8 Months in Africa

NOTE: My Pictures are Updated!! http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=2589346022/a=1579671022_1579671022/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

I received a text from a fellow volunteer last week saying, “Congrats! You’ve survived 8 months in Burkina! Only 19 more to go…” This is when I realized, shit, I’ve been in Africa for 8 months already! I know in the grand scheme of 27 months, 8 months is not that much. But, hell, 8 is a lot.

I’ve successfully survived my first trimester teaching English and Biology, and am well on my way through the second trimester. I am confident that not only do I know what I’m doing, but I am fully capable of living and surviving in West Africa (which sounds harder than it actually is… in my opinion). My students have learned to understand me and (for the most part) know what I’m trying to say. They understand my “Franglais” (French-English combined). I’ve been able to not only sit through, but conduct business meetings… in French!

Now that I am confident in my abilities to teach/live here, I have started working on secondary projects. Teaching is my main focus here; I am a secondary education volunteer. But, I have started working on projects that I’m more interested in. Something that (hopefully) will be sustainable after my two years of service are up. I mean, that is the point of Peace Corps… help communities through sustainable projects, not to be a glorified substitute teacher for two years. Anyway, so I’m really excited about my projects. The first and biggest project is my school library. During my planning session with my counterpart (the VP at my school), he identified one of the needs of the school as a library/resource center. When I returned to site, I started looking into this project. My school is a middle school/high school combined and there are 704 students in total. In the “library”, there are 27 books, and most of the books are so old and worn down that they are practically illegible anyway. So, I decided to take this on. I am hoping to transform one of the unused rooms into a resource center/library. This will be a place where students can go to study or read. This project is still in the early planning stage, so I don’t know much beyond this. But, I really hope it will work.

In other news, my house is coming along quite well. When I arrived here, my house was a mess. There was no upkeep (or cleaning for that matter) before I arrived, so there were a lot of issues. But, slowly and surely, I have been fixing, cleaning, painting and organizing my little humble abode. I (FINALLY!) got book shelves and kitchen shelves made, which means my things are no longer in piles on the floor... woohoo! I have a nice little sitting area and cooking area. My walls, which were literally falling down, are cemented and repainted. I now have the bluest house in Burkina Faso haha. This, I feel, is my punishment from telling the painters to just paint my salon whatever color they want ha.






I also finally planted my garden. I have slowly been acquiring seeds, but I wasn’t sure how to proceed, so I just kept putting it off. Well, one day, I decided to hell with it, and I’ll just throw the seeds in the ground and see what happens. If nothing grows, oh well, I’ll try again next year. I was thinking I could just put the seeds in the ground and they would grow. This was until I tried digging up the ground and I found that the dirt was no good. It was a mix of red clay dirt and huge slabs of rocks. So, I ordered the “good dirt” and 30 bricks to make a little wall around the garden area. My neighbor brought over my bricks the next day and filled it in with the “good dirt”. This is when I realized the good dirt is dirt that is hauled out of the trash pile across from my courtyard. Yes, I just paid a man to bring in trash pile dirt… crap. Lesson learned for next time. So I spent the next 2 hours digging trash out of my garden. There were old animal bones, broken glass, plastic bags… you name it, and it was there. At this moment, I was really wishing Wal-Mart existed here, so I could buy a pair of gardening gloves. Unfortunately, it does not. But, this was a few weeks ago, and all the trash didn’t seem to hinder the garden because it is growing by leaps and bounds. It (pathetically) is the highlight of my day; coming home from school and working in the garden. I planted tomatoes, green peppers, green beans, squash, cantaloupe and cabbage. I even have a peanut plant growing, which I never planted. Probably a remnant from the trash pile.





March and April are supposedly the hottest months of the year. It’s only the middle of February and slowly, degree by degree, I can feel the heat starting. Apparently, during the hot season, it averages 115-120 everyday! Oh boy. And, I live in the coolest part of the country! I cannot imagine the volunteers who live up in the desert… with no electricity. At least I have a fan, sort of. My fan is rather pathetic; the head fell off and now points permanently towards the ground… a lot of good that’s doing me haha. Sometimes, if I’m really hot, I’ll prop the fan head on top of a chair or in a dresser drawer. I tried the good old, college stand-by of duct tape. In college, duct tape will fix anything. Well, apparently that rule doesn’t apply to Burkina Faso because it failed miserably. One good thing about the hot season is that it brings the fruit! My papayas from my papaya tree are ready to eat now, and they are delicious! My mango tree has started growing fruit, so they should be ready to eat in about a month or so. The town I live in is the mango capital of Burkina Faso, so in about a months time, I will, literally, be swimming in mangoes. Mango bread, mango wine, fresh mangoes, dried mangoes, mango salsa. I can’t wait!



My site mate just took the GRE’s, the entrance exam for most master’s programs. This got me thinking about my future, which is overwhelming. I always thought that during my 2 years in Africa and Peace Corps, I would be able to figure out what I want to do with my life. Well, easier said than done. I know I’ve only been here for a portion of my time, but I’m starting to panic. Before I know it, I’ll be back at home and then what…? Grad school? Job? Where? When? How? It’s a lot of big questions. I’m 25 and I feel like I should have a clearer picture or idea of what I want to do with my life, but honestly, I have no clue. How do you figure out a life plan?

I’m sure my next blog post will be complaining about the heat, but until then, I’m enjoying the papayas. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the pictures!

So, this just happened to me on the way to the office, and I feel like I should write about it. I was getting off of the bus and trying to get a taxi. One driver was taking me over to his taxi, and when we got there his taxi was parked next to another taxi, but then there was a third taxi parked horizontally in front of the both, blocking them in. So, I was thinking great, it's going to take forever to find the owner of the third taxi so that I can get out of here. Well, I forgot, I live in West Africa. My taxi driver, just puts his arm in the OPEN window of the third taxi, takes off the parking break, and pushes the taxi 2 feet out of the way. Simple fix hahah, and I was off!

10 Ways You Know You Live in West Africa…

10 Ways You Know You Live in West Africa…

1. 70 degrees is freezing to you
2. When you buy a bag of rice infested with bugs, you just pick out the big ones and eat the rest
3. Receiving a letter or card in the mail is the highlight of the week
4. Having 75 students per class doesn’t seem like that many
5. You prefer ‘dolo’ to beer
6. Its ok if there’s a lizard living in your house… at least it’s eating the other bugs
7. It feels weird not to sleep with a mosquito net
8. Having internet access once a month is completely acceptable. Who needs email anyway?
9. You aren’t shocked when you throw something in the trash, and then you see the neighbor’s kid playing with it the next day
10. A donkey wanders into your class in the middle of the session, and no one is shocked

Although I have my days and moments where I hate Africa and cannot understand what I’m doing here, I have more days where I love being here and cannot imagine being anywhere else. So, I feel like I should do the next section:

10 Reasons Why I Love Living in West Africa…

1. Everywhere you go, people say “Welcome!” when you arrive
2. I can garden and have fresh fruit and vegetables all year
3. People will always feed you, no matter what
4. Anywhere you go, a crazy, old, African woman will adopt you as her white child who knows nothing, but will teach you anything and everything
5. You can leave work and take a nap in the middle of the day
6. The cost of a normal dinner in a restaurant in less than $1
7. People will always help you
8. An important part of my integration into the community, is to just sit and chat with people
9. Everybody knows your name because you’re the only white person around
10. Life is simple. There’s not a lot of drama, stress or commotion.

And You Thought Holiday Traffic in America Was Bad

Christmas came, and passed. It was successful, or as successful as you can have when you’re living in West Africa. So, to pass the New Year, Kathryn (my host sister) and I accepted an invitation from our host family to come to their New Year’s party. We were really excited to go visit them! Kathryn lives significantly closer to them than I do, but my travel is much easier because I just had to take one bus on a paved road (this is a big deal in Burkina Faso). So, I thought the trip would be easy. I would leave at 8am and arrive at my family’s at about 1 in the afternoon. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

So, the bus only left at one time (8am), which wasn’t enough time for me to leave my site and get to the bus before 8, so I had to leave the night before and stay in my regional capital for one night. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem. We have a satellite office there and there are many hotels. Well, what I didn’t take into consideration was that it is the holiday season and many people are moving around, so all the hotels were full. Luckily, throughout my travels, I’ve been in a lot of situations where I really had no plan and things didn’t go quite as planned, but somehow, they always worked out. So, I didn’t panic. I eventually found a place I could camp at for the low price of $2.00 per night. Perfect. Except, I had no tent, no warm clothes, and nothing suitable for camping. (And for those of you who think living in Africa is like camping, you couldn’t be more wrong.) Also, it’s the cold season, so the temperatures get to about 60 at night in my part of the country, so it’s kind of cold for camping. Anyway, so I eventually found a tent that another volunteer left in the office, and went over to set it up. When I got there, I saw a huge group of about 30 other white people (a rare thing in West Africa), and even rarer, they spoke English. They were from the UK doing an overland tour from Cairo to Cape Town. It’s a weird feeling, when you have to speak English and come across many other white people. Anyway, I fell asleep pretty quickly, but then woke up about an hour later freezing because I was only wearing a tee-shirt and my jean sweatpants, not the warmest clothes ever. All in all, I got about 2 hours of sleep that night.

The next day, I had to leave early to catch my 8am bus out of the city. I called my normal taxi man, Kareem, to come and pick me up. Well, what he didn’t tell me on the phone was that he already agreed to take a couple other volunteers to their bus station at the same time. Next thing I know, all 8 of us are crammed into a small taxi trying to get to the bus station on time. Little did I know at the time, there was no reason for me to rush to the bus.

Normally, they start loading the bus about 30 minutes before the scheduled departure. Well, 8:00 came … and went, then 9:00, then 10:00. Ok, what’s the problem here? I finally get up to see what’s going on, and they tell me that the bus is broken. Super. But we are scheduled to leave at 12:00. Only 4 hours later than planned. This, relatively speaking, is not that bad. So, I’m sitting around, waiting, waiting, and more waiting. Finally noon rolls around and the bus starts… woohoo! So, I hurried and put something on the bus to claim two seats (one for me and one for the other volunteer I was travelling with), when all of a sudden the bus takes off out of the station like a bat out of hell. I’m the only person on the there and the previously “broken” bus is now speeding around town. I felt like I was in “Speed” haha. Finally, after about a 20 minute tour, we head back to the station. As far as I could tell from the runaway bus, everything seemed like it was working fine, but apparently, no, it was still broken. This time they assured me that at 1:00 PM, we will definitely leave. As I expected, 1:00 came and still no advances on the bus. Then, finally, they bring in another bus. Thank God. But the new bus is only half the size of the original bus so there isn’t enough room for everyone, so it’s a mad dash to the bus. I’m pushing big African women, small children and goats out of the way so that I can make it onto the bus. I get on when the mechanic announces that the original bus is fixed. I was doubtful, probably considering that there were a significant amount of bus pieces still lying on the ground. But everyone got off the new bus and loaded the old bus. We were crammed on there, sweating, and the bus was still going no where. So, again, we all get off, and at this point, I was about done. I was getting hot, sweaty, hungry, and annoyed. I was about to just go home and forget the entire trip. But, I ate and got a new wind and decided to wait a few more hours. I really wanted to see my host family and Kathryn.

Finally at 3:00 (7 hours late), the mechanic announces (again) that the bus was fixed, so once again, everyone loads onto the bus. This time, it seemed like a good sign because they actually started loading the bags and the bus was on, they were revving the engine and everything seemed good. The motos and bikes are tied down, and we are preparing to leave the station, when, naturally, the bus stalled. Typical. The mechanic gets off, takes a couple of minutes to fix it, and once again, “it’s fixed.” This time we actually make it out of the station! Woohooo!! We get about 20 minutes outside of town, with the bus only breaking down once, when a woman decides she doesn’t want to make the trip. Which, who could blame her, I’m doubtful if we will actually make it either. But, then the kicker, she had to get down her moto, which was on the top of the bus. So all the men had to get off the bus, untie all the motos and carefully lower down her moto. This whole thing put us another 45 minutes behind schedule.

So, now it’s nearing about 4:30, and we are only 20 minutes outside of the city. I still have a 5 hour bus ride ahead of me. But, we were going, finally. The bus only broke down… 2 more times. Then, about 5 hours later, a dehydrated, starving, smelly, dirty, tired me arrived at my host family’s house. A trip that should have been 5 hours, turned out taking 14.

When I arrived at my family’s, I was greeted by a huge sign saying “Welcome Home, Sara & Kathryn!”, decorations, music, food, and family. So, at the end of the day, I would do it all over again. I would sit at that stupid bus station another 8 hours waiting for the bus so that I could come here. I’m happy to be here, and happy to spend the New Year’s here in the company of good people.

‘Tis the Season (12/06/2010)

Well, it’s that time of the year. God, how times flies when you’re having fun… or when you’re sweating your ass off and fighting away invasions of insects in West Africa. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and my birthday have all come and gone. In October and November, I was craving pumpkins, watching the leaves change on the trees, and of course, Halloween candy. Now, it’s December, and I’m craving Christmas. I want snow, Christmas smells, Christmas trees, cookies, decorations and lights. I live in West Africa (in case you forgot), so there’s nothing I can do about all these cravings. I have one lone Christmas smelling candle (thank you, Mom!!!!), which I don’t want to burn because I don’t want it to run out. I just keep smelling it, and thinking of all you lucky people in America, who are surrounded by friends, family, and Christmas cookies.

This week is my last week of school before Christmas vacation, and I’m just as tired and burnt out as the kids are, so I decide to avoid teaching today and throw a Christmas party at school. It was probably the most pathetic Christmas party one has ever seen. First of all, I wanted to teach them about the history of Christmas in America. The town I live in is split between Christians and Muslims, so I start by explaining to them that in America, Christmas is not only for the Christians, but it’s for everyone to celebrate. Then, I started to tell them traditional American Christmas stories, which is when I lost them, and they thought I was completely bat-shit crazy. I mean, I would too if I were them. I told them about this magical, fat man named Santa Clause who flies around the world in his magical sleigh pulled by magical reindeer (only I didn’t know the word for reindeer in French, so I told them he was pulled by an animal like a horse). He lives in the North Pole and has midgets that work for him and build toys. Like I said, they thought I was crazy. I continued on to tell them that the night before Christmas he stops at everyone’s house and gives them a present, so that when they wake up in the morning, there’s a present under the tree. This is when I got the question. “Madam, why doesn’t he come to Burkina Faso?” Uh oh. What do I say here? No, this magical, fat man doesn’t avoid your entire continent. He is make-believe, and it’s actually the parents who put the presents under the tree. Crap.

After my stories didn’t go over too hot, I decided to teach them some Christmas songs. Once again, this didn’t go as planned. First of all, I couldn’t remember the words to any Christmas songs, except the chorus to Jingle Bells, and Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer. Then, the dreaded part, I had to sing to 80 little Burkinabé children. Half applauded and the other half laughed at my pathetic attempt at singing. There’s a reason I always fake singing “Happy Birthday.” Then, I wanted to play them some Christmas tunes from my iPod, except I don’t have any. I stole a couple of songs from my site mate before class, but they were all instrumental only Christmas songs. I mean shit, can I get some Alvin the Chipmunks Christmas tunes, or something entertaining I can give these poor kids.

My final failed attempt was making Christmas decorations for the classroom. Not only do we have no supplies, literally no supplies (there was about 10 packs of colored pencils which all 80 students shared), but they lack all creative ability (something they never harp on as children… critical thinking and creativity). So when I tell them to draw something relating to Christmas we can hang in the classroom, they draw exactly the same pathetic Christmas tree and “Happy Holidays” sign that I drew on the board. When they are all finished drawing, which took an exceptionally long time considering, I wanted to glue the drawings to the classroom walls, which, once again, turned into complete chaos. I had 80 children running up to me, “Madam! Madam! I need to glue this!” I only have one small bottle of glue, so I’m trying as best and quickly as I can to put glue on every single piece of paper they hand me. During the gluing chaos, the kids are putting up their pictures on the walls. I’m finally done, and not only do I have glue all over me, but I accidentally glued one girl’s finger to her paper, and spilled glue down another girl’s back… woops. Then, I have time to breathe and look around at all the decorations. This is when I see that the kids went crazy while pasting their pictures. There was one paper glued to the ceiling, one glued in the center of the blackboard (obviously, “because it’s the best one, Madam”), and then I see the picture that takes the cake. It’s a picture of a half-nude NASCAR girl in a bathing suit. I live in a country where it’s slutty to show your knees, and now, I have a picture glued to my classroom walls of a girl in a bikini… excellent.

So, now, I’m home. I’m exhausted, and it’s the end of my holiday party. It could have been better, but it also could have gone a lot worse. All in all, I wouldn’t say it was a complete failure. I’m retired back to my humble abode, and am sitting eating Reese’s (thanks Grams!), smelling my Christmas candle, and watching “Elf.” Merry Christmas, and enjoy everything about Christmas that I am missing right now!

Mes Grands Merci Beaucoup!

So, I try to write a new blog everytime I have internet, but this time I don't have any new stories, so I want to take this time to say thank you to everyone at home who has taken the time to support, call, write and love me! It always makes my day better receiving a letter or package, and stories from home! Living in Africa isn't always easy and I can't just pick up the phone and call someone, but the letters get me through!

Special thanks to the following people:
Of course.. my parents, Hannah, Jessie & Yoda
Grandma Kathy, who writes me every single week with the new gossip
GB and Jean
Grandpa Ron & Kay
Aunt B
Jenn O.
Albright
Alpo
Urias

Merci Beaucoup and I love you!

Pics from The Fair

The Fair (11/04/2010)

So about 2 months ago, I heard rumors of a fair in my town. I didn’t really think much of it because often times this kind of thing is either false information or the ideas never actually take off. Well, as time passed, more and more people started talking about it. I told one of my neighboring volunteers, and he said it’ll probably be nothing so don’t get my hopes up. Too late, I was already expecting face painters, carnival rides, cotton candy and clowns…. haha just kidding!

Some time passed and the fair was out of my mind, when all of a sudden, my neighbor tells me, not only is the Burkinabé government going to construct a brand spanking new market for the fair, but the president is coming! I also found out that the last time they held a fair like this was in the 1990’s. So yea, it was a big deal.

Well, the week of the fair rolls around, and I’m still not sure what to expect, but I’m excited. The admin at my school calls a last minute (as usual) meeting for the staff. We find out that the school will be closed for not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 days to “prepare the town for the fair.” Prepare the town for the fair? Ok, why not.

The Tuesday before the fair, was the day everything would be closed to “prepare the town.” All I know is that I don’t have school, so I slept in haha. I get a call from my site mate, another Peace Corps volunteer, saying, “Sara! Get up! You have to get into town! It’s crazy down here!” Ok, I’m up and heading into town. Well, no kidding. Every single man, woman and child was out with a shovel, rake or broom cleaning the town. They were pulling all the weeds, cutting down branches, clearing the roads, and picking up the trash. And to top it all off, there were drummers there to “inspire” and “motivate” the workers. (Could you imagine the Borough of Downingtown announcing the town will be closed and everyone must go down to Kerr Park to help clean for Good Neighbor Day? HA! Yea right!) My other site mate told me later in the day that he went out to buy a broom for his house (just conveniently on the same day as all this), and they were sold out everywhere! HA!

So finally, Thursday rolls around… the day of the fair. I’m up early and excited. I put on my best clothes and head down to the mayor’s office for the opening ceremony. This, again, included drummers and a lot of important Burkinabé government officials. They also had a wonderful thing called bonbon glacé (a frozen yogurt and coconut popsicle-like thing). The ceremony is finished and we head down, along with about 1000 other people, to the fair grounds. When we arrive there, they aren’t letting anyone from the general public in yet, only the important officials. Well, as I quickly learned, I’m not the general public… I’m white. I got in with the important people, which included government ministers and people from the French Embassy. We wandered around to check out everything. It was amazingly organized and clean. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, in Africa that is.

I run into my bamuso (my adopted mother) wearing a full green and white “Burkina Faso and USA friendship” outfit. Well, coincidentally, I have the same fabric made into a dress. So, of course, I had to go home and change so that we were wearing the same thing. Now, if this were America, I would never be caught dead wearing the same thing as my mom (no offense, Mom). But, this isn’t America, it’s Burkina Faso, where it’s totally acceptable and encouraged to dress similar. So, now, I’m back at the fair, wearing the same outfit as my bamuso. HA!

I head around one corner, and there’s a huge mass of people surrounding one stall, so of course, I had to go check it out. When I get there I see three old men sitting covered in various furs, teeth and bones from different animals and that’s when I saw it. The thing everyone was there to see… an elephant head. It was humungous! You don’t realize how big these animals are when you’re at the zoo. The elephant was accompanied by a hippo head, a warthog head, and a full cheetah! It was quite something! (Sorry, I tried to take pics, but the men didn’t like that ha.)

The next thing I come across is the row of traditional medicine men. (Now, if you forget how fascinated I am with medicine men, please refer back to my blog about my bike accident.) Needless to say, I was really excited to check them out. Most of them were normal (well, as normal as any old, traditional medicine man will be) and selling various herbs and plants to cure everything from hemorrhoids to blindness. I asked about a couple of the plants they had, and as curious as I am about this stuff, I’m still nervous about taking any it myself. So, I continue down the row, when I come across one man that really creeps me out. So, naturally, I had to stop and check out his stuff. The first thing I notice is a pile of about 50 human teeth on a mat on the ground. Not only were they human teeth, but they were still attached to the root, as if they had been pulled straight out of the gum! Then, I look over, and he has a huge scorpion crawling up his arm! I tried to chat with him, but he didn’t speak any French, only Jula (the local language here). And, once again, I tried to take a picture, but he wasn’t having any of that. And the last thing I need is some weird African spell put on me because I took the picture of a traditional medicine man.

So, I’m back, wandering around the food section, buying some amazing bananas right off the stalk, when I get another frantic call from my site mate, “Sara! You gotta come over here! There’s a man with a monkey on a rope!” Apparently, there was a whole other section of medicine men that I missed, and one had a monkey! So, I had to go check it out, and got distracted on the way buying more bonbon glacé. I round the corner, and see another swarm of people, so I know I’m in the right place. And once again, I’m white, so I was immediately dragged to the front of the group by the medicine man. I’ve seen a few monkeys here and in Guinea, and none of them were very big. They reminded me of the little pet monkey that Ross (from Friends) had. This man had two monkeys, and one was really big. The little one was just sitting contently eating bonbon glacé, but the big one was mad, probably because he wasn’t eating bonbon glacé and was wearing a tee-shirt that said (in English) “Who’s my Daddy”. Anyway, I saw the monkeys, and it was fun, but nothing I would want to get too close to.

The chaos of the fair lasted for three whole days, and the whole while, everything in town was crowded and the cell phone reception was overloaded so I couldn’t make or receive any calls. But, all in all, it was great! I bought a lot of good stuff (which I will be sending home as Christmas presents), and ate some really good food! I saw an elephant head and some crazy medicine men. I mean, how many people can say that they’ve done that?

On a side note, a lot of my devoted blog readers have asked how my gym classes are going, and I proudly want to say that I was not chosen as the gym teacher! Thank god for the youth of Burkina Faso.