Potpourri in Burkina

Today I'm moving into my new home, but I had a potpourri of posts I wanted to add today. So I realize that there is A LOT I have yet to talk about on this blog, and there are A LOT of pictures I'd like to post, so I thought a mixture of blurbs here and there would help broaden readers' perspectives on life in Burkina. So here we go:

Chain Restaurants:

In short, they don't exist here. Unless there is a starbucks or chipotle in an alley that I don't know about. In which case, I will scream with joy all the way there.

Clothes:

Pagnes are sold EVERYWHERE, which are sheets of fabric, colorfully designed. You can by 1 pagne (1 meter by 3 meters) for 3 bucks. Then you can go to a tailor (huge here, you can find as many as 30+ in any large city) and get it made into anything you like--dresses run about 8 bucks, skirts about 4.

Moringa:

Moringa is an incredible tree. Its seeds, when ground up, can purify water, its roots are used as an herbal remedy, and its leaves have ridiculous amounts of nutrition in it--TONS of iron, calclium, vitamin C, B and A.... And it has the capacity to grow like wild fire here, so I hope to use it.

The Fous of Burkina:

A fou is, essentially, the village crazy person. There is at least one in every village, and they are not like any crazy person I have seen in the states—and yet they’re all crazy in their own special way. One fou in Sissamba biked two and from the water pump at least 20 times a day to fill up water in a gas container and put it who knows where. Another one in Sissamba, a foulle (the feminine term for crazy) was caught sneaking around in a PCVs room in the middle of the night. In Ouahigouya, there’s a crazy old lady in the marche who stalks and harasses nasaras (a.k.a. foreigners, a.k.a. me) until you either pay her to leave, run for your life, or karate chop her (I have yet to do the latter, but I’ve been temped to on several occasions). Another fou walks through the city wearing nothing but a torn shirt and a loin cloth (if you’re lucky). And just the other day I saw him bareback on a horse (I’d presume a stolen horse), riding with a vengeance down the goudron.

Street Food:

Probably the worst for you from a health and sanitation stand point, but it’s absolutely glorious. Fries plantains are a personal favorite, but there are also gato (fried donut without the sugar), sweet potato fries, and a variety of other wonderfully fried goods.

Trash:

Aside from major cities, there is little to no plumbing in Burkina. There are also no trash services. So, like every other Burkinabe here, I’ve grown accustomed to throwing my trash on the ground wherever I happen to be. It’s a terrible habit and I hope to just utilize my latrine as a garbage can for the next two years, but, when there is no one to come on over and take your trash for you every Wednesday morning, what are people expected to do? So they throw their trash on the ground, and burn piles of it on the streets.

Money:

It took me about 6 weeks to get adjusted to the prices here, and now I’ve become an even bigger cheapskate than I was back in the States. I can get a massive omelet sandwich here for 350 CFA , which is about 75 cents. I can get a cup of coffee (it’s no Starbucks…its actually Nescafe…but it sort of tastes like coffee with enough condensed milk…) for less than 25 cents. We got PC Burkina tshirts made for only 2,000 CFA a person—about 4 bucks. A twin size mattress costs about 20,000 CFA, 40 bucks. And these are the prices in the 4^th largest city in Burkina—it gets cheaper in village. Bargaining for prices in the marche is huge here, so it has become a goal of mine to get goods for Burkinabe prices instead of nasara prices.

More to come, particularly about my site!