Tea

One of my favorite West African rituals is drinking tea. It’s become part of my daily routine, like brushing my teeth or getting dressed. Every night, after I’ve finished eating dinner, I head over to Moussa’s. Moussa brings out the teapots, the sugar, and of course the tea. Chinese green tea with funny names like Arawane and Bonmama. While Moussa is preparing the tea, we chat about our day. They boil it for way longer than is necessary and add a LOT of sugar, like ½ cup per 8 ounces of tea. People have different preferences. I like mine foamy and super hot with mint.

One of the most entertaining parts of making tea is exchanging the tea from one teapot to the next to mix in the sugar and make it foamy. This part is really elaborate, with the tea chief holding one teapot more than a foot above the other to create a tea waterfall.

The whole process, each  box makes about 3 pots of tea, can take around an hour. This means lots of time to “causer” (chat) or just sit in silence and enjoy eachother’s company and the night sky. When a pot is ready, Moussa will pour out the tea into shot glasses, one per person per round. There’s a bit of a hierarchy concerning who gets the first shots, but since I’m the toubabmuso I almost always get first dibs (unless there’s a lot of men around).

I’ve learned that it’s not really about the tea, but about bringing people together. It’s nice having an hour each night to reflect under the starry night sky and what Moussa calls village electricity- the moon.

A mango a day... or ten

It’s mango season! And lucky me, my village is overflowing with them. In my courtyard, surrounding my courtyard, in the market, everywhere there are mango trees. The mangoes have been on the trees for about 3 months now but they only just started getting ripe a couple of weeks ago. The kids in my village spend most of their waking hours not in school on a mango mission, namely to get those mangoes off of those trees.

All kids have different techniques and much depends on skill level. Very small children can’t do much but wait for a big wind to come blow some down to the ground or beg their older brothers and sisters for one. My smallest neighbor, two-year-old Sharif, insulted his mom the other day because she wouldn’t give him a mango. The athletic ones can run and jump onto a branch and climb to the ripest ones at the very top. The stupid, unathletic kids throw rocks. But it’s the clever kids who interest me most. They devise new contraptions, mango technology if you will.  The bigger and riper and juicier the mangoes get, the more elaborate the contraptions that the smart kids make to get them down.

Here, you don’t give your teacher an apple. You give her a mango. I get at least 10 a day offered to me from my students and small children in my neighborhood. And living in a mango area you learn that not all mangoes are created equal. There are at least five different mangoes that I know of, and probably a lot more. My favorite is timi timi, the juiciest type of mango which I’ve learned to spot by its curved tip. The three mango trees in my courtyard are called “mangues en retard,” or late mangoes. Apparently, they get nice and ripe once all of the other mangoes are carted off to the rest of the mango-less world. Bon appétit!

Elephants, warthogs, and hippos, oh my!

Who knew that African life could become normal? Hence why I haven’t written in a few months. I’m not shocked/amused/interested/disgusted by the same things I used to be- goats in the courtyard, greeting every single person I pass, eating tô with my hands (okay, still a little off-putting). And so I’m not able to relate to you all a lot of the goings on. Life here has developed a rhythm, and as unexciting as that might sound, it’s a peaceful reassurance to realize how adaptable we are to new ways of life.  

Having an American visit you during your service, like I did this month, can re-open your eyes to all of the strange things around you. Seeing his reaction to the transportation, the heat, the languages, etc. made me remember how I felt when I first arrived in this country and, in doing so, make me realize that I’ve come a long way!

We were able to see a lot of the country, too. We went on safari at Nazinga where we saw elephants, warthogs, antelope, and water buffalo, and we sat in a canoe a mere 50 feet away from a family of hippos at Lake Tengrela. We also visited the painted village at Tibili!

It’s hot season. Not like Florida hot. Like Africa hot. Like sleep outside in my bughut hot. Like take 3 bucket baths a day hot. To give you an idea of just how hot it is, the Jula name for March is funtenikalo. Funteni means heat and kalo means month. However, March is nothing compared to April, for which the Jula name is funtenibakalo (ba at the end of any word means big). So April is big heat month.

There is occasionally some respite from the heat with what villagers call the “mango rains”. Another upside to this heat is that its mango season and they are everywhere. When children aren’t at school, they’re throwing rocks or devising new contraptions to get down the ripest, sweetest mangoes at the tops of the trees (I don’t know why the ones on top are always the ripest… just to tease maybe?)

I’ve been in Burkina over 10 months now so I’ve experienced almost every season and I have to say that this is definitely my least favorite so far. Next time around, I will really savor rainy season, with its fireflies and breezy afternoon showers, and the “cold” months, where I get to sleep with sheets AND a blanket. Until then, I’ll be sleeping outside!

I’ve put on two programs for my 6^th grade class in the past couple of months, a career fair and a 3-day sexual education/family planning workshop. Both were successes, although nothing went as planned, which I’ve come to expect.

The career fair panelists were a primary school director, a history professor at the college, the secretary of an NGO in Banfora who grew up in the village, a couple of cultivators in the parent-teachers association, and a coffee vendor/photographer. Several of the panelists stressed that being a “functionaire” (i.e. government employee) shouldn’t be thought of as the only career option. The cultivators stressed that you can make a decent living and stay in the village, whether through running a shop, learning a trade (becoming a mason, tailor, mechanic, etc.) or raising animals and cultivating crops.

I thought this was a great message for the students, since there exists such an inferior status for “villageois,” or those who stay in the village. It leads to a broader inferiority complex where people believe that everything good comes from outside the village, outside the country, outside of Africa. The kids who play in my courtyard insult each other in one of two ways: 1) Insulting someone’s mother (turns out yo mama jokes are universal) or 2) Calling someone “villageois”. Once, I asked one of the girls what that meant and she said it means you can’t read. I told her that I was villageoise, since technically I lived in the village, but that I could still read and could even teach people how to read. Then a couple of the other little girls started parading around telling everyone that they were villageoise, too. Needless to say, I think that calling myself villageoise reduced the stigma to some extent. But the reality is that there aren’t enough government jobs to sustain all of the 6e students around the country who want to become teachers and nurses. At the end of the day, at least they’re thinking about their futures, a concept that is completely unheard of in this culture.

Broaching the topic of sexual education is a huge taboo in this country and therefore goes largely ignored. Neither parents nor teachers will address the topic until 3e, when most students have already reached 16 years of age. However, my director informed me that unexpected pregnancy is a huge problem in our village. So I decided to do a 3-day workshop during spring break to talk candidly with girls AND boys in my 6e class (6^th grade) about puberty, the sexual reproductive systems of men and women, pregnancy, contraception, family planning, and decision making. There was an “anonymous box” at the front of the room during the workshop where students could pose questions without having to raise their hands and risk being laughed at. I compiled a 15 page manual for each student with diagrams of the male and female sexual anatomies and tons of information and images. We did condom demonstrations and a condom hot potato game where the students had to pop the blown up condom and answer the question inside. Although silly, the kids got comfortable touching condoms (and realized how difficult they are to break, too). I gave a pre and post-test to actually monitor what the students learned in the process. Here are some of the results:

·         27/52 can now define family planning and give 2 advantages

·         41/52 can explain how to avoid early pregnancy, citing condom usage, abstinence, or both

·         14/52 could fully name 3 contraceptive methods and their respective prices

·         52/52 answered correctly multiple choice questions asking at what age a girl could become pregnant and at what age a girl should reach to avoid dangerous complications during pregnancy (On the pre-test, many thought a girl could get pregnant once she developed breasts and that if she had her period, she could deliver a baby without any complications)

Other than work and vacation, I’ve started to really appreciate the pace of life here. I have a lot of down time when I’m not teaching or tutoring or educating a group of people on some health topic, even though my blog may make you think otherwise. I’ve made and jarred my own mango jam, made sun-dried tomatoes, and planted trees and flowers in my garden. I’ve read around 50 books in the 9 months that I’ve been in this country- mostly classics, philosophical works, and history books. I have little rituals, like drinking tea with my neighbor and talking with the village men at the coffee kiosk. I draw, paint, and write more than I ever have. I’ve taught myself some German. I’m content just sitting on my porch and watching kids throw rocks at mangoes. All of this alone time was scary at first, but I think you reach a beautiful, pivotal moment when you realize that you’ve made a life for yourself and that getting to know yourself and being okay with who you are is important.

Peace,

Marlow

7 months

Hello world!

I hope all is going well where you are. The past month has been a bit of an emotional whirlwind for me, to say the least. First I packed up and left site for a week and a half of In-Service Training (IST) in Ouaga. Seeing friends from stage and relating to their own stories from their villages was amazing. I realized how close I feel to these people who I’ve only known for 7 months but who I share so many incredible memories with. My counterpart came from village and we designed our first project at site together and I was more excited than ever to get to work. On top of all this, I had an upcoming holiday trip to England.

Then I spent an amazing week in England with my family- parents, sister, uncles, aunts, and cousins. We saw Wizard of Oz in London, went thrift store shopping, and just enjoyed each other’s company. But I found that the world I thought would be so familiar to me, the world I left behind, turned out to make me more than a little uncomfortable at times. I realized that there are so many things I dislike about the world that I come from- superficiality, materialism, obsession with technology, and waste, just to name a few. That world sucked me back in in an instant but some deep part of me kept silently disapproving of everything I saw around me. I guess that being back in an environment like this made me realize just how much I’ve grown up in the past 7 months (yeah, I can’t believe it’s been that long, either)- I’ve learned not to let little problems get to me, to appreciate people and not objects, to live life at a slower pace and to truly appreciate every moment.

First, I couldn’t help but notice that despite all of the amenities and organization, English people just looked a whole lot sadder than my Burkinabe friends. (Click here for an interesting article about the relationship between material standards and happiness, and how unhappiness might be a necessary evil in order to keep a capitalist system going strong. Thanks, Greg!) People are easily stressed by car problems and waiting in lines, but my own standards regarding these matters have gotten so dismally low living in Burkina that everything in England seemed to move relatively fast.

I spent New Year’s Eve on my uncle’s balcony with my arms around my grandma watching the fireworks and drinking prosecco and then, on New Year’s Day, I had to leave. This was difficult but at the same time I was excited to get back to my life in Burkina- my neighbors, my friends, and even my dog. I was surprised when my first day back in Burkina, walking around with another volunteer looking for breakfast, I realized I had actually missed this life while I was gone- a lot. People smiled and greeted me as I walked past. And this was just in Ouaga. The first night I got back to site, my neighbor Moussa had dressed up for the occasion and Yakouba met me as I was getting off the bush taxi to help with my suitcase. The village was still celebrating the new year, so Alimatou and I went to dance to the balafons. 

On a sadder note, one of my best friends in village, Moussa, has left to work in Cote d’Ivoire during the agricultural off-season. It’s only for a couple of months and I still have plenty of people to hang out with including his wife, my friends at the CSPS, random tanties in the market, the president of the women’s association, the swarm of children always at my house, and Abu who we drink tea with on market days. I guess that this is the norm here- men leave because they need to make money and they have to leave their families and friends behind.

I’ve been really busy with work- starting up a girls club for my older girls in 6eme and CEP study courses for the CM2 students of both primary schools and securing funding to build latrines to name just a few activities. I'm also planning a career fair for my 6eme students and starting soap making with the women's association since my grant for the soap mold was approved! And, on top of all this, I'm still teaching English 3 days a week. But I’ve also been visiting other volunteers’ sites and the beautiful tourist attractions like the waterfalls in Banfora. I had time to help another volunteer label the giant world map that she painted on the side of her primary school and will be painting my own map at one of the primary schools in my village soon!

Evan finishes up the map before we start labeling the countries

I also attended an animist dance party at night in my village which was interesting and also a little terrifying. It was out in the brush at the house of the gri gri man, who only has one leg but jumps really high and does somersaults. There was lots of fire and shrieking and topless women who were dancing like they were possessed, sometimes falling over people or rolling on the floor. They were chanting in Jula and Gouin, apparently asking the spirits to give them a good harvest and protect their fields. One man started yelling that he wanted “jii suma.” I asked Alima why he kept asking for cold water and she said what he really meant was he wanted fire. I was confused and thought I had made a language translation error until he actually started grabbing the hot coals and making like he was going to eat them. I couldn’t get a good look, but I don’t think any of the men actually ate the coals. The funny thing is that everyone in my village believes that these men can do anything, even the educated people who work at the health center. They tell me that you can shoot at them and the bullet will just bounce off (I sometimes wonder if an attempt to prove he was capable of achieving some “miracle” like this is how the gri gri man lost one of his legs in the first place). They told me to take a video next time and show people in America because they don’t believe. Although, apparently first I have to ask the gri gri man if I can take a video otherwise it just won’t show up on the camera. Hm. I just told them that in America there are no genies or spirits.   

I’m starting to realize that Diaraba is my home and I get worried about the time passing too quickly. My tutor, Odile, just had a baby boy who shares the same birthday as me so we will celebrate my 23^rd and his 1^st birthday together in 2012. And Kaitiessi just found out that she is pregnant and I couldn’t have been more excited when I realized that I’ll be here to celebrate when the baby is born (she is hoping for a boy since she already has several girls). I guess what I’m starting to feel is that hanging out with people in village isn’t just part of my job as a volunteer. The people I hang out with are not host country nationals, they’re not Africans, they’re just my friends now. I love hanging out with Alimatou, whose wicked sense of humor sometimes leads her to play practical jokes on her husband like hiding his shoes so we can have a good laugh at his expense. Or coming home to find toddler Barikisa napping on my porch, whose eyes light up when I hand her a spoonful of “tige dige,” peanut butter. Alimatou gets upset when her nephew won’t eat the meals she prepares and can tend to dwell on it, just like any American woman might. At that moment, it’s as if I can teleport Alima in my mind to any American kitchen, her wood fire replaced by a stove and the mud walls turned to tile, and she is suddenly just like any other woman I know. She wants the same things- a little extra money to buy groceries and an outfit for the next big party or holiday. She gets upset when her husband is late for dinner. She savors those few solitary moments she gets each day to relax. It’s scary to think that 7 months have already passed and that eventually I will have to leave here. It just makes me want to work that much harder to get to know the people here and learn from them as much as I can teach them.

And last, but definitely not least, thank you to all of you for your support so far. It means a lot to have people cheering me on over there and sending me little American goodies. If you are also willing to support my projects here financially, one of the country-wide projects I'm working on, Camp GLOW, could use your help. Visit the website (http://pcburkina.org/camp-glow) to read all about the camp, which seeks to empower both girls and boys towards mutual respect and good decision-making, and click the image for "Boromo" on the left hand side to donate. We are very proud that the community of Boromo is donating 42% of the total budget to ensure sustainablity for the project AND we have already raised US $775 towards our goal of US $6,391. Thank you!

Peace,
Marlow

P.S. A quick hello to the French class from Southern Lee High School in North Carolina who I have been corresponding with! Thank you for your letters- another one from me is already on the way :)

World AIDS Day

Since December 1^st was World AIDS day, I decided that my counterpart and I should have a discussion with the community about what AIDS is and how to prevent it. There are so many myths here about HIV and AIDS (that it only comes from Cote d’Ivoire, that only prostitutes can have AIDS, that white people have a cure, etc.) so I thought that dispelling those myths would be a good start.

We picked a Friday market day, which are always super busy since it’s also the day when people don’t go out to work in the fields. We were set up by 9am but since we’re dealing with West African International Time (WAIT), I only had a few women from the women’s association there with me on time. We hung tight and since there were balafons playing, we just had a great time dancing and started to draw a crowd. Of course, the nosortia (white person) always draws a crowd, but especially when she’s dancing. On this day I also had jabi, the patterned black dye on my feet, which my neighbor Alimatou has been working on every night for the past 3 nights. I kept getting compliments from the village women “kofa, deh!” which translates roughly as “pretty, ay!”

We drew a pretty big crowd, about 50 people at one point- young and old, women and men. My counterpart read off the phrases in Gouin and then the chief of the village repeated them in Jula. Then I would pick someone in the crowd who would say whether it was true or false and why. If they were correct, I’d give them either hard soap and or Chinese green tea (both very popular here) and condoms which the young men in the crowd were especially happy about.

After the true or false portion, we discussed what HIV/AIDS is, how you can prevent getting HIV, how you can find out whether or not you’re HIV positive, etc. My counterpart, who works at the health center, explained the difference between a treatment and a cure and really stressed fidelity and regular HIV testing as a means of prevention. I also think we helped to remove some of the stigma of HIV being a disease for only promiscuous women, since it only takes one time with one person, even if it’s with your husband, to become HIV positive.

Afterwards, we all danced to the balafons, even the women carrying babies on their backs! I think they were a little surprised that I could hold my own with the other women dancing to the beat of the balafons. Later when I was buying my vegetables at the market the women kept coming up to me and saying “toubabmuso be se ka donkay, deh!” which is basically the Jula equivalent of “white girl can dance, ay!”

The chief keeps saying that I am his new wife despite my repeated refusals and my reminders that he already has several wives. Nevertheless, I haven’t quite learned to say no to the chief yet since I feel like he is my adopted Bill Cosby-esque grandpa in village so when he asked I ended up dancing with him at the front of the circle. 

All in all, I think it was a pretty good day!

Peace,

Marlow

What is "chalkboard"?

As a Peace Corps volunteer, I am an employee of the U.S. government living abroad. A representative, if you will, of all that America stands for. As taxpayers, I want you to know that I take this role very seriously and I only present the best of what the U.S. has to offer.

Case in point: Jeopardy! I’ve taught over 100 African children how to play this game already. You’re welcome. But seriously, whether it’s learning about HIV/AIDS in my girls club or reviewing for an English test with my collège students, they love it. I tape the double-sided candy-colored papers up on the chalkboard (one side with the category and amount of points and the other side with the answer… like I said, I take this seriously). The grand prize: American candy. Twizzlers, jelly beans, you name it. And the crazy thing is they actually started studying. I don’t think it’s to do well on the test but rather so that their team can win the “Jeopardy! English Review Edition” the day before.

And for a village and ethnic group that I’m told started out as entirely communal, when there is candy (and glory) at stake, these kids get pretty competitive, demanding that I review the points I gave to a team or quietly humming the Jeopardy! theme song when a kid is taking a long time to answer. Okay, okay, so I taught them that. But you can’t really have Jeopardy without the theme song, right?

So maybe I introduced Jeopardy a little for my own benefit, too: to bring a tiny piece of my former American culture to my now very African village life so that I feel at home. It may not be exactly the same thing (I’m the host instead of Alex Trebeck and we skip the boring life story segment in the middle) but I actually think it’s an improved version.

And nothing puts a smile on my face like Adama shooting his hand into the air and then rising, stoic and scholarly-like in true Jeopardy fashion, to say “Wat eeez thee chokebowd?” (Clue in French “L’enseignant écrit sur cet objet pendant la leçon.”) Their team erupts in cheers as he quietly takes his seat, motioning with his hands and saying “la silence” so that everyone quiets down (I’ve explained that Jeopardy is not like a football match, it’s a serious academic quiz show which requires etiquette).I correct his pronunciation before giving them their 1000 points. They’re so close they can almost taste the jelly beans…

Tabaski

Hello world,

I hope all is going well! So much is going on that I thought I’d update you all on life at site. As always, thank you for the packages and mail, they make my day!

This past weekend I celebrated the Muslim holiday of Tabaski in my village. A few days before the party, out of nowhere, there was suddenly a sheep tied to the mango tree in my courtyard. I thought it was just another random thing that happens in this country but then my little neighbor Nadja explained to me what was going on. She came over and pointed to the sheep and said in French, "We're gonna kill him and eat him tomorrow. And he is going to say 'ahhhh ahhh ahhh.'" She then started feeding the sheep some mango leaves, and I couldn't help but think it would be his last meal before he would be sacrificed.

This is the sheep that lived in my courtyard for a few days... and then we ate him.

The morning of Tabaski, I went to the mosque with my neighbors and then afterwards watched as they killed the sheep. It was really sad and I almost started crying, something which they found hysterical. However, I did eat the sheep and it was quite delicious, so I can't say that I really felt bad. We drank tea all day and visited different families in the village. My neighbor and I even got matching Tabaski dresses made!

This is me with my neighbor, Moussa, and his daughter after going to the mosque on Tabaski.

I spent the day after Tabaski with the imam (Muslim priest) from my village and a Muslim missionary who lives in Banfora. He is Pakistani and his wife made us some delicious food!   

As far as work goes, I went from having a relaxed schedule to a relatively hectic schedule in a matter of weeks. Mostly because I am now an English teacher at the new collège, the equivalent of junior high, in my village! There isn’t actually a school building yet, just a few abandoned rooms throughout the village. However, it’s better than the previous alternative in which the kids had to bike or walk 10k to another village to continue their schooling.

I teach 3 days a week to the sixième students, which is kind of like 7^th grade. It’s their first encounter with English which is kind of exciting and it gives me an opportunity to get to know the older students and some of their challenges. It’s surprisingly not as easy as one might think to teach your native language. Since I learned English in a natural way, I don’t know a lot of the rules, I just know when something sounds wrong. Luckily, the director has given me a lot of materials and I’ve devised a pretty interesting syllabus, incorporating debate into the class as well to hone the critical thinking skills which are so often ignored in the Burkinabé education system. I’ve also included a unit on children’s and women’s rights and we might do some Model UN! The kids are really motivated and it’s awesome to hear them correctly pronounce funny-sounding English phrases. Any English teaching materials (songs, books, flash cards, etc.) would be greatly appreciated!

Other than that, I’m still continuing my girls club for the primary school girls once a week and I’m thinking about replicating the same club for the sixième girls in my English class. We’ve recently covered HIV/AIDS and yesterday the midwife came in from the health center to talk about the dangers of early pregnancy and about the different contraceptives that are available in Jula. It took about half an hour just for the girls to say on their own what sex was. In this culture, people don’t talk about sex out of shame. However, this leads to some serious problems later on when girls get pregnant and don’t know what happened. Many girls in my village get married young and therefore have children young and in all cases it cuts their education short. The girls were able to submit questions anonymously which helped them to open up a lot and I gave American goodies (chocolate chip cookies) to the girls who answered the really tough questions. I think the girls learned a lot from the session and I’m hoping it might make a difference.

In this picture, the midwife is showing the girls the different kinds of contraceptives available and explaining in Jula.

In non-work-related news, I have a puppy! His name is Benji and he was given to me by one of the men who works at the CSPS. He’s great company but he is also a handful right now. He would appreciate anything in future packages as well!

It’s harvesting season which means most of the village is out in the fields harvesting corn, rice, and cotton. I was able to go to the fields and harvest rice with my neighbors which was a pretty fun time. I'd love to put more pictures up of all of this stuff in the blog but the Internet is just too slow so check out my Facebook! 

Thank you for all of your support!

Peace,

Marlow