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!

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!

Adopt-A-Latrine!

In my village, hygiene-related illnesses are a huge problem. Next to malaria, they represent the highest number of visits the CSPS receives. One huge contributor to this problem is the village’s lack of latrines. I see people of all ages doing their business on the side of the road in the bushes on a regular basis (and let me tell you, it’s a little disturbing to see a grown man squatting to defecate in some bushes where anyone can see him). But there are worse consequences than grossing out the local Peace Corps Volunteer when people go to the bathroom in the open air next to their courtyards. Flies land on the poop and then go to land on people’s food or hands or dishware and eating utensils. When it rains, the rainwater washes the poop into the local wells where people get the water that they drink. People around my village are literally ingesting little bits of their own feces and it obviously causes them to come down with various fecal-to-oral illnesses. So when the Peace Corps announced the opportunity to attend a workshop on hygiene and latrine building, I jumped at the chance.

Two masons and I went to the workshop a couple of months ago and the entire week was spent discussing good hygiene practices such as hand-washing and using latrines. Of course, we also learned to build latrines. At the end of the workshop, we created an action plan describing how we were going to bring the things we learned back to our village. We planned lessons to present to the community about the importance of proper hand-washing (one of these presentations is pictured in my previous blog post about the 8 Mars celebration). We are also doing a project distributing hand-washing stations throughout the village, particularly in places where people usually eat or use the bathroom. Finally, we are planning to build 15 new latrines around the village so that people will have more access to latrines.

While my village members are very eager and willing to donate time and labor and smaller miscellaneous purchases to this project, cement is expensive! Each latrine needs about $135 worth of cement and so I wrote a grant proposal asking for money to buy cement and iron bars while community members take care of the labor. The kind of grant I applied for is a specific kind that allows people back home (meaning you!) to be involved in the project by donating to it. Every little bit counts and 100% of what you donate goes directly to buying supplies for latrine building (and it is tax-deductible). Please visit the website for more details and to help make this project a reality!

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-216

If you still have questions, feel free to ask me!
Finally, if you want to support this project in another way, share this blog entry with your friends!

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!