Thank you!

I just received word from the Peace Corps that our PCPP project at the elementary school has been completely funded. Thank you so much to those who donated! I called the Headmaster last night, and he was very excited. We’re (hopefully) going to start gathering materials and (really hopefully…but doubtfully) building next week. I’ll keep you posted as we go.

I was over at the school the other day, and we have Moringa! We planted about 175 trees, and I’d say about two-thirds of them have already germinated. We planted the trees in water sachets (bags…many drinks come in small plastic bags bags here. You bite off a corner and enjoy!) where they’ll grow for a couple of months. This process is called creating a pépinière (or nursery in English). The students have been watering the plants each morning for the past couple of weeks, and we now have trees! Sometime this summer, when the trees are 30-40 cm tall, we’ll take them out of the bags and plant them in the ground.

The other big news in village is actually pretty big. Our village soccer team recently won the provincial soccer tournament in Dedougou, the provincial capital! The day of the match practically the whole village piled into a huge camion for the short trip to Dedougou. Throughout the match the Dedougou city slickers were ratting on our team for being too villageois to beat them. It was very much a city kid vs country bumpkin atmosphere…until we kicked their butts. 2-0. No questions. Let the partying begin! Well, kind of. Much to my surprise there wasn’t much of a party that night in village. Groups of small children ran around the whole night screaming “WE WON! WE WON!” but everyone else was pretty subdued. The next morning there was a small ceremony at the soccer field in village to present the trophy and prizes to the village elders and respected adults, each of whom gave a speach thanking the team members. See the pictures! The real party was the following weekend. The team members threw the village a dance, and what a good time that was! Everyone stayed up until 3am dancing at one of the bar/restaurants in town. Good times! And luckily for the kids, staying up late is no longer a problem because…

School is over! Though the “last day of school” date changed three times (not kidding) in the month of May, we eventually made it to the end of the school year. We “didn’t have time” for final exams this year, so I gave my last tests last week, and when I get back to village I just have to calculate the students’ cumulative GPA. It was a great school year, and it would have been really hard to say good-bye to the kids…except that I’ve decided to come back! I’ve talked to the Peace Corps and with my school, and I’ve decided to remain in village and teach for one more school year. I’ll be spending most of my summer training the new group of volunteers who arrive next month, travelling around Burkina saying good-bye to my friends who are COSing (Close of Service) this summer, and hopefully making a trip to Morocco and America. Then I’ll be back in village for the start of the school year in October! I’m really excited to be staying. Who knew I’d love teaching this much!? Or living without electricity and running water. Haha.

Moringa is in the Bag

Hey everyone,

I don’t have much time today, but I wanted to let you all know that our first set of trees is planted and eagerly awaiting the summer rains. We planted about 200 Moringa trees last weekend, and we’re all very excited. Moringa is a fantastically nutritious tree that grows really well in our climate. The leaves can be ground up and put in sauces, and the seeds can even be used to purify water. Check out our pictures from the morning.

We’re still a few dollars short of our fund raising target, so an extra help you could give us is much appreciated. Trees are easy and (nearly) free, but construction materials and labor are not. Please donate here. Thank you!

Support my Village Elementary School

Over the past couple of months I have been working with the staff at one of the elementary schools in my village. We have designed a project that will start a school garden, build a kitchen for the school lunch program, and dig a staff latrine. We need your help to make sure the project goes as planned. Please donate here. All donations can be made online through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, and every penny of your donation will be put towards our project. Thank you for your help!

We began the first phase of the project, the planting our garden, last Saturday. Check out the pictures! The 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade boys spent a couple of hours one morning softening up the ground with their axes and hoes. We haven’t had rain since October, so the ground was hard as a rock, and the kids did a lot of work. Then they hauled ten wheelbarrows full of dirt, sand and manure to the garden to mix and water. We’ll let it sit for a couple of weeks so it can begin to break down. As soon as it’s ready, we’re going to start planting trees! Our first trees are going to be Moringa, an extremely versatile tree that is packed full of nutrients and grows well in our climate. The leaves will make great additions to rice sauces, and the seeds can even be used to purify water.

Later this month we will start construction of the kitchen building and latrine. The kitchen will have enough space for several women to prepare food, and since it is on the school property, it will be an easily-accessible place to prepare school lunches. It will also have a roof to protect the women from the sun and dust, and a door to make sure the goats don’t eat the lunches. And the staff latrine, your basic hole-in-the-ground, will be a much-needed addition to the school grounds, saving the staff trips to neighbors’ houses to use the facilities.

The school staff and students are very excited about the garden and kitchen in particular, and everyone is eager to get started. Now all we need is a little financial help to buy construction materials and seeds. Please donate here. We appreciate anything you can give, and remember, every penny of your donation will go towards our project. Thank you! Merci! And I ni che!

A Camel Comes to Visit

Last weekend I was sitting minding my own business on my front porch. I had gotten a little behind in my lesson preparations, and as it was already late Sunday afternoon and I had nothing prepared for Monday morning, I admit I was a bit…focused on my work. And that probably explains my delayed reaction as a mob of swarming children stampeded into my courtyard. (I’m not kidding. There were probably 50 of them.)

My first thought admittedly was, “Great. What do they want? And why are there so many of them?” I’m accustomed to having numerous small children come to stare at me, but usually they try to sneak into the courtyard (as if a group five year-olds can sneak anywhere) and peek over my wall to stare at me and ask for candy. But as my gaze rose, my jaw dropped, and I watched as a man’s head bobbed up and down above my courtyard wall. He slowly made his way to the gate, moving in a very jerky manner that at first made me think he was on stilts. Nope. He got to the gate and I immediately saw that he was sitting atop a gigantic camel. He smiled and waved at me, then eased the camel through the gate and rode right up to my porch. I was dumbfounded. And for a second I didn’t think he was going to stop. My thoughts sounded like a stuttering adolescent Romeo: “Uh, pbt, ah, what do I do with a camel on my porch?” I froze. Luckily he stopped at the porch step, and my 8 year-old neighbor came running up.

“Monsieur, he’s travelling through town and wants you to take a picture.” When a man rides into your courtyard on a camel asking for a picture, you oblige. I ran into the house, and was shocked again when I came back out. The camel that had been enormous moments ago was now kneeling with his head about level with mine. I took a few pictures of the man and his camel, then, without a word, he got back on, stuck out his hand for a tip, and was gone. Equally amazingly, the children had found the one thing in village more interesting than a goofy white person, and they followed the camel (which we don’t see very often that far south) out the gate.

I talked to my neighbor a few minutes later. Apparently the man, a member of the Tuareg tribe that lives in the Sahelian north of Burkina, was travelling through town, probably on his way south to Cote d’Ivoire. Someone must have told him that there was a tobaboo (the Djioula word meaning “stranger”, “foreigner”…or “white person”) in village who would love to take his picture. So he came to visit. And I took his picture.

Almost two years in Burkina, and it’s still bringing me surprises. Go figure!

Word from the Village

Pictures from my family’s visit!

Second, a BIG shout out to Ms. King’s 6th graders in the Bay Area! I received your letters yesterday and am going to share them with my students this week. They will be thrilled. Thank you so much!

Life has been good lately. My family came to visit right after Christmas, and we had a great time together. We got hassled in the markets, biked out to the waterfalls in Banfora, and were celebrities in village. Though we differed on temperature comfort levels (I was freezing in the mornings and during our afternoon dips in the pool; they were unpleasantly hot in the mid-afternoon), I think they had a good time. In village we got to visit my school and told my students all about life in America. In return, students and other friends were at my house at just about every day-lit moment to talk with my family. They took us on a tour of the pottery making boutiques, showed us around the elementary schools, and even gave us front row seats during my village’s New Years celebration. They were incredibly kind and generous, sharing food and souvenirs with my family. Though the latrines and bucket baths took a little getting used to, I think they secretely loved village. My students tried their hardest to convince Nick to replace me when my time is up. We’ll see…

School has been going well this trimester. Mornings are so cold (OK, 72 degrees) that students come in bundled under three or four shirts and complain when I tell them to open the windows or door so that they can see the blackboard. (I must admit I shiver a little too; my last full Minnesota winter seems a long time ago.) Lately, though, the heat has returned, and by the time the afternoon class rolls around, students are passing water bottles around to try to stay cool (temperatures over 100 degrees). And we’re not yet to the hot season. Our school soccer season has started, and my class of 7th graders almost beat the ninth graders a couple of weeks ago. It looks like we’re going to have a great team this year!

I’m in Ouaga this weekend for a softball tournament with the American Embassy. We’ve had two games so far…and played well both times! Haha. It’s been a lot of fun, though I must say it’s been weird being around so many Americans the past two days.

I’ve got to run, but I should be at a computer again soon. Happy New Year to all!

Arly National Park

See the pictures!

Over the first part of our trimester break two friends and I went on a bike trip to and through Arly National Park, in the South of Burkina. We spent three days in the bush, saw some neat wild animals, and did a lot of biking. A lot of biking. Because no Burkina trip is complete without a little randomness, we also were given wine by a regional forester from Ouaga, learned why the 1969 moon landing was staged in Nevada, and met up with (though were not allowed to socialize with) rich Europeans vacationing and paying up to $10000 to hunt Burkina’s big game.

Our trip started with a Christmas celebration in Caleb’s village, east of Fada. We had a nice dinner of guinea fowl, pasta, rice, and watermelon with his family, and folded paper airplanes with his little neighbors. Around dusk the party started to get going at the church. They had a drum set set-up outside, and people were dancing a bit and mingling. A few hours later they started a movie about Jesus; the movie was European-made, but dubbed over in Gourmanche, the language spoken in Caleb’s village. We had no idea what was going on, but we did get to see Jesus raise a girl from the dead and fill the fishermen’s nets with fish. Go Jesus! We hung around after the movie waiting for the dancing to start, but when nothing had happened by 11:30, we decided to go to bed.

The next day we took transport east and south from Caleb’s village to Diapaga, the last large town before hitting the national parks system. Nothing too exciting about transport- only broke down twice, lost one tire, two babies threw up, another kid screamed the whole time. But we made it. Saturday morning we took off on our bikes into the bush. We biked about 75km past very small villages, some gorgeous cliffs, and lots of sand. At the entrance to Arly National Park, there’s a hunting lodge, and we stopped there for lunch. The place was gorgeous- pool, bar, restaurant, bungalows (see picture)- and after our initial shock wore off, we started to feel a little out of place. Sure enough just after we finished eating, “the clients” showed up in their 4×4’s with three suitcases a piece and several guns. As we were (quite literally) shuffled off to the side by the staff, we quickly decided that this place was out of our price range for the night. We asked the staff if there was somewhere else to stay, and they kind of laughed at us as they told us we could continue 15km into the park and try to stay with the forester. So we did.

We figured that the forester’s would be located at a village of some type, and since we had camping gear, we weren’t too concerned. Well, we got to our “village” to find that it was literally one family plus the forester. There was an old abandoned hotel that the family worked to keep in minimum (and I do mean minimum) inhabiting condition, and that was it. The hotel was built in the 1950’s and had apparently been THE spot for hunters from around West Africa and Europe; there was a pool, dance floor, bar…it clearly used to be gorgeous. Due to new hunting laws however, the big game hunters are now staying elsewhere, and the hotel is slightly rundown. Soon after “checking in” to our room, we went over to the forester’s to find some dinner. As luck would have it, the Park Forester was hosting a regional higher-up in the Forestry Department that night. And we were invited! While we waited for dinner to be prepared, Peter, the man from the Forestry Dept, busted out his laptop and showed us a movie entitled “Why No One Has Ever Been to the Moon”. Conspiracy theory and that stuff. I must say, the flag blowing in the atmosphere-less environment is pretty convincing. But I digress. Dinner included watermelon and wine. Ah, life with the Forestry Department.

Sunday morning we got up crazy early and went on a guided bike tour of Arly. We saw some baboons, gazelles, elephants, deer-type animals, and hippos. We were kind of hoping to see lions, but we were kind of glad we didn’t get eaten by lions. (Despite numerous reassurances that “they won’t attack you if you don’t attack them”, we were a little scared.) We also got to visit a fishing village where they smoke their catches, then ship them off to Ouaga. Talk about living in the middle of nowhere. This village was probably 15km from the place we stayed, which was itself not really a village. The nearest primary school was probably 60km away. After our bike excursion in the morning, we were pretty exhausted, so we decided to take Peter up on his offer of a ride to the next town. We loaded up in his pick-up, and set off. When we got to the campgrounds, we quickly realized that it was another place for high-paying European tourists, and once again we were not quite in our element. Luckily the manager was very nice and let us set up our tents in the back by the staff quarters.

I must say, I believe we had it better that night. We spent the night trading card games with the staff and trying to figure out magic tricks. For those of you who have never played cards with Burkinabe before, you’re in for a treat. The suits are called tomatoes, peanuts, diamonds, and spades. They play a game sort of like “Uno”, but the rules seem to change each hand. We also watched them cut up one of the water buffalo that had been killed that day. After quartering it, it still took two men to carry over a single leg to the butcher’s table. Then they went at it with knives, hatchets, and axes. It seriously sounded like they were trying to chop up a piece of rock, the bones were that hard. While watching them work, we got the inside story on the hunting trips: rich people pay to come to Burkina to kill a certain type of animal; they stay for a couple of weeks and almost always get their kill. Once the animals are killed, the heads go home to Europe, the neck meat goes to the staff, one quarter goes to the government, one quarter to the hunters, and the other half goes to the villagers. The villagers sell the meat and use the money to buy communal things like water pumps and schools. This made us feel much better about their trips- at first we had though they were just coming to Burkina to exploit the land, people, and animals. And though the rich tourists refused to even return our greetings, at least they were doing something for the people here.

Monday morning we said goodbye to our lodge staff friends, and took off by bike on the last 40km of our trip. It was a pretty easy day since the last 15km was on a paved road, but I was still exhausted as we reached Pama. Luckily there was a bush taxi ready to go, so we got on and next thing we know (OK, lots of stops, about ten 100kg bags of beans…but no breakdowns!), we were 100km north in the capital city of Fada. Ah civilization.

And now I must run. I’m meeting Mom, Dad, Nick and Chelsea at the airport in just a couple of hours! I can’t wait to see them! Happy New Year to all!

Tobaskie (Eid ul-Adha) in Village

Last Monday was the Muslim holiday Eid ul-Adha; this is the Muslim holiday of sacrifice, celebrated in honor of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to show his loyalty to God. What this translates to in village is eating. A lot of eating sheep.

I started the day off at one of my colleague’s house. I got over there around 8:30, and hung out with his family for a while. Then everyone got all dressed up in their celebration garb: long, flowing outfits for both the men and women. Once we were all ready and pictures had been taken, we went over to the morning prayer session. Yup, I prayed with the Muslims. Prayers are normally held in the mosque, but because just about everyone in village shows up for special occasions, this morning the prayers were at the big soccer field across from the school. We walked over there, and my colleague set out the prayer shawl for the two of us, continuing one of many lines of people set up to pray facing Mecca in the East. We had arrived fairly early, so we sat for a while on our shawl, chatting with people and listening to the Arabic music. They had one megaphone set up, and music played for about an hour before the Imam arrived. Not surprisingly, he arrived in typical Burkinabe style- in the front seat of the ‘Blue Express’ village bush taxi. (That’s the newest addition to our bush taxi fleet…or it may just be newly painted.) I had to chuckle a bit when they opened the back door and 25 of the Imam’s closest friends piled out. The prayer itself lasted only about 15 mintues. The Imam spoke for a bit, all in Arabic, then we all kneeled to pray. I had been nervous that I’d feel out of place or not know what to do, but I didn’t feel any more neon than I do any other time in village, and I don’t think I screwed anything up religiously. I have to admit, it was very peaceful and meditative. I couldn’t help but thinking how wrong so many people are to be scared of the Islamic religion.

After the prayers were done the Imam was presented with a sheep, which he ceremonially slaughtered, as is tradition. I couldn’t see anything, so no video this time. Sorry Amy. Also during this time, the Koranic school boys roamed throughout the crowd asking for donations. These are usually kids whose parents can’t afford to send them to (the supposedly free) public schools, so they attend the Koranic schools at the mosque instead. They learn about Islam and the Koran, but have no one to provide food for them. So they ask for donations; they walk around with tomato paste cans and take what people offer, usually giving you a quick blessing and thank you in return. I think this was the “asking for money” portion of the prayer service, because many women with young children walked around the crowd and asked for money and or food as well. Also, a photographer roamed throughout the crowd taking photos for the mosque’s collection.

After prayers we went back to my colleague’s house where he killed not one, but two sheep. I hung out with his kids for awhile, teaching his youngest daughter (about 3 years old) English. Her older brothers have just started to learn English in school this year, and she is eager to learn as well. We also chased chickens away from the sheep carcasses and grilled the heads for eating the next day. After a couple of hours, my colleague brought out he first round- liver! He and I shared this while his wife continued to prepare the feast. A little later my other colleagues came over, and we all ate the rest of the sheep together. Good stuff. Then we went over to the school headmaster’s house…and ate again. This time sheep and POPCORN! Yup, apparently popcorn is one of the special holiday foods. Then we went over to another one of my colleagues houses. And ate yet again. Chicken this time. All three meals were delicious, and I could barely walk afterwards. Key word: barely. We then went to one of the village bars where all the non-Muslims and less strict Muslims continued the festivities. When I got home my neighbors shared with me some of their feast as well. Yum yum!

Lesson learned: holidays mean lots of food. Really, it’s kind of like Thanksgiving. In Arabic.