Let's Do Sports!

As my time in Burkina draws to a close, I’m finding myself stressed, irritable, and tired more than usual. While this is never a desirable state to be in, it’s particularly undesirable to pass the last days I will probably ever spend in this village in such a mood. In efforts to boost my spirits, I took someone’s advice and decided to get some exercise. I changed into some running clothes and stepped outside, ready to work off some stress, release some endorphins, be at one with nature, and all that jazz. Unfortunately, any plans made in Burkina, no matter how small, usually don’t go the way you want them to. This run was no exception.

“Lindsy!” kids greeted me as soon as I walked out my door. “Lindsy! Hey, Lindsy, what are you doing? Where are you going?” They noticed I was wearing sneakers instead of my usual flip flops. “LINDSY! You’re going to do sports?! We want to come with you! We want to do sports too!”
“Guys, listen,” I said, knowing how my run would play out if I let them come. “I’m going to run. I’m not going to slow down for you, I’m not going to stop and walk for you, I’m not going to take breaks. I don’t even want to talk to you. You shouldn't come.”
“It’s okay, we won’t stop either! We want to come do sports!” was their enthusiastic reply.
“Actually, what I’m trying to say, guys, is don’t come. Stay here.”
“Oh, no, we’re going to come! We won’t stop, don’t worry. We know we’re going to just keep running.”
“But…I…it’s…*sigh* Okay, do whatever you want. I can’t stop you from running down this path but I am NOT waiting for you. You’re doing this on your own.” I know when I’m fighting a lost battle.

So off we went, me running followed by 4 giggling girls between the ages of 4 and 8. As I predicted, the girls were straggling after about a quarter of a km. From time to time, I looked back over my shoulder at these silly giggling girls running along arms and legs all over the place. For the first half of the run, I remained true to my word and didn’t wait for them. After a couple km, I turned around to follow the path back to my house. I caught up with the girls who had also turned around and the littlest cutest one looked up at me with her big eyes and just said “Lindsy.”
“What?!” I said, slightly exasperated with them. With that, she simply reached up with her little hand, grabbed my hand, and started walking. My tough, no-nonsense attitude melted immediately. I smiled ruefully and knew we’d be walking sweaty hand in sweaty the rest of the way.

So, I didn’t get in quite the workout I was hoping for. But somehow, meandering along looking at clouds and talking about trees and cows and anything else we happened to come across, yielded the results I was looking for in the first place.

Conversations with a Villageois

During my time here, I have had countless conversations with people trying to dispel myths about America and its infinite wonders. Don’t get me wrong, I think America has a lot of great things to offer. But I know that everyone there is not instantly rich and you can not just work hard sweeping streets and make a living and send your surplus money back to your family in Burkina (the first reason of MANY this doesn’t work is that we don’t have people who sweep streets.)
The other day, I had a fun conversation with someone about the States in which we got past how rich everyone is. Here are some interesting excerpts from this conversation.

Villager: So, you need to have a job before they even give you a work visa? How can you get a job if you aren’t there yet?
Lindsy: Well, have you heard of the internet? [villager nods hesitantly] People find jobs searching on the internet. Or they already work for an organization that also operates in America so they can get transferred or something.
V:[ pauses and seems to be thinking intently about something] So if I wanted to go over and get a job washing dishes in a restaurant, I could find one on the internet?
L: Um…I mean…not really. I think to get a work visa, you have to have a more…specialized skill. Like if someone already worked for an NGO in Ouaga, maybe they could get a job with the same NGO stateside. But I don’t think they give work visas for dishwashers. We have enough people who can wash dishes there already.
…

V: I hear people there can make over $2 a day.
L: [choking back a laugh] Yeah, there is actually a law saying that employers have to pay employees a minimum amount and while I don’t know exactly how much it is right now, I think it’s over $7.50. An hour.
V: WHAT?!? An HOUR?!
L: Yes, but even if someone works every day for that much, it’s really hard to afford a place to live and stuff. Things in America are really expensive.
…

V: So when you go back, you’re not going to live with your parents?
L: No, I want to move to a different city.
V: Are you going to build your own house? Or who’s going to build it for you?
L: Hm. In America, we have a lot of houses and places to live. None of them are built out of sand so they last a lot longer than houses here. Also, people move a lot. Most people don’t stay in the same place their whole life. So I’m just going to move into a place that’s already built. I don’t have to build my own house and will probably NEVER build my own house. Ever.
V: If you were staying in the same city, though, you’d live with your parents?
L: Uh…no. Probably not.
V: Why not? Wouldn’t they let you?
L: Of course if I really needed a place to live they would let me live with them but…I like being independent.
V: [blank stare]
L: Being able to do things myself…provide for myself…take care of myself…that’s important to me.
V: [blank stare]
L: Americans are like that. We like to be able to take care of our own needs and not depend on other people and…oh, nevermind.
…

V: America is the place where they have skyscrapers, right?
L: It’s one of the places, yeah.
V: And they can be, like, 20 stories tall, right?
L: They can be 100 stories tall.
V: What?!? What if you lived on the 54th floor? How would you get there?
L: There are these things and it’s like a box and you get inside and it takes you to the floor you want to go to.
V: Like a vehicle?
L: Yes, like a vehicle. A vehicle that takes you up to the floor you want to visit.
V: Can it go sideways too?
L: Nope, just up and down.
V: How does it know which floor you want? Does it just know?
L: No. There are buttons on the inside with the floor numbers. You push the button of the floor you want to go to.
V: And what about when you want to go back down? How does it know you’re waiting? Do you just have to wait until someone else comes to your floor?
L: No, there’s a button you push to signal you want to go down. Then the vehicle comes up and you can go down.
V: So this vehicle takes you right inside your house on the 54th floor?
L: Usually there are more than one house on the same floor and the vehicle lets you out in a hallway. Then you find the door of the house you want.
V: So if I wanted to go say hi to my friend on the 54th floor, I would just have to go up there and then be like “knock-knock! Hey!” and then if they weren’t home? I’d just wait there and when no one came out after a little while I’d go back down?
L: Actually, in America we don’t usually visit someone unannounced. We plan it in advance and then we know they’re home and not busy and stuff.
V: Oh. What about trash? Do you just throw your trash out of your 54th floor window?
L: No, that’s illegal. You have to take your trash to a big dumpster then a truck comes and gets it and brings it to the designated spot where we put all our trash.
V: But if you just threw your trash out the window and there are 54 floors, how would they know it was you?
L: Maybe the first time they wouldn’t know it was you. Or even the second or third but after a while, they’d figure it out. Someone would see it and people don’t like trash thrown on the street like that.
…

V: Say I got a visa and put your address as my contact in America. But then when I got there, went to the other side of the country and wanted to stay there. They wouldn’t know, would they? They couldn’t track me?
L: Not technically, no. But if you wanted to get a job or anything you’d have to show you were allowed to be in America. Either that you’re a citizen or that you had a visa. People don’t want to hire people who aren’t allowed to be there. It can get the employer in to trouble, too.

Village Girl in the Big City

My best friend in village is my 15 year old neighbor. This may seem strange to non-PCV’s but I could probably write an entire separate blog entry on why kids/teenagers make the best friends in villages. For now, though, you’ll have to take my word for it – they make some of the best friends.

Anyways, my friend, Odile, has barely left village. The few times she has was to go to the small town 12 km up the road, which hardly counts as leaving village. So, since she’s been my friend for almost 2 years and I’m leaving soon, I wanted to do something special for her. I decided to take her to Bobo.

We started our voyage at 8 AM the Friday before school started. Or at least we were SUPPOSED to start at 8 AM. Of course for a Burkinabe (especially a villager) meeting times are really just suggestions. Having never left village, Odile didn’t seem to realize that when a bus is supposed to leave at a certain time, it’s generally a good idea to be at the bus station on time. Especially when you’re taking one of the 2 bus companies in the country that usually leave on time. Luckily, I had anticipated this when I planned to leave at 8.
So sometime after 8 AM, we’re on the road. I expected her to be giggly and excited as she had been all week leading up to the trip. However, she IS a 15 year old girl so the other option for 15 year old girls is to act very cool like she takes buses to the second largest city in the country all the time. Odile chose this option. (Though a 15 year old girl who takes buses all the time would probably have slept during the trip instead of staring incredulously out the window and asking “Is this Banfora? Is this Bobo?” every time we came to a village or town along the way).

We got to Bobo at lunch time and had some tasty kebobs and fries before going to relax at the PC office. The PC office is full of wonders for someone coming from a village. First of all, there is a toilet. I can confidently say this was Odile’s first time seeing indoor plumbing let alone a toilet. In addition to a toilet, there is a shower. When it came time to shower, she said “We should go get water, huh?” “Oh, no,” I smiled, “Follow me!” and showed her the marvels of the shower – just turn a knob and as much water as you want falls on your head! Genius!

There is also a refrigerator/freezer at the office. Odile wanted to fill every bottle she’d collected during our trip (every villager knows you can NOT throw away a plastic bottle – there are so many uses for them!) with water and leave them in the freezer. Hours later when she pulled one out that was entirely frozen, she cried out in amazement. “LINDSY! It is all solid! The whole thing! And so cold!” I can go out on a limb and say she has never seen ice before our trip.

So, the office was full of wonders, surely the rest of the city must be too. We went to the Grand Marche to look around. Odile was insistent about buying things despite my continuous warnings that the Bobo Grand Marche would not have much to offer her for $4. Certainly not the pair of pants and school bag she was hoping to buy for herself and the toy she wanted to buy for her little sister. As we walked around, I let her do the talking since I certainly didn’t want to try buying anything in that ridiculous market. She very quickly learned how far her money would go – the answer was not very far at all. After half an hour, she had spent almost all of her money on a pair of pants and much to my relief, she was ready to leave. I took us instead to the market I prefer – the western style super market. We bought a variety of things including sausage, cheese, a pineapple, and chocolate cake (none of which she’d ever tasted – a problem I eagerly sought to rectify.)

We took our goodies back to the office where we ate and watched a movie on my computer. Here is where I thought I would get more of a reaction from her. Until this point, she had not seen my computer. She had certainly never seen anything computers can do like go on the internet, talk to someone on another continent for free…but none of these things seemed to impress her. Eventually I concluded that this technology was so far beyond what she had ever seen before, she didn’t really grasp it. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself because I personally think the internet is amazing so everyone else should too.

After spending the night in a hostel (where she was too cold because I kept the fan on all night)we had a leisurely breakfast and got ready to go back to village. When we got back, I started wondering if the trip had been as special for her as I’d wanted it to be. I didn’t have to wonder for very long. The next day, Odile’s little sister came up to me and said, “Odile said you guys slept in a bed and had a fan. And that you didn’t have to go get water it just came out and you stood under it. And…” I smiled as she continued, satisfied that even if the trip wasn’t quite what either of us had imagined it would be, neither of us would forget it.

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!).

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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!