All of the volunteers must have cell phones so the Peace Corps office can contact us. That makes us more like the Burkinabé because just about every adult here has a cell phone. All volunteers have some amount of money deducted from their living allowances each month to pay for what they refer to as “the float.” That is, all volunteers are in a “friends and family” type group. All our numbers are with the Zain cell phone company group so we can call other volunteers and talk to them for as long as we like at no additional cost. Some of the people in my training group have called me from time to time just to say hi and see how I am doing and I try to do the same. The problem with this plan is that some people are in sites that don’t get a signal and they have to go to another village to be able to get on the network. Mostly it works pretty well. People also send text messages.
In order to talk to a person who is not on the float, or to send a text message, you have to purchase “unité” or credit. You buy a card at a boutique (small shop, not an up-scale place like the states) with a Zain sign outside or, in a city, you buy one from one of the many guys on the street who sell the cards. When a taxi stops at a red light in the capital there will usually be a guy standing there waiting for people to ask for unité, or he will come up to the taxi to see if there are any takers. Suppose you buy a card for one mille, that is, 1000 CAF (Central African Franks) which is about $2.00 in US money. You get a thing that looks kind of like a credit card with directions about how to recharge your phone. There is an area on the card where you scratch off the covering to reveal a 10 digit number. You dial *130, enter the number, add # and send it. Now you have 1000 unité on your phone. If you don’t have unité you can’t make a call. Here it only costs you if you make a call or send a text. Receiving calls and messages is free.
Interactions among Burkenabé
The first thing to know is that, in this culture greetings are very important. When you enter someone’s courtyard, you must greet everyone in the place, shaking hands with them and saying a series of phrases. Basically you say, Hello, how are you? Did you sleep well? How is the family? How are the children? What’s new? Are you well? Regardless of how you slept, how the folks are, and so on, the answer has to be that everything is good. While you say (and hear) these greetings you continue to shake the hand of the person you are greeting. At the end of the greeting, if the person is a good buddy, you separate you hands continuing to hold on to the other person’s thumb and middle finger, and finish the hand shake with a snap of the finger. I haven’t quite mastered the finger snap, although I can do it after the fact and people get very excited that I almost did it. This greeting is such a part of the culture that you do the same thing in miniature before you ask for an article at a boutique or buy something from a person at the marché. When you are biking down the road, if you see a good friend you really have to stop and go through the greeting ritual.
When a group of Burkinabé people are talking, I get the impression that they are arguing and yelling at each other, but that is not the case. People tend to speak loudly and the language is quite nasal, which gives it that angry sound to my ear. You realize they are not arguing when you hear a burst of laughter from the group. I don’t understand enough Mooré yet to know what they have been talking about, but it is clear they are having a good time. There is a lot of joking and laughter here.
Visiting
As with the greetings, there is a ritual associated with visiting. When you visit with people it is almost always in your courtyard, not in your house. When a visitor arrives you send one of the kids to fetch chairs from the house. You put them in the shade and indicate that the visitor should take a seat in the best one. If you have not done all of the greetings properly, you start that ritual over again. When we visit one of the important people in the village (all men, of course) my community homologue often slips out of her chair at this point into a very subservient crouching, almost kneeling, posture for this greeting bit. I, of course do NOT follow suit. Next, the custom is to offer your guests some water. When you are talking to people, looking them in the eye is bad manners (I always forget this, being very American). You chat for a while and, if you are the visitor it is up to you to decide when it is time to go. To let your host or hostess know you want to leave you say “I request the route” which means, please show me the way out. Here you have to shake hands with everyone except those who are going to show you out and say farewell. Then the host or hostess walks with you out of the court yard and, at least, to the edge of their property. I have a neighbor who almost always walks all the way back to my house with me. You are expected to go greet your neighbors each day. I do see my community homologue just about every day, and my closest neighbor, but many others stop by my house to say hello.
There is a strong cultural taboo on a man and a woman being together alone in a house, so for a man to enter my house there is supposed to be another woman here with me. This is quite inconvenient when a workman comes to do something about a problem with the house and the woman he asked to meet him here failed to find the house. That also means that, if a man comes to call, I have to take chairs out and we sit on my front porch-that-isn’t-a-porch. That is to say, on the paved place in front of the front door that doesn’t have a roof. After the rainy season they are supposed to put up a covering for shade (hopefully before the hot season in March). I can invite a woman into the house, or, if the man brings along his wife, I can invite them to come in. Quite different from entertaining in the states.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Mail, e-mail and pen pals
Thanks to all who offered to be pen pals with folks here. In my village there is neither a post office nor a mail box. For these folks to write to you they have to make a trip to the next big town, about an hour away by motorcycle on a nasty dirt road, to mail a letter. That town also has a cyber café, so it is possible for people to use e-mail when they go there, but I doubt if any but those who have lived in a more urban environment have ever used a computer. In other words, it may be a while before you hear from anyone. I may also give your names to more than one person because I am not sure how serious most of these requests are. The idea of having a correspondent in another country may be exciting but the effort to write and mail a letter may discourage some folks. If you get a letter from someone here, I would love to hear about it. If you get more than one, feel free to pass one of them off to another person who might be interested in writing to someone here.
No cyber? Then how am I on the internet?
I brought my laptop with me, and I bought a USB cell phone modem in Oauga. If I get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and if the network is working at all, I get the best connection then. During the day and evening there are too many people using cell phones on the network and things move so slowly that I will run down my battery waiting for the screen to refresh when I delete a message or ask for the next e-mail from the JCU server. Sometimes the network is down but better than nothing. It works MOST of the time. I was recently unable to access the network for a couple of weeks. It turns out that was NOT the fault of the network, but I made a mistake in paying my monthly bill so I couldn't get on.
Warm hands!
Those of you who know me well know my hands are ALWAYS cold and that I wear a long sleeved shirt or sweater most of the time. For once in my life I have warm hands. When I cross my arms, my hands are actually warmer than my arms because my arms sweat and the air cools them a bit. It is the mini hot season right now. The locals keep saying how hot it is, and I agree. People are sweating up a storm, including me.
An update on crops
The rainy season is almost over. People say there may be one or two more good rains, and then things will start to dry up. The corn has been harvested. People are husking and shucking the corn for drying and storage. Some folks have started to harvest the peanuts, but others are waiting for a good rain so the ground won’t be so hard. The petite mil (small millet aka bird seed) and grand mil (which looks like really tall corn until the tassel part gets heavier and heavier with the grain and the stalks start to bend) are also getting ripe but I guess it will be a while before they harvest it because they let the seed dry on the stalk. I will try to add here pictures of the millet when I first arrived and it looks like corn and how it looks now, with the grain ripening on the stalks. I don’t know how well this will show up on your computer screens, but there are both kind of millet in this field.
People also grow beans of various kinds. I have seen big pole beans being dried and, of course they have been drying the okra as it grows. The okra plants are very productive with very pretty flowers and the pods that seem to grow over night. There are also gourds growing on vines that may be climbing up the millet or covering a storage shed. These will be used for calabashes for eating and drinking.
More on traffic
Some of you asked about how safe the roads are here, after seeing the picture of the traffic. In a word, not very. One volunteer has already had to return to the states because she was hit by a moto while riding her bicycle and broke her ankle. I have seen wrecked busses being towed (two at least) and one collision between cars being sorted out by the police. I try to ride on the dirt roads as much as possible or to walk my bike on the shoulder. The one paved road through the center of town passes through my village fairly close to my house. It is kind of like living a block away from the free way. You hear the traffic, but it is not bothersome. In fact, there may be times when you don’t hear a truck or bus for five or ten minutes. When they do go by, they are often blasting their horns at bicycles, motos or donkey darts as they pass them.
No cyber? Then how am I on the internet?
I brought my laptop with me, and I bought a USB cell phone modem in Oauga. If I get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and if the network is working at all, I get the best connection then. During the day and evening there are too many people using cell phones on the network and things move so slowly that I will run down my battery waiting for the screen to refresh when I delete a message or ask for the next e-mail from the JCU server. Sometimes the network is down but better than nothing. It works MOST of the time. I was recently unable to access the network for a couple of weeks. It turns out that was NOT the fault of the network, but I made a mistake in paying my monthly bill so I couldn't get on.
Warm hands!
Those of you who know me well know my hands are ALWAYS cold and that I wear a long sleeved shirt or sweater most of the time. For once in my life I have warm hands. When I cross my arms, my hands are actually warmer than my arms because my arms sweat and the air cools them a bit. It is the mini hot season right now. The locals keep saying how hot it is, and I agree. People are sweating up a storm, including me.
An update on crops
The rainy season is almost over. People say there may be one or two more good rains, and then things will start to dry up. The corn has been harvested. People are husking and shucking the corn for drying and storage. Some folks have started to harvest the peanuts, but others are waiting for a good rain so the ground won’t be so hard. The petite mil (small millet aka bird seed) and grand mil (which looks like really tall corn until the tassel part gets heavier and heavier with the grain and the stalks start to bend) are also getting ripe but I guess it will be a while before they harvest it because they let the seed dry on the stalk. I will try to add here pictures of the millet when I first arrived and it looks like corn and how it looks now, with the grain ripening on the stalks. I don’t know how well this will show up on your computer screens, but there are both kind of millet in this field.
People also grow beans of various kinds. I have seen big pole beans being dried and, of course they have been drying the okra as it grows. The okra plants are very productive with very pretty flowers and the pods that seem to grow over night. There are also gourds growing on vines that may be climbing up the millet or covering a storage shed. These will be used for calabashes for eating and drinking.
More on traffic
Some of you asked about how safe the roads are here, after seeing the picture of the traffic. In a word, not very. One volunteer has already had to return to the states because she was hit by a moto while riding her bicycle and broke her ankle. I have seen wrecked busses being towed (two at least) and one collision between cars being sorted out by the police. I try to ride on the dirt roads as much as possible or to walk my bike on the shoulder. The one paved road through the center of town passes through my village fairly close to my house. It is kind of like living a block away from the free way. You hear the traffic, but it is not bothersome. In fact, there may be times when you don’t hear a truck or bus for five or ten minutes. When they do go by, they are often blasting their horns at bicycles, motos or donkey darts as they pass them.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
So, what am I doing here?
Our first three months at our sites we are only supposed to be doing a study of the community. Really this means it is a time for new volunteers to get an idea of how the community works, begin to get integrated into the community, and to try to understand some of the ins and outs of the culture. I am now quite sure I will never fully understand the culture, but I am getting some insights by just looking and listening. During this time we are supposed to have some community meetings to try to get people to talk about what they have in the way of resources and what problems exist. After three months we have to write a report about what we have learned and propose work for the next three months.
Peace Corps development philosophy
The Peace Corps development philosophy is to work with the community to identify needs and to help the community find their own solutions to their problems, not to impose an American solution on them. We also are not here to give them money to solve their problems. There are a lot of foreign aid programs and Non Government Organizations (NGOs) giving grants, but Peace Corps has always been about sustainable development. If you hand money to people to solve a problem today, the next time there is a problem, they will go looking for another hand out rather than figuring out ways to tackle the problem with existing resources. If the sources of funding dry up, people will not have the training to think for themselves about possible solutions to their problems. When the community comes up with a plan and it is successful, there is a feeling of success and empowerment that is supposed to carry over to more development after we are gone. It is that old “give me a fish and I eat today, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime” philosophy, which I believe whole heartedly. Also, I have seen a number of unused buildings that I am told were built by well meaning NGOs without consulting the local community. After the NGO left, the program that was supposed to happen there died too.
Right now I am doing my study of the situation. I have just been trying to get a bit integrated into the community while waiting for school to start October 1 or 15, depending on the school. I hope to have some meetings with representatives of parent groups and with students, but it is not clear how that is going to get organized. For those of you who have been asking, no I am not yet working directly with girls. I currently intend to have a girls’ club for living a healthy lifestyle at the high school level. I hope to motivate club members to share what they learn in the club with younger girls, naybe as mentors, or maybe running girls’ clubs themselves. Many of the younger girls do not speak French well enough for me to be able to communicate with them, but they really are the target group. After my study of the situation I may have a different plan.
Speaking of School…
Can you imagine walking into school and being taught in a foreign language? Unless the parents have taught the child French at home, that is the situation, because the language of the home here is Moore or Jula. That is the reason French is used in school. There are about 14 different local languages spoken here. Even though Moore is spoken more than any other, it is still used by less than 50% of the people. French is the language of the colonial days, but it does not privilege one group over another.
If walking into school hearing only a foreign language is not bad enough,, imagine being in a class with 100 or more other kids in a room with no lights (no power at the school) and sharing a desk with two or three other kids? It amazes me that people are able to learn anything here. No wonder a lot of kids quit school. This year there is actually a new program called BRIGHT which is a program to create 15 bilingual schools. They will start in the first year with about 10% French and 90% local language, and by the 6th year it will be almost all French. It is rather like what they try to do in bilingual programs in the states. It seems very reasonable to me, but then, I am an American, so who knows?
Peace Corps development philosophy
The Peace Corps development philosophy is to work with the community to identify needs and to help the community find their own solutions to their problems, not to impose an American solution on them. We also are not here to give them money to solve their problems. There are a lot of foreign aid programs and Non Government Organizations (NGOs) giving grants, but Peace Corps has always been about sustainable development. If you hand money to people to solve a problem today, the next time there is a problem, they will go looking for another hand out rather than figuring out ways to tackle the problem with existing resources. If the sources of funding dry up, people will not have the training to think for themselves about possible solutions to their problems. When the community comes up with a plan and it is successful, there is a feeling of success and empowerment that is supposed to carry over to more development after we are gone. It is that old “give me a fish and I eat today, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime” philosophy, which I believe whole heartedly. Also, I have seen a number of unused buildings that I am told were built by well meaning NGOs without consulting the local community. After the NGO left, the program that was supposed to happen there died too.
Right now I am doing my study of the situation. I have just been trying to get a bit integrated into the community while waiting for school to start October 1 or 15, depending on the school. I hope to have some meetings with representatives of parent groups and with students, but it is not clear how that is going to get organized. For those of you who have been asking, no I am not yet working directly with girls. I currently intend to have a girls’ club for living a healthy lifestyle at the high school level. I hope to motivate club members to share what they learn in the club with younger girls, naybe as mentors, or maybe running girls’ clubs themselves. Many of the younger girls do not speak French well enough for me to be able to communicate with them, but they really are the target group. After my study of the situation I may have a different plan.
Speaking of School…
Can you imagine walking into school and being taught in a foreign language? Unless the parents have taught the child French at home, that is the situation, because the language of the home here is Moore or Jula. That is the reason French is used in school. There are about 14 different local languages spoken here. Even though Moore is spoken more than any other, it is still used by less than 50% of the people. French is the language of the colonial days, but it does not privilege one group over another.
If walking into school hearing only a foreign language is not bad enough,, imagine being in a class with 100 or more other kids in a room with no lights (no power at the school) and sharing a desk with two or three other kids? It amazes me that people are able to learn anything here. No wonder a lot of kids quit school. This year there is actually a new program called BRIGHT which is a program to create 15 bilingual schools. They will start in the first year with about 10% French and 90% local language, and by the 6th year it will be almost all French. It is rather like what they try to do in bilingual programs in the states. It seems very reasonable to me, but then, I am an American, so who knows?
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thanks for all your e-mails. In this blog I will try to answer some of the questions folks asked. First of all, I am doing fine here. During training we heard about the emotional roller coaster that volunteers experience. One day you are feeling great and on top of the world and another day you wonder why you ever left home. The only time I have had such a down time was during the second week of training. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t think! I talked to one of the Peace Corps doctors and told him that if this did not change I would have to go home. He said maybe it was the type of anti malaria medication they were having me take and changed me to another kind. Just knowing that it might be a drug reaction made me feel better about things. It was kind of like when I take Ibuprofen, but ten times as bad. It took several weeks to get mentally back to normal. I think I am functioning at about 95% now, although I still feel a little out of it from time to time. That could be the stress and strangeness, however, or maybe a side effect of the new drug, but I am much better. One thing I learned about myself during this time was that I feel best when I am mentally engaged. Just having a serious discussion with one of the training staff (in French) about cognitive psychology made me feel better. I have applied that lesson to how I try to spend my spare time here. When I have nothing else to do, which is several hours a day, I study French or Mooré, the local language in my village. I am not sure I am learning that much, but I am mentally healthy. I also spend time each day visiting with various people in the neighborhood trying to speak Mooré and French. (more about visiting in a future blog).
The fact that my older daughter and her family are coming to see me at Christmas time is also an emotional boost. I wouldn’t say I am home sick, but I do miss all of my friends from Mud in Yer Eye, the dance community, church, and JCU. I occasionally think about calling a contra dance or playing a tune on the dulcimer and wish I were in a place where I could do that. But mostly this is the adventure of a lifetime and I am glad to be here.
Food
As I said above, when I was having that bad reaction to the anti-malaria drug I totally lost my appetite. I lost the weight I put on just before I left home and some I have been trying to lose for years. I am not sure it is all weight loss. Some may be changing fat into muscle. Because I have to ride my bike when I want to go anywhere except the immediate neighbors I am getting more exercise than I used to. I have to see if I can find a scale to check that out. My new medication must be taken at the same time each day, with food. I selected lunch time because that was the most predictable meal time during training. For breakfast I usually have the same size bowl of oat meal that I have eaten for breakfast for years and a cup of Nescafe, the only kind of coffee you can get here. Then I don’t eat anything until lunch, so I will really want to eat with it is time to take my pill. Thus, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, as a rule.
So, what do I eat? I stocked up on canned goods before I came to my site but I am trying to make meals out of what I can buy locally as much as I can. At the moment one of the things that is easy to find are eggs. They are from pintades (Guinea fowl), so they are half the size of a chicken egg. The yolks are big and almost orange, as you expect from free range birds. There are lots of onions, and a local egg plant that I have not tried to master. I understand they are quite bitter, although I see people eating them raw. One of the things the girls and ladies have on the trays they carry on top of their heads are something that looks like a sweet potato but is white on the inside and tastes almost like are regular potato. These ladies also sell what they call gateau (cake) that seems like cake that has been deep fat fried, fried dough that is really greasy but OK on the inside, little pie shaped things made from millet flour, and peanuts which can be raw, boiled or, if you are lucky, roasted. One of my favorite things at the moment is local bread. It looks a bit like a French baguette, but the taste and texture is more like sour dough bread. From time to time there are tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. One can also visit a small (and I do mean small) shop in a shack called a boutique and get powdered milk, Nescafe, sugar, flour, salt, oil, mayo, margarine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste spaghetti, macaroni, rice and couscous. They also sell non edible things like matches, soap, bleach, and lots of hair products. With no refrigeration I have to eat what I cook or throw it away. Fortunately my community counterpart raises pigs, among other things, and I can take my scraps to her for her pigs.
There is no propane for sale in Burkina Faso at the moment, and it does not look like the situation will change soon. I am lucky to have a community homologue who loaned me her gas canister to use. Very generous of her. Now she does do her cooking with wood or charcoal.
I have made pancakes and French toast, but can’t do any baking. I have made macaroni and cheese with Laughing Cow Cheese, the only kind of cheese product that you can keep without refrigeration, available only in the big cities. One luxury item I got from town was a jar of raspberry jam. I have to see if I can find more next time I go. I have to go to a town from time to time because the Peace Corps deposits our living allowance in an account at the Post Office. There is no post office in my village so I have to go to a bigger town to get my monthly allowance and, while I am there, I can do some shopping at an alimentation, a bigger store (kind of like a very small 7/11) that you only find in larger towns and cities.
I don’t eat much meat, just because there is no way to buy it and keep it. There is a guy who cooks up a pig on market day and I have gone to his hangar a couple of times for a pork sandwich. There are guys grilling meat on the side of the road, but seeing flies all over the meat kind of turns me off. I will get my protein from eggs and eating rice and beans and so on. My latest food adventure is trying the baby breakfast food they sell at the center for malnourished babies, up the road about 15 minutes. They do really good work there and this breakfast food is supposed to have a good mixture of things that give you complete protein. Hopefully if it is good for the babies, it will be good for me. I will let you know if I like it.
Sorry, this got a bit long. I will address some more of your questions in future blogs.
The fact that my older daughter and her family are coming to see me at Christmas time is also an emotional boost. I wouldn’t say I am home sick, but I do miss all of my friends from Mud in Yer Eye, the dance community, church, and JCU. I occasionally think about calling a contra dance or playing a tune on the dulcimer and wish I were in a place where I could do that. But mostly this is the adventure of a lifetime and I am glad to be here.
Food
As I said above, when I was having that bad reaction to the anti-malaria drug I totally lost my appetite. I lost the weight I put on just before I left home and some I have been trying to lose for years. I am not sure it is all weight loss. Some may be changing fat into muscle. Because I have to ride my bike when I want to go anywhere except the immediate neighbors I am getting more exercise than I used to. I have to see if I can find a scale to check that out. My new medication must be taken at the same time each day, with food. I selected lunch time because that was the most predictable meal time during training. For breakfast I usually have the same size bowl of oat meal that I have eaten for breakfast for years and a cup of Nescafe, the only kind of coffee you can get here. Then I don’t eat anything until lunch, so I will really want to eat with it is time to take my pill. Thus, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, as a rule.
So, what do I eat? I stocked up on canned goods before I came to my site but I am trying to make meals out of what I can buy locally as much as I can. At the moment one of the things that is easy to find are eggs. They are from pintades (Guinea fowl), so they are half the size of a chicken egg. The yolks are big and almost orange, as you expect from free range birds. There are lots of onions, and a local egg plant that I have not tried to master. I understand they are quite bitter, although I see people eating them raw. One of the things the girls and ladies have on the trays they carry on top of their heads are something that looks like a sweet potato but is white on the inside and tastes almost like are regular potato. These ladies also sell what they call gateau (cake) that seems like cake that has been deep fat fried, fried dough that is really greasy but OK on the inside, little pie shaped things made from millet flour, and peanuts which can be raw, boiled or, if you are lucky, roasted. One of my favorite things at the moment is local bread. It looks a bit like a French baguette, but the taste and texture is more like sour dough bread. From time to time there are tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. One can also visit a small (and I do mean small) shop in a shack called a boutique and get powdered milk, Nescafe, sugar, flour, salt, oil, mayo, margarine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste spaghetti, macaroni, rice and couscous. They also sell non edible things like matches, soap, bleach, and lots of hair products. With no refrigeration I have to eat what I cook or throw it away. Fortunately my community counterpart raises pigs, among other things, and I can take my scraps to her for her pigs.
There is no propane for sale in Burkina Faso at the moment, and it does not look like the situation will change soon. I am lucky to have a community homologue who loaned me her gas canister to use. Very generous of her. Now she does do her cooking with wood or charcoal.
I have made pancakes and French toast, but can’t do any baking. I have made macaroni and cheese with Laughing Cow Cheese, the only kind of cheese product that you can keep without refrigeration, available only in the big cities. One luxury item I got from town was a jar of raspberry jam. I have to see if I can find more next time I go. I have to go to a town from time to time because the Peace Corps deposits our living allowance in an account at the Post Office. There is no post office in my village so I have to go to a bigger town to get my monthly allowance and, while I am there, I can do some shopping at an alimentation, a bigger store (kind of like a very small 7/11) that you only find in larger towns and cities.
I don’t eat much meat, just because there is no way to buy it and keep it. There is a guy who cooks up a pig on market day and I have gone to his hangar a couple of times for a pork sandwich. There are guys grilling meat on the side of the road, but seeing flies all over the meat kind of turns me off. I will get my protein from eggs and eating rice and beans and so on. My latest food adventure is trying the baby breakfast food they sell at the center for malnourished babies, up the road about 15 minutes. They do really good work there and this breakfast food is supposed to have a good mixture of things that give you complete protein. Hopefully if it is good for the babies, it will be good for me. I will let you know if I like it.
Sorry, this got a bit long. I will address some more of your questions in future blogs.
Thanks for all your e-mails. In this blog I will try to answer some of the questions folks asked. First of all, I am doing fine here. During training we heard about the emotional roller coaster that volunteers experience. One day you are feeling great and on top of the world and another day you wonder why you ever left home. The only time I have had such a down time was during the second week of training. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t think! I talked to one of the Peace Corps doctors and told him that if this did not change I would have to go home. He said maybe it was the type of anti malaria medication they were having me take and changed me to another kind. Just knowing that it might be a drug reaction made me feel better about things. It was kind of like when I take Ibuprofen, but ten times as bad. It took several weeks to get mentally back to normal. I think I am functioning at about 95% now, although I still feel a little out of it from time to time. That could be the stress and strangeness, however, or maybe a side effect of the new drug, but I am much better. One thing I learned about myself during this time was that I feel best when I am mentally engaged. Just having a serious discussion with one of the training staff (in French) about cognitive psychology made me feel better. I have applied that lesson to how I try to spend my spare time here. When I have nothing else to do, which is several hours a day, I study French or Mooré, the local language in my village. I am not sure I am learning that much, but I am mentally healthy. I also spend time each day visiting with various people in the neighborhood trying to speak Mooré and French. (more about visiting in a future blog).
The fact that my older daughter and her family are coming to see me at Christmas time is also an emotional boost. I wouldn’t say I am home sick, but I do miss all of my friends from Mud in Yer Eye, the dance community, church, and JCU. I occasionally think about calling a contra dance or playing a tune on the dulcimer and wish I were in a place where I could do that. But mostly this is the adventure of a lifetime and I am glad to be here.
Food
As I said above, when I was having that bad reaction to the anti-malaria drug I totally lost my appetite. I lost the weight I put on just before I left home and some I have been trying to lose for years. I am not sure it is all weight loss. Some may be changing fat into muscle. Because I have to ride my bike when I want to go anywhere except the immediate neighbors I am getting more exercise than I used to. I have to see if I can find a scale to check that out. My new medication must be taken at the same time each day, with food. I selected lunch time because that was the most predictable meal time during training. For breakfast I usually have the same size bowl of oat meal that I have eaten for breakfast for years and a cup of Nescafe, the only kind of coffee you can get here. Then I don’t eat anything until lunch, so I will really want to eat with it is time to take my pill. Thus, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, as a rule.
So, what do I eat? I stocked up on canned goods before I came to my site but I am trying to make meals out of what I can buy locally as much as I can. At the moment one of the things that is easy to find are eggs. They are from pintades (Guinea fowl), so they are half the size of a chicken egg. The yolks are big and almost orange, as you expect from free range birds. There are lots of onions, and a local egg plant that I have not tried to master. I understand they are quite bitter, although I see people eating them raw. One of the things the girls and ladies have on the trays they carry on top of their heads are something that looks like a sweet potato but is white on the inside and tastes almost like are regular potato. These ladies also sell what they call gateau (cake) that seems like cake that has been deep fat fried, fried dough that is really greasy but OK on the inside, little pie shaped things made from millet flour, and peanuts which can be raw, boiled or, if you are lucky, roasted. One of my favorite things at the moment is local bread. It looks a bit like a French baguette, but the taste and texture is more like sour dough bread. From time to time there are tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. One can also visit a small (and I do mean small) shop in a shack called a boutique and get powdered milk, Nescafe, sugar, flour, salt, oil, mayo, margarine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste spaghetti, macaroni, rice and couscous. They also sell non edible things like matches, soap, bleach, and lots of hair products. With no refrigeration I have to eat what I cook or throw it away. Fortunately my community counterpart raises pigs, among other things, and I can take my scraps to her for her pigs.
There is no propane for sale in Burkina Faso at the moment, and it does not look like the situation will change soon. I am lucky to have a community homologue who loaned me her gas canister to use. Very generous of her. Now she does do her cooking with wood or charcoal.
I have made pancakes and French toast, but can’t do any baking. I have made macaroni and cheese with Laughing Cow Cheese, the only kind of cheese product that you can keep without refrigeration, available only in the big cities. One luxury item I got from town was a jar of raspberry jam. I have to see if I can find more next time I go. I have to go to a town from time to time because the Peace Corps deposits our living allowance in an account at the Post Office. There is no post office in my village so I have to go to a bigger town to get my monthly allowance and, while I am there, I can do some shopping at an alimentation, a bigger store (kind of like a very small 7/11) that you only find in larger towns and cities.
I don’t eat much meat, just because there is no way to buy it and keep it. There is a guy who cooks up a pig on market day and I have gone to his hangar a couple of times for a pork sandwich. There are guys grilling meat on the side of the road, but seeing flies all over the meat kind of turns me off. I will get my protein from eggs and eating rice and beans and so on. My latest food adventure is trying the baby breakfast food they sell at the center for malnourished babies, up the road about 15 minutes. They do really good work there and this breakfast food is supposed to have a good mixture of things that give you complete protein. Hopefully if it is good for the babies, it will be good for me. I will let you know if I like it.
Sorry, this got a bit long. I will address some more of your questions in future blogs.
The fact that my older daughter and her family are coming to see me at Christmas time is also an emotional boost. I wouldn’t say I am home sick, but I do miss all of my friends from Mud in Yer Eye, the dance community, church, and JCU. I occasionally think about calling a contra dance or playing a tune on the dulcimer and wish I were in a place where I could do that. But mostly this is the adventure of a lifetime and I am glad to be here.
Food
As I said above, when I was having that bad reaction to the anti-malaria drug I totally lost my appetite. I lost the weight I put on just before I left home and some I have been trying to lose for years. I am not sure it is all weight loss. Some may be changing fat into muscle. Because I have to ride my bike when I want to go anywhere except the immediate neighbors I am getting more exercise than I used to. I have to see if I can find a scale to check that out. My new medication must be taken at the same time each day, with food. I selected lunch time because that was the most predictable meal time during training. For breakfast I usually have the same size bowl of oat meal that I have eaten for breakfast for years and a cup of Nescafe, the only kind of coffee you can get here. Then I don’t eat anything until lunch, so I will really want to eat with it is time to take my pill. Thus, lunch is the biggest meal of the day, as a rule.
So, what do I eat? I stocked up on canned goods before I came to my site but I am trying to make meals out of what I can buy locally as much as I can. At the moment one of the things that is easy to find are eggs. They are from pintades (Guinea fowl), so they are half the size of a chicken egg. The yolks are big and almost orange, as you expect from free range birds. There are lots of onions, and a local egg plant that I have not tried to master. I understand they are quite bitter, although I see people eating them raw. One of the things the girls and ladies have on the trays they carry on top of their heads are something that looks like a sweet potato but is white on the inside and tastes almost like are regular potato. These ladies also sell what they call gateau (cake) that seems like cake that has been deep fat fried, fried dough that is really greasy but OK on the inside, little pie shaped things made from millet flour, and peanuts which can be raw, boiled or, if you are lucky, roasted. One of my favorite things at the moment is local bread. It looks a bit like a French baguette, but the taste and texture is more like sour dough bread. From time to time there are tomatoes, cucumbers, and cabbages. One can also visit a small (and I do mean small) shop in a shack called a boutique and get powdered milk, Nescafe, sugar, flour, salt, oil, mayo, margarine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste spaghetti, macaroni, rice and couscous. They also sell non edible things like matches, soap, bleach, and lots of hair products. With no refrigeration I have to eat what I cook or throw it away. Fortunately my community counterpart raises pigs, among other things, and I can take my scraps to her for her pigs.
There is no propane for sale in Burkina Faso at the moment, and it does not look like the situation will change soon. I am lucky to have a community homologue who loaned me her gas canister to use. Very generous of her. Now she does do her cooking with wood or charcoal.
I have made pancakes and French toast, but can’t do any baking. I have made macaroni and cheese with Laughing Cow Cheese, the only kind of cheese product that you can keep without refrigeration, available only in the big cities. One luxury item I got from town was a jar of raspberry jam. I have to see if I can find more next time I go. I have to go to a town from time to time because the Peace Corps deposits our living allowance in an account at the Post Office. There is no post office in my village so I have to go to a bigger town to get my monthly allowance and, while I am there, I can do some shopping at an alimentation, a bigger store (kind of like a very small 7/11) that you only find in larger towns and cities.
I don’t eat much meat, just because there is no way to buy it and keep it. There is a guy who cooks up a pig on market day and I have gone to his hangar a couple of times for a pork sandwich. There are guys grilling meat on the side of the road, but seeing flies all over the meat kind of turns me off. I will get my protein from eggs and eating rice and beans and so on. My latest food adventure is trying the baby breakfast food they sell at the center for malnourished babies, up the road about 15 minutes. They do really good work there and this breakfast food is supposed to have a good mixture of things that give you complete protein. Hopefully if it is good for the babies, it will be good for me. I will let you know if I like it.
Sorry, this got a bit long. I will address some more of your questions in future blogs.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Pen Pal, any one?
The other day I was sitting under a tree at the local health center, waiting for the director to come and chatting with several folks. Three of them were nurses (one man and two women) who asked if I might be able to find them American pen pals. I am not sure if they are thinking of surface mail or if they might have access to the internet. I only have the internet here because I have a USB/cell phone modem, which I don’t expect they would have. They might go to the next big town where there are cyber cafes and use e-mail, but I think it more likely they are thinking of written letters, the old fashioned kind of pen pals. Now that I think of it, you have to go to that town (about an hour away by moto or bush taxi), to mail or receive a letter. No home delivery here! Well educated people here read and write a third language, usually English, so these folks could read letters in English and would respond in English (which may not be perfect, but probably would be understandable).
If any of you out there would like to have a Burkinabé pen pal, please send me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu with your name, American mailing address, and e-mail address. You could also say a couple of things about yourself to help get things started. I am sure I will be getting more similar requests so if you don’t want to write to nurses but like the idea of a pen pal, let me know your interests and I will keep your information in reserve for future requests.
If any of you out there would like to have a Burkinabé pen pal, please send me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu with your name, American mailing address, and e-mail address. You could also say a couple of things about yourself to help get things started. I am sure I will be getting more similar requests so if you don’t want to write to nurses but like the idea of a pen pal, let me know your interests and I will keep your information in reserve for future requests.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Travel and Cultivating
Pubpic Transportation
In Burkina Faso there are two basic types of public transportation for long trips, bus and bush taxi. I already told you about bush taxies, but the other day I road in one that was beyond belief. It was a tiny pick-up truck with benches in the bed along each side. I said I would only take it if I could ride in the cab with the driver. I am sure it was better than the back, but I felt sorry for the other lady who got to sit up front. The passenger door kept popping open and the driver reached across two of us to grab the door by the window opening (no window of course), and slam it shut. Each time he closed it, it would pop open again at the next big rut, which was quite often. I will try my best not to take that one again, but if you are in one place and need to get to another place, it may be the only thing going that day.
While there are a few busses that run rather like an American Greyhound bus, (I actually see them on the road near my house) most are very old, with ripped and worn seats, sagging over head shelves, and windows that may or may not open or close. On these busses air conditioning is not a concept. The amount of baggage and other things that are carried is amazing. First of all, there is a roof rack on which big bags of things, like charcoal, rice and so on may be stored. Next come the motorcycles and bicycles. Yes, on the top of many of these busses you see fifteen or twenty motos and bicycles all standing in a row. Things are also stored in the usual baggage compartment under the bus. If there is not enough space under there, things come inside, into the aisle. They make fine seats for those who get on after all the regular seats are taken.
In the city
In the capital there are some city busses, but I have not tried to use them. When we are there we walk or take taxies, but they are nothing like American taxies. First of all, there is no meter. Before you get in you tell the driver where you want to go and negotiate with the driver about how much you will pay. If you are experienced you just say how much you will pay, with confidence, and the driver agrees. If the driver thinks he can get more because you do not know the going rate, he will ask for more. The taxies themselves almost all have cracked windshields, ripped upholstery, and little in the way of shock absorbers. Another interesting thing is that you may be the only ones in the taxi at first, but then the driver will stop to pick other passengers along the way. One night it was raining and we were lucky to get a cab. It started out with me and a friend, but we stopped three times to pick up other people, so we ended up with four in the back seat. The defroster, of course, did not work so the driver had to use a tissue to wipe the steam off the inside of the windshield for the entire 10 minute ride. The drivers are amazing, weaving around the bicycles, motos, donkey carts, other taxies and pedestrians. It takes a little getting used to, but it is beginning to seem perfectly normal. I am sure those of you who have lived in a third world country will recognize the situation.
Walking in Town and Village
In the city there is no concept of a sidewalk. Occasionally you think you have found one and, guess what? It is actually the cover over the sewer. This cover is about the width of a sidewalk and is divided into blocks about the size of sidewalk blocks, but with cut outs that let the water drain in when it rains. It makes walking have the smell of an open sewer, which is what you have under the cement cover pieces, and there is always the danger that one of the pieces will be missing, so watch your step!
In the village most people walk to most places they are going. In addition to the dirt roads, wide enough for cars, there are many paths to go between family compounds. Right now there tend to be mud puddles on these paths, but for the rest of the year they will be quite convenient.
Cultivating
In the rainy season just about everybody cultivates. If you live in a village your family is assigned the land you cultivate. After the first rain (or second one) you go out with your hand tool that looks a bit like a big ax, but the blade is more hoe like. You turn over the soil and plant your crop, the hope for rain. Below is a picture of me, trying to use one of these gizmoes to plant beans earlier in the summer. After each rain people are out in the fields, using this tool to chop out the weeds. Here are some of the crops I see around my village: petite millet (the kind we think of as bird seed) that grows to over 7 feet tall, grand millet, that must be 15 feet tall now and growing, corn (field corn for cooking, not sweet corn), gumbo (aka okra) which is NOT slimy if you just sauté it, peanuts, and beans (like black eyed peas). In other places you see rice and cotton being raised.
Animals
In my village most people seem to have a donkey and cart. The donkeys braying to go out so they can eat is what wakes me up in the morning. There are also lots of sheep and goats. It is a bit hard to tell them apart because the sheep are adapted to the heat and do not have all the fluffy wool you expect on a sheep. They are bigger than the goats and have a different shape so after a while the difference is obvious. If you are not Muslim you probably have a couple of pigs to eat up your scraps from the table, if any, the chafe from the millet, and so on. And then there are the chickens—everywhere! The roosters crow all night so you get used to them. The hens and chicks run around among the crops, scratching up the bugs, with the roosters in hot pursuit of the hens. There are also petards, AKA guinea, fowl that tend to hang out in groups more than the chickens. Most people seem to have a dog in the court yard, although they are not actually treated as pets. In some parts of the country a dog may end up in the cooking pot. I have also seen cats, but not too many.
Feel free to write
If you have questions or things you would like to know about, drop me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu. I am running the computer from my solar re-chargeable battery and using a USB to cell phone modem. I do check my e-mail a couple of times a week if I get a chance to get on to the computer early in the morning before there is a lot of cell phone traffic. The blog website is very slow to access so about the only time I look at it is when I am posting to it. If you post a comment I am not likely to see it. If you write to me I will try to answer and maybe use your questions for ideas for future bolgs.
In Burkina Faso there are two basic types of public transportation for long trips, bus and bush taxi. I already told you about bush taxies, but the other day I road in one that was beyond belief. It was a tiny pick-up truck with benches in the bed along each side. I said I would only take it if I could ride in the cab with the driver. I am sure it was better than the back, but I felt sorry for the other lady who got to sit up front. The passenger door kept popping open and the driver reached across two of us to grab the door by the window opening (no window of course), and slam it shut. Each time he closed it, it would pop open again at the next big rut, which was quite often. I will try my best not to take that one again, but if you are in one place and need to get to another place, it may be the only thing going that day.
While there are a few busses that run rather like an American Greyhound bus, (I actually see them on the road near my house) most are very old, with ripped and worn seats, sagging over head shelves, and windows that may or may not open or close. On these busses air conditioning is not a concept. The amount of baggage and other things that are carried is amazing. First of all, there is a roof rack on which big bags of things, like charcoal, rice and so on may be stored. Next come the motorcycles and bicycles. Yes, on the top of many of these busses you see fifteen or twenty motos and bicycles all standing in a row. Things are also stored in the usual baggage compartment under the bus. If there is not enough space under there, things come inside, into the aisle. They make fine seats for those who get on after all the regular seats are taken.
In the city
In the capital there are some city busses, but I have not tried to use them. When we are there we walk or take taxies, but they are nothing like American taxies. First of all, there is no meter. Before you get in you tell the driver where you want to go and negotiate with the driver about how much you will pay. If you are experienced you just say how much you will pay, with confidence, and the driver agrees. If the driver thinks he can get more because you do not know the going rate, he will ask for more. The taxies themselves almost all have cracked windshields, ripped upholstery, and little in the way of shock absorbers. Another interesting thing is that you may be the only ones in the taxi at first, but then the driver will stop to pick other passengers along the way. One night it was raining and we were lucky to get a cab. It started out with me and a friend, but we stopped three times to pick up other people, so we ended up with four in the back seat. The defroster, of course, did not work so the driver had to use a tissue to wipe the steam off the inside of the windshield for the entire 10 minute ride. The drivers are amazing, weaving around the bicycles, motos, donkey carts, other taxies and pedestrians. It takes a little getting used to, but it is beginning to seem perfectly normal. I am sure those of you who have lived in a third world country will recognize the situation.
Walking in Town and Village
In the city there is no concept of a sidewalk. Occasionally you think you have found one and, guess what? It is actually the cover over the sewer. This cover is about the width of a sidewalk and is divided into blocks about the size of sidewalk blocks, but with cut outs that let the water drain in when it rains. It makes walking have the smell of an open sewer, which is what you have under the cement cover pieces, and there is always the danger that one of the pieces will be missing, so watch your step!
In the village most people walk to most places they are going. In addition to the dirt roads, wide enough for cars, there are many paths to go between family compounds. Right now there tend to be mud puddles on these paths, but for the rest of the year they will be quite convenient.
Cultivating
In the rainy season just about everybody cultivates. If you live in a village your family is assigned the land you cultivate. After the first rain (or second one) you go out with your hand tool that looks a bit like a big ax, but the blade is more hoe like. You turn over the soil and plant your crop, the hope for rain. Below is a picture of me, trying to use one of these gizmoes to plant beans earlier in the summer. After each rain people are out in the fields, using this tool to chop out the weeds. Here are some of the crops I see around my village: petite millet (the kind we think of as bird seed) that grows to over 7 feet tall, grand millet, that must be 15 feet tall now and growing, corn (field corn for cooking, not sweet corn), gumbo (aka okra) which is NOT slimy if you just sauté it, peanuts, and beans (like black eyed peas). In other places you see rice and cotton being raised.
Animals
In my village most people seem to have a donkey and cart. The donkeys braying to go out so they can eat is what wakes me up in the morning. There are also lots of sheep and goats. It is a bit hard to tell them apart because the sheep are adapted to the heat and do not have all the fluffy wool you expect on a sheep. They are bigger than the goats and have a different shape so after a while the difference is obvious. If you are not Muslim you probably have a couple of pigs to eat up your scraps from the table, if any, the chafe from the millet, and so on. And then there are the chickens—everywhere! The roosters crow all night so you get used to them. The hens and chicks run around among the crops, scratching up the bugs, with the roosters in hot pursuit of the hens. There are also petards, AKA guinea, fowl that tend to hang out in groups more than the chickens. Most people seem to have a dog in the court yard, although they are not actually treated as pets. In some parts of the country a dog may end up in the cooking pot. I have also seen cats, but not too many.
Feel free to write
If you have questions or things you would like to know about, drop me an e-mail at Larsen@jcu.edu. I am running the computer from my solar re-chargeable battery and using a USB to cell phone modem. I do check my e-mail a couple of times a week if I get a chance to get on to the computer early in the morning before there is a lot of cell phone traffic. The blog website is very slow to access so about the only time I look at it is when I am posting to it. If you post a comment I am not likely to see it. If you write to me I will try to answer and maybe use your questions for ideas for future bolgs.
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