Every Child Deserves a 5th Birthday!

That is sort of like the theme of this year’s Malaria Month. Children under 5 years of age are far more likely to contract malaria because they have not yet developed any resistance to the illness. And, at least according to what I’ve seen, people have to be pretty sick to actually go to the CSPS to get checked out. If you are a small child who can’t adequately express how sick you’re feeling, there’s a good chance you won’t be taken to the CSPS until your condition gets serious.

So what kinds of life saving activities have I been doing in village to ensure these kids make it to their 5th birthday? Let me tell you. I’ve been doing a lot of work in local schools, and not just because schools are a convenient place to find a large group of people who HAVE to sit and listen to me :) I really enjoy working with students and I believe if they get the information while they are relatively young (while still being old enough to understand it) it will stick with them more. They’ll be more likely to adopt good health practices because they haven’t had much time to develop and be engrained with poor health practices. The fact that you can do fun, goofy activities and you are adored for shaking up their boring school day doesn’t hurt either.

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve worked in different classrooms doing activities to explain what malaria is and how you get it (from mosquito bites, not from eating green mangoes or from doing too much work). We talk about the symptoms associated with malaria and what to do when you have them (go to the CSPS ASAP, not boil leaves from a tree you found in the bush and drink the concoction). And finally, we talk about the many ways they can decrease their chances of getting malaria. Many of them know they should sleep under a well-maintained mosquito net (whether they actually DO or not is another question entirely!) Some of them also know they should get rid of standing water in or near their courtyard so that mosquitos can’t lay their eggs there. But no one thinks about wearing pants and a shirt (i.e. proper clothing and not just their underwear!) when they’re out and about at night so they expose less skin as a mosquito target. They also have no idea of the mosquito-repelling power of neem leaves, a tree that grows in abundance all over village. In the one small class, we actually made a pot of neem cream together.

Tomorrow, I’ll be making neem cream with a group of women. To make a pot full (about the size of a stock pot/soup pot) it cost the equivalent of 35 cents and I estimate it would last one person at least half a month. Hopefully I am getting across the point that there are many inexpensive ways to reduce people’s risk of malaria.

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In addition to malaria activities, I’ve started working with a class of elementary school students to study for the Certificat d’Education Primaire (or CEP which is their elementary school degree). To pass obtain their CEP and continue to middle school or get a job, they must pass an extensive cumulative test. To help them study, I’ve been going in and playing CEP Jeopardy with them (shout out to the volunteer who created the manual/compiled all the questions!) It is a BLAST and according to their teacher, it seems to be motivating them to study. “Before you started playing this game with them, I’d give them time to study in groups and everyone just goofed off. Now all of the groups are actually studying. They want to win points for their team!” Well, if they can’t think ahead enough to study for a test that could determine their future, at least I can get them to study by promising them the glory of winning points for their team by answering a Jeopardy question correctly.

I am also half way through a nutrition program with a handful of mothers and their malnourished kids. Every morning for 12 days, we get together and make enriched porridge out of local ingredients for their children. My counterpart also gives a sensibilization on various health topics (nutrition, malaria, going to the CSPS when they’re sick, HIV/AIDS, etc.) while the porridge is cooking. At the end of the 12 days, the idea is that the mothers will a) see the benefits of making sure their children eat enough food as well as food with actual nutrients in it through their children’s weight gain, b) will have learned healthy, nutrient-filled recipes that are also inexpensive and easily accessible, and c) will learn about a variety of other health topics. More about that once the program is finished!

Well, that about sums up my last few weeks. TTFN, ta-ta for now!

April = Malaria Month!

Here in Burkina Faso, Peace Corps has named April Malaria Month and is dedicating the month to combating the disease with even more vim and vigor than usual.

Malaria is a disease that effects everyone in Burkina. In my village, 48% of the CSPS visits were to treat malaria. As I put an extra effort into malaria education this month, it astounds me how much people just accept malaria as a fact of life. Even when ways exist to prevent/decrease their chance of getting the disease, I find that people feel like they are going to get it no matter what they do so they don't put the effort into prevention.
So this month, my goal is to instill in my village a sense of power over this illness. I hope I can at least convince a few people that their prevention efforts DO make a difference.

I'll write more about my activities at the end of the month.
If you want more info, visit stompoutmalaria.org.

Where does Shea butter come from?

Last month, I got a chance to visit a village near mine that makes high quality Shea butter (no, I can't tell the difference in Shea butter quality, I am going off of what people tell me). A friend of mine started helping the women transport the butter to cities from their village because there is not a big enough market for the butter in their village and they don't have transportation aside from walking. My friend asked if I could go with him to see the group and then use my mad PCV skills to help them, finding other markets and ways to transport the product there.
I showed up to the village and was greeted by a large group of women, all in various stages of making Shea butter. They greeted me and, in the usual Burkina style, offered me water and food. After the initial pleasantries, they proceeded to show me how one actually makes the Shea butter:

Step One - start with Shea butter seeds.

Step Two - soak the seeds in hot water, then dry them in the sun.

Step Three - pound the seeds

Step Four - roast the seeds

Step Five - Grind the pieces into a thick liquid state (or use a mill if you have one)

Step Six - mix the Shea goop

Step Seven - stir over heat to separate oil from the semi-solid parts

Step Eight - Let it cool into a butter consistency


And there you have it! All you need now is your own Shea tree, right? :)

*If some reader out there happens to be an expert in Shea butter making or interested in becoming such, I admit that there could be errors/something left out of my process. I'm going off pictures I took and my memory, I am not claiming to be an expert on it.

8 Mars - International Women's Day

March 8th is International Women’s Day and a recognized holiday in Burkina Faso. My village throws a big party to celebrate. Mostly I think they just want to throw a party but I still appreciate the effort they put into it. This year’s 8 Mars was essentially the same as last year and this gave me a great opportunity to see just how far I’ve come in the past year.

To start off, there was a women’s bike race. Last year, I knew there was a bike race in the morning but crazily enough, I didn't get the program informing me what time everything started and I missed it. This year, I asked around and of course there was not an actual time it was to start so I wandered over to the road and chilled out there chatting with some friends while we waited for it to start.

Then while we had a crowd gathered after the race, my counterpart put together a presentation to talk about the hygiene things we learned about at a latrine workshop we attended together. He essentially planned the thing himself and it might sound cheesy but I was so proud. It really is a PCV's dream to become unnecessary in a good way. I watched my counterparts do everything themselves while I stood on the sidelines.

Later in the afternoon, there was a men's soccer game and then a women's soccer game. I almost played in it - if they had asked me again I would have said yes but since they didn't, I was content to watch women run around ridiculously in their nice clothes and absolutely NOT follow the rules of soccer.

Me wearing the pattern my villagers picked out for the holiday holding a baby wearing Burkina Faso's national pattern for the holiday

After the game, there was a little dancing. It was a taste of what was to come later that night. Then we ate massive amounts of rice. After dinner, everyone grabbed a piece of ground to set up camp. People actually were setting up camp and taking naps before a night of all night dancing. And once the dancing did start, my crazy villagers really did dance all night long. I got different reports ranging from 3 to 6 in the morning but in either case, they went crazy. (I went home by midnight, being the old lady I am). The dancing was done to balafones which is like a wooden xylophone and drums. The popular dance move in my village is to walk around in a circle and our circle got HUGE! Every time I looked around there were more people dancing. It took up at least half of the soccer field! All in all, it was a very fun day - one of my best in village to date. It made it even better to see how different it was from last year. The activities were identical to those of last year but this year instead of being overwhelmed all day long I enjoyed it all.

An Analysis of 5 Common Jobs in Burkina Requiring No Education (in order from worst to best according to the humble opinion of the author)

Brick maker – These men wait until it is dry season and then chop and carve mud/dirt bricks out of the ground. They work all day long in the hot sun (and dry season also happens to be hot season!) chopping away at rocks with machetes. To top it all off, I don’t think bricks cost that much so all they get from this torturous work is back problems and heat stroke. *And most of them also cultivate during rainy season!
Summary: Loads of manual labor in the sun, little payoff

Farmer – Most people are farmers, even if they have another side job. As soon as rainy season begins, they set out to their field to plant their crops of corn, sorghum, millet, cotton, peanuts, or rice (usually some combination of these). In my village, some people have to walk to fields as far as 13 km away and sleep there during the height of things instead of trekking back and forth every day. However, in many other villages, the fields are planted all around the houses and village. In villages like this, one has to know where things are because you can not see houses or stores amidst the tall stalks of millet. Anyways, farmers work in their fields continuously through rainy season. My village was deserted from June until October (with some people working in fields as late as December). All of these crops are cultivated by hand so it is a very tedious and time consuming process.
Most crops like corn, millet, and sorghum, and rice are stored in storehouses and eaten throughout the year. Some might be sold but a large portion is eaten by the people who grow them. Other crops like cotton are sold, I assume to the Burkina Faso cotton company, Sofitex.
Summary: Lots of manual labor in the sun but you get food and a little money, so that’s a plus

Boutique/small shop owner – These people sit in their small, usually claustrophobically packed shack of a store selling random things all day long. Many people, especially if it’s mainly the woman of the family who holds down the fort, even cook meals next to their boutique.
Summary: Minimal manual labor, spending all day in the shade. The downfall of this job (according to the opinion of yours truly) is that you are in the same spot all day every day.

Marché lady – These women spend their days in the marché selling produce. Usually, all the ladies clumped together are selling basically the same products – tomatoes, onions, eggplants, etc. How do you pick who to buy from? I don’t know how Burkinabe do it, I just walk around awkwardly inspecting the produce of everyone in search of the prettiest looking veggies.
Summary: Similar to a boutique owner, these people have very minimal manual labor involved in their job and spend the day in the shade. The upside, though, is that even though they stay in the same spot all day, they are surrounded by their friends and get to chatter and gossip all day long.

Bush Taxi driver/loader/money taker – These people drive and ride back and forth between two destinations, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. The loader (who is also sometimes the money taker) throws any baggage or bicycles or anything else you can imagine travelling with (goats and chickens, for example) on top of the old creaky van and ties it there. Sometimes if the van is full, they ride on top with the bags et al. I think driver and money taker are pretty self-explanatory.
Summary: you get to drive around on the open road all day, constantly meeting and talking with new people, and feeling the wind on your face. Overall, I’d say a pretty sweet gig. I wouldn’t mind doing it, that’s for sure.

Misunderstandings and Renewed Hope

A few times throughout our service, someone from the Peace Corps office in Ouaga comes to visit our humble sites. Last week, one of the staff came to visit my site. He inspected my house, finding lots of mouse holes and places where scorpions apparently like hiding (I have only seen one scorpion in my time here but he said they were the perfect scorpion hiding places). I didn’t have a gate; there is no shade-providing hangar in my yard.
Then we went to the CSPS where we had a meeting with my two counterparts. I expected it to be more of a formality than anything because here, people always like to be “informed” of things and greeted especially when someone comes from out of town. I also expected them to be given a little grief into helping me bully the carpenter into getting my gate and hangar made (did I mention I ordered them over 6 months ago, stop by at least once a week to ask about their progress, and they STILL hadn’t been made?). However, it turned into an awkward situation where my counterparts were yelled at for not working enough with me. Being an American, I do NOT like yelling but here yelling is how you get things done. While the yelling was uncomfortable, ultimately I think it was a good thing. Misunderstandings between my counterparts and I were brought to light and now I can work to fix them.
Another thing I realized after this visit was that I had been feeling a little defeated by Burkina and development work in general. I didn’t know I was feeling this way until suddenly, with some misunderstandings cleared and a spark in the form of chastisement was lit under my counterparts, I didn’t feel that way anymore. Suddenly, I’m feeling very enthusiastic and optimistic about my last 10 months here and the work I hope to accomplish.
And I’ll try to keep you posted on these endeavors as they happen
Peace out!

So how does one spend their time in the BF?

It has recently been brought to my attention that after over a year here, I haven’t done a very good job of shedding light on my day to day life. So I will begin my post by trying to better illuminate village life.
By the time I wake up around 7 AM (a little later the few weeks a year it’s below 80˚) everyone in village is awake. The women are busy, finding wood to cook with or pounding something (rice, millet, corn, etc) and sweeping their courtyard. I drink some instant coffee while eating oatmeal or the previous night’s leftovers if it’s not hot season. After a couple of hours to myself, I head out to the CSPS. While I’m there, I generally hang out in the pharmacy or the maternity. I help with little things as needed until lunch time. While I’m doing this, village women are still pounding things and preparing lunch/dinner (usually one meal is prepared a day and the family just eats throughout the evening until it’s gone). If it’s rainy season, people are in the fields planting and weeding and whatever else goes into growing crops.
At lunch time I bike back home, stopping at my village’s mini-marché on the way. At its best, there are tomatoes, onions, cabbage, garlic, aubergines, hot peppers, yams, and very occasionally, green peppers and lettuce. At its worst, it has onions, some very sketchy looking tomatoes, and dried hot peppers.
I buy whatever veggies I need and continue home to cook them with rice or pasta. After lunch, it’s the beautiful time called repose. Sometimes I nap, sometimes I read, but it’s almost always a time to not move during the hottest part of the day. The rest of the village tends to be lounging around under trees.
When the sun starts to lose the worst of its intensity, I visit neighbors or hang out with people who have come to visit me (mostly this consists of children, though lately I’ve had a few more adult visitors than usual!). Visiting someone usually means being offered a stool to sit on and a bowl of tô to eat. The women almost always keep doing whatever they were doing when you I arrived and very little talking takes place (unless there’s a group of women and then they talk too much and too fast for me to understand anything).
Once the sun goes down, I take a bucket bath and settle in to read or write letters by candle light. Sometimes a couple of my neighbors come over and they use my battery-powered light to do their homework. The past couple weeks they’ve brought over some leaves that we boil in water until the water turns red. We take out the leaves, add sugar, and enjoy (Okay, I’ll be honest – I’m mostly enjoying the company and drinking the beverage to be polite). Then eventually it’s time to go to sleep, and my exciting day is done!
A few notes on life in general:
Amenities – There is no electricity in my village. For water, there are wells and a few community faucets of water where people get water by the giant bowl full (or, for those of us who can’t carry 25 L on our heads, by the 30 L yellow gasoline jug strapped to the back of my bike!)
Language – Some people speak “village” French and essentially everyone speaks Jula and Gouin. I can get around in Jula and greet people in Gouin, but I rely heavily on gestures especially when talking with women. Days can pass when the only person I speak English to is myself.
Getting Around – I ride my bike everywhere, and there are many families that have bikes. Some people have motorcycles/mopeds and there are two cars in my village. Getting around village, most people walk.