS painful experience to try to navigate the
station and the trains.
We get to the bus station. Our bus is late, and when it does arrive
the ticket guy can't be bothered to announce it, so we almost miss it.
We don't though, which means we get to experience sitting for an hour
at the Paris peage while the police search a few peoples' luggage
quite thoroughly. Whoever they're looking for, it's not Americans -
mine and Pat's passports get only the most cursory of glances. Lucky,
since I'm travelling on my peace corps passport, which features me
sporting no hair and 50 more pounds than I currently carry (even
taking into account the hair I've allowed to grow back).
The combination of delays puts us back in Paris too late to do
anything other than check into our hotel, catch a cheap (but still
yummy!) dinner at a kebab place, feel sorry for ourselves to see
posters for Les Mis, because how cool would it be to see it IN
Paris?!?, and hit the sack.

I will now be moving away from the day-by-day format, as the rest of
the story has some gaps of uninteresting time spent on a flight, then
in Ouaga, then in village. But I haven't forgotten that I still owe
you the vizards. And then I can finally drop this silly title.
So...since while in country I keep my journal notes on this same phone
that I'm using to update that same journal, you'll have to put up with
another "to be continued" while I transfer them to paper...

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 12 of ?)

2010-06-13T04:04:00.001-04:00

DAY 6 - A DISMAL DECISION
For the second time, I make a bad bus choice. I'd booked us tickets to
leave to go back to Paris around 3, having misunderstood Pat's
expressed wish to ARRIVE around 3. But I chose not to change the time,
telling Pat that the 5 hours at the Louvre he planned that evening
would only make me angry. We agree instead to have a relaxed morning
in Brussels, walk by and maybe through the botanical gardens on our
way to the bus, then when we get back to Paris catch the boat tour
we'd missed the other night.
Silly me, I'd forgotten we were no longer in a country where the rain
is completely predictable, and when it does rain you've no need to go
anywhere because everything shuts down anyway. The morning of day 6 is
cold and wet, and I have nothing to wear against the rain.
To slightly change a bad quote from an unmemorable movie, "I'm a Peace
Corps Volunteer. We don't plan, we improvise." Pat has the suit he
bought in Ouaga. That means he has a suit bag. A couple quick slits of
a knife for armholes, and voila, not only do I have rainwear, but it's
Armani. The most stylish piece of plastic I've ever worn.
While I'm no longer getting wet, our bags still are, so the rain blows
the botanical garden plan. Instead, we step into a mall, meaning both
the things I set out to do on day 1 without Pat I also ended up doing
with him (the other was McDonald's, remember?). We browse an
electronics store looking for a tip to a car charger he'd given me. No
luck.
We take a train again, figuring going one station over shouldn't be
that hard. It's not, though we've probably done it illegally: there
are no turnstyles there, so we just hang onto the undated tickets we'd
bought two days ago. I guess it works on an honors system? There are
machines to destroy used tickets, reinforcing that theory, but not too
many people seem to use them. Generally I'm an honest guy, and I
considered paying for another ticket, but in the end I decide that if
they want my money they're going to have to meet me halfway (to be
continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 11 of ?)

2010-06-12T13:37:00.001-04:00

DAY 5 - CONT
From there we go on to St. Katherine's. You'd think we'd be tired of
cathedrals by now but first, you'd be wrong anyway, and second, this
one has a feature we just have to see for ourselves - a urinal on one
side. Not a Port-a-Potty, this is just two half walls and water
running down the walk of the cathedral itself to allow people to
relieve themselves and show exactly what they think of Mother Church
in the same go. Or perhaps a kinder interpretation would be that they
can get physical relief outside and spiritual relief inside. In either
case, neither Pat nor I use the facilities, on my part less out of a
sense of propriety for the church and more of one for myself - those
walls aren't that high, and it's right next to a high traffic road.
From there, we go get the first two things people associate with
Belgium - chocolate and beer. This time we go for the much more widely
famed trappist ales. We see the Mannekin Pis, which is exactly as
interesting as you'd expect it to be, but since it's on pretty much
every postcard I got for my Burkinabé friends, I figured I ought to
see it. Research the stories about why it's there, though, reading
them is much more fun than actually being on a street corner looking
at a sight I see on a daily basis in Burkina. Though to be fair, in BF
the streets usually aren't paved.
We find another local tradition, fries. I mean, I knew Europeans take
their fries with mayo - I love it myself - but if the tradition wasn't
started here, don't tell the Belgians. Toward the close of the day we
find the hat Pat's been looking for, pick up a couple of Cuban cigars,
and head back to the hostel. Tonight we find our room being shared
with an animated, opinionated Nigerian who lived for a few months in
Nashville and is now based in England. We chit chat about what's
ailing West Africa and I find myself for the most part in agreement.
Pat and I hit a nearby outdoor pub to enjoy our last on-site Belgian
beers and smoke our cigars - mine a Romeo y Julieta, his an H. Upmann.

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 10 of ?)

2010-06-12T13:13:00.001-04:00

DAY 4 - CONT
The hostel we're staying at has a map/guide to the city which mentions
a type of beer I'd never heard of - gueze, apparently only found
locally. We head to a place that has it on tap. The menu refers to
this type of beer as "self-fermenting." I don't know what that's
supposed to mean, but the beer is yummy - though it doesn't taste like
any beer I've had before. It's so sour, it tastes more like lemonade.
They do a cherry kind that is even better.

DAY 5 -COFFEE, CATHEDRALS, PALACES AND PARKING
We start the morning finally getting that coffee we've been talking
about all trip. It's instant, a freebie in our hostel's lobby. Then we
go and get the third thing everyone thinks of when they think of
Belgium - waffles! This would not even have occured to me were it not
for the frozen waffles they sell at the front desk to shut up the
wise-asses. We go to a place in the galleries that does them up right
- I get mine with ice cream and chocolate sauce, Pat gets a cherry
concoction. We head out and hit the highlights - the flea market, the
palace of justice (which does not disappoint. Seems like the sort of
place that would be impressive, right? Here it is. Paris, not so
much.), the museum area (though the only one we're ardently interested
in going in, which has underground 15th century ruins, is closed), the
royal palace and gardens (pretty enough, but no Jardin du Luxembourg),
and St. Michael's Cathedral. Along our walk I notice that the city
planners have used the perverse strategy I hated so much in Atlanta of
giving one street many names, depending on which block you happen to
be on. We go down four different streets without once turning to get
to our next destination - a parking garage. Its view from 11 stories
up is recommended as one of the nicest in town, and it's free. We see
much of town, including in the distance the Atomium, which we didn't
visit (it's touted as Brussel's Eiffel Tower, and like the Tower it's
expensive to go up and not particularly close to anything else we were
interested in.

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 9 of ?)

2010-06-09T05:02:00.001-04:00

Anyway, we've chosen this particular one because there's a statue
surrounded by a prism of fluorescent lights on it, and we figure
that'd be worth seeing at night. But we'll never know, as the lights,
which had been on all day, turned off as the sun went down. We head
back to the hotel.
As we're sitting in the lobby, with it's two chairs, we make the
acquaintance of two very attractive young American women, one of whom
had actually been to Burkina the year before planting Jatropha. She
was in a village not far from my own and doing work very similar to
what I've done with Peace Corps, so in other circumstances I'm sure we
could have had a lot to talk about, but the hotel lobby was simply not
conducive to socializing, nor was it in a part of town where we could
easily go out and find a place to hang out. Oh well, she was too young
for me anyway.

DAY 4 - BUS TO BRUSSELS
And the return of alliteration...
We stop at the front desk on our way out to see about reserving a room
on our return trip, but weirdly, it costs MORE to reserve the room
while there than it would to do it online through a hostel aggregator
website. We tell them nevermind - as you can tell from yesterday's
entry, we weren't particularly enamored with the hotel; it just would
have been easier to be able to leave Pat's big bag there.
We have surprisingly good hotdogs and surprisingly bad doughnuts at
the bus station, then head out to Brussels. We mostly ignore Get Smart
along the way. Anne Hathaway is quite pretty, but so is the European
countryside, with its sparkling new windfarms next to ancient
churches.
We get there and find the Brussels metro to be extraordinarily
user-unfriendly. Hostile, even. A typical sign at an info booth: NO
TOURIST INFORMATION HERE. And for whatever reason, while all of the
pamphlets on the buses are available in 5 or 6 languages (Russian,
even!), the one on the trains is only in Dutch. After one train ride
we decide to walk. We find our hostel, which is right downtown. No
metro needed - we can finally stay out late!

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 8 of ?)

2010-06-09T04:34:00.001-04:00

Perhaps less grand than Notre Dame, Sacré Coeur feels more sincere.
And the mural in the cupola is breathtaking. Before I left my CD had
told me she found the latter more beautiful; I entirely agree.
We head out, making our way back downhil through le Square St
Louise-Michel, a pleasant little park that looks more like a cliff
from a distance. We decide now is a good time to plan the next days of
our trip, if we can find an internet connection. We walk to a cafe
district in hopes of finding one with wifi. Many do, but Pat's iPod
can't connect to them. We need internet to get internet! Because if we
had a connection, we could pull up a map of all the hotspots in Paris.
Finally we find a shop that offers a free 20 minutes that P can
actually connect to, enough time to pull up a map...and find that the
nearest McDonald's, where we know we can get a connection, isn't near
at all. Still, there are worse fates than to be forced to walk around
the prettiest city I've ever been in. On our walk, I realize that it's
not only the architecture that's beautiful. Of course, in a city of
millions, there's bound to be a large number of beautiful
people...still and all, the number in Paris seems disproportionately
high.
In the evening, we wander the art district near the Louvre, and it's
just as well that the galleries are mostly closed, as judging by what
they have in the windows we couldn't even afford to walk through the
doors. We head back to Pont Neuf, near Notre Dame, where we'd planned
on catching a boat down the Seine, but we're a bit late. There's
another in a half hour, but we worry that we'd get back too late to
catch the last train to our hotel at 11, and the night buses don't
start running until 1. So instead we decide to watch the sunset from
the bridge. When I go back someday, I'd like to walk all of the
bridges in the city. If it's a long trip, maybe even watch sunset from
each. (to be continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 7 of ?)

2010-06-09T04:03:00.001-04:00

PARIS DAY 3
We start out the morning by going to check out where the Bastille
stood. Tours of the opera house that now stands there don't interest
us, but P was born on Bastille Day, so we're kind of obligated. We
luck out - turns out on the weekends there's a big open air market. If
Pat hadn't just picked up souvenirs in Burkina, he could have
believably faked it shopping here. He stops at a hat stand. And I
encourage him to buy a Panama Jack - EVERYONE looks good in a Panama
Jack - but he's in the market (no pun intended) for a black felt
fedora. To try to state things the right way around this time, I
observe that in retrospect I can see the influence of this market
tradition on NOLA, and even more so Charleston, SC. Not to mention
chez moi, of course, though even in Ouaga the fish never looked this
fresh.
We mosey up the Blvd Magenta, where I kick myself for having just
bought a suit in Ouaga (they have them here for 35€!) to our next
stop, the one place every single person I talked to recommended we
visit: Montmartre and Sacré Coeur. It turns out to be a steep walk,
but well worth it - our direction of approach has allowed us to bypass
the majority of tourists and end up smack in the neighborhood itself.
Which is beautiful and wonderful and I completely understand why
everyone told us to go there. We stop at a small cafe and have
tartines and wine. Mine has bacon, plum, and one of the dizzying array
of cheeses available in France. Since we're on Rue Lamarck, I spend
all of lunch humming one of Enjolras's solos from Les Mis.
Afterward, we make our way around the backside of Sacré Coeur, where
we find all the tourists we'd temporarily shaken. We also find ice
cream! When I go back someday, I'll want to try the popcorn flavor,
but for now I stay a bit more conservative and get peanut butter. We
walk past what I am convinced is the single water fountain in the
whole city (silly me, I didn't think to pack a Nalgene to go to
Paris!) and finally arrive in front of the cathedral and enter. (to be
continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 6 of ?)

2010-06-08T13:43:00.000-04:00

to get to the top of the bell tower. And it was worth it. We got into
the room to see the bells just before it closed to tourists because it
was about to start tolling. Which meant we were right on top of them
when the evening carillion started. The view up there is one of the
best we had the whole trip, and FEELING the bells as much as hearing
them only added to the experience. I joked with Patrick that it was
too bad we didn't get the chance to climb the Washington Monument
during our vacation to DC in 08, but this was an ok 2nd best.
Before calling it an evening, we hung out in the literary district. I
had fun window shopping at the bookstores, though I don't suppose it
meant much to Pat. Again I was struck by the influence of Paris on New
Orleans; we could have been walking through the Quarter.
We took the opportunity to have a nice beer with dinner, chuckled over
the fact that while Pat did get carded every time when we got him
reduced prices on tickets for being under 26, no one once questioned
his right to enjoy a drink.
Despite our observation on the way back that the subway brakes screech
like a thousand condemned souls, after a day of walking the city we
have no trouble falling asleep.(to be continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 5 of ?)

2010-06-08T13:26:00.001-04:00

I wouldn't have it any other way - I'm pretty sure if I get on a bus
or train I'll never find my way back. We manage to find each other and
get the metro to our hotel. We leave our bags, make it back to the
metro...and realize we've left our malaria medicine behind and have to
go back to get it. This will also turn out to be a theme of the trip:
every evening we'll plan to get out early and have some coffee, then
when the morning arrives we'll forget something, or end up somewhere
other than we planned, or find we need a wifi hotspot, and by the time
we're ready for coffee it's practically lunchtime!
First stop - the catacombs. Which it turns out are flooded. Since
we're nearby, we walk over to Montparnasse cemetery, where several
famous people are buried. The tombs are neat. I mention to Pat that it
reminds me of New Orleans; he very reasonably points out that it's
really the other way 'round: New Orleans is reminiscent of Paris. We
move on.
The garden in front to Luxembourg Palace is possibly the prettiest
green space I've ever seen. When I live in Paris, I'll go there every
weekend. You know, with my supermodel Nobel-Prize-in-Physics-winning
wife, right after we hit the biggest lotto jackpot in history.
We wander over to the Pantheon, an impressive structure from the
outside, which is all we see since you can do that withOUT paying 9€.
From there we head up to Notre Dame, stopping along the way in a
smaller but also impressive church whose name I've forgotten. The
inside of Notre Dame is...certainly impressive, but to me all the
statuary has a vibe of High Church at its worst - lauding the Church
rather than the Faith. I'd bet money that many of those statues of
"saints" look an awful lot like whichever archbishop commissioned
them. But still, it's an experience not to be missed. After touring
inside and being possibly the only two people to respect the no flash
photography rule, we wait a really long time and pay a not small
amount of euro for the privilege of climbing way too many stairs (to
be continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 4 of ?)

2010-06-08T13:01:00.001-04:00

PARIS - DAY 1
Discovery number 1: despite being on almost the same longitude as
where I live, Paris is TWO hours ahead. Good to know - never mind the
nap I had planned! This means I need to get used to sunset after 9pm.
Since I have this day to myself, plus since I'm staying near the
airport rather than in town, it seems to make sense to do all of those
things that a Peace Corps volunteer would do after 2 years in Africa,
rather than the things a typical American tourist would do in Paris -
I'll rate those to do with Pat. I walk around the Roissy area, which
is basically in industrial park, but a much nicer one than you'd find
in, say, Atlanta. Certainly nicer than Ouaga. I walk. I enjoy the
cold. I buy a jacket, and wish I had more money for clothes - even the
discount stuff is really nice. I stroll through an Ikea, then a
shopping mall, stopping for lunch at McDonald's. I have dinner at what
I take to be the French version of Appleby's (the name translates to
Shortstraw). None of it stuff Pat would have been interested in, but
every PCV reading this is jealous. On a side note, in what will prove
to gold true throughout the trip, I notice that people do NOT switch
to English with me, despite the Parisians' reputation. Not that they
can't tell my French is not theirs...but I suspect that my African
accent is so strong that it masks any American accent, and they're
just not sure where the hell I'm from.

DAY 2 - TEAM DUCK REUNITED
It's weird to see a sunrise with no dust. Equally weird to see birds I
recognize from Africa in trees I recognize from the US.
Poor Pat will never agree to meet me at an airport again. I'm a bit
late getting there; while the 20 minutes I was told it would take to
get to the airport was not wrong, it was misleading - CDG is BIG. To
actually get to the terminal I want takes another 15 minutes, and when
I get there I find that his arrival gate has changed. The lady at the
info desk is very apologetic when telling me that the only way to get
to the new gate is to walk, but (to be continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 3 of ?)

2010-06-07T07:58:00.001-04:00

THAT was atypical. I just found out (though we'd already suspected
given the frequency of the word "nasara" in the preceding argument)
that they'd been talking about us. The kickee had been insulting us.
The kicker decided to defend our honor. More than any other time in my
service, I wish now that I'd focused more on Mooré so I could have
defused that situation. Anyway, as I said, that was unlike anything
I've ever seen here, and I hope it's not what Pat walks away
remembering.

A WEEK IN...WHOOPS!
On Wednesday we discover Pat is leaving as planned on Friday, but MY
ticket is for Thursday! Uh-oh! We spend the evening frantically
calling Air France, Delta, and Orbitz, and eventually find that to
change one of the flights will cost about $700. The cheaped solution:
find me a hotel room online and thank the lord I've got good friends
in Ouaga who can take care of my brother for the soon-to-pass weird
situation of 24 hours in which *I*'m in Europe and my brother is in
Africa.

LAST DAY IN OUAGA...FOR ME, ANYWAY
We run around being tourists, with a side trip to the embassy, which
was holding BOTH my passports. Can I describe how much stress I was
under knowing I was flying out that week and having no passport to do
it with? Not adequately. You see, I'd submitted my PC passport with my
application for a personal one. No big deal, except for a string of
events which prevented me from getting there to pick them up until the
day of my flight, several weeks after receiving a phone call telling
me my PERSONAL passport had arrived, but the photo wasn't quite right,
and in response to my query, oh yes, my PC passport "should" be there
too. Finally, the day I'm leaving, I get there and all is well - the
photo's contrast is not great, but it's passable, and my PC passport
is indeed there (though I spent an ugly couple of minutes before they
figured out that a friend of a friend had put it in the safe for me to
ensure it wasn't lost). With a much lighter heart, I accompany my
brother on a souvenir-hunting trip before leaving.

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 2 of ?)

2010-06-07T07:36:00.001-04:00

change your mind twice about whether that was really a good idea.
We get to Bani late and tired, but Pat gets to meet my best friend
here, and dinner is grilled chicken with ranch dressing and sweet
potato fries, so all's well that ends well.

DAY 3 - MOSQUES AND METAL
I hope you appreciate how hard I'm working on this alliteration. It
probably won't continue.
We spend the morning exploring the Bani mosques, which belong to a
cult whose story I'm fairly certain I've recounted elsewhere on this
blog.
The plan is for 6 of us to mount 4 camels that afternoon to visit a
gold mine. Thanks to a heavy dust storm and light rain, it ends up
being twilight before we can start. We name our four camels to an
Aladdin theme: Jafar, Abu, Jasmine, and Raja. Though we did this early
on, it turns out we got their personalities pretty well - Jafar is
mean as a snake, Abu really overexcitable, Jasmine nice, Raja
implacable (except when it came to anything on two wheels...whenever
Emma and I saw a bike coming, we knew our shared mount was about to
leave the road). 7km takes two and a half hours. We're sore and tired,
and our guide is dying to tell jokes and riddles. The jokes were
terrible, but the riddles clever.

DAY 4 - WE HAVE TO RIDE *BACK* ON THOSE THINGS?!
We check out the gold mine, which was bigger and more interesting than
I expected (the last time someone offered to show me mines, in Fada,
it turned out just to be deep holes in the ground). We chat with
people in the mining camp about the process, then head back into town
to catch a bus then a bush taxi to get to my place. Transport is
typical (read here "unpleasant") and uneventful.

DAYS 5 AND 6 - HOME SWEET HOVEL
I exaggerate, my place isn't that bad. Anyway, Pat gets to see what
life for me here is like. He even helps me calculate grades for my
class! Since for me this was just everyday stuff, you'd do better to
ask him what was the standout moment of this part of the trip. Not
counting the old guy kicking the other old guy in the jaw, (to be
continued)

A visit, a vacation, and vivacious vespertine vizards (part 1 of ?)

2010-06-07T07:03:00.001-04:00

As I've already crowed about here, my brother planned a visit. Well,
he's come and gone, and I hope he had as much fun as I did. Which was
a lot! Though the trip wasn't without its bumps...

DAY 1 - ARRIVAL
I get to the airport right around the same time Pat's flight did. So
I'm expecting a wait. What I'm not expecting is to spend 2 hours
watching ALL the other passengers leave with no sight of my brother.
Finally, I ask permission to enter the (restricted) arrivals gate,
where I finally find him at wit's end because his luggage isn't there,
and he can't leave to find me because he's afraid they won't let him
back in! English may be the international language of aviation, but
that's a pretty loose standard at the Ouaga airport, so it's not 'til
I find him that he learns his luggage has been left in Niamey (where
the flight stops for an hour. Get that? It's not a transfer, just a
stop. They had absolutely no business taking his luggage off the plane
there), but it will come in on the next flight tomorrow evening. Too
bad tomorrow evening we'll be exploring the Sahel.
After arranging for another volunteer to come get the luggage, our
Country Director, who has already graciously allowed Pat to stay at
her place (he had nicer accomodations than I did!), invites us to
dinner, assuring that Pat's initial African repast is a lovely one.

DAY 2 - BUREAU AND BANI
Today we begin exploring the damage a daily regimen of French has done
to my English. I refer all morning to taking my brother to the
"bureau" rather than the office. By either name, we get there, I
introduce him to my better-paid colleagues, and we head to the bus
station (which I insist on calling the "gare") to get to the start of
the real adventure - camel riding in the Sahel! After assuring Pat
that I've chosen the most reliable bus company on our route, naturally
our bus is 2 hrs late leaving. Which is only to be expected when you
load lead pipes too long to put anywhere other than the main aisle of
the bus, then load the passengers, then (to be continued)

I'm out of canned meat and it's 2 weeks before I go back to the city

2010-05-03T14:41:00.001-04:00

But I'll tough it out, because when I do go, it will be to get my
brother at the airport! And from there, we'll...well, I don't rightly
know. Not entirely. It would be handy to know when our mask festival
will be. But then, getting advanced notice of events is a luxury my
colleagues & neighbors have been training me to do without for 2
years.

SCHOUETTE
My good old friend John of God hooked me up with an outfit to go with
the sandals he gave me a couple months ago. It is so money. Literally:
the design is based on the picture that appears on the West African
CFA. As if my skin color alone wasn't enough to convince everyone here
I'm rich. I kid because I love - it's my favorite outfit, and not in a
hey-look-at-the-goofy-stuff-I-can-wear way.

BIKES ON A BUS
Not as scary as snakes on a plane, maybe, but when parts of the bike
are thrown willy-nilly on top of the looming pile of crap behind your
seat, by the time you get off the bus you have a serious crick in your
neck from turning after every bump to see if the Tire Rim of Damocles
is coming your way.

MORE MOORE STUDIES
Our Mooré manual includes cultural tips in each chapter. I feel
compelled to quote my most recent knowledge acquisition: "...cooking
utensils are not used for other purposes like taking showers or to
physically attack someone." Unfortunately, I haven't yet found out
which utensils ARE culturally appropriate for beating someone
senseless. Inquiring minds want to know!

FRENCH LESSON OF THE WEEK
distraire = distract
extraire = extract
soustraire = subtract
therefore
traire = ... to milk a cow, naturally.

KEEP TRYING
Some students were showing off their knowledge of world history. They
were doing pretty well until we started talking about 1929. They went
on about the measures taken by President ... I wasn't sure what they
were saying, but it wasn't Roosevelt. I had them write it. It turns
out President Krach Wallstreet was really on the ball. Bien entendu, I
could easily make a similar mistake in Mooré, so my amusement is
tinged with empathy.

I am a bad updater

2010-04-24T08:54:00.001-04:00

As witnessed by the fact that the first things on my list happened at
our last conseil de classe, which was a month ago!

CONSEIL DE CLASSE
That's the meeting we have every trimester to discuss what went & what
didn't (mostly the latter). Highlights of the last one: a 15 minute
argument about whether the word "refusal" is appropriate when a
request is denied due to lack of funds; an exposition on one
professor's lack of need for a doctor, EVER, because he once spent 3
months caring for his sick uncle and therefore has learned all that
need be learned in the field of medicine; and a 3 hour wait for
chicken because our organizer didn't think to let the grill guy know
we wanted any until the meeting was over, even though it had been
scheduled for two weeks (and keep in mind that while in the states,
when a restaurant takes a long time with an order, we joke that they
had to go catch the chicken first, here that is exactly the case!).

FÊTE DE DAGARA
Last weekend I and some neighbors headed south to spend time at a good
friend's site and see the annual festival for the main ethnic group in
her region, the Dagara. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of pictures,
because in a clever subconscious scheme to keep my bag light, I
neglected to pack batteries for my camera. But the dances were fun to
watch. No masks. Fingers crossed that the masks in my site come out
while my brother is here!

I spent over a week in Ouaga and didn't update my blog once

2010-04-09T15:19:00.001-04:00

Apologies for that, but COS conference is both hectic and
overwhelming. Basically, they sit you down on Tuesday and say, "We
know you've been out of the loop. We know you only have vague notions
of what you might plan to do after Peace Corps. We know that, since
you're miles from internet access most of the time, you have no way of
knowing yet what employers may be interested in you. But you need to
start thinking about it. Because we need to nail down what day you
will no longer be a volunteer. We need to know by Thursday."
The upshot is I more or less arbitrarily chose August 5th. Where I'll
be on August 6th I haven't a clue...

IS IT A BOY OR A GIRL?
This is a question I ask from time to time when I'm not sure about the
gender of a noun in French. On the other hand, it's a question I've
always avoided asking when referring to names, for fear of offending
someone (would YOU know that Pamoussa is a boy but Lamoussa is a
girl?) But I guess it must not be TOO insulting...when my volunteer
neighbors, a married couple, came to visit last, the husband came with
me to pump water; while there, the old ladies asked me if he was a man
or a woman. Really, I'd have thought the full beard a dead giveaway,
but then maybe that's why so few men grow facial hair here...

A TEACHER STRICTER THAN ME?!?
A disciplinary measure I heard a teacher claim to use after having
caught a cheater: first, they get a -5 to their class score because
they cheated. Then I take their paper and throw it away, because I
won't grade a cheater's paper. So then they get a zero, because they
didn't turn in the assignment.
I bow to that teacher's superior vengefulness!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T14:08:00.001-04:00

Given my Irish descent and the Peace Corps's goal of educating people
about American culture, if I'd been clever I could probably have
hosted a party and claimed it as a secondary project. However, that
was not an option because...

I AM A BIG FAT LIAR
I didn't give up alcohol for Lent. Recalcitrant recidivist that I am,
I didn't give up ANYTHING for Lent. But, you see, Lent overlaps with
funeral season. And funeral season means drinking. Lots of drinking,
at all hours. About the only way I can function throughout the day
without repeatedly insulting my neighbors' "hospitality" is by coming
up with a much better reason not to drink than things like "I have to
go to work," or "I try not to drink before breakfast." These are
simply not acceptable reasons here. Lent is. So no drinking at site
until Easter. And by then the funerals will mostly be over as people
get ready to start the planting season.

SPEAKING OF PARTIES
For reasons noone bothered to share with me, the Catholics hosted a
carnival last Sunday. Carnie games are the same here in their most
important aspect - they're rigged - but it was fun to see the
variations. We didn't throw softballs at milk bottles; we threw
rag-stuffed plastic bags at condensed milk cans. The ring toss offered
prizes such as soap and packages of spaghetti.

HAIL MARY, FULL OF GRACE, THE LORD SAYS WRITE 24 COPIES OF THIS
MESSAGE AND PASS IT ON
I got a chain letter from a student today. I think the last time I got
a non-electronic one I was 10, and that one didn't resort to threats
(it was supposedly some academic project, and while at 10 I was too
naive to ask "What possible gap in human knowledge could be filled via
chain letter?", I was also much too lazy to copy any letter 7 times,
or whatever it was). This one claims to be a missive from the Virgin
Mary and come from Bosnia-Herzogevenya, 1894. Aside from spreading the
Good News of the chain letter, you must also pray to get your good
luck...and prevent your family from dying, of course. That Holy
Virgin, she's feisty!

World War Z

2010-03-14T14:46:00.001-04:00

You know how when you move someplace new it takes some time to get
used to the sounds. Well, I've been here awhile. I'm used to the
animal noises - the pig squeals, the guinea fowl cluck, the bat
squeak. But a couple nights ago, I heard something that sounded like
nothing other than a zombie groaning straight out of a movie. I still
don't know what the hell it was, but it's not a sound that is easy to
fall asleep to - especially when the dog-barking sound emanating from
the same general area suddenly gets cut short. Happily, the dog
started barking again just as I was starting to consider sleeping
inside, and heat be damned. That sound was spooky.

INSULT TO INJURY
Folks here had a SECOND party yesterday (13 March) to celebrate
International Women's Day (8 March), and AGAIN no one thought to let
me know. Although the hilarious argument I was lucky enough to catch
today about whether women should be "allowed" a 2nd day almost made up
for it. One side maintained that the 13th is not the 8th, 1 + 3 is
only 4. To which I responded fine, 4 is half of 8 so give them half
the day - noon to midnight. But my friend Christophe had an even
better observation: put a 1 next to a 3 and you close the two loops.
It's an 8 again!

ICE!!!
I had ice today in village, and no matter how sick that unfiltered
water makes me, it was worth it. I asked Christophe why he doesn't
always have it, and he said it doesn't sell. Well, demanded our friend
(having lost the 8 March argument and happy to join another) do people
know you have it? Do you advertise? No, said C, I just sell it if they
ask. I told C that if he promised to carry some every day, I'd
personally make him a poster so it would sell. So my new project: find
out how to say "Ice for sale here" in every language spoken here. I
want that ice!

No more funny subject lines

2010-03-13T11:44:00.001-05:00

I figured out the solution to that little problem. Which is not to say
I won't still throw in crazy subject lines in emails, actually. I just
no longer have as good of an excuse.

8 MARS
The 8th of March is International Woman's Day. Last year my village
did nothing special that day except close school - no surprise, that's
generally how things work on any non-religious holiday outside of the
cities. So last weekend I went to my provincial capital (see next
section). Monday morning, as I'm waiting for transport back to site,
people start telling me that I'm missing the party there! Apparently
our provincial celebration was being held in my village this year.
Now, this must have taken MONTHS of planning - there were women's
groups from all over, representatives from the UN office in Ouaga,
chiefs of all the villages, the freakin' Minister of Agriculture, they
even made tshirts with my village's name...and through all of that
planning, it never occured to one single person that hey, maybe this
is something our Peace Corps volunteer might like to know about!
I didn't end up missing that much, but if I'd had some warning I'd
have done something to participate. As it was, the only contribution I
made was during lunch, when I made it a point to take over the serving
job from the women, who had naturally assumed that role because that's
how things are done here. Which speaks much louder than imported
orators as to how seriously people take women's empowerment here.

WE DON'T NEED NO WATER, LET THE MILLET STALKS BURN
Other than grocery shopping and relaxing with friends who happen to
have things like ice and fans, I got to help said friends experiment
with a project they've set up to make charcoal from millet stalks. I
don't know if I've ever said it directly here, but you've probably
picked up on the fact that the theme of my service, outside of
teaching, has been fighting desertification. This charcoal project is
a cheap, clever way to discourage tree-cutting. Lesson one - wear old
clothes.

Rodents of unusual size? I don't believe they exist

2010-03-10T03:45:00.001-05:00

A newly discovered quirk of my phone: in gmail, no matter whether I am
composing a new missive or replying to an existing conversation, the
subject line is filled by whatever the subject was of the last message
I sent in Facebook! I've tried sending Facebook messages with blank
subjects, but it just retains the older subject in that case. Nor does
clearing the cache work. So I've taken to filling the line with quotes
from favorite movies, since I'll be forced to read it so often.

CRAVING
Grits aren't the only thing I miss here. I miss potatoes! They are
grown in this country, but for reasons that escape me the people in my
particular village have no interest in them. So I occasionally crave
fries. Since one thing I can get in Ouaga is instant mashed potatoes,
I brought some back to site, prepared some, let it cool, then formed
it into balls and fried it. I got something that tasted almost, but
not quite, completely unlike french fries. But it killed the craving
anyway.

LANGUAGE STUDIES
Whoever put together our Mooré manual chose to translate "to shit."
Not in some scatological section. They just thought it was a verb we
might need. I couldn't agree more.

VISITORS
I have finally, after a year and a half, convinced a small number of
students that if they don't understand something in their classes,
it's worth their time to stop by my house and ask for help. Recently,
I noticed one student writing his numbers right to left. I can't help
but wonder if that's a signal of a fundamentally different way of
thinking about our decimal system. Without question there's a
disconnect between how I think, and therefore teach, and how my
students think, and therefore learn. But I've yet to bridge that gap.

TIE-DYE
I tried to use bleach to make a fun tie-dye pattern on some pants that
already had a faded spot. Against all expectations, there is fabric
here of high enough quality to resist bleach! All I managed to do was
make the pants look old and sun-faded, subtly enough that it doesn't
look at all intentional. FAIL.

Studying a new language is fun!

2010-03-02T13:15:00.001-05:00

Is a lie I tell myself. It WILL be fun speaking Mooré, but let's be
real, the first couple months in a new tongue are just painful. At
least I'm finally, after 21 months, trying.

STARBUCKS
Special thanks to brad, who made the brilliant discovery that Nutella
+ coffee = hazelnut mocha. For those mornings when regular just isn't
enough.

HISTORY/GEOGRAPHY TEST QUESTION
"Name 3 characteristics of the North American population." I'd really
like to see some of those answers. I bet "rich" made the list on
several students' papers.

RESPECT THE WRITTEN WORD
I've taken to laying books gently on the floor, rather than just
tossing them down as I once did. Not because I'm worried about hurting
them. It's because seeing the plume of dust rise when I they hit the
floor is just a depressing reminder that it's been 24 hours since I
swept.

IN THE NEWS
-Somali pirates involved in "land attack"
My more serious thought: anyone who hijacks food aid deserves to burn
in the 9th circle of hell. My more flippant thought: if it's on land,
are they still pirates?
-GM sales rise due to Toyota recalls
But wait. 2 headlines down...
-GM recalls 1.3 million cars
Ironic enough? NO! In this one, we find that the supplier of faulty
parts is "partially owned by Toyota." Sounds like the fix is in!
-Ice found in lunar north pole
How freakin' cool is that?!? Can we revisit that NASA budget decision Mr. Prez?
In short, I deeply appreciate being in touch with the wider world
again. Thanks, BBC News!

Part 3 of 3...I hope...

2010-02-28T05:00:00.001-05:00

This is the 2nd post for Sunday, 28 Feb, & the 3rd for the weekend. So
scroll down to read them in order!

MORE NERDING
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary
& those who don't. Of course, there are limitless ways to divide
people into two opposing groups - unless you're a destructivist of the
Kronecker school. One of relevance to my current station: those who
feel it NEVER hurts to ask for something, & those who won't ask unless
they're reasonably sure the answer will be yes. Without ever making a
conscious decision, I've always been firmly in the latter group-it's
embarrassing to make someone refuse a request! Everyone here is in the
other camp. Which means I'm constantly being asked for gifts, money,
quoi que ce soit. It gets really old. For instance, a guy recently
harassed me to give him a shirt since I had a new one. The one I was
wearing WASN'T new, in fact, but I don't wear it often because I want
it to last. I explained this...then the next time I ran into him he
harassed me again as if we hadn't had that conversation. Which to be
fair (if such the following may be called) may have been true d'après
lui-I've never seen him sober. Even more frustrating are the people
who tell me that "now I know what it's like here" so when I get back
will I set up an association to send them money? To them, it's just a
philosophy of ask, because the answer might be yes. Though I recognize
that intellectually, it still feels more like "hey, you haven't helped
enough. What else have you got?"

RATIONING
No matter how strict I was with myself, I knew you couldn't last
forever. The day I dreaded has finally come, and you are gone. You
picked me up when I was down. You satisfied a craving both physical
and emotional. Grits, you will be missed!

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPMENT WORK
Mossi proverb: Better underwear today than pants tomorrow.

HOUSEWORK
I need to slap some fresh cement on my door, and it'll be good as new.
Literally. Exactly as good as when first built!

My phone has a character limit!

2010-02-28T04:23:00.001-05:00

Hence my rather abrupt need to split this post into parts. Please note
that,as I've mentioned, the reason I'm using email to update is that
Blogger loads very slowly on my phone. So if you comment here, I won't
see it for a while. I'm not discouraging comments, I'm just saying
talk amongst yourselves. If you want to talk to ME, email is the way
to go.

MEN OF MATHEMATICS
That's the name of a book by E.T. Bell in 1936 I just finished, and I
highly recommend it to anyone teaching a math curriculum based on the
French model. It highlights the major advances in math from Zeno up to
Cantor, and it's fascinating to find how strong a historical (if not
pedagogical) basis our curriculum has.

I AM A NERD
Not just because I've read the book. Not even because it makes me want
to study advanced math. I'm a nerd because I've spent several
delightful mornings trying to independently prove Fermat's Theorem*,
as well as solve one or two geometric puzzlers.
*Not Fermat's LAST Theorem (x^n + y^n = z^n has no integer solutions
for n>2), which I suspect requires something akin to algebraic
numbers, well beyond my capabilities. Fermat's Theorem** is for any
whole number n and any prime p, the result of (n^p - n) is divisible
by p.
**Please don't tell me the solution, I'm wholly aware that Leibniz
solved it centuries ago. The point is that it requires no advanced
mathematical knowledge, and I want to see if I can do it.

Character limit again. Obviously I need to either update even more
frequently or learn to be more concise. That's not true. I CAN be more
concise-if college teaches you how to turn a one page concept into a
10 page essay, grad school teaches the much more difficult skill of
reducing 10 pages of work into a 1 page summary. But that's not really
the point of a journal, is it?

To be continued...again...

Hello, gentle reader, and welcome to another edition of This Is MY Life

2010-02-27T04:31:00.001-05:00

I did so want to post This Is YOUR Life, dear reader, but try as I
might, I couldn't contact your 3rd grade teacher, and she was frankly
the lynchpin of the whole piece. Without her, our producers just
couldn't find sponsors.

LORD OF THE RINGS
While standing in front of my class whilst administering a test, it
seemed like I could almost see a wave of heads ducking as my gaze
swept over the room. I felt like the Eye of Sauron in a room full of
Frodos.

I NEVER THOUGHT I'D BE GRATEFUL TO MICHAEL BAY
But while he may have prostituted my beloved Transformers to
big-budget Hollywood, he at least pulled them into the mainstream.
Which means many more of you will appreciate what I'm about to tell
you: I met the guy who killed Optimus Prime! A gentleman from this
really cool NGO called Trees For The Future came to chat with our Food
Security Committee about partnership opportunities. He later revealed
that his uncle was the creator of the Transformers comic in the early
eighties, and he decided to name the main human character after his
favorite nephew. Ethan Zachary was the Autobots' programmer, who
eventually introduced an experimental program into OP that killed him.
And I met the real Ethan Zachary!

SOMETIMES I THINK BAD THOUGHTS
There is a group of kids who come by daily asking for chalk. I gave it
out freely a first, but they've become really rude now; for instance,
when they see me napping they will yell to wake me, just so they can
ask for chalk. So for about two weeks I've refused to give any. They
still come every day. And now the bad thought: I really want an
airsoft gun.

I'M NOT THE ONLY NAUGHTY ONE
Let's face it. If you've ever studied a foreign language, chances are
that even though they were never taught in class, you went out of your
way to learn how to curse in it. I can still swear in Russian 10 years
after I last spoke it. It's sometimes fun to see the little ways
people are the same everywhere. Seen on a blackboard at my school:
"You want to fok your mother?"

To be continued tomorrow...

This is not a real post

2010-02-27T02:56:00.001-05:00

I noticed on the last one that via email my double line breaks were
treated as singles. So i'll test another couple ideas before posting.
Blogger takes entirely too long to load for me to consider posting
directly. First, a TRIPLE line break:

ok, check. Two empty lines in this email...we'll see how that looks.
Next, html? How about my favorite, the horizontal rule, for this one
no line breaks.<hr>if it works it will be between this sentence and
the preceding. I vaguely remember testing all this two years ago, but
don't remember what worked. Real post to follow, hopefully prettier
than the last. Though i don't know what i'm telling you for, reader,
you're still in bed!

Update via email

2010-02-20T09:00:00.001-05:00

Apologies if the format is wonky, this update and those to follow for
a while will be coming via email. Directly from my site!

You see, I recently realized that I won't be here forever (even if
some days it feels that way). The time of my "return" fast approaches.
Why the quotes? Because while I most certainly WILL be returning, it's
completely unclear at this point whether such a thing will be
permanent. Which brings me back to the topic of how it comes to be
that I can email from my village: the job hunt.

I have started nosing around looking for jobs, and i quickly decided
that only being able to correspond once a month, and that on weekends,
was simply not very useful. This would be less of a problem if I were
not mainly looking for teaching positions. But I am, and waiting until
my close of service (which has not yet been scheduled, but will with
90% certainty happen around the end of July) is a recipe for being
unemployed - or worse, a SUBSTITUTE teacher - for an entire year.

So, I decided to invest some of my vacation money into a phone capable
of basic internet usage. Along with hopefully helping me to find work,
I figure I can use it to update my blog in a more timely fashion. My
current plan is to update once a week. Naturally, the updates will be
much shorter, both because I'll generate less to say in a week versus
a month as well as because typing long updates on a phone number pad
isn't really my idea of a good time.

So that pretty much IS this week's update; I haven't much else to
report. My new challenge will be keeping my phone charged, what with
accessing the internet and our new cell plan that allows us to call
other volunteers for free.

Ah, that reminds me. In order both to get this internet and to
participate in the aforementioned plan, I had to change numbers. Get
rid of the old one, it's no good. The new number is
+226.75.90.71.83
Use it sometime!

Homeward bound

2010-01-07T12:21:00.006-05:00

If you're my mom, that title refers to the fast-approaching end of my service. If you're anyone else, you're capable of admitting the possibility that I may also be referring to heading back to my site because my vacation was wonderful but intense and exhausting and I'm looking forward to getting back to my own personal space and decompressing for a few weeks...

Christmas in Togo, the New Year in Benin. Here will end my vacationing in coastal West African countries (until the end of my service, at least) - I want to check out the other Sahelian countries with my remaining vacation time. Though Niger is looking a bit dicey at the moment...maybe a trip up the Niger river to Timbuktu? (Actually, I hear that Timbuktu isn't that fun, and the only reason to go would be to send postcards to people so they have the word Timbuktu in their address of origin). I had hoped at one point to climb Mt. Cameroon with a friend, but that doesn't look viable at this point. I AM still hoping to spend a week in Paris with Pat; you know, right after he buys that winning lottery ticket (message to Pat: please stop procrastinating on that).

Speaking of Pats, this post's shoutout goes to another, my Uncle Pat, who sent me a backpack and shirts that have accompanied me in a short period of time through very different climates and terrains - from the kind-of desert to the kind-of mountains to the (not-kind-of) beach and back!

A New York second

We've all heard the idiom So-and-so would do such-and-such in a New York second! to indicate eagerness. It was once explained to me that a "New York second" is that incredibly small amount of time between when a light turns green in New York City and when the car behind you honks believing you to be unaware of the fact. There's a similar tendency in Ouaga to prove your reaction time is better than those ahead of you by honking before the nerve impulse to change from the brake pedal to the gas can even reach their foot. At least, that's what I used to think, and it drove me nuts. But I recently realized that here, at least, that obnoxious honking has a non-obnoxious purpose: moto drivers routinely pull into the intersection far enough that they can no longer see the light! So the honking is downright civic-minded. Just a little reminder that just because I see people doing things I feel are irritating and irrational doesn't mean they actually are.

The stress of travel

Border crossings in West Africa are in my experience very user unfriendly. There will be a stop for customs somewhere near-ish the border, which will be entirely unmarked but everyone but you will know that they have to get off the bus, which will drive empty an unspecified distance before allowing you to re-board. The process is similar at the border itself, though usually it's more clear how far you will have to walk before being allowed back on the bus; the problem here will be figuring out which of the dozens of poorly marked buildings contains the one person who can stamp your passport and allow you to leave the first country; this fun game will be repeated on the other side of the border to find the one person who can let you INTO the second country. Depending on where you are, there may be another customs stop on that side.

It's confusing and time-consuming, but usually only that - you get through it in the end. Well, this trip we got an extra nasty surprise: at the very first customs stop we got back on the bus and the bus driver left FIVE PEOPLE BEHIND!!! We yelled at him to stop, but he didn't give a damn. They caught up with us at the border (50 km later) because a second bus driver for the same company had some modicum of compassion, but it made every stop an excruciating experience, thinking to ourselves Do I have time to pee? Can I buy dinner? Crap, was that the bus's horn? Maybe I should just be hungry and suffer bladder discomfort for the next 12 hours...

At least now I know one reason that traditional women's outfits invariably include a third pagne (a bolt of cloth) folded and draped over the shoulder. Because when we stopped, they whipped that sucker out and had their own personal enclosed urinals. Handy when you can't afford to take the time to find a bathroom for fear your bus will leave you stuck in the middle of nowhere...

Après avoir arrivé: Mountain #1

In what I hope will solidify into a holiday tradition, I spent much of this vacation with my friend C, the same C from last year's trip to Bobo and Banfora (she's doing a third year in Togo). K (same K as from Ghana) and I got in late, knew we were going to get up early to hike up a mountain - and still stayed up until 4 catching up with C. Which was totally worth it. The next day we set our sights on the highest mountain in Togo: Mount Agou. We're not talking about alpine-like climbing here, to be clear; our more modest goal was to hike up the paved road that wends its way to the top. We didn't even manage that (we started too late in the day), but the scenery was beautiful, and it was pretty amazing to be in a place where, if you were hungry, pretty much all you had to do was reach into the nearest tree. The hike up was occasionally interrupted by dodging nearly entirely silent moto drivers who cleverly save gas money by coasting down the mountain, but very un-cleverly do not honk when rounding corners to let people know they're coming. We had a lunch of boiled corn and peanuts with coconut, then grabbed some star fruit from the nearest tree for dessert (for some inexplicable reason, the French name of star fruit translates as "fruit with 4 sides," even though it very clearly has 5 lobes).

Mountain #2

The next day, we chose a smaller mountain, Mount Kouma-Konda, because based on its sharing a name with a coffee brand, K hoped to find freshly made coffee (coffee grows all over the mountain region, but for the most part the locals don't sell it in a way useful to us: they prepare some for themselves, then export the rest raw to be prepared, packaged and sold in Côte d'Ivoire. No joy there, but it was an even prettier ascent than the first mountain, and this time we found a guide and climbed up and down on village trails, seeing more fruit trees (avocado, pineapple, banana, plantain, lemon, and others) plus other crops of interest (bushes and trees cultivated to make dyes and the like). We also found a guy who does batik on bazin, a lovely combination. We all 3 bought some.

Mountain #3

Tired of climbing, we took a car to the top of Mount Daï (appropriately pronounced "die," given the terror of the hairpin turns with overloaded truck sincerely expressing their desire to use the whole road no matter which part of it you may happen to occupy) where the members of a Benedictine monastery do, in fact, prepare, package and sell their locally grown coffee. We didn't make it quite as far as the monastery, so we didn't get to SEE the process, but the nuns at the associated convent sell the end result, so I've been drinking intensely good coffee for the last several days. We also bought some avocado wine (I recommended this course not because I'd ever had avocado wine, but because if there's one thing I know about Benedictines it's that they know how to make alcohol worth drinking. We weren't disappointed.)

Christmas

After our mountain climbing, we relaxed in C's lovely abode, joined by a group of 5 other Togo volunteers who share the following traits with C and K: they are women, they are beautiful, they are fun, and they kick ass and take names. I really should have taken more pictures to show off how much of a player I looked hanging out with this crowd. We ate wonderful food, a mélange of American and local fare. We had some suspect mushrooms, which we debated about - and then regretted that we didn't have a recording of what we'd said (things like "Should they be this hairy?" "Does that smell right to you?" and "Were they that color two days ago") in case they turned out to be our last uttered words. They weren't, and the mushroom sauce may have been the winner in a competition that included fondue, roasted chicken, and a salad with BACON.

The next day we did pretty much the same thing again. What a great two days. The debatable food that second day was the chicken from the first day. This time, we decided NOT to use it, and had our suspicions confirmed when even the neighbor's dog refused to eat it.

Cocoa Beach

Two other Burkina volunteers who spent Christmas on the Togo beach stumbled on a place that even the Togo volunteers didn't know about (because it's not in any of the American travel guides). It's really popular with Europeans, particularly Germans (no shock given Togo's colonial history), so for the first time ever the first thing one kid said to me wasn't some form of "Hey whitey" or "Are you French?" or "Are you American?" It was wie gehts!

The resort was a cluster of buildings made from strips of palm tree bark. It was cheap, fun, had a great atmosphere and a friendly staff, and if you EVER want to vacation in Togo, give me a call. Or check the next edition of Lonely Planet's West Africa guide - all of us who stayed there (K, myself, and 2 of the Togo volunteers who either greatly enjoyed our company or were at least willing to tolerate it for a chance at a decent beach - I hope it was the former, because we certainly enjoyed THEIR company immensely) decided that the omission of this place must not be allowed to continue. We played in the surf for the day (there was a nearby area with a rock shelf about 40 meters offshore, so we didn't have to fight too many waves - the Togo beach is a steep one, so wading isn't much of an option, it's sink or swim, except for this area) and slept to the sound of waves crashing on the shore at night. Lovely. So lovely that we changed our plans and went back again a couple days later!

The second time we stayed there, we decided to eat a bit cheaper and had one of the staff lead us to a street-side food vendor. We had spaghetti with scrambled egg on top, which sounds weird to you but I bet every Africa RPCV reading this (if any) is having a mouth-watering problem right now. At the end we witnessed a rather intense confrontation between the staff member (whom we treated to dinner for walking us out) and the counter lady, who had overcharged us. The proprieter eventually showed up and fixed the price. We had actually told our staff friend to just let it slide, it was only about 100CFA each (maybe 25 cents) and we just wanted to go, but he wasn't having any of it. He explained to us on the way back why he was so upset, and if this isn't the EXACT (translated) quote, it's close enough: "It's not that she overcharged YOU, you're white, that's normal. It's that she overcharged you when you were with ME! She knows me!"

Voodoo and devil worshippers

As you may or may not know, the Togo and Benin area is credited as the birthplace of voodoo, and I was excited to explore the markets devoted to this, having grown up next to Cajun country. In the end, we weren't able to work that into the trip, but instead we got to see something more local and not at all influenced by the tourist trade. One of the volunteers we'd spent Christmas with invited us to her village, where her neighbors were self-described "devil worshippers." Nothing so straightforward of course, but the guy who'd started the religion had been converted by missionaries when he was young and so I suppose when he turned away from that he kept some of the vocabulary. Unfortunately, he wasn't there to discuss the matter - he had gone to some mystic spot to transfer the contents of a liquor bottle into a new container. The contents being a locally produced distillation of palm wine called sodabi mixed with snakes. It's purpose is to prevent snake bites, and I'm sincerely sorry I didn't get the chance to taste it (having tasted unadulterated sodabi, I can assure you the alcohol content is high enough that there would be no fear of the snake bodies causing disease). But his assistant allowed us to take plenty of pictures of the idols and explain to us all of the different magical objects found in the "devils'" room. Only after making sure we'd partaken in several shots of (non-snake) sodabi, of course. So it was still interesting, and as I observed above there was no question of authenticity - this was NOT a tourist village, just a guy doing his thing in the middle of the jungle.

Mountain #4. Er, 1.

Rejoined by C (who had left our company briefly to gather her friend flying in from the states), we returned to Mount Agou, this time to stay in a couple of villages, one at the bottom, the other at the top, thanks to their connection with another volunteer, who unfortunately was not there, but in Africa that hardly matters. This time we drove up to the very peak (remember, we hadn't made it on our first attempt), slept with a family at the village on top of the mountain, then hiked down on back trails. More beauty, more fruit, more sore legs. It was great!

Benin

Technically, I've been now. But really, I can't say I EXPERIENCED Benin the way I did Togo. We just hopped across the border - so close my Togo cell phone never even stopped working - and hit a popular beach resort there. Popular with French families, that is - it was overrun with kids. The upshot of this is that we got to participate in releasing baby sea turtles into the ocean. How FREAKIN' COOL is that?? At this point, we'd also hooked up with another group of Burkina volunteers, so we ended up having the roof of a chateau to ourselves (more or less) overlooking the beach. So we partied, ate well (comme toujours dans cette récitation), drank, and swam. Oh, poor choice of order with those verbs. Swam, THEN drank. Honest. Oh, and played in a drum circle. That definitely DID come after the drinking. Well, during.

Our rooms ended up being free because we didn't have running water for part of our stay. A pretty nice cadeau for a group of people who ROUTINELY live without running water!

Au retour

On our way back we passed through the Togo capital, Lomé, where we found BUMPER CARS!!! Best 500CFA I ever spent. Ramming into friends and kids to 80s dance music. The kids at first seemed upset - having observed them before we got in, we got the impression that they didn't really get the "bump" part of bumper cars. We taught them, and by the end everyone was having much more fun than they'd had before. Especially the worker, who absolutely LOVED slamming his car into this white guy's just as hard as possible.

The bus ride back was less stressful - no stragglers - though waiting at the border for 5 hours so the driver could catch up on his sleep was annoying (not that we would have minded sleeping, just that no one bothered to give us ANY indication of the length of the stop, so we couldn't go wandering nor fall asleep outside the bus for fear of ... well, by now you know of what). Our mood wasn't helped when the fellows at the border decided to check our bags, but only AFTER said 5 hours when the driver awoke and we were ready to go! On the plus side, we got to see guys standing in donkey carts led by two donkeys at a full gallop - African chariot races!

And now, if all goes according to plan, you won't hear from me for at least a month. I'm going back to site, I'm going to work, I'm going to visit with my friends there whom I haven't seen in entirely too long - and I'm going to catch up on my sleep! I plan to stay there until mid-February, when obligations will call me back to Ouaga. Until then, gentle reader, be well, and remember when crossing the street to keep an eye out for silent motos and racing donkeys!

2009-12-15T05:10:00.004-05:00

That title is meant sarcastically. I'm in Ouaga, and this weekend I leave for Togo - and today I have to go back to site for all of three days. Argh. But duty calls; I have to fill out report cards for the end of the trimester, so as convenient as it would be to stay, it just can't happen. Bummer.

This post's shoutout goes to the usual suspects: my brother, who is planning to come visit me; and my parents, whose most recent package was full of top-notch goodness (the Pizza Hut parmesan/romano cheese packets being particularly exciting - they didn't last long).

Ouaga safari

I had the chance a few weeks ago (just after my last post) to visit one of the president's alternate residences. It's not technically in Ouaga, but it's pretty nearby. The reason people visit this presidential palace in particular is the menagerie: the prez keeps a zoo on the grounds. It was, well, sad really. The enclosures are awfully small for the animals kept there. Also, the enclosures are just chain link fence: not something that would even register when watching antelope, but being less than 10 feet from a couple of the largest species of wild cats (a bengal tiger and a pair of lions) with nothing between you but hurricane fencing is pretty exhilerating. Hyenas are much bigger than you'd expect if your only exposure to them was The Lion King. And LOUD. Again, nothing but chain link fence, and this one not even very high - about head level. The guide, to get them riled up, kept putting his foot on the fence; the hyenas would then very sincerely try to eat it. At which point he would kick their snout. Burkinabe have a very different outlook on animals in general than we do. They wouldn't even really understand the concept of "cruelty to animals" without in-depth explanation, in the same way we wouldn't understand if someone berated us for cutting out grass. Yeah, it's LIVING, but that doesn't mean you worry about its FEELINGs.

The primate enclosures made the space given to the predators seem kind: for example, 3 adult baboons were kept in a cage I'd say was about 5' x 5' x 10'. There was also a cage containing a few monkeys of various ages, who displayed a very direct form of displaced aggression. The guide would poke the oldest with a stick; being unable to attack the guide, this monkey would then attack the next younger, who would in turn attack the youngest.

The hippos were nifty. The guard, thankfully, chose not to taunt them. The most startling thing that happened there did not, in fact, happen there - after we walked away and were gone at least 150 yards, one of the hippos roared; it was so loud I really thought it had somehow escaped and was right behind us.

The only other thing of note on our "safari" were the ostriches, which ran entirely free. As in, I've now had an ostrich basically BRUSH past me (there was not any physical contact but only because I moved - I did NOT want to piss off a bird several feet taller than me that kicks like a mule).

Senior moments???

It's not ENTIRELY my lousy memory that causes me to routinely use my geometric tools when I'm lesson planning or test grading. It's also the fault of whatever jerk decided to make them of clear plastic - I set them down and they disappear! I tore my house apart while making up my last test, scattering papers and other items all over - only to find the ruler sitting in what would be plain view on my table if not for the fact that it's basically INVISIBLE. Stupid ruler.

Well, that's kind of mobid

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but while I live in a courtyard by myself, there are several other apartments there. They just stand empty. I found this somewhat strange my first year, but figured it was just a question of supply exceeding demand...until recently my landlord (who is quite old) began construction on another. I asked him about it, and it turns out those apartments aren't there to be rented at all. My landlord has had this entire courtyard of apartments constructed so that, when he dies, the family who will come in from other parts of the country will have places to stay. I found this remarkable both for the offhand manner in which he spoke of his own death and for the amount of foresight it shows - most Burkinabe are very in the moment. But I shouldn't be too surprised by that latter - I've always just assumed my landlord was a villager with an above-average education. In fact, it turns out that he was a very powerful figure in this country in the 60s. I haven't asked him about this directly because it's a conversation that couldn't help but be very political in nature, but I'm trying to find a solid history book so I can get a more complete story.

Good music (part 1)

Thanks to the acoustics in my area, I can very clearly hear the tv at the video club I've mentioned in the past, despite its being, if not far from my house, not particularly close either. I often go when I hear it fire up, but sometimes I'm not in the mood - the people who go are their to see action, not plot, so I often can't hear dialog and therefore have a hard time following movies (too bad, it WOULD be a good way to improve my ability to understand a European accent). One night I was feeling that way so i stayed in, and it worked out beautifully - they were playing things louder than normal that night, so I could hear the tv perfectly but without the background of burkinabe watching. Which of course wouldn't be very interesting if they were watching a kungfu movie, but in fact they were watching some locally produced variety show, which featured at one point a 15-minute long piano solo. I didn't know the tune, but it sounded very Gershwin-esque. It was just beautiful, I could hear it very clearly and with no interruptions. It was a nice 15 minutes.

Parallels

One interesting thing about being a second-year volunteer is the opportunity to compare and contrast with my first year. There are definitely some similarities. For instance, the week of Thanksgiving was hands-down the worst week I had in the classroom all year last year - the students were just uncontrollable. Same problem this year. Like last year, thanks to the rainy season, my hangar (the thatched ceiling of my porch) is drooping and needs to be re-positioned. I've started attending video club again (which I did fall of last year, then stopped after the holidays). I've once again attempted a compost pile. Not everything's the same (I haven't been baking this year, for instance), but enough is that it's kinda weird.

Speaking of the video club...

It was funny and sad when watching one of the Blade movies how shocked all the Burkinabe seemed when a woman was one of the kick-assinest martial artists. They just couldn't shut up about Cette femme est forte! Unrelatedly, I mentioned above the problem of chatter there. For a long time the video club was making me insecure about my French, because of the fact that I couldn't seem to follow the movies well unless there were subtitles (even subtitles in French work well enough for me now). Until we watched a movie in English and I STILL couldn't follow. All the same, I should try to listen to RFI more.

Positive feedback

A comment made by an APCD in regards to a proposal our Food Security Committee made to the office here regarding tracking food security projects among volunteers: "It was so popular it was passed up the chain. It's in Washington on the agency director's desk right now." Go us! Our work also apparently had a starring role in a conference in Dakar, Senegal, a week ago. It's nice to be appreciated.

Thievery

The last couple of times I've left site, I've come back to find that someone has taken the soap out of my outdoor shower. It's a small thing, but it's extremely frustrating - until now I've always felt like I was in a small enough community to not have to worry about theft, and now I just can't be sure. It's small, I know, I know, but that's just the thing that bothers me - it's SO small a thing that it's something everyone can already get. Soap is made locally and extremely inexpensive, so this theft, though not of anything I can't replace, feels like it's all about ME rather than about the THING being stolen. Plus I hate having to lock my bathroom after almost breaking a key in the door trying to get in one evening before I pooped my pants.

Good music (part 2)

I have Les Mis stuck in my head quite a bit these days. Partly because I'm reading the book, but more so because in one of my favorite songs ("The Confrontation") Javert refers to Valjean as Monsieur le maire, a phrase I hear two or more times a week, since that actually IS how one addresses the mayor here.

Ethnic identity

After being here for a while, you get to be able to tell the differences between the major ethnic groups. But some people can be of one ethnic group genetically but of another traditionally (a past history of slavery will do that). So it's weird seeing a clearly Mossi girl in full-on Peuhl garb - it made me thing of high school spirit week. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't include this blurb, I don't think I can explain it well.

Santa?

Our masks came out for an annual local holiday in my village (another parallel to last year...). Last year I'd gotten the impression that people don't talk about who wears the masks, because once they put them on they're not themselves anymore, they ARE the persona of the mask (an ancestor, specifically). Well, more recently I found that some people are quite willing to talk about who wears them, and MOST recently I found out why the dichotomy - you can talk about it, but not when kids are around. Because you don't want the kids to find out that's really their Uncle Jimmy in a fake beard and a red suit. Er, I mean vegetable stalks and a wooden mask.

Respect for disabled people

I recently waved and said hello to a deaf guy in our village. And it broke my heart when he turned around to see to whom I was talking, because it's so unusual for them to be treated as normal citizens.

Is this some kind of metaphor?

A few volunteers were out at the bar the other night when some guys came by selling (fake) Christmas trees. We decided to chip in and buy one for the transit house. We come traipsing into the house a bit later and start hollering about our find - only to find we're interrupting the celebration of Hanukkah that one of our Jewish volunteers was sharing with the group. Crass commercialization, meet sincere expression of faith. Fortunately, he was an extremely good sport about it.

Damn!

That was the word used by a Burkinabe to express how impressed he was with my friend K's fluency in Fulfulde. She elicits somewhat similar expressions often (I've referred to this more than once), but to hear it in English gave it a more visceral reality. The guy, as you might guess from this, spoke great English; he'd studied something or other in Arizona.

Good music (part 3)

The setting for that last encounter was a concert at the French Cultural Center, where I got to hear a group called the Mountain Men. A French guy on guitar, an Australian with kind of Marty Feldman eyes on harmonica, and some of the greatest blues I've ever heard. I closed my eyes and I was home for a while - especially when they played "When the Saints Go Marching In" followed by "Georgia on my Mind". They also played a couple pieces with a Tuareg group, which produced an interesting fusion.

In closing, what can I say except "Who dat?" Sorry, Maggie, but when the Saints and Colts go undefeated to the Superbowl, I'm gonna have to wear black and gold. I like Peyton a lot - but I've liked the Saints much longer.

In the life of a second-year volunteer

2009-11-11T12:52:00.002-05:00

First off, apologies for the delay. My provincial capital lost its internet (that's right, the whole town did, but weirdly, not all at once. First the high school, then the internet café, and finally the PLAN offices.) So now I can only get internet when I make more extended trips, such as to the capital, Ouaga. Upshot: my posting frequency will be reduced this year. But if you want to talk to me, I still always have my cell phone, +226 70 94 99 60, which receives both international calls and texts (sometimes). Which brings me to my next topic...

Shoutouts for this post go to two friends, both named Christina, who took time out of their busy schedules (and money out of the bank accounts) to call me! Thank you both, it was lovely to catch up.

A budding star in our midst

And since I'm apparently better than usual at segues today, it's appropriate to mention now that one of these two namesakes will be appearing on television this month. She was a volunteer in Burkina, extended for a third year in Togo, and therefore got a month leave to visit home. HGTV decided this homecoming would be a great chance to film a holiday decorating special hosted by Sandra Lee. It's showing Nov. 28 at 8pm EST on both HGTV and the Food Network. Of course, the Peace Corps is not the focus of the piece at all, so if you'd like to know more about what she does as a volunteer, you'll find a link to her blog at right (and I should mention that she's in the midst of gathering funds through the Peace Corps Partnership Program to provide training to 82 educational workers, and I should further mention that I can think of few volunteers, indeed few people, I admire as highly as I do her for her work ethic and ability to succeed under extremely challenging conditions: in short [too late for this parenthetical!], I'll personally guarantee you that any money you send her is money well spent).

Don't break the bank

But don't send her all your money! I'm hoping in the near future to be in a position to ask for you to send money to help out another project, one looking to reduce malaria by providing mosquito nets - sleeping under a net drastically reduces the risk of malaria, as mosquitos are much more active at night. More on that as it develops - and more on other projects I may need funding for in the next section.

Second year, already?

Or equally appropriately, depending on my mood, "Second year, STILL?" Because sometimes it feels like the time has flown by; others I feel like I can't wait to get home. Which I plan on doing sometime next summer. I can't be any more specific than that at this point. Neither in regards to time nor duration.

My first year, I was extremely busy teaching. I have mentioned before, I think, that 20 hours may not seem like much, but it is in fact 33% higher than the maximum the schools are requested to load on volunteers, and the typical load for a Burkinabe teacher, who is both fluent in French and deeply familiar with the curriculum, neither of which applied to me then (am I implying a fluency in French now? Not as much as I mean I know the junior high math curriculum now! But there's no denying that my French is better by leaps and bounds than when I began my African teaching career. This will come up again in a later section of this post.) So now, what happens my second year, when I have both much stronger language abilities AND I already have lesson plans made up for three different levels of classes? I get knocked back to 10 hours, both at the same level! The two years of my service got mixed up! This should have been the other way 'round!

So now, in terms of my primary project, I am your typical second-year volunteer: competent, calm, confident. But in terms of secondary projects...last year I was so busy teaching I didn't have time for anything else! I was a full-time teacher! Whereas other volunteers this year are building more successful projects based on what they learned their first years...I'm kind of like a first-year volunteer, trying to figure out what's needed and what I can do. When I described this problem to a friend, I said "Now I have all this time, and I don't know how to be a REAL volunteer and do all this other stuff!" She responded, "ARE you being a real volunteer and actually doing nothing?" Hey, learning how to play the harmonica and reading Les Misérables in its original language isn't noth - yeah, she's right.

But I WANT to do things. I've got plans. As I've mentioned above, some of these plans involve funding. So, if you want to help reduce malaria in my small corner of Africa, that will be the first to get off the ground, I should think, and I've already mentioned that project. Another volunteer has found an organization that provides mosquito nets at cost, and they already partner with Peace Corps in other West African countries. Of note, if I should have the happy circumstance of collecting more money than I need to supply my village, the extra automatically spills over into another village - so you're guaranteed that you money is working.

If you're more interested in helping increase literacy here, in a few months I'll probably be looking for the funds to build bookshelves; my school, by the grace of a Canadian NGO, has a room FULL of books, most of which are kids' books and ideal for the youngest students to practice reading (and learn about other cultures - the books are mostly either Canadian in origin or translations of American books). But thanks to that lack of follow-up so often found in development work, this room I speak of is a room full of PILES of books, in no particular order and with nothing in place to protect them from termites, or keep track of how many they are, what they are, who may have at some point borrowed them, etc. It's a room no student is allowed into, because as things are right now if they were, the entire stock would be "borrowed" indefinitely in a matter of days. I'm hoping to rectify this situation and organize the library - a library that no one is allowed to visit isn't the most useful place in the world.

Finally, if you're more interested in fighting starvation and poverty, I will also at some point be asking for funds to provide my villagers with communal pickaxes. The ground here, when it isn't sandy, is sun-baked cement-hard clay. A pickaxe is not normally needed for traditional planting methods (only a shallow hole is needed), but I've succesfully introduced to some of my villagers the technique of zai holes that greatly increases crop yields - but also requires deeper holes, which are sometimes exhausting, sometimes impossible to dig with the local cultivating tool (known as a daba). Of course, all of these projects are dependent on finding community support, which I have yet to do. As stated above, I need to figure out if my community WANTS these things. If not, there's no point in doing them.

Change of pace

Life here often has a numbing sameness. Sometimes you get into a rut, and you don't even realize it until some small thing happens to break up the routine. Two examples: I was walking along with a volunteer friend while we were in Ouaga, and she handed me her nalgene and said "Taste this." I did, and said it tasted kind of like soap. She agreed, and noted that in the states she would have made a face and thrown it out, but here, it was actually kind of nice that it was something different. I agreed, and we shared the water for the rest of the walk. Another day, at my site, I stepped outside to walk to the nearest boutique to buy some laundry detergent, and I noticed that while, as always, I was having to watch my step in my courtyard to avoid animal excrement, said excrement was cow-produced; normally, it's donkey droppings* I have to look out for. And it brightened my day a little to have something different to do.
*In the interests of full disclosure, I have to point out that I was ALSO excited because cow dung is far superior to donkey dung in a compost pile. But really, the change-of-pace thing was part of my happiness.

Let's toast

You always toast on the first round of drinks here. The one I hear the most at site: À notre santé et la diarrhée a nos énnemies: To our health, and diarrhea to our enemies! Of course, if you REALLY wanted to wish diarrhea on your enemies, you'd go to the local sorceror and make it happen. But if you ever did such a thing, you'd never tell anyone. (Not because they'd think you silly for believing in it, of COURSE you believe in it, EVERYONE does. That's the problem - you'd be shamed for performing evil on a neighbor.)

How to order a steak in French

Mentioned this in my last post, when I talked about my birthday dinner. I didn't know how to order medium (I love a good red steak, but in West Africa, I'll have the cooked all the way through, thanks all the same), so I guessed with a direct translation: moyen. Which they understood, but as it turns out wasn't correct. I was curious, and checked out my dictionary. A medium steak is au point, "at the point." Well done is nearly a direct translation, bien cuit, "well cooked." The most interesting is how to say rare: saignant, lit. "bleeding." I like that.

My old counterpart

My counterpart, the then only other math & science teacher at our school, got promoted to be director of a school in our regional capital. (This led me to believe I'd have a higher workload this year, contributing to the floundering in terms of secondary projects mentioned above - I spent no time this summer developing ideas with my community, because I was SURE I'd yet again be so busy I wouldn't have time to do anything other than teach!) I got a text from her after she moved saying she'd come visit some time. That sounds like a nice text, right? Except that I'd heard earlier that day that she had actually just moved the day before, the day that I had texted HER to congratulate her on her new position and to say I'd stop by to come visit her at her new place, and she didn't even bother to tell me that she was still in town!

Gr. Oh well. My new homologue is now my director, who has frankly been more helpful to me than she was anyway (that's not at all her fault; cultural mores between the sexes would have made it difficult for her to go out of her way to spend time with me, and me being the proud and insular person that I am, I rarely asked her for help - because I rarely needed it, of course! And just to be clear, since sarcasm doesn't scan well in text, I'm saying that I believed myself more capable than I likely was. Er, am.) I selected him less on my own needs than on those of whomever replaces me next year - he's likable, knowledgable (though not in math and science, unfortunately), and he speaks good English. A useful trait for an English teacher. In fact, above my normal 10 hours I'm also helping him in his English classes 3 hours a week.

Lapin or liévre?

Whenever I've discussed rabbits here (and this is, by the way, ALWAYS in the context of "what's for dinner?"), whenever I use the word lapin (rabbit) people look at me funny. They understand, but they themselves always use the word liévre (hare). Well, in the mornings, some mornings anyway, I now have a visitor to my porch that I HAVE to use the word lapin for. And in the U.S. I wouldn't even say rabbit. I have a snow white, hippety hoppety BUNNY rabbit that comes to munch on my grass. The kind of thing you'd give a kid for a pet as an Easter present. And it's surprisingly unafraid of me. As long as I'm not moving directly toward it, it'll let me get in arm's reach. Not that I've ever tried to reach it. But I wonder about that. Does it belong to someone, is that why it's acclimated to people? Maybe it, like everyone else here, thinks Americans are too soft to eat bush meat. I'm not, but it's not entirely wrong - this bunny is WAY too cute for me to try to catch it and eat it. Even though rabbit is the best meat I think I've ever had, both in the U.S. AND here.

Only in Africa

Is the thought I had as I was sitting by the road one day and watched a cherry picker truck drive by with a goat riding on the back. If they'd stopped and if I'd had my camera charged, I'd have probably offered them money to put it in the basket itself so I could get a picture.

I had this feeling again a week or so later when I was visiting a local boutique and a villager randomly introduced me to the guy I was sitting next to, blurting that this was both his dad and his little brother. Actually, the only "only in Africa" part to this is that he randomly volunteered the information - the fact of weird relationships through marriage reminds me, as in an earlier post, of living in the South.

New volunteers

I have several new neighbors...well, not REALLY neighbors, but anyway several volunteers in my very general area of the country (the northeast) have been replaced. I miss the old ones, but it's a good new crew I'm surrounded by, too. One notable feature among the new group is that I've gone from having NO ONE matching me drink for drink to THREE people, which has put me in the novel situation of routinely being the one to say "No more for me tonight, thanks guys."

Kungfu video club

Ok, it's not officially a KUNG-FU video club. But we have a video "club," not a club really, a place where a guy uses a generator to run a tv and show a movie on dvd, and collects enough from the 50FCFA fee from everyone who wants to watch to pay for the gas plus make a bit of money. And 90% of what they show there is kung-fu movies. Well, try this on for a multi-cultural experience: one night, in a village in Africa, I watched a German kungfu movie dubbed in French. That's four cultures and three continents represented. Not bad.

Also seen at the club, in the 10%, French-dubbed versions of Con Air and Spiderman. Con Air I didn't watch 'cause I didn't think it'd be half as much fun without hearing Nick Cage's ridiculous southern accent. Spiderman I did watch; people asked me if I thought it was good and I said yes, but I don't imagine they got nearly as much out of it, not having grown up with marvel comics. If you're interested in seeing a hybrid bad kung-fu/bad horror movie, look no further than Ninja III: The Domination, the story of a young femal aerobics instructor, with crimped hair that would make Charlie's Angels weep with envy, who becomes possessed by the spirit of a ninja who's only purpose seems to be killing whoever killed its last host, and doing so in such a public way that it's current host is bound to be killed (probably by law enforcement), thus ensuring the cycle continues. I'm convinced this plot would not have made any more sense to me if I'd seen the movie in English. At one point, during one of her non-possessed moments, she licks v8 off of her hand to seduce her boyfriend. I'm sorry, tomato juice just isn't sexy, not in any country. [SPOILER ALERT] They're able to defeat the ninja spirit with the aid of a non-dead ninja who fights her in the Buddhist temple conveniently located only a few miles from her California suburbian home.

Reading exercises

I didn't just jump right in to reading Hugo. I started by trying to read Camus, both L'Étranger and La Chute, but eventually gave that up as a lost cause. I've mentioned that Camus' works are so brilliantly written that he single-handedly changed my mind about liking the language - but spending an entire day getting through a paragraph is just too wearing. I regressed to using our "library" as a personal supply of children's books. I've read a number of stories about Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Dingo, er, Goofy, as well as several re-tellings of Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. One version of Cinderella made an interesting claim. Snopes says it ain't so, but it's an interesting story all the same. The French for "glass" is verre. But in medeival times, there was a type of fur known as vair (same pronunciation) used as trimming on clothes. The claim is that Charles Perrault, in writing the account in 1697, was transcribing an oral account that had retained the word in the story although by then the word was no longer in use. And it was therefore assumed by M. Perrault that the slippers were verre instead. I'd say the Snopes argument is compelling but not conclusive.

Village cuisine

I LOVE benga. I eat it constantly while in village. Benga is beans and rice. If you're not me, it's beans and rice with oil added, but I always ask them to hold the oil (well, I used to always ask; now everyone in my village knows, and the vendor I usually go to even automatically held the oil when serving three of my volunteer friends who have visited). But you have to be careful. The process of harvesting beans isn't perfect, nor is the cleaning of rice in large quantities by hand, and your first bite in a new mouthful should always be gentle lest you find a rock and break a tooth. Well, I was lucky enough to find a (used) nail one day. It felt kind of like finding the baby in a king cake, only more like tetanus.

Tom Sawyer, anyone?

I'll soon be whitewashing the walls of my house. It's not that I mind the red mud color, it's actually a nice color (much more pleasant than the raw cement color of, well, those houses made of cement), but when your only light runs off of a battery you have to charge with a solar panel, you need to do whatever you can to increase its effectiveness. I got some whitewash from volunteer neighbors who had used it in their house as a base coat (it's much cheaper than real paint). Unfortunately, I've only got about two thirds of what they gave me.

When I got back from visiting said neighbors, one of my colleagues asked what I'd brought for him from their town (this is a standard question, not rude at all here). I jokingly said I'd brought back some paint, but sarcasm is mostly lost on people here and he said he'd be by around 8 to pick it up. Once he'd accepted what he'd taken to be a sincere offer it would have been incredibly rude to try to explain I'd been kidding. So I gave him a bag of whitewash. He said he was going to use it to paint his door, which should only use a fraction of what I gave him. But I have no idea whether it's culturally appropriate to ask to have the remainder back. Well, I haven't started yet. Maybe what I have will be enough anyway.

To be clear, I'm not in any way put out with my colleague. It's just something that when I think about, I think "Well, that was a dumb thing to say."

Faith in nasara

A few weeks ago, two other volunteers and I went to visit two yet other volunteers in the west of the country. Which means we passed through Ouaga. I don't know why, perhaps because of the confidence in my voice, perhaps because I am white and therefore have strange powers, but when I told him which bus station I wanted to go to in which neighborhood, he promptly started driving us out there, despite the fact that said bus station does not, in fact, exist. I thought I was remembering the station from an earlier trip, and I was - but I'd mixed up companies. Fortunately, seeing the station that belonged in the realm of reality combined with the taxi driver asking me where my mythical* bus station was, since he'd never seen it, prodded my memory, so we got off at the one we'd ended up at and made it too our destination.
*I'm not ENTIRELY crazy, there IS a bus station by the name I gave, and it does go where we wanted. It's just in an entirely different neighborhood from the one I named.

Biking

I do a lot of it. Which wears down parts. I discovered the hard way that you can't just put a new chain on a multispeed bike. You need to replace the cassette (the smaller gears on the back wheel) at the same time, or you end up with a nice new chain that skips with every pedal. So you have to put the old chain back on, but at this point you've weakened that one by taking it apart and putting it back together...

Also, shout out to my brother who sent me some really cool bike additions. I now have a compass on my bike, and an odometer/speedometer that works by placing a magnet on one spoke and then a sensor on the fork that measures rotations per minute. When I first pulled it out and started playing with it, I kept exclaiming things like "Oh, COOL" with glee as I read about each feature and discovered the mechanism by which it worked (when he'd described it to me, I was worried it was something that would actually contact the wheel and therefore slow me. Technically [NERD ALERT] if you're cutting magnetic field lines through a coil to induce electricity, you ARE taking energy from the system, but a completely negligible amount in this case). One volunteer watching me play with my new toys said, "Whoever sent that to you, knows you really well." And she was right. Thanks, Pat.

And let this not be a slight against my parents, who have consistently sent me packages and who also know me well, so I know I always have good American food to treat myself with when I'm down. Thank you guys, too.

Am I being spied on?

The system for volunteers who want to leave site for short non-work trips is known as TAC. You text a phone number containing your name and where you'll be when. The phone is supposed to be held by a guard at the office (this takes some explaining. On the one hand, there are rules governing how much time we're allowed to spend away from our sites. On the other hand, in the case of an emergency, the office needs to know where we are so they can contact us/plan to evacuate us. So this system is a compromise - while technically we are only allowed to TAC 4 nights per month, no one in a position to penalise volunteers from breaking these rules is handling the logs, and the bureau promises not to look at the logs unless they have very good reason. The idea is that volunteers will report where they are, even if they're "illegally" out of site). Well, last time I used it, the text message I got back wasn't the usual "Ok" or "Reçu," but "Well received," a phrase I've only EVER gotten from the American APCD here. So the question is, is he monitoring my TAC (why? he's not my APCD!) or is he giving the guard lessons in obscure English? I'm joking by the way, there's nothing sinister about this APCD, I've worked with him on a couple of projects with satisfying results. But it was a weird text message to get.

Broken promises

There was an education volunteer here from the stage before mine that I became pretty good friends with. Over the course of two weeks, we once played a game of chess via text message while at our respective sites. I promised her I'd come visit her and we'd walk the 10km (6.2mi) to her nearest bigger town. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to work out a time to visit her before she left the country. When I went on the visit to volunteers in the west I mentioned earlier, it was in fact to the replacement at her site. At the last minute I had bike trouble. Did you wonder if I was going to expound on the comment about weakening an old chain? Well, it didn't break on me while I was pedaling, but it did have a link come half apart, so I decided to leave my bike in Ouaga while we went on our trip so that the casette could be replaced and I could put the new chain on and be done with it (the new one has a quick-release link, negating the problem of weakening the chain). We got to the bigger town and found a taxi brousse to the site. But when we wanted to leave, there were no taxi brousses. It looked like I was going to have to walk that 10km after all - with a bag full of gear! Fortunately, after we'd been walking about 25 minutes, a truck passed by and picked us up, so we got the best of both worlds: a pleasant walk in a pretty area, without it becoming such a long walk that it was no longer pleasant.

Better French, worse communication

I noted early on that thanks to my knew schedule, I've had a chance to work on my French a good bit (aside from the aforementioned reading, I've been working my way through The Ultimate French Review and Practice, doing every exercise except the oral ones. I'm on Chapter 22 right now). My French has improved a lot (though I see on the sidebar that Nick's most recent post is about the imperfect subjunctive, and tense-mood combo I have yet to even study, much less master). And I suddenly find that it's a problem! I'm teaching the youngest collége kids this year, 6ème students (about our 6th grade), and I sometimes find they're not following me because I'm using words or grammar they've never studied! It didn't occur to me at the time, but having only basic French like I did when I first got there was an ADVANTAGE for that class. So I'm struggling with that.

The 3ème (9th grade) students on the other hand, some of them snicker at my French mistakes, which I find absolutely enraging - I'm there teaching them English, which they've now studied over THREE YEARS, and they can't follow simple commands or answer simple questions, but they'll mock me for having French only slightly worse than theirs when they've studied THAT language for nine years whereas I have for a year and a half. I shouldn't generalize like that, there are some students in the class who ARE quite good at English, and most of them don't make fun of my French at all...it's just that the few who do drive me nuts. They are, of course, the worst students. The ones I need least fear will ever read this post with comprehension (well, depending on how evolved translating software ever gets, I guess).

A village Halloween

I visited my friend K over the Halloween weekend for reasons entirely unrelated to Halloween. But the day before, I made an offhand comment that it's the ideal American holiday to share with Burkinabé - it's a mask tradition, as is often seen here, and moreover it's the one holiday that children there celebrate the same way they do here - by going door-to-door asking for gifts! So the morning of, we bought cardboard and string, and that evening we had over about 30 kids who made masks, wore them, then said "Trick or treat" (in English) at the door and we gave them candy. I've gotta say, it was one of the most fun Halloween's I've ever had, and though my costume may not have been as intricate as my brother's (check out his profile picture on Facebook), the cardboard mask I wore that night is a souvenir I'm as excited to bring home as any artifact I've bought while here.

The village in question is in the true Sahel (I'm personally in a transitional Sahelian region, which is a pretty narrow area - as little as 45 km north of me it's markedly drier and less vegetated, and as little as 20km south of me you see grasses growing that can't survive in my village). As a testament to the amount of dust there was (the amount of dust we were inhaling, ick), one evening I looked in the sky and saw a strange dark/light striation; I realized that there was so much light scattering from dust that I was actually seeing the line of a shadow cast by a cloud that was partially obscuring the sun.

Note to self

Yes, steel wool is effective at cleaning the oxidation off of car battery terminals. However, note that as it is both steel and thin, it is both a good conductor and flammable. Which makes connecting the terminals with it something that should probably in the future be avoided.

Why am I in Ouaga in the middle of the week?

I was planning on coming Thursday or Friday for a meeting. But instead I got to have a new, though very typical, Peace Corps experience. I got so sick I had to come to the Peace Corps office.

Don't worry, I'm healing up nicely now. But it was a bit scary when the thermometer read 104.6. That was Sunday. It was weird knowing it was over a hundred degrees as I huddled shivering under a blanket. They started me then on an antiobiotic that was available in my village, which immediately knocked my fever down from the scary range to the typical yuck-I-have-a-cold range. However, since it did not totally knock it out within 24 hours, they asked me to come in, which I did yesterday (Tuesday). And what a fun ride that was. I took the first thing going out of my site (I was still too sick to consider biking), which turned out to be a taxi brouse that had goats lying on the floor. ALL over the floor, about 20 of them, so packed that to get to my seat I had to walk on the other seats to get there. Which almost meant stepping on one guy's hand, who saw me coming and obstinately refused to move even a finger. I wonder why it should be that the same culture that produces people who will go miles out of their way to help you also produces people that won't shift a finger to give you a foothold. It seems to be something about transport in general - you should see the scuffles trying to get on the buses on market days! Anyway, I got to my seat and had to sit with my legs tucked to my chest - not that I'm above resting my feet on a goat's stomach, but they'd put me in a seat with no leg room.

When volunteers leave the transit house, they pick up the ID they left with the guard upon entering. We had a new guard yesterday, and I noticed that in searching for my ID (based on picture, I hadn't said my name), he had missed it and already put it aside. Before he could look through any more I pointed to mine and said "No, it's that one. I've lost weight since then." He gave it to me and said "I hope you get better." (The exchange was actually in French.) Ha. Appropriate, since I was sick, but he just meant it because I'd lost weight.

As I said, I'm feeling much better now; when I got here they switched my antibiotic and this one is doing well. The diagnosis? Well, it's NOT malaria, it's NOT dengue fever, and it's NOT typhoid fever. What IS it? Who knows? Just some infection. One of those things. Ça va aller.

Ghana Vacation!

2009-09-07T13:57:00.010-04:00

Actually, I have plenty to update about before I get to the vacation, so I may end up not doing it justice...

Franglais

This isn't the first time I've brought up the phenomenon, I believe. My favorite kind is when we use French grammar but English words. In Burkina French, the most common way to expressive possessive is with the preposition "pour," "for." To say, "That's mine," I'd say, "ça, ç'est pour moi." A group of us went out to a nearby bar, and someone had the clever idea of bringing a bottle opener from the transit house since waitstaff sometimes have the perplexing habit of bringing beer and then not opening it until asked. When someone asked her if it was hers, she said, "No, it's for the house."

Girl's Camp!

I spent the better part of a week assisting other volunteers at a "girl's camp" they were running. Girl's camps are a really common secondary project for volunteers from all 4 sectors here, the goal in general being to encourage the girls to get as much education as they can and to try to take control of their own lives (and to live them responsibly...like not getting pregnant at 14 for instance). I helped in several sessions, and led one on first aid and origami (the process of how those two things got thrown together is still opaque to me). It was cute how the class of 25 girls chose their seating arrangement: the desks here fit three students normally, and they were in a classroom with enough desks they could even have sat one per desk and still had room to spare. Instead, they squeezed in 4 and 5 to a desk. The youngest girls we called the "cupcakes," cause they were tiny and so cute you just wanted to eat them up.

Autrement, the funniest thing that happened was the session led by a Burkinabé on family planning. His main argument for spacing out children? So that the wife will be available more often for sex, and therefore the husband less likely to cheat! In the same session, he talked about the price of condoms, and the fact that they're so cheap that even if you're using FOUR PER NIGHT you're not spending much.

One of the projects during the camp was to have the girls make liquid soap, then wander around town to sell it, having groups compete to see who could sell it the fastest. The idea was to teach them about marketing, costs and profits, etc. Can you tell this camp was run by a Small Enterprise Development volunteer? Anyway, it struck us as we were discussing the plan that it's one of the nice things about living here that it's perfectly acceptable to have 12 year old girls wandering around town. Imagine trying a similar project in the US! Although as it turns out, the girls didn't wander at all - as soon as we gave them the bottles they gave us money! It turns out they'd already talked to their family and neighbors and collected money from them to buy the soap! They told us that this, too, was a form of marketing, and we couldn't disagree.

I missed the last day, when the girls performed skits they'd written during the week. And I'm sorry I did, as there was one in which a girl got pregnant, tried to get a back-alley abortion (abortions are illegal here), then when that didn't work drank a potion to do it herself which ended up killing her. At the end they all said in unison, "Just say NO to abortion!" Hm, not EXACTLY the take-home message we were hoping for...

Old technology

In a conversation about research, I mentioned to my friend something or other about microfiche. She said many people her age (she's 24) probably don't even know what that is, and I was really dating myself. To which I immediately responded that I may as well date myself, as no one else has recently shown any interest in doing so.

Birthday

My second African birthday was celebrated at a German restaraunt in Ouaga. I ordered a steak roquefort, and for the first time since arriving here was asked how I wanted it cooked! I wonder, gentle reader, if you can really appreciate how big a deal that was. It was a wonderful way to spend my birthday. Then we all went to a bar where my friends bought me and my birthday buddy (one of my neighbors from the group that just swore in shares my birthday!) shots of Johnny Walker. Good steak, then good whisky. Yes, I was very content that night.

Swear In

Went great! We now have 32 awesome new volunteers. I prepared an informal powerpoint presentation describing the SE program that was run during the reception after the ceremony; likewise other volunteers prepared presentations describing their own sectors. I was very happy with our finished product, but it was completely ignored by nearly everyone there in favor of the table we set up selling moringa products. Oh well, it's nice to see such a strong interest in moringa! Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the outfit I wore (a bright yellow boubou, a traditional Muslim garment here that looks like nothing else so much as a nightgown with pants underneath) but there ARE pictures, I made sure someone took some. I just haven't gotten them yet. Afterwards, as we were catching a bus early the next morning for GHANA(!!!), we decided to basically stay out all night dancing. Which I did with shameless abandon.

Ghana Vacation!

Wow. Just, wow. Without any exaggeration whatsoever, the moment you cross the border from Burkina into Ghana, the difference is profound. Thanks to their port and their well established tourism, Ghana's level of development is miles, light years ahead of ours. We felt like we'd gone back to the States - though I know full well if I'd come straight from Atlanta to Ghana I wouldn't see it that way at all. Really, though, I lack the words to describe the difference. But that's never stopped me before! Ok, I'll give a couple of examples. Technology: On the BF side of the border, the process to record your passport is to fill out the salient details in a notebook. On the Ghana side, your passport is scanned into a computer. Literacy: In Burkina, I have to come to Ouaga to find a bookstore, and pretty much any signage on the road outside the capital is for an association or government office. In Ghana bookstores abound; almost every hotel we stayed at had a bookshelf in the reception where you could trade a book you'd read for a new one; and there are billboards for everything from adverts for phone companies to signs urging you to do your part to stop domestic violence. Environment: In Burkina, the world is your garbage can. In Ghana, there are civic garbage cans even in the smaller towns.

I have NEVER seen a sign like this in BF.

Ok, I'll stop dwelling on that point now and instead bask in the memory of how awesomely great the vacation was.

With a few exceptions, I found Ghanaians to be less exuberant than Burkinabé. I don't mean less friendly, exactly, just less imposing with their friendliness. I've seen Ghana described as "Africa for beginners," and I can understand why. If you are considering an Africa trip but worry about culture shock, you should really consider Ghana. A few interesting quirks of the language: people say "You are welcome" to actually mean that you are welcome, as in they're glad you're there. But when someone just randomly says that to you, you can't help but think, "Was I supposed to just thank him for something?" Also, I find it absolutely endearing that when answering a yes-or-no question in the affirmative, they will say "Yes, please": "Do you have Castle Milk Stout?" "Yes, please. How many would you like?" Speaking of, CMS is a beer that would be well-received in America it's so good. Finally, the signs in the hotels cracked me up: they say basically that the hotel isn't responsible for items stolen from your room, so if you have something you're worried about you should check it with the front desk. The phrase they actually use is "You must hand over valuables to the front desk." Ha!

We started off by stopping in the second-largest city in Ghana, Kumasi, which has (arguably) the largest market in West Africa. It's dazzling, intense, confusing, and wonderful. We got completely lost, of course, but that just meant we got to walk around all the more.

A small fraction of the Kumasi market

From there we went down to Cape Coast, site of the Cape Coast Castle, an old British slave-trading fort. The tour would have been more interesting, I think, if we hadn't been with a group of rowdy Ivoirians who in my opinion really didn't show the proper respect to what was a horrible time in their neighbors' (and their own) not-so-distant past. Also, the tour guide was pretty pissy ("People, can you PLEASE be quiet so I can continue the tour?"). But still, it was a sight worth seeing (and one, it turns out, that President Obama saw on his recent visit to Ghana).

This is one of the NICER rooms.

From there, we made a trip to Kakum National Park, a rainforest reserve about 30km north of the coast. We went on the "canopy walk," a series of rope bridges and platforms built 30-40 meters (90-120 feet) over the floor of the forest. Naturally, you get a pretty incredible view from that high up. And while they're described as "rope" bridges, to be entirely accurate you'd have to call them rope and metal and wood and steel cable bridges. My comment to my traveling companion, K, was that they are rockety, but not rickety.

Not recommended for the agoraphobic.

After that adventure, we decided to take a break - we'd been traveling almost every day of our trip. We went to the beach in Busua and stayed for four nights and did nothing but lounge in hammocks by the beach (it was kind of cold, and the surf wasn't high enough to convince us it was worth being that cold to barely body surf), read, and eat ridiculously delicious seafood. K at one point found some Fulfulde speakers and chatted with them - I am forever complaining to her how jealous I am of her for that, but she DID already speak French when we got here, to be fair. It was neat seeing the way the surf swirled the very fine sand as it hit the shore - prosaicly, it reminded me of what my laundry water looks like after a full load.

The view from the rooftop bar across the street from our cabin on the beach.

On our way back up to Burkina, we stopped in Kumasi again. We went back to the restaurant we'd loved the first time through, but knowing the town a little better I took us by a different root. I bragged to K that I was glad I knew the town better and could take us around this other road so we could avoid all of the faux types; naturally the echo of my voice hadn't even died away when we were approached by a guy trying to sell us the same mediocre acrylic paintings that everyone else in that area wanted to sell us. Sigh.

We made a stop at a monkey reserve before leaving. In the towns of Baobeng and Fiera, monkeys are sacred, and if a person is found to have brought harm to one, the same harm is brought to him or her. So the monkeys are very habituated to people. The Colobus monkeys stay in the treetops, but the Mona monkeys will come down, and if you have a bit of patience, will take food right out of your hands! One actually held my hand for a few seconds.

YOU try taking a picture while feeding a monkey!

This one I don't have as good an excuse for, just that my flash takes forever.

The ficus is a parasitic tree that eventually kills its host, leaving a hollow mesh structure you can climb.

Our last adventure of the trip was the result of a misunderstanding. After the monkey reserve, we didn't have time to get any farther than Techiman, which is a large enough town but not touristy, so we didn't know where to stay (there's nothing in the guide book, and no one we know had ever stopped there - though it DOES have the largest cloth market in the country, which we unfortunately missed by no more than an hour). We asked the cab driver to bring us to a "cheap" guest house. Well, it turns out there's a guest house named "C. Guest House," which is what he thought we said. It was indeed cheap. It was also indeed the chosen guest house for a large group of merchants who had decided to hire some prostitutes to blow off some steam before leaving after the big market. Quite a switch from the Presbyterian Mission we'd stayed at in Kumasi the night before! The first thing said to me when I walked into the office by a guy who was hanging out (waiting his turn?) was "What's your name, white man? I like your style!"

The last two days of the trip were a series of bad transport taken in an effort to go somewhere we finally decided we just couldn't get to without going crazy. But in the end we got back into Burkina, a day earlier than planned even (you see, we knew going in that the aforementioned destination might be dicey to get to), which was great because it meant we didn't miss the going away party for a really cool volunteer who is by now trekking through Uganda in search of mountain gorillas. I could say so much more about the trip than I have, but enough's enough.

So, it's been a hell of a summer, and I'm both glad I had it AND glad it's almost over. I'm exhausted! Soon I'll be going back to site, where I hope to stay for a long time and settle in (well, I may do some day trips to neighboring villages before school starts). So it will be some time before I can update you on my exploits. Oh! Almost forgot the shoutout. Tonight (I've spent several hours on this post, it's late!) the shoutout is for Vernon and Nancy, two friends of my mom's who have been very supportive both of me, and, more importantly, her! Cheers, ladies!

2009-08-10T09:31:00.002-04:00

I'll start this post out with a shout-out to Carson, since he's first on my list of notes. I really appreciate the steady stream of mail, man, especially considering how lousy I am at writing back.

Chemistry in Burkina
I recently got the chance to read two real-for-true chemistry articles. The first came compliments of Carson, who read a non-technical review of an article which interested him and decided to send me the actual 30-page article! It was a treat to geek out for a half hour. I don't know what journal it came from, the printout didn't say. Think of how shocked I was to receive a letter that thick!

Soon after, I spent some time with the other chemist from my stage, and as it turned out she had brought back from her recent trip to the states an article her boyfriend had published. So I got to geek out AGAIN. I miss reading research. I do NOT miss performing it.

Bump start
I read that term recently to refer to what I'd always heard previously described as a push start: the process of pushing a vehicle (I've mostly done it with motorcycles), preferably down an incline, until you get enough speed to drop the clutch and turn the engine over to get it started. Well, on a trip to Ouaga recently I got to help - with all of the other passengers - push a BUS to start it this way. I don't think they actually expected me to help, but come on, was I really going to miss being able to tell that story? Fortunately, at the intermediate stops on the several-hour route, the bus stayed running and we didn't need to repeat the process.

Who would win in tug-of-war, a donkey or a cow?
You might think the cow, it's certainly got the weight...but there's a reason you see donkeys pulling plows and not cows. A couple weeks ago I saw a donkey pulling a cart that had a cow tied to it...and wheresoever the donkey was taking it, it was a place the cow did NOT want to go. That cow was pulling just as hard as it could against its lead rope trying to stop the cart, feet dug into the ground...and that donkey just kept plodding along as if it weren't tied to anything at all. The cow's feet left furrows in the road until it gave up. Winner: donkey.

Cranium games
You know they have a whole line of them. One of them is named Cluzzle. I argue that the "u" should be pronounced as in the word "puzzle," so that the "Cl" could be interpreted to come both from "clue" and from "clay" (the idea is to give people a clue about the word or phrase you want to represent using clay), But I was in a minority of one - everyone else pronounced it "clue-zzle." Anyway, it's a reasonably fun game.

Lost in translation
While working at stage again, we had a session at which all trainees and staff were present. At one point, I asked a question of the sesson leader (a Burkinabe), and after responding he asked me to translate for him. I thought this was weird both because most of the staff speak English anyway AND his French is of course better than mine, but I started - only to be stopped by the stagiares who patiently explained to me that the leader had already SAID it in French, and it would be much more helpful if I could translate it to English, please. Oops.

Style tips
When your t-shirt says something in a language you don't know, find someone who speaks that language and ask them to translate it. Or you might end up looking to someone who speaks that language like the buff 30-year old Burkinabe man wearing an "Active girl" t-shirt did to me.

Apologies to stagiare S, who should in fact be commended for getting hair extensions braided in a very popular Burkinabe fashion. I'm sorry that my first response was just to say your name and laugh for several minutes.

The new me
Not as in I'm changing anything dramatically; as in there is a person in this stage, M, who reminds me of me - he's kind of a smartass cynic. Here is a rough representation of a dialogue he had with the aforementioned S (before her transformational hair decision that I in all honesty really do think is cool, it was just SUCH a change) after she had performed a needs assessment with her class...

S: Wow, that was so great! When we split off the girls from the boys, all of the boys listed as needs these material things, like books and desks and bicycles. The girls, on the other hand, seemed to really recognize some deep issues, like that they need equal rights, and to be respected as much as boys, and -
M: So basically the boys asked for real things and the girls spouted cliches.
S: I am going to kill you while you sleep.

Technically, that last line wasn't spoken, it's an interpretation of the look she gave him. Don't worry, it was all in good fun, and the odds of one stagiare killing another are low (if non-zero).

Dream job
Why, oh why oh why, couldn't this have come up around this time NEXT year?
LEGO Education Development Specialist

Dentist
We're in the midst of our mid-service medical exams, which includes a trip to the dentist for an exam and getting our teeth cleaned. The backs of my front teeth where I couldn't see with a mirror were really gross - I'm never skipping a yearly cleaning again. All is well, though, no cavities.

Good luck!
I've had crazy good luck booking work that ends up helping out my personal schedule. After a week of being a PCVF at stage, I stayed in town for an extra couple of days to be a guest speaker for the Food Security Committee...and the day we (myself and a co-chair of the committee who joined me) did that, we were asked to stay an extra day to be guest speakers for a session on survival in Burkina (a hodgepodge of topics that PCVs think it is useful/convenient/necessary for the new PCVs to know; we talked about topics from phone plans and check writing to how to maintain a latrine free of flies). Which meant my dead day between working stage and having to be in Ouaga for a meeting became a day on which I had a free place to stay and was paid to be there. AND it meant I got a ride in a PC car down to Ouaga. And now, thanks to another job, I get to be in town for the last couple of days of my friend C's service, AND I've got an impossible-otherwise-to-get spot at the transit house for the Swearing In ceremony of the new volunteers!

Right then, off to start the groundwork for getting something made for Swear In. And to buy cheese. REAL cheese. Ouaga is spoiling me.

These are the people I "run" with

2009-07-16T12:13:00.002-04:00

Just to give you an idea of the caliber of person we have in Peace Corps Burkina Faso:

Ronkonkoma, N.Y. Resident and Peace Corps Volunteer Places First in Burkina Faso Marathon

I am humbled to be counted in their ranks.

I can't say I'm a fan of July

2009-07-06T13:36:00.006-04:00

For one thing, it's the month my brother was born. Ugh. Just kidding! (Or am I?) But really, I am feeling sorry for myself as most of our second-year SE and GEE volunteers pack it in and prepare to move back or move on. Good for them, of course, but it's a loss for us. You will be missed, folks.

Ok, enough of the touchy-feely crap. I'm back in Ouaga, working again. Most of my secondary projects seem to be more involved with the infrastructure of Peace Corps Burkina Faso than with the development of resources for Host Country Nationals. This is not good or bad in and of itself, it's just the milieu I am most comfortable in. But it does make for bad numbers on my quarterly reports, which focus on number of HCNs served and have no place to discuss how our work might be of aid to current and future volunteers. Anyway, on to the format I've found works best for me: random paragraphs!

Sheep

Yes, sheep and goats are different. You can tell by the tail. Usually, that's the ONLY way you can tell here. But recently I saw a sheep that actually had wool on it! A first for me here in Burkina. It still wasn't covered all over, but it had a good clump over its front haunches.

Interior decorating

When it comes to style, folks here take a relaxed attitude to ideas like "clashing," or "loudness," or "appropriateness." The last time I left site was in a taxi brousse; the driver had decided to spice things up by using shelf liner as a decorative adhesive over every surface to which it would stick. A lovely floral print.

Game day

Last month, a HUGE soccer match took place in Ouaga: Burkina vs. Cote d'Ivoire. This was a big deal because of our group of four, we are the two contenders to earn a spot in the 2010 World Cup. I attended the game against Guinea a few months earlier, and was looking forward to attending this one too. Unfortunately, due to safety issues the Peace Corps office decided at the last minute to ban volunteers from attending, but I came to Ouaga anyway, to at least watch the game on a good TV. Ouaga during an important soccer match is like Mardi Gras! People were honking their horns driving down the streets, screaming, waving huge flags on the back of tiny mopeds; it was great. One guy had even painted his face and body in Burkina colors - a really cool idea, but somewhat ill-advised given the lack of availability of paints made for said purpose here. I suspect his choice was an acrylic-based paint that is popular for coating the mud walls found in village construction. Whatever it was, he was more or less incapable of moving his mouth due to the paint on his face. Like I said, a cool idea...but I worry about that guy.

Unfortunately, we didn't win the game, but it was still a blast to watch - which many of us did on a big-screen LCD TV in a bar named Titis (and yes, we pronounce it in the most offensive way possible). My favorite player Pitroipa, number 11, had some fancy moves - but coolest move of the night goes to the goalie, who would routinely throw the ball to his teammates while performing a flip. I was unimpressed with Cote d'Ivoire's number 11, Drogba, the most internationally well-known of the players there. But it's entirely possible I'm just bitter. But even though we lost, we held our own against a team that won its last match 5-0. And with the collapse of a wall in Abidjan's stadium, it looks like our rematch will not be held in Cote d'Ivoire, but in neighboring Ghana. Which slightly increases the chances that we could still end up in the World Cup. I'm not holding my breath (not least because that match isn't until September).

Tradition

It's interesting how traditions persist in a society that is, in many ways, moving forward so quickly. On a bus sitting in front of me was a woman who was functionnaire through and through; she had the clothes, the attitude, and the French. My point is that this woman was well educated. And she still had a penny-sized sack of burlap pinned to her hair: some fetish to protect or aid her magically. Its copper coloring matched her outfit; I wonder if she has several to accesorize with.

Working stage

They're a great group! I do have a couple of funny stories, but I won't crack jokes at their expense in so public a forum. Instead I will simply say that I very much enjoyed working with them, look forward to doing so again, and even more look forward to working with them after they become Volunteers.

An aside that fits here only because it happened while I was in Ouahigouya - while I clearly can and do go weeks at a time sans computer, when there's one available the addiction comes right back. Once while at the PCVF house alone, I actually caught myself about to turn on the laptop someone had brought just to play solitaire - when there was a deck of cards right next to me.

The Sunday after I worked at training, I went to hang out at the pool - a common hangout for both PCVFs and PCTs. For the first time in this country, I saw a monkey! Some guys had one on a chain outside of the pool. I don't know why. Just for kicks, I guess. I didn't get too close because it seemed rather nervous about white people. Go figure.

Leaving stage

I'd done laundry a couple days before my week with the trainees was done, and left it out to dry (atypically, it took more than 24 hours, due to high humidity. Ah, rainy season.) When I got back from the pool, it was gone! I searched high and low, convinced that my peers had decided to pull one over on me. My mistake was looking inside. As it turns out, there was no practical joke - one of the staff had kindly pulled my clothes off the line and put them under shelter...but respecting our privacy, she didn't want to go inside, so she put them in the garage. In short, one person's kindness had me thinking that all my colleagues were jerks.

Bus trouble

Leaving was itself a two-day ordeal. The first bus I wanted to take was so late that a)I'd have perforce travelled at night, and b)even if I'd been willing to break that rule, it would have gotten trapped by rain halfway to my destination thanks to its running late. So after spending a night more than intended, I took morning transport the next morning. And took 12 hours to go 113 km (I could have biked it in 6).

First step: arrive at bus station, discuss disposition of bike with kind of shady guy who insists on calling me "mon blanc" and further insists that I respond "mon negro" (he actually corrected me after I overcame my embarassment at the possessive pronoun enough to say "mon noir"!). Yeah, THAT's not intensely uncomfortable for someone from the States. I try to explain that this sort of exchange would be entirely unacceptable in the US, but he is uninterested.
Second step: wait two hours for bus to arrive.
Third step: push, shove, but stop short of elbowing and biting people to get on bus in order to reserve seat. Normally I hate this step and will take slower bus companies to avoid it, but for this trip there was no choice - and frankly I was ready to take out some aggression anyway. That feeling would prove to increase all day.
I'll stop numbering them now. Next: Stop for...well, I don't know. Though I'm pretty sure everyone else on the bus did. Some guy was either hurt or sick. We waited for about 45 minutes for...well, I don't know that either. Something changed. Maybe someone from a nearby village arrived to help him. Maybe 45 minutes is just the culturally appropriate time for a bus to wait for someone to see if he'll get better. Presumably he didn't, since we left him. Or hell, maybe that was his stop. Things like this happen all the time - and by "things like this," I don't mean people dropping their pants to rub toothpaste on their legs (something he did while we were waiting); I mean things that everyone around us understands intuitively but that we don't even have the basic knowledge to ask the right questions to find out what's going on.
Next: Stop again, this time to switch buses. The route is blocked because at a place where it is only one-lane (because of a new bridge being built), a mango truck has possibly broken down and definitely dumped its load of mangoes all over the road. This in itself should only cause maybe a half-hour delay...
Next: Get to bus on other side of mango truck to discover that it's not being reloaded, because the staff have decided to take this opportunity of its lack of cargo to change the leaf spring. This turns out to be an unfortunate decision, since there is no replacement handy. Four hours later, they've found one, reinstalled it, and we're ready to go again. One moment of levity: while reloading, the staff are trying to lift a motor scooter onto the roof of the bus, and unlike at the station they have no platform to do it from. There is one guy alone on the roof to pull it up after the three on the ground have managed to lift it over their heads. One of those three, as soon as the weight was being held by the one on the roof, ran as fast as he could, certain (as I was) that the roof guy was going to drop it. He didn't - but the runner and I shared a laugh.

When we stopped, I should have just biked on; but by then it was three in the afternoon and I'd eaten nothing all day (there's a lack of opportunity to eat when your bus is stopped in the middle of nowhere for repairs). Naturally by then I was frustrated, tired, hungry, and generally grumpy - and I knew that if I tred to bike anything more than 5km I'd be sick at the other end of it. Imagine how thrilled I was to discover upon our recommencement that we were, in fact, less than 5km from the next village.

Fortunately, the only other incident of note during that trip was that at one stop, my seat neighbor bought me a Fanta. When buying food or drink on the bus, it's typical to either buy a small piece of food or sachet of water for your neighbor (at the very least, you should offer to share what you've bought for yourself), but a soda is more expensive and a very nice gesture.

With friends
I spent the next couple of days with friends, which was relaxing, and there's nothing to report except that I have awesome friends.

4th of July
First, the 3rd-
The plan: if we can't find transport, bike with my friend Y from Djibo to a small village 40km away. This plan surprised me, since up until a couple months ago Y was vehemently opposed to biking if she could avoid it. But I was game.
The execution: We got a bit less than 20km down the road (but I couldn't accurately judge as we're going Y's pace, not my own). At that point we should have passed another village, but it had yet to appear. Y made the crack, "Do you think we made a wrong turn?" She thought this was funny because there's only the one road; there ARE no turns. And yet, her comment made me think...was this really the right road out of Djibo? Now that I think of it, it wasn't really the right direction...So I made a call, and sure enough, I'd led us down't the wrong road. Clever me! It's not that I hadn't TRIED to verify that I knew the right road, just that I hadn't quite asked in the right way when I did, and so thought that the directions I was given jibed with the road I thought I should take. Anyway, we turned around and went back, and basically biked 40km just to end up where we started.

And then, Y said let's just try again! She was willing to bike 40km again the same day! I was shocked - but again, game. Fortunately, there WAS transport on the correct road, and we were spared an 80km day. We got to C's (have you noticed I keep mentioning the same people...er, letters...in this blog? I'm nothing if not consistent) in time for dinner, a wonderful beef stew prepared by D. Not me D, another one. I did, in fact, prepare lunch the next day, but it was not wonderful, merely passable.

Now, the 4th-
This trip was only part vacation, it was also part work. More so for D and another volunteer, E, who were there at C's village helping all week with a girls' camp (a common secondary project for volunteers during the rainy season, with the goal of encouraging girls generally to take more ownership in their lives and specifically to pursue their education), but I helped too for one session. I led a session teaching the girls origami. I enjoyed it so much that I agreed to work at another girls' camp in a few weeks. I was very impressed with the girls - for young girls from a small African village, they had very good French and were very willing to laugh and help each other and work with me (once they got over being shy with me, which took almost no time at all). Clearly, C has had an impact in that village - and credit where it's due, it was equally clear that the (male) teacher she was working with made a point to encourage these girls. Rare here, and gratifying to see.

In the evening, we had another great dinner prepared by D, this time chili. And fireworks. Kind of. For the second day in a row, a sarcastic comment saved the day (the first one I'm referring to is Y's wrong turn comment). We were sitting on the porch when Y heard a small popping sound and said, "What's that?" I noticed that the inside of the house seemed brighter than before, and I half-jokingly said "C, is your house on fire?" She ran inside and screamed, "YES!!" A candle had caught her bookcase on fire. Fortunately, there were buckets of water available and nothing important was burned. Though it was a close thing - there was a lot of money nearby, and the closest item which would have probably caught in less than a minute was a tube of rubber cement marked "highly inflammable."

Then we watched Breakfast at Tiffany's, and really I just don't get it. Audrey Hepburn's character is just AWFUL. And the male lead isn't much better - sure, he's a nice guy in his way, but given Holly GoLightly's personality, there can really be only one reason he likes her so much - she's beautiful. How is this movie so popular? One character who has devoted her life to using people, and the other is as shallow as an uninflated kiddie pool. I can't deny we laughed at it, but not for reasons I suspect its creators would approve of. I know I have at least one friend that I'm going to catch all kinds of crap from for not liking this movie, but I'm sorry. I don't.

Return trip
We biked it. This time in the right direction (my colleagues very helpfully pointed many, many times to make sure I turned the right way on the one road that runs through C's village.) It was a pleasant ride, though the wind slowed us. Y can most certainly not claim to be a non-biker anymore.

Being white
A couple of times recently someone has shouted some form of greeting to which I've responded only to find they weren't talking to me. Because, being white, they almost always ARE for me. It's downright offputting when they're not!

More bus travails
Ever been kneed in the neck? I have. On the way from Djibo down to Ouaga for my current project, a kid working for the bus was clambering down the aisle as best he could (it was full of people) by walking along the armrests. And naturally we hit a bump as he passed me. Bus travel here is something I would strongly recommend to anyone with a masochistic streak. Or a sadistic streak for that matter, you could get your own in pretty readily.

Current project
And what am I back in Ouaga for? This time, I'm working with another volunteer and an APCD to prepare an agriculture manual for PCBF. Actually, we're putting together a couple of documents, but that's the big one. Our main resource is a similar document for a neighboring country, but we're adapting other materials also. It's an exciting project, and our hope is that our work will lay the groundwork for eventually introducing an agriculture or environment sector into the country. Of course, that's an administrative decision and thus I can't comment on its likelihood. But I can say that from the volunteers' view on the ground, it would be a worthwhile endeavor. This country is struggling with desertification and crop failures in a major way.

Whew! Another long post with no overarching theme. Hope you had more fun reading it than I did writing it! Today I find out who my new neighbors will be, but I won't bother waiting for that before posting this, since I make it a policy not to share information on other volunteers' placements (nor even their names, generally. That may seem hypocritical given that I have names attached to the blogs I link to, but in each case I checked to see that they themselves share that information in their blogs. At least, I *think* I did - if you happen to read those and know that I'm wrong, do let me know and I'll change link names as appropriate.) Also, I hope you like my new PC banner on the right. I thought it was pretty nifty.

Happy 1-Year Anniversary!

2009-06-11T07:18:00.006-04:00

Yep, it's officially been a year as of today. One year ago a group of 30 of us flew into Ouagadougou with precious little idea of what to expect, and even less of an idea of how we would adapt.

And now here we are.

Today is also the day that the NEW stagiares arrive. Although I am in Ouaga, I will not meet them while they're here - the Training Manager keeps very strict rules concerning access to the new folks, and I'm not working with them until Week 2 of their stage. If any of their parents happen to be reading this, a) don't worry, the people who will be meeting them are capable volunteers and extremely good choices for helping them through their first couple of nights, and b) don't be surprised if you don't hear from them right away. They probably won't have a chance to hit a telecentre to call until they get up to the city they'll be training in.

Now then, this post won't be as comprehensive as the last one, because this time I neglected to keep notes on what I wanted to write about for the most part. I'm working from memory. And shoddy tools give a shoddy result...

Professeur Principal
This is the name of the professor in charge of a class, and in most situations Peace Corps volunteers don't do it. But when you're in a school with four teachers for five classes, there just aren't that many options. It generated a small amount of extra work for me at the end of each trimester, but I had no idea just how much work it required for the end of the year. My last week in school was by far the busiest I've ever been in this country, and that's counting a week when aside from preparing and teaching classes I had to grade 400 of my own tests PLUS 70 practice nationally-required exams for a class I've never taught. I've kind of been winding down ever since.

Formations
A decent translation of that would be workshops, I guess. At the same time I was doing all that PP stuff, my homologue and I gave a VIH/SIDA (that's the French way of saying HIV/AIDS) sensibilisation (you can get the flavor of that word without translation) to about 150 students aged 12-24 at our school. It went well, thanks in large part to some presentation materials that one of our volunteer committees managed to get for all volunteers. I still owe them a report on that, actually. I also gave the agricultural workshop I mentioned in my last post, and that went really well I feel. Though I haven't checked back in with my farmers to see if they're using the techniques we talked about. I still owe a report on that one, too...

Secret Meetings
Once my school obligations were finally finished, I went to hang out with a nearby volunteer friend. Turns out some of the fonctionnaires in his village (that's the catch-all term for government workers, everything from the military to teachers to doctors. Pretty much any job that is not farming or selling things is some sort of fonctionnaire position.) have a secret club - and he'd only recently started being invited. He got me an invitation as well. Now, I say club, but I don't mean they have a secret handshake or plot world domination...it's just an excuse for some guys (it's all men) to hang out, eat some chicken, and drink some sodas, without having to invite everyone and their brother. It was a good time.

Not so Hardcore
I haven't made my 140km bike ride yet, but I have reached a new high mark - 125km. Unfortunately, the trip did not go smoothly. I was two hours late getting out, and because I was late I hit a headwind that started up right as I was leaving; between those two problems, instead of arriving at my destination at 9am as planned, I got there at 1pm. Which means I was biking through the hottest part of the day. The upshot is that a ride that should have taken 6 hours took 9, and one that should have ended when the temp was about 90 degrees in fact continued for a significant time in 115 degrees. I ended up having massive heartburn and couldn't participate in the party that was my reason for making the trip. All in all though, I got off light for being so hard-headed - at any point in that ride I could have pulled over and waited for a bus or taxi brousse to pass, there were many.

Once There...and Well Again
While I didn't get to party (and it was a cool party, local music and dancing, and great food), I did get to explore my friend's village the next day. It's always interesting to see how others live here. Her village is much larger than mine, but still small in the grand scheme of things. The people were very friendly, and many stopped by the day after the party to make sure I was feeling better. For the first time ever, I played Bocce Ball. Kind of a strange place to do it.

On to Ouaga
After that, I came to the capital to hang out with some friends who were in town for a meeting of the Peer-Support and Diversity Network (PSDN). This has caused many volunteers to ask if I'm on that committee, which continues to shock me - don't you people KNOW me? I am many things, but a supportive peer is not one of them. Ok, that's not actually the case, I can be supportive when I want to be, but I'm not a good choice to encourage people I don't know well through their difficulties - my sarcastic wit tends to make me seem insensitive to those who don't know me. I'm not warm and fuzzy, is what I'm saying. However, for whatever reason, two of my favorite people in the country ARE on the committee, and I enjoyed getting to hang out with them.

And then to Fada
And one of those favorite people asked me if I would like to accompany her to Fada. She's leaving soon, and wanted to visit parts of Burkina we hadn't seen yet. Naturally I said yes - in fact, I've traveled with her before, this is Y from the New Year's trip I took. We acted like tourists, visiting the sacred hill (great view of the city) and a baobab with horseshoe-shaped marks in its trunk, traditionally explained as having been made by an ancient chief who actually rode his horse up the tree to hide from an invading tribe. And then we got our sand read.
Most cultures have some sort of tradition of divination, I think. Tarot, numerology, tea-leaves, that sort of thing. The Gourmantche in eastern BF read sand. Y and I found a guy who both does this and speaks French (a rare combination), and he took us out into the bush, took off his pants (to reveal that he had another pair on underneath, but we certainly had a moment of shock before that became obvious), sat us down, and told us to ask him questions and the sand would answer them. Y's reading was more interesting than mine, but of course it's not my place to share hers. Mine included some interesting tidbits, namely that both my brother AND my sister would come visit me - surprising enough - and then the doozie - I'm going to marry an African. Actually, after he said that, he backpedalled and said that the sand didn't actually say where she was from, but that she has dark skin. Y asked probing questions (she's arguably more concerned about my romantic well-being than I am...and having written that I feel that I've made an implication that is not true - she likes to see her friends in relationships, that's all) and we found that my future bride could be indian or hispanic; not necessarily VERY dark-skinned, just not white. Hm. Oh, but we'll date for 6 years first, because while in my heart I want a relationship, in my head I don't, I really just want a friend. That part rang true, at least. Y's remark was "Wow, she must be very patient."

Training of Trainers
After that, up to a city I know well, though I haven't been there in nearly a year. Stage this year is being held in the same place as ours was, and so was our ToT, the event where those of us who will be PCVFs (the PCVs who work at stage) receive training. I got to visit my host family and hang out with some volunteers I don't get to see much of otherwise. I also got very sick, fortunately only for a day. Something about that place.

Djibo
Another city I had not yet visited - it's where they held the aforementioned "hardcore party" that I missed in April - and a town near another of my very favorite people in the country (my other volunteer traveling-companion from New Year's, C). I got to see several volunteers who live in that region, and had a blast with them. I also discovered and bought my new favorite shirt - a bright blue-and-red-striped soccer jersey with a giant picture of Obama. When I wear it, people don't yell "Nasara," they yell "Barack Obama!". It's pretty great.

And Ouaga Again
And now I'm working with a few other math teachers developing critical-thinking exercises to compile into a book to give to all PCBF math education volunteers. That work is going pretty well, but it's not terribly exciting stuff. Saturday I return to my village, but only for a week - come June 21, I'll be working at stage! So I'll get to meet all the new hip, cool, with-it young beautiful people who have come to show us old farts how it's done. Perhaps most exciting about the timing is that I have a rock-solid excuse to be in Ouaga on the 20th, so I'll get to see our football (that's soccer, remember) match against Cote d'Ivoire! That's gonna be intense. If we beat them, we have a real shot at getting into the 2010 World Cup games.

Shout Out
Hi, folks at St. Columb's! My mom has informed me that probably several more of you will be reading my blog. Hope you enjoy it!

A month at site, a long bike ride, and why Burkina is like the South

2009-05-09T13:11:00.002-04:00

As a part of the wheeling and dealing that got me approved to work that stint in Ouaga at the end of March, I agreed not to leave my site at all during the month of April. The hottest, driest month of the year. Which means I missed the "hardcore party," a fête thrown by the crew of volunteers in the hottest, driest part of the country. I was pretty bummed about that, not so much because I feel the need to prove I'm hardcore (I feel like I kind of am, as evidenced by...well, I'll get to that), but because many of my friends were there - I'm not in the Sahel, but that's the crowd I run with. Anyway, a month at site may not lead to the same kinds of excitement that comes with the constant chance of getting run over or mugged in Ouaga, but it went smoothly enough, and I've had plenty of free time to think about what to write about. Unfortunately, I didn't really spend any of that time thinking about how to link my many disparate thoughts, so while this post will be long, I suspect it will be somewhat disjointed.

Burkinabé and Jesus
The Peace Corps has a very clear policy: volunteers do NOT proselytize. My question is, is there a policy on how to respond when locals do it? It's surprising the number of times I've found people who want to talk to me about how much they love Jesus. Really, it makes me feel like I never left the South.

Everchanging hair
The fu-manchu finally became more trouble than the joke was worth, and like the rest of my hair it is now slowly becoming compost in my yard. Our country director claims he's never seen me with the same hair twice. This reflects somewhat more on the frequency we see each other than on my hair, but it IS true that my hair has gone through more phases in the last 10 months than in a typical decade of my life.

A New/Old Hobby
One reason it became more trouble (all right, at least ONE segue!) is that I've started regularly practicing my cornet. I don't know how people do that with facial hair, it's a real hassle. I try to get in at least an hour an evening. For some reason I have the damndest time remembering that the A flat scale has a D flat. Anyway, one side effect means that I now have a crowd of visitors under the age of 5 every night. They're good kids, and a couple speak a smattering of French. For some reason, they love to greet me anew every 5 minutes or so, which makes playing continuously a bit difficult, but they're cute. My goal is to play in the Ole Miss alumni band and really scream...but it's slow going building my lip back up. Unfortunately, one of my spit-valve pads is pretty worn and I have to adjust it every time I use it to get a good seal. On the plus side, the climate is so dry that I don't use it that much.

Gardening
If I quit, it won't be because of the heat, vicious though it can be. It will be because of the insects. The flies and the ants DRIVE ME INSANE here. So I have a request. It may not be entirely legal to send foreign plant seeds, but it's pretty routinely done without a problem. I don't want genetically modified tomatos or fast-growing squashes. If you really want my undying gratitude, send me Venus fly-trap and pitcher plant seeds. I think these plants require a lot of water, but believe me, if you send them, they will be WELL cared for. Totally worth the water expenditure for the joy of vengeance whenever I see one of those pods closed. As for the ants, I'd love to import some ant lions, but that I think would be a little too difficult.

Irony, Thy Name is Dabilgou
At least, my being named Dabilgou is ironic. I've known for a while that Dabilgou, while a Mooré name, is kind of local to my area - often, Mossi in Ouaga don't recognize it, though I've met Dabilgous as far away as my friend K's site around 100km away. It turns out it's a VERY local name - it originated in my village. And its origin is this: when the French colonists first arrived in Zege (I can only imagine they were just passing through), they sat in the shade of a baobab tree with the village elders and said that they could show them how to live a better life. The elders responded "We already know how to live, don't tell us what we already know." And the Mooré for "don't tell me what I already know" is da bilgi. Thus the name of these men (and as it happens the tree they sat under) became Dabilgou. So here I am, another whitey trying to help the people of Zege live a better life...and my name is their negative reaction to the first whites who tried the same (or claimed to, at least).

A Night in Niounougou
Months ago now, on a weekend that I planned to visit Ouaga, I decided to bike that Thursday evening 45km to a friend's site on the main road, the idea being I could take a morning bus the next day without having to get up early enough to bike 2 hours before catching it. I didn't get out until 5 in the evening, and I had no bike light, but I decided that shouldn't be a problem because as I just said, the trip only takes about 2 hours, so I could just use my cell-phone LED for the last couple kilometers I would still be out when night fell. In fact, I had high hopes of making the trip in UNDER two hours, as it was windy: that road runs northwest, and the wind is nearly always from the east, so I planned on it pushing me along. Well, it turned out that the wind was freakishly blowing from the wrong way, and after two hours it was fully dark and I was only HALFWAY THERE. Fortunately for me, as I passed through the small village at the halfway mark, a man passed me on a moto, stopped, and came back. I could tell from his hat that he was a chief; as it turns out, he was the chief of the even smaller village just on the other side of the one we were in, and he invited me to spend the night with him. Now, if he hadn't been a chief, I probably would have said no, but I figured I could trust a chief, and I'm glad I did. He set me up basically my own room made of straw walls in his courtyard, and even covered my bed with a mosquito net. This was one of those moments when I thought to myself, "Wow, I am really in the Peace Corps." So now I stop by whenever I'm biking to or from site...on those rare occasions when i'm not doing so in the small hours of the morning at least.

Trinkets and Novels
During my New Year's trip, as I've mentioned, I acquired a small wooden elephant and later named him Bogart. Later, my companions from that trip bought me a small wooden duck keychain. I have finally named the duck - he's Camus. Because I'm (very, very slowly) reading La Chute by Albert Camus, and it's the first time I've read a French book that I haven't hated every second of and given up after three paragraphs. It's still excruciatingly slow going - I have to stop every third word, and Camus uses words that don't even appear in my smallish dictionary - but the writing is so good that I don't mind (though I don't do much at a time because it's tiring). I'm learning not to hate French (I still don't think it's a pretty language all told) at least.

Secondary Projects
Confirmed: I will be working stage, the training of new SE volunteers. Related, I will be developing a session for that stage on the Food Security Committee. I have started work on my school's library*. I will be hosting two formations this month in village, one on an agricultural technique known as "zai holes," the other on HIV/AIDS. I will also be working on developing critical-thinking lesson plans for the math curriculum to keep in the PC office. Not confirmed: I plan on applying for a program to teach English for 5 weeks in Ouaga. Well, I think I will...I like the idea of it, but it would mean a large amount of time away from my site, so I'm internally debating - and even if I decide to apply, I may be turned down on exactly those grounds. Well, we'll see.
*Funny story there. As a reward to students who helped me move all the books, I let each of them check out one book. Most chose dictionaries, or illustrated encyclopedias, and a few chose novels. One chose a translation of a Danielle Steele book. I'm looking forward to hearing how he liked it.

Grading
In mid-April, I was very stressed by all the grading I had to do. Not only did I have 400 of my own tests to grade, I was also asked to grade the math section of 70 practice BEPCs, the exam required to pass from 9th to 10th grade. It was really hard work, considering I don't teach that class, but I feel like I was fair to the students. Too bad they mostly failed.

Birthday
Ok, I've already asked for one thing to be sent in this post, but I have a second request. There's a book I really, really want. It's called (in English) "Trees, Shrubs and Vines of the West African Dry Zones", and it's a really kick-ass field guide that would be really fun to have here. But it's expensive, around $100. So rather than asking any one person to send it for my birthday, I'd like it if maybe everyone who was planning on buying me something pooled together to get that.

Chess
I convinced a friend to play chess with me via text, that was a lot of fun. Then I visited my nearest neighbor, and we played. He checkmated me when I was up by FIFTEEN POINTS. I was up a queen, a rook, and two pawns. Seriously need to work on my end game! And my opening and middle game, but never mind that.

I'm Kind of Hardcore
100km in a bit over five hours! As soon as my semi-self-imposed exile was over, I biked 100km to visit my friend K. The weird thing is that by the end of it, I wasn't exhausted - I wanted to keep going! So if my workshops fall into place at the right times, I'm hoping later this month to bike 140km to visit another friend, Y (one of my traveling companions during the New Year). She's leaving soon (sad for us, happy for her).

Reggae
There's probably a reggae cover of every song ever made. In fact, there's probably several, because it seems like even every reggae song has a reggae cover. Well, today I heard a reggae cover of the reggae song "Different Colors, One People." How do I know it wasn't the original? Because the original didn't work the theme from Super Mario Brothers into its chorus, that's how.

This Time It Wasn't My Fault That I Lost It
No, not my pocket knife. My razor. My dad had a really nice adjustable safety razor, and at my request he sent it to me here (safety razor blades are really easy to get here). Well, I had left it along with my other toiletries in one of the bathrooms in the Transit House while I was staying there last March, and it disappeared. I was very disappointed that someone will take it. Well, someone did - but it was an honest mistake. Weirdly, someone else here had EXACTLY THE SAME RAZOR. Small wonder he just assumed it was his when he saw it - what are the odds? He eventually realized he had 2 and brought mine back and left it where he'd found it...but unfortunately I wasn't around for a very long time and presumably due to its apparent lack of ownership in the eyes of the cleaning staff it is no longer there. I don't know whether I'll ever see it again, and this makes me sad. I get by with a local 3-piece razor, one much like the travel safety razor my dad gave me at the same time as the nice one. I've gotten to where I don't cut myself with it. Much.

And that's it. Long and disjointed, as promised. Off to a night of debauchery. Anyway, a beer or two. When are you coming to visit me? That's right, I'm talking to YOU.

An interlude in Ouaga

2009-03-27T05:56:00.003-04:00

This week is what we volunteers refer to as "spring break." It's the 11-day break between the second and third trimesters. Most folks have used it as vacation time. Too bad I didn't go with them - there are some good stories from the volunteers who went on safari. But you'll have to look elsewhere for those stories. I've been working in Ouaga.

I've been working on collecting information on agroforestry in Burkina Faso. The Peace Corps does agroforestry in other countries, but not here, so I've been talking mostly to different people in the Burkinabe government and a bit with people working with ONGs (sorry, that's NGO in English). Not much on the latter because of the difficulty of the former...

I'm staying about 10 km outside of Ouaga. I suppose I could take a cab in, but that adds up, and overall it's easier to have my bike with me than not, so I bike in everyday. So unlike every other stay I've had in Ouaga, I'm not gaining any weight! Tuesday in particular I biked a lot - I'd guess at least 40 km in all, and much of it in 110 degree heat. That day I started off by heading to the main office of the Ministry of the Environment. It turns out there's no general secretary, so there wasn't anyone there to help me figure out who I needed to talk to. Fortunately, I'd anticipated that I had a good idea of which divisions within the ministry I needed to visit. UNfortunately, neither of the two divisions I wanted to talk to have offices in the main building. The secretary of one of the other departments gave me directions to the other two. I'm willing to accept the theory that the reason these directions were so useless was in large part due to my French, but whatever the cause I wandered downtown for an hour looking for the first place she'd tried to direct me to. I eventually gave up and went looking for the second, in hopes that when I found that one, over and above helping me with my project they could direct me to the office I couldn't find. This second office took an hour and a half to find. My directions were "Go straight down the Avenue d'Independence, and it's behind the BCAO building." Sounds straightforward, right? Problem: it turns out that by "go straight" what she meant was "turn twice." Solution: Fortunately, I know this area of town slightly, and was able to figure that out reasonably quickly. Problem: The BCAO building is entirely unmarked. Solution: Ask around about the giant building with no signs and a big wall around it. Consensus is that it's the BCAO building. Problem: Which side is "behind"? Solution: ...Probably the side opposite the side on the main road? No one seems really clear about this. Problem: There's no Ministry of the Environment building on ANY side of BCAO. Solution: There's an office for a different ministry on one side. Maybe they'll know. Problem: Nope, they have no idea. Solution: Ask at a coffee stand outside. Problem: The directions they give me send me...nowhere in particular. Solution: Ask yet more people as I wander around. Finally, some folks know about a Ministry of the Environment office nearby. It's not the one I'm looking for, but maybe they'll know. I find them, and go in...and despite the fact that their sign lists a different division, this IS the office I was looking for. Problem: They can't, in fact, give me the information I need!

So that was a frustrating morning. On the plus side, they were able to direct me to two OTHER offices, both of which proved more fruitful (and one of which was the one I couldn't find earlier). At least as good for my state of mind at that point, they were also both on the way back to the Transit House (where I'm not staying, but I'm not above napping on a couch). Then that afternoon, I biked basically all the way across town (laterally to the direction of the place I'm staying at, so it didn't save me a whole lot with regard to my trip back) to another office. Fortunately, that office was also helpful - so much so that I went back the next morning. So I was glad to go...it was just an awful lot of biking.

Anyway, I still don't love Ouaga, but I do feel more comfortable here now, and I definitely have learned my way around better. I alternate between eating expensive and eating cheap. Today I plan on trying a place that claims to have Big Macs on its sign (it's not a McDonald's, there aren't any here).

And now I'm going to try to start collating the massive amounts of information I've collected. Whew!

The LIST

2009-03-13T08:14:00.003-04:00

Which is not going to be riduculously informative, certainly not a definitive packing list; just some stuff I use and stuff I don't.

As for that bike ride, I survived...but I could barely stand up by the time I got back to my site. Whew! I haven't tried anything that long again, just my relatively tame 45km to get transport.

Ok, here we go. First, the stuff I brought and use a lot:

Nonstick cookware. It's gettable here, but I hear it's not worth anything. I use mine a lot.
Serrated kitchen knives. For some reason, it's really hard to find serrated knives. You won't have a problem finding smooth blades of all sizes. And in fact, I HAVE found one serrated knife here. One.
Pocket knives/multi-tools. Love these. I have a multi-tool for travel and one for home. I've also been through a few pocket knives, but that's because I lose them, not because I wear them out.
Camp shovel. This one's also a multi-tool. I've used the saw side, the hammer, and the actual spade. All of these are gettable here, but I love having this little guy handy.
A GOOD safety razor. There are blades aplenty here, that's what people use, but you won't find a very good razor for the blades. Also, I recommend learning how to use a safety razor in advance. You will cut yourself at first.
Security belt. Got this at Wal-mart, and now I feel relatively secure when I travel with larger amounts of money. I'm not talking about an under-the shirt pouch (though I use that too for my passport), but a hold-your-pants-up belt that has a zipper on the underside.
Nail clippers. Small and handy.
English-English dictionary. You'd be surprised how often this comes in handy. I was fortunate enough to inherit one from the volunteer I replaced - I didn't think to bring one.
Shortwave radio. LOVE my Grundig mini300. $30 at RTI, and I hear you get a discount if you're a PC volunteer.
Mosquito-net tent. Another inheritance, and another thing I use all the time when traveling. Tropic Screens and Bug Huts are the popular models here.
Mosquito-net hammock. Love this invention, too, and I would bring a hammock again - but I'd switch. Having the mosquito net is nice, but I'd rather have one that's cloth. Unfortunately, my hammock is too hot - nylon doesn't breath. And you could in theory buy a mosquito net (they're easy to find here) and sew it on...
Spices and drink mixes. Self-explanatory.
Camera with exchangeable memory. Since I didn't know if I'd be somewhere that I could regularly upload pics (and I'm not) I brought several SD cards. Re: cameras, though, I have a battery problem. See next section.
mp3 player. Duh.
Backpack. Gettable here, but if you go that route it'll fall apart. Get a good one, you'll use it a lot.
Glasses. Go to zennioptical.com and you'll find that you can afford to bring several pairs.

Things I WISH I had but have proven I can live without:

Thermarest. Great for traveling if you don't like sleeping on the hard-packed ground, and who does? Still, the one time I really needed one I was able to borrow someone's.
Thermometer. Some days I get home and wonder what temperature I can brag about having survived. But I just don't know.
Pillow. Gettable here, but your options are either crappy or crazy expensive. I'm getting by on a tiny travel pillow.

Stuff I brought but could get here or go without:

Toiletries. Toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, kleenex, floss. All gettable in the market (or from the PC Medical Officers in the case of floss). Though I'm told the toothbrushes here are terrible.
Bandannas. You don't buy clothes here; you buy material and have it tailored. You could easily have bandannas made too. But all the same I'd bring them again, they're small and lightweight and softer than something you'd have made here.
Rechargeable batteries and solar chargers. Batteries are available; this is really a question of how environmentally conscious you want to be. Me, I like NOT dumping cadmium into the ground water. Not that there's much of that.
Sandals. I got some nice Clark's, but they're about worn out after 9 months. I'll be buying something local next. If you DO want to bring sandals, GET CHACO'S. If they wear out, you can get them replaced for free. If I had it to do over again...
Headlamp. I use it, but it's not critical. A locally-bought flashlight serves for most purposes.
NON-non-stick cookware. Save the space and weight. Buy it here.
Hats. Love my hats. I'm a hat guy. But you can buy them here easily.
Briefcase. I'm going to replace the one I brought, there are really nice leather ones here.
French-English dictionary. PC will lend you one. Though I do have a technical one that WILL come in handy if I teach anything other than math next year.

Things I NEVER use:

Twine. I just use the local plastic line.
Pop-up hamper. Ok, it's not true. I DO use this. But it simply wouldn't change my life in the slightest if it disappeared.
Flint. Although I like having it if I ever get stranded and just have to have a fire.
Emergency blanket. With the flint, something I've never had call for but am still glad to have.
Undershirts. Men here do wear button-ups, and in the states, with a button-up you wear an undershirt. Here, you don't. Leave 'em.

Things I get here:

OTC medicine. The PC will take care of you there. I brought a ton of ibuprofen just in case, but I really needn't have worried. Of course, you're young and beautiful and in your prime and don't have to worry about joint aches after exercising. Lucky you.
Books. Our house in Ouaga is full of them. Though no Terry Pratchett, tough luck for me.
Wallet. I brought a couple, but the one I use I bought here. It's goat leather.
Coffee pot. I considered bringing one, but it's good that I didn't. You can get a stovetop coffeepot here for pretty cheap. My morning coffee and chicory is kind of my touchstone to my old life.

Specialized to me:

Fishing gear. I LOVE having my stuff...but you can go the cane-pole route here if you want to save space. That's assuming fishing is a big deal to you to begin with.
Musical instruments. I brought harmonicas and a cornet. I'm not good at either, though. These I would not be able to get here if I'd later decided to take something up.
Binocs and a star guide. Again things I wouldn't be able to get here, and the star-gazing here is really great some nights, as you can imagine. For instance, from here you can see the second-brightest star after Sirius, Canopus, which is too far south to be visible from anywhere in the US.

That's it. I never made an inventory of my stuff, so there are probably omissions. Feel free to comment with questions if you know I've forgotten something, or you are the at least one future volunteer who is reading this and are wondering if something you have is worth bringing.

No news is good news

2009-01-23T06:59:00.002-05:00

Nothing much to report. No problems at site. Decided to make a day trip to Boulsa to check mail and the like. A day trip...as in 70 km round trip by bike in one day. Am I crazy? Nope, I'm PRACTICING.

I've decided that this spring I'm going to do a Tour du Sahel. Dori to Ouahigouya - or possibly the other direction, it's too soon to tell. In total, a distance of 300 km, give or take (more if we do a side tour to visit one volunteer out of the way). But for the most part, there are volunteer sites about every 50km, so the individual days won't be awful, though the heat will be brutal. But there is one stretch of 100km with no one's house to stay at between. Camping is a possibility, but so is making the whole stretch in one day. So it would be nice to know that I can do it without dying. Of course, conditions are MUCH easier right now - it's so cold I was biking until 10 o'clock and I barely broke a sweat.

I may actually tack on another 150km by biking from my site to Dori as well, if we end up going that direction. The reason for that is that in late my we have a mask festival chez moi, and the two volunteers who have expressed an interest in biking the Sahel with me have also expressed an interest in attending said festival. And I'll have to be in Ouahigouya in early June anyway for training, if I get a spot working the next stage. Unfortunately, while I should know whether I've been accepted for that sometime in March or April, the way holidays work here I won't know the date of the mask festival until just a couple weeks before it happens. We'll see.

Oh, I DO have news, it's just not site-related. I have been accepted on the Food Security Committee, and my job is to coordinate tree-planting projects, both to fight desertification and to improve crop yields. I'm very excited by this job! I will probably also work pretty heavily on preparing educational materials in Mooré, once my language is up to snuff. There's a nice synergy going on between my interests and my responsibilities right now.

And now lunch. I need to eat a lot. I do still have 35km to bike today!

Coming soon: Have you applied to the Peace Corps? Are you coming to West Africa? I actually don't know whether or not anyone fitting that description reads this blog, but my next planned post may be interesting to friends and family as well. I'm going to make a list of what I've brought or had sent that has been really useful, and what was a complete waste of luggage space. Stay tuned!

Vacation continued

2009-01-07T07:53:00.007-05:00

First, I would just like to point out that while I have mentioned more than once how cool C and Y are, it needs saying that C's friends, J, S, and M are also awesome. M had spent a few months in Ghana studying turtles (how freakin' cool is that); S and J had never before been to Africa. And none of them speak French. Yet they were fearless during this trip.

Dec 31, Day 5: New Year's in Bobo

We got up early and took the bush taxi back into Banfora. Fortunately, we didn't go by the same bus stop as before, so I didn't see my new faux type fan. We hung out at the gare waiting for the bus, and as it was a long wait some of us decided to go for a walk. J, S, and M went off by themselves (see how cool they are? No French, but they just went wandering without any of us with them to interpret. And they got by just fine), C went to find a phone to call a friend, and I wandered about too. Y (and another volunteer, K, and her RPCV boyfriend, B, who had joined us; sorry that I forgot to mention them sooner.) stayed with the bags. On my perambulation, I found McDonald's, which I'd heard about before. It's not a part of the fast food chain, but still it's a funny name here, and to add to the strangeness their decor is mostly Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. I also stopped in a "Chinese Health Store" because I was curious what such a place might sell. Mostly erection-enhancement pills with incredibly graphic pictures on the boxes, if you were wondering.

After we were safely on our way to Bobo, I texted my new boyfriend to tell him that I'd left Banfora and wouldn't be back for a long time, as I live very far away. He still calls. Thank goodness and Nokia for number screening.

After arriving in Bobo, we tried to stay at a place called La Pacha (I don't know what that means), but they were jerks so we instead chose to stay at Casa Africa, which was definitely the better way to go. We found that several other volunteers were staying there too (so of the 9 rooms, PCVs had at least 4 of them). Dinner was great, though I found my steak to be incredibly tough compared to everyone else's - until I realized that they had gotten actual steak knives and I had a butter knife.

I tried to take a nap, as all the others were doing, so that we could stay up for the New Year, but just couldn't get to sleep. So I ambled into the lobby and started looking at the carvings and musical instruments on sale there. I met the man who makes them, and when I told him I was a Peace Corps volunteer, he became downright effusive. He loves the PC, it turns out. Since Casa Africa is a common place for volunteers visiting the region (or those who live nearby taking a weekend trip to Bobo), he has many friends who are current and returned volunteers. Apparently, one even ordered jewelry from him and sold it in the states for him, and the profits were enough for him to buy a motorcycle. He said that now, whenever a volunteer finishes service, if they want to use a moto to travel Africa, they can always borrow his, because it's an American moto. Then, he said that since I was a volunteer and it was a holiday, he would give me a gift - a small wooden elephant, which is now a permanent fixture in my pocket. He promised to teach me how to play a game that looked similar to Mancala the next day.

Everyone else got up, and we went to Bois d'Ebene (Ebony Wood) to celebrate the New Year in style. It was expensive, but we got a four-course meal and a hell of a show. First a band that did traditional music and dance, who played almost entirely for our group as no one else had showed up yet, then a band that played a mix of latin, French, and Burkinabe music, plus one Credence Clearwater Revival song. They were lots of fun.

And here in the story I must pause and direct your attention to my posts from 19 June and 5 July 2008, where I mentioned that I don't enjoy dancing. What I failed to mention was that I enjoy it so little that at the 4th of July party I ranted at someone about not wanting to dance - and it wasn't even one of the people who had been harassing me.

Well, it's a new year. I danced. By choice, without a drop to drink, and in fact without even being asked. *I* asked. I told Y that her new mission is to teach me to dance, and that I wanted to start right then. And we did. And it wasn't awful. I still feel like an uncoordinated fool on the dance floor, I can't change that overnight, but I can decide not to care. So we danced and had a good time. I didn't exactly make dancing a New Year's resolution (my actual resolution is that every day I will use at least one French or Moore word or grammar point that I don't have a good grasp on), but I do plan on going dancing pretty much whenever I get the opportunity so that I can learn. Whether I'll ever love like I've never been hurt or work like I don't need the money remains to be seen. One thing at a time.

Jan 1, Day 6: Sya

We walked around Bobo the next day. Being a holiday, very little was open, but we did discover to our chagrin that faux types don't take a break. It was really ridiculous, it seemed like we couldn't take three steps without ONE of us getting harassed. Mostly the girls, of course. C really went off on one guy, and he still then tried to get me to talk to her to calm her down so he could talk to her some more. I need to learn the French equivalent of "Go piss up a rope."

We hired a guide and walked around Sya, which is the name of the original settlement that became Bobo-Dioulasso, and where people still follow many of the original 14th century traditions of the settlement (with the 19th century addition of Islam into the mix). Often our tour guide answered our questions with "C'est le secret, on n'explique pas," ("That's a secret, we don't discuss it," a response C said she would use the next time a faux type asked her name). Basically, it was a tour of gift shops, but they were some of the coolest gift shops you'd ever hope to see. There was a mask shop with some really fascinating work (out of my price range), a mud-dyed cloth shop (I got a hat), and a bronze worker who makes things that are surprisingly modern-art style and absolutely beautiful and I hate that I didn't take any pictures there. While at the mask booth, C observed that successful shopping in West Africa is much like Zen Buddhism - you must free yourself from wanting.

Walking back to the hotel with the group, I almost got arrested. Apparently, the Burkina flag is lowered twice a day, and when this happens, everyone stops to watch. Well, we don't have a flag in my village. They're usually at the police or gendarme station, and we're so small that we have neither. I'd never, ever heard of this. So we heard a police whistle, glanced over and saw that the policemen were not looking at us, assumed that the whistle was for the traffic they'd been directing and kept walking. About 30 seconds later, a HUGE police officer comes running after us, yelling. We stop and turn, and he points at me with a furious look on his face and tells me that I just disrespected the whole country. Why me and not the other 5? Maybe my silly goatee, maybe my new hat...but most likely the simple fact that I am a man (as is S, but he doesn't speak French, so just as well I was chosen to bear the brunt of this tirade) and therefore the leader of the group (completely untrue, I could never coordinate a trip like this with the suaveness and assuredness of C, our fearless leader). This guy just couldn't wrap his head around the idea that I might not have known what the whistle was about. I apologized profusely and obliquely offered to pay a "fine", because the guy was so upset that I really thought it was going to be that or go to jail. But he was, in fact, truly offended by our not "stopping for the colors," as this practice is called, without being corrupt - after several minutes of haranguing me, he sent us on our way. I've been cagey about hearing whistles ever since.

After a dinner of Africanized curried chicken, I went to bed tired, ready to leave Bobo, and hoping that my new wooden elephant (and J's, she'd gotten one too) would bring us luck at our next stop, Boromo.

Jan 2, Day 7: Koro

But before leaving for Boromo, we decided to bike out to a cliffside dwelling called Koro, a governmentally sponsored tourist locale. In what had by now become the theme of our trip, the bike ride was longer than expected. As to the site itself, if I had it to do over again I'd have lobbied to join K and B visiting the sacred catfish ponds instead. Oh well. There's really not much to say about Koro otherwise. There were some good views, but the tour was very short, and our guide was not very interested. And so neither were we.

From there we caught a Rakieta bus to Boromo, and while we'd seen the scenery before on the way down (dead flower-tree!), the bus itself is worth mentioning. It was like being in America. Large, cushy seats, air conditioning with adjustable vents, drinks sold ON THE BUS, TV screens that folded down from the ceiling, even a BATHROOM! I'd better not ever hear those Southwesterners complain about transport. It was downright bizarre after months of buses crammed with people and animals, stifling hot with all the windows closed (Burkinabe hate opening windows on buses, I don't know why) unless you're lucky enough that one of them is missing. We got into Boromo without incident, and found a hotel. And after lugging around a tent, ThermaRest and blanket the whole trip, I finally had a chance to use them, as it was much easier than taking a room. The staff at this hotel was incredibly helpful, and while they didn't serve food there the proprietor took our orders and went into town and delivered our dinner to us. J, S, and M finally had the chance to experience a bucket bath and a latrine, as this was the first place we'd stayed that did not have toilets and showers.

Jan 3, Day 8: Boromo

I haven't mentioned why we stopped in Boromo, though I've dropped a hint. Why did I hope our wooden elephants would be lucky? Well, for one thing, because that's what they're supposed to do, bring luck. But for another, the reason we'd stopped in Boromo was because there is an animal reserve there with several herds of elephants.

We'd negotiated a price the night before to have a 4x4 pick us up at the hotel at 6 and drive us to, and through, the park. What we GOT was a four-door midsize sedan at 8:30 that drove us to the park and then stopped, as the noise would scare off the elephants. On the plus side, this meant that we payed much less; on the minus side, it meant we - no, not "we," C and Y, have I mentioned how awesome I think they are? - were arguing about the new price right up until we left town. Anyway, we got our tracker and went into the park on foot. We passed by elephant dung, which I considered taking a picture of in case we never saw elephants, so at least prove that we'd been somewhat near them. I decided that I'd take a picture on our way out if it came to that.

There are no pictures of elephant dung on my camera. About a half hour into our walk, the guide stopped and asked if we'd heard that sound. I'd heard nothing, but he said it was an elephant sound and we needed to be quiet. We were, and we followed, deep into grass which had been obviously trampled in parts, until he stopped us and pointed - and just on the edge of visibility due to the high grass, we saw them. A group of a couple dozen, including young elephants (which by the way, makes it a dangerous group to approach, you don't piss any animal moms off if you can help it, and elephants are no exception). We raised our cameras to try to get some pictures, thinking how cool it was to be just a couple hundred yards away, even if we couldn't see them well. After a few minutes, they ran on, and we took a different route to where the guide thought they might go.

He was right, and this time we were both closer and had a better view - maybe 100 yds away. Really, really, really awesome. But it got even better. He'd put us in a place where their path brought them even closer...maybe 50 yds away at the closest. We were just half a football field from real, wild African elephants! Like I said, the best part of the trip. Good job, wooden elephants. A side note - after telling us to be quiet and making us crouch down to avoid scaring the elephants, our guide got A PHONE CALL. And he answered it and talked on the phone, loudly. These elephants aren't all THAT scared of people apparently.

Apparently he'd been talking to another guide; we met up with another group and continued our hunt. Unfortunately for the others, we did not see any other elephants, nor any other animals. They were really upset, and I did feel bad for them, but it was hard to feel too bad after our elation at seeing them ourselves.

That evening we made it back safely to Ouaga, and stayed out ridiculously late dancing. I didn't dance very much this time, but I did some. And a final note on how cool my companions were: when we sat down, everyone got up to dance, except me. J and M noticed and asked why, and I told them someone had to watch the bags. And so they picked all the bags back up and carried them for a song so I could join them. And then I sat back down because by then I was quite drunk (and I didn't enjoy this club as much, too loud and full of, um, ladies of negotiable affections). But a good time was had by all.

End of vacation

Well, for me. As I said, C, J, S and M kept traveling (Y went back to her site), but I have had to stay in Ouaga for IST. Which has been ok, but nothing worth writing home about. I've gotten some great ideas about what I want to do at site over the next couple months, and equally importantly I've gotten some lesson plans from other people, so I'll actually have the time to DO some of those things.

Since I've spent so much time away from site, I probably won't leave again until February, when I will come back to Ouaga for the meeting of a committee I'm applying to be on. Until then, take care, my friends, and if you've texted me and your name is not Joey, be assured that I have not received it. Sorry.

Burkina vacation!

2009-01-06T06:41:00.004-05:00

I mentioned in my Thanksgiving post that I made travel plans for the New Year. I'm now in Ouaga, vacation over (I'm not back at site because we have a training session). It was an excellent vacation. Excellent. Definitely makes my top three list. I'm antsy to get back to site now, I've been gone since the 27th. Even so, I'm extending my stay in Ouaga by a day so that I can see my traveling companions - or most of them - one more time as they pass back through (they've naturally continued on while I'm stuck here). Which gives you an idea of how cool they are. But first things first...

Christmas in village

Exhausting. Christmas was celebrated the way all holidays are celebrated here - lots of eating and drinking. And my village is nearly all Christian. So there was even MORE eating and drinking than for other holidays. I'd spend three hours at one house, eating and drinking, then be directed to another, where I was also expected to eat and drink. Then another. After the first two, I was going to houses of people I didn't know. I was finally allowed to stagger home around 11 at night (I'm usually in bed with a book by 7:30). And because I was expected to visit all of these people, I was only able to spend about 5 minutes at my best village friend's house.

Which meant that the next night, the 26th, I spent a lot of time with him. He was justifiably upset that I hadn't spent more of Christmas with him, so I needed to let him know he's important to me - I wouldn't have survived my first months at site without the support of this guy. Unfortunately, this meant yet another late night, this time right before having to get up at 4 so I could bike 3 hours to catch transport to Ouaga. Oh well. I made it. And thus began the trip.

Dec 27, Day 1: Ouaga

Met with Y and C, my two PCV travel companions. While waiting for C's friends to arrive (they came from the states to visit her here in Africa, I wish *I* had friends that awesome, hint hint), we had dinner at a Lebanese place (you'd really be surprised how common they are here). I kicked off our adventure by eating adventurously...well, not REALLY, but I tried an avocado milkshake. And now all I can say is move over chocolate, and give it up banana. This milkshake was just shockingly good. Off to a good start.

Dec 28, Day 2: Transport to Banfora

C's friends, S, J, and M, arrived safe and sound, and late, so not too bright and early the next morning we departed from Ouaga and began our trip in earnest.

Mostly spent that day on buses. As we went south, the landscape changed dramatically. I never left the country on this trip, but I felt for most of it like I had. It's really pretty in the south. And wet. And hilly.

There was this one species of tree, that unfortunately I only saw from the bus and never anywhere we stopped (I wanted a cutting). It was totally bare, dead-looking, except for random splashes of color that at first I thought were something people had placed there. Until we passed one closer to the road, and I realized they were flowers. Brilliant, beautiful red and orange flowers on trees otherwise totally devoid of signs of life. Y commented that it was much like Burkina (at least our parts of it) - a splash of life made all the more beautiful for the desolation on which it grew. She's kind of poetic, I guess. I tried to get pictures, but I don't think any turned out (I don't have my camera to upload them, so they won't show up in this post anyway).

On the way to Bobo, the bus stopped for 15 minutes in a place called Boromo. This place will come up later in the trip. But it was this first time passing through that we discovered that for some reason people there REALLY want you to buy sesame cakes. All of the vendors are aggressive, but it really was ridiculous how long they could expound on the vitamins found in their sesame, and this AFTER you've told them "No thanks, good market" - a phrase that works 98 times out of 100 in Ouaga and points north. It turns out that its not working in Boromo was a bit of foreshadowing...

Finally we arrived in Banfora, our first destination. We spent the night in a place called the Canne a Sucre (Sugar Cane) which was really, really nice, and not very expensive. I highly recommend it. Beautiful flora, decorations from several different Burkinabe ethnicities, and a very accomodating staff. As we were six, we got a three bedroom bungalow all to ourselves.

Dec 29, Day 3: The Cascades (Waterfalls)

It's really a beautiful bike ride out, about 10 km. We did a lot of biking this trip, and I loved every second of it. In fact, I'm now planning a biking vacation for my next one. One person I can be certain will NOT join me on that one is Y, who probably biked more in this one vacation than she had in all her previous 19 months in country. But she's tough.

We stopped on the way at a place called Campement Baobab to order pizza at a place about halfway there, so that it would be ready when we got back. It wasn't, natch, but still, we wouldn't have gotten any if we hadn't ordered on the way.

Then C ran over a snake. That was fun. It darted in front of her bike such that she ran right over its middle; fortunately, she had the wherewithal to lift her legs and NOT brake, so that it couldn't bite her (though it tried). C is tough too. I was next behind her, and my options were to stop and just miss it or run over it myself. I chose to stop, and fortunately the snake in its turn chose not to turn and bite me.

Speaking of my companions' formidability, when we got to the entrance of the falls, we found there were two different prices, those for foreigners and those for Burkinabe nationals. We did not pay the foreigner price. Which I really do think is fair, given that we live here, I just probably wouldn't have bothered trying to argue the point myself - our white skin makes it a hard sell. But they did it. There and everywhere else on the trip. They really are awesome.

The falls were beautiful. What else can I say? It's not schisto season, and you have to stay in the water 15 minutes to catch it, but all the same, we were careful. We did not have time to check out a nearby rock formation called the "Domes", but I can't complain really, the view we got was stunning enough. I got what I hope were really good pictures. Speaking of, I was very happy with my camera batteries this trip. All the same, I'm in the market for a film camera, since on my next vacations I won't be staying in posh places with current.

On our way back, we ate those pizzas I mentioned, and they were better than Ouaga pizzas. True to the name of the place, there was baobab fruit on the pizza. Very yummy. First time I'd tasted the fruit itself, though I'd had a drink made with the juice once, and sauce made from the leaves is common enough.

I mentioned we missed the Domes due to time constraints. We were actually running two hours late, but I'd made contact with a total faux type at the gare who found us transport after our taxi brousse had left. They do have their uses. Although now the guy STILL calls me every day. Ugh. I took one for the team there, but it was worth it as we were able to travel on to Sindou that evening.

Dec 30, Day 4: The Sindou Peaks

After a night at a basic but nice enough hotel, we biked out to hike the peaks of Sindou, where we learned that the peaks are part of the same rock formation as the cascades and domes in Banfora, and in fact the same rock formation as the cliff dwellings in Dogon Country in Mali. The ethnicity in Sindou are the Senoufou, who migrated from Dogon in the 1400s. They were told by their god that if they lived on a plateau in the peaks, and never descended, he would provide their food and protect them from their enemies. After colonization and the end of tribal warfare in the 1800s, they asked their god and he allowed them to descend, promising still to protect them from their enemies but to no longer provide food, as on the plains below they could cultivate for themselves. I plan on going back to explore more of Senoufou country, as they have a warrior sect known as "the Samurai of Burkina". There are ruins of houses on the plateau, but it turns out they're from a film shot there in the 80s. Still, once again, beautiful views.

After that, we biked out to a barrage we'd heard about, which we were told was beautiful - somewhat surprising for a barrage here. Its merits were not overstated. Though on the way we stopped at a small pond and decided that if it had been what we were told about someone would be getting hurt. It wasn't - it's just that the estimate of distance to the actual barrage was off...by about 70%. 6km, 10km, what's the difference? Quite a bit depending on how much water you brought with you. Still, totally worth it. Blue-green water in Burkina! Nice enough to swim in probably, though we didn't.

Ok, that's it for this update. I'll pick up later with New Year's in Bobo, nearly getting arrested, and riding a bus that is totally out of place in this country. I'll also cover what turned out to be the best part of the trip (outside of the company I kept), but I'm not giving you any hints.

PICTURES

2008-12-10T04:26:00.013-05:00

The stars have aligned, Lachesis has woven Clotho's brightly colored cords, the moon is in Aquarius, whatever, we finally have a long sought-for confluence of events: I am in a place with internet, and I have my camera! AND I'm reasonably sure that these computers aren't virus-laden...

So we start six months ago, in Charles de Gaulle, when I'm still looking at all of these people and thinking, "Well, these are my best friends for three months. Hope they don't suck." Turns out they don't.

Three of the guys, and one of the not-guys in the background. Ah the stories I could tell. Not really, we're a tame group.

But I'm not going to spend much time on these because it IS spending much time to upload. On y va, onto our arrival in Ouaga...

Tea and crumpets - well, glucose cookies - in the courtyard at SIL.

After a few days we moved to our slightly more permanent home of Ouahigouya. And we danced. Ugh.

If you hate dancing like I do, be the guy who takes pictures instead. It didn't work forever, though.

We met the chef of Ouahigouya, who was gracious enough to allow us to take pictures.

I don't remember his name, but like everywhere else in the world, always show respect to whomever is wearing the funniest hat.

What was living in Ouahigouya like? Step into my parlor.

Ah, water filter, you make my life less diarrhea-y. And mosquito net, you make my sleep less malaria-y.

But naturally the most interesting part of living with a host family is the family:

My host "aunt" Risnata, whom I called "Tantie Rit", a play on her name and the fact the she laughs a lot.

My kid brother, Faris. He's trouble. But lovable.

My host parents. These are good folks. I can't describe how lucky I was to get this family.

My host sister, Aida. She's smart as a whip; she won one of the prizes for highest marks in our model school, mentioned previously.

And now on to life AFTER training. Yes, current stagiares, it does exist. Your housemates change drastically, however...

It's already dead, I'm not that crazy. Though I left it overnight so I could get a picture of it during the day, and almost stepped on it as a result. So I'm not that sane, either.

Not pictured: my ex-roommate, Riley the cat. Sorry, Lisa, it just didn't work out. But she still hangs out on the porch a lot. Burkina cats are tough. Messed up in the head, maybe, but tough.

I tried to take some pics of the night sky, but they didn't come out. Since coming to site, I haven't used my camera much, for several reasons. And my pictures from Bani were taken on another camera; I don't have them with me. So we skip ahead to just last night, actually. My first taste of a mask festival! Ok, my second. My first was the night before, but it was dark, and it's hard to take pictures when you're constantly on the lookout for the masks to stop dancing and start hitting people. Fortunately, this second night they came out earlier AND we talked to the guy in charge of the masks, who told them not to hit us while we took pictures. I know this all seems bizarre, but that's the way it is with the masks. Once the person puts it on, he (or she? I don't know...) ceases to be that person. And the masks are feisty. How best to describe it? The people gather around closely to watch the masks, and they laugh when they run away when a mask tries to hit them, so they're not in fear for their lives or anything - but when they run, they run in earnest, so when the masks try to hit people, it's not JUST symbolic - they're looking to cause some bruises, at least. At least, that's my reading on it, and I'm not interested in taking a hit to find out whether I'm right.

Spinning!

Dancing!

Not hitting me!

And finally, at the request of my sister, a current picture of me. As of my last checkup, I weigh in at 72 kilos. I currently have hair, but look for that to change come the next hot season. I'll take it all off again. Well, the hair on top of my head I mean. The goatee stays. Not because I like goatees. I think they're silly-looking. But I'm hoping to pass the goatee stage and have myself a Fu Manchu by the close of my service. Even if that means I have to extend a year.

I don't like this picture, either. But be fair - I'm fresh off of a 40km bike ride. And I left my makeup at home.

That's it from me this time around. After posting this, I'll be visiting my post-office box. I'll have lots of letters, right? Right?!?

Hooray for internet access!!

2008-11-29T05:58:00.002-05:00

This time I have it because I'm visiting friends in Dori, even FARTHER north than my friend in Amsiya. Which means that mid-day here is still pretty darned hot, despite it being winter. In my site now the days are quite pleasant, and the nights are blanket-worthy.

Since my last post I've...hm, not done that much outside of teaching, honestly. It keeps me very busy. I'm afraid many of my students are frustrated with me right now, and the feeling is mutual. You see, by inclination and by training, my teaching style is oriented toward teaching students critical-thinking skills, not just rote memorization. And on paper that corresponds well with the Burkinabé approach. Unfortunately, in practice, the majority of education here is through memorization. Which has its place, I don't deny, but I try to do more than that. And the students aren't well-equipped to handle anything else. They just refuse to THINK about problems before responding! Right now I'm trying to teach them to start by making sure they're at least responding to the actual question being asked. Results are not encouraging...add to that the fact that I have 400 students (my earlier estimates of 300 were based on older roll sheets) and that French is not the first language for ANY of us, and the upshot is that the grades on my tests are not that great. Most recently I had trouble with my oldest class; some of the students told me basically that they didn't need the notes I was giving them. This despite having failed the last two tests. I walked out of class a half-hour early, fuming. But I now have a plan for Monday's class. I'm going to show up, take roll, and then not teach for the hour. I will give the students who DO feel they need my notes a real class that evening. That way we won't be bothered by the others. Can you tell I'm still mad?

On a much more positive note, I've had a couple of very good sessions with my 7th grade class. The Associate Peace Corps Director (APCD) for Secondary Education in Burkina Faso - in other words, my boss - came for a site visit. And happily the timing corresponded with my lessons in such a way that I was able to hold a PACA session - that's a tool used by Peace Corps to help the community discuss what their needs are (I've forgotten what it actually stands for). My boss was very happy to see it, and I in my turn was very happy with the results. I had the boys and girls split up and build typical daily calendars. I then used them to discuss the comparison of fractions and the need to convert them to the same denominator, in the process proving that the girls work a hell of a lot more each day than the girls. The guys were all shocked, despite how clear it was from the calendars (a typical comparison: 12h30 Girls - get water from well, heat, prepare lunch. Boys - sleep.) See above comment on critical thinking.

Anyway, I'm now in Dori celebrating a slightly belated Thanksgiving. And am I ever thankful to be here! I didn't realize how stressed I was until I was able to unwind with friends. The trip has been productive in more ways than mental-health, too. I got a great deal on a solar panel, which means I will soon have enough electricity chez moi for REAL lighting - I may even be able to run a fan off of it! I had resigned myself to not having one because I felt the expense wasn't worth it, but fortunately one of my friends has one he doesn't use, so he sold it to me at a good price. I am VERY excited. I'll also be making divinity tonight, as we have access to eggs here. I hope it turns out ok...I don't even love the stuff myself (though I don't hate it), but in the spirit of cultural exchange I'm sharing this Southern ubiquity with friends from more northern latitudes. I also now have New Year's plans to visit a part of the country I haven't before with two extremely cool (and incidentally beautiful) volunteers. They're both GEEs, and I love talking with the people from other sectors because it's fascinating how different their experiences are. I also love visiting other volunteers and seeing first-hand some of the differences between our sites. Which brings me to Dori itself.

Dori is a small city, truly in the Sahel: off of the one paved road, everything is sand. Large enough to have amenities such as internet and refrigeration, it is still small enough not to be overwhelming in the way Ouagadougou or even much smaller Ouahigouya can be. So far, of all the places I've been here (which in all honesty is not yet that large a number), Dori most closely matches the hazy vision I had in my head of what life in West Africa would be like before I got here. The market, on Fridays, made me think of Raiders of the Lost Ark - some outdoors, some indoors in large stone structures built for the purpose (MUCH cooler than the cement brick and tin or wood and straw-thatch of the markets of larger or smaller places, respectively - and I meant the word "cooler" to refer to temperature, but it also works in the figurative usage). Fresh veggies and brilliantly-dyed cloths catch the eye, and the vendors are mostly friendly without being pushy (a rarity!). The stalls and aisles are PACKED with people. The people here are mostly Puehls (as in the village of Amsiya described in my last post), which means, as then, that when people aren't speaking French I have small chance of understanding. On the plus side, this means that when I do come across a Moabga (the singular of Mossi), my Mooré is even more appreciated.

Need to work on that Mooré! And my French, though my boss said he was very impressed with my improvement in that arena. Nice to hear, as it is naturally hard for me to judge my own progress day-to-day. But when? School is all-consuming. But the trimester is over soon, and with my travel plans for New Year's as they are, I will probably spend the first part of Christmas break doing those things I've been wanting to do since moving in - study language, get my compost really cooking, and plant a garden. Personal projects, rather than Peace Corps projects for this break. Because come summer I've got plenty of secondary projects in the wings ready to go. More on that when the time for them draws near.

Short version: School is hard, but I'm coping. Fellow volunteers are always fun to hang out with. I like visiting new places.

As I often do, I will close by exhorting you to call, text, email, or mail me. I have really nifty cards to send in response to letters! Sally and Carson have earned theirs (though I still lack your address, Sally). Who else? Supplies are limited! No they're not, I can get more. WRITE ME!

Hopefully a long post - I certainly have a lot to say

2008-10-31T19:34:00.002-04:00

But my connection is slow, as is my typing on an american (and very small) keyboard, so we'll see.

Church
I went to the Catholic church because my best village friend is Catholic. He showed me in to a seat - then went back outside to chat with other people while I sat through an hour of service. In Moore, natch. At the end they announced something, and some people left while others stayed (my friend was still outside), and I wasn't sure what was going on. One of my students who was there saw my confusion and explained. The hour I'd just sat through was the PRE service...now we were waiting for expected visitors. A half hour later the service resumed, or rather, started. Three hours later it began winding down. Someone, possibly the priest, switched to French long enough to thank the nasara who visited and stayed through the long service that he clearly didn't understand.

Next time I'm trying the Protestant church.

Bani
I recently visited a friend in her shockingly small village of cattle-herding Peuhls (aka Fulani). My site is nearly in the Sahel. My friend's site is unquestionably in the Sahel. The view over her courtyard wall is an incredibly uninterrupted view to the horizon - no vegetation, no hills, just red dirt and rock baking in the sun. Beautiful. To the north distant hills are visible. Well, they seem distant in the dust haze.* In fact, they're not far. I know that because we biked from her site to nearby Bani, where the hills are. The point of interest? An imam in the 70s founded his very own sect of Islam. He had built a huge mud-brick mosque in the center of the town (it's just large enough to deserve that appelation, rather than village, I think). It has figures carved in of the traditional kneeling postures of Islamic prayer. It's awesome, and beautiful outside and in. We went in, shoeless by Islamic tradition and flocked by children by nasara tradition, and walked through the banded dark amongst large pillars. On arriving at the back, we climbed a shockingly steep, completely unlit, and partially crumbling stairway to the roof. The view of the city is really worth the climb, even the climb back down, which is even scarier. The roof is rock and sand, and very hot as you might imagine. I didn't walk around much (we were shoeless, remember?), but the kids did. My friend did too - she definitely earned hardcore points for that.

Afterwards, we climbed the surrounding hills, which very strongly reminded me of climbing out on the rocks in Monterey to get better pictures of the surf. The kids did this barefoot too. We weren't just climbing to climb - I haven't told you the most interesting part of this imam's wishes. Aside from the grand mosque, he had 7 other mosques built in the surrounding hills, and possibly uniquely in all the Islamic world, they do NOT face toward Mecca - instead, they face toward the central mosque. Also he apparently wasn't a big fan of upkeep - two have crumbled completely, and none are usable.

I forgot my camera on that trip, which I'm sure my friend got tired of hearing me bitch about. She did let me use her camera, AND I will be going back - there's talk of a camel ride fr0m Bani to a gold mine and maybe even sand dunes.

*You know those pictures in National Geographic of Africa where the sun is a beautiful orange ball low in the sky? Yeah, it's not clouds causing all that beautiful refraction. It's dust. Beautiful at a distance - the sunrises and sunsets here are pretty much ALWAYS spectacular. But the dust is playing merry hell with my sinuses, now that the rain is gone. Hello, 9 months of head cold. Actually, hello 9 months of Claritin and dust masks.

Cell phones
The BBC recently reported on how Japanese cell phone companies have a hard time selling to the world market because they add too many functions to their phones, and most people prefer to have phones just to make phone calls. They should consider the Burkinabe market. People here don't carry radios, they just play music on their cell phones. And I've seen a huge number of cell phones with LEDs flashing red, blue, and who knows what else. I bet they'd buy those Japanese phones. Although in all reality they wouldn't be able to afford it.

DST
Daylight savings time my friends! You do it, we don't. So however far our time difference has been up to now, add an hour. One immediate result is that instead of staying up late to listen to election results, I'll get up early.

SIAO
Went today. Thought to bring my camera to Ouaga - then didn't think to bring it to SIAO. But honestly, it wouldn't have done much for me. Some of the wares were interesting, but the format looked like that of a consignment shop or flea market. And a good number of the merchandise would believably exist in those places, as well, or the African store in the mall. I did make what I think were some good finds:

Dogon door - the dogons live in Mali, in an area so well-defined ethnically that it is called the Country Dogon. I *think* they have a mask tradition like so many ethnicities in this area, but they also have traditional doors, which I've not seen from any other ethnicities. The carvings on it represent the male and female ancestors, the male and female principle more generally, and their descendants. The doors are always kept closed - their purpose is to bar the entry of evil spirits. I bought a small one. Since I won't ship it due to both expense and worries of durability, I'll go ahead and say now that this one is for you, Mom and Dad. You'd better like it.

Tuareg lock - a small but expensive purchase, this one for me. I was suckered in because I love puzzles. It's not truly a puzzle, but it's not far from being one. There are three keys, the first opening a panel to allow access for the second, likewise the second for the third, and the third allows the lock to pull apart.

Mask bottle openers - I got three. These were small, and not inexpensive, but not on the same order as the other purchases. One for me, one for my brother, and one for Christoff, the shopkeeper/bartender who has really helped me settle in and begin integration.

Reading list
Yes, life is busy. But all the same, you need downtime, and I've always been a voracious reader. Here's a list of the books I've read since June, and note that only the first two were during training and ALL THE REST have been at site.
Don Quixote; the Kiterunner; Middlesex; the Dark Romance of Dian Fossey; Her Majesty's Wizard (my guilty pleasure, a not-so-well written fantasy novel that I love both for being the first fantasy novel I ever read AND for leading me to Spanish Trail Books for the first time, looking for a copy. I've read it three times since getting here); the Handmaid's Tale; Holder of the World; One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Obsessive Genius: the Inner World of Marie Curie; Alias Grace; the God Delusion; Wilderness 911; Card Games for One (I've played all of them for both one deck and two, some 150 games in all); the Art of Travel; Lucky.

Wish list addition
I didn't bring a CD player because of the dust. But it occurs to me that small capacity SD cards are dirt cheap these days. And I just happen to have an mp3 player that takes SD. So if you would like to send me music, just load some on that little $7 card and send it on over in a regular envelope.

Village Recipe

2008-10-04T08:09:00.002-04:00

Peel and cut five of the smallest onions you've ever seen - cripes lady, would it kill you to leave them in the ground a week longer before bringing them to marché? Peel and dice some garlic, because you don't want to have to clean out the garlic press later (note: not worth it. The press is a pain to clean, but it still beats dicing the garlic). Peel and dice a whole ginger root (even though you know it's too much, because how can you store the leftover?) that you bought purely because you knew how to ask for it in mooré (note: Dicing again, bah. garlic press + ginger? hmmm...) Sauté in oil a few minutes, then add brown sugar to candy because you saw someone else do it recently, and when you don't know what you're doing, copy others (according to a landlord I once had who had worked with Lise Meitner, that's what Einstein did). After candying, add leftover of a small tin of tomato paste, because if you don't use it today, you don't want to at all. In fact, it already smells a little weird...oh well, throw it in. Add water, and boil, because you definitely want to kill whatever that was you smelled. Taste. Way too sweet, though yummy. Add red wine vinegar. Taste. Still sweet, add regular vinegar because God only knows when you might be able to buy red wine vinegar again (red wine + regular vinegar? hmmm...) Taste. STILL sweet. Screw it, you tried not to use salt because you already eat so freakin' much, oh well, add salt. Ah ha! Yummy. Cook rice. Flail at flies who are currently in love with your lantern. Pick up crank handle that fell off due to flailing. Crank. Check rice. Taste sauce again. Add pepper. Add sauce to rice, and eat. And feel vindicated - you were right, it was too much ginger.

But it was yummy all the same.

Site is good. My teaching schedule was changed this week. We had so many students sign up that we split the sixième class (roughly sixth grade) into 2 sections, which means I have to teach 20 hours, not 15. If you think that sounds like a light schedule, please remember that my French is still only so-so. 15 is recommended for 1st year volunteers. Anyway, I won't be teaching Physics & Chemistry, just math. So, I have two classes of sixième (sixth-grade) math, one of cinquième (7th grade) math, and one of quatrième (8th grade) math. Class sizes are 102 and 100, 97, 63, respectively.

Before I left, I put out a general call for addresses for people who want to receive mail from me here. Well, bad news - I can't find my list! But that's ok, I have a solution. YOU mail ME first (and in case it's not clear, include your return address on the envelope!), and if you do I promise you at least one written response while I'm here*. You can find my address here. To give you an idea on the Boulsa address, today is 4 Oct and I had a letter from 22 Sept in the box. Not bad! Of course, it may have gotten here even sooner, you also have to take into account that I only come here about once a month.
*Hi Sally. Yes, you've already sent me something. But I cleverly threw away the envelope before writing down your address. If you email me your address then you'll get the response you're owed.

A big thank you to PLAN for sponsoring my internet time this week!

Quick update

2008-09-15T04:53:00.002-04:00

I'm in a hurry today, but just so everyone knows I was successfully installed in my site, and I've survived the first couple of weeks. Although really it was the first couple of days that were really hard, after that it's been easier. I've begun planting some moringa trees in my courtyard, and I know what classes I'll be teaching now (two maths and a physics/chemistry, all at the middle school level since that's all my site has), but I do not yet have a schedule.

I also already have a secondary project of organizing a room full of hundreds of books into a lending library. Step 1: Get bookshelves!

Hopefully next time I'll be able to post more!

Winding down

2008-08-14T06:28:00.004-04:00

Model school will be over soon. Next week is all review, tests, and reclamations, so I'm pretty much done teaching class until I go to site.

Not much to report otherwise. I'm on the hunt for good gifts to give my host family that reflect how truly awesome they've been. Oh, and speaking of that DOES remind me of something worth recounting...

A couple years ago, my host dad set up an organization that gives sensibilisations on things like HIV/AIDS, female circumcision, and autres choses comme çà (other things like that - this is one of the more common franglais-ed phrases among volunteers, so I thought I'd use it). So we set up a chance for stagiares to have a sensibilisation on excision (that's what female circumcision is called here). It went really well, we learned a lot, and the GEE stagiares in particular were happy about it, I think, because apparently they'd expected to have more on that topic in their training than they'd actually received. My host dad gave a really great talk, which included some rather disturbing models. I was very proud to be a part of their family that day.

A couple more additions to my wishlist - my safety razor (natch, that one is for mom and dad), and books on how to sail and how to maintain sailboats. While I can't practice sailing here, I can at least get the book-learning done: How to read charts, what to look for when buying a boat, etc. I don't need books in general, because there's a great reading library for volunteers. But for this specific topic, I could use your help.

New shout out

2008-08-07T08:15:00.002-04:00

So I don't have very much new to say, other than that teaching in French gets a little easier each day. Oh, here's a story from model school:

Preparing lessons in French takes FOREVER. There are constantly new words in the book I need to look up, plus I want to try to re-word everything, PLUS I need to try to be aware of any new words my students might throw at me. At least, that was my outlook the first few days of model school. But after spending 5 hours to prepare the first 2 hours worth of lessons (lessons that in English I could have taught if someone had handed me the book as I walked into the classroom), I kind of relaxed my standards for myself. Which leads us to what happened two days ago, when I was talking about evaporation and I wanted to say that over time water disappears. But I completely forgot the word. Now, every other day, I've kept my dictionary with me, though I've never used it - if you once let the students here realize you're fallible, discipline immediately becomes a problem. So that day, I let the PCVF who was observing my class use it. So naturally that was the day I needed it. So I had to go to the back of the class where she was sitting to look up "disappear" (it's "disparaître," by the way) as my students looked on. So I told them that I was sorry, I know the science, not the French, but if they'd like I could easily teach the lesson in English. That got a chuckle, so I was able to play it off, but it was pretty stressful all the same. Some of my students, by the way, said they WOULD like me to teach in English, but I don't know if that's a comment on the interest in English or their disinterest in Physics/Chemistry.

But that story is not why I'm posting today. I'm posting today to recognize my awesome friend Sally who sent me a package full of goodies! I got it Sally! On the downside, that means you don't get to lie about what was in it, but on the upside I can't imagine why you would - it's great! I am now officially a fan of Propel Fitness water.

It took a month, but it made my day!

Je ne suis pas David. Je m'appelle Moumbarak.

2008-07-30T11:18:00.002-04:00

My family finally gave me a Burkinabé name. It's actually Arabic in origin as opposed to Mossi, but that's small surprise given that my family is Muslim. Anyway, my name here is now Moumbarak. Our family name is Maïga. I actually use that at our model school - I have told the students that I am M. Duckworth, but if they find that too hard to pronounce, they can call me M. Maïga.

Finished reading the Kite Runner. It was a great read, though not something I'd label uplifting. Anyway, I still have Don Quixote to read (no, I don't know which translation offhand) and it won't be too long before I have another chance to go to the PC transit house in Ouaga and pick up a couple more books.

Model school is going ok. I'm currently teaching quatrième Physique/Chimie. In general my students behave for me though today they were a little chatty. The other quatrième PC teacher got farther than me today - we'd kept pace with each other the first two days. But I forgive her. I have a class at 8 tomorrow, but I don't teach on Friday, so I should have time to both begin lesson planning for next week and slip in an extra language session.

I keep randomly losing credits from my CelTel account. I'm irritated enough now that I will be buying a TelMob SIM card in the next couple days. There are two downsides. One is that I don't know the plans. The other is that I will no longer be able to send or receive texts from the U.S. Actually, I've heard mixed rumors about that, so it will probably still be worth trying, but expect to no longer be able to text me. Of course, that's directed at my brother since no one else has anyway, to my knowledge.

By the way, I updated my contact info again - I had the info for the other website this time.

Visiting village

2008-07-27T06:25:00.002-04:00

Sadly, we had another of our colleagues leave us this week. The good news is that when she can, she will return. In the meantime, we miss you Annette!

Yesterday I went to spend the night in Bogoya, one of the nearby villages where GEE (Girls' Empowerment and Education) trainees stay. We played soccer with some local kids, and this morning one of the trainees was grilling her host brother about his girlfriend, which was pretty funny to watch. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay and cultivate with my colleagues' host families because I'd forgotten to pack my malaria medicine and I had to get back to the city ASAP to take it. I think I've mentioned that unlike most of the stagiares, I'm on a daily med, so I don't have two or three days to take it if I'm late. I normally keep an emergency week's supply with me in my bag, but for this trip I switched to a larger bag and didn't move that medicine over. Lesson learned - I now keep that emergency supply in my mini med-kit, which I never forget. Because you never know when you're going to be in serious need of antibiotic ointment or pepto bismol.

My front tire has four more patches on it than it did yesterday morning. So that was fun. We had just gotten to the village when I heard something rattling in my spokes. I stopped, saw a branch stuck to my wheel, pulled it out - and could hear the hissing of my tire. I'd picked up two thorns large enough that when I removed them I could see the holes in the tire (not the innertube, the TIRE). So I patched those, we went on to my friends house - and my front was flat again. Didn't find what hit it that time, but I patched that, and we went to go play soccer. At the end of the game, I checked and my tire was flat AGAIN. I was sure that one would turn out to be because I messed up the third patch (here's some advice - after you've inflated the tube to find the flat, DEFLATE IT AGAIN before applying the patch, or you end up with one that bulges out funny). I was wrong - I actually had a fourth hole. Patched that and used a bucket of water to check, and so far the front hasn't giving me any more trouble, though the day is still young. I also had to pump up my rear tire on the way back, but that's a leak just slow enough that I'm too lazy to fix it and instead I just pump it back up every few days.

Today I must go to the pool. Usually on Sundays I do anyway, but today I must, to meet with the people planning the community meeting next week - because I'm one of them. It's not a job I'm terribly enthused about, but we all have to do it, so that's that.

I've added something to my wishlist: dark chocolate peanut M&Ms. We were talking about them the other day, and now I'm craving them something fierce. Also, keep an eye out for a change in the phone instructions...one of the PCVFs got us instructions for an even cheaper option, but I forgot to bring the sheet with me.

My address and phone number

2008-07-23T13:21:00.028-04:00

*This mailing info was updated in March 2011*

All mail should be sent to:
David T. Duckworth
06 BP 10539
Ouagadougou 06
Burkina Faso

Instructions from the first time I wrote about mail
You may use the U.S. postal service to send letters or small packages - preferably small enough to fit in a padded envelope rather than a box, to minimize taxes and customs fees on my end. Mark all packages with "Airmail / Par Avion". There is the possibility that things you send through the mail will be lost, so don't send anything too valuable. In particular, don't send me postcards without enclosing them in an envelope unless you'd really like your postcard to adorn some post office along the way that I'll never see.

Finally, my phone number. My number is with Airtel(was Zain, was CelTel): 75.90.71.83. Sending texts to this number may or may not work. Remember, to dial out of country, in the states, you must either dial 011 or the "+" sign (on your cell phone, hit "*" twice...at least that works here. You can find it, I have faith), then the country code of the country you are calling. Burkina's code is 226. So, to break that down, you should dial either

01122675907183 or
+22675907183

if you are dialing direct. Which you shouldn't be doing. What you SHOULD be doing is either using a VOIP like Skype or an online calling card from a place like http://www.pingo.com/ (I really don't recommend using a store-bought calling card, they tack on a lot of fees). So when you use those, you'll need to follow whatever their directions are for calling another country. Again, I have faith in you. Also, you should notice in the comments below that Pingo kindly left you a coupon code to help you save a bit of money.

Another online site, http://www.speedypin.com/, is used by at least one volunteer's family. Instructions from that volunteer's dad:
Go to the site and enter your origination country and destination. The site will list your options. You should select Super Star. You may choose segments of $2, $5, $10, or $20. There is a service charge of $1 for purchases that total under $20 (so for example, you can buy 4 $5 segments to avoid the charge). $5 should get you about 35 minutes of talk time. The downside to using smaller segments is that if you want to talk longer, you must redial - there is no back-to-back use on a single call. There is a posted $0.79 semimonthly service charge, but it appears to be only within "opened" segments - the volunteer's family has never lost any value to time deterioration. Once you've ordered once, the site is easy to navigate for reorders of additional time: just select [Your Account], choose the time to purchase, acknowledge your personal info, re-enter your charge info and select "Yes".

If you are really uninterested in anything else, I still have an email address, too! This username at gmail dot com. Write, call, text, email, but do something! I miss you folks!

My site kicks butt!

2008-07-20T12:16:00.002-04:00

Ok, some more info about my site...

While it is small, it's still a departmental capital (departments are KIND of like counties). This means that it has a lot of stuff for being so small, including:

A marché (market) every three days big enough that I can meet all of my dietary needs easily.
A boutique big enough to have non-perishables like tomato paste and noodles. It also has sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk...but no powdered milk. And while I COULD live without powdered milk, it's much easier not to try, since it lasts so long. Anyway, the boutique basically has so much stuff that you can't even tell what it might have since stuff is piled two and three layers deep. To give you an example of its breadth, I got bike brake cables there, and I've had a hard time finding those here in the "big" city.
A barrage that I CAN FISH IN!!!
REAL COFFEE! From Cote d'Ivoire, I think.
Neem trees! Look it up.

Also, the house I'll be in is really freakin' sweet. No electricity or running water, of course. But it does have a huge hangar (a porch with a thatch roof) with a cement floor, and I've confirmed that my hammock fits comfortably there. It also has a latrine/shower area with a locking door! This is rare for volunteer sites and is really super great. I'm also inheriting a Lipico (a cot more or less) and a mosquito tent with broken poles. Now that you know these things, you'll understand my new wish list. Some of this stuff would be expensive to send, so I understand if you can't. Even if I do have a birthday coming up.

Two tent poles.
A percolator coffeepot. Walmart sells a great little Coleman that is made for use on a propane stove for cheap.
Fishing supplies!!!

Other things I'm inheriting include a cat named Riley with whom I actually got along, a nice propane stove, several tables, bookshelves (and even some books), and a host family whose name I've already forgotten.

Now the saga of GETTING to my site:
Plan A: Go most of the way Thursday night, stay with neighbor, bike Friday to site. Reverse for trip back to training site.
Problem: Transport leaves too early for that neighbor's site.
Plan B: Go the other way and stay with another neighbor and do more or less the same thing.
Problem: I am not allowed to stay with this neighbor.
Plan C: Oh wait, there's later transport to that first neighbor's house. But by the way, he can't be there so you'll have to bike to your site that night.
Problem: That transport was full before I got there.
Plan D: Well, there MIGHT be another bus this afternoon.
Problem: Screw that. I'm going with Plan E.
Plan E: Go to second neighbor's and bike from THERE to site.
Problem: It's going to rain. I am not biking 45 km in the rain, as night falls, to a place I've never been. You can't make me.
Plan F: Oh, you can stay with that neighbor after all.

SO, Thurs. night I stayed with that neighbor. Unfortunately, she's leaving so she won't actually be my neighbor, and she's pretty cool. But so is the other person in that city, so that's ok. Friday night I managed to take a pickup truck to my site. Stayed there that night, then Saturday we planned to take a camion (a really large truck) back up the same way, which would have taken several hours. As it happened, we managed to catch another pickup truck, which was much faster so I ended up getting to spend most of a day in Ouaga. Met some more of my colleagues at the PC transit house, which is as you might guess a house for PCV's to stay in while in Ouaga (though not for free unless they're there on business). And now I'm back in Ouahigouya.

My community is Mossi, so they do speak Mooré, and I will definitely need to learn since it's a small enough place that many people do not know French. Once I'm comfortable enough in that, though, there are indeed some Fulfuldé speakers there as well. The community seems pretty excited about trees - they're EVERYWHERE. Including the aforementioned neem, as well as mango and baobob. AND, the village gardener is very excited about moringa trees, so I will definitely be doing some moringa plantings there. And if you don't know what moringa are, look them up - they're even more exciting than the neem.

Last, but FAR from least: There is a video club. They watch kung-fu movies. The girl I'm replacing said "bad kung-fu movies", but I explained to her that there's no such thing. She said, "You'll fit right in."

Oops, that wasn't last. I'm also inheriting a PO box in my provincial capital. Here's what would work best for me. Packages, continue to send to the Ouaga address. I'll get them there when I pass through. Letters, after the middle of August, start sending to this address:

David T. Duckworth
BP 205
Boulsa
Burkina Faso

And in case you weren't paying attention, I just gave you a big piece of information regarding where my site is.

Good news and...no, just good this time. Well, depending on your point of view.

2008-07-16T14:11:00.002-04:00

Best news first - my language test went much better than I expected, and I received a score of Intermediate-High!! Personally I feel this is more of a reflection of my testing skills than my French skills, but whatever. That's enough to swear in (though I will have to test again at the end of stage) and definitely enough to study Mooré, so I'm very very happy about it.

Site visits are tomorrow, so while you probably could have assumed I'd be out of touch for the next four days anyway since I average longer than that between posts (I think?), you can take it as a certainty this time. My itinerary has changed a bit. I'm now hopefully making the entire trip on Thursday, and via a different route than originally planned. There's a possibility I will not have to bike, but if I do, by this route the biking leg of the trip is 42km!!! Aack! Wish me luck. And overcast skies. But not rain.

Oh yeah, other good news - I may be able to teach PC (that's physics/chemistry) after all! I may not know for sure until a week or so before classes start, though. We'll see.

I know for a fact now there's a place at my site to hang my hammock. I'll give you the rest of the details after I return.

Bad news, good news

2008-07-12T11:24:00.003-04:00

Ok, bad news (for me, at least) first:

My nearest stagiare neighbor decided to separate very soon after I posted that last entry. We are sorry to see you go, Liz! I don't think there's a security issue with mentioning her name at this point. So now my nearest stagiare neighbor is in the neighborhood of 80km away. I probably won't be biking that. But rumour has it I can bike about 30k of that and then pick up transport. Actually, rumor has it that I could theoretically take transport that first 30k as well, but I've received conflicting reports so I'm not holding my breath.

Good news:
The same day I found out that Liz had left (actually, as it happens, within minutes) I also found out that I have one of the smallest SE sites in the country! This is exactly what I requested. I mentioned in the last post that my site was not the one I was expecting. What I didn't mention is that I was bummed about that because I knew that one was very small. But it turns out this one is too! In fact, there's an ongoing debate about whether the site I expected, the site I GOT, or a third site is the smallest SE post in the country. Yea! So I am now crazy excited about the place - and nervous about how to get there! We're all going to our sites next week to visit. My schedule is to leave on Thursday, spend the night at a PCV's house in the nearest city (35km away), then Friday go to site - and I may be biking that 35 km. 'Cause I'm hardcore like that. Actually, I'm terrified at having to bike that distance, but I need to get used to it, because as I said, rumors of transport from my town are conflicting. Anyway, Sat. I'll return to my "neighbor"'s place, then Sunday bush taxi / bus back to Ouahigouya.

I've also warmed to the idea of teaching math. I was REALLY bummed about that at first, but frankly considering my limited language skill, it's the better choice. Some concepts in chemistry/physics are very difficult to explain in a second language. Not so much of a problem for teaching math, especially at the middle-school level.

UPDATE A FEW MINUTES LATER: We had language tests today. I'll know where I place on Monday. Smart money is on Intermediate-Low, I think. But there is an outside chance I did well enough for I-Mid, and that's enough to begin training in Mooré (though not enough to swear in, I need I-High by then). Speaking of Mooré, we had another class in that, also in French, since we're visiting our sites next week. But it was on mostly the same stuff, and I've been practicing the greetings with everyone in my host family and everyone at the training facility, so it wasn't as painful as the first time around.

Site Assignments!!!

2008-07-09T13:23:00.002-04:00

And I can't tell you! Sorry, but that's the rule. I have to be careful about what information I give. What I will tell you:

It's not where I thought it would be.
The people speak Mooré. I requested Fulfuldé. Oh well. There's a non-zero chance I'll be able to find some people there who speak it - Fulfuldé is spoken in small pockets throughout the country.
I'll be teaching MATH!!!
I will get a new cellphone number because I have to switch companies.

I'm definitely pumped about my neighbors. My nearest neighbor is one of the PCVFs, so I already know that person and get along with them. And while by now I know everyone in stage and there's no one that I would be unhappy about being near, one of my two nearest stage neighbors is someone I hit it off really well with. I don't know the other one as well, but that person is also super nice.

Naturally as time goes on I'm sure I will let slip little details, like the names - or at least the genders - of those nearby individuals, but there's no reason to put so much information in one place where it could be found by faux types. But check out my links! Some of the stagiares put together a newsletter and included blogs. Go them! I should now have everyone in our stage who has a blog. And if any of THEM happen to put up information about site assignments...well, all the better for you with none of the administrative hassle for me! I haven't checked yet, but I don' think any have.

I am not a party guy

2008-07-05T07:34:00.002-04:00

So last night we had a blowout for July 4th. My favorite part was actually the prep time. That's when I actually got to just sit and chat with a few people in a super relaxed atmosphere (while peeling sweet potatoes and dicing onions). The actual party was still really great; I don't want to detract from the work Brad and Bridget did - they put together a bonne fête indeed. And the sheep tasted great. If you're looking at other blogs, you may be inclined to argue that it was a goat, but I assure you it wasn't. Goats have tails that point up; sheep have tails that hang down. Our dinner definitely had a hangy tail.

Anyway, once again there was dancing. People who like to dance really can't wrap their heads around the idea that there are people who don't like to dance. In other words, eventually I danced. For as short a time as I could get away with. I think my strategy for future parties will be to dance as early as possible and get it over with. Or better yet, grab an instrument and start playing, that's where I'd rather be anyway.

To respond to whichever RPCV apparently has enough internet connection to give me a hard time, but not enough to research exchange rates (See the first comment on my previous post):

The CFA (Central African Franc) is a somewhat widespread unit of currency in francophone africa. According to Wikipedia, it's value was tied to the franc, and therefore now the euro. The rate is 100 CFA : ~0.15 €. According to Yahoo!, one dollar gets you 416 CFAs. According to my wallet, I got 385 on the dollar a couple weeks ago, but that certainly includes some tariff. I have already mentioned my salary as a trainee, it's about 11,000 CFA/wk (It will be around double that after swear-in). To answer your next question, I'd really need to know what you mean by aspirant - I assume we're not talking about the French military rank. Stagiare means trainee in French.

Costs:
Lunch: 200 - 700 CFA (as long as you aren't craving a 2500 CFA hamburger)
Drinks: 350 CFA for a coke. 500 - 800 CFA for a beer. I generally stick to water, or a 100 CFA bag of bilsap (a chilled hibiscus drink).
Laundry Detergent: 200 CFA MIGHT be enough for one load of laundry, if your clothes aren't very dirty. Which I assure you is never the case.
Laundry Soap (when you don't have a machine, you really need both): 350 CFA, but it lasts a while
Phone time: 250 CFA/mn local or international. 30 CFA for a short text in-country; 90 for a short one to the states
Mail: Over 800 CFA to send regular mail to the states. A 1 kg package costs nearly 10,000 CFA.
Internet: 400 - 500 CFA/hr
Toilet paper: 1000 CFA / 4 pk
Swimming: 1000 CFA/day
One pagne (A length of material long enough to have pants made): 1250 CFA. Another 1000 or so to actually have the pants made.
I haven't bought any powdered milk, toothpaste, or bath soap.

I actually did save about 6000 CFA from our last pay period, so I'm planning on buying some material for pants this weekend.

Tomorrow I'm taking my host sister to the pool.

Had my first flat yesterday. Took me about two hours to take apart, patch, and put back together due to my lack of experience combined with my total incompetence with all things mechanical. My rear brake is now giving me trouble - actually it already was, but now it's giving me more. Anyway, I'm glad that stuff is happening now, while I have PCVFs around to advise me.

Have I published a key of "acronyms"? I put it in quotes because the PC calls them that, despite the fact that they don't pronounce a single one of them as a word. Anyway...

PCT = Peace Corps Trainee
PCV = Peace Corps Volunteer
PCVF = Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitator (A PCV who is helping out train the PCTs)
RPCV = Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
ET = Early Termination (when a PCT or PCV leaves before COS)
COS = Close of Service

Those are the ones I'll likely be using the most.

By the way, shout out to Carson for the letter! In answer to a comment you made, I generally do NOT check the news online because it takes me so long to type on a French keyboard! Please feel free to include news items you feel are important or interesting in your letters.

Now I'm going to go read other people's blogs because I'm tired of heard stories about other trainees from MY MOM. There's just something not right about that. Speaking of blogs, we should next week have a nearly definitive list of the blogs being maintained by our class. I will link them when I have it.

A (Not As Brief As I Thought) Brief Update

2008-06-26T07:23:00.004-04:00

I'm online early today because our language assignment was to come to the post, look up a news article in French, and write a summary (also in French, natch). And we had to find out how much it costs to send stuff to the States. Answer: a LOT. 800 CFA for a letter, nearly 10,000 for a package of 1 kg. So you have an idea of what that means, we stagiares (I spelled that wrong in my last post) make around 11,000 a week, which as I've mentioned is enough to buy us lunch each day and laundry detergent as needed. Our host families provide breakfast and dinner - otherwise it would be really difficult to live off this amount.

Food update: bouilli is good. If you look for that word online you find it refers to many different foods, and there may be a better spelling, but anyway, here it's a rice porridge with sugar and (powdered) milk. Another yummy snack: dégé, which is sweetened yogurt with millet in it. I'm certain that one is misspelled, by the way. There may be an "n" in it, for one thing - "n's" are really hard for me to hear in Mooré.

After lunch...more language. 3 of the 4 classes today. Fortunately, our teacher JZ (who is actually a French teacher by profession) recognizes how hard it is to study language that many hours in one day, so he's setting an easy pace today. Lesson of the morning: Scrabble in French is a humbling experience. Not that I needed any humbling where French is concerned.

Yesterday we had to give a 10 minute lesson in French. Monday, 15 minutes. And I'm changing topics because the one I picked first (phases of the moon and the seasons, CETL people will know why I chose those) isn't actually in the curriculum (it's in the book, though...I just didn't realise that there was anything in the book NOT in the curriculum). So lots of work to do between now and lundi.

I'm weak

2008-06-23T09:13:00.002-04:00

I broke down and went ahead and bought a cell phone. How else can we coordinate when we're going to the pool? It is free for me to receive calls or texts, so feel free - make that obligated - to do either as you can afford. It is expensive for me to dial or text out of country (it ain't cheap in-country, for that matter) so I won't be calling you. Plus I've lost my book of phone numbers. In short, if you want to receive a text from me, call me or text me!

Which brings us to how you do that. Short version: from your phone, dial 011.226.76.81.09.68. 011 gets you out of the country, and Burkina's country code is 226. This is the most expensive option, unless you have some kickass international plan. Otherwise, I just heard at lunch from some of the other stagiéres (I think that accent is right) about a website that sells online calling cards that will get you Burkina Faso for about 20 cents a minute. It's http://www.pingo.com - I haven't tried it myself. Or you can just buy international calling cards at Wal-mart (watch the surcharges), or use the VOIP of your choice.

My host mom gave me a real-for-true Burkinabe outfit yesterday. It is AWESOME. The pants are calf-length, so they don't get filthy as I'm biking.

Friday we had a community mapping class, and I learned of an internet café near my house. I tried to use it all this weekend, but it's been shut. Happily, we got out of morning classes early today.

You now have FIVE WAYS to communicate with me: texting, calling, commenting here, emailing, and snail mail. Get on it, people!!

Ouahigouya and living with a host family

2008-06-19T08:28:00.002-04:00

Ok, I ponied up for an hour-long connection this time, so hopefully I'll have time to hit the main points, at least. For efficiency' sake, I've also already made a reminder list in my journal. And I ate lunch early, like 10 in the morning, just so I'd have this time online. What I'm getting at is that you'd better not complain about anything in this post :p And leave comments, you jerks! I want to hear from you!

After a couple days in Oauagadougou, we drove for 3 or 4 hours to Ouahigouya. I had the good luck to be the last one on the bus, which means I had an unparalleled view of the countryside we passed. Unfortunately, my camera was packed underneath the bus. Which reminds me, a note on pictures: some people here are extremely sensitive about having their picture taken (a couple of years ago, there was a riot in Bobo, and a Volunteer taking a picture was cited as one of the causal influences. No one was hurt, just so you know), so as a rule I won't be taking pictures out on the street unless I have the person's permission. In other words, there wont't be any candid shots. I do hope to take pictures of my host family later.

Anyway, the drive had scenery of breath-taking beauty and breath-taking poverty, often side by side. I attempted to converse with the driver and luggage handler a bit, but my French was (and still is) crap. I was able to ask a few questions that one of the other trainees had, and understand the answers...eventually, anyway (a bit of irony there - that trainee, Kate [see links on the right], has excellent French). I also got a cheer from everyone when I asked the driver to pull over for those who needed to use the bathroom (read: bushes).

Upon arrival in Ouahigouya, we danced to traditional local music. As a rule, I don't dance, but there wasn't really any other option, so it's entirely possible that by now there are pictures somewhere on the internet of me making a complete fool of myself - more of them, I mean. We spent the first two nights staying at the ECLA (where our training is based). The second night I tried out my hammock with built in mosquito net, and it was GREAT. Unfortunately, that's not an option at my host family's house.

Our pay here is pretty low during training. It's enough to get lunch every day and occasionally get online or call home, but not enough to buy clothes, which is what I'd really like to do. Speaking of calling home, my mom has the number of the telecenter right outside my host family's home, but I'd rather not give that out since any time I take a call there, that's time my host family isn't making money from someone else using the phone. Once I have a cell phone (probably in a couple months - some of the volunteers are getting them this weekend, but I'm waiting until I know if my site has coverage), I'll make that number available. Incoming calls are free here, so you'll be able to call that as much as you can afford. Just remember the time difference! During daylight savings, I'm 4 hours ahead of EDT.

The food is awesome! Riz gras (very similar to Jollof rice, Pat), pétits poids, tô...trés bon gôut! Lots of oil in the food. I'm lucky, I haven't been sick yet. That may be due to the particular malaria medication I'm on. It's also an antiobiotic against E. coli. Unfortunately, it also increases sensitivity to the sun, so I have to wear lots of sunscreen. At least it doesn't cause lucid and strange/bad dreams, like the medication most of the others are on.

My host family is really awesome. They're very progressive, so I don't really have to worry about offending them - that's not true for all the trainees. My host-dad gives talks on HIV/AIDS (here, VIH/SIDA), and my host-mom is a cashier. They have a 5yo son who I think only speaks a little French. He just stopped calling Me Nasara, Mooré for Foreigner, and started calling me Emily, the name of the trainee the family hosted last year. They also have a 14yo daughter who helps me study my French, then I help her study her English. They also occasionally try to teach me Mooré, but I really only know the ritual greetings. Which are kind of long, by the way. You NEVER just say "What's up?" It's "Good morning! How's your morning? How's the family? How's work? How's the neighborhood?" People here like it when I go through all that with them, although once we're past it all I can say is "Goodbye". By the way, our Mooré class was all in French. That was a special kind of hell.

My journal is doubling as an IOU book. Change is hard to come by here, so PCVs and PCTs are constantly paying for each other and owing people.

We're still waiting for the rainy season to truly start, so it' still wickedly hot here mostly. But on the evenings when storms come near, if not over, the wind picks up and it fells glorious. Wind, that's another reason my host family is awesome - I get a fan in my room at night. Oh, and they LOVE MTV.

Bucket baths are pretty straightforward, but I mostly take showers. Like I said, my family is pretty progressive.

Running out of time. Thankyou to those who sent emails! Please send more, and comment here!

Oh! And send pictures!!! By post I mean - you have the address. I want pictures and postcards to show people. And American stamps and powdered Gatorade would also be appreciated.

'Til later!

I'm here!!

2008-06-12T12:12:00.002-04:00

I only have a few minutes online. First observation: a French keyboard is just different enough to really throw you. Entering my password was paricularly confusing, since the special characters are in different places. As you might guess, this makes punctuation an adventure, too. This paragraph started out full of semicolons, colons, and commas where "m" is on our keyboards.

Ouaga is fascinating, though I haven't seen much yet. We're staying at a mission called SIL. I had a French interview today to determine what class I'll be in. I'll know the result Saturday.

The people here are so far very friendly, and other than the heat, which isn't actually so bad right now during rainy season, the experience has been wonderful and I'm really looking forward to my stay here.

Tomorrow we drive to Ouahigouya (Why-yee-goo-yah) where we'll be for three months.

Time to go - the weird keyboard makes me type super slow!

Staging

2008-06-09T22:00:00.004-04:00

The following entries are paraphrased from my new dead tree journal. That will pretty much be true for any entries from here on out, since my internet time will be limited. And otherwise I'll forget everything.

6/8/08

Leave Jackson way too early. Mom and Dad surprisingly chipper; I appreciate the effort, since I know they're sad to see me go. Patrick's enthusiasm not faked.
My investment in a $5 spring scale paid off - my bags don't weigh too much.
Delta waived the extra-bag fee since I was on a government ticket. I didn't think they would.
Carry-on bag check! My first. It took a long time, but the lady was nice. She mentioned that I should have had my liquids bag out separately (I've always before just avoided carrying any) and I asked her if that was why they called a bag check. She said "That's one reason" and then entirely failed to elaborate on what the others were.
Got coffee on the flight. This was not a brilliant idea since my stomach has already been in knots for days and I really could have used a nap.
Called mom and dad from the Atlanta airport. Surprise! This calling card charges THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES to call from a pay phone. Thanks, AT&T! From 63 minutes to 27, all for less than a minute of talk time.
Got a Diet Coke while waiting at ATL. Looked at the cap, and realized that for the first time in months there was no reason to save the MyCoke Rewards cap from my brother. An oddly poignant moment, which Coke will almost certainly never make a commercial out of.
Got into Philly at 12, and still didn't arrive at the hotel until after 2. Incredibly long wait at the baggage claim followed by a shuttle service that took so long to leave the airport that 4 people got out to take a cab - whereupon the rest of us had to wait even longer while the driver found a few more fares.
Thank you, TSA, for losing my TSA-friendly lock on my footlocker and inexplicably removing the address tag from my other carry-on. I promise, Ouagadougou is a real place (I'll find out later that I'm not the only person this happened to).
Staging itself was ok. And the kimchi I had for dinner was excellent.

06/09/08

Comfy beds and nice rooms here. I slept well...until I started waking up every 20 minutes CERTAIN that this time I overslept. I gave up and stayed awake at 6:30. Two hours until staging continues.
The hotel has good coffee. And expensive breakfast, but I can afford it, thanks to our daily allowance. And I won't be having lunch for reasons elaborated on below.
We were a half-hour late getting to lunch. Which meant I had only an hour to a)walk 21 blocks to where I was told Bank of America was, b) wander around looking, c)ask directions, d)walk 2 blocks back the way I came to where it REALLY is (there was a left turn in my route, so I wasn't on the same block as the building when I passed it), e)actually close my account, and f)walk 19 blocks back to the hotel. With all of 30 seconds to spare. Hence, no lunch.
Quizno's for dinner. It's probably a minor sin to be in Philadelphia and get a cheesesteak from a nationwide chain, but it was close and I was hungry.

And that was pretty much it for staging. Tomorrow we get Yellow Fever shots, then in the evening leave for Ouaga! I may or may not have time to update Thursday evening.

Highlights of the trip

2008-05-29T22:50:00.007-04:00

Ohio:

My godparents are just as cool hanging out with at 29 as they were when I was 7. They're versatile like that.
Cedar Point is great, but the lines are super long, so we only go to ride 5 coasters. The rundown:

Top Thrill Dragster - Awesome, OF COURSE. When they're worried about rollbacks, they only partially load the cars. This makes it cooler than Kingda Ka, which stops running altogether. But of course, it's not quite as fast.
Raptor - A solid entry in the steel coaster category. Shouldn't be your priority, but I'm not sorry we waited in line for it.
Millenium Force - Great ride. One of those build 'em tall, build 'em fast steel coasters. This should be your first stop after the Top Thrill Dragster.
Mantis - Unfortunately, Pat and I only thought to do mantis fists after we got off. The better* standing up coaster I've been on.
*Yes, "better." I've only been on two. But it's MUCH better than the Georgia Scorcher at Six Flags Over Georgia.
Blue Streak - A smaller wooden coaster that we mostly rode because there was a wait of exactly zero minutes. Good, old-fashioned fun.

I stink at golf. So does my brother. But it's fun.

New Jersey:

Hampton Inn is pretty nice. We almost didn't get a room.
Bathrooms get nicer as you head east.
Six Flags: Great Adventures was totally worth a second day:

Kingda Ka - It's line runs really smoothly, but like I mentioned, they shut down at the first sign of rain or strong wind. Pat and I DID think to do tiger fists on this one the second time we rode.
Batman: The Dark Knight - A ride new this season and TOTALLY NOT WORTH THE WAIT. DON'T GO. Not until everyone knows it's not what they think and the lines reflect that.
Batman the Ride - Standard hanging coaster, virtually the same as its namesake in Six Flags Over Georgia. Which is my favorite ride at Six Flags Over Georgia.
Nitro - Sorry, I know I'm comparing a lot of these rides to SFOG, but this IS a Six Flags, after all. Anyway, it's like the Goliath. Big. Not as fast as the Millenium Force, but still big and fun. Ride it.
El Toro - Obviously, I was predisposed to like this one (have you noticed the URL you're at?) Best. Wooden Coaster. Ever. As it turns out, it's the second-tallest and second-fastest wooden coaster, and the first-steepest at 76 degrees, which is NUTS and such great fun. It bucks more than a wooden coaster has any right to, hence its name. I'd go so far as to say that if you only had time for one ride while you were at SF:GA, skip the Kingda Ka and hit this one. You'll thank me.
Superman: Ultimate Flight - The gimmick is you're hanging, kind of in a Superman position. Kind of. Worth doing because of the gimmick, but it's still pretty tame. Just like the Superman at SFOG.
Medusa - I love floorless coasters. If you're ever at SeaWorld in Orlando, they have one called the Kraken, which is freakin' great and there's no line (because who goes to SeaWorld for the roller coaster?) Well, the Medusa does have a line. And it's still even better.
Great American Scream Machine - This one reminded me of SFOG in two separate ways. For one, there IS a Great American Scream Machine there, but it's wood (and decent). For another, it's virtually an exact replica (or is it the other way around?) of the Ninja at SFOG. Again, we rode because there was no line. It was fun. Ride if there's no line. Otherwise, skip it.

Washington, D. C. (a short list until I add photos) :

Tons to see. TONS.
Alexandria is cool. Skip the jazz festival.
Arlington is incredible. Someone gave me an ornament for my service to the country as a Peace Corps Volunteer.
My brother's friend has a sibling who works for a senator, so we got a guided tour of the Capitol Building. Given by a statuesque brunette intern by the appropriate name of Grace. Wow, she was gorgeous. And the capitol was nice, too. (Actually, the capitol was fascinating, and it was super-neat getting a tour with just the three of us.)
The L'Enfant has a really posh lobby, and shopping underneath, but when it comes to amenities in the room, give me a Hampton Inn any day.

The trip home:

The flight crew must have just started duty. They were hilarious. When discussing crash procedures and giving oxygen masks to children (or people acting like children), their advice, if you were traveling with two or more children, was to pick the one with the most potential.
Ran into an old college friend - well, anyway, we had several mutual friends - who we called Filly. She's even prettier now than then (no small feat), and seems to be doing well.
Pat got home and was immediately out the door to meet with friends. I remember having that kind of energy.

Ok, that's the best I can do for the trip until I add pictures. Pictures will include the safari we drove through at SF:GA, and most of our time in D.C.