It’s crazy to think that I’ve been here over a year! But there have been a few instances recently when it has been very obvious that not only is my life incredibly different over here but that I am so used to it I don’t always notice when things are “amiss” by American standards. This change stood out exceptionally when I spent a day with my fellow PCV and her parents who were visiting from the States. Things that we thought were nice or even luxurious – a private car that didn’t break down where you weren’t sitting on top of someone or getting tetanus from the rusty spring poking your butt or a hotel that had a real toilet and air conditioning – they found to be severely subpar. Another thing they kept saying was how difficult, sad, and downright miserable life is here, not just for PCV’s but especially for Burkinabe. With one week in country, I can see that mindset. However, I can safely say that my life is not miserable (no matter how much PCV’s like to complain amongst ourselves). Sure some days I am hot and trying without success to make something work but most days are fine.
I have also noticed that my good days here are almost impossible to convey to people back home. So I’ll try but I don’t know how this will come across. If my bike hasn’t broken and given me problems and a mouse hasn’t tortured me all night with his presence in my house and the kids listen to me and realize I’ll be nicer to them when they don’t harass me and I’m not compared to another volunteer (too much) and I am amused by my neighbor’s curiosity (read: nosiness) instead of irritated by it and I say the right ridiculous things to get people to laugh and have a conversation…these things make a good day. It’s so many little things not going wrong that leave me with a feeling that I live here and the next year will be fine and not overwhelming and I’ll actually like it. See? That hardly sounds like a good day when put into words, even to me! But I feel great about myself and life at the end of them.
So let’s see, life in village. My closest PCV neighbor and I threw a Halloween party. It was going to be really fun (candy, cookies, mask decorating, dancing, bobbing for aubergines…) but massive amounts of kids came who I had never met and it got kind of crazy and we had to end the party after only a few activities.
I found some wonderful books that are in Jula (one of my local languages) and are photos of people in West Africa doing daily things – market day, making certain foods, making dolo (locally made millet beer). They are great! I read them to the kids and they love them. At the end of the book about making dolo, it says “But attention! Dolo is not for children!” Yes, this seems obvious to not give children alcohol but here it is not so obvious and can lead to some crazy things. Which segues nicely into my next anecdote…
My neighbors are a great family, with polite, healthy kids and a clean courtyard . Often, the ten or thirteen year old will watch their baby sister, Pascaline, who is 2. One day, the three of them came over after school. Pascaline likes me and was happy to see me, but she was acting crazy. She ran around in circles then fall over, then giggle and get back up and run around until she fell over or ran into me. “Pascaline!” I exclaimed, “What is wrong with you?!”
“Oh,” replied her sister, “Can’t you smell it? She drank too much dolo!”
“What? Who the heck would give her dolo?” I demanded.
“Well, we were in school, our parents were in the fields, so we left her with the old people.”
(I should also note that most old people in my village spend all day long drinking dolo)
While I certainly do NOT approve of this, what could I do but laugh at the adorable baby stumbling around? Of course I said that dolo is bad for children.
“We know!” they said. “Attention!” they used their quoting voices, “Dolo is not for children!”
The next few days, I would hear kids randomly saying “Attention! Dolo is not for children!”
I will end this by stating how funny sounding the words ‘forty-four’ and ‘bottle’ are. I never noticed until I said them around a Burkinabe who cracked up, making me laugh, until we ended up on the floor laughing at how weird these words sounded as we repeated them over and over. Seriously. Just say them.
Peace out!
