Tour du Faso!

So what is the Burkina Bike Tour?

The Bike Tour was started last year as a fundraiser for our Gender and Development Committee (GAD). The riders in the tour ask their friends and family back home to make a donation to in support of them biking the tour. The money was then used to fund small grants for volunteers and their communities throughout this past year. All the projects that grant money was used for had to help promote the development of women and girls. (This really awesome project was done by my nearest neighbor, a Girls' Empowerment and Education volunteer who lives about 30km from my village! She used grant money to train some middle school girls to act as "health agents," teaching the community about a variety of topics.)

This year, in addition to using the tour as a fundraiser, the GAD committee wanted to use it as an opportunity to spread awareness about Peace Corps Burkina Faso and about individual projects volunteers are working on. I know this year's route was chosen so that they are passing through as many sites as possible. At some of the sites we pass through, through group will help lead a formation (session? sometimes i forget that words i use aren't really english words...) about hand washing, hygiene, malaria, family planning, or anything else that the volunteer wants to put together. In some villages, we will have a welcome festival and simply enjoying spending time spent eating and dancing.

The Bike Tour is going to cover a total of 1800km (about 1120 miles) over 22 days. I will biking 7 days for a total of 572km (355 miles) for an average of 96km/day! I'm super excited, and I tell myself that 100km is not actually that much; most cars can do it in an hour, so I figure I can do it in a day, right? The tour starts on the south-western corner of the country, and I'm starting at the third little dot. I'm ending at the most northern dot, and if you're curious, my village is just north of the 4th dot.

Yes, there are more dots than sites listed. We are just passing through some villages, and spending the night in others.

So now that you know all about the Bike Tour, consider donating to the GAD committee. I mean, what better way to spend some tax-deductible money than on the development of women in one of the poorest countries in the world. And you do get quite a bang for you buck, too. At the current exchange rate: $8 will buy all the needed supplies for a hand washing station (bucket, spigot, and soap); $10 is enough to buy notebooks and pens for girls' camp of 15 girls; and just $2.50 is enough to feed each of those girls breakfast, lunch, AND dinner for that same week long camp. So without starting to sound like one of those infomercials for sponsoring children, even a little bit goes a long way! If you do donate, make sure to mark GAD Gender and Development in the comments box. Here's the website, and the donation box is on the right hand side.

I will hopefully have at least one update on how the tour is going, but I'm not sure what our internet access is going to be like. If not, I will most definitely write all about it once I'm done :) Also, if you have any other questions about the donations or grants, let me know!

Ghana has the best French Toast!

Ironic if you think about the fact that Burkina is a French speaking country and Ghana isn't...

So back in June I traveled to Ghana with a few friends, Val, Shannon, Celenia and John. We visited Busua, Akwiida, Cape Coast and Kumasi, spending almost all of our time relaxing on the beach. It wasn’t really hot when we were there, but we actually really enjoyed the nice and cool weather after our weeks of 100+ temps in Burkina.

One of the first things we noticed after crossing the border into Ghana was the number of children wearing shoes. Even in a somewhat small village/city. Everyone had shoes, and they were nicer than cheap flip flops!! After a couple more days in country, we started noticing that very few people wore pagne (local fabric) clothes; most people were wearing western style clothing. In Burkina, it is not at all uncommon to see a woman wearing simply a piece of fabric wrapped around as a skirt. Even in the capital city, this is not an uncommon sight. But in Ghana, I think I only saw two women throughout the week who sported the simple pagne skirt.

One thing we often talk about amongst volunteers is how buff Burkinabe are, men and women! Every woman in my village has the most muscled arms you can imagine. And every boy over the age of 8 has a well defined six pack. In Ghana this was not the case: we saw almost no well-toned arms, and everyone seemed to be carrying a few more pounds around the waist. I am certain this difference is due to richer diet and a less physical labor required, but it really struck me how obviously healthier Ghanaians looked.

After living in Burkina for a year, my perceptions of what is “normal” most definitely have changed: What is normal body size, what is normal to expect in a grocery store, what is a normal level of cleanliness for children, etc. And Ghana once again shook up my ideas of all of these. The grocery stores had so much more to offer!! (it still is nowhere near an American store though). It’s funny, because just before leaving we were talking about the movie Green Zone and how everything in the war-torn city looked nicer than Ouaga :P

Because of the big differences we noticed in Ghana, I looked into the gap in income between the two countries. According to CIA World Factbook Ghana’s GDP per capita is $2500 and Burkina’s is $1200 (and the US’s is $47,200). Even more interesting: Ghana’s unemployment rate is 11%, while Burkina’s is 77%!! (US is 9.7%). So it’s one thing to be told I’m living in one of the poorest countries in the world, and it’s another thing all together to think that a country with a per capita GDP of $2500 has it made :P

In Burkina, the common mode of transportation is a small motorcycle (called a moto). In big cities there are enough of these to completely fill the streets and cars are rare. In Ghana there were cars everywhere!! Motos were rare and roads were better condition.

Anyway, back to vacation-y things. One of the days we were staying in Akwiida, three of us biked to the nearby Cape Three Points. The cape claims to be the closest landmass to the intersection of the equator and the prime meridian (0 degrees for both latitude and longitude), aka the center of the world! One look at a map argues that there are probably closer points, but it is certainly one of the closest on the continent! While the bike ride would have been much more fun on bikes that weren’t really crappy, it was still rather enjoyable (and kind of scary going down some of those hills!)

Our second to last day was when we headed to Cape Coast, and I really wish we would have spent another day there. Yes, it was a little more touristy, but it had a lot of cool things to offer that the smaller places we were staying didn’t have. We did get to see the castle in Cape Coast and we noticed that the part of the castle that you only see from the ocean hadn’t been white washed as recently as the street view side :)

Unfortunately, after our relaxing week, we had to spend over 24 hours in transport getting back in to Burkina. Transport was just as awful on the way there, but this time there wasn’t a beach at the end of it :/

Also, I probably gained about 5 lbs that week from eating, drinking, and relaxing to my heart’s content. And I’d do it again in a second :)

Director's Cup

So, the second event mentioned in the previous post was the Director’s Cup. It is an annual tournament for the CEG (where I work) student’s that is put on and planned by the director (who is also my counterpart). As mentioned a few posts ago, the other professors were boycotting the tournament. These had caused quite the ruckus at my school earlier in the spring, but by now things had (mostly) calmed down. They still didn’t come to tournament, but I did and I had a good time!

The final match was between the 4e and 3e classes (4e=8^th grade, 3e=9^th grade), which were the two classes I taught this year!! I was Prof. Principale for 4e, which means that I was in charge of calculating their grades and I have to deal with them if there are any discipline issues, so I was cheering for them.

They started by having a few warm up laps, after which one of the 3e boys pulls out a wig and puts in it on! Funniest thing ever. I have to admit, while a small silly prank like that would barely draw attention at home, any show of personality is a big deal here. Students from a young age are punished for doing anything creatively or uniquely, meaning that by the time they get to my level a lot of them don’t even try to stand out any more. This mentality it so opposite the current US position on the subject, which I feel encourages adolescents to be themselves a little more.

The game itself wasn’t too interesting, just another soccer game. One exciting moment in the game was when a dog decided wanted he wanted to play, too! He chased the ball up and down the field a few times until they finally paused the came to chase him away. Pretty cute :)

(sorry for the poor quality, i had to zoom it in to show the dog!)

I forget the final score, but 3e won. They were pretty excited about it.

And even more important, 29 out of 42 of my 3e students passed their BEPC! That means they can go on to second cycle or they can get jobs as primary school teachers, nurses, or other medium level government jobs! Doesn’t sound like huge deal at home, but the students who didn’t pass will maybe try again but more likely start the life of a sustenance farmer.

OSEP

There were two recent (or not so recent) at site, both of which ended with a soccer game. The first event was OSEP, and quite honestly, I can’t remember what the acronym stands for… It is an event at the primary school level, between all the schools in my “district” and the “district” next door. Throughout the previous months all 10 ten schools in my area had a tournament and the champion was now playing against the other district’s champion. The students were all about 5-6^th grade level and unfortunately neither of the two Yaho schools won for our district. A week or so earlier I had purchased my OSEP t-shirt, so I was sporting that and jeans in honor of the day.It was my first time wearing jeans in village, and I definitely got some comments about it, haha!

That morning there was supposed to be a theater performance by some of the students that I wanted to see. I went to the school roughly the time I was told, and of course they weren’t set up yet. So I went across the street to hang out at the health center until they were ready. After about an hour and a half, they still hadn’t started, so I finally went over to ask. Apparently nobody had arranged for speakers to be brought to the school, so they were going to do the theater pieces later at the soccer match.

I sat with the men waiting for a while, but when I realized all the women were over making lunch for everyone, I went to hang out with them. They were almost done when I got there, so I ate with them. They had to bring the food over to the men, so they decided I was at least capable of watching their purses and the boiling spaghetti.

That is one thing about living here, in some situations you are treated well above your status (such as being seated with school officials instead of the other profs), and the rest of the time your treated like a child (considered incapable of doing anything actually useful). And unfortunately, by their standards, I am kind of like a child. I don’t have the hand calluses necessary to grab coals or pots off the fire with no protection. I can’t even eat food straight off the fire, it burns my hands. I don’t have the strength to lift 20L pots full of rice or sauce. I also don’t cook the same way they do, so I have to ask how much oil to add (way more than any ever wants to think about), how long to cook the sauce, etc. I’m better left in charge of watching the purses…

Anyway. After eating and serving the men, they fed the players for the two soccer teams (all boys) then had some students (all girls) help clean up and bring some more food to the bar for after the match. At the match, all the official-type people were able to say a few words: congratulating the kids, thanking the sponsors, thanking anyone else who’s put in long hours for this, etc. At this point the prefet (the person in charge of all the government employees in the community) asks to say a few words, and goes on to say how they could have made the event better. Not saying that criticism is bad, but this was not the time or place or audience to be sharing specific ideas. And everyone was talking over him anyway, they just wanted to see the kids play!

Finally, the students did start playing. They even had officially looking uniforms provided by SEMAFO, a gold mining company that mines just north of Yaho.

During half-time the students preformed a couple theater pieces. There was a dance, a monologue, and a wordless skit. All of the pieces were directed by a friend of mine, Mados.

About half way through the second half, the sky got really dark and the wind started to pick up. It even blew the tent over!! But the students were able to finish the game and our district won!!! The whole village was so excited, it was great :)

(Sorry the picture isn't the greatest, as I said, the sky got real crazy just before this!)

After the game some people were invited for a little after party, where I helped serve the snacks. There was supposed to be a dance after the that, but it started raining, so it never happened :/ But I had a really fun day helping out with the event and mostly just watching the kids have a fun time!

A day in Burkina

I’m at a training this week in preparation for the new volunteers coming, so I’ve been thinking a lot about my first impressions of things here. Volunteers often talk about is how quickly you get used to life here and how things quickly lose their novelty or strangeness. But thinking back to my first days (months) in country, there was a lot that I just thought was crazy, that I now found not really that crazy.

For example, when I first got here I was amazed at the number of lizards here! I mean, I’m from Minnesota, not a place really known for any sort of reptiles at all. But here in Burkina (and the majority of Africa, I think) lizards run around like squirrels do in the Midwest. And animals in general are just everywhere here. I’ve written about several incidents involving bulls, but there are also donkeys, chickens, cats, dogs, sheep, goats and pigs everywhere. And they make noise. All. The. Time. But I’m used to it. I can sleep through the roosters’ morning cries, and the donkeys’ random screaming and the goats crying (that really does sound like kids). Just this weekend I saw some horses racing down a street in the capital, which was actually really weird. Though riding in a taxi in the capital city that’s following a donkey cart, that’s not weird at all.

In addition to animals everywhere, there are children everywhere. And they aren’t really supervised… They poop where ever they want. For example, my neighbor kids poop 10 feet from the gate to my courtyard, so often open the door to go out to school and see one of the popping a squat. They used to run away in fear of the white girl, but now they just ignore me and I ignore them. And then a pig or dog comes along and enjoys a nice breakfast. (I’ll let you connect the dots on that one yourself).

Another weird thing that you quickly get used to here is eating food from plastic bags. Instead of “to go” boxes, street vendors and even restaurants will give you your food to go in a black plastic bag. And at first you think it is absolutely bizarre and little gross to be eating your rice or spaghetti out of bag, but you get over it.

You also get over being dirty constantly. You never stop sweating, and it’s so dusty that you will always have a thin (or not so thin) film of dust and sweat on your face and clothing. If by some act of God, you do stop sweating, you have a crust of salt everywhere. Mostly on your neck, it’s rather unpleasant.

Transportation here is also really something you have to see to believe. Most of the transport here is what we call bush-taxis, which are vehicles larger than a mini-van, smaller than a 15 passenger van (would that just make it a van?) But in addition to loading the inside with as many people as possible, the top is loaded up with baggage, motorcycles, bikes, animals, etc. There have been numerous occasions where the height of the stuff on the roof is the same as the height of the car itself. Not a comforting site, but I have yet to see one tip over! One of my first bush-taxi experiences involved a jam-packed van that had 2 bulls and 15 sheep/goats on top. At one point some water was falling off of the roof and everyone was trying to avoid getting hit by it from the window. I thought to myself “why are they being so weird about it, the mist is kind of cooling,” then I realized it was animal pee...

But in addition to all these funny (and somewhat gross) things that I have gotten used to and now consider almost entirely normal, there are some things that I will never get used to. And I think a lot of that has to do with being an outsider in this culture. I will never get used to children (and adults) blatantly staring at me, following me, crying at the sight of me (not so much the adults on that one), and asking me for things. I will never get used to people trying to touch my hair, people calling me fat or telling me I’ve gained weight, no matter how many times they try to explain it’s a compliment…

One last fun story (once again about animals): the other day I was biking home from a little shop in “downtown” Yaho. There is a spot where a bunch of young men/boys hang out, and right as I biked past, one pulled up alongside me and challenged me to a race. Being an awesome biker, I accepted his challenge and we both took off pedaling. Not even 100ft down the road a pig starts to cross the street, so the boy veers to the side to avoid it. At this same time the pig realizes that he is interfering in our race and starts to turn back, but where he turns is right where the boy had swerved! Boy hits pig, sending boy flying over his handle bars. Boy is fine, as is pig. Everyone downtown had been watching our race, and they are now all laughing hysterically at the poor boy, who simply grabbed his bike and turned back in shame. Needless to say, I think I won that race.

The Day I Climbed a Mountain

I mean maybe it's just a large hill, but let's call it a mountain for simplicity's sake (and because it sounds awesomer).

So there's this mountain by my house. I can see it when I'm coming home from the main part of the village, and I've always wanted to climb it. And after recent events that have led me to realize that a lot of things are out of my control (previous post), I've decided to take the mindset of "why not now" in terms of a lot of things I want to do here before my second year is up. (Side note: I'm less than a week away from my one year mark!) So with this new focus of living in the here and now, I decided that I wanted to climb that mountain. Now.

The morning of my climb (about a month ago), I got up at about 6, packed a backpack with lots of water and some snacks and headed out on my bike. There were paths leading up to the that point for the most part, but occasionally they would suddenly disappear and I would have to walk over rocky parts until I found a path again to continue biking. After biking for an hour or so the incline got much steeper so I locked my bike to a tree and started hiking. After only about another hour I was a the top and saw this:



Then I turned around and looked back toward village. It looked a lot further away than about 2 hours biking/walking. In the first picture there are two cell phone towers just above where I typed Yaho, and the second picture is those towers magnified x100 (approximately).



When I got up there I was just amazed at the beauty of this place. It is so easy to forget that no matter where you live and what you're doing, but in all the craziness that has been happening here lately, I really just needed a reminder of just how wonderful this world is. I mean, just look at how beautiful that is. And that was just a 2 hour bike ride from where I live.

That morning, while on the top of the mountain, I got a text from home saying that one my best friend's dad passed away. It was just a very surreal moment for me. The scenery surrounding me was so beautiful and awe-inspiring it literally made my heart hurt, and now my heart was hurting for my friend's loss. More painful for me was the fact that I wasn't at home, and I couldn't be there for my friend. All this also came during I time when I was trying to live in the here and now and I was doing something I had wanted to do since getting to site, but I suddenly wanted to be not here at all, but at home.

There honestly haven't been too many moments over the past year where I want to be at home, but this was most definitely one of them. While I love the work I'm doing here and the people I'm able to do it with, that doesn't make me miss the people and events at home any less. There have been weddings, holidays, graduations, homecomings (both the event and literally people coming home) and just the spur of the moment gatherings that I've missed over the past year.
But in that same time, I've learned French and some Jula, I've eaten to (and many other things), I've taught math, physics AND chemistry, I haven't had running water or electricity, I've used biking as my main mode of transportation, I planted a (failed) garden, I taught numerous small children to call me by name instead of "white girl" and now I climbed a mountain.

So when times like this come up, when I think to myself that maybe I should just go home and stop missing all these important moments; it helps to remember all the challenges I've overcome and the victories (however small) I've accomplished. And to remember that even if I were home, I can't be there for everything for everyone. Living in the here and now is certainly not easy, and there will always be events that tear you one way or the other. But when I look around at my beautiful surroundings and think that I only have a year left, I hope to make the most of it.


Side note: I tried to make a panoramic of all my photos together, but it didn't work. Instead I layered the pictures one on top of the other and got this sweet looking guy:

Control Freak

So yesterday (May 12th) I was supposed to have a site visit from my boss, Firmin. I had been preparing all week, cleaning my house, clearing out the courtyard, and even having a neighbor help me prepare a meal for my guests. The night before the he was to get here, it rained starting at about 1am. It was still raining that morning when I got ready for school, and I was actually the only professor to show up for classes that day. That’s actually typical for rainy days here in Africa, but it’s been a while since it rained, and I forgot how everything just completely shuts down.

Unfortunately, the rain doesn’t just affect schools. At 1:30pm, about 20 minutes after he was supposed to be here, I get a call from Firmin. He was almost to Yaho, but there was a river between him and me. I had actually worried about that for a minute earlier in the day because there is a place that was often flooded last year during rainy season, but I hadn’t given it too much thought. I was too excited to have a visitor!! So, I have to admit, because of how excited I was to have visitors, it made the sudden change in plans that much more sad. Another volunteer had even come with him to surprise me and see my village. After I got off the phone with them, I honestly was very close to tears. I had put so much time and effort into getting ready and looking forward to the visit. And now, when they were literally 5km from my house, it wasn’t going to happen.

Now, this might seem like an overreaction to a situation that completely out of my control, and I asked myself the same question. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything event I have looked forward in the past two months has been cancelled at the last minute:
The last week of March I was going to take a trip with the couple who went to Wartburg with me, but I was having some tooth problems and spring break was moved up two weeks at the last minute, so it wasn’t going to work out.

March 31st there was a goodbye party for the volunteers leaving this summer, but the morning of the 30th there were some violent protests in the capital and the party was now off limits to everyone who wasn’t already there. This was something I was really looking forward too, and the last time I would have probably seen some volunteers.

Over Easter, I had planned to visit some friends south of me, but the President of Burkina dissolved the government a few days earlier, so travel was off limits (that wasn’t as intense as it sounds, basically he fired his 29 ministers, rehired 17 of them with 8 new ones to bring the total up to 25).

And now I was supposed to get a visit from a friend, but it rained.

Now, every single one of these situations was entirely out of my control. But it got me thinking about just how much control I am able to exercise over my life here versus my life in America.

-In America we have a stable government, but also stable electricity and stable internet (you might not think that stable internet is that important in a developing nation, but with more and more of our business world happening online, it is. If the internet is down here in Burkina, I can’t get money out of my bank account. And because I have to travel about 3 hours to even get to the bank, it’s that much more annoying). That stability gives us a daily assurance of what to expect. We know that it is (highly) unlikely that we will see rioters, that our stores will be pillaged, or that we will get to the bank only to be turned away because internet or electricity is down that day.

-In America (or at least Minnesota), we have systems in place to deal with inclement weather. It’s so effective that I often complained during high school that our roads were always plowed before the buses had to come through, meaning we wouldn’t get a snow day. We don’t often have plans ruined by a simple rainstorm, or worse; we don’t have our houses collapsed by rainstorms because we are able to build houses with more than mud bricks. (Yes, this did happen in my village. There were two people in the house and they were both killed)
-In America we are able to plan ahead to the next weekend, the month or even the next year with a high degree of certainty that everything will work out. The big events of our lives are often planned months and a year in advance. I know another volunteer here had her wedding scheduled at the end of July, but with the unrest the national exams were changed, and her soon-to-be husband now has tests during their wedding. She had to change the wedding, and most of the Americans that were going to be a part of the service are leaving before the new date.

So here, I’m learning not to plan for more than a week at a time, or I’m just going to get myself excited for something else that might not happen. And especially with all of the unrest that has happened here since February, I am certainly in the mindset of having a plan B, C, D, etc for every plan. Though, since Easter, everything does seem to have calmed down here. I am very thankful for that, but things are still a little behind schedule and I don’t really know exactly when school is over, exactly when I will be working at stage this summer, or exactly when I’ll take my vacation to Ghana. And while occasionally disappointing, I guess I’m learning to be more and more OK with those uncertainties.