Visit From Aicha

June 28^th

Dear Journal (and friends reading this once I put it on my blog) – you better be feeling quite appreciative, because I am only writing this out of a deep sense of obligation to record what was actually a surprisingly productive day. I would much rather be finishing my book or watching Glee, just so you know.

*deep breath*

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night because the howling wind was threatening to tear my roof off. I closed the windows and the door, and somehow, even with a piece of corrugated tin roof slapping against the side of the coffee shack next to my house, fell back asleep. Deep asleep enough that I didn't hear the rain when it started, but saw the evidence when I woke up and my yard was so flooded that I couldn't even get to my latrine without wading through several inches of water and mud.

I prodded myself into doing yoga in my living room, and I'm really glad I did! It felt good, an encouraging start to the day. My moringa sprouted! And the old one that I took for dead is even trying to make a comeback, I'm crossing my fingers. Insects or animals ate it while I was gone, it was just a 3 foot tall stick, but now a little branch is sprouting off one side.

At 9, as agreed, I biked over to the Mairie to see Francois and find any paperwork we needed to show Aicha, coming from Ouaga to visit and help with the library situation. He wasn't there. After waiting a bit I called and he said he was at a funeral, he'd call when he was on his way. So I went home. 30 minutes later, near 10am, he called and said he was on his way. I waited 5 minutes and biked over. Still no Francois. So I sat and read until he showed up just before 11am, right on village time. We walked over to the library and started talking about what the payment system for the library was (finally!), what we could offer to pay a new librarian, and when we can have a meeting to discuss finding one. Man, I should have just lied months ago and said someone from the Bureau was coming! Although when Aicha showed up we did have a more in depth discussion, just the fact of her arrival started conversations that I've been trying to have for ages.

The way she went about it was very different from an American, and I'm curious to see what happens. I would have barged in, asked to see the financial reports, demanded action immediately, and probably made them feel guilty for not taking good care of the library or the librarian. Aicha listened, asked a few questions, and started praising all the things they were doing right, all the plans they had made to work on the problems they'd identified. I was sitting there thinking that everything Francois was saying was probably made up on the spot to appease her, but she took it at face value and appreciated the steps they had taken rather than berating them for the ones they hadn't yet done. I'm not sure if it will help, if her praise and trust will be more encouraging of tangible action than my berating and disappointment would have been, but we shall see. There were a lot of specifics I had been hoping to hammer out, like a drawn up contract detailing where the money goes, who gets it, and how much gets set aside for new books and such, but maybe later. I've realized that I need to take a much more active role in this, which is frustrating but at least gives me something to do.

Aicha also had tons of good suggestions for new projects, like sensibilizations to teach students how to take care of library books since they get handled a lot and start falling apart if people aren't careful. I mentioned talking to the secretary at the Mayor's office about making neem cream and Francois was all over that, telling me that we'll pick a day when I get back from Ouaga and he'll have 3-5 women from each village waiting for me to teach, that he'll tell them what to bring and how much, and maybe the Mairie can chip in a little from it's budget for some of the supplies. Um...sweet!! How did I never realize that this is how to get this kind of thing done? Here I've been trying to do it through the CSPS when really I should have done it this way. I should probably talk to the Chief as well, he'll be angry if I don't, and of course I'll tell and involve my CSPS staff, maybe we should aim for a Saturday so it's nobody's day of prayer and functionaires have the day off. We talked about making liquid soap and handwashing stations at the Maison des Jeunes as well. Overall, very productive indeed! I'm happy but not overly optimistic, everything seems to always fall apart at the last minute, but at least I've got something to aim for.

We ran into Major and the people from TDH (a child malnutrition NGO), but couldn't go greet the CSPS staff since Aicha had to get back to the bureau by 18h and it was already nearly 15h. I went home and called Al back, then headed to the CSPS to charge my phone and help with the polio campaign paperwork. I requested to not be part of a team, so from 2-8pm I drew maps, made charts and grids, re-copied paperwork, and fended off the flying termites that flocked to the lamp over my head. It was tedious but I do feel a little less guilty about not getting up early to help tomorrow morning, having stayed so late tonight.

Visiting Rosalie and the Mill

June 28^th

I was drawn out into the dark by the flashes of light I glimpsed through my window, lightning without yet seeing a hint of wind, rain, or even thunder. A cloud, noticeably thicker and darker than the ones around it, seemed to be slowly swallowing the last edges of the moonlight, while a ripple of internal lightning would light up my courtyard instead. The frogs are still croaking outside, so even though I'm inside I still have yet to close up the windows and doors, trying to welcome the cool storm breeze into my little cement and tin oven.

I went to meet with Francois this afternoon about the library (I'd called him yesterday to set up a time to meet). Mariam the secretary for the Mairie and the Prefecture informed me that he had gone to OHG and wouldn't be back until late, so I told her I'd call him tomorrow and re-schedule. I also invited her to my as-of-yet-unplanned neem cream formation, which now that I think of it I should plug with the ASCs on Thursday at the pre-polio campaign meeting. There were some people there from OHG, they didn't offer why and I couldn't figure out a polite way to ask “what the heck are you doing in my village?” so I left it at that. One of their group came out of the mayor's office calling me nasara. I felt peevish so I didn't reply until he actually walked over. He then stated, in Moore, that he wanted me. Some days this is unbearably insulting and I feel the need to snap back, but today it took less energy to just joke back at him and tell him that it's too bad, I'm already married, my husband would be very angry, and no, I do not need another husband here while mine is so far away in America. Writing it out in English makes it sound like I was being rudely sarcastic, but I say it as a joke and everyone takes it as such, at least they seem to respond better than when I've seen volunteers get angry or upset. We all laughed and shook hands and went our separate ways.

Since there was nothing else to do at the Mairie, I was headed home and decided that as I was already on my bike I should go visit Rosalie and maybe see if I could find out more about Simon. She was cleaning dried corn kernels, standing up and pouring them from a calabash into a basin on the ground so the breeze would blow away anything that wasn't heavy enough to fall straight down, bits of husk and cob and broken kernel bits. She was taking it to the mill to be ground into flour. Having never actually seen one of the machines in action since stage, I volunteered to go with her. We got sidetracked for a little while when Koka pulled up and the two of them started to gossip, so I occupied myself by watching Rosalie's kids play in the dirt, making mounds of gravel and forming it into shapes they could sit in the middle of. Her son Isiadore was absolutely petrified of me, which of course made everyone laugh. I normally feel bad for kids who are scared of me, but he was at least 7 or 8, and at the sight of me arriving he had gone and hidden in the storage shed, curled in a ball and sobbing. Rosalie coaxed him out to shake my hand and he did so without too much trouble and had even stopped crying, but continued to regard me with great fear and did whatever he could to stay out of direct sight of me. His little brother, on the other hand, was happily showing off his skills at throwing rocks to chase away pigeons, chickens, and goats who were attracted to the broken corn kernels on the ground.

The machine was under repair when we arrived so we went and stood in the shade to wait and chat. She told me about the drama in the CoGES – she's no longer speaking to Binta because of some petty argument they had at the last meeting, Binta having shown up late and blaming Rosalie in a way that sounded quite excessive. She explained that Simon had taken a job in Ouaga, she thinks as a groundskeeper for a house, but she wasn't totally sure why he'd decided to leave and she did say his family is still around. I asked if anyone had his new phone number and she said she'd ask her husband. Mariam at the Mayor's office had hinted, and Rosalie confirmed, that there still hasn't been enough rain to plant all the crops, most people have planted their millet but are waiting to plant the corn, peanuts, okra, oseille leaves, and pois de terre (kind of taste like a chickpea crossed with a dusty peanut). We stood there for a while commenting on the fact that it might or might not rain tonight – in Moore you do a lot of stating the obvious or narrating out loud what's going on. Oh, and my CoGes president has truly gone off to Cote d'Ivoire, possibly for several years. I really need to hang out with Rosalie more – she's got all the gossip and information!

Interestingly, I think I remember writing a month or so ago that my number of marriage proposals has dropped almost to zero, but today I had not just the one at the mayor's office, but another waiting at the mill! Again, all parties were surprised that I understood what was being proposed, and again I joked that I was already married and he'd have to take it up with my husband in “white-person land”, and no I was not in need of a husband for over there and for over here. All I could do was sigh and laugh along with them.

So once the mill was put back together and functioning we went inside to watch. The machine consists of a large metal funnel that dispenses the item to be ground into a small horizontal trough suspended below it. The operator, sitting in a chair next to the machine, has one hand in the trough to move the grain through at the correct rate, and he also swings it back and forth a little so that more keeps falling from the funnel into the far end. He pushes the grain in small amounts into the opening at the top of the grinder, two vertical disks with a rather pretty pattern of grooves that are diagonally radiating from the center out to the rim (I got to see them when he was taking everything apart earlier, when the machine is running they're enclosed in a cast iron cover). The resulting flour is spit out of a chute into a waiting metal basin. Each run is put through 4 times, so when the trough is almost empty you grab the basin and dump it back into the funnel while he catches the last bits in an empty can until you put the basin back under the chute. The last pass is deposited directly into your rice sack or bowl that you brought the grain in, and then he grabs the next bag in line and starts again.

The price depends on quantity, measured in boites, the amount that fills an empty 1kg tomato paste tin (it's about a 6in diameter and 4 inches high). An American would fill it level each time, here it's customary to measure one boite as being the amount up to the rim plus as much as you can get to stay in a pyramid on top, plus a little spill-over. Millet is 50cfa per boite all over town, but corn, being harder and more work for the machine, is 75-100cfa depending on which mill you go to, the ones near my house in the market are apparently more expensive than this one only a 1 minute bike ride away. I know it's possible to leave your grain and pick it up later but the process did go smoother when someone was there to help him so he didn't have to get up or turn the machine off to put the flour through for another pass. Most people seem to send their children, although there were a few very old ladies there as well, Rosalie and I were the only people who weren't under 10 or over 60.

At that point it was getting towards 6pm, so I said goodnight and headed over to the CSPS to say hello, where I learned about yet another Polio campaign. I have come to dislike the drudgery of going door to door at any time of the year, but it's particularly frustrating to be sent during the beginning of rainy season when trying to find the kids under 5 is almost impossible - they're all out in the fields with their mothers, fields that are never located near the house. So we end up vaccinating any kids we meet as we go from house to house. We never find all of them, it makes marking the house with how many kids were vaccinated a nightmare, and it results in the numbers for each village being all messed up because we end up getting kids in our sweep for village x who belong to village y, meaning we will be sent back tomorrow to village y to find the “missing” children that got marked by the team who were assigned to village x. But it must be done, so do it we will.

Laundry, Simon Left?

June 25^th

Yesterday I finally broke down and bought new basins for washing laundry, tired of using my cramped buckets. They cost more than I really wanted to pay, but it was gratifying to be able to wash more laundry at one go and I'm glad I got them. I was reading under my hangar, waiting for my laundry to dry, when a rainstorm crept up on me. Normally rain is proceeded with thunder, huge gusts of wind, dark ominous clouds, but this was just a slight darkening of the sky and the realization that the tapping sound I was hearing was rain hitting the wooden table next to me that wasn't under the protective cover of the hangar like I was. I got my laundry inside just in time, put the last damp items to hang over chairs, and that was that. The calm drizzle intensified into a thunderstorm so violent and directly overhead that I almost tore a hole in my GRE book when I was circling an answer just as a clap of thunder shook my house. It continued on for another hour or so. I was worried for my garden, which looked to be in peril of drowning, but for the most part the little mounded hills I dug stayed above the waterline. The drizzle following the violent storm continued until I went to bed at 9 – I had been trapped in the house for 5 hours, I was bored, so I went to sleep. Oh rainy season. At least it was good for the fields!

With such a sunny start to my day this morning after sleeping almost 10 hours I felt all bouncy and productive, so I swept the house and started GRE problems. I tried calling Simon to tell him about Aicha's visit on Thursday, but his phone still said it was turned off, adding weight to my suspicion that he doesn't have it anymore or doesn't use it, since it haven't successfully connected in about 6 months. I decided to go visit Rosalie in the afternoon to get directions to his house, and in the meantime I went to the CSPS to get water, say hello, and keep studying with some company. There must not have been many CPNs, because they were finished when I arrived! What a nice change from the usual crowded Monday. I went home when people started leaving at 12:30, still plugging away at GRE math problems, which didn't go perfectly but not nearly as bad as I'd expected. I ate lunch and kept at it, then went back a little before the end of repose to get my computer and another bidon of water. I ended up talking to Belem and Nacoulma for a while, then headed home to put down my stuff and go visit Rosalie.

I first called Francois, the mayor, to tell him about the meeting. He told me that Simon left! He's in Ouaga looking for work, he turned in the keys to the library a month ago! I'm so disappointed and sad, I feel like it's my fault he's there instead of here, if he'd actually been getting paid he might not have had to leave. I don't know if his family went with him, I guess I'd be surprised if they did. I wonder what happened – did his fields last year do so badly that they didn't have anything to plant this year, forcing them to find some other source of income in order to eat? So far this year is shaping up to be a good rainy season, I really hope someone is planting his fields. I've only met his wife once over a year ago, I don't know if I'd actually recognize her if I went to go talk to her (if I could find the house) and I don't remember if she spoke French, but I seem to remember that he had a daughter who had made it to 6eme before leaving school, so she might. I really want to talk to him, but I have no idea how to contact him. I should have asked Francois if he had a different phone number, I'll do it when I see him tomorrow.

So instead of going to see Rosalie, who everyone assured me would be in her fields until dinner, I sat with Belem in the shade next to her house and read my Maternal-Neonatal book. She was so excited about it, and kept lamenting that it's wasn't in French. I told her to keep an eye out for the maternity/midwife book I found in the CSPS last year, that I had enjoyed reading it and it was all in French. She asked about me teaching her yoga, so maybe tomorrow I'll take my mat over there and we can start doing some exercises to help her back pain.

Studying for the GRE

June 23^rd

I must be ready to go back to academics, I'm studying for hours a day for fun? Wow. I woke up very leisurely around 6 and went back to sleep until around 7, then got up and had my tea and oatmeal. I tried to read but soon abandoned it for my GRE book. I finished up the Verbal practice section, revealing that I am wonderful at sentence completion, pretty good at analogies, need work on reading comprehension, and felt like a pretty big failure on antonyms due to a large number of words I just didn't recognize in the least. Good news is that there's a mini-dictionary in the back with the most commonly used GRE words, and I started writing my own list to study, but it was admittedly disappointing to feel like I read so much and yet have what they would consider to be a limited vocabulary.

I put down the GRE book after finishing the verbal section and picked up my Maternal-Neonatal Health book that I got at a used book store in Half Moon Bay. It's a little outdated and kind of...thin, as though it's a review to accompany a bigger book or a lecture series, the information isn't very detailed, but it's also a lot of fun to be reading about things that I vaguely remember and look forward to re-learning in detail, like embryonic development (this time with humans instead of zebra-fish or sea-urchins) and fetal blood flow (they were kind of confusing on that, somehow oxygenated and deoxygenated blood seemed to be going through the same pathways of the heart but not mixing?).

The frogs are out in full force the past few nights, croaking away at an almost unbelievable level. I wonder what they do in the dry season, where they go? After the first good rain or two they just appear, as if they hibernate in the ground and the rain loosens the soil above them and tells them it's time to get going again.

Working in the maternity

June 22^nd

I went to the maternity to work this morning – it was nice to feel helpful even if it does get a little dull by the 20^th woman. We did have one women come in and midway through her exam Belem announced that she had a broken foot! Smart, actually, since pregnant women get free medications due to a program with Terre des Hommes, an NGO. Also amazing, the birth early this morning of a baby boy, in perfect health, missing a left calf and foot. It looks like a healed amputation below the knee, just a small spur of bone covered in smooth skin indicating where the rest of his leg would have developed. The body is fascinating! My nurses were talking to the mother, an 18-year old first time mother, telling her the baby would adapt well since he was born this way, but I couldn't really get a read on how she felt about the whole thing, maybe just stunned.

So we worked until a bit past noon, I came home and made lunch and read, and around 3pm opened up my gate to watch people passing by and started studying my GRE book. Juliette came by to sit and chat, and ended up napping for a few hours while I studied. She passed her exam! I'm so proud of her for wanting to continue on to 6eme next year, and I'm just hoping that Rosalie and her husband can come up with the money for her to continue her studies at the CEG.

Malnutrition campaign, Site development

June 20^th

I've been back in village for the better part of a week, but I still feel like I have yet to get back into the swing of my life here. Makes sense, I spent 2 days cleaning, 1 day with visitors, 1 day preparing for more visitors, and today waiting for visitors who eventually showed up. I've got this nice impressive list of stuff I want to accomplish in the next 5 months, so feeling like I'm sitting around doing nothing is making me a little nervous, especially considering I want to leave site again in less than 2 weeks.

The main village event today was the start of a campaign to identify malnourished kids. I didn't go help, ostensibly because I was preparing for my visit by Justin for site development, but he was so late I easily could have gone. I'm admittedly kind of burned out on the door to door campaigns. I feel obligated to go and help the ASCs, particularly after they helped me with the schools for free, but I now truly understand the absolute need for “motivation” money. It's not that they're unwilling to do the work for free, or don't understand how important and necessary the work is. It's that these campaigns are boring, hard, thankless tasks that have to be done. Knowing there's a reward at the end keeps people at least feeling obligated to come and help every time the call goes out for yet another campaign of some type, particularly during the rainy season when all they want is to be in their fields to ensure they can eat next year. I guess I've started shifting myself more into the paperwork and prep-work part of the campaigns so that I'm still helping in some way, but I do feel a bit guilty for avoiding the part that involves getting up early and biking long distances and having children cry when they see me.

In the afternoon we had my site development meeting at the Mayor's office, only starting 2 hours later than planned. I was nervous because I honestly didn't work with (or even know) the majority of the people who showed up, but they seemed to be saying good things about me, which was encouraging. Justin presented his points in Moore about community responsibility, that the PCV is like a flashlight that the village needs to guide to illuminate the path they chose to travel, and we signed some paperwork saying that the house I live in will be available for the next PCV as well. I don't really think they got too much out of it besides a forum to clear up that the next PCV will be health, and after that they can request another sector. But I assured Justin that I have big plans for making the next PCV feel welcome and hit the ground running, and I'm excited to work on that with my staff and CoGes.

Visitors, HP, Garden

June 19^th

Bridget and Alicia came to visit Monday and left this morning. We didn't do much, just relaxed and ate and talked. We bought bread and made a bunch of grilled cheese sandwiches for my staff, but they ended up not coming over even when I called people, so we ate all of them ourselves. We made a delicious dinner of taco lentils and barley (with even more of the Velveeta, dear god!) and watched an episode of Glee. I'd set them up outside in my bughut on top of the mattress – the stars were out even though it had threatened to rain all day – but an hour or so later we were dragging everything back inside as it started to rain. And rain. And rain. Still, they managed to get out of the village without too much issue this morning and since I haven't had them back knocking on my door I assume they made it home ok.

I then went on a Harry Potter binge! Did I mention that I finally collected all 7 books, having been trying to do so for the past 18 months? I finished the first book which I'd started before my visitors arrived, and then tore through 2 and 3 by the end of the repose, even taking a break to plant my tiny garden. Clearly not highbrow literature, but they sure are fun to re-read after so long. The rain last night flooded my yard, so I ended up putting everything in the only place it didn't flood, over by the curved wall between the gate and my hangar. I've got a lettuce blend, spinach, swiss chard, basil, cilantro, carrots, onions, tomatoes, wild flowers, and lavender, still trying to decide if I can find a way to grow the green beans, squashes, and melons without them taking over my yard or being drowned (all the other places for a spreading plant are either shaded or low-lying, but maybe I could get the beans to climb the hangar). That and a new moringa and I should be set! Trying to decide if I need to cover them, it probably wouldn't hurt to make a little fence or something to keep the lizards from snapping off the tops of the sprouts again, although I didn't have that problem last rainy season, it was only during the hot dry season this spring. Maybe I'll wait and see if I need it.