Work and Alimata

July 12^th

Apparently all I needed to do before now to ingratiate myself with my staff was to do just this, being somewhat more active in helping them with their work. I'm only weighing women and then writing down the observations that Sali calls out to me from the other side of the curtain in the exam room, but my major seemed quite impressed when Sali told him that I now know what medications a woman is going to be given based on the size of her uterus. There were quite a lot of women and we got started late because Sali was attending a birth and I was speaking with Abdoulye (the owner of my house who helped me remove all my weeds), so we didn't finish until nearly 1pm but we did manage to see all the women who had been waiting. On a tangent from the morning, I wasn't sure about proper protocol for thanking the owner of the house you're renting when he does your yard work for you, but he refused all offers of coffee, tea, breakfast, and only used the water I left for him to wash his hands when he was finished. Hmm. Still, he was very nice. He said a woman asked if she could plant peanuts in the plot of land next to my house, and I said that would be just lovely.

Instead of going home and taking a nap, I headed to the marche, but got waylaid talking to Alimata for an hour and decided that I didn't really need onions that badly so I headed home with my samsa and galettes. I'd missed talking to her – it was really nice, especially the Moore/Francais mix that lets me try and pick up new words a little easier. We talked about what I did in the US (didn't work, just was with family), Lauren's visit (her Moore was very impressive), my eating habits (I've gotten skinny and should never travel again – I need to stay in village and get fat and strong so I can find a husband – have some more galettes), and her family (her daughter is sick, they just started planting a few weeks ago but it hasn't rained in 4 days and everyone is a little worried).

Visit with Simon

July 11^th

Today was a really good day. While my weekend of hiding in my courtyard was helpful in it's own way, getting back out and feeling like I was accomplishing things made me a lot happier, just settling back into a familiar groove. I got a call from my major at 7:20am, which kind of irked me, but he was just checking up on me and I told him I'd be there soon. So at 7:30 (my usual time) I went over and helped Sali weigh women and write down information from their exams into the carnets. We didn't finish until noon, and so I went home to eat and relax before spending the afternoon at the maison des jeunes, waiting for Simon and talking to the people sitting at the little restaurant in the corner of the courtyard.

My conversation with Simon was really interesting and kind of surprising in a few ways. Dr. Claude and Emily both told me that he had come to IST in Bobo and was really enthusiastic about starting projects when I got back, but what they didn't tell me is that he didn't know I wasn't going to be there until he arrived. In my rush of leaving I asked Dr. Claude and Justin to call my homologue and let him know, but he said he was really confused and worried when he arrived and couldn't find me, until Dr. Claude told him what was going on. I felt bad that he walked into that completely unsuspecting – I'd assumed that they'd contacted him and told him to come anyway. Now he has a cell phone, but at the time he didn't so I guess communication was probably a factor. But he did seem to have really enjoyed the information they gave him, and thought the idea of Care groups was a good one and he's willing to help me find a good village or quartier for starting one, which was really exciting.

(A Care Group is a new idea that Peace Corps is picking up to use in spreading health messages. You survey a community and find 10 interested and respected women who then become responsible for 10 families each. They attend a monthly meeting where they learn to teach a simple health concept, like how to put up and properly use a mosquito net and why it's important, then they have the month to teach it to each of their 10 families, effectively reaching 100 families on a very personal level by a neighbor that they already know and respect. It also tends to give the women involved a higher level of status and respect by being visibly involved in the improvement of their community.)

But the theme of the conversation was, unsurprisingly, wait until after the harvest. I said I understand – a big spectacle can sometimes get people to come out after their work in the fields where a smaller gathering might be ignored in favor of going home, but he said that I should take the time to repose. I smiled and said that I'd done a lot of reposing this past weekend and was actually kind of excited to be out doing things, but he shook his head and told me that it's important to rest my spirit after such a long voyage. I was so shocked that I don't think I even responded to the comment directly – I've never heard anyone here talk about taking care of one's mental or spiritual heath. Thinking about it now, it makes me feel really happy to know that he's willing to listen and understand that I was away for something difficult that might take time to recover from, which is even more surprising contrasted with most everyone else who offers their condolences and then expect life to resume as usual (which, granted, it usually does for the most part in their eyes). It made me really happy to have found such an impressive person to become friends with, and I'm really glad he's agreed to help me in my work here as well as be my friend.

4th of July

June 8^th

Well, safely back at site. Emily had been planning a 4^th of July party for longer than any of us could remember, so I got a map from Sali and hopped on my bike bright and early to go and find the bush route between our villages, in theory only 25 km apart. Well, it exists, and I suppose it could be 25 km, but on a flat paved road that would take about 60 or 90 minutes to bike. This took me 3 hours, mostly because there were a number of very steep hills that I ended up walking up, and several places where the road was flooded and I had to walk through the soggy fields until the path became passable again. Needless to say, I was very glad Emily hadn't told me the truth of how hard the route was, because I probably wouldn't have come otherwise! We had a lovely time though, cooking all day for a huge crowd and sitting and chatting while we snacked. They had made bagels! We also made guacamole, salsa and hummus for lunch, then fried chicken, beans and rice flavored with taco mix, mango fried rice, cookies, roast pork (we put it in the ground to cook but it kept catching on fire, so we gave it to the butcher to finish in the oven), and several other things I'm forgetting at the moment. I ended up staying a few days extra so I could help clean up and to avoid biking back on that terrible route.

Twice a week there's transport that leaves her village, so I took the 5am camion to Seguenega, then biked back to Kossouka. It might have been that I had significantly less to carry, or that it was earlier in the morning, but the ride back was a lot easier than I remember it being when I returned from our language IST. I got to the CSPS just in time to be informed that the entire staff was going to Seugenega for a formation (I had passed Sali on the road and wondered where she was going on baby weighing day). So I stuck around and helped our visiting nurse from a nearby CSPS, taking temperatures and listening to consultations. He was nice and seemed to actually care about figuring out the correct diagnosis for each person – I found myself wishing that he worked here all the time and could be a motivation to the other nurses. I went back in the afternoon, but the staff hadn't come back, so I went home and started The Invisible Man, and talked with people who poked their head in my gate. Check (the boy whose name I thought was “Crash”) came to say he'd take me to look at paint tomorrow, and his little brothers came and walked with me to get water.

I was finishing my shower and getting ready to yoga (which I had actually been looking forward to all day) when someone knocked on my gate. Normally people will knock continuously until I open the gate or they'll open it themselves, but this person waited and it made me curious. It turned out to be Ilias, my petit Africain, who again started out the conversation by saying he was mad at me for neglecting him. I was going to stand outside my gate to try and keep the conversation short, but he told me to go ahead and get dressed, he wasn't in a hurry. We ended up sitting down and having a pretty nice time talking, although he did stay a lot later than I really wanted (I think he finally left around 9:45, which left me a little cranky because I was tired and didn't feel like I had time to do anything before going to bed). It was nice talking about life here compared to life in the US, and it made me happy to hear him say that he was proud to be African and he wants to live in Ouaga and help the country develop, even if it means getting affected to a village even further en brousse than Koussouka. We talked about why I like living here, about what he wants to do after he takes his BAC this weekend, living in a global society and the importance of getting to experience a life different than your own – it was nice to actually have conversations that went past day to day living.

Iki and Smile Train

July 3^rd

Another day of Polio campaign. We were supposed to meet at 5:30 at the CSPS, but the rain that started at around 3am (forcing me to quickly move my tent inside) and was still going when my alarm went off, so I went back to sleep. To my credit, I did re-set the alarm and peak out at the CSPS at the appointed time, and upon not seeing anyone in the drizzle, hopped back in bed. I was woken up a bit past 6 by Binta knocking and calling my name. As I was unzipping the tent to get up and go to the gate, she came around to my window to peak in! Oh dear.

We went to Iki, a village I hadn't visited yet. There aren't very many people, but all of the concessions (a cluster of houses, all part of one extended family, usually linked by walled pathways and/or sharing a common courtyard) were impressively large and well maintained, and I noticed that several of them also had very elaborate raised graves for elders, not just with signs but also with fancy black and white metal fences around them. Apparently all of the small children live in one huge concession – most had between 4 and 10 kids under 5, but one had 35! When they say it takes a village to raise a child...

I had a really nice moment today at the CSPS with the AVs (village midwives, who advise women in their villages and bring them to the CSPS to give birth). They were asking me questions and speaking to me in Moore, and I was actually able to at least hazard some answers to a few of them, but once it got to be too complicated I was rescued by some of the women on the vaccination campaign arriving. Koka explained to them that they were confusing me with Lauren, who was here and did speak Moore, with me, who is new and still learning Moore. She put it in a really nice way, so that all the women were very sweet and positive that I would learn Moore and they were glad I was here. Small but happy.

I had brought a Popular Science magazine with me and opened it up, feeling a little guilty to be kind of blocking myself from interacting with people, but they were all speaking Moore and the meeting looked to not be starting anytime soon. Lo and behold, my magazine started attracting attention immediately, and got passed around and started a lot of discussions – it was really neat and felt nice to share a little bit of 'me' with the ASVs and my staff. They were particularly fascinated with an ad for the Smile Train, the group that uses donations to perform surgery on kids with hare lips and cleft palates. Sali and the major kept telling me that there's a group in Ouaga who does that – those kids in the photos just need to come to Burkina! No one here has that problem, because NGOs take care of it. I pointed out that this was possibly the same NGO that does the surgeries in Ouaga, but that part didn't seem to sink in, that the NGO operating in Ouaga can do so because it solicits donations in the advertisements of American magazines.

Polio and Child Visitors

July 2^nd

It's funny, Sylvie was easy to call by her name, but I don't know what to call my new major – everyone just calls him “Major”. I guess I can stick with that – he seems ok with it. I guess that might be why people persist in calling me nasara. It's crazy annoying, but I can think of a number of people who get called by their job or title, so I guess that could be seen as my “job” - I'm the foreigner, the nasara.

The latest and greatest Polio campaign started yesterday. The major mentioned when I got back that one was going to happen, but when I showed up at the CSPS yesterday morning he asked why I hadn't gone with any of the teams. The campaign started already? I love it how people tell me things after they happen and then ask why I didn't show up. So I got up this morning and arrived a few minutes before 6, as I was told, and discovered that everyone had already left at 5:30! When we have a meeting scheduled for 11am, it doesn't start until noon or 1pm, but suddenly when we have to meet as the sun comes up, everyone is in a hurry? The major came out of his house and told me everyone had already left (I gathered) and he took me to meet up with one of the groups. I went with Binta and Issac to Napalgue, a village so close by that you can't even tell you've left Kossouka (and, indeed, the neighborhood of Kossouka closest to it is also called Napalgue, just to add to the confusion). We finished quickly, and sat around with the other two teams for the village before, at some signal I didn't catch, it was decided that we were leaving. We stopped to pick raisins (they were small, grew on a tree, and the seed was nearly the entire fruit, but I guess it tasted kind of like a grape), which was fun although I felt bad taking some random person's fruit. Clearly we weren't the first ones – we had to bend branches towards us to find ones that were ripe.

I had child visitors today! Nice ones, that is, in contrast to the other day. Sarata came by to say hello, helped me pull a few weeds and promised to take me shopping for bug killer tomorrow to take care of the infestation in the section of my hangar that blew down months ago, so that when I put it back on it won't infect the rest of the roof. I realized that without the cats I could leave my gate open (I guess now I'd probably do that anyway since they're bigger and vaccinated), and as I was sitting reading while the sun was setting, 4 boys poked their heads into the yard. Normally seeing groups of young boys makes me a bit nervous since they tend to be the most obnoxious with their teasing of the uncomprehending nasara, but these were the sons of some functionaire (a government employee, educated in the city and sent to work in a village) and they were really quite sweet and patient with me. The smallest boy stood and let me hold his hand in mine for a few minutes, and when they left he kept looking back over his shoulder at me and smiling. The oldest boy said that during the summer they help at a boutique nearby that sells paint, so I asked him to come back next week and take me so I can start painting my house. He's in the 6eme and wants to practice English, so I said if he'd help me with Moore we have a deal. :)

Back in Site

July 1^st

I guess I should catch everything up to this point, even though I did say most of this in my last post. Ok, so I left village for a VAC meeting. I went to Koudougou to visit Sunyata and drop off the cats, then returned to Ouaga for the meeting. After that I went back to KDG, and the day before I was going to leave, got a call saying that the people in KDG and the villages surrounding it were being consolidated as a precaution against rumors of a demonstration the next morning. So we got up early and caught the bus to a village called Sabou. We thought it would just be for a day, maybe two. But upon arriving, we found out that every volunteer was being consolidated into 13 locations around the country to ease the burden on the Bureau in locating and informing all 150 of us during the period of uncertainty and unrest in a lot of cities. We celebrated Easter, then all got to leave and head back to site. I was sick, so stopped in Ouaga at the med unit for 5 days – it was rather complicated with the cats, but we managed alright. I got back to my site, cleaned my house, and left 4 days later for IST (in service training) with the rest of the people in my stage. We went to Bobo, the biggest city in the southwest and second biggest in the country. It was fantastic to see everyone, and to be in such a big city with such wonderful food. A few days into our stay, I got a call that my Dad was in the hospital. I left IST and went back to Ouaga to make arrangements to fly back to the US on Emergency Leave. I was there for a week before he passed away, a time I'm so grateful for that words don't even begin to cover it. The next week was preparing for the funeral, then my mom and I flew to New Orleans to be with my step-family upon hearing of the illness of my grandfather. I returned to New York after a week, drove to see Katie (and hold her hand in the hospital – what is it with everyone?), then left for Burkina a few days before the funeral of my grandfather, the only way I could have stayed longer would have been to interrupt my service with Peace Corps and re-apply later.

So I returned and jumped into a shortened version of the IST I'd missed. I'm very glad that the Bureau let us make up some of the very useful information, but admittedly my head wasn't in a particularly receptive place – I'm glad we have handouts. I stayed in Ouaga for the next week or so, being with friends and helping Sunyata in her COS (close of service) process, mostly running around trying to determine if Air Burkina had a policy on pets, and what it was, and who we had to talk to in order to get the cats back to the US. It took a few days, but with some help we got it worked out, and now the boys are living in California, chasing field mice instead of waddling fat lizards that hide behind my furniture. I came back to Kossouka near the end of June, and now here I am! Who knew I could smash the events of 3 months into 2 paragraphs – I'm rather proud, despite the poor grammer.

And now I'm back in my village and it's raining like crazy outside! I spent the morning at the maternity with Sali doing CPNs (prenatal consultations), and leaned how to write down the results of the exam into the CSPS notebooks and the individual carnets that each woman has. I had a nice little conversation with a student who had come in for birth control – it always makes me happy when the 16-18 year olds are there with the green family planning carnets instead of the blue maternity ones. I wanted to do my laundry, but after getting water and sitting around at the CSPS waiting for everyone to come back from the Polio campaign it started to thunder so I decided to keep reading my book, and now that it's raining I'm inside typing this!

My little cement house with it's corrugated tin roof is like being inside of a drum when it rains – it's so loud I can hardly hear myself think. It would be a perfect time to call a friend, but even with our phones on the loudest setting it's pretty hard to hear each other. Still, the breeze coming in the windows feels cool and is blessedly free of dust. There's a cow somewhere outside who is clearly unhappy at the rain – I would imagine he'd be used to this happening, but maybe that doesn't make it any easier.

I said goodbye to a friend today – Moussa, the English teacher here at the middle school. I hope it's not for good and I know I have a lot of time left here, but I'm not sure when I'll see him again. He and I are occasionally of differing opinions on things, but he's probably been the person in village that I've had the best discussions with, the person I feel at least knows a little of who I am. He takes the time to listen, and lets me ask him questions about nearly anything. When I can't explain it in French, I know he'll understand when I say it in English, and he lets me switch back and forth so he can help me say what I mean in French. He's been teaching here for 8 years, but this year he's clearly been unhappy, burnt out and ready to move on. He was talking about staying for another year, but yesterday he said it was over and today he came to say goodbye. He's going to Ouaga for now to be with his family, then he wants to take a solo trip, possibly to Cote d'Ivoire or Ghana. He said he didn't know what he was looking for, and that people didn't understand why he wanted to leave. I said that sometimes we need change in our lives, and if he's not happy it's clearly time for a change – going to a new place is a good way to let you examine your life because you're removed from your routine. He said he'd be ok teaching if he could do it in Ouaga or Arbolay, but I suspect he might decide to go back to school pursue his dreams of becoming a lawyer or college professor. I hope he does.

I keep seeing this silly waddling little lizard all over the house! I miss the kitties – they'd have eaten him, or at least chased him outside. I've been cleaning my house from the accumulated 2 months of dust (disgusting), and every piece of furniture I move seems to be the one he's chosen to hide behind.

Quick Update (I love you all)

I suppose everyone who actually reads this is a friend or family member so you know what's been going on, but I'm feeling guilty that my last post was nearly 2 months ago. Thus here is the shortest condensing of 2 months that I can manage. I haven't been journaling for the last month, so it might never appear on here, but April and early May still have a chance at some point.

Since April 12th, when I last was in Ouaga at the VAC meeting: I left Ouaga to visit Koudougou, and as I was going to return to Kossouka I was consolidated to the large village of Sabou with 10 other volunteers from the region. We stayed in Sabou for a week, where we played cards and Bananagrams, cooked large delicious meals, and celebrated Easter with dyed pintard eggs and mimosas.

Upon returning to Ouaga on my way home, I was detoured to the med unit for 5 days and after I was on the mend I went back to my lovely village. I did my laundry and kind of tried to lay low, because 4 days later I had to leave again for IST - In Service Training, our chance to get our questions answered and begin learning ways to start the work we came to do.

The first few days of IST were lovely, getting to see all my stage friends that had been scattered around the country! The kitties came along, of course, so they got to meet all kinds of new people. :) I was sadly only there for a few days when I received a call that my dad was in the hospital, in the ICU.

I drove back to Ouaga and flew out the next evening, and I've been in the US since. I've gotten to see a good number of family members from my dad and step-dad's families, as well as a lot of friends at MHC graduation (congratulations 2011!).  There have been emotional ups and downs, and I'm absolutely still in the raw stages of processing everything. I've been lucky enough to see just how many people around the world I have in my life who love and support me. I've gotten a bit of a chance to continue to reflect on my time thus far in Burkina and many opportunities to practice determining what I truly want. I've had hugs and tears, good days and bad, support and stress. It's been worth it, and now I'm getting ready to return to Burkina tomorrow (well, today I guess, it's past midnight), to begin rebuilding my life and my life there.  I'm excited to sit in my courtyard at night and watch the shooting stars.