World AIDS day is December 1st every year, but this year the school system of Burkina decided to do some activities on November 25th, which you may or may not remember was Thanksgiving this year! So while I didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving in any sort of food related way, it was fun to have a day out of the ordinary :)
In French, HIV/AIDS is VIH/SIDA, so almost the same. AIDS is NOT a large problem in Burkina Faso, I believe that the reported number of infected is only around 2%. This is very very small compared to eastern and southern African countries that have as much as 15% of the population infected. Either way, AIDS is taken very seriously, and is more of a starting ground to talk about issues more immediate to the people here, such as STIs/STDs and unwanted pregnancy. I hope I’m not coming off as downplaying the severity of the AIDS pandemic in other parts of the world, or even to those with AIDS here in Burkina, but even without having any information on me, I’m quite confident in saying that both Malaria and malnutrition individually cause more deaths a year than AIDS here in Burkina. So while it is very important that students are informed about what AIDS is and how it is and isn’t spread, a lot of the conversations during the day turned towards unwanted pregnancy which affects many many many of the girls in my classroom.
That morning all the students at school cleaned the school and CSPS grounds. Then two of the nurses from the CSPS came over and gave a lesson on what is AIDS. They talked to the entire school at the same time, and while I think they did a good job, I think it would have gone over much better to divide up age levels, if not age AND gender. There were 11 yr old kids who barely know what kissing is right there next to sexually active 19-20 yr olds who tried insisting that abstinence isn’t possible.
There were the usual misconceptions about how AIDS is and isn’t transmitted, and the one that really seemed to hang them up was mosquitoes. Mosquitoes cannot transfer AIDS/HIV from one person to another, and after how much they talk about malaria here, it was a little hard for students (and teachers) to grasp that they aren’t a problem for AIDS. We also talked for a while about mother/child transmission.
In the US, if a mother with HIV/AIDS were to give birth to a child, I have no doubt that it would be a C-section birth and that the mother would never breastfeed. Now think about rural Africa… The nearest facility capable of performing a C-section is 75km down the dirt road, a trip that normally takes at least 2 hours and cost about half a week’s salary, let alone the medical costs. And if a mother didn’t breastfeed, the child would starve. So, in Africa, they do actually recommend that the mother breastfeed. The transfer rate is so low that the benefits greatly outweigh the risk to the child.
By the end of the lesson by the nurses, the conversation had turned towards abstinence and how to avoid pregnancy. The profs and nurses both strongly encouraged the students to wait, at least until they were done with school, before having sex. I’m not sure how that went over, but we’ll just have to look and see at the end year.
That afternoon we had a soccer match between the 4e and 3e girls, just for a little bit of fun to reward the students for all the work they did that morning. But, when the profs said that it would be for fun, I didn’t realize that it would be for entertainment. When the girls got out there to play, the entire student body just laughed at them. It was obvious that they’ve never received any sort of training in strategy of playing the game, and all followed the ball around like a herd. I was really upset and tried to give the girls some pointers, but as most of you know, my sports knowledge and ability is quite limited… It was just so frustrating to see the girls out there trying their best, and getting laughed at, even when they were doing really well. Just the idea of girls playing sports is funny enough to set them off sometimes. I could (and probably will at some point) write a whole post on just this, but don’t feel quite ready to really elaborate at the moment…
All in all, not your typical Thanksgiving, but a good day, and definitely important message for the students. The next day, I explained what Thanksgiving is to each of my classes, just like I made them explain Tiimbe to me. It was really hard to try and explain a cranberry or pie to my students though :P
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Tiimbe & Tabaski
So about a month ago was the village fete of Tiimbe. I asked around to neighboring volunteers, and no one else had ever even heard of the fete, so I’m pretty sure that it is just celebrated in Yaho. We did have school that day, so I asked each of my classes, what is Tiimbe, what is the village celebrating, how do you celebrate? Well, the last question listed is much easier to answer than the first two; to celebrate you eat sauce arachide (peanut sauce), traditional dancing, you go out late and drink and dance some more. But the first two questions were a little harder. It sounds like Tiimbe is in celebration of the harvest (although the harvest is most definitely not done yet at that time of year), but also is sort of a new year’s festival. The elders of the village are apparently the only people to really know exactly what is going on.
So after school that day, I changed into my Tiimbe shirt and went to talk with some neighbors. One offered me tô with sauce arachide. But this sauce was not the same sauce that I’d had before, and normally you don’t eat tô with sauce arachide, normally that is for rice. But this sauce was much thicker, it had pate arachide (literally peanut paste, but the same as peanut butter) and leaves and was really really delicious. I really don’t know what kind of leaves they were, and even if I knew the word for them, either in Bwamu or Jula, I wouldn’t know the French word, and we probably don’t even have the same plant in the US, so we can just call them something similar to spinach. So imagine spinach & peanut butter sauce served over a corn product with a Jello consistency, and you’ve got the traditional dish of Tiimbe :P
Also that afternoon there were some women doing traditional dance around the petit marche. And I have to admit, it looked kind of painful… They would dance around a little then whip their heads back to the beat of the music. They tried to get me to try it, and I danced for a bit with them, but as I said, the head whipping just looked painful. The elders/leaders of the community were watching the dancing and giving out prices to the women, but I don’t know how that was decided. I believe the prizes were donated or purchased with the money that was raised from the t-shirts and fabric they sold.
That night, after everyone went back to their houses and ate dinner, they all came back out and went dancing at the ball. There are a couple places you can get a cold drink in village, and one of them has dancing once a week and for all the fetes. So the night of Tiimbe, the obviously had dancing, and because I didn’t have school the next day, I decided I was up for some fun! I convinced my friend Tené to come out with me, and we had a fun time!
Hopefully next year, I can get a head start and try and figure out a little more concretely what the purpose of the fete is, but either way, I’ll be excited to eat more special peanut sauce like that!!
Edit: So, upon posting this, I remembered that I titled it Tiimbe AND Tabaski, but have yet to say anything about Tabaski! It is a Muslim holiday (side note: I’m not sure if I’ve said this, but Muslim in French is Musselman, so it sounds a little like muscle man, and always makes me smile) in celebration of when Abraham was supposed to kill his son, but then didn’t have to. Of course, the Muslim tradition recognizes Ishmael as the son in this story, and the Christians say it’s Isaac. But to celebrate the fete, they eat mutton, because Abraham killed the sheep instead. In village, I celebrated the fete by eating well (note the pattern between all fetes). I went with the other professors to my director’s house, and we had some chicken and riz gras. We just sat and talked for a couple hours then I went home and hung out with my next door neighbors. I’m not sure if it’s always like this, but I felt like Tabaski was more celebrated than Ramadan, but that might just have more to do with how well I know the community at the two different points of time. And this year it was the day after Tiimbe, so it was a pretty good week!
So after school that day, I changed into my Tiimbe shirt and went to talk with some neighbors. One offered me tô with sauce arachide. But this sauce was not the same sauce that I’d had before, and normally you don’t eat tô with sauce arachide, normally that is for rice. But this sauce was much thicker, it had pate arachide (literally peanut paste, but the same as peanut butter) and leaves and was really really delicious. I really don’t know what kind of leaves they were, and even if I knew the word for them, either in Bwamu or Jula, I wouldn’t know the French word, and we probably don’t even have the same plant in the US, so we can just call them something similar to spinach. So imagine spinach & peanut butter sauce served over a corn product with a Jello consistency, and you’ve got the traditional dish of Tiimbe :P
Also that afternoon there were some women doing traditional dance around the petit marche. And I have to admit, it looked kind of painful… They would dance around a little then whip their heads back to the beat of the music. They tried to get me to try it, and I danced for a bit with them, but as I said, the head whipping just looked painful. The elders/leaders of the community were watching the dancing and giving out prices to the women, but I don’t know how that was decided. I believe the prizes were donated or purchased with the money that was raised from the t-shirts and fabric they sold.
That night, after everyone went back to their houses and ate dinner, they all came back out and went dancing at the ball. There are a couple places you can get a cold drink in village, and one of them has dancing once a week and for all the fetes. So the night of Tiimbe, the obviously had dancing, and because I didn’t have school the next day, I decided I was up for some fun! I convinced my friend Tené to come out with me, and we had a fun time!
Hopefully next year, I can get a head start and try and figure out a little more concretely what the purpose of the fete is, but either way, I’ll be excited to eat more special peanut sauce like that!!
Edit: So, upon posting this, I remembered that I titled it Tiimbe AND Tabaski, but have yet to say anything about Tabaski! It is a Muslim holiday (side note: I’m not sure if I’ve said this, but Muslim in French is Musselman, so it sounds a little like muscle man, and always makes me smile) in celebration of when Abraham was supposed to kill his son, but then didn’t have to. Of course, the Muslim tradition recognizes Ishmael as the son in this story, and the Christians say it’s Isaac. But to celebrate the fete, they eat mutton, because Abraham killed the sheep instead. In village, I celebrated the fete by eating well (note the pattern between all fetes). I went with the other professors to my director’s house, and we had some chicken and riz gras. We just sat and talked for a couple hours then I went home and hung out with my next door neighbors. I’m not sure if it’s always like this, but I felt like Tabaski was more celebrated than Ramadan, but that might just have more to do with how well I know the community at the two different points of time. And this year it was the day after Tiimbe, so it was a pretty good week!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
A rat, a bat, and a bull
Life here “en brusse” (in the bush), is much closer to the nature, meaning that I am now used to roosters crowing at all times of the day, donkeys braying (also at all times of day, and it’s really really annoying), cows mooing, goats and sheep bleating (which sounds a lot like children), and dogs barking (and fighting) and generally all sorts of noise all the time. Normally, all I really have to deal with is the noise, but in the last couple weeks, I have had a couple interesting run-ins with the wildlife here.
The rat: So the other night, I was getting ready for bed. I had already bushed my teeth and was just going to visit the latrine before lying down. It was already dark out (fyi, I was too scared to use my latrine at night for the first few weeks of site), so I had my flashlight ready and gave the usual preparatory flash around the latrine before going in. Normally, there’s nothing there or occasionally I’ll see a lizard scurry up the wall, but not tonight. Tonight, there was a black rat hanging out right next to the hole. I’m sure he was there to eat the crickets and other insects I don’t think about that also live near the hole, and normally I’d thank him for such a task, but I had to pee.
I kept my flashlight on him, trying to scare him away, but he couldn’t climb walls like the lizards can… I left, hoping he would leave, but was still there when I came back. It was starting to get late (aka 8:30), so I decided to let him be the bigger man, and I went and took care of my business in the shower area…
The bat: This one just happened two nights ago, I was talking to a friend on the phone lying in bed, in the dark, when I started to hear to something scratching against my window screen. I figured it was a large fly or wasp (those flies are louder than you think against the screens!), but when I shined my flashlight from bed, I saw a bat!! I still don’t know how it got into my house, but I suspect he found a way between the sheets of tin that make up my roof. I often see sunlight coming through in the morning, meaning there is a space large enough for a little bat to get in. I wasn’t sure how to encourage him to leave, and didn’t really want to get out of my bed at that point, so I just waited about 20 minutes when I heard him move to the window in the main room. I went out and opened the door, hoping that he would be smart enough to fly out, but that was a no go. I eventually just went to bed, but I could still hear him banging around against the windows. Luckily, he wasn’t there the next morning when I got up, so I will just hope that he doesn’t come back! I’ll maybe also look into sealing up my roof better…
The bull: This one actually happened on Thanksgiving Day, which is the same day my village did some activities in honor of World AIDS Day. I was biking between the CSPS and the school, where the kids were cleaning up and I passed someone from school and as I was waving, he started yelling that there was a Taurus coming. I turn around and see that there is a large black bull running towards us!! Everyone else around us is running to hide behind bushes or trees, but I was currently in the middle of the road with nowhere to go. I don’t know about most of you, but I have never had to avoid a rampaging bull before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do. It was running towards me, and I didn’t want to move because I was afraid it would try and chase me, but my friend was yelling at me to ditch my bike and run to the nearest bush. In the end, the bull moved on before I really made a decision, but it was pretty scary for about 5 seconds there (of course it felt longer than that though…). When I got to school, my colleague made fun of protecting my bike, but really I just thought movement would provoke him…
Also, I feel I need to point out that there are a lot of cows/bulls here. It is not at all weird to see them, but normally in a herd, walking to get water. So when they started saying, “There’s a bull!” I didn’t really care… But now I know, if a bull is running towards you, hide!
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Stll here!
So i'm going to make this really quick, but i just wanted to give you a short update of life here! I have only one week of the trimester left before my In-Service Training (IST) for a week in the capital. I have to give two tests next week, and get them graded before heading off, so it's going to be busy! About as busy as this last week, where i spent a good chunk of time writing said tests!
This weekend was supposed to be the Volunteer Day celebrations, but the were unfortunately canceled because the weekend after is the 50th anniversary of independence here! So there are going to be some pretty big celebrations for that, which i'm looking forward to.
It is finally getting cold here (aka about 65 degrees), and i now have to wear my long sleeve shirt and socks in the morning! I can also finally sleep with a blanket though, so that's nice. But it is a weird feeling to be cold after six months of being hot all the time.
While i'm in the capital, i hope to have a few more detailed stories for you, Tiimbe, the local fete here, World AIDS Day and a few other fun days, so check back after a week or so!!
Miss you all, hope you're all getting ready for the holidays!
This weekend was supposed to be the Volunteer Day celebrations, but the were unfortunately canceled because the weekend after is the 50th anniversary of independence here! So there are going to be some pretty big celebrations for that, which i'm looking forward to.
It is finally getting cold here (aka about 65 degrees), and i now have to wear my long sleeve shirt and socks in the morning! I can also finally sleep with a blanket though, so that's nice. But it is a weird feeling to be cold after six months of being hot all the time.
While i'm in the capital, i hope to have a few more detailed stories for you, Tiimbe, the local fete here, World AIDS Day and a few other fun days, so check back after a week or so!!
Miss you all, hope you're all getting ready for the holidays!
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