Bike Tour 2012

For the past few years, Peace Corps Volunteers in Burkina have organized a bike tour. The purpose of it is similar to that of a walk-a-thon. Volunteers advertise what we’re doing and try to raise money for gender and development projects. This year, I participated in the tour from Ouahigouya to Fada, totaling over 400 km. We biked different distances each day from 20 to 80 kilometers. Here’s a look at a typical day on the tour:

We woke up very early, between 4 and 5 AM. We hit the road early before the sun was up while it still wasn’t too hot. Each morning, I’d start out full of optimism ready to go. I wouldn’t even listen to my iPod the first 10 or so kilometers. I would bike in silence and enjoy the early morning with birds chirping and the sun rising and appreciate it all. But after a while, nature wasn’t enough to distract me from my sore butt or my aching back and I’d start jamming to my bike tour playlist. That was usually enough to keep me going until our snack break which generally came a little over half way through our day. My breaks were pretty short because I was close to last every day so by the time I got there people were ready to start back up. But the breaks were enough to give me some oomph to continue on. However, after the first few days, I would get tired pretty quickly after this break. I’d need to take frequent breaks just so I could be in a different position for a few minutes. I became quite the dawdler.
*Addition* I can't believe I forgot to mention my favorite part of the tour: When I would be biking and children on the side of the road would jump up and down pumping their fists in the air and cheering for me like I was Olympian or something and high-fiving me as I passed. Adorable, and nothing gives you an energy boost quite like being treated like a superstar.

Once we’d arrive at our destination, we’d lie around, eat, and relax (and sometimes shower!) In each village, we’d do something “Peace Corps-y” like planting trees, malaria sensibilizations, reading with children, etc. Then the riders would hang out, play cards, eat more (I wanted to do nothing but eat all day on this tour!) Overall, I had a great time biking through north-eastern Burkina and hanging out with other volunteers in their villages.

A map of the tour:

For more information about the bike tour, visit : http://pcburkina.org/gad/bike-tour

Parents and COS Conferences and Reading Camp (Oh, my!)

Well, who knew a year ago when I wasn’t writing out of a lack of material to write about that in one short year I’d neglect writing because I was doing too much? I definitely did not see that one coming. In any case, let’s play catch-up, shall we?

In the beginning of August, after 22 long months of not seeing each other, my parents came to visit me! We spent a couple days in the capital to let them adjust a little bit to Burkina before heading out to Bobo/Banfora to hit some of the awesome tourist sites here. And while that was a little sarcastic because it's hard to imagine people who'd come here for purely touristic purposes, we did have a lot of fun. We biked out to the Domes of Fabedougou, which are rock formations that were made millions of years ago when BF was supposedly under water. From there, we biked to the waterfalls. My parents were great sports even when I maybe didn’t know the way exactly and when it started raining and we were biking through mud.

Then we went to my village! We did the usual village things – sat around, said hi to everyone, played with my neighbor kids…there isn’t really much else we could do. I should add that dad fixed my gate and my bike; I don’t think he can just sit and do nothing.
Overall, their trip was a LOT of fun and a LOT of work! I had to translate everything and do everything and fight off all the faux types (sketchy people) and basically be the parent. It was weird!

After my parents left, I was in Ouaga for my COS conference. COS stands for “Close of Service” which is the official way of saying I’m going back to America soon! The conference was three exhausting days of sessions about job hunting, resume building, grad school info, how to say good bye to our villages…by the end I just wanted to go back to village where everything is so simple and where I have finally reached the point of knowing what is going on (or not caring when I don’t). It was great to see everyone in my training group again (and for the last time all together) and much of the information we listened to was useful but I was glad when the conference was over.

After this, I spent a short week in my village before leaving again to FAVL Reading Camp. FAVL (Friends of African Village Libraries) is a really cool organization that makes books in local African languages and in an African context. They also build village libraries. At each of the libraries in Burkina (and perhaps other countries, though I don’t know) they hold a summer camp. There is a combination of reading practice and appreciation, health lessons, and games. As someone who loves ALL of those things, this camp was great. They even let me check out a Roald Dahl book in French to read in the evenings. What’s not to love?

Hello Mother, Hello Father…

Ah, summer camp. Days full of team building exercises, trust games, canoeing, exploring, playing capture the flag, ghost stories by the bon fire…

Okay, that’s not exactly what summer camp was like in my village. At the end of June, I did a day camp with a small group of kids who just finished elementary school. They ranged in age from 12 to 15 and were a mix of boys and girls. We started off every day with an ice-breaker. One great thing about working in Burkina is that EVERYTHING you do is new. These kids had never ever done a human knot or any of those other typical ice-breaker/team-building activities. It is a brand new experience for them. Following the ice-breaker was a game of soccer. Then it was time to get serious. The rest of the day was filled with sessions that followed a variety of themes. There were health lessons about malaria, HIV, nutrition, etc. There were life-skills sessions about decision making, being assertive, and making goals. We had basic English lessons and a study skills session. One hour was set aside for our “Panel of Professionals” which ended up being one self-made business man from town encouraging the students to work hard and not allow challenges to stop them from achieving their goals.

The camp ended at lunch time, except one day the girls came back after lunch to do a puberty/reproductive health talk and the boys came back the next day. The girls were very shy even without the boys but the boys were so much fun. They asked a LOT of good questions both during the session and using our anonymous questions box. There were so many great questions about all sorts of puberty/reproductive health/girl-boy things but my favorite? “How do I get a girl to fall in love with me?” Adorable.
A few other volunteers came down to help me with the camp and it was very fun having them in my village for a while. And they were VERY helpful with the camp (special shout out to Doug for doing an amazing job leading the boy’s reproductive health session as well as ice-breakers all week!).

------------------------------------------

This past week, I also helped out at our regional Camp G2LOW (Girls and Guys Leading Our World). 121 middle school students from all over the western part of Burkina came to Dedougou to participate. This camp was an all-day sleep over camp for 5 days. While we did many sessions similar to the ones in my village camp, it felt more camp-like for a variety of reasons. First of all, we all had our own teams of students. All the meals were together, when there weren’t sessions we could hang out, etc. We had a fire one night and started to make s’mores until it began pouring rain and forcing us to finish the s’mores inside. All in all, it was a very fun and exhausting week.

Parental Advisory Warning: May Contain Explicit Content

I’ve lived the past year and a half without electricity or running water. I’ve chopped the head off of a snake in my house, dealt with mice, bats, scorpions, spiders, and other creepy-crawlies in my home. I’ve had several infections, been dehydrated, had ring-worm twice, and gotten amoebas. I’ve been in a fight with a taxi driver, on a bus that caught fire, and had countless other transport failures. I’ve been sexually harassed, am openly mocked regularly in at least 4 languages, and deal with out of control children who have no supervision. I eat strange unidentifiable foods on a regular basis. And with all of these crazy experiences, do you want to know what reoccurring concern I have about my parent’s upcoming visit?

That I will drop the F-bomb in front of my mother.

Yes, somewhere during this past year and a half (probably partially due to many of the above-mentioned things) I have developed a very bad habit of saying words you’d never want your grandma to hear you say. I have found that this happens to many volunteers, not just me. I believe its cause to be two-fold. First of all, as volunteers in a new country, we have a variety of new stresses to deal with. With all of these stresses, I have found a surprising release in saying words I previously found distasteful. Second of all, no one for miles and miles can understand me when I speak English. Whatever I say in English has essentially no meaning to anyone except me. I can get stress out using foul language and I’m not offending anyone or corrupting impressionable young children. Now, thanks to these two factors, I have a new very un-ladylike habit.

Over the next few months, I plan on trying to break this habit so when I return to the States, I have other ways of expressing myself. But can I break this habit in the three weeks before my parents arrive? I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any promises, mom!

There’s no place like home, even when home is a hot semi-desert

The past couple of weeks, I went on vacation with a couple of other PCV’s. It was relaxing at some points, exhausting at some points, and filled with interesting characters, stories, and GREAT FOOD! We traveled to Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

Ghana – The 28 hours of straight transport to get to our beach destination were exhausting, but not as bad as it sounds. As soon as I took my shoes off and sunk my toes into the lovely soft sand and watched the waves crash onto the beach, it was worth it. We stayed at a secluded beach place for a few days and spent our time swimming in the ocean, exploring the surrounding “jungle” and beach area, and eating delicious sea food.


A view of the beach where we stayed


Fish dinner!

After we left towards Togo, we stopped to spend a day in Accra. Compared to Ouaga, Accra is overwhelmingly developed. We felt like small town girls in the big scary city. However, this scary city DID have wonderful food (you’ll notice that a large part a PCV’s vacations revolve around food). We had sushi for dinner and it was awesome. It was definitely the highlight of Accra.

Togo – We had a terrible time crossing the border, due to some border police who very clearly wanted some money to add to their pockets. After a very long fight over our visas, we gave up (quite reluctantly) and paid the extra money which we watched the man put directly into his pocket.

While in Togo, we only stayed a couple days in Lome (the capital). We went to the market in search of pretty pagnes. Then we went to eat at a beach bar (these coastal countries rock) and hung out the rest of the evening. Togo was mostly just a stop on the way to Benin.

Benin – Benin was great from the beginning. We had no trouble at the border and got to a village called Gambie by nightfall. The interesting thing about this village is that it is in the middle of a lake on stilts. We took the 8 km boat rate to the village and got to our hotel. The next day, we rented a canoe and paddled all around this amazing village. Their markets are on boats all grouped together in the middle, children paddle to school, it is ridiculously cool. Although all 3 of us had successfully maneuvered canoes or kayaks in our life, we had a difficult time with these boats. In the beginning, we were running into people’s houses and boats; it was a mess. But we got much better. It was a great lesson in teamwork.


The stilt village, Gambie


Paddling around the stilt village

After the stilt village, we headed to Ouidah, a town on the beach. We took a tour illustrating/commemorating the different steps in the slave trade. It started in the spot where the slave market was held. There were other stops including a mass grave, the Tree of Forgetting, the Tree of Coming Back, and ending at the Door of No Return. Slaves being sold had to walk around the Tree of Forgetting and it was supposed to make them forget their past, families, and country so they’d leave more submissively. The Tree of Coming Back (a phrase which sounds more elegant in French) was walked around so that even though the bodies were being taken away and they were mentally forgetting their home, their souls would return to Benin. The African king who sold the slaves was willing to sell bodies but not souls.


The Door of No Return monument

In Benin, the people are very into voodoo. We saw many voodoo spots where people sacrifice things (we did not see a sacrifice). We saw “revenants” which are spirits according to Beninese. For a lack of better description, I will describe them as looking like people wearing crazy (sort of scary) costumes. They ran around and tried to hit people. If they hit you, you were supposed to die (I can not verify this because I was careful NOT to be hit!). We also had a tour of different palaces and voodoo sites. Our guide told so many interesting stories which were far more interesting than the actual sites. One stop that was very cool was the voodoo market. If you want something from a voodoo priest, he tells you the ingredients he needs. For those things that aren’t found in every day markets, you can go to the voodoo market where you’ll find all sorts of dried animal parts – horse heads, snakes, gutted cats and monkeys, dogs, etc. There were also a few live snakes and chameleons which we were allowed to hold.


Holding Voodoo market merchandise


A voodoo hut

Over all, the vacation was amazing. It was relaxing in the beginning, intriguing in the end, and fun throughout the trip. But the three of us who travelled together agreed that getting back to Burkina feels great. Even though there are many similarities among francophone West African countries, we're in our own territory now. We know what's going on. It’s good to be home.

Things We Hate Until We Love Them

In Burkina, a lot of time things seem impossible to get done. Things are hard to find. People are hard to talk to or hard to understand. A lot of times, they see a white person (or other clearly non-Burkinabe) and assume they can take advantage of us because we don’t know anything (a lot of times true…). It doesn’t help that if someone is difficult or rude or blatantly not doing their job, there is little we can do about it. We can’t call their supervisor or someone nicer to help us. Basically, things can be difficult.

But sometimes, this works in the opposite direction. Someone recognizes you or knows someone who knows you or came from the village where you live and they help you out. And when I say “help you out” I don’t just mean they’ll point you to the stand that sells what you need to find. They will bring you to the place you need to go, tell people what you need and then bargain for you. Sometimes, they won’t bring you. They’ll sit you down in the shade and say, “Wait right here.” Ten minutes later, they come back with what you need.

An example of this occurred a couple of days ago. It wasn’t to the extent I just described, but I still really appreciated it. I headed to a place to get a Togo/Benin visa for an upcoming vacation. I had been warned that to be VERY prepared because the people are grouchy and not helpful. We walked in and stood around awkwardly trying to figure out where to go and who was supposed to help us. People who seemed to work there just glanced over at us and then went back to their work (or more often, talking to the person next to them). Great, it seemed like the rumors were true and the service would be awful. We bumbled around to a man in the corner who suddenly looked up at us and said to me, “You’re Peace Corps? What village are you in?” I told him the name of my village and he said “I used to be there! I was one of the police who worked at the border check!” He continued to talk about the village, the previous volunteer (of whom he had a picture of on his camera), found out I was neighbors with his friend, and that I (and the other people I was with) spoke Jula. Suddenly (in concurrence with one of the other volunteers giving him her pen), he was our best friend. He was smiley and friendly and VERY helpful. We had so much fun talking to this guy and left the visa place smiling and feeling like the experience was kind of fun and not at all frustrating.

It’s all about who you know and where you’re from. And sometimes what language you can speak. A pain in the butt until it’s really helpful.

You think WHAT, now?!

In a village that doesn’t see very much activity from the “outside world” I am regularly surprised by the things people believe. Some misconceptions, like the idea that white people enjoy the smell of farts and will give you money if you fart next to them, are just hilarious. Others, however, are anything but hilarious. Here are a couple stories of frustrating beliefs I’ve heard from my village recently.

HIV – While preparing to do HIV lessons with students, I gave a pre-test to see what they already knew or thought about HIV and AIDS. For the question “Can you be friends with someone who is HIV positive?” the class unanimously answered “no.” If that weren’t bad enough, one question asked how to prevent the spread of HIV. I got answers saying you couldn’t say hello or make eye contact with someone with HIV and even a couple kids who said that everyone with HIV should be sent out of the village to live in the bush so no one with HIV would be in the village. When it came to give the lesson, I put a LOT of focus on how HIV is transmitted and how that means that you can be friends with an HIV positive person and do the same things they do with their other friends. I tried to point out that someone who finds out they are HIV positive need friends and support even MORE. I could tell afterward that not everyone was convinced but they at least learned the “right” answer to the question. Everyone said that you could be friends with an HIV positive individual and I hope most of them actually believed it. Hopefully that sinks in for the rest of them at some point, too.

Excision – While talking with a male neighbor, the topic of excision came up. “Yeah,” he said, “If a woman is not excised, she can’t do ANYTHING! She can’t walk more than a couple of kilometers at a time, she can’t work in the fields, nothing.”
“Uh…” I responded, “That is absolutely NOT true!”
“Well, here it is. For our women, it’s true.”
“Every single woman in this village is excised. How can you know what a non-excised woman can do or not do if you don’t even know one?!”
“I just know. Our old people told us.” Because the old people know everything, of course.
“I’m not excised and I can do things. I can bike and walk and run far.” I countered.
“Well, yeah, but that’s Americans. African women are different.”
After a few more minutes of this type of arguing and telling him all the dangers and reasons it shouldn’t be done, I realized it was not going anywhere. I left frustrated and also sadly contemplating the fate of his beautiful little daughter.
When I told a fellow PCV about this encounter later, she said encouragingly, “Maybe at least now you’ve put those ideas in his head. He’ll be thinking about it and questioning it now.” I hope she’s right!