Pictures

Apparently I can only post a max of 5 pics at a time...

My New Peace Corps Record

So, I'm happy to say that I've beat my old Peace Corps record of 4 days at site. I am now going into my 3rd week... woohoo!

But, because I've been at site, I have no internet connection (womp womp). In the last few weeks since I've blogged, I swore in (again) as a Peace Corps volunteer, and moved to my site where I'll be living for 2 years, hopefully! It's been chaotic, stressful, amazing, new! I had to say my good bye's and head off to live in a town all by myself (except for the 2 other Peace Corps volunteers, a few Americans doing a health study, and the 3 Japanese volunteers)... so, I'm really not alone haha. It's been really great so far.

Instead of writing a long detailed blog about every single thing that's happened in the last few weeks, I'm just going to put up some pictures. If there's something specific you want to know, either comment on the blog or email me.

“But Mom, the bissap is finished” (8/22/2010)

Yesterday morning, before Katherine and I left for school, our dad asked if we would be around after dinner that evening. We said yes we would be around, we didn’t have any plans, and he was excited and announced he had a surprise for us. This coming from our Burkinabé host dad, we had no idea what to expect, but were really excited.

So after school we ate lunch (hamburgers and chwarma... yum!), and then hurried home for our surprise even though it wasn’t until dinner time. When we got home, our family was preparing a feast. They were making popcorn, crevettes (like shrimp flavored chips, which sound gross but are actually really good), bissap, many chickens, and there were a lot of drinks. At this point, we realized our family was throwing us a fête! We sat around for a few hours and watched them prepare the dinner and the house. They got out the good music, the fancy cups and plates, the new tablecloth, and of course, their party clothes. Katherine and I adjusted to the situation as good Peace Corps volunteers learn how to do, and put on our party clothes too, which happened to be matching green and brown outfits (AKA our mint chocolate chip outfits). Around 8 pm, the party began.

Our dad started with a speech, saying that this party was for us as a going away party. He said he wanted us to know that we will always have a family here, and whenever we pass by, he hopes we will stop by. The doors are always open and there is always room for us, even when there are 9 people living in a 2-bedroom house haha (as it is right now). He said their family learned as much from us and we did from them, and that they appreciated the experience to meet us. The speech was probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

Then, as any good party, came the food. It was a buffet style feast that included salad, two kinds of chicken, couscous, chips, popcorn, and French fries. It was delicious! After dinner, our host dad opened the beers and wine, and then came the dancing. They put on a mix of traditional Burkinabé songs, some French music, and even salsa. They laughed at Katherine and me as we tried to dance. There’s no competing with African women haha. But, it didn’t matter, we danced away the night and had a great time. At the end of the night, my host mom announced that I had found “the rhythm”. For those of you who know me, you know this is not true, and I have never been able to dance well. She insisted it was true, but I think it could have to do with the amount of whiskey she consumed haha.

After we finished the second bottle of red wine and our family wanted to continue dancing, our 4 year old host sister said, “But Mom, the bissap is finished.” She had thought that the wine was bissap! Haha! After a few hours of dancing, eating, drinking, and me finding the rhythm, our host family decided that we “passed” and invited us back for their New Year’s Eve party haha.

This has definitely been one of my favorite and most memorable nights spent here. After living with four different host families across Guinea and Burkina, I had found MY family. A family that I felt comfortable enough with that I had adopted them as my own as well as them adopting me. It was a great night, and made me glad to be here.

“Sometimes Signaling isn’t Enough” (8/20/2010)

As a Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina, I ride my bike… a lot. We go through a few sessions of bike maintenance and bike safety. The most important things are always wear your helmet, and always signal when turning. Since I haven’t been on a bike since I was about 12 when I had a purple sparkly bike, I made sure to always follow the rules and pay attention when I’m biking. After about 2 months here, biking around on dirt roads, I was getting pretty confident on my bike and becoming a pretty good biker. Or so I thought…

A few days ago, after a long day of teaching and classes, I left the school and headed towards a nearby restaurant to celebrate the birthday of a fellow trainee. (Let me preface this by saying that as a part of our training, we have to give a 15 minute presentation in French about a cultural aspect here. I chose to give my presentation on traditional medicine vs. modern medicine in Burkina. After interviewing a few people, I found out that people who practice tradition medicine mainly treat using different parts of plants. Being a biology major, I was really excited about learning about the different types of plants here and what their uses are.) So back to me biking down the road, I was riding near a part of town where there are a lot of trees and plants, and so I was looking at the plants and thinking about what their possible uses are, and trying to remember what they looked like so I could look them up in my traditional medicine book when I got home. I was approaching the turn to the restaurant and signaled like a good biker… or at least I thought I did. So I’m turning left when a moto swerves around me and WHAM! I’m hit! My bike flew to the right, and I flew to the left. I hopped up really quick, made sure my glasses weren’t broken, and then checked out the rest of me. I had some nice scratches on my knees and my hand, but nothing was bleeding too badly. I decided I was ok, and after convincing the other trainees who witnessed my mini accident that I was ok, we continued to the restaurant for the birthday.

I’m there for about an hour or so, and realize that my elbow really hurts and is starting to swell. I decide its time to head home. I ice it and wrap it for the night hoping it would be better in the morning. Well, I woke up in the middle of night with it really hurting and couldn’t fall back asleep. The next morning, my elbow still swollen and in pain, I realized I should call the doctor. Luckily, he happened to be at our training site that day. He takes one look and it and says I need an x-ray immediately. Crap. All I can think about is the other trainee who was recently medically evacuated to South Africa for a similar incident involving his elbow and a bike. I don’t want to be evacuated. I want to swear in with the other trainees.

I head off to Ouagadougou, the capital, with our doctor to get my x-ray. I walk into the Peace Corps med unit when I hear, “Holy crap, Sara!” Who do I know here? I look over, and it’s Phil and Dylan (my fellow volunteers from Guinea)! They were coincidentally in the med unit at the same time as I was! This was a nice little surprise and comfort to see people I know. After quickly saying hi, I was off to the radiologist for my x-ray. I went by myself, which I was a little nervous about. But, I successfully got an x-ray and received the results from the doctor… all in French! This whole thing took about 45 minutes, and I found out that my elbow is fine. I have to wrap it and wear a sling for a few days (so embarrassing!), but after that, I’ll be good as new! Yay!

When I get back to the med unit, I meet back up with Phil and Dylan, who I think felt bad for me, and took me out for some pizza! So, all in all, I got a nice little vacation away from training, some pizza, and got to see my old friends… getting hit by a moto wasn’t so bad after all.

I learned a few lessons from this whole experience. One, there is a reason I haven’t done one physical activity or sport in my 24 years of life… because the one time I do, I get hit my a moto. Two, I now know how to wrap my left arm with only one hand. And three, sometimes signaling just isn’t enough.

Sabou & the Sacred Crocodiles

The last few weeks are the most intense part of our training, practice school. We teach for a few hours each day at a summer school. I have been teaching math and biology. Friday was our last day of practice school! Woohoo! Normally, we have 4 hours of language class on Saturdays, but yesterday, they decided to take us on a little field trip to celebrate our hard work and the end of practice school. They announced that we were going to feed crocodiles…

I really didn’t know what to expect from this. I’ve been to the zoo and paid a quarter to feed the ducks or an occasional camel, but crocodiles were on a whole different level. We arrive at the crocodile place, which was basically a huge lake surrounded by some marshy wetlands and trees. There was a place to eat lunch, and naturally, the touristy shops. The first thing I noticed when stepping off of the bus was that all the workers there had some type of deformity or handicap in their feet. Of course, the first thing I think is that they were attacked by the crocs. This makes me a little nervous, but I follow the group down to the lake.

Now, if this were America (if only I had a dime for every time I said that phrase), there would be a clear separation between us and the crocs, but we walked right up to the edge of the water. I’m looking into this lake when all of a sudden, about 10 feet away from me, I see a croc peak it’s head and eyes up out of the water. It was like something you would see on a movie… a horror movie haha. Now, I’m still a little wary of these crocs, so I step back… behind the rest of the trainees ha. Next thing I know, the man in charge of the crocs heads out into the middle of the lake with a dead chicken died to a string. He starts swinging it around in the water until a croc gets close enough that he can grab it. Yes, I said grab it. A wild croc. With his bare hands. He gets a hold of the tail and starts dragging it out of the water towards us. He puts the croc down in front of us, and announces that we can go touch it now. It started with our brave trainers, and then slowly progressed to some of the trainees. For most of the time, the crocodile would just sit there while all us took our turn touching it. The man in charge of the croc would swing the chicken near its face, presumably to distract it from the thought of eating us haha. Everyone few minutes, the croc would get angry and snap towards someone, or try to head back into the water.

After the novelty and this croc wore off, one of the kids in my group asked jokingly if he could sit on top of a crocodile and ride it. We all laughed, when to our surprise, the man in charge says yes, he can arrange that. He’ll go catch “le vieux” aka “the old one”. We were all shocked as we watched him put the first croc back into the water, then head back into the crocodile infested lake, with the chicken in hand, to catch the old crocodile. A few minutes later, sure enough, he’s dragging out a much larger, older crocodile. He plops it down in front of us, and says we can sit on it. Once again, I’m thinking hell no. All I can picture is me trying to sit on the croc, and that’s the end of my right hand.

After about an hour of so of poking and sitting on the poor crocs, we’re finished and we head up to eat lunch. At this point, the man in charge of the crocodiles tells us their story. First, let me start off my saying that there’s a common joke among Burkinabe that, “50% of them are Muslim, 50% are Christian, but 100% are Animists.” Obviously, the numbers are a little off, but the point is that most people here are animists. Ok, so the croc story. So along time ago, the crocodiles lived about 5 kilometers away from their current town. One day, the founder of the town where the crocodiles currently live, Sabou, caught on fire. Luckily, the crocodiles were around and they saved his life by putting out the fire. After that, the crocs were moved to Sabou, and have lived in the same lake for over 100 years. He said there is a relationship between the crocodiles and the humans. The crocodiles saved the founder’s life, so now the people of the town care for the crocodiles. Every year, they make a sacrifice to the crocodiles to keep them happy. He didn’t say what the sacrifice was, but I would think that it would be a chicken, or other small animal. He said it’s ok to go swimming in the crocodile lake because the crocodiles and humans are friends. (There are 100+ crocs in the lake… this is not a theory I would want to test out!). He also said that during the dry season, the crocodiles will leave the lake and venture out into the town. If you happen to find a crocodile in your house, which apparently is common, you feed it a chicken and it’s good luck for the family.

Later that night, when I return home to my host family, I ask them about the sacred crocodiles. They assured me that the crocodiles and humans in Sabou live peacefully together. But they also said that the crocodiles know the difference between “good people” and “bad people”, and they only eat the bad people. This led me to believe, that at some point, the crocodiles have in fact attacked a human… or two.

Burkina Faso’s 50th Anniversary (8/5/2010)

Today was the 50th Anniversary of Burkina Faso’s independence (Burkina’s 4th of July). Interestingly enough, they do not celebrate the anniversary today, but in December… December 11th to be exact. Why, you ask? Good question. The calendar of everything in Burkina, as most West African countries, is based on the seasonal calendar. They only have 2 seasons here- the rainy season and the dry season. During the rainy season, people do not go to school, they do not work at regular jobs, they do not attend meetings… all they do is work in the fields. The school year, which runs October through May, occurs during the dry season. When the rains come, it’s all hands on deck. Their independence day falls in the middle of the rainy season, so they designated a new day, in the dry season, to celebrate their independence each year. Anyway, today, in honor of this, we had a small session on the culture of Burkina, and then all of our LCF’s (Language & Cultural Facilitators), sang the national anthem of Burkina.

For those of you who are curious, here is a small summary of the history of Burkina Faso. In 1895, the country, known at that time as Upper Volta, was attached to the French West African colonies, Afrique Occidentale Franҫaise. In 1932, a decree suppressed the territory and divided it between Niger, Mali, and the Ivory Coast. In 1958, a new constitution was adopted and Maurice Yaméogo became the first Chairman of the Republic. In 1960, he signed an agreement to end colonization in Upper Volta, and on August 5th, there was a proclamation of their independence. Between the years of 1960 and today, the republic experienced all types of government systems, including democracy, dictatorship and autocracy. In 1966, the people of Upper Volta were displeased with Yaméogo’s rule, and he, peacefully, dismissed himself. After this, General Sangoulé Lamizana took power, and ruled until 1980 when there was a coup d’etat. Colonel Saye Zerbo seized power with the help of young army officers. In 1982, there was another coup d’etat, conducted by Thomas Sankara who was previously the Minister of Information. Commandant Dr. Jean Baptiste Ouédraogo was in power from 1982-1983. He currently owns a medical practice in the capital, Ouagadougou. The government had Thomas Sankara arrested because of “difference of opinions.” He was released shortly after with the help of Blaise Compaoré. In 1983, through (yet another) coup d’etat, Thomas Sankara and his newly created National Council of the Revolution took power of the country. In 1984, Sankara changed the name of the country, the national anthem, the flag, and anything else associated with the French colonization. Upper Volta became Burkina Faso (translated to “Country of the Upright People”), and their new moto became, “Fatherland and death, we’ll overcome.” In 1987, Thomas Sankara was murdered and Blaise Compaoré came to power. He was then reelected in 1991, 1998, 2005, and (probably)November 2010.

“Le Bissap” (8/1/2010)

One of my most favorite things about West Africa is Bissap. I’ve written about this drink a few times in various blogs and letters, but I’m not sure if I ever took the time to really describe it. The Bissap in Guinea, like most things, was not as good as it is in Burkina. In Guinea, I liked it, but didn’t drink it often. In Burkina, my host mom prepares it for me daily! It’s a great summer drink (or if you’re in Burkina, a year round drink), and really good frozen too! This past weekend, I asked my host mom if she could show me how to prepare it. She was really excited and rushed off to the market to buy the ingredients. I found out that all the ingredients used to make Bissap are available in the US, so I figured I would share my host mom’s recipe (which is much better than most!). Here’s a little taste of Burkina:

Ingredients
1 ½ cups dried hibiscus leaves
A few sprigs of fresh mint leaves
1 liter water
¼ kg of sugar
½ tsp pineapple extract

Directions
Combine water, hibiscus and mint. Boil for 10 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes. Strain. Strain again. Add sugar and mix well. Add pineapple extract. Serve chilled or over ice.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
(PS… sorry about the metric measurements)