Swear In and Affectation!

A ni sogoma! (Good morning, for you non-Julaphones). I thought I’d give you all a quick update on what I’ve been up to since swearing in and becoming a “real” Peace Corps volunteer…

Our swear-in ceremony coincided with the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps so it was a huge celebration complete with a fair and lots of publicity. I even got to give an interview in French on national TV and radio! To see the video that was sent to Washington covering the event, go here. The biggest rap star in Burkina, Floby, even wrote a song about the Peace Corps for us. During our swearing in ceremony, the U.S. ambassador to Burkina Faso had us raise our right hands and take the oath of office. There’s only one oath for all federal employees so it’s the same one Obama fudged at his swearing in.

So after swearing to uphold the constitution of the United States and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic (I’m not kidding, that’s in there), we were greeted by the first lady of Burkina Faso and spent a few more days in Ouaga to buy things for our new homes.

Yesterday, we were “affectated” (I’m not sure if there is an English word for that), which basically means we are on our own. Some of us are already at our sites and some of us, myself included, are staying at hotels in our provincial capitals picking up a few last minute items (aka lounging at the pool) before Peace Corps takes us to our sites tomorrow.

I’m excited and anxious to begin my service and have no idea what to expect. Having no expectations up until this point has been the best way to go and I hope I continue to be pleasantly surprised. It’s hard to leave the very close friends I have made here who are now scattered all over the country, but I know that they are only a phone call away and that I will see them in three months at in-service training.

My beautiful site makes the whole moving process a lot easier. My neighbor and I rode in on our bus yesterday through the sugarcane hills and palm trees and remembered that we won the lottery when it comes to regions. Even more important, my village is very motivated and happy to have me, and when I need to escape Banfora is only a short bike ride away and has everything I need. Everyone is friendly and helpful and actually talks to me in Jula. I’ve got a lot of great Peace Corps neighbors nearby, too.

So what’s next? Well, for the first three months, my main task is to get integrated into my community. I will be conducting an “etude de milieu”, or a needs assessment. Basically, I’m talking to people to learn about my community and what its development priorities are and building relationships at the same time. Before we can engage in any substantial projects, we have to be integrated (so that people have a reason to listen to us) and we have to build relationships (so that our projects continue even after we’re gone). All of this socializing doesn’t amount to what Americans would consider “work,” but I think it’s crucial to my effectiveness as a volunteer and my personal happiness. I have two whole years in my village, so there’s no rush to jump into projects right away.

I will also be spending a lot of time with my Jula tutor in village so that I will be able to give sensibilizations on various topics in the local language of my community. This is extremely important since a significant portion of my village, especially women, doesn’t speak French. Really, only the government employees who work at the health center and the primary school speak French fluently. I have a great counterpart who works at the health center who is related to the village chief and who I can bounce ideas off of and have introduce me to important people.

I hope all is going well in the good old U.S. of A! Keep the letters coming and let me know if you want to skype at any point since I’ll be riding into Banfora at least once a week to visit the market and check my email. Love and miss you all!

I'd Like to Give the World a Coke...

Picture this… Four Christian village leaders and a nun coming to eat at the home of the president of the Muslim’s on the Muslim holy day celebrating the end of Ramadan. After serving them food and conversing, the president of the Muslims brings out a Coke for everyone.

No, it’s not a Coke commercial. This is the reality of religious tolerance in Burkina Faso and I think the whole world could learn a little something from it.

Surprisingly, a country with 160 different local languages, several different ethnic groups, and a 50/50 split of Muslims and Christians manages to live up to its hype as “the land of upright and honorable people”. I’ve concluded that they really just love a good party and more religions means more parties, with the Christians celebrating the Muslim holidays and the Muslims celebrating the Christian holidays. And you can’t forget traditional animist beliefs which pervade both of these major religions in Burkina.

Since my host family is Muslim and my host father is president of the Muslims in our training village, I’ve been especially privy to Muslim beliefs here. I was fortunate enough to experience Ramadan with them, the annual month of fasting that Muslims undertake each year as one of the five pillars of Islam. During Ramadan, my family did not eat while the sun was up. As soon as the sun set, they would eat their first meal of the day and then we’d get ready to leave for mosque. I would wear a long dress and a scarf to cover my face, shoulders, and neck. (Unfortunately, this doesn’t hide the fact that I’m white so I just end up looking like an extra weird Muslim nasara.)

At the mosque, everyone is positioned outside facing the front of the building. It is a white building with one archway entrance and two large columns on either side with a crescent moon and star at the top of each column. The prayer starts just after sunset so the backdrop is a picturesque dark blue sky lit up by the moon and the stars.

Before the praying, they bring out a giant loudspeaker with a microphone and chant the call to prayer into it. They repeat a phrase in Arabic over and over again which means “may peace be with you.” In fact, this is what you are supposed to say to all Muslims upon greeting them. (Next time you think that Islam isn’t a peaceful religion think about that). The men have mats on the concrete floor right in front of the mosque while the women sit in a row behind the men on the ground. Verses of the Koran were read in Arabic by a man in the front as we sequentially put our hands on our knees while standing up, dropped to the floor and put our heads on the ground in front of us, and then stood back up. I was simultaneously frustrated that because I’m a girl I automatically get second-rate seats and thankful that I could mimic what the men were doing from behind, since I’m an Islam novice and had no idea what I was supposed to be doing at any given moment.

At the end of Ramadan, my courtyard held a big party and most of the village attended. My family killed many of its chickens to make soup, shredded coconut to make little cakes, and made fresh ginger and hibiscus juice. I got to help make the hibiscus juice, which involves boiling dried hibiscus leaves and then adding sugar and mint leaves before letting it cool.

It was a fun game watching the kids corner the chickens in the courtyard and then tie them up. I would have loved to avenge the french fries I lost to those pesky animals one morning but, unfortunately, women aren’t allowed to kill chickens in this culture. I did, however, get to look on with gratitude as my host dad killed a chicken. He explained that we had to face East while killing a chicken just like we have to face East towards Mecca while praying. Personally, I don’t think these awful creatures deserve such consideration. I much prefer to see them saran wrapped or in the frozen aisle.

It felt a lot like Christmas, with all of the kids getting new clothes and running around annoying their mothers who were trying to cook. Some things are universal, like little kids making their brothers or sisters cry and men sitting off in a corner talking about man stuff.

The first guests to show up were the Christian leaders in the village. They brought Fanta as a gift and ate what my family had prepared. And yes, my host father really did bring out Cokes for everyone. I started humming the jingle “I’d like to give the world a Coke…” to the amusement of some nearby nasaras who also thought this was a perfect commercial opportunity. But the funny thing was this wasn’t a commercial, it was real life. Somehow, religion had brought people together instead of dividing them. I wondered how the Burkinabe, many of whom suffer from extreme poverty and little to no education, had learned how to regard religion as such an integral part of their lives while simultaneously respecting the beliefs of others. 

Thoughts on Being a Type-A American in a Developing Country

“You may not control all the events that happen to you but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking.” –Maya Angelou

Sometimes we turn to each other during sessions and joke, “Hey, remember that time we joined the Peace Corps? What the HELL were we thinking?” We laugh, especially when we have giardia and a flat bike tire on that same day. In essence, Peace Corps training is a sick masochistic fantasy world where your limits are constantly tested. You lose all control over your own life- your chosen language of communication, your schedule, and, at some point, your bowel movements. Once the simultaneous diarrhea and vomiting start, you have no choice but to resign yourself to it. (After all, you apparently aren’t a real volunteer until you poop your pants. Check). This is tough on us Americans because there is so much in the states that allows us to feel like we have control: schedules, rules, order, logic, Imodium. But it turns out that all those values which we think are just inherent to living life are actually not all that important elsewhere.  Allow me to explain…

First of all, time doesn’t have the same importance in Burkina. There isn’t even a word for “late” in Jula. The best we can say is that someone was “not fast.” Time is not some other-worldly God that we obey, it is something  that the Burkinabe can manipulate at their discretion to the annoyance of any and all nasaras in the vicinity. It doesn’t really matter what time the bus leaves. It will go when it goes. Ça va aller.

Logic and order are not valued here. This is especially counter-intuitive and frustrating for nasaras like me. Here I was thinking that we should always be trying to increase efficiency and have things just make sense. I guess I never questioned why this was important to me. And why would I question it? In America, everyone else thought that these things were important too so I never had to explain myself.

But this is the best part about living in another culture- you learn so much more about your own culture and in doing so you realize that your way of thinking and doing things is a) not the only way and b) maybe not even the best way. If you never experience a culture different from your own, you miss out on these insights. And, in my humble opinion, I think that this might be the fundamental cause of most problems in the world. If we never bother to consider why people in other cultures behave differently, we never question our beliefs, our traditions, our thinking. It’s as if it never occurred to us that there are reasons why other people behave differently.

It’s easy to notice how the Burkinabe behave differently, but discovering the reasons underlying those behavioral differences is a lot more nuanced and revealing. Like when you are waiting 2 hours for a bus to come, it’s pretty easy to understand that time isn’t highly regarded here. But as you spend more time around the Burkinabe, you’ll find that it’s more offensive to not greet someone you pass than it is to be late for something. And it takes you a lot longer to get somewhere when you have to say good morning to everyone in your family first, then proceed to ask how their family is doing (even though you’re in their family and know what’s going on... duh) and then say good morning to every single person you pass on your bike and ask about their family and their work. I’m learning to do this although I don’t think it will ever feel normal for me, since I come from a culture where not only do you not say hello to someone you pass (especially not a stranger), you instead try to divert your eyes and ignore them. Can you imagine saying hello to every person you passed in the grocery store or on the street? Can you imagine pulling up to a drive thru and having to have 5 minutes of small talk before placing your order? As an American we just want the essentials, namely getting our cheeseburger. Greetings just aren’t necessary for that transaction to occur.

Our logistical Peace Corps tech guy who is Burkinabe and who spent some time in New York City said it best when he said that Americans “flee” when someone says hello to them. “Pourquoi tu fuis?” I’d have to agree. I couldn’t help but picture him standing in the subway and trying to ask for help in the little English that he knows, meanwhile lugging his 3 huge suitcases (he said he looked like Eddie Murphy in the movie Coming to America) with New Yorkers purposely avoiding him. And you’re thinking “well yeah, they’re New Yorkers, of course they’re assholes”, but I couldn’t help but be a little embarrassed of my culture when he told me this story. Why are we so petrified of a little human interaction? I can think of times when I saw someone walking towards me on campus and would purposely play with my cell phone to avoid having to speak to them. And I’m still trying to figure out why this is the case…

I think that maintaining social connections might be more important in Burkina because when you need help your neighbors are the first people that you turn to. In America, we have this sink or swim attitude that people should be independent and fend for themselves. And maybe we become too independent and we forget that we’re social creatures and that we need human interaction. I’m not sure yet if this attitude is a weakness or a strength, though I think it may be either depending on the situation. But maybe America can learn something from Burkina in this respect.

With that said, there’s a lot that I would like Burkina to learn from America for my own sake and for my own sanity. For instance, there is no such thing as a line here- everyone just pushes up to the front. This injustice frustrates me to no end. And no one sits in their assigned seat even though there is an assigned seat written on your bus ticket. So maybe America is doing something right, after all. Next time you’re standing in a line complaining about how long it is, be grateful that you have a line to complain about in the first place. The rest of us have to push past sweaty men with body odor who just arrived even though we’ve been standing there for a whole hour.

In situations like these, the American in me wants to scream. Sometimes it does scream. Literally. And very loudly. Like when I start yelling in English at a bus station in West Africa where no understands a word I’m saying. After venting, I follow Maya Angelou’s advice and change my own thinking…  

Specifically, I adopt the Burkinabe “ça va aller” philosophy. There’s a reason that this is the name of my blog. It literally translates to “that is going to go” in French, but it means that everything will be fine. People say this when I can’t communicate something in Jula (like when I said in Jula “I am dead” instead of “I am finished”), when a bus breaks down, when someone is sick, etc. In Jula, they say “A bena bi,” or literally, “It’s going to be” to signify the same thing. And when you put it that way, it doesn’t seem like there’s much I can do to change things even if I wanted to. So I turn to the person next to me and say ça va aller and laugh. Eventually, we get to where we need to be. Maybe not on time, but we’re there.