International HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: Curing my Type A Personality One Unexpected Holiday at a Time

Happy World HIV/AIDS Day! (I’m not sure if “happy” is the right word, but you know what I mean.) If you didn’t know it, December 1 is World AIDS Day. Find out more.

Though Burkina participates in the WAD awareness programs, we also had a national awareness day last week. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has not hit Burkina with nearly the strength it has in other countries (official infection rates here are less than 5% compared to 30-40% for some countries), but its obvious potency and global importance is enough of a reason for a second day of campaigning.

Thursday morning a doctor (his official title is Major…I’m not sure if that means he’s a doctor or health official or what) from our village medical clinic spoke to the students and staff at my school. Before he arrived, the students placed benches in the shade of a large tree and arranged a table from which he could speak. “That’s nice,” I though. “He and some of the students will be able to sit in the shade.” Wrong. He and ALL 500 students were in the shade. To be fair, it was a big tree, and we had the benefit of long, pre-noon shadows, but still… By the end of his speech the rising sun had significantly decreased the area covered by the tree’s shade; consequently, the students were either sitting on top of each other in the shade or miserable in the sun. (And remember, this is the cold season.)

The content of the major’s speech was very informative. He talked about the history of the epidemic, a little biology, methods of transmission, and methods of prevention. I’m not sure how effective the biology portion was; the kids have never used a microscope to view a cell, and most- except for possibly the oldest- probably really don’t understand what a cell is, let alone the immune system. But the information was good. The thing that struck me the most, however, was the audience reaction to his “prevention” spiel. I expected giggles when he discussed condoms; there isn’t a seventh grader in the world who can discuss safer sex with a straight face. But it shocked me to hear bold laughter - from students and staff alike - when he mentioned abstinence. Great. so we’re all old enough to have sex, but we’re not old enough to talk about doing it safely. That’s a dangerous combo in my book. Whatever little credibility I used to give to abstinence programs, especially abstinence only programs, decreased by about 99.9% in that two minutes. Let’s spend our time talking about how to buy (I found out you CAN buy them in village), store (keep them out of the Burkinabe heat), and use condoms.

The other interesting aspect of the morning was the wide difference in knowledge levels of the adults (teachers). The spectrum ranged from an inquiry about the microbiological differences between HIV and malaria to “Why should we support rich European and American companies by buying their condoms?” Keep talking; the message has not reached everyone.

The only negative aspect of Thursday’s day of no school was that I didn’t find out about it until Monday night. So much for the test I had planned for Thursday afternoon. Next available time? A full week later. Which is difficult because a week after that is the last day of classes. Aye. We probably have as many random holidays in the US (especially for school kids) as they do in Burkina; the only difference is that we have a calendar. The Burkinabe like to keep their holidays secret as long as possible. It’s a fun game, but one that has given my uber-Type A, planning-centric style a sick stomach more than once. Not anymore. I’ve now resolved to leave the house each morning saying “If we have class today, this is what we’re going to do.” It may not be the way I’d choose to live my life, but it works wonders on the stress levels. Besides, I tell myself, every surprise holiday is a new opportunity to re-organize the rest of the trimester.

T-minus five days to my six-month in-country mark. How am I going to celebrate? A luke-cool beer from my village buvette. Cheers!

Snippets

It’s been a while since I last updated my blog. Here are a few snippets of my life the past few weeks.

-I went to Bobo for the first time in the middle of October. It was wonderful. It has all of the conveniences of Ouaga (grocery store, internet, good restaurants…) with much less of the crowded polluted big city feel. The only difficulty was getting there and back: I took a bush taxi (small mini van) with anywhere from 17 to 25 other people hanging out windows or sitting on the roof or each others’ laps. (The range is necessary because we stopped about every 3km to pick up or drop off passengers…for you metrically-challenged people, that’s about once every mile and a half…which is why the trip took six hours.) Bobo deserves more of a description, so I’ll write more the next time I go.

-I got a refrigerator! …and a girl delivered it on her head. …ok, so to be accurate, the refrigerator is a small clay pot. But buried in moist sand, it keeps my drinking water refreshingly cool. Ask chemist Chelsea how it works.

-Towards the end of the fourth week of school, the last of our teachers arrived to complete the staff. There are six full time teachers, including me, plus the director, secretary, vice principal, accountant, and groundskeeper. All in all, it’s a pretty big staff.

We had our “back to school” staff meeting at that time and discussed such important things as the discipline policies, the school calendar, and the number of tests required in each class per trimester. You might be thinking that all those things would have been nice to know before school started…flexibility is very important here.

Interestingly, we did not discuss the random holidays that pop up every two or so weeks; I guess those are regularly kept secret until a day or two before they happen. It’s more fun that way. Also, I found out that the fall trimester ends December 7; this allows for two weeks of grade calculations before Christmas. “Two weeks!?” says you.

“300-500 students per teacher and no computer,” says I. Finally, the spring trimester is only seven weeks long. Bonus: we got chicken and beer after the meeting.

-I gave my firsts tests last week. The sixth grade average was 60%, and the seventh graders got about 40%. The seventh graders were rightly disappointed, but the sixth graders were thrilled. Like I said earlier, the system here is based on the French system that believes in showing students the areas in which they can improve. 50% is passing, so the sixth graders were happy…almost all of them. I gave three cheaters zeros. That’s the rule. And when you copy the only kid in class who draws a four-sided figure on the triangle question, then match his answers word for word on the rest of the test, it makes my job really easy.

-For the most part the kids are great though. The sixth graders fly out of their chairs when I ask for volunteers to do a problem on the board. They especially like correcting their classmates’ errors.

They also like goofing around, and it’s sometimes hard for me to resist cracking a smile at some of their antics. But sometimes discipline is easy: like when I send you to the vice principal to get a tardy slip and you don’t come back for an hour and a half. Give me a break kid.

-One of the things that has really struck me the past month is the noticeable lack of an outlet for student creativity in school. The kids meticulously copy notes from the blackboard so carefully that they use rulers to underline key words and start a new page if they make a mistake. There are no fun projects, music classes, or art classes. One of the ways I want to remedy this is by starting a math/science club after our holiday break. I say math/science but what I really want is math/science undertows with an emphasis on fun and games: Soduku, brain teasers, star-gazing, and Cribbage…that kind of thing. If you have any good ideas, please let me know.

-Another thing you can help with: Send me postcards if you go on any cool vacations. The history/geography teacher invited me to talk to one of his classes last week. They are learning about North America, and he wanted me to talk about the big American cities. The kids were floored to find out that everyone has electricity, people ride to work in underground trains, and buildings can reach the clouds. If you visit or live in any major American cities or other points of interest that they would have heard of (I’m thinking New York, Chicago, LA, Washington DC, the mountains, the beach, someplace with snow…), send me a postcard. Traveling internationally? London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Tokoyo…send me a postcard. If it’s a really good picture I’ll pay you back with a beer the next time I see you. Sorry, the kids probably won’t recognize pictures from your trip to visit Grandma in Hodunk, Nebraska. But I always love getting mail, so send away anyways. Thanks!

-I’ve started sleeping outside again. It’s probably not completely necessary since the weather hasn’t been too hot recently. Don’t ask me what that translates to in degrees- my perceptions are all screwed up. I go to bed wearing only a pair of shorts and wake up twice every night: once to pull on a t-shirt, knit socks, and a sleeping bag; and once to shoo away the donkeys that like to make a rukus in the front yard around 3:30am.

I think that’s just about it for now. Happy Thanksgiving! How ’bout them Packers?!

Pencils, Notebooks, Protractors...Rocks, Sticks and Machetes

The school year has gotten off to a pretty good start. Despite Monday’s unexpected holiday, I think all of my classes will be ready for their first test in two weeks as planned. I’m teaching two classes each of sixth and seventh grade math. Both classes are about equivalent to their American counterparts: the sixth graders are learning about lines and angles; and the seventh graders are learning central symmetry. The Burkinabe school system puts algebra and geometry subjects in each grade, so the next unit in each class will be algebra-oriented. The sixth graders are especially fun; they are excited to be in middle school and are receptive to my sometimes foreign teaching methods- I borrowed an idea from a PCV friend and used a tent pole to demonstrate lines, rays, and segments. The seventh graders are a little more set in their ways and, like American seventh graders, have acquired the “cool kid” attitude that must be a universal phenomenon.

Last weekend was host to two big holidays. My Muslim-savvy readers know that Ramadan was last Saturday. (I know embarrassingly little about Islam, so if someone wants to learn me some stuff, that’d be great.) As far as I know, Ramadan marks the end of the daytime fasting period. How do people celebrate? With a feast, of course! Preparations began just after sunset on Friday and lasted literally all night. You know it’s important when every house in village uses their car battery electricity to blast radios all night. Quite the festive atmosphere! My neighbors killed a few chickens and roasted them over a small fire in the yard. Even more so than when alive, dead Burkinabe chickens make their American brethren look like steroid-enhanced gigantic super freaks. Or maybe the American birds are just well-fed. The biggest difference I noticed between Ramadan Saturday and a regular Saturday is that everyone was all dressed up: women in brightly colored pagnes, men wearing full-length traditional outfits…even the kids looked nice. Saturday afternoon my neighbors shared some of their feast with me: rice and couscous with peanut sauce and…chicken. Delicious!

The other holiday last weekend wasn’t so much a traditional holiday as a political celebration. Monday marked the 20th anniversary of Blaise Compaore’s presidency. The occasion warranted the day off from school…which I found out when I arrived to teach my first class at 7am. Thing is, the students were all there too. Why not just have class? I guess I’m not the only one without a school year calendar. The day also gave me the opportunity to talk American politics with several of my neighbors and coworkers. Most of them were shocked to find out that not only do I not like President Bush, I didn’t even vote for him. (Sorry to disappoint you, Grandma.) Their response: “But he’s the President. Why didn’t you vote for him?” They were even more surprised to find out that very few Americans like him or approve of his presidency. “If no one likes him, how is he President?” Good question.

A couple of other notable differences between Burkinabe and American school and life. The students spent their first few physical education classes clearing the fields behind the school. Since the rainy season is over, all the overgrown grass back there was dead and needed to be cleared so they could have a soccer field. Imagine my surprise when I walked out of my math class to see the eighth graders in the fields with their hoes, axes, and machetes. “Don’t forget your machetes for PE class tomorrow, kids.” If I had a dime for every time I heard that in an American middle school…

When I got home from class yesterday morning, there was a gang of 20 or 25 men standing around with sticks and rocks a few houses down. “Uh-oh,” I thought. “Somebody’s in trouble.” My gut instinct told me to run inside, but my curiosity got the better of me. I hesitated for a few seconds and was amply rewarded: in no time the group started hurling their rocks and sticks, and two pigs came squirting out of the crowd. Yup, I had stumbled across a hunting party. Though I knew the likely outcome, I couldn’t rightly let the party get away without seeing more. I ran inside and changed out of my work clothes (’cuz who knew what was going to happen). Jumped on my bike and took off after the crowd. They chased these poor pigs all around town, squealin’ and hollerin’ the whole way. The men were shouting strategy commands, and women and children helped when they could; they didn’t get too close though and ducked into doorways whenever the gang came into their yard. For my part, I stayed a decent distance away- close enough to see the action, but not so close as to get pelted by a stray stick if one of the pigs should take off in my direction. By and by they cornered one of the pigs. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that a few sticks and rocks to the head later and that pig was ready for the fire.

I later got the scoop from one of my friends. As I’d noticed, people pretty much let their animals roam freely about the village. When someone wants to eat their livestock, they hire a group of men to go find it and kill it. Cows are the easiest because they barely move; goats and pigs require a small herd of men. The going rate for such a hunting party? About one dollar. (What would you do for one American dollar?)

...a Little More Action Please

Life has a certain charm when you live in a small African village and have nothing to do. I spent the month of September going on bike rides, reading books, and watching the shadows move on my front porch (I threw myself a party the day the sun moved far enough south to shade my porch the entire afternoon). Though it might sound a little dull, I had actually started getting used to this life. I enjoyed people watching and knowing that the most stressful part of my day was deciding whether to eat rice or couscous for lunch. That said, I was very excited this week when school started.

School technically starts at 7am, and though I had been warned ad nauseam about the school year getting off to a slow start, I showed up Monday morning promptly at 6:30. Right. The director rolled in a little after 8:00. Most of the students who were going to show up had showed up by then, so the vice principal started taking attendance at 8:30. One by one, he called the names of every student in every class. When their name was called, each student walked from the courtyard into their classroom. Then the VP read the next name. This thrilling process took about three hours. Luckily I realized about an hour into the ordeal that my presence was neither necessary nor required. So I left.

After observing the rigor of the first day, I showed up Tuesday mentally prepared to not spend any time in front of students. Much to my surprise, the director asked me if I was ready to go. “Hell yeah!” said I…in French. He took me to my first class and introduced me to the students, a class of about 80 sixth graders. In my opening spiel I mentioned that I had gone to school in California; no one recognized the state until I mentioned that the popular TV show 24 is set there. Then the faces lit up. Terrorist-fighting Jack Bauer is about as popular here as riding donkeys. Since most of the students don’t have text books, I spent the first class going over the program for the year. Yup, I spent half an hour writing out the table of contents from their math book. Very exciting. Then we went over classroom rules and grading. Nothing to crazy.

I actually got to teach on the second day of class. I started right in on the first chapter of sixth grade math. To my surprise and delight, the lesson actually went really well. I think the kids mostly understood my French, and they more or less paid attention. Something tells me that will change. I have two classes each of 6th and 7th grade math. The 7th grade classes are reasonably small; there are about 45 kids in each section. The 6th grade classes are more typical of Burkinabe sizes- each section has about 90 kids. Yup. 90 sixth graders and me. One of the classes meets every Monday and Wednesday from 3-5pm; can’t wait for the hot season. With the four classes I have 20 hours of teaching per week. Add in lesson planning, grading, and French practice, and I think I’m actually going to be doing quite a bit of work, especially this first year. I guess the shadows on my front porch will have to go on without me.

A Little Less Conversation...

Living in a small town in an unfamiliar country with people who speak unfamiliar languages and have unfamiliar customs provides ample opportunity for “cultural awareness experiences”. And when you sit on your front porch all day with only authors and crossword puzzle editors for company, those experiences are about as frequent as seeing the diarrhea-stricken neighbor boy poop in the front yard.

Two Burkinabe bike towards each-other. I swear this whole conversation occurs without slowing the bikes. This whole conversation happens without stopping or even slowing.

A: Good morning.
B: Yes. Good morning to you
A: How was your night?
B: It passed well. How is your family?
A: They are well. And yours?
B: Yes, everyone is well.
A: How is your health?
B: Excellent. There are no problems.
A: How is your left leg?
B: It is doing just fine. How is your grandfather’s second wife’s third child?
A: He gets stronger each day.
B: God blesses us all in many ways.
A: Yes, He does.
B: May He continue to look after you and your family until we meet again.
A: God willing you will remain in good health.
B: As will you.
A: Amen.
B: Amen.

***

I recently got electricity in the form of a car battery and two fluorescent light bulbs. Here are some words of warning from my Battery Storage Manual. These are direct quotations; the manual is written in English. Odd in a French-speaking country.

“The storage of battery of this type is far from bright fire.” Dim fires are OK?

“If you cannot use the battery of this type properly that will lead to exploding.” Duly noted.

“Suggest using the way of march charge the battery so that the use of the battery in function is the best.” What?

***

Though French is the official language in Burkina, few people use it regularly outside of the big cities. There are over 60 regional languages, and most people use one of these in their everyday lives. The people in my village speak Jula, and I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to pick it up.

Old Lady: Ini tile. (Good afternoon.)
Me: Mbaa. Heere tilena? (Good afternoon. Have you had a good day?)
OL: Heere. (Yes.) (Shocked that I speak Jula.)
Me: Somogowdo? (How is your family?)
OL: O ka kene. (They are good.) (Huge smile.)
Me: Heere. (Good.)
OL: (Lots of fast words that I come nowhere close to understanding.)
Me: (Smile and nod. Uh, that’s all I got lady.)
OL: (More words I don’t understand. Lots of laughing.)
Me: (Laughing, smiling, nodding.)
OL: (Huge smile.)
Me: Heere. Ini ce. (Good. Thank you.)
OL: (Laughing. Walks away.)

***

As a functionnaire (the “middle class” in Burkina), I am expected to do little in terms of household chores. As a man, I am expected to do even less. I’ve hired a kid to bring me water, and a lady down the street does my laundry. However, I do my own cooking and cleaning.

Burkinabe: Good morning.
Me: Good morning.
B: What are you doing?
Me: Cleaning my dishes/ sweeping the floor/ making dinner.
B: That is woman’s work. You should get a wife.
Me: Haha.
B: Do you have a wife?
Me: No. I’m only 24 years old. Besides, if I had a wife, do you think she’d let me leave her and come here?
B: That is plenty old enough. This is women’s work.
Me: In America, men and women often share household duties. A man who knows his way around the kitchen is thought to be sensitive. Women like that in a man.
B: (Puzzled look…so much for cross-cultural exchanges.) I will find you a wife.
Me: No really…
B: Here is my daughter. She will be your wife.
Me: Thank you. But she is much too young.
B: She is a strong woman.
Me: She looks like she’s 12 years old.
B: She has curved feet. (Good luck in Burkina.)
Me: Really, thank you, but…
B: You need a wife.

***

We have a medical clinic in town. I haven’t figured out what services they offer yet, but I talked to one of the nurses the other day…

Nurse: Are you French?
Me: No. I’m American.
Nurse: But you speak French.
Me: A little. I’m going to be a teacher at the middle school here.
Nurse: Ah, you will teach French?
Me: (Are you joking? Is this place really in bad enough shape that I could teach French?) No…
Nurse: English then.
Me: Actually I’m going to teach math.
Nurse: You know math?
Me: Yes. I studied math and biology at university in America.
Nurse: But how are you going to teach? You don’t speak French.
Me: But I’m speaking French right now…and didn’t you just tell me I should teach French?
Nurse: The students won’t understand you.
Me: …grr…

***

Me: Hello, I’d like a ticket for the 9:30 bus.
Worker: There is no bus today.
Me: Yesterday you said there would be a bus.
W: There was a bus yesterday. Today the drivers are on strike.
Me: Oh. (Somewhat disappointed.) Will there be a bus tomorrow?
W: (Blank stare.)
Old Man: You should come back this afternoon. There will be a bus at 2:30.
Me: Thank you. Do you work here? (What is this? The drivers go on a morning strike so they can have mimosas and a casual brunch in bed?)
OM: (Blank stare.)
Me: (to worker) So if I come back this afternoon there might be a bus?
W: (Already resumed sleeping.)

…4 hours later

Me: Hello is there a bus this afternoon?
W: (Obviously irked that I woke her.) The drivers are on strike today.
Me: Oh. Are all the drivers on strike, or is there another company I can try? I really need to get home today.
W: There are no buses today.

(Across the street at a different company.)

Me: Hello. Do you have any buses this afternoon?
W: Yes. It leaves right away.
Me: (Kiss of death.) Great.

Fifteen minutes later the bus pulls up. Except it’s really a van. Boarding the bus I notice that you can see the engine through the floorboards. There is a spare can of gas behind the driver’s seat. The ceiling is held up by three poles, and the wall paneling is held together with duct tape…at least it was ten years ago. Ten minutes later, still at the garage, the bus shakes and dies.

***

There’s no garbage service in Burkina. Actually there’s a noticeable lack of many public services- garbage, water, electricity, health care, sewage…- so people burn their trash. I had my first garbage fire last week.

Neighbor: What is that?
Me: Garbage.
N: What are you going to do with it?
Me: Burn it. Isn’t that what people do here?
N: Wait. (Calls over another neighbor.) We will help. (Dumps garbage into the yard.)
Me: Well thank you.
N: The kids like to play with these (tin cans) and these (plastic bottles). I could use this (old magazine, faded and in English).
Me: (But you don’t speak Engl…whatever.)
N: Here, take these (hands some torn plastic report binders to her kid, whose primary clothing is a “new” ratty headband I found in the bottom of one of the canteens in my house).
Me: (I guess I didn’t do that good of a job sorting through the garbage to save useful items. At least the things will be reused. This is nice: inhaling fumes from burning plastic, keeping the goat out of the “not-yet-burned” pile. The kid next door is taking a bath in the front yard and blowing bubbles in my old tomato past can. Something tells me I’m not in Kansas anymore.)

Let There be Light

My big news this week is that I now have electricity in my house! It’s a great convenience, but before you get too jealous of my luxurious life, let me explain.

Envious of my neighbor’s well-lit porch, I mentioned to him that I was interested in getting power installed in my house. He brought me over to the hardware store, which is run by a man and his one or two assistants (you never can tell around here). The store itself shares a building with one of the tele-centers in town and is a rectangle maybe twenty feet long and half as wide. Some pipes lie on the floor, and a shelf holding light bulbs, wire, and miscellaneous tools runs along one wall. Everything is covered with the signature layer of dust that inevitably accumulates on any item in this country not used for more than ten minutes.

I explained what I wanted to the electrician, and he showed me plans he had made for another customer. It all looked great except for the price tag- the equivalent of $500, or two month’s salary. A little pricey. I told him what I was willing to pay, and together we whittled down the existing plans, leaving me with a basic but extremely sufficient setup. At the end of an hour, I walked away with a 15W solar panel, a 12V car battery, 20 meters of wire, two fluorescent light bulbs, a wall outlet, and a light switch.

To my slight surprise the electrician showed up at my house the next morning only a couple of hours later than scheduled. You don’t get that punctuality in the States. Of course I was probably his biggest customer of the week, if not the month; very few homes in village can afford even the basic setup that I bought. The first thing he did was raid the garbage fire pit for a nice piece of charred ash. He used this to mark an outline of his plan onto my wall. No measuring tape. No level. No ruler. Just his eyeball. My grandfather, Mr. Fixer-Upper, would have laughed out loud if he had seen this inaccuracy.

With the plans etched in the wall, he went to town…with an axe! He chopped away at the cement layer of my wall creating a trough a couple inches wide and about half as deep. It reached down to the underlying mud brick and ran the height of one wall, along its base, around the corner, and up the next wall. He widened and deepened the trough about halfway up the first wall and at its top and bottom; these spots are where he would later install the light switch and wall plug, and where he would drill a hole through the wall so I could have a light outside. After laying the wire in the trough and cutting it to size, he cemented it all in place, filling in the trough and approximately smoothing the surface by hand. Again, no tools except for a wire cutter.

By this point the job was basically done. His assistant mounted two fluorescent light bulbs- one above my stove and one on the porch- and they added the cover for the wall socket and light switch. All said and done, it was pretty cool. All I had to do to get power was hook up the car battery to the wires that run straight out of the wall (right through the cement…no fancy cover or anything). When the battery runs out of juice, I hook it up to the solar panel and harness the sun’s energy from my front yard. The setup is a bit crude, and now I have the remnants of the trough to paint, but hey, it works! I’ve been using the light for an hour or two for over a week now and haven’t had to recharge the battery yet.

Does this mean you can come over, eat microwave nachos, drink a cold margarita from my blender, and watch a movie in surround sound? Not exactly. All those fancy appliances would drain my battery faster than you can say “Ouagadougou”. What it does mean is that I can make dinner (usually rice or pasta), read a book, and see my guitar music after watching the sunset. However, despite having access to this cutting-edge technology, my favorite nighttime activity is still sitting on my front porch and admiring the stars. I have yet to see a movie or read a book that equals the magnificence and splendor of Nature’s nightly feature.

Notes from Africa

The days that followed were considerably more positive than that first afternoon. There have been some rough moments, but on the whole, things are looking good as I adjust to life in my new ‘hood.

My house is mostly cleaned out. I’ve converted the second bedroom into a yoga/meditation/music studio, and the living room/kitchen is going for the “beach house without the water” look. As the fourth volunteer to live in my house, I’ve inherited a lot of crap, some useful, and some useless. Tops on the list include old lesson plans, a Peace Corps health manual from 2005, about 30 novels, and a slightly used tent. I also have a ton of my village’s famous pottery. The only thing I don’t have yet is electricity. After sunset I usually play the guitar in the dark before going to bed around 8 or 8:30. I don’t think I went to bed that early when I was five years old, but that’s life in Burkina.

It’s rained everyday except one that I’ve been in village. Most of the time this keeps the temperature pleasantly in the mid-70’s. I don’t know if this is a bad omen for what awaits me in the hot season, but the Burkinabe are now wearing winter coats. Yikes! They make San Diegans look tough. The rain has also allowed me to make an important discovery about my new house: the floor isn’t level. Usually the storms come from the south, the back of the house, so this isn’t a problem. One day, however, we got a storm from the front of the house, and the rain blew right in under my front door. It collected in a nice little…large actually puddle across the living room from the front door. Fortunately the living room is also the garage, so it wasn’t too tough to sweep the water out again.

The other unfortunate affect of the rain is the toll it takes on the roads. The nearest paved road is about 100km away, and all the dirt roads have been transformed into Swiss cheese. Despite this, I’ve taken several bike rides to neighboring villages. Between potholes, I’ve managed to make several observations. One, there are a lot of potholes. Two, add a little water and the Burkinabe countryside is actually quite beautiful. Three, kids are given a lot of responsibility here. It’s not unusual to have to steer around a herd of cattle being led to graze by a set of three year olds. Four, people walk a long ways to get to market. Check that, women and girls walk a longs ways to get to market; men and boys ride bikes, motos, or donkey carts. Not only do they walk it, but the women carry all their goods to sell on their heads.

Most days, town is pretty quiet. The bus stop on the main road sees four buses a day, two in each direction. We have a buvette and one or two restaurants. We also have a medical clinic which employs a doctor and nurse. The only person over there the day I stopped by was the mayor’s daughter and a friend, just hanging out. Town comes alive on market days though. Two big trucks bring in goods from the nearest big city. You can find everything from eating utensils to plastic sandals. Also: Britney Spears t-shirts and “real” Rolexes. Villagers bring in their crops, and there’s a huge meat section. With all the people and goods crowded into a small area in the center of town, sanitation is largely ignored. I walked by a cow head hanging out on the ground in front of the butcher’s stand.

All in all, life isn’t too bad out here. Since school hasn’t started yet, I have very little to do. Most days I take a bike ride, go for a walk around town, and do a lot of reading. There’s also the humorous half conversation with the servant/daughter of the family next door. She speaks less French than I do. There’s also plenty of time to watch the endless parade of animals that comes through my yard: cows, goats, pigs, sheep, chickens, roosters, dogs, cats, donkeys…As long as they don’t poo on my porch, I’m happy.