Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July from Burkina Faso!

In honor of independence day I want to write a little tribute to my country. I would have never described myself as patriotic before coming to Burkina, but I think that living abroad gives one a new appreciation for their homeland.

Of course, I probably romanticize it a bit (okay, a lot) and there are obviously things that irk me about my country, but living here I've realized that there are quite a few things that America just gets right. Here are a few, in no particular order...

lines
fixed prices
fast food
putting ice in already-cold drinks
debit cards
driving
cool weather
being anonymous
good beer
television
movie theaters
sandwiches
cheap delivery pizza
Dr. Pepper
ENGLISH
air conditioning
good pillows
grocery stores
ketchup always available
chicken pumped with hormones
Mexican food
soda fountains
2+ story buildings
privacy
being able to show my legs
feeling clean
hot showers
shopping malls
people saying what they really think
can-do attitude
not being treated like an idiot because I'm a female
non-forced marriages
real coffee
individualism
being on time
following road rules (most of the time)
umbrellas
educating girls and boys
seedless watermelon
sarcasm
jeans
actually having everything thats on the menu
babysitting/childcare

And now, a few things that Burkina has got going for it...

super cheap maternal health care

free child labor (need sugar or water or a box of matches? just tell that small child to go get it for you!)
palm wine and millet beer

bush taxis (for all the safety concerns, its still really cheap and convenient to throw all your stuff on top)

street vendors (want sesame cakes, cold water, or cashews? just give this woman your money through the window when you stop at customs... African drive-through)

water conservation (when you're pumping all of it yourself, you tend to use it sparingly)

village markets

pay as you go phone credit

sweetened condensed milk in coffee

pagne skirts (just wrap this $3 piece of fabric around your waist and voila- a skirt!


Have a great independence day everyone!

One Year

I have officially been living in Burkina Faso for a whole year as of June 11^th. It has been a year filled with making new friends (American and Burkinabe), learning how to thrive in a new culture both personally and professionally, and saying yes to every new experience. There have been ups and downs as with anything in life, but every moment has been vivid and intensely felt. It is a time for reflection as well as anticipation. I’m confident now that I can navigate in this culture and I think that I will be much more effective during my second year because of everything I’ve learned so far.

The fact that I was chosen as a Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitator (PCVF) for the new group of education volunteers that just arrived in country only highlights this landmark in my Peace Corps service. I’ve already helped out with one week of their technical and cross-cultural sessions and will be coming back in August for a week to visit them again. They truly are a great group and they all seem very excited to be here. 

I also have three camps coming up- one for 32 5^th grade girls from my region focusing on health and positive lifestyles taking place this week, one for 120 boys and girls in 6^th and 7^th grade which focuses on sexual education and goal-setting taking place in July (Camp G2LOW), and a 6^th-8^th grade science camp in September which will feature hands-on experiments that are very rarely done in science classes here due to a lack of resources. All of these camps will be in part led by Burkinabe teachers and health workers- the idea being that they will gain the skills necessary to continue these activities in the future. I will post a blog for each of these events once they happen!

There was some drama in my host family but it has settled down now. Moussa recently engaged a second woman who is now living in the courtyard full time. I was awkward and angry at first, but even his first wife, Alima, who is one of my best friends in village, has adjusted to the situation and everyone seems to be pretty happy. One of my good friends in village is 8 months pregnant so I’m excited to be there when the baby is born!

I made a list of some of the cool things I’ve done this year!...

Seen elephants and warthogs on safari

Watched ritual animal sacrifices at animist funerals

Worn a baby on my back

Harvested rice, corn and cotton

Danced to balafons

Pumped my own water

Seen a woman giving birth

Learned 3 local languages

Celebrated the Muslim holiday Tabaski

Prayed at mosque

Washed my clothes by hand

Made soap

Celebrated international women’s day

Tried (and failed) to carry water on my head

Been 50 feet away from a family of hippos while in a canoe

Swam in the waterfalls

Drank palm wine and millet beer

Thank you for all of your support so far- your letters, packages, and calls mean so much! I'll keep you updated!

Peace,

Marlow

Islam, Women, and the "Third Sex"

My village is mostly animist but my adopted family is Muslim. I started going to mosque with Moussa, like my big brother in village, to learn about the religion, but I kept going because I found that Muslim prayer had a soothing, peaceful quality that I really enjoyed, even as someone who isn't religious.

I made a lot of friends at mosque, mainly women because we're kept separate, but also with the imam (kind of like the priest for Muslims) and the Pakistani missionary for the region. The missionary loves volunteers and I've been to his house to eat delicious dinner with his family. He also took us to the waterfalls and he gives me books on Islam translated into English. Because of our friendship, he invites me some of the most important events in the region.

Most recently, he invited me to the opening of a mosque in a village about 10 kilometers away. I always debate going to these things since I don't want to offend and I'm not Muslim, but I always end up going to support my Muslim friends in village. So Friday, which is the Muslim holy day, I put on my best pagne wrap skirt and a shawl which covers my chest, neck, shoulders, and hair (Allah said a woman's beauty is in her hair). I biked with Moussa and Abu to the village and, when we arrived, quietly walked to the closed-off area in the back for women as my friends took their seats in the front with the men. The women don't have chairs, just mats which they share. I took off my shoes and greeted the women in Jula and Gouin. They were very surprised and happy to have me with them. We chatted for a few minutes and just when I was starting to make new friends the imam came to get me. He said I was a special guest and so I would be sitting right behind the podium with the mayor, the prefect, the missionaries, etc. This isn't the first time that something like this has happened but it's always a reminder that even before I'm a woman, I'm a foreigner. An American.

Times like this are the most poignant example of how I occupy the role of the "third sex" here in Burkina Faso. That is to say, I'm not respected as if I were a man (I've visited enough male volunteers in their villages to witness the differences), but I'm also not treated like an African woman, expected to cook and pump my own water and always subvert my own opinion in favor of my husbands. Most women here don't graduate primary school, let alone university. I occupy some weird space in the middle which has been referred to by one Burkinabe man as "femme-garcon" - woman boy. Honestly, I think a lot of women feel sorry for me because I don't have a husband or any children and this is what determines your social status in the village. They're always pinching my boobs saying I'm ready!

Anyway, back to the story. I sat up on the makeshift stage as they recited in Arabic from the Koran. Me, a young, single, white American female looking out at 100 older, married, African men. I could tell that some weren't pleased that I was contaminating the men's area with my lack of a Y-chromosome. But what was I to do? I was instructed to sit here. During the first prayer, I was relegated back to the role of woman. We couldn't enter the mosque so we just sat on mats outside. I've pretty much memorized how to do Muslim prayer by now so that wasn't a problem. At least I felt more comfortable over with the women who were much friendlier to me. Men would come up after prayer and shake hands with the men to my left and right but not even make eye contact with me. This is very awkward and something I don't think I'll ever be able to interpret as anything other than extremely rude and sexist (from the perspective of my own culture, of course). They've explained to me the reasons why, but it still makes me feel like I'm just not worthy of consideration.

However, being a member of the third sex has its advantages, too. The women in village would never allow me to seriously pump my own water, maybe for a minute just for a laugh, but that's it. Also, if I'm ever caught doing housework (which weirdly enough I enjoy), they run over to help and tell me to reposer- relax. Most women have to give up their chair if a man enters, but not me. In fact, men will most often give up their chair to me. When I visit someone's house they become very concerned that I sit immediately in the best chair that they have. Merci!

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 :)