it's been a long time

It's been a long time

So haven't blogged in a while, so much has happened and I haven't had the internet in a while, thought it would be a good idea to take a break.

Well, what do you people who read my bog want to hear? A day in the life? Ok, take today for example...

Couldn't sleep last night because it was too hot. Kept getting up and moving around because that was the only way to get some air movement around my body. Woke up late, took a bucket bath, I've been letting my leg hair grow out, it's just too much water and too much work to shave and it's worse to have stubble than long hair. During the winter in the states, I shave my legs like once a week or every couple of days, but that's only because no one sees my legs...

Anyhow, my friend Pascaline said I got a belly after I came back from Ouaga so I took a walk this morning instead of riding my bike to get some pintard eggs and bread for breakfast.

Let me take this opportunity to discuss eggs in this country. The Mossi people and Burkinabe in general (with the exception of the Peulh (pronounced Puul)) people have decided that drinking milk from animals besides humans is silly and weird, and if you give your children eggs they will grow up to be thieves. Therefore the availability of one of my major food groups is little to none. However when Europeans came here they were like "milk, butter, eggs, yogurt, and cheese is delicious and we'll eat it even if you don't" so there is SOME to be found, however, suggest to a Burkinabe and you can milk a goat or eat yogurt that isn't flavored with sugar and vanilla they'll look at you like you've grown and extra head and you are HILARIOUS.

This brings me to pintard eggs or guinea fowl eggs. Chickens in this country generally are underfed and when they do eat, they mostly eat garbage. They smell bad, they are plucked of most of their feathers while still alive (or just loose feathers due to malnutrition, whose to say?) So free range in this country means free to range the piles of garbage and toxic waste that litters the street, free to starve and eat plastic bags and free to mate with whichever annoying ass rooster they come across. The result is an egg, always fertilized (I've heard stories of volunteers cracking and eggs and out comes a fully formed chick) with a light yellow yolk, that may or may not be rotten. Because I have never seen an egg refrigerated in this country. Not one time.

Anyhow, pintards are stupider than chickens, but at least their yolks are a healthy orange and they are typically much fresher than any chicken egg.

So after a breakfast of chili ginger omelet with tomatoes and onions, I cleaned up my house, pulled my laundry off the wall of my courtyard and generally hung out / hid in my house for the better part of the day. Today is marche day, happens every three days here in Bousse. It generally means that there are a wider variety of things to buy than on a general day and everyone comes out to say hello to the neighbors and the people who chill at the marche. Today was too hot and too bright to leave my house. I did some yoga for a bit while listening to an LSE (London school of economics) podcast about the role of public spaces and power in relation to the Arab spring.

Then I left my house because I was feeling guilty for willfully ignoring my community, so I took another walk down to the welder's shop. In any given village you will find someone who is a carpenter and at least a couple of welders. You can tell these people by the piles of scrap metal and puddles of grease in front of their shops.

I had given a drawing to the owner of one of these aforementioned establishments to build me a stand for a gravity feed faucet to put next to my latrine so that I might feel slightly more compelled to wash my hands after I leave my bodily waste in a hole in the ground. (Did I win the prize for the longest run-on sentence? You be the judge!)

And he had built the stand. All that was left was to find a bucket and attach a faucet and I was in business. That process only took 2 hours and me turning down only one offer of marriage. So I would consider that a success!! So now I have a model to bring to school, with a complete price listing of materials and labor to start a hand washing station project at my high school!

In west africa they say (inFrench) bit by bit, it will come, and every step forward feels like such a great success that I feel compelled to blog about it. But I don't just see this as a progression, but also it wasn't a regression. Because, sometimes, despite my best efforts I go backwards, I miss appointments and opportunities, sometimes I ask for things and I get the wrong thing, or I tell a taxi driver to take me one place and they take me somewhere else because they think they know better....so when I can order something complex, communicate clearly and I get something close to what I was asking for (close enough is fucking awesome! No such thing as exact, but who's keeping track anyway?) It really makes my day.

Cheers to all you first worlders out there, don't forget to enjoy the little success and I'll keep posting!

a DIY 10 step guide to the peace corps training experience

Don't know if this has been done before, but here it is anyhow...

How to have a peace corps adventure while still in the states...

For those who are curious about the day to day, people who wanted to join but couldn't go, or those who just want to have "the experience" the following is a do-it-yourself peace corps training guide.

1. Move in with any random family in a small town that someone chooses for you. Make sure that this family is given some basic confusing instructions how to feed you, treat you and expect you to behave.

2. Do not buy ANYTHING for 3 months besides lunch and the occasional piece of fruit.

3. Charge everything electronic you have at a training center one thing at a time..do not for get to bring, a) adapter b) corresponding cord c) device needing to be charged

4. Set an alarm with animal noises to go off at random intervals during the night, increasing frequency as dawn approaches, be sure to include, donkey, goat, sheep, cow, and many, many roosters (sick roosters, not healthy ones)

5. Wear the same pair of sandals for 3 months, divide your clothes in half, then half again, not necessarily excluding everything you like, but anything ripped, stained, or revealing

6. Eat with randomly chosen host family every night and morning (remember you can only purchase lunch) hope the food made for you doesn't make you sick, or resemble snot, or contain entrails, genitals or discernible craniums.

7. For go all kinds of tea and coffee beside Lipton, and Nescafe instant. Do not break this rule.

8. Participate in development training and learn a language only 1-2 million people speak with 40-60 strangers experiencing exactly the same culture shock and health issues as you, make sure every room is 80 degrees or warmer with 50% humidity. Breezes are infrequently allowed.

9. Ask your family for care packages that take 6-8 weeks to arrive

10. Don't forget malaria profilaxis! Take once a week, or everyday depending on prescription, take with food as horrible indigestion and acid reflex is common.

Hope you enjoy! Don't forget to smile, greet strangers like you know them and ask how everyone is doing!

It's donkey for dinner

It"s donkey for dinner

So, I'm sitting here with my host family, just kicking it. There are 4-5 children at any given time around here, and 3-4 adults and from time to time Anicet stops by and we talk about phones. He's kind of obsessed with "portables" as they call them here in Burkina.

There are two little kids cutting pieces of doneky meat with a very dull knife, one of the kids hold the piece of meat while the other one saws at it and basically pulls it apart.

I'm very intrigued to try donkey meat, haven't yet had it here. It's also benga for dinner with sauce, benga is this delicious combination of black eyes peas and rice, the sauce is basically just oil with onions fried in it and pieces of meat.

I haven't had much for lunch and I'm really looking forward to dinner tonight.

Did laundry today, the girls never let me do my own laundry, they tolerate me helping, but mostly they just take the soggy clothes out of my hand and wait patiently for me to stop "helping" I don't stop helping. I do try to stay out of their way when they're on a "wash jeanine's clothes for her" rampage, however.

I spent my evening reading the science text book that I borrowed from training with my little sister. She wants so badly to learn, that she is willing to read to a nassara, out of a text book that has no pictures things she barely understands for hours on end if I let her.

I am almost 27 years old and I am helping a girl who's mother cannot read or write, make it in school. I cannot even begin to appreciate that right now. I am so happy to deal with every small thing that makes me uncomfortable because this one little girl is trying so hard to make it, and I can help her. I love that!

I have internet!

Yay! after weeks of trying and the support of both my dad and a few Burkinabe have internet on my phone! I could not have done it with out the help of a few dfferent people, but in the end it was me who put it all together and made it happen, a perfect parible for community based development, combining existing skill and knowledge, to create new resources and pools of information!

Yay! what can I say about my village? it is hot, and everyone is praying for the rain. no rain, no food. that's how is.

I can hear the sound of the wind in the trees, motos and children, occasionally interrupted by the intermittent screams of a donkey, they sound like dinosaurs...it's kind of cool, but also kind of upsetting.

Tomorrow, I have the day off, promised the kids that I would play soccar with them! night!

You're Never Fully Prepared

You're never fully prepared to ever make a life change that takes you away from your family and friends, half way across the world. You're never fully prepared for the moment of realization that you are not the strong, independent person you thought you were. You're never fully prepared to take a jump, off a rock, high above a mountain creek into, what looks like a maybe deep-enough pool below. You're never fully prepared but you go anyway, you get on that plane, you stand in those lines and you tell yourself that everything is fine. everything that you forgot, you don't need, all the things left undone can wait and all the things left unsaid can still be said you jump off that rock, even if it takes you 45 minutes to work up the nerve, and even if 10 minutes before you were mocking the person who went before you for having like 6 vaginas for not jumping immediately damn I'm poetic when I'm scared out of my natural self! I apologize to all the people who read this, I really am insufferable. Enjoy

Other resources

Hey all, so as not to bore you with only one perspective of this amazing adventure, I am posting a link to my bestie peace corps, co-adventurer Nata, enjoy! http://burkinata.wordpress.com/ she's hilarious and a much better writer than I.

first night in Africa

This is my first night in Africa! Oh my god that was such a long journey! I have never had my feet swell this much ever, in. my life, I think I'm qualified to have cankles at this point! Totally gross. After arriving at the airport, and like a champion, not having my yellow card with me, we were taken through Ouagadougou to our hotel. This city is so exciting! Everywhere there are people on the street, vendors, beautiful ladies riding motos in a dress and heels, no helmet, it made me think of Eddie Izard, "Italians aren't fascists! they are happy and love life and ride scooters with no helmets.....Ciao!" At the hotel were were introduced to our medical team, current volunteers and Jeff, the money man. Shannon, the lady that met us at the gate is absolutely a character. she's definitely a lady in charge! Dnner was awesome, a rice dish, with, what looked like goat meat, carrots, peppers and cabbage, all served with this proper spicy sauce on the. side that was delicious! A lemon/lime sorbet finished us off and it was off to bed. I took my first anti-malarial pill tonight, methyl quinine, It's a once a week dealy, thank god I didn't get the one to take daily. It's supposed to maybe give me weird dreams, I'll write about them in the morning if I have any? Anyway, as I was falling asleep in 90 degree weather, with what must have been at least 70% humidity, I was thinking to myself, yes, I am committing to 27 months of this weather, yeas, I am committing myself to being sticky and sweaty and less than optimally comfortable with really no way to make it nicer for myself for 27 months....ok, bring it on! Anyway I'm proper fucked out, traveling for 24 hours will do that to you! Oh and for future reference, Air Brussels has amazing food! delicious curry! So tasty! All right, good night, until next time.

Staging

Well, here it is, I've completed the second leg of this journey, just getting to Philly was hard enough with luggage that roughly equaled my weight, lugging it the 446 feet from the train station to the hotel left me wondering what the feazy did I pack that weighted so goddamned much? Anyhow after the luggage it was time to find some food. Natalya, Ashley and I all went on a mission to find some food. Malaysian sounded like something that would be a good thing, Natalya was really just looking for a glass of sweetened condensed milk to drink! Anyway had my first stress response to eating food, and cuddled into bed to try and fall asleep after all the excitement! Off to NYC tomorrow! Sooooo excited!