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.

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.

Volunteers at Last

Last week as a Trainee

We have reached the end of our “formation” to become Peace Corps volunteers. It seem like it has been a long time coming for many of us, but for others we still wish there was more time to become more proficient in French or in the local language, the traditional language of our region. Pretty exciting and pretty scary at the same time. We will be forced to speak French because there will be very few people, if any, who know any English. There have probably been more staff, current volunteers, and language and cultural trainers working to get us ready than there are trainees, although we are quite a big group. They have all worked very hard to get us ready to go out into Burkina Faso and work for the good of the people here.

Swearing In

The transition from Peace Corps Trainee to Peace Corps Volunteer is marked by a swearing in ceremony that, in Burkina Faso, took place at the US Embassy on August 27. It was a really nice event that included lots of Burkinabé dignitaries. The most important was the Burkina first lady, Madame Chantal Compaoré, who made a very nice speech. Clearly she is aware of the work we are doing here and appreciates it. The head of the National Party also spoke and his speech also showed his appreciation of our work as he reviewed all the programs we are doing here. There was entertainment by a group of women who did a traditional African dance to drums and singing. It included pairs of women dancing around each other and ending with two very solid “bumps.” Six of the trainees did short speeches in the native languages they have been learning, which was a big hit with the audience. Finally the 76 trainees swore in as volunteers, repeating the same oath of office the president says when he is sworn in. A pretty emotional moment for all of us, I think.

The ceremony was followed by a reception which was a time to let us congratulate each other, but also a time to thank our trainers and tutors for all their work to get us to this place. The host families were also invited to attend and several did, including my host mother and the teen aged girl, Salome, who has been looking after me for the past four weeks and who is now other of my extra granddaughters. It was really special to see them all there.

Affectation

Now all the volunteers are being taken to their various sites all over the country. I am not allowed to put the name of my village on the blog, for security reasons, but I am pretty excited about finally getting to meet the people of the village where I will be working and to see my home for the next two years. Any village (or town) that wants to have a volunteer must provide housing for that volunteer. I understand mine is a new house, which should be really nice. As expected there is no electricity or running water, which means I will have to get water from a pump and either go to bed with the sun or read and study by lamp light. Sounds a bit romantic, but I expect it will not be easy to read that way. I will tell you all about it next time.

More About Biking

Biking on the main road is challenging. I showed you the pictures of bicycles 3 abreast in the street with a car, bus or truck trying to get around the bikes and motos. What you do NOT see in the pictures are the donkey carts, guys pushing hand carts loaded with 4X8 pieces of plywood or 2X8 boards that are at least 8 feet long, and maybe a lady riding along with a baby tied to her back and a tray of fruit on her head. As you ride along you have to watch out for groups of sheep (not enough to call a flock, but 4 or 5 in a group), the random pig with piglets, goats with a couple baby goats following, and dogs looking for a meal. These are likely to walk across the road in front of you at any time. This is on the paved road that runs through the middle of town.

The rest of the streets in the town are dirt roads and have other challenges. The dirt here is reddish brown. Think of Georgia clay or the Southwest in the US. Most of the dirt on the road is sand, clay, or loose gravel, but the ruts get down to the bed rock, so that, as the dirt washes away in the rain, the under lying rock, which is pretty uneven, pokes through. All of the motos and bikes, as well as the walkers, tend to follow a winding path along the road to avoid the worst of the ruts and the bumps of the bed rock. Along the sides of many of the bigger streets there are ditches. Sometimes at the intersections there are concrete “bridges” over the ditches, but other times the path dips down through the ditch. This is not a big problem until there is a big rain, such as we have had recently. Then the ditch turns into a stream and you have to find a detour, which may not be easy.

Shopping in a small town

In the small towns there are not any supermarkets or the kind of stores we are used to. The closest thing to an American style store is an alimentation, which is a bit like a very small 7/11 store. The one advantage for Americans is that the prices in the alimentation are marked on things and you do not have to haggle about the price. Some of your shopping will be done at the little shelters along the road, referred to as boutiques or from women or children (and the occasional man) selling things at the side of the road. This could be some kind of fried dough, tomatoes, water, fruit, or field corn roasted on a small charcoal brazier. The corn looks good, but you have to like gummy, hard corn to appreciate it. Most shopping is done at the marché. I have not done much to date because we are living with families who feed us breakfast and dinner, but I will probably describe these to you when I move to my site and start cooking for myself.

Food



The mainstay of the traditional Burkinabé diet is to (pronounced toe). It can be made from just about any grain including corn, millet and sorghum. The woman pounds the grain in a wooden mortar and pestle and dries the flour by spreading it on a sheet for a day or two. Of course the flies and the chickens check it out, but eventually it is sifted and ready to cook. A round bottomed pot, called a marmite, is set on the charcoal brazier, 3 rocks, or whatever cooking surface the family uses, and water is heated. The flour is gradually added and this is allowed to boil for quite a while. There is a little stirring at this point, but surprisingly little, and I have seen no evidence that the to burns on the bottom of the pot. Eventually it is the right texture or temperature and the fun begins. The cook whips the to vigorously for quite a while, until the texture is right. I am guessing the whipping is rather like kneading bread in that it releases the glutton in the grain. In any case, when properly cooked the to will hold its shape. If put in a bowl and let it cool you can dump the to out and have a bowl-shaped glob of to. This is a very labor intensive food that has little nutritional value. It is served with sauces of various kinds. Many are loaded with vegetables, like tomatoes, onions okra, and leaves from trees like the baobab tree. Unfortunately these sauces are also cooked to death so all those good vitamins and minerals are cooked out of them before they are eaten. If you are lucky the sauce may contain dried fish (well, I do not appreciate the flavor, but the bones cook down and you get the calcium) or a bit of meat. I have yet to meet a to sauce I like, but I am told there are some out there. I will let you know if I find one.

Rain

Well, it IS the rainy season here, so it should not be surprising that we are now getting rain almost every day. Sometimes there are short bursts of heavy rain, lasting an hour or so. Sometimes it rains two or three times a day. Other times, like last night, the rain goes on and on. I just hope my house in my future site is on high ground! Now that the rain has started I see that all the empty lots in the town that looked like nothing was there but weeds and trash have turned into fields to raise corn and okra (gumbo here). There are even cultivated patches along the dirt roads in the town. And things are growing, like crazy. You just hope they mature before the rains stop.

The future

We have less than two weeks before we are sworn in as volunteers and we disburse to our various sites around the country. After that I may not have access to the internet very often, or it may be just as handy as it has been here at the training site. I am living with a host family and the internet café is a short three block walk from here. In other words, my number of posts may decline when I move to a smaller place.

Biking

I am getting better are the bike riding bit. I expect eventually I will be comfortable with it, but riding in traffic with motos, mopeds and other bikes, three abreast on a paved road, with an occasional car or truck coming up behind you or at you is still a bit scary. I have a 24 speed bike, but only use the middle 8 gears because the country here is pretty flat and I am lazy. That does mean that I go faster than the lady on a gearless bike with a baby on her back, or the guy driving the donkey cart, so I do have to pass people. You have to keep track of those motos passing you while you are passing others.




All Peace Corps members and employees have to wear bike helmets. If we are seen riding without helmets, we could be sent home! Bike helmets are not a concept for the Burkinabé, so if you see anyone with a helmet, you know they are Peace Corps folks. I, of course, am totally happy to have my helmet on any time I am on the bike. I also wear the biking gloves I brought, so that, if I take a tumble, I will not be so likely to scrape up my hands. I was sure glad I had them on a couple of weeks ago when I tipped over trying to get on my bike with my back pack strapped on the back of it. The scrape on my knee is now healed, but my hands were not hurt at all. By the way, I now wear the back pack rather than trying to strap it on the bike and that works better.

A Bit More About Stage

Stage is a French term for training. We refer to ourselves as stagiers who are doing a formation, or a course of training. As I have mentioned, we have language training every day, and a couple of blocks of time devoted to the work we will be doing. Until now, this training has been rather abstract. During the past couple of weeks things have become more hands on. In small groups we are doing clubs with students in the summer school program at which the volunteers who will be teaching English, science, and math have been doing their practice teaching. Three trainees meet with groups of students on their free days or times and we practice the kinds of activities we are going to be doing with girls clubs when we get to our sites. We are also going to be running a four hour “day camp” type session next Saturday. Thursday we met with some of the officers of the equivalent of the PTA to see what they do at schools.

A word about school here.

It is hard to believe what teachers and students face at the elementary school level here. It is normal for there to be 120 (yes, that is not a typo, one hundred and twenty) students in a classroom with one teacher. Student desks are designed for three students to sit side by side on a wooden bench which is a board about 8 inches wide, and the desk is only a bit larger. They put three rows of desks across, ten deep in the classroom. If you are in a village, the only light comes through a few small windows with shutters. The blackboard may be green or black “chalk board paint” on the wall. In rooms that have real chalk boards, there are often holes in them, and usually several cracks. A chalk tray is not a concept, nor is an eraser. When the teacher has finished with a section of the board, some lucky student gets to take a sponge or rag from a bucket of water and wipe off the writing. Teaching is primarily the teacher writing things on the board and students copying the information into a notebook. It is kind of hard to have a class discussion with 120 kids, I guess. There are times students are asked to give an answer. Volunteers snap the fingers of their raised hands to attract the teacher’s attention. I have not yet seen a class room full of students. At the Model School classes are very small and the students are those who are eager to learn, or those who have parents who are eager to have them learn. I’m sure I will have more to say on this when I do observations of real classes in the fall.

Getting ready to get on with the job

Many of my fellow trainees are feeling tired of training and eager to get out to their sites. While I have some of the same eagerness to know where I am going to be and exactly what I am going to be doing for the next two years, I know I am not quite ready for this in terms of language skill. The language of the school and the educated population is French, and I am doing better are expressing myself in that language, although I really wish I had my dictionary with me most of the time. What I have just started to learn is Moore, the main “local” language here. There are really quite a few different ones, which is one of the reasons the schools are all in French. It is also the case that there is very little written material in most local languages, because they only have a written form because Christian missionaries created a written form so they could put Bibles in the language of the people. Moore has a few nice features. There are no congregations. The verb form is the same for I, you, he, she it, we and they. The past and future tense are exactly the same except for putting “ne n” before the past tense form. The problem is that there really are no cognates and I am having trouble getting vocabulary to stick in my brain. In other words, I need more time to get my head around this new language. Be that as it may, we are to be sworn in as volunteers at the end of August. That is coming very soon.

A chance to donate, if you are interested

Many of you have expressed an interest in making a financial contribution to the program here. I am sure there will be many more chances, but this one is a fund raiser to help provide small grants to volunteers in the sector I will be working in, Girls Education and Empowerment. Current volunteers are doing a “ride around Burkina Faso” as a fund raiser. If you want to make a contribution, you can do so at this website: www.Burkinabiketour.blogspot.com.