Thanks for all your e-mails. In this blog I will try to answer some of the questions folks asked. First of all, I am doing fine here. During training we heard about the emotional roller coaster that volunteers experience. One day you are feeling great and on top of the world and another day you wonder why you ever left home. The only time I have had such a down time was during the second week of training. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t think! I talked to one of the Peace Corps doctors and told him that if this did not change I would have to go home. He said maybe it was the type of anti malaria medication they were having me take and changed me to another kind. Just knowing that it might be a drug reaction made me feel better about things. It was kind of like when I take Ibuprofen, but ten times as bad. It took several weeks to get mentally back to normal. I think I am functioning at about 95% now, although I still feel a little out of it from time to time. That could be the stress and strangeness, however, or maybe a side effect of the new drug, but I am much better. One thing I learned about myself during this time was that I feel best when I am mentally engaged. Just having a serious discussion with one of the training staff (in French) about cognitive psychology made me feel better. I have applied that lesson to how I try to spend my spare time here. When I have nothing else to do, which is several hours a day, I study French or Mooré, the local language in my village. I am not sure I am learning that much, but I am mentally healthy. I also spend time each day visiting with various people in the neighborhood trying to speak Mooré and French. (more about visiting in a future blog).
The fact that my older daughter and her family are coming to see me at Christmas time is also an emotional boost. I wouldn’t say I am home sick, but I do miss all of my friends from Mud in Yer Eye, the dance community, church, and JCU. I occasionally think about calling a contra dance or playing a tune on the dulcimer and wish I were in a place where I could do that. But mostly this is the adventure of a lifetime and I am glad to be here.
Food
As I said above, when I was having that bad reaction to the anti-malaria drug I totally lost my appetite. I lost the weight I put on just before I left home and some I have been trying to lose for years. I am not sure it is all weight loss. Some may be changing fat into muscle. Because I have to ride my bike when I want to go anywhere except the immediate neighbors I am getting more exercise than I used to. I have to see if I can find a scale to check that out. My new medication must be taken at the same time each day, with food. I selected lunch time because that was the most predictable meal time during training. For breakfast I usually have the same size bowl of oat meal that I have eaten for breakfast for years and a cup of Nescafe, the only kind of coffee you can get here. Then I don’t eat anything until lunch, so I will really want to eat with it is time to take my pill. Thus, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, as a rule.
So, what do I eat? I stocked up on canned goods before I came to my site but I am trying to make meals out of what I can buy locally as much as I can. At the moment one of the things that is easy to find are eggs. They are from pintades (Guinea fowl), so they are half the size of a chicken egg. The yolks are big and almost orange, as you expect from free range birds. There are lots of onions, and a local egg plant that I have not tried to master. I understand they are quite bitter, although I see people eating them raw. One of the things the girls and ladies have on the trays they carry on top of their heads are something that looks like a sweet potato but is white on the inside and tastes almost like are regular potato. These ladies also sell what they call gateau (cake) that seems like cake that has been deep fat fried, fried dough that is really greasy but OK on the inside, little pie shaped things made from millet flour, and peanuts which can be raw, boiled or, if you are lucky, roasted. One of my favorite things at the moment is local bread. It looks a bit like a French baguette, but the taste and texture is more like sour dough bread. From time to time there are tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. One can also visit a small (and I do mean small) shop in a shack called a boutique and get powdered milk, Nescafe, sugar, flour, salt, oil, mayo, margarine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste spaghetti, macaroni, rice and couscous. They also sell non edible things like matches, soap, bleach, and lots of hair products. With no refrigeration I have to eat what I cook or throw it away. Fortunately my community counterpart raises pigs, among other things, and I can take my scraps to her for her pigs.
There is no propane for sale in Burkina Faso at the moment, and it does not look like the situation will change soon. I am lucky to have a community homologue who loaned me her gas canister to use. Very generous of her. Now she does do her cooking with wood or charcoal.
I have made pancakes and French toast, but can’t do any baking. I have made macaroni and cheese with Laughing Cow Cheese, the only kind of cheese product that you can keep without refrigeration, available only in the big cities. One luxury item I got from town was a jar of raspberry jam. I have to see if I can find more next time I go. I have to go to a town from time to time because the Peace Corps deposits our living allowance in an account at the Post Office. There is no post office in my village so I have to go to a bigger town to get my monthly allowance and, while I am there, I can do some shopping at an alimentation, a bigger store (kind of like a very small 7/11) that you only find in larger towns and cities.
I don’t eat much meat, just because there is no way to buy it and keep it. There is a guy who cooks up a pig on market day and I have gone to his hangar a couple of times for a pork sandwich. There are guys grilling meat on the side of the road, but seeing flies all over the meat kind of turns me off. I will get my protein from eggs and eating rice and beans and so on. My latest food adventure is trying the baby breakfast food they sell at the center for malnourished babies, up the road about 15 minutes. They do really good work there and this breakfast food is supposed to have a good mixture of things that give you complete protein. Hopefully if it is good for the babies, it will be good for me. I will let you know if I like it.
Sorry, this got a bit long. I will address some more of your questions in future blogs.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thanks for all your e-mails. In this blog I will try to answer some of the questions folks asked. First of all, I am doing fine here. During training we heard about the emotional roller coaster that volunteers experience. One day you are feeling great and on top of the world and another day you wonder why you ever left home. The only time I have had such a down time was during the second week of training. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t think! I talked to one of the Peace Corps doctors and told him that if this did not change I would have to go home. He said maybe it was the type of anti malaria medication they were having me take and changed me to another kind. Just knowing that it might be a drug reaction made me feel better about things. It was kind of like when I take Ibuprofen, but ten times as bad. It took several weeks to get mentally back to normal. I think I am functioning at about 95% now, although I still feel a little out of it from time to time. That could be the stress and strangeness, however, or maybe a side effect of the new drug, but I am much better. One thing I learned about myself during this time was that I feel best when I am mentally engaged. Just having a serious discussion with one of the training staff (in French) about cognitive psychology made me feel better. I have applied that lesson to how I try to spend my spare time here. When I have nothing else to do, which is several hours a day, I study French or Mooré, the local language in my village. I am not sure I am learning that much, but I am mentally healthy. I also spend time each day visiting with various people in the neighborhood trying to speak Mooré and French. (more about visiting in a future blog).
The fact that my older daughter and her family are coming to see me at Christmas time is also an emotional boost. I wouldn’t say I am home sick, but I do miss all of my friends from Mud in Yer Eye, the dance community, church, and JCU. I occasionally think about calling a contra dance or playing a tune on the dulcimer and wish I were in a place where I could do that. But mostly this is the adventure of a lifetime and I am glad to be here.
Food
As I said above, when I was having that bad reaction to the anti-malaria drug I totally lost my appetite. I lost the weight I put on just before I left home and some I have been trying to lose for years. I am not sure it is all weight loss. Some may be changing fat into muscle. Because I have to ride my bike when I want to go anywhere except the immediate neighbors I am getting more exercise than I used to. I have to see if I can find a scale to check that out. My new medication must be taken at the same time each day, with food. I selected lunch time because that was the most predictable meal time during training. For breakfast I usually have the same size bowl of oat meal that I have eaten for breakfast for years and a cup of Nescafe, the only kind of coffee you can get here. Then I don’t eat anything until lunch, so I will really want to eat with it is time to take my pill. Thus, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, as a rule.
So, what do I eat? I stocked up on canned goods before I came to my site but I am trying to make meals out of what I can buy locally as much as I can. At the moment one of the things that is easy to find are eggs. They are from pintades (Guinea fowl), so they are half the size of a chicken egg. The yolks are big and almost orange, as you expect from free range birds. There are lots of onions, and a local egg plant that I have not tried to master. I understand they are quite bitter, although I see people eating them raw. One of the things the girls and ladies have on the trays they carry on top of their heads are something that looks like a sweet potato but is white on the inside and tastes almost like are regular potato. These ladies also sell what they call gateau (cake) that seems like cake that has been deep fat fried, fried dough that is really greasy but OK on the inside, little pie shaped things made from millet flour, and peanuts which can be raw, boiled or, if you are lucky, roasted. One of my favorite things at the moment is local bread. It looks a bit like a French baguette, but the taste and texture is more like sour dough bread. From time to time there are tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. One can also visit a small (and I do mean small) shop in a shack called a boutique and get powdered milk, Nescafe, sugar, flour, salt, oil, mayo, margarine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste spaghetti, macaroni, rice and couscous. They also sell non edible things like matches, soap, bleach, and lots of hair products. With no refrigeration I have to eat what I cook or throw it away. Fortunately my community counterpart raises pigs, among other things, and I can take my scraps to her for her pigs.
There is no propane for sale in Burkina Faso at the moment, and it does not look like the situation will change soon. I am lucky to have a community homologue who loaned me her gas canister to use. Very generous of her. Now she does do her cooking with wood or charcoal.
I have made pancakes and French toast, but can’t do any baking. I have made macaroni and cheese with Laughing Cow Cheese, the only kind of cheese product that you can keep without refrigeration, available only in the big cities. One luxury item I got from town was a jar of raspberry jam. I have to see if I can find more next time I go. I have to go to a town from time to time because the Peace Corps deposits our living allowance in an account at the Post Office. There is no post office in my village so I have to go to a bigger town to get my monthly allowance and, while I am there, I can do some shopping at an alimentation, a bigger store (kind of like a very small 7/11) that you only find in larger towns and cities.
I don’t eat much meat, just because there is no way to buy it and keep it. There is a guy who cooks up a pig on market day and I have gone to his hangar a couple of times for a pork sandwich. There are guys grilling meat on the side of the road, but seeing flies all over the meat kind of turns me off. I will get my protein from eggs and eating rice and beans and so on. My latest food adventure is trying the baby breakfast food they sell at the center for malnourished babies, up the road about 15 minutes. They do really good work there and this breakfast food is supposed to have a good mixture of things that give you complete protein. Hopefully if it is good for the babies, it will be good for me. I will let you know if I like it.
Sorry, this got a bit long. I will address some more of your questions in future blogs.
The fact that my older daughter and her family are coming to see me at Christmas time is also an emotional boost. I wouldn’t say I am home sick, but I do miss all of my friends from Mud in Yer Eye, the dance community, church, and JCU. I occasionally think about calling a contra dance or playing a tune on the dulcimer and wish I were in a place where I could do that. But mostly this is the adventure of a lifetime and I am glad to be here.
Food
As I said above, when I was having that bad reaction to the anti-malaria drug I totally lost my appetite. I lost the weight I put on just before I left home and some I have been trying to lose for years. I am not sure it is all weight loss. Some may be changing fat into muscle. Because I have to ride my bike when I want to go anywhere except the immediate neighbors I am getting more exercise than I used to. I have to see if I can find a scale to check that out. My new medication must be taken at the same time each day, with food. I selected lunch time because that was the most predictable meal time during training. For breakfast I usually have the same size bowl of oat meal that I have eaten for breakfast for years and a cup of Nescafe, the only kind of coffee you can get here. Then I don’t eat anything until lunch, so I will really want to eat with it is time to take my pill. Thus, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, as a rule.
So, what do I eat? I stocked up on canned goods before I came to my site but I am trying to make meals out of what I can buy locally as much as I can. At the moment one of the things that is easy to find are eggs. They are from pintades (Guinea fowl), so they are half the size of a chicken egg. The yolks are big and almost orange, as you expect from free range birds. There are lots of onions, and a local egg plant that I have not tried to master. I understand they are quite bitter, although I see people eating them raw. One of the things the girls and ladies have on the trays they carry on top of their heads are something that looks like a sweet potato but is white on the inside and tastes almost like are regular potato. These ladies also sell what they call gateau (cake) that seems like cake that has been deep fat fried, fried dough that is really greasy but OK on the inside, little pie shaped things made from millet flour, and peanuts which can be raw, boiled or, if you are lucky, roasted. One of my favorite things at the moment is local bread. It looks a bit like a French baguette, but the taste and texture is more like sour dough bread. From time to time there are tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. One can also visit a small (and I do mean small) shop in a shack called a boutique and get powdered milk, Nescafe, sugar, flour, salt, oil, mayo, margarine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste spaghetti, macaroni, rice and couscous. They also sell non edible things like matches, soap, bleach, and lots of hair products. With no refrigeration I have to eat what I cook or throw it away. Fortunately my community counterpart raises pigs, among other things, and I can take my scraps to her for her pigs.
There is no propane for sale in Burkina Faso at the moment, and it does not look like the situation will change soon. I am lucky to have a community homologue who loaned me her gas canister to use. Very generous of her. Now she does do her cooking with wood or charcoal.
I have made pancakes and French toast, but can’t do any baking. I have made macaroni and cheese with Laughing Cow Cheese, the only kind of cheese product that you can keep without refrigeration, available only in the big cities. One luxury item I got from town was a jar of raspberry jam. I have to see if I can find more next time I go. I have to go to a town from time to time because the Peace Corps deposits our living allowance in an account at the Post Office. There is no post office in my village so I have to go to a bigger town to get my monthly allowance and, while I am there, I can do some shopping at an alimentation, a bigger store (kind of like a very small 7/11) that you only find in larger towns and cities.
I don’t eat much meat, just because there is no way to buy it and keep it. There is a guy who cooks up a pig on market day and I have gone to his hangar a couple of times for a pork sandwich. There are guys grilling meat on the side of the road, but seeing flies all over the meat kind of turns me off. I will get my protein from eggs and eating rice and beans and so on. My latest food adventure is trying the baby breakfast food they sell at the center for malnourished babies, up the road about 15 minutes. They do really good work there and this breakfast food is supposed to have a good mixture of things that give you complete protein. Hopefully if it is good for the babies, it will be good for me. I will let you know if I like it.
Sorry, this got a bit long. I will address some more of your questions in future blogs.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Pen Pal, any one?
The other day I was sitting under a tree at the local health center, waiting for the director to come and chatting with several folks. Three of them were nurses (one man and two women) who asked if I might be able to find them American pen pals. I am not sure if they are thinking of surface mail or if they might have access to the internet. I only have the internet here because I have a USB/cell phone modem, which I don’t expect they would have. They might go to the next big town where there are cyber cafes and use e-mail, but I think it more likely they are thinking of written letters, the old fashioned kind of pen pals. Now that I think of it, you have to go to that town (about an hour away by moto or bush taxi), to mail or receive a letter. No home delivery here! Well educated people here read and write a third language, usually English, so these folks could read letters in English and would respond in English (which may not be perfect, but probably would be understandable).
If any of you out there would like to have a Burkinabé pen pal, please send me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu with your name, American mailing address, and e-mail address. You could also say a couple of things about yourself to help get things started. I am sure I will be getting more similar requests so if you don’t want to write to nurses but like the idea of a pen pal, let me know your interests and I will keep your information in reserve for future requests.
If any of you out there would like to have a Burkinabé pen pal, please send me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu with your name, American mailing address, and e-mail address. You could also say a couple of things about yourself to help get things started. I am sure I will be getting more similar requests so if you don’t want to write to nurses but like the idea of a pen pal, let me know your interests and I will keep your information in reserve for future requests.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Travel and Cultivating
Pubpic Transportation
In Burkina Faso there are two basic types of public transportation for long trips, bus and bush taxi. I already told you about bush taxies, but the other day I road in one that was beyond belief. It was a tiny pick-up truck with benches in the bed along each side. I said I would only take it if I could ride in the cab with the driver. I am sure it was better than the back, but I felt sorry for the other lady who got to sit up front. The passenger door kept popping open and the driver reached across two of us to grab the door by the window opening (no window of course), and slam it shut. Each time he closed it, it would pop open again at the next big rut, which was quite often. I will try my best not to take that one again, but if you are in one place and need to get to another place, it may be the only thing going that day.
While there are a few busses that run rather like an American Greyhound bus, (I actually see them on the road near my house) most are very old, with ripped and worn seats, sagging over head shelves, and windows that may or may not open or close. On these busses air conditioning is not a concept. The amount of baggage and other things that are carried is amazing. First of all, there is a roof rack on which big bags of things, like charcoal, rice and so on may be stored. Next come the motorcycles and bicycles. Yes, on the top of many of these busses you see fifteen or twenty motos and bicycles all standing in a row. Things are also stored in the usual baggage compartment under the bus. If there is not enough space under there, things come inside, into the aisle. They make fine seats for those who get on after all the regular seats are taken.
In the city
In the capital there are some city busses, but I have not tried to use them. When we are there we walk or take taxies, but they are nothing like American taxies. First of all, there is no meter. Before you get in you tell the driver where you want to go and negotiate with the driver about how much you will pay. If you are experienced you just say how much you will pay, with confidence, and the driver agrees. If the driver thinks he can get more because you do not know the going rate, he will ask for more. The taxies themselves almost all have cracked windshields, ripped upholstery, and little in the way of shock absorbers. Another interesting thing is that you may be the only ones in the taxi at first, but then the driver will stop to pick other passengers along the way. One night it was raining and we were lucky to get a cab. It started out with me and a friend, but we stopped three times to pick up other people, so we ended up with four in the back seat. The defroster, of course, did not work so the driver had to use a tissue to wipe the steam off the inside of the windshield for the entire 10 minute ride. The drivers are amazing, weaving around the bicycles, motos, donkey carts, other taxies and pedestrians. It takes a little getting used to, but it is beginning to seem perfectly normal. I am sure those of you who have lived in a third world country will recognize the situation.
Walking in Town and Village
In the city there is no concept of a sidewalk. Occasionally you think you have found one and, guess what? It is actually the cover over the sewer. This cover is about the width of a sidewalk and is divided into blocks about the size of sidewalk blocks, but with cut outs that let the water drain in when it rains. It makes walking have the smell of an open sewer, which is what you have under the cement cover pieces, and there is always the danger that one of the pieces will be missing, so watch your step!
In the village most people walk to most places they are going. In addition to the dirt roads, wide enough for cars, there are many paths to go between family compounds. Right now there tend to be mud puddles on these paths, but for the rest of the year they will be quite convenient.
Cultivating
In the rainy season just about everybody cultivates. If you live in a village your family is assigned the land you cultivate. After the first rain (or second one) you go out with your hand tool that looks a bit like a big ax, but the blade is more hoe like. You turn over the soil and plant your crop, the hope for rain. Below is a picture of me, trying to use one of these gizmoes to plant beans earlier in the summer. After each rain people are out in the fields, using this tool to chop out the weeds. Here are some of the crops I see around my village: petite millet (the kind we think of as bird seed) that grows to over 7 feet tall, grand millet, that must be 15 feet tall now and growing, corn (field corn for cooking, not sweet corn), gumbo (aka okra) which is NOT slimy if you just sauté it, peanuts, and beans (like black eyed peas). In other places you see rice and cotton being raised.
Animals
In my village most people seem to have a donkey and cart. The donkeys braying to go out so they can eat is what wakes me up in the morning. There are also lots of sheep and goats. It is a bit hard to tell them apart because the sheep are adapted to the heat and do not have all the fluffy wool you expect on a sheep. They are bigger than the goats and have a different shape so after a while the difference is obvious. If you are not Muslim you probably have a couple of pigs to eat up your scraps from the table, if any, the chafe from the millet, and so on. And then there are the chickens—everywhere! The roosters crow all night so you get used to them. The hens and chicks run around among the crops, scratching up the bugs, with the roosters in hot pursuit of the hens. There are also petards, AKA guinea, fowl that tend to hang out in groups more than the chickens. Most people seem to have a dog in the court yard, although they are not actually treated as pets. In some parts of the country a dog may end up in the cooking pot. I have also seen cats, but not too many.
Feel free to write
If you have questions or things you would like to know about, drop me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu. I am running the computer from my solar re-chargeable battery and using a USB to cell phone modem. I do check my e-mail a couple of times a week if I get a chance to get on to the computer early in the morning before there is a lot of cell phone traffic. The blog website is very slow to access so about the only time I look at it is when I am posting to it. If you post a comment I am not likely to see it. If you write to me I will try to answer and maybe use your questions for ideas for future bolgs.
In Burkina Faso there are two basic types of public transportation for long trips, bus and bush taxi. I already told you about bush taxies, but the other day I road in one that was beyond belief. It was a tiny pick-up truck with benches in the bed along each side. I said I would only take it if I could ride in the cab with the driver. I am sure it was better than the back, but I felt sorry for the other lady who got to sit up front. The passenger door kept popping open and the driver reached across two of us to grab the door by the window opening (no window of course), and slam it shut. Each time he closed it, it would pop open again at the next big rut, which was quite often. I will try my best not to take that one again, but if you are in one place and need to get to another place, it may be the only thing going that day.
While there are a few busses that run rather like an American Greyhound bus, (I actually see them on the road near my house) most are very old, with ripped and worn seats, sagging over head shelves, and windows that may or may not open or close. On these busses air conditioning is not a concept. The amount of baggage and other things that are carried is amazing. First of all, there is a roof rack on which big bags of things, like charcoal, rice and so on may be stored. Next come the motorcycles and bicycles. Yes, on the top of many of these busses you see fifteen or twenty motos and bicycles all standing in a row. Things are also stored in the usual baggage compartment under the bus. If there is not enough space under there, things come inside, into the aisle. They make fine seats for those who get on after all the regular seats are taken.
In the city
In the capital there are some city busses, but I have not tried to use them. When we are there we walk or take taxies, but they are nothing like American taxies. First of all, there is no meter. Before you get in you tell the driver where you want to go and negotiate with the driver about how much you will pay. If you are experienced you just say how much you will pay, with confidence, and the driver agrees. If the driver thinks he can get more because you do not know the going rate, he will ask for more. The taxies themselves almost all have cracked windshields, ripped upholstery, and little in the way of shock absorbers. Another interesting thing is that you may be the only ones in the taxi at first, but then the driver will stop to pick other passengers along the way. One night it was raining and we were lucky to get a cab. It started out with me and a friend, but we stopped three times to pick up other people, so we ended up with four in the back seat. The defroster, of course, did not work so the driver had to use a tissue to wipe the steam off the inside of the windshield for the entire 10 minute ride. The drivers are amazing, weaving around the bicycles, motos, donkey carts, other taxies and pedestrians. It takes a little getting used to, but it is beginning to seem perfectly normal. I am sure those of you who have lived in a third world country will recognize the situation.
Walking in Town and Village
In the city there is no concept of a sidewalk. Occasionally you think you have found one and, guess what? It is actually the cover over the sewer. This cover is about the width of a sidewalk and is divided into blocks about the size of sidewalk blocks, but with cut outs that let the water drain in when it rains. It makes walking have the smell of an open sewer, which is what you have under the cement cover pieces, and there is always the danger that one of the pieces will be missing, so watch your step!
In the village most people walk to most places they are going. In addition to the dirt roads, wide enough for cars, there are many paths to go between family compounds. Right now there tend to be mud puddles on these paths, but for the rest of the year they will be quite convenient.
Cultivating
In the rainy season just about everybody cultivates. If you live in a village your family is assigned the land you cultivate. After the first rain (or second one) you go out with your hand tool that looks a bit like a big ax, but the blade is more hoe like. You turn over the soil and plant your crop, the hope for rain. Below is a picture of me, trying to use one of these gizmoes to plant beans earlier in the summer. After each rain people are out in the fields, using this tool to chop out the weeds. Here are some of the crops I see around my village: petite millet (the kind we think of as bird seed) that grows to over 7 feet tall, grand millet, that must be 15 feet tall now and growing, corn (field corn for cooking, not sweet corn), gumbo (aka okra) which is NOT slimy if you just sauté it, peanuts, and beans (like black eyed peas). In other places you see rice and cotton being raised.
Animals
In my village most people seem to have a donkey and cart. The donkeys braying to go out so they can eat is what wakes me up in the morning. There are also lots of sheep and goats. It is a bit hard to tell them apart because the sheep are adapted to the heat and do not have all the fluffy wool you expect on a sheep. They are bigger than the goats and have a different shape so after a while the difference is obvious. If you are not Muslim you probably have a couple of pigs to eat up your scraps from the table, if any, the chafe from the millet, and so on. And then there are the chickens—everywhere! The roosters crow all night so you get used to them. The hens and chicks run around among the crops, scratching up the bugs, with the roosters in hot pursuit of the hens. There are also petards, AKA guinea, fowl that tend to hang out in groups more than the chickens. Most people seem to have a dog in the court yard, although they are not actually treated as pets. In some parts of the country a dog may end up in the cooking pot. I have also seen cats, but not too many.
Feel free to write
If you have questions or things you would like to know about, drop me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu. I am running the computer from my solar re-chargeable battery and using a USB to cell phone modem. I do check my e-mail a couple of times a week if I get a chance to get on to the computer early in the morning before there is a lot of cell phone traffic. The blog website is very slow to access so about the only time I look at it is when I am posting to it. If you post a comment I am not likely to see it. If you write to me I will try to answer and maybe use your questions for ideas for future bolgs.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Life in an Aftican village: The first week and a half
As I mentioned before I have a wonderful community counterpart (aka homologue) who has the responsibility to help me integrate into the community. She is a leader of the community and is president of the mother’s association, the women who are responsible for providing lunch for the primary school children, and president of the women’s association at her church.
Everybody’s out of town
I also have other people who made the request to have a volunteer here. One is the man who is in charge of a local group dedicated to improving the lives of women and I think he was behind the request. He was supposed to be my supervisor, but now he is the facilitator because Peace Corps wants the person who is my supervisor to be associated with the schools. My new supervisor is a man who is the Inspector for a group of about 20 elementary schools. As I understand it, his job is to check up on the schools in his district to see that everything is going right. Unfortunately, both of these men have been out of town most of the past week and a half. It is, after all, the end of the summer vacation and a bit like August in the states, I think. One day they were both here and we had a meeting with my community homologue and a couple of other people behind the request for my presence to discuss my work for the first three month and to introduce me to some of the important people in town. I followed their motos on my bicycle and we went to the places where several of these folks should have been, but most of them were either out of town or otherwise occupied so I only met the man in charge of the military police, who are responsible for police business outside of the town, and got registered with the police as being a person living here. I also saw where some of the folks work when they are here. Maybe another time.
Food for me
Before I came to the village I bought quite a bit of canned food so that I would have things to eat that I am accustomed to, or facsimiles thereof, like oatmeal, jam, canned vegetables, tomato sauce, tuna, and the only kind of cheese you can keep unrefrigerated, Laughing Cow Cheese. I have been able to buy local bread, baked in an old fashioned stone oven, onions, eggs and, sometimes, tomatoes. So far I am not starving, but I have to branch out and learn to eat more of the food the locals eat.
Transportation
Getting around is either walking or bicycling. I am quite a way out of the main part of the village so I ride my bike most places. It is a very nice 24 speed bike, of which I use only the middle 8 gears. I certainly stand out around here, not only because of my white skin, but also because I wear a bike helmet and ride this fancy bike. As I go down the dirt road the kids tend to come running out of the family compounds yelling “Nasara! Cadeau?” in other words, “White person, do you have a gift for me?” I am learning the local language so I try to greet them first with the greeting words in Moore and that often cues them into the fact that I am not a random tourist. If that does not work and they are really pesky, I stop and ask them (in French) “Gift? Gift? Do you have a gift for ME?” which often gets a laugh or a look of puzzlement because they don’t actually speak French. I want to learn to say that line in Moore. One of these days.
Integration
My task for the first three months is to get integrated into the community and get to know the life of the community as it relates to my project, Girls Education and Empowerment. This is hard because there are so few people who speak French and my Moore consists of hello and goodbye. I need to figure out how to get some community members involved in these discussions, helping me talk to the people who do not understand my bad French, or any French at all. One way to do this is to walk up to a random courtyard, clap my hands at the gate, saying coo-coo. and see what happens. Often people will run to get a chair to put in the shade and invite me to sit down. If there is anyone who speaks French, I explain who I am and where I am living, nearby, and try to get the names of the people who live there. I am so bad with names and faces, as most of you know, that I really need to be able to go back and review who lives where pretty often. I also try to practice Moore with folks. That is a very slow process, although it is usually good for a few laughs.
There have also been a few people who stop by to greet me and some have invited me to come to their place to meet the family, so I am getting to know a few folks. Sunday I visited the protestant church that is nearest to my house. Everything was in Moore, so I understood exactly nothing, but the music was interesting. I will write more about that later, but there are now quite a few more people who have seen me and probably know who I am and where I am staying, if they did not know already. A couple of people I have encountered had commented on the fact that they saw me at church.
Everybody’s out of town
I also have other people who made the request to have a volunteer here. One is the man who is in charge of a local group dedicated to improving the lives of women and I think he was behind the request. He was supposed to be my supervisor, but now he is the facilitator because Peace Corps wants the person who is my supervisor to be associated with the schools. My new supervisor is a man who is the Inspector for a group of about 20 elementary schools. As I understand it, his job is to check up on the schools in his district to see that everything is going right. Unfortunately, both of these men have been out of town most of the past week and a half. It is, after all, the end of the summer vacation and a bit like August in the states, I think. One day they were both here and we had a meeting with my community homologue and a couple of other people behind the request for my presence to discuss my work for the first three month and to introduce me to some of the important people in town. I followed their motos on my bicycle and we went to the places where several of these folks should have been, but most of them were either out of town or otherwise occupied so I only met the man in charge of the military police, who are responsible for police business outside of the town, and got registered with the police as being a person living here. I also saw where some of the folks work when they are here. Maybe another time.
Food for me
Before I came to the village I bought quite a bit of canned food so that I would have things to eat that I am accustomed to, or facsimiles thereof, like oatmeal, jam, canned vegetables, tomato sauce, tuna, and the only kind of cheese you can keep unrefrigerated, Laughing Cow Cheese. I have been able to buy local bread, baked in an old fashioned stone oven, onions, eggs and, sometimes, tomatoes. So far I am not starving, but I have to branch out and learn to eat more of the food the locals eat.
Transportation
Getting around is either walking or bicycling. I am quite a way out of the main part of the village so I ride my bike most places. It is a very nice 24 speed bike, of which I use only the middle 8 gears. I certainly stand out around here, not only because of my white skin, but also because I wear a bike helmet and ride this fancy bike. As I go down the dirt road the kids tend to come running out of the family compounds yelling “Nasara! Cadeau?” in other words, “White person, do you have a gift for me?” I am learning the local language so I try to greet them first with the greeting words in Moore and that often cues them into the fact that I am not a random tourist. If that does not work and they are really pesky, I stop and ask them (in French) “Gift? Gift? Do you have a gift for ME?” which often gets a laugh or a look of puzzlement because they don’t actually speak French. I want to learn to say that line in Moore. One of these days.
Integration
My task for the first three months is to get integrated into the community and get to know the life of the community as it relates to my project, Girls Education and Empowerment. This is hard because there are so few people who speak French and my Moore consists of hello and goodbye. I need to figure out how to get some community members involved in these discussions, helping me talk to the people who do not understand my bad French, or any French at all. One way to do this is to walk up to a random courtyard, clap my hands at the gate, saying coo-coo. and see what happens. Often people will run to get a chair to put in the shade and invite me to sit down. If there is anyone who speaks French, I explain who I am and where I am living, nearby, and try to get the names of the people who live there. I am so bad with names and faces, as most of you know, that I really need to be able to go back and review who lives where pretty often. I also try to practice Moore with folks. That is a very slow process, although it is usually good for a few laughs.
There have also been a few people who stop by to greet me and some have invited me to come to their place to meet the family, so I am getting to know a few folks. Sunday I visited the protestant church that is nearest to my house. Everything was in Moore, so I understood exactly nothing, but the music was interesting. I will write more about that later, but there are now quite a few more people who have seen me and probably know who I am and where I am staying, if they did not know already. A couple of people I have encountered had commented on the fact that they saw me at church.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Affectation
There were 76 new volunteers to get to their sites so we went out in groups. Each group had a car and driver to deliver all their things from home and things they had acquired with their moving in allowance. I was at the end of the line and was affectated alone, but I had a very good experience. My drive is a Burkenibé who has been with the Peace Corps for 25 years. He put my bike on top of the 4 X 4 vehicle and put in all my stuff from home and things I bought in Oauga and off we went to find a corner where folks were selling the things I still needed, like buckets, plastic chairs and a table, and so on. After picking out what I wanted and discussing the virtues of this kind of stove or battery operated LED lantern we got down the Burkenia game of negotiating and disputing the prices of things. I was grateful for a list the Peace Corps had provided of typical prices volunteers had reported paying in the past. It helped in the discussion and kept us from paying way too much for some items.
I had been told to go to the Gendarmery to meet a person who would guide me to my new home. The information I had was that it would be a new house with three rooms and an indoor bathing place (more about African bucket baths in a later blog, I promise), When I arrived I found the house is about 75 years old, probably built by European missionaries or NGO folks. It has a large living/dining area, and “kitchen” of sorts, three bedrooms, and a bath room that used to have a toilet and shower. The place the toilet was still has one of those overhead water tanks like you see in old European places, and you can see where tile has been put over the place the toilet was. There is a storage area that could have been a linen cupboard. All of the walls were painted at one time, but the paint is chipped and the roof leaked (or leaks) so the walls are streaked with water stains. Hopefully the roof is fixed, but I think I will wait until the rainy season is over to see if that is true. The floor of the living/dining area, kitchen and hall are tiled with the little ceramic tiles (about 1 cm square). The kitchen has a narrow counter and a sink along one wall, but the sink hole would drain on the floor if I did not put a bucket under it. There is a pipe coming out of the wall, but it is plugged up. My driver said he thought there used to be a water tower for the house that would have provided running water.
My community homologue has been taking good care of me. She went with us to look for gas (propane) for my stove, and had her kids filled up my water tank (a 100 liter garbage can). When we could not find gas for my stove, she brought over her propane tank. I think she cooks in the traditional way, on a wood burning stove, so I guess her family will not starve. There does not appear to be any propane in Burkina Faso.
I did have an adventure today. I got to go to a celebration for the onion and rice cooperative group. They were primarily showing off their building for storing onions and telling people from several other communities how they were successful. All the speeches and discussions were in Moore, but it was still interesting, even though I did not understand a word. I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon at my community homologue’s dolo (Burkina homemade beer, made from millet and sugar in three days) concession at the marché. I think I may have helped her business because I am such a curiosity. I tried to say some things in Moore and they found that quite amusing. I had a good time.
The community is much as advertised: no electricity or running water and families living in separate houses or in small compounds of related folks. The paved road runs through the middle of town, between two bigger cities, but the rest of the roads are dirt, and many are just paths. People walk, bike, ride in donkey carts, or tear around on motos. In the center of town some of the shops have electricity, but that does not seem to extend to private houses so my house is like the norm in that regard.
I had been told to go to the Gendarmery to meet a person who would guide me to my new home. The information I had was that it would be a new house with three rooms and an indoor bathing place (more about African bucket baths in a later blog, I promise), When I arrived I found the house is about 75 years old, probably built by European missionaries or NGO folks. It has a large living/dining area, and “kitchen” of sorts, three bedrooms, and a bath room that used to have a toilet and shower. The place the toilet was still has one of those overhead water tanks like you see in old European places, and you can see where tile has been put over the place the toilet was. There is a storage area that could have been a linen cupboard. All of the walls were painted at one time, but the paint is chipped and the roof leaked (or leaks) so the walls are streaked with water stains. Hopefully the roof is fixed, but I think I will wait until the rainy season is over to see if that is true. The floor of the living/dining area, kitchen and hall are tiled with the little ceramic tiles (about 1 cm square). The kitchen has a narrow counter and a sink along one wall, but the sink hole would drain on the floor if I did not put a bucket under it. There is a pipe coming out of the wall, but it is plugged up. My driver said he thought there used to be a water tower for the house that would have provided running water.
My community homologue has been taking good care of me. She went with us to look for gas (propane) for my stove, and had her kids filled up my water tank (a 100 liter garbage can). When we could not find gas for my stove, she brought over her propane tank. I think she cooks in the traditional way, on a wood burning stove, so I guess her family will not starve. There does not appear to be any propane in Burkina Faso.
I did have an adventure today. I got to go to a celebration for the onion and rice cooperative group. They were primarily showing off their building for storing onions and telling people from several other communities how they were successful. All the speeches and discussions were in Moore, but it was still interesting, even though I did not understand a word. I spent a couple of hours in the afternoon at my community homologue’s dolo (Burkina homemade beer, made from millet and sugar in three days) concession at the marché. I think I may have helped her business because I am such a curiosity. I tried to say some things in Moore and they found that quite amusing. I had a good time.
The community is much as advertised: no electricity or running water and families living in separate houses or in small compounds of related folks. The paved road runs through the middle of town, between two bigger cities, but the rest of the roads are dirt, and many are just paths. People walk, bike, ride in donkey carts, or tear around on motos. In the center of town some of the shops have electricity, but that does not seem to extend to private houses so my house is like the norm in that regard.
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