Weather, again
The weather has been staying pleasantly cool here, low 70s in the mornings and most days no more than 90-95 degrees in the afternoon, although it did reach 100 one day. As long as it cools off at night I will have no complaints. I just remember that my original assignment was supposed to be Mongolia and think about how much I hate to be cold. There it might be -40 degrees right now, so I am happy to be here. Some days there have been real clouds, not just dust in the air, which helps keep it cooler. We actually had about 15 seconds of a shower the other day, a very rare event this time of year. At first I did not believe I was really hearing rain on the roof, but I got outside before it stopped and it was real.
With the hot dry season approaching the trees are blooming and making seeds to put down before they go dormant in the heat. The sweet smell in the air makes me think of spring back home. Leaves are beginning to fall from most of the trees. I understand the Mangos keep their leaves, but most of the other trees drop them in preparation for this time of stress, just like our trees drop them in the fall to get set for winter.
Moringa trees
Speaking of trees, have I told you about moringa trees? These are the miracle trees the Peace Corps is encouraging volunteers to promote with the Burkinabè. They are drought resistant, fast growing trees that have other great virtues. The biggest one is that the leaves contain lots of good things. Here are the statistics:
If you compare100 grams of moringa to 100 grams of these other things you can see how good moringa is
7 times the vitamin C of oranges
4 times the calcium of milk
4 times the vitamin A of carrots
3 times the potassium of bananas
25 grams of leaves a day will give a child the following % of recommended daily allowances: protein 42%
Calcium, 125%
Magnesium 61%
Potassium 41%
Iron 71%
Vitamin A 272%
Vitamin C 22%
The trick is to get the Burkinabè women not to cook them so long that they cook out all of the good stuff. The usual cooking method involves hours of cooking things over a fire to make sauce for the to. You have to get people to add the morenga at the last minute so that people get the nutritional value.
Apparently you water the morenga trees a bit if you want them to keep their leaves all year, but if you want them to go to seed, you have to stop watering them. I have a stash of seeds and I would like to pant them in my courtyard, but I have to do that good old soil preparation and dig big holes first. Me dig the holes? No way in this dirt, but I have a friend who has dug a few for me. Now he is looking for well rotted manure so that there is fertilizer for the seeds. I may get trees planted by the rainy season.
Malnutrition
I have talked before about the malnutrition here and my visit to the center for malnourished babies that is sponsored by the Catholic Church in town. It is actually supported by donations from European countries, mostly from Italy I think, which is the home of the order that founded the church here. When people take babies there for help with nutrition they learn how to make a kind of baby cereal from local ingredients, and one of the recipes uses morenga leaves. Again the secret is not to boil it to death, as the Burkinabè tend to do. With malnourished babies you usually have malnourished mothers as well, so you need to convince the mothers that they need to eat well to provide good breast milk. Another thing I have learned is that mothers often give their very young babies water in addition to breast feeding them. This is a dangerous practice because of the contamination of the water sources here, and also because it fills the baby‘s stomach. Then the baby does not drink as much breast milk, and the mother produces less.
Non Peace Corps Volunteers
I recently encountered a couple of other nasaras (white people, foreigners) riding bicycles down the dirt road that passes my house. I stopped to greet them and find out who they were and what they were up to. She is a French pediatrician, newly retired, who is volunteering at the center for malnourished babies. Her husband is an agriculturist who has been doing some training about farming and also helping with the garden at the medical center.. They have been here for almost two months and this was the first time I had encountered them. They had been riding up and down the highway and finally discovered this safer dirt track. I invited them to my house for lunch Sunday and I was pretty proud of my menu. It was all local food except for the seasonings which Janet had sent me. I get a piece of goat meat, cut out the good bits and fried them up with onions. Then I added water and rice, along with a mixture of herbs of Provence, and it made a yummy casserole type dish. Add to that cooked carrots, local bread, and a lettuce and tomato salad, and it was not a bad lunch if I do say so myself. It was a very pleasant afternoon, but, unfortunately it was their last week here so we will not be getting together again. Too bad. It was good practice for my ear listening to good French, and they were interesting folks.
The pediatrician was talking about some of the things I mentioned above about malnutrition and giving babies water. She also told about the family’s lack of a sense of urgency if a child is sick. One child was brought to the center, so ill it finally died. When she asked how long the child had been sick, the mother said about 7 months. Can you imagine watching a child get sicker and sicker and doing nothing? Maybe they had tried other things, like traditional medicine and had only come to the western medical place as a last resort. Maybe they kept thinking if they gave it enough time the baby would improve. Maybe it was a matter of not having the small amount of money it takes to get medical help. I have no information, but you have to wonder what they were thinking.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Time
Time in Burkina Faso
I am sure you have all heard that the American view of time is different from the view of time in developing countries. I have just had a couple of examples that I will tell you about.
I had an appointment for 9:00 with the director (principal) of an elementary school. I went there on the appointed day at 9:00 and was told by one of the teachers that he had left, and maybe he was over at the health center. I went over there to see if I could find him. They were doing annual physical checkups, with people lined up at various stations, like the eye chart with the Es that face different directions. I didn’t see him in the crowd, but I was explaining to someone who I was looking for and he said, “Oh there he is, just arriving at the school.” I went back over there and the director told me he had received a notice from the Inspector (superintendent of schools) that there would be a meeting that day at 9:00 so we could not meet after all. Come back at 16:00 (4:00 pm). I am sure the teacher who told me he was not there called his cell phone about it and he left his meeting with the Inspector to come tell me we could not meet, or was also late to that meeting.
I arrived at the school at 3:50 and waited around until 4:30. Then I sent him a text saying that I was there and that if this is not a good time, tell me when I could see him. Within 5 minutes he appeared on his moto, shopping bags in hand. He said the meeting at lasted until 1:30. I guess that means he needed to take his 3 hour lunch break late. (Yes there is a 3 hour break in the middle of the school day here, to let the children and teachers go home for lunch and a rest in the heat of the day.)
The second example is even worse. Someone asked me to be somewhere at 8:00 am for a meeting on a particular day and, when she did not show up after 2 hours, I called her. She told me the meeting had been changed to the following day. I had some things I wanted to discuss with her rather than in the meeting with others so she said to be there at 7:20 and we could talk before the meeting. I was there at 7:15 and she arrived at 8:00 so we did not get a chance to talk until afterwards. Another day she and I had a meeting scheduled with a group of girls at the private college (junior high school). She was supposed to stop at my house at 7:00 so we could discuss the plan for the meeting that was to be at 8:00. When she had not arrived by 7:30 I called her and told her I would ride my bike to the school and meet her there. No, no, no, she said, I am on my way. Wait for me. So I waited at my house and she finally arrived at 9:30. We got to the school at 10:00, after I convinced her it would be a good idea to go straight there rather than stopping off to see some folks along the way. We arrived at 10:00 for this 8:00 meeting. I had expected all the girls to have given up and gone home, but there were actually 50 girls sitting around waiting for us. Amazing.
On the other hand, I have had a couple of meetings with a man who spent quite a few years in the US and he has been early for the three meetings we have had. As he says, in the US people say “Time is money.” Think about the value of people’s time in the US considering the salary of each person waiting at a meeting place for someone who is late. It is certainly true that, if you consider the value of their work they could have done in the time they are waiting for late comers, money is being wasted.
I was warned to expect people to be late here and for meetings to be very late in starting, an hour or more not being unusual. What I was not prepared for was people who know they will not be there for a meeting with you who do not bother to let you know about that. It is one window into the cultural differences. This being late for meetings is chronic. I have heard people say they should tell people to get to a meeting an hour before they really want to start. To my way of thinking, that just rewards late comers and makes the problem worse, but it is such an ingrained part of the culture I doubt if I can fight it. I was able to convince my language tutor that if we agreed to meet at 3:00 I expected him to appear at 3:00, not 3:30 or 4. Maybe it is knowing that the job might disappear if he did not conform to that American standard, or maybe he is more westernized, but he is always on time now. It is possible for Burkinabé to arrive when expected, just not the usual custom.
I think I have already mentioned that the same thing happens in church. I arrive at 7:30 and usually the pastor and one or two other people arrive about then. They begin the service and after a half hour or so there are 30 people in the room and the choir has started to trickle in. By 9:00, when the service is almost over, there are probably 60 there. Some of those late comers may actually be arriving early for the next service that is in Moore, but I don’t think so.
One of the reasons things tend to be late here is that people stop along the way to chat with all the people they know. When they arrive, there is the ritual of greeting everybody in the room with good morning, how are you, how is the family, did you sleep well, etc. These ritual greetings are a deeply ingrained part of the culture and people tell me the relationships take precedence over any idea of time. Good thing or bad thing? I am not sure I will adapt to it here. I am sure when I get home I will still be that compulsively prompt person you all know who has been indoctrinated with idea that if you are not early, you are late, because only one person can walk through the door exactly on time.
I am sure you have all heard that the American view of time is different from the view of time in developing countries. I have just had a couple of examples that I will tell you about.
I had an appointment for 9:00 with the director (principal) of an elementary school. I went there on the appointed day at 9:00 and was told by one of the teachers that he had left, and maybe he was over at the health center. I went over there to see if I could find him. They were doing annual physical checkups, with people lined up at various stations, like the eye chart with the Es that face different directions. I didn’t see him in the crowd, but I was explaining to someone who I was looking for and he said, “Oh there he is, just arriving at the school.” I went back over there and the director told me he had received a notice from the Inspector (superintendent of schools) that there would be a meeting that day at 9:00 so we could not meet after all. Come back at 16:00 (4:00 pm). I am sure the teacher who told me he was not there called his cell phone about it and he left his meeting with the Inspector to come tell me we could not meet, or was also late to that meeting.
I arrived at the school at 3:50 and waited around until 4:30. Then I sent him a text saying that I was there and that if this is not a good time, tell me when I could see him. Within 5 minutes he appeared on his moto, shopping bags in hand. He said the meeting at lasted until 1:30. I guess that means he needed to take his 3 hour lunch break late. (Yes there is a 3 hour break in the middle of the school day here, to let the children and teachers go home for lunch and a rest in the heat of the day.)
The second example is even worse. Someone asked me to be somewhere at 8:00 am for a meeting on a particular day and, when she did not show up after 2 hours, I called her. She told me the meeting had been changed to the following day. I had some things I wanted to discuss with her rather than in the meeting with others so she said to be there at 7:20 and we could talk before the meeting. I was there at 7:15 and she arrived at 8:00 so we did not get a chance to talk until afterwards. Another day she and I had a meeting scheduled with a group of girls at the private college (junior high school). She was supposed to stop at my house at 7:00 so we could discuss the plan for the meeting that was to be at 8:00. When she had not arrived by 7:30 I called her and told her I would ride my bike to the school and meet her there. No, no, no, she said, I am on my way. Wait for me. So I waited at my house and she finally arrived at 9:30. We got to the school at 10:00, after I convinced her it would be a good idea to go straight there rather than stopping off to see some folks along the way. We arrived at 10:00 for this 8:00 meeting. I had expected all the girls to have given up and gone home, but there were actually 50 girls sitting around waiting for us. Amazing.
On the other hand, I have had a couple of meetings with a man who spent quite a few years in the US and he has been early for the three meetings we have had. As he says, in the US people say “Time is money.” Think about the value of people’s time in the US considering the salary of each person waiting at a meeting place for someone who is late. It is certainly true that, if you consider the value of their work they could have done in the time they are waiting for late comers, money is being wasted.
I was warned to expect people to be late here and for meetings to be very late in starting, an hour or more not being unusual. What I was not prepared for was people who know they will not be there for a meeting with you who do not bother to let you know about that. It is one window into the cultural differences. This being late for meetings is chronic. I have heard people say they should tell people to get to a meeting an hour before they really want to start. To my way of thinking, that just rewards late comers and makes the problem worse, but it is such an ingrained part of the culture I doubt if I can fight it. I was able to convince my language tutor that if we agreed to meet at 3:00 I expected him to appear at 3:00, not 3:30 or 4. Maybe it is knowing that the job might disappear if he did not conform to that American standard, or maybe he is more westernized, but he is always on time now. It is possible for Burkinabé to arrive when expected, just not the usual custom.
I think I have already mentioned that the same thing happens in church. I arrive at 7:30 and usually the pastor and one or two other people arrive about then. They begin the service and after a half hour or so there are 30 people in the room and the choir has started to trickle in. By 9:00, when the service is almost over, there are probably 60 there. Some of those late comers may actually be arriving early for the next service that is in Moore, but I don’t think so.
One of the reasons things tend to be late here is that people stop along the way to chat with all the people they know. When they arrive, there is the ritual of greeting everybody in the room with good morning, how are you, how is the family, did you sleep well, etc. These ritual greetings are a deeply ingrained part of the culture and people tell me the relationships take precedence over any idea of time. Good thing or bad thing? I am not sure I will adapt to it here. I am sure when I get home I will still be that compulsively prompt person you all know who has been indoctrinated with idea that if you are not early, you are late, because only one person can walk through the door exactly on time.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
More Changes in the weather and IST
More Changes in the weather
As I have mentioned, in December the weather got cooler, rather suddenly. Some days you can barely see the sun because of what appears to be low hanging clouds, but is actually dust in the air. The feeling is of an over cast sky in the states, but it is kind of like there is smoke or fog in the air. I guess it is the African version of smog. It is not from emissions from gas burning vehicles, but the dirt that is blowing in the wind because of the loss of ground cover and trees.
I keep thinking of that old song “Dust, dust , dust in the skies, dust in the heavens, dust in my eyes. oh dust, dust can this be, can this be eternity? Oh Lord, have mercy on poor me” Most of you are too young to have heard it. I think it was popular for a while in the late 40s or early fifties.
The dust is hard on the eyes, hard on the lungs, and gets on everything. When you ride a bike or moto on the dirt roads, they kick up quite a cloud of dust. Motos going fast are particularly bad. People wear a face mask/dust filter over their mouths and noses to keep from breathing in the dust. Sometimes they have the kind you buy at a hardware store to use when you are working in your shop, but mostly they use the blue sleeping masks you get on overseas flights. I guess someone at the airport collects them from the trash and sells them to folks. I am sure that most people have no idea of their original use because I have discussed it with a few and they were very surprised, and perhaps a bit puzzled. Why would you want to sleep when there is light?
WE have more dust and wind in the future, I understand. In the hot season (March, April and May) the wind slows from the north, across the Sahara desert, picking up lots of sand and dust as it comes this way. I understand it can be like a whiteout snowstorm, only red. Something to look forward to in a house that does not have glass windows but just metal shutters
For a while the days were on the cool side, only getting up to 80 or so. From here on out it will begin to get hotter and hotter. I am sure you will hear more about the heat in these blogs as the days and nights get to be really hot. For now the weather is quite comfortable for me most of the time. It was actually 68 degreesw Sunday morning when I headed out to church. (Thanks for the thermometer, Garret-Larsens). The Burkinabè find it quite cold and wear their warmest clothes. For some, mostly the men, that means knitted stocking caps and heavy winter jackets. Women tend to layer their pagnas and to use them as shawls, so a woman might have two or three pagna “skirts” and a couple wrapped around her shoulders. I sometimes wrap one around me, over my slacks, in the morning if I am feeling cold. It is surprising how warm multiple layers of cotton cloth can be.
It is really strange to get up in the morning and not to give much thought to what the weather except to wonder how hot it will get. At home, when I first got up, I always put on the TV news in the morning to hear what the weather would be like before I decided what to wear. Here, for the next three or four months, there will only be a question of how hot it is going to be.
In Service Training (IST)
It has been several weeks since my last post. That is because, after four months at our sites, the Peace Corps brought our various program groups together for two more weeks of training. The first week for Girls Education and Empowerment was held at the conference center I described in the last blog. We learned about the reporting expectations, which look like they will be a bit of a pain, but this is a government agency, after all. In order for the Peace Corps to get funded they have to document for congress what the volunteers are doing and how many people they have worked with, etc. It starts with each volunteer filling out a report his or her activities for a four month period. Of course there is a form to fill out. I feel sorry for folks who did not bring a computer or who do not have internet access because you have to go through a sequence of forms, selecting from drop-down menus or filling in blanks. Among other things you have to indicate the number of people who participated in each activity. I am really glad I followed the Burkinabè custom of having people sign an attendance sheet at meetings so I know how many people were there.
We also had presentations from second year volunteers about activities they had done. There was a Burkinabè English teacher who described the kinds of activities he has done with his English clubs and a third year volunteer (yes, a lot of people here sign on for an additional year) who is working with an organization called Friends of African Village Libraries. There are not many libraries anywhere in Burkina Faso, and reading is not a major activity, even for the well educated. Very few smaller towns or villages have libraries, but I sure wish there were one in my village! The ones that do exist have children’s books in local language as well as French, and it would be a great way to practice Moore. It turns out that such books are very expensive because there is a very small market for them, so they are not produced in large numbers.
We had a session on gardening, hoping volunteer would start a garden to show people how to use compost and how to do drip irrigation. I don’t think I will be doing that, but you never know. The most fun was the session on soap making. It is one of the most popular income generating activities. You can seel the product for twice what the ingredients cost, so it is a pretty good deal. The liquid soap is easy to make and the ingredients are even safe for children to handle. I would not want to fool around with the hard soap which requires rubber gloves and a good deal of care, although the soap you get in the end is pretty nice.
I am going to stop my discussion of IST here and continue in the next blog. Hope you all are enjoying all that cold, snowy weather. Just imaging a place where you have to put on a einter coat when it is 70…… I’m there!
As I have mentioned, in December the weather got cooler, rather suddenly. Some days you can barely see the sun because of what appears to be low hanging clouds, but is actually dust in the air. The feeling is of an over cast sky in the states, but it is kind of like there is smoke or fog in the air. I guess it is the African version of smog. It is not from emissions from gas burning vehicles, but the dirt that is blowing in the wind because of the loss of ground cover and trees.
I keep thinking of that old song “Dust, dust , dust in the skies, dust in the heavens, dust in my eyes. oh dust, dust can this be, can this be eternity? Oh Lord, have mercy on poor me” Most of you are too young to have heard it. I think it was popular for a while in the late 40s or early fifties.
The dust is hard on the eyes, hard on the lungs, and gets on everything. When you ride a bike or moto on the dirt roads, they kick up quite a cloud of dust. Motos going fast are particularly bad. People wear a face mask/dust filter over their mouths and noses to keep from breathing in the dust. Sometimes they have the kind you buy at a hardware store to use when you are working in your shop, but mostly they use the blue sleeping masks you get on overseas flights. I guess someone at the airport collects them from the trash and sells them to folks. I am sure that most people have no idea of their original use because I have discussed it with a few and they were very surprised, and perhaps a bit puzzled. Why would you want to sleep when there is light?
WE have more dust and wind in the future, I understand. In the hot season (March, April and May) the wind slows from the north, across the Sahara desert, picking up lots of sand and dust as it comes this way. I understand it can be like a whiteout snowstorm, only red. Something to look forward to in a house that does not have glass windows but just metal shutters
For a while the days were on the cool side, only getting up to 80 or so. From here on out it will begin to get hotter and hotter. I am sure you will hear more about the heat in these blogs as the days and nights get to be really hot. For now the weather is quite comfortable for me most of the time. It was actually 68 degreesw Sunday morning when I headed out to church. (Thanks for the thermometer, Garret-Larsens). The Burkinabè find it quite cold and wear their warmest clothes. For some, mostly the men, that means knitted stocking caps and heavy winter jackets. Women tend to layer their pagnas and to use them as shawls, so a woman might have two or three pagna “skirts” and a couple wrapped around her shoulders. I sometimes wrap one around me, over my slacks, in the morning if I am feeling cold. It is surprising how warm multiple layers of cotton cloth can be.
It is really strange to get up in the morning and not to give much thought to what the weather except to wonder how hot it will get. At home, when I first got up, I always put on the TV news in the morning to hear what the weather would be like before I decided what to wear. Here, for the next three or four months, there will only be a question of how hot it is going to be.
In Service Training (IST)
It has been several weeks since my last post. That is because, after four months at our sites, the Peace Corps brought our various program groups together for two more weeks of training. The first week for Girls Education and Empowerment was held at the conference center I described in the last blog. We learned about the reporting expectations, which look like they will be a bit of a pain, but this is a government agency, after all. In order for the Peace Corps to get funded they have to document for congress what the volunteers are doing and how many people they have worked with, etc. It starts with each volunteer filling out a report his or her activities for a four month period. Of course there is a form to fill out. I feel sorry for folks who did not bring a computer or who do not have internet access because you have to go through a sequence of forms, selecting from drop-down menus or filling in blanks. Among other things you have to indicate the number of people who participated in each activity. I am really glad I followed the Burkinabè custom of having people sign an attendance sheet at meetings so I know how many people were there.
We also had presentations from second year volunteers about activities they had done. There was a Burkinabè English teacher who described the kinds of activities he has done with his English clubs and a third year volunteer (yes, a lot of people here sign on for an additional year) who is working with an organization called Friends of African Village Libraries. There are not many libraries anywhere in Burkina Faso, and reading is not a major activity, even for the well educated. Very few smaller towns or villages have libraries, but I sure wish there were one in my village! The ones that do exist have children’s books in local language as well as French, and it would be a great way to practice Moore. It turns out that such books are very expensive because there is a very small market for them, so they are not produced in large numbers.
We had a session on gardening, hoping volunteer would start a garden to show people how to use compost and how to do drip irrigation. I don’t think I will be doing that, but you never know. The most fun was the session on soap making. It is one of the most popular income generating activities. You can seel the product for twice what the ingredients cost, so it is a pretty good deal. The liquid soap is easy to make and the ingredients are even safe for children to handle. I would not want to fool around with the hard soap which requires rubber gloves and a good deal of care, although the soap you get in the end is pretty nice.
I am going to stop my discussion of IST here and continue in the next blog. Hope you all are enjoying all that cold, snowy weather. Just imaging a place where you have to put on a einter coat when it is 70…… I’m there!
Monday, January 24, 2011
Language Training
After three and a half months at our sites to get settled in and familiar with our new homes, Peace Corps provided us with a week of language training in the local language spoken in our village or region. (Yeah Peace Corps!) For me, that is Moore (pronounced as if the last letter were a long A), the language that is spoken by about 40% of the people in the Burkina Faso as their first language. I have been seeing a tutor for about 10 hours a month, thanks to Peace Corps that reimburses us for what we pay tutors. I have also been trying to study some books of Moore, but I am not doing very well at learning the language. In my week long training there was another member of my stage group who had been living with a family that speaks Moore with her day and night and she was way ahead of me. The other member of our group was so good in French when he got here that he did not have any French instruction during stage, but studied Moore all 9 weeks. I have been doing most of my communication, except for the ritual greetings, in French.
I have been working through the Ultimate French Review books, trying to learn things I never really learned, and to remember things I knew once upon a time. People assure me my French is better than it used to be. I certainly hope so, but it is still not good and I have a lot of trouble understanding people in normal conversation. If they are speaking directly to me and paying attention to when I look confused, they usually use other words or explain ideas until I catch on. When there is just a conversation going on in a group, I can understand a lot of the words, but often miss the few important ones that convey the meaning of a sentence. Talking on the telephone is a particulate challenge because you do not have any visual cues and can’t lip read.
Adding Moore on top of the French has been hard for me. In French, at least, you have a lot of cognates. If I don’t know a word in French, I can often use the English word with a French accent and actually be saying the right word. No such luck with Moore. There are a few Moore words that have been adapted from the French because they refer to modern ideas, like school that were not a part of the culture before colonization. For the most part, the words are completely different.
At first I thought Moore verbs were going to be way easier than French or English because, regardless of whether it is first, second or third person, singular or plural, you use the same form of the verb in a given tense. It turns out there are six types of verbs and you have to learn the type of verb to get the right endings. This is hard to figure out because there is no general rule (like –er verbs in French) and I have yet to find a good Moore dictionary. To make things even more confusing, you add an ending to the infinitive of the verb, but if there is an object after the verb, you drop part of that ending, and sometimes (I am never sure when) you drop off another letter. Of course, as in every other language I have tried to learn, there are irregular verbs (lots of them).
Moore is a very nasal language with lots of double vowels. You can have a word that looks just about the same except that in one word there is one o, in another there is a double o, and in another there is a tilde (~) over the o or the first of two oos. There are also three extra vowels, and I have trouble hearing the difference between the two kinds of u. the two kinds of e and the two kinds of i. Many words in Moore start with k, w, or z, I know I will never be good enough in Moore to give a talk in the language, but I hope to learn enough to have a short and simple conversation with some of the mothers who do not speak French.
There were only three of us in this group, although some other groups in other places had as many as 5 in a group. Our LCF (Language and Cultural Facilitator) was a young man who did his best to keep everybody in the loop, in spite of the differences in our levels of knowledge of the language. The schedule was the same as stage: 8-10, 30 minute break, 10:30-12:30, and hour and a half for lunch, then two afternoon blocks of a hour and a half with a 15 minute break. That is a long time to be trying to pay attention to a language you do not understand. He tried to keep it interesting by using topics we had indicated were important for our work, but the other two are part of the Small Enterprise Development sector and I am in Girls Education and Empowerment. After the first day, he tried to have one block each day as kind of a field trip to try to hear Moore from other people and to use Moore in a practical situation. We visited a market and bought a couple of things, went to a juice bar and had interesting fruit drinks, talked to the secretary at an NGO that is sponsored by the Catholic Church here, focusing on the use of water resources, and so on.
The training week was held at a conference center associated with a Catholic seminary. We each had a private room and I could eat breakfast and dinner in the “restaurant” there. It was really a dining hall and there was no choice about what you got to eat, but that way I did not have to hop on my bicycle and ride into town to find food. Because I do not bike in the dark it was a wonderful arrangement. They also had a good internet connection.
The grounds are beautiful and very well maintained. You feel like you are at a fancy resort and not in one of the poorest countries in the world. Every day men were out raking up leaves and sweeping the dirt areas. Here are a few pictures of the pretty flowers.
Folks who have been in my office at JCU should note the flowing green plant. That is what I had around my window, but this is living in the wild.
There were a lot of birds in the many trees on the grounds. We had our classes on a covered porch of one of the large buildings were conferences can be held. I have to admit to being distracted by the bird calls and the geckos scampering up the trees and walls of the buildings. I understand that sometimes the conference center is packed full of large groups, but it was a pretty quiet the week when we were there.
On the Saturday, there was a wedding in one of the chapels on the grounds. It was interesting to see all of the guests arriving in a big motorcade of cars and motos, including the bride and groom in a car decorated with streamers and balloons. I am pretty sure that the whole group had been at the civil ceremony before this church wedding and that is the reason they all arrived at the same time. Being on time for events is so un-Burkinabé-like.
Another interesting thing was hearing the boys at the seminary singing each morning and evening. They must have a European trained choir master because the sound was what Americans would think of as beautiful. The other thing we heard 5 times a day, starting at 4:00 in the morning, was the Muslim call to prayer. I am not sure if all the sound was coming from one mosque, but it sounded like two men having a conversation in chant. The sound was amplified, of course, so you couldn’t miss it.
I have been working through the Ultimate French Review books, trying to learn things I never really learned, and to remember things I knew once upon a time. People assure me my French is better than it used to be. I certainly hope so, but it is still not good and I have a lot of trouble understanding people in normal conversation. If they are speaking directly to me and paying attention to when I look confused, they usually use other words or explain ideas until I catch on. When there is just a conversation going on in a group, I can understand a lot of the words, but often miss the few important ones that convey the meaning of a sentence. Talking on the telephone is a particulate challenge because you do not have any visual cues and can’t lip read.
Adding Moore on top of the French has been hard for me. In French, at least, you have a lot of cognates. If I don’t know a word in French, I can often use the English word with a French accent and actually be saying the right word. No such luck with Moore. There are a few Moore words that have been adapted from the French because they refer to modern ideas, like school that were not a part of the culture before colonization. For the most part, the words are completely different.
At first I thought Moore verbs were going to be way easier than French or English because, regardless of whether it is first, second or third person, singular or plural, you use the same form of the verb in a given tense. It turns out there are six types of verbs and you have to learn the type of verb to get the right endings. This is hard to figure out because there is no general rule (like –er verbs in French) and I have yet to find a good Moore dictionary. To make things even more confusing, you add an ending to the infinitive of the verb, but if there is an object after the verb, you drop part of that ending, and sometimes (I am never sure when) you drop off another letter. Of course, as in every other language I have tried to learn, there are irregular verbs (lots of them).
Moore is a very nasal language with lots of double vowels. You can have a word that looks just about the same except that in one word there is one o, in another there is a double o, and in another there is a tilde (~) over the o or the first of two oos. There are also three extra vowels, and I have trouble hearing the difference between the two kinds of u. the two kinds of e and the two kinds of i. Many words in Moore start with k, w, or z, I know I will never be good enough in Moore to give a talk in the language, but I hope to learn enough to have a short and simple conversation with some of the mothers who do not speak French.
There were only three of us in this group, although some other groups in other places had as many as 5 in a group. Our LCF (Language and Cultural Facilitator) was a young man who did his best to keep everybody in the loop, in spite of the differences in our levels of knowledge of the language. The schedule was the same as stage: 8-10, 30 minute break, 10:30-12:30, and hour and a half for lunch, then two afternoon blocks of a hour and a half with a 15 minute break. That is a long time to be trying to pay attention to a language you do not understand. He tried to keep it interesting by using topics we had indicated were important for our work, but the other two are part of the Small Enterprise Development sector and I am in Girls Education and Empowerment. After the first day, he tried to have one block each day as kind of a field trip to try to hear Moore from other people and to use Moore in a practical situation. We visited a market and bought a couple of things, went to a juice bar and had interesting fruit drinks, talked to the secretary at an NGO that is sponsored by the Catholic Church here, focusing on the use of water resources, and so on.
The training week was held at a conference center associated with a Catholic seminary. We each had a private room and I could eat breakfast and dinner in the “restaurant” there. It was really a dining hall and there was no choice about what you got to eat, but that way I did not have to hop on my bicycle and ride into town to find food. Because I do not bike in the dark it was a wonderful arrangement. They also had a good internet connection.
The grounds are beautiful and very well maintained. You feel like you are at a fancy resort and not in one of the poorest countries in the world. Every day men were out raking up leaves and sweeping the dirt areas. Here are a few pictures of the pretty flowers.
Folks who have been in my office at JCU should note the flowing green plant. That is what I had around my window, but this is living in the wild.
There were a lot of birds in the many trees on the grounds. We had our classes on a covered porch of one of the large buildings were conferences can be held. I have to admit to being distracted by the bird calls and the geckos scampering up the trees and walls of the buildings. I understand that sometimes the conference center is packed full of large groups, but it was a pretty quiet the week when we were there.
On the Saturday, there was a wedding in one of the chapels on the grounds. It was interesting to see all of the guests arriving in a big motorcade of cars and motos, including the bride and groom in a car decorated with streamers and balloons. I am pretty sure that the whole group had been at the civil ceremony before this church wedding and that is the reason they all arrived at the same time. Being on time for events is so un-Burkinabé-like.
Another interesting thing was hearing the boys at the seminary singing each morning and evening. They must have a European trained choir master because the sound was what Americans would think of as beautiful. The other thing we heard 5 times a day, starting at 4:00 in the morning, was the Muslim call to prayer. I am not sure if all the sound was coming from one mosque, but it sounded like two men having a conversation in chant. The sound was amplified, of course, so you couldn’t miss it.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Using Soap Operas to Change Behavior
One of the things I learned about several years ago in a talk by Albert Bandura at a meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association was a practical application of one of my favorite theories of learning. Some of you know about Albert Bandura’s social learning theory. Without going into the details, the basic idea is that we can learn about the consequences of behavior by watching other people and seeing what happens to them when they behave in certain ways. For example, if you see someone slip on a patch of ice, you don’t have to slip yourself to be cautious in that place.
This idea, along with several other theories related to communication, was used by Miguel Sabido, a producer of Mexican TV programs, to develop the idea of using soap operas to change behavior in many people in a country. He focused on the exploding population of Mexico. One of the programs he produced featured a character had only two children and worked at a family planning center. Her sister had so many children and so little money that the family had to move in with the grandmother. The differences in the lives of these two families, of course, were quite dramatic. During the time he was producing this and other programs with similar social themes, the population increase in Mexico dropped 34% and Mexico received a UN award for its progress in controlling its population growth. He produced another soap opera in which an old man responds to publicity about a learn to read program for adults. In the program the man faces some obstacles, like people telling him he is too old to learn how to read, and his own feeling that no one would want to work with him, and he succeeds. Before this program, about 100,000 people each year enrolled in Mexico’s adult literacy program. During the year it was broadcast, the number was over 900,000, and the year after the broadcast it was 500,000. The point is, soap operas with a positive social message can lead to big, measurable changes in the behavior of the people in a whole country.
I could go on about this for quite a while longer, but if you are interested in hearing Bandura tell the stories of how soap operas have changed behavior all over the world, listen to his lecture about it at the Everett M. Rogers Award Colloquium, 2007, on Youtube. This link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjIbKaSXM3A) is not live, but you can cut and paste it into your browser if you are interested. Actually the first 10 minutes or so are him getting the award. His lecture is what you want to hear.
Population Media Center is one of the groups that is now active in trying to help countries who wish to use this method to work on social problems. I contacted them and asked about how I could help bring this idea to Burkina Faso and they told me about a soap opera focusing on child trafficking in Mali and Burkina Faso that was produced in Mali about 8 years ago. It was intended to be broadcast in Burkina Faso but apparently many of the stations that were supposed to be participating did not actually broadcast the program regularly. One of the groups I am working with here is a small community radio station and I asked them if they would be interested in broadcasting this program if I could get Population Media to get permission for it to be rebroadcast. They are a part of a small group of community radio stations that are working on ways to collaborate. I should point out that this soap opera is in the local language of Mali and western Burkina Faso and the story is actually set in Burkina Faso, so it is perfect for broadcasting in the western part of the country. As I think I have mentioned before, there are 14 different local languages spoken in Burkina Faso. Although this program is in Bambura, Jula speakers here should be able to understand the program.
I recently had a meeting with several of the people from these radio stations. The meeting was similar to what I have been told to expect here. Of the six people who were expected to be there, only two actually came. After some phone calls it turned out that the other four were either sick or taking care of sick children. Two of them called other people who eventually came to the meeting. The meeting was supposed to start at 9:00 but finally got underway about 9:45. After introductions I made a PowerPoint presentation (in French) and explained the project. Then at 10:30 one of the people who had been called to fill in appeared and at 10:45 the other arrived and I went through the whole dog and pony show again. The bottom line is that the four that were there agreed to present the program and my professional homologue took the other two sets of 29 CDs for the other two groups and said she would explain it all to them.
This project is intended to be a pilot, or perhaps demonstration, project to show Burkinabè that people will listen to such a program. This particular show does not have a theme that is so easy to capture in measurable behavior as those I described above, but we are going to do some monitoring to see that the program is actually broadcast and to sample some opinions about the problem of child trafficking and children’s rights to see if we can show a difference in the broadcast area and areas where the program is not broadcast. I hope that eventually I will find people in the Burkina Faso media who are interested in tackling some of the identified problems of the country, such as the need to increase the number of girls continuing with school or the advantages of delaying having children until girls have completed their education. If you read about the method you will learn that an outsider like me does not go into a country telling the people there what problem they need to work on, but rather we can facilitate the people of the country talking about the problems and the kinds of solutions that would work in their country. All goals addressed in Population Media projects must be consistent with the UN human rights statement and with commitments and rules of the country. In other words, this is not an idea imposed by outsiders, but developed by the people of the country to help them improve their lives. That is exactly the philosophy of the Peace Corps, so this seems like a good partnership if it works out. You can also read about the method on the Poplulation Media Center’s web site. http://www.populationmedia.org/ I know there is supposed to be some what to make these links active, but I can't do it. Any suggestions??
This idea, along with several other theories related to communication, was used by Miguel Sabido, a producer of Mexican TV programs, to develop the idea of using soap operas to change behavior in many people in a country. He focused on the exploding population of Mexico. One of the programs he produced featured a character had only two children and worked at a family planning center. Her sister had so many children and so little money that the family had to move in with the grandmother. The differences in the lives of these two families, of course, were quite dramatic. During the time he was producing this and other programs with similar social themes, the population increase in Mexico dropped 34% and Mexico received a UN award for its progress in controlling its population growth. He produced another soap opera in which an old man responds to publicity about a learn to read program for adults. In the program the man faces some obstacles, like people telling him he is too old to learn how to read, and his own feeling that no one would want to work with him, and he succeeds. Before this program, about 100,000 people each year enrolled in Mexico’s adult literacy program. During the year it was broadcast, the number was over 900,000, and the year after the broadcast it was 500,000. The point is, soap operas with a positive social message can lead to big, measurable changes in the behavior of the people in a whole country.
I could go on about this for quite a while longer, but if you are interested in hearing Bandura tell the stories of how soap operas have changed behavior all over the world, listen to his lecture about it at the Everett M. Rogers Award Colloquium, 2007, on Youtube. This link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjIbKaSXM3A) is not live, but you can cut and paste it into your browser if you are interested. Actually the first 10 minutes or so are him getting the award. His lecture is what you want to hear.
Population Media Center is one of the groups that is now active in trying to help countries who wish to use this method to work on social problems. I contacted them and asked about how I could help bring this idea to Burkina Faso and they told me about a soap opera focusing on child trafficking in Mali and Burkina Faso that was produced in Mali about 8 years ago. It was intended to be broadcast in Burkina Faso but apparently many of the stations that were supposed to be participating did not actually broadcast the program regularly. One of the groups I am working with here is a small community radio station and I asked them if they would be interested in broadcasting this program if I could get Population Media to get permission for it to be rebroadcast. They are a part of a small group of community radio stations that are working on ways to collaborate. I should point out that this soap opera is in the local language of Mali and western Burkina Faso and the story is actually set in Burkina Faso, so it is perfect for broadcasting in the western part of the country. As I think I have mentioned before, there are 14 different local languages spoken in Burkina Faso. Although this program is in Bambura, Jula speakers here should be able to understand the program.
I recently had a meeting with several of the people from these radio stations. The meeting was similar to what I have been told to expect here. Of the six people who were expected to be there, only two actually came. After some phone calls it turned out that the other four were either sick or taking care of sick children. Two of them called other people who eventually came to the meeting. The meeting was supposed to start at 9:00 but finally got underway about 9:45. After introductions I made a PowerPoint presentation (in French) and explained the project. Then at 10:30 one of the people who had been called to fill in appeared and at 10:45 the other arrived and I went through the whole dog and pony show again. The bottom line is that the four that were there agreed to present the program and my professional homologue took the other two sets of 29 CDs for the other two groups and said she would explain it all to them.
This project is intended to be a pilot, or perhaps demonstration, project to show Burkinabè that people will listen to such a program. This particular show does not have a theme that is so easy to capture in measurable behavior as those I described above, but we are going to do some monitoring to see that the program is actually broadcast and to sample some opinions about the problem of child trafficking and children’s rights to see if we can show a difference in the broadcast area and areas where the program is not broadcast. I hope that eventually I will find people in the Burkina Faso media who are interested in tackling some of the identified problems of the country, such as the need to increase the number of girls continuing with school or the advantages of delaying having children until girls have completed their education. If you read about the method you will learn that an outsider like me does not go into a country telling the people there what problem they need to work on, but rather we can facilitate the people of the country talking about the problems and the kinds of solutions that would work in their country. All goals addressed in Population Media projects must be consistent with the UN human rights statement and with commitments and rules of the country. In other words, this is not an idea imposed by outsiders, but developed by the people of the country to help them improve their lives. That is exactly the philosophy of the Peace Corps, so this seems like a good partnership if it works out. You can also read about the method on the Poplulation Media Center’s web site. http://www.populationmedia.org/ I know there is supposed to be some what to make these links active, but I can't do it. Any suggestions??
Monday, January 10, 2011
A Celebration and Carrying Things
A celebration at the church
Early this fall there was a very special celebration at the Catholic Church in my village. The Bishop of Burkina Faso was there to officiate, and my community homologue was busy for a couple of weeks getting things ready because she is president of the Catholic Women’s Association (or whatever the official name is). The church was repainted and redecorated, and this was a very big deal. I wasn’t going to go to the mass, but several people I know well encouraged me to come so I decided it would be a good idea to show up. I went to the protestant service first, but left a bit early to get to the church a bit before 9, when the mass was to begin. I followed lots of people heading to the church, many carrying their own benches and chairs. I arrived to find the church surrounded by people seated on their own benches and on the ground. After putting my bike in the paid parking (not a usual feature of the services here), I marched right up to the front door and was immediately invited to come in and sit with the dignitaries. My homologue had told me she would reserve a seat for me, but this was beyond what I had expected. I sat right behind the nuns and the brothers who were not participating in the service, up by the alter, so I could really see what was going on. The benches for the congregation were packed and it was standing room only. The building is a pretty big space and I would guess there were easily 1000 people in the church, with at least that many sitting around outside.
They had a small electronic piano, set to sound like an organ, to play along with the choral selections and the hymns. The organist set the automatic rhythm and played the melody, and there were several drummers, someone playing a percussion instrument that had the sound of metal hitting metal, but not tuned like a triangle, and a couple of guys playing some kind of whistle, like an ocarina, that made only one sound and that did not seem to be tuned to the melody. The procession of priests was lead in by a group of women and girls who danced them in, and danced three or four other times throughout the 3 hour service. The Mass, which lasted about 2 of those hours, was primarily in Moore, although from time to time there was a bit of French. There were several rituals that may be familiar to those of you who are Catholic. At the beginning of the service, a number of calabashes were filled with water that was blessed by the priests who walked around, inside and outside the church, sprinkling the congregation with holy water, dipped from the gourds with a bundle of straw which serves as a broom in the village. The altar was bare when the service began but, before the Eucharist, they used the sensor (with incense) to bless it, walking around it three times, and put a new alter cloth on it. At the end of the Mass, the dancers lead a dance up and down the aisles and some of the people in the congregation joined in. After the Mass there was about an hour of thank yours and gifts to the church and to the sisters who were opening a new convent.
When my homologue and I left the church we walked over to the new convent. After the convent was blessed, there was a big feast (rice and sauce, tō and sauce, and so on). People were fed in groups based on where they lived. My community homologue took me to the area for our village and I waited around with everybody else while she got things organized. After about an hour she came back and took me to a room where the functionaries and westerners were eating with plates and silverware. Quite an event!
Carrying things
As I think I have made clear, the average citizen in Burkina Faso does not have a car. In my village there seems to be a bicycle or two in most families, and the more well-to-do have a moto. Motos are bigger than mopeds, but smaller than the typical US motorcycle. They do have a long enough seat that two can ride on them. For carrying things, there are also the donkey carts.
You may remember that I was not able to get propane gas for my stove when I arrived. I bought a canister to be ready to get gas when it was available and my community homologue gave me her gas canister to use. In early November I got the news that there was gas available, so I got my good neighbor, Prosper, to take my empty canister to get it filled. He returned with the news that there was not yet gas for the kind of gas canister I had. After waiting a month, I asked him to get a full canister of the kind of gas that is available and he did so. He and his wife, Martine, came over to help me set it up and we discovered that the handle for turning the gas on and off was bent and I was not going to be able to manage it, so I asked him to take it back and get another one. Prosper and Martine carried the canister between them for a little way, but it was very heavy. They were about to set it down when Martine told Prosper to help her lift it up onto her head, and she walked the rest of the way back to their place carrying it alone. Incredible!
I see women carrying the most amazing amount of stuff on their heads. They certainly get a lot of weight bearing exercise. Maybe that is why there is so little osteoporosis here! They even ride bicycles with a baby on their backs and things balanced on their heads, like a bucket full of water or things to sell at the marché. It is amazing what they can carry and how great their skill at balancing things on their heads.
Early this fall there was a very special celebration at the Catholic Church in my village. The Bishop of Burkina Faso was there to officiate, and my community homologue was busy for a couple of weeks getting things ready because she is president of the Catholic Women’s Association (or whatever the official name is). The church was repainted and redecorated, and this was a very big deal. I wasn’t going to go to the mass, but several people I know well encouraged me to come so I decided it would be a good idea to show up. I went to the protestant service first, but left a bit early to get to the church a bit before 9, when the mass was to begin. I followed lots of people heading to the church, many carrying their own benches and chairs. I arrived to find the church surrounded by people seated on their own benches and on the ground. After putting my bike in the paid parking (not a usual feature of the services here), I marched right up to the front door and was immediately invited to come in and sit with the dignitaries. My homologue had told me she would reserve a seat for me, but this was beyond what I had expected. I sat right behind the nuns and the brothers who were not participating in the service, up by the alter, so I could really see what was going on. The benches for the congregation were packed and it was standing room only. The building is a pretty big space and I would guess there were easily 1000 people in the church, with at least that many sitting around outside.
They had a small electronic piano, set to sound like an organ, to play along with the choral selections and the hymns. The organist set the automatic rhythm and played the melody, and there were several drummers, someone playing a percussion instrument that had the sound of metal hitting metal, but not tuned like a triangle, and a couple of guys playing some kind of whistle, like an ocarina, that made only one sound and that did not seem to be tuned to the melody. The procession of priests was lead in by a group of women and girls who danced them in, and danced three or four other times throughout the 3 hour service. The Mass, which lasted about 2 of those hours, was primarily in Moore, although from time to time there was a bit of French. There were several rituals that may be familiar to those of you who are Catholic. At the beginning of the service, a number of calabashes were filled with water that was blessed by the priests who walked around, inside and outside the church, sprinkling the congregation with holy water, dipped from the gourds with a bundle of straw which serves as a broom in the village. The altar was bare when the service began but, before the Eucharist, they used the sensor (with incense) to bless it, walking around it three times, and put a new alter cloth on it. At the end of the Mass, the dancers lead a dance up and down the aisles and some of the people in the congregation joined in. After the Mass there was about an hour of thank yours and gifts to the church and to the sisters who were opening a new convent.
When my homologue and I left the church we walked over to the new convent. After the convent was blessed, there was a big feast (rice and sauce, tō and sauce, and so on). People were fed in groups based on where they lived. My community homologue took me to the area for our village and I waited around with everybody else while she got things organized. After about an hour she came back and took me to a room where the functionaries and westerners were eating with plates and silverware. Quite an event!
Carrying things
As I think I have made clear, the average citizen in Burkina Faso does not have a car. In my village there seems to be a bicycle or two in most families, and the more well-to-do have a moto. Motos are bigger than mopeds, but smaller than the typical US motorcycle. They do have a long enough seat that two can ride on them. For carrying things, there are also the donkey carts.
You may remember that I was not able to get propane gas for my stove when I arrived. I bought a canister to be ready to get gas when it was available and my community homologue gave me her gas canister to use. In early November I got the news that there was gas available, so I got my good neighbor, Prosper, to take my empty canister to get it filled. He returned with the news that there was not yet gas for the kind of gas canister I had. After waiting a month, I asked him to get a full canister of the kind of gas that is available and he did so. He and his wife, Martine, came over to help me set it up and we discovered that the handle for turning the gas on and off was bent and I was not going to be able to manage it, so I asked him to take it back and get another one. Prosper and Martine carried the canister between them for a little way, but it was very heavy. They were about to set it down when Martine told Prosper to help her lift it up onto her head, and she walked the rest of the way back to their place carrying it alone. Incredible!
I see women carrying the most amazing amount of stuff on their heads. They certainly get a lot of weight bearing exercise. Maybe that is why there is so little osteoporosis here! They even ride bicycles with a baby on their backs and things balanced on their heads, like a bucket full of water or things to sell at the marché. It is amazing what they can carry and how great their skill at balancing things on their heads.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Arly National Forest Visit
The Burkina Faso Arly National Forest is adjacent to national forests in Niger and Benin, so the wild animals are free to roam where they want to in the three countries.
On the 26th we left my village at 7:15, with the driver, Prosper, me and the family. The first part of the trip was pretty smooth, about 7 hours on paved road. My friend Prosper had made reservations for us in a “hotel” at the game park, Arly, with a friend who works there. He called his friend to make sure the rooms would be ready and found out that, unfortunately, there was a screw up of some sort and the reservation never got into the book. At first we thought we would be able to stay there only one night and then have to move to another place where there was no electricity and no dining facility. Eventually they worked something out so that we were able to stay all three nights.
Getting There
Between the end of the nice paved road and the game park the road was unbelievably bad and the drive took us 5 hours. My son in law, Jonathan, said that the road was similar to some he had taken out west as a geology student, but there were times when I was not sure it was a road, and the driver was not sure which way to go. I certainly was glad we had Prosper with us. He knew exactly where he was going because he used to teach at a school near the park. The last hour we were driving on a track that often was deep sand, and then deeply eroded rocks. It was kind of exciting, but also kind of scary, especially when we were not sure if we had a place to stay out in the middle of nowhere.
The Encampment at Arly
The resort was an amazing place, designed for eco-tourism. They had 12 housing units, most of which were built in the round room style with grass roofs.
There was a lounge area near the swimming pool and bar. The food was first class. There was a set menu for each meal, but everything was delicious, and there were three courses for lunch and dinner. The encampment is not only for photo safaris, like we wanted to make, but also for hunting. I was shocked when Prosper asked if my family wanted to hunt some of the wild animals while they were here when he was making the reservation. Just as in the States, there are seasons for killing various kinds of game and they sell hunting licenses for the park. Essentially the hunters keep down the population of grazing animals because there are not enough lions to do the job. Human beings, after all, are the ultimate predators. As a result, the meat we ate was fresh meat from the hunt.
Our Evening Photo Safari
We visited the park twice, once in the late afternoon and once in the early morning. In the afternoon we piled Jonathan and the kids on the top of the 4X4 in the luggage rack so they had a great view.
We had to have a guide with us, and took us on one of the bumpiest rides I have ever had. He explained that the elephants preferred to walk on a cleared path rather than through the tall grass, so the road is full of holes made by elephants walking in the mud. Here is an example of the tracks elephant make, with Janet for size comparison..
We saw lots of an antelope of some sort, or maybe of several sorts. I could not tell for sure, but here is a picture of one of them.
We also got a look at some of the wild boars. I think these are the two creatures we had for lunch and dinner at the encampment.
Our morning Photo Safari, the Elephant Experience
The kids really wanted to get a look at an elephant. The guide said there were some near by so we set out on foot. We saw lots of foot prints and scat (AKA poop). We knew they were nearby because the scat was fresh. The guide pointed to a thicket and said there were a mother and baby behind the brush. Jamie said he could see the baby, and then a big elephant head stuck through the branches of the tree, ears fully fanned out on each side of her head, tusks gleaming in the sunlight, and trumpeting loudly. The guide yelled RUN (in French, of course) and we all took off. Abby ran right out of her flip flops. No time for pictures, of course, but here is Janet at the place we saw the elephant head, pretending to be the mother elephant.
My impression of the event was that it was like being on Disney World on a ride of some kind where a big elephant head pops through the brush and trumpets at you. Really hokey at an amusement park, but stunning when it is the real thing.
Baboons
We took the 4X4 on a different, awful road and saw a few birds and a troop of baboons on the top of a cliff. Those things at the top of the cliff are not rocks but the baboons.
Later on, back at the guide post, we were visited by a troop of baboons, above. We could almost have skipped the bumpy ride and just hung out where the guides live.
Back to Ouaga
We returned to Ouaga by daylight and the rough road was a bit easier for the driver to navigate so we got back in a little less time. I was able to take the family on a tour of the Peace Corps office. The next day we had planned to visit the Artisan Village, a great place to shop for authentic African art here. Unfortunately I got very sick during the night and was not able to go with the rest of the family. I ended up in the Peace Corps infirmary (again). When the family came to say good by, several of them were also feeling the effects of whatever I had. We think it was the food we ate along the road. It is all part of the African experience, and I was glad it didn’t happen until the last day. Luckily there were able to get on the plane and make it home without any tragedies. All in all, a wonderful experience for all. So, when are YOU coming to visit?
On the 26th we left my village at 7:15, with the driver, Prosper, me and the family. The first part of the trip was pretty smooth, about 7 hours on paved road. My friend Prosper had made reservations for us in a “hotel” at the game park, Arly, with a friend who works there. He called his friend to make sure the rooms would be ready and found out that, unfortunately, there was a screw up of some sort and the reservation never got into the book. At first we thought we would be able to stay there only one night and then have to move to another place where there was no electricity and no dining facility. Eventually they worked something out so that we were able to stay all three nights.
Getting There
Between the end of the nice paved road and the game park the road was unbelievably bad and the drive took us 5 hours. My son in law, Jonathan, said that the road was similar to some he had taken out west as a geology student, but there were times when I was not sure it was a road, and the driver was not sure which way to go. I certainly was glad we had Prosper with us. He knew exactly where he was going because he used to teach at a school near the park. The last hour we were driving on a track that often was deep sand, and then deeply eroded rocks. It was kind of exciting, but also kind of scary, especially when we were not sure if we had a place to stay out in the middle of nowhere.
The Encampment at Arly
The resort was an amazing place, designed for eco-tourism. They had 12 housing units, most of which were built in the round room style with grass roofs.
There was a lounge area near the swimming pool and bar. The food was first class. There was a set menu for each meal, but everything was delicious, and there were three courses for lunch and dinner. The encampment is not only for photo safaris, like we wanted to make, but also for hunting. I was shocked when Prosper asked if my family wanted to hunt some of the wild animals while they were here when he was making the reservation. Just as in the States, there are seasons for killing various kinds of game and they sell hunting licenses for the park. Essentially the hunters keep down the population of grazing animals because there are not enough lions to do the job. Human beings, after all, are the ultimate predators. As a result, the meat we ate was fresh meat from the hunt.
Our Evening Photo Safari
We visited the park twice, once in the late afternoon and once in the early morning. In the afternoon we piled Jonathan and the kids on the top of the 4X4 in the luggage rack so they had a great view.
We had to have a guide with us, and took us on one of the bumpiest rides I have ever had. He explained that the elephants preferred to walk on a cleared path rather than through the tall grass, so the road is full of holes made by elephants walking in the mud. Here is an example of the tracks elephant make, with Janet for size comparison..
We saw lots of an antelope of some sort, or maybe of several sorts. I could not tell for sure, but here is a picture of one of them.
We also got a look at some of the wild boars. I think these are the two creatures we had for lunch and dinner at the encampment.
Our morning Photo Safari, the Elephant Experience
The kids really wanted to get a look at an elephant. The guide said there were some near by so we set out on foot. We saw lots of foot prints and scat (AKA poop). We knew they were nearby because the scat was fresh. The guide pointed to a thicket and said there were a mother and baby behind the brush. Jamie said he could see the baby, and then a big elephant head stuck through the branches of the tree, ears fully fanned out on each side of her head, tusks gleaming in the sunlight, and trumpeting loudly. The guide yelled RUN (in French, of course) and we all took off. Abby ran right out of her flip flops. No time for pictures, of course, but here is Janet at the place we saw the elephant head, pretending to be the mother elephant.
My impression of the event was that it was like being on Disney World on a ride of some kind where a big elephant head pops through the brush and trumpets at you. Really hokey at an amusement park, but stunning when it is the real thing.
Baboons
We took the 4X4 on a different, awful road and saw a few birds and a troop of baboons on the top of a cliff. Those things at the top of the cliff are not rocks but the baboons.
Later on, back at the guide post, we were visited by a troop of baboons, above. We could almost have skipped the bumpy ride and just hung out where the guides live.
Back to Ouaga
We returned to Ouaga by daylight and the rough road was a bit easier for the driver to navigate so we got back in a little less time. I was able to take the family on a tour of the Peace Corps office. The next day we had planned to visit the Artisan Village, a great place to shop for authentic African art here. Unfortunately I got very sick during the night and was not able to go with the rest of the family. I ended up in the Peace Corps infirmary (again). When the family came to say good by, several of them were also feeling the effects of whatever I had. We think it was the food we ate along the road. It is all part of the African experience, and I was glad it didn’t happen until the last day. Luckily there were able to get on the plane and make it home without any tragedies. All in all, a wonderful experience for all. So, when are YOU coming to visit?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)