Un Petit Repos

So here I am here at the end of my weekend in the capital, in an attempt to get a little work done. For the most part, i really just did some research and gathered resources for ideas of things to do in village. And being on the internet... :P

But one really cool thing that may be starting up: i may be starting a women's group!! I talked with the man who works for WaterAid in my village, and he is super excited to work with the women in the village. The conversation we had was simply amazing. He started by saying that women are the most marginalized group, and when they suffer, the entire family suffers. And he (we) would love to start something like a microcredit (basically a small bank, where people apply for small loans to start money making projects. The original capital can either come from an outside source, or people can each put in a small amount), but he has seen too many situations where money just disappears. So maybe down the road if we have a solid group we can talk about doing that. By the way, his name is Somé and he is Burkinabé. I met his wife earlier this fall when she would come chat with the women at the CSPS, and after i got to know her, i got to know him. He is super motivated and super excited to be doing things in the community, so i really hope that this goes somewhere :)

I also realized that i haven't written about Christmas or New Year's yet! I have to admit, Christmas just felt so non-Christmasy, that it wasn't too difficult for me. Haha, in some ways i feel that when i get back home, i'm not going to realize that two entire years did actually pass. But the holiday was celebrated much like Tabaski and Ramadan were, with lots of food and going to visit your friends to get said food. I went to the house of another prof, and he actually was really sick, so we didn't do a whole lot.

New Year's was a lot of fun, though! I spent the night at the local bar with friends, where we danced and generally hung out. That entire day was kind of cold, meaning that the night was even colder! Most of the guys wore suit jackets, and when i asked if New Years is normally that formal, the said no, it's just cold! (It was probably 55 at the lowest...) But at midnight, everyone goes around and shakes hands with everyone else and does the head touch thing (like the french cheek-to-cheek thing, but with the side of your head instead of your cheek) and wishes everyone else a happy new year. The usually wish longevity, prosperity, success, and health for you as well. And you have to do this hand-shaking/head-touching greeting whenever you see someone for the first time in that year. So i'm still wishing people a happy new year... But that night, after we went around to greet everyone, we sat down and ate at about 12:30. I didn't realize that we wouldn't be eating until after the new year, so i was pretty hungry at this point, haha. And the next day, people celebrated, like Christmas or other days. It was kind of weird, because in the US, you party on the 30th, but then the holiday's pretty much over. Here it was more like Christmas Eve and Christmas, where the real holiday is actually the day after.

Well, i head back to village bright and early tomorrow, but i just wanted to let you know i'm still alive! And Happy New Year to all of you!

World AIDS Day/Thanksgiving

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

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!

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!

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!

Teacher's Pet!

So sad news; i had two thoughtful and interesting blog posts all written out and ready to go, and i forget my usb key at home... So you are stuck with my last minute thoughts.

Well, one good story that happened after i wrote the other entries: Toby followed me to school the other day! it was pretty damn cute :) Every morning, i am usually in a hurry to get out the door and to school by 7. I usually let toby out of the courtyard before then because he gets restless and starts scratching at the door. well, that day, for whatever reason, he made it to 7 before he started to bug me. So he followed me out the door and when i took off on my bike, he followed. School is about a km away, and he kept up the whole time! admittedly, i did go a little slower at the end for him, just because i didn't want him to get lost halfway between home and school. At school he explored all around the grounds, walking in and out of my classroom and even following me up and down the aisles! Finally, he curled up and took a nap until it was time to go home.
Like i said, pretty adorable!

So there are a quite a few events coming up; international volunteer day the weekend of dec 4th, Burkina's independence day Dec 11, and my In-service training starting Dec 13th. And the end of the trimester around the 10th. So, i'll finally have some work to do around here, haha! But also, i'll have lots to write about coming up, so check back around then! Miss you all, happy holidays coming up!!

Toubabou!

So, I have to admit, that I had a little bit of trouble thinking of what to write for this entry. You’d think that after two weeks of not really talking to anyone back home, I’d be bursting with new and exciting stories of my adventures in Africa. Well, sorry to disappoint, but just like in America, when you start to get into the routine of things, they stop being new and exciting.
I do have a couple stories for you though, so hopefully they will tide you over until something really fun and exciting happens here :)
First, I need to explain that here (and most other non-Western countries) it is perfectly acceptable and normal to refer to people by the color of their skin. Say what you want about political correctness, this simply isn’t done in the States. It is considered rude at best, and in most instances it is much more serious than that. But here, it’s any everyday occurrence. Daily, I’m greeted as Toubabu (the Jula word for white/foreigner), Nasanu (Bwamu), Nasarah (Moore), or simply La Blanche (French). And both people I’ve never met, as well as my friends and co-workers will call me such. My friends and co-workers don’t call me those names directly, but I have heard them refer to me as such to other Burkinabe. Some days I decide it’s worth it to try and ask that people call me by name instead of by the color of my skin, where as other days it simply isn’t worth the effort.
This past week I was sitting and reading at the coffee kiosk outside my house when this man comes up to me and greets me as “Madame Toubabu, Bonjour!” As I knew that I would never see this guy again and because there were other people around who always get a kick out of it when I ask people to use my name and not Toubabu; today was one of those days where I decided it just wasn’t worth it. So I simply responded with my Bonjour and start to open my book again (a little rude not to run to full gambit of salutations, asking about their family, work, health, etc, but I was annoyed). As I do so, the little kid working at the shop says, “her name’s not toubabu, it’s Danielle.” And suddenly, it was the best day ever! This little kid, who laughed along with his parents when I’d said that same thing in the past, was now sticking up for me! It was adorable and really made my week :)
A couple days later, I was at school for the study hall I host for the 3e class. I brought my water jug for the students to fill up and bring to my house after, and asked a group of girls to fill it up for me. As I’m walking away I hear one of the say, “La blanche…” and I yell after them that they can call me Madame, not La Blanche. Students here are expected to show a lot more respect to their teachers than we expect in the states, so that I really did consider unacceptable. The girls laughed and ran away, but I hope that my point was made. The next day, I had study hall with 4e and we were going over English words. One of the girls from the day before asks, “How do you call someone La Blanche in English?” “You don’t,” was my response to that. We then had a discussion about it, and how I understand that it is somewhat acceptable here, it is considered very rude in the US, so hopefully I’ll run into it less in the future. I had the same discussion with some of the functionaire women in the that weekend, so hopefully I will get to the point where at least my friends don't call me Toubabou any longer. But we'll see...