I'm a Terrible Peace Corps Blogger.

It’s been really hard to sit down and write a proper email or blog these past, how many, 4 or 5 months now? Sometimes it was because I was feeling too lousy or useless, other times it was because I was too preoccupied enjoying life. There have been many ups and downs since my last email, and if that should mean anything, it should mean something pretty momentous: that I’m making myself vulnerable to new experiences and relationships here. For quite some time, I saw my service in the Peace Corps as a 2-year interval of time between ‘real life.’ I’m not quite sure when exactly it happened, but my time here is no longer just an interval of time, but my life.

Rainy season is just coming to a close. The temperatures are cooler and I can hardly see all the mud-brick houses of neighbors and friends over the tall stocks of corn and millet. Villagers are now collecting, literally, the fruits of their labor from a cultivating-filled rainy season: potatoes, peanuts, manioc, corn, millet, sesame, taro, and a plethora of other roots, leaves and grains I hadn’t really heard of until I arrived here. These things are their food for eating, their produce for selling—their sustenance for the year. This rainy season was not a very successful one, so I’m worried what conditions will be like this coming hot season when there is nothing.

I’ll start the review of my past so many months with the visit from my parents and brother. They came in August, making it 10 months since I had seen my parents and over a year and a half since I had seen my brother. They were the first (and, most likely only) people from home that I will see while I’m here. The reunion was wonderful. Arranging a family vacation in the second poorest country in the world was harder than I thought, but we managed to hire a private driver to go all around the country with relative comfort. I was incredibly impressed with their fortitude despite all the new and challenging situations; minus the extreme heat (which wasn’t so extreme to me anymore), they seemed open and eager for new cultural experiences. I think the highlight of the trip for all of us was the time spent in my village. We pulled up to the market of my village with over 100 people around us, a band of bylaphones playing, dancers, and children holding hand-made Burkina and US flags. My friend Siaka, a very dear friend and an eager student of English, even crafted a banner that said “Welcome Parents of Amanda.” We danced from the market all the way to my house, and then we danced some more. So many people (particularly older women) would come up to my parents, hug them, grab their hands, and show them their deepest appreciation. We were all so touched at the lengths they had gone to welcome my family. Our two weeks in Burkina proved to be challenging and heartwarming, and in the end I think my whole family learned something about me and my life here that they could have only learned by seeing and experiencing themselves.

After Burkina, we all went to Paris for a week. While I had forgotten what living in a developed life had been like, it did not take long at all to readjust. And I appreciated all the little things I had taken for granted before. Taking a shower every day was a luxury—water coming from a place other than a cup I held over my head, with warm water I didn’t have to heat up myself, was a beautiful thing. Actually, just drinking water from a faucet without worrying about how many parasites and amoebas would wreck havoc on my intestines was a vacation in itself. And feeling cold—I forgot what that was like! (it was actually rather unpleasant, since I didn’t have any warm clothes…). Paris was absolutely beautiful, perhaps it’s because I came from Burkina, but I don’t know if I’ve seen anywhere more beautiful. I managed to adjust and love living there probably within the first day, but the one thing I couldn’t adjust too so quickly was how much stuff was there. It was actually incredibly overwhelming, having so many options I managed to just stay in one place the whole time trying to figure out what to do first. What they have on one block in Paris is more than anything they have in probably any town in Burkina sans Bobo and Ouaga, the two largest cities.

I came back to Burkina sad to say goodbye to my parents and brother, but very happy to get back to my life here. I also had a new project I was antsy to start in village. Right before my parents came, one of my best friends in village told me that there was a lot of prostitution in village. Not only that, but that certain people (people closely associated to the CSPS and to me) are involved in a prostitution ring. Some of the girls are underage. One, who I know personally, is 16 and pregnant. One of the clients of this ring is the head nurse of the CSPS and also my official counterpart. This was very alarming news, and after many talks with Peace Corps staff, I developed an action plan to approach the problem. After a lot of discussions and meetings, I have helped develop Association Gonyônmôn (meaning “helping hands” in Toussian) with women in my village. This group is very much like a savings and credit club, where, at each meeting, women contribute 100 CFA to the group funds, which, when substantial enough, will be used as a bank for women to take out loans for business endeavors. In the group there will be women who already have many kinds businesses—crochet, jewelry making, boutique owner, restaurant owner, etc. There will also be women who are exposed to risks like prostitution, who don’t know much about business or have any kind of skill to create a business (which has presumably lead them to prostitution in the first place). At each meeting, the women will make their contribution, and then they will be sensibilized in areas such as sexual health, nutrition, etc., and a business woman within the group will teach the women some skill or knowledge relevant to business. So for example, if a woman just learned how to make soap, she could take out a loan from the group to buy the materials and begin to sell soap, and over a period of time she will pay the group back with a small interest. This will act not only as a forum for women to start business, but for women to develop new business, whether in product or technique. Women have already been elected to positions and our first meeting was a success with over 50 women in attendance! The best part was that, while I was there, I did very little. The officers were the ones who discussed the mission of the association and its rules and regulations, while answering any questions the new members posed. I was simply used as a resource for clarification, which leads me to believe that these women are making this into their own.

Other than this women’s group, I have not been up to too much else—I have adjusted to the relaxed, patient speed of village life. I have been learning Toussian, the native language of the ethnicity of my village, a language with no alphabet and only spoken by about 30,000 people. My best friend in village calls it the Chinese of Africa, because a Chinese person can understand it. My brother confirmed that, unfortunately, this is not the case. I have just begun a girls club and am working on a "health buddies" project with the school, but I am not far enough a long with these projects to report anything significant other than the uplifting enthusiasm and smiles of some wonderful children who I'm thrilled to work with.

So, overall, I would say that I’m very happy here. I recently celebrated my year anniversary in Burkina Faso (with probably a bit too much wine…), and come December I will be in Takaledougou for one year. It has flown by and I see the following year flying even faster. Now that I have about a year to go, I have thought more about what to do when I’m finished. Before arriving in Burkina, I seemed to have my whole life planned. Now, I’ve seemed to go back to the drawing board. I feel like I was in Paris: fortunately, I have many options. But there are so many I feel lost. I’ve thought about extending my service here for a partial year, I’ve thought about teaching English in France for a couple months, I’ve thought about grad school—but that opens up a whole other realm of options like location and major that I can’t begin to address. I could certainly do all of them, but the order is difficult, as is the timing. You might be thinking that I have plenty of time to decided, but you’d be surprised to learn that, here, months fly by sometimes faster than days or weeks.

Ça fait deux jours!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but: I've been busy. Too busy to get online often or even write a proper blog post. The past two weeks I've been working a girls camp in village. In May and early June, I organized and selected a small group of girls to participate in a 5 week long camp during their summer break. Then, I left for Ghana, came back, celebrated the 4th of July, and started camp immediately upon my return to village. Probably very, very poor planning on my part. But with the help of some incredible fellow volunteers and some smart, hard working young girls, I don't think the first week could have gone any better.
For the first week, these 10 girls and I (and, for the first week, several very helpful volunteers) discussed life skills issues such as gender and culture, role models, risky behaviors and decision making skills. Honestly, I know not everything stuck--these are topics that they have probably never talked about and it was addressed in a way they were not use to. They didn't even know what it meant to have a role model. But now they do, and if that's the ONLY thing they got of the first week, I would still be thrilled, because the idea of a role model could have an impact on them for the rest of their lives.

This past week, and the following three weeks, the girls are split up into two groups: Health and Commerce, each meeting once a week. The health group will be discussing the various health issues that face the village and work to create sensibilizations (informational sessions, whether they are purely sessions or take the form of theater sketches or informal talks) to inform the rest of the village how to better take care of their health. The commerce group will focus on the importance of record keeping and budgeting, and we will be developing a product to sell to the village for, hopefully, a profit. On the third day of the week, all the girls reconviene to share what they learned and also to learn english (at their request!). These are girls who are busy all day washing clothes and dishes, going into the fields to help their families farm, cooking--and yet they are voluntarily taking time out of their days to spend with each other and learn. And what is even more surprising is they come early! Their enthusiasm and high spirits are truly inspiring, and its keeping me going during rainy season, when most people in village are busy out in the fields.

So, Ghana was great. In many, many ways. I spent nearly two weeks in Ghana with a group of fellow Burkina PCVs. Ghana is the paradise of West Africa: lush green fields, clean (depending on the beach, some were covered in human waste…) pristine beaches, beautiful castles, lobster, a variety of cold beers, burritos, ocean water... We began in Accra, the capital of Ghana, which is the closest thing to an urban, western looking city I have stepped foot in since October of last year. Accra, in my newly developed perspective, is a booming city. All the streets were paved, and paved evenly. There were over passes and streetlights and sidewalks. There were many, many tall buildings. There were toilets (instead of latrines). The electricity didn't cut out. A laminated, multiple-page restaurant menu serving sandwiches, muffins, crepes and a variety of other diverse foods unheard of in Burkina was looked through with far too much excitement. We were even thrilled to find (and keep, of course) discarded garments and trash on the side of the road that was perfectly fine and need not be thrown out. Accra, essentially, was the big rock candy mountain to a Peace Corps Volunteer living in Burkina. From Accra, we went to Cape Coast, a cute port town, home to the Cape Coast Castle and probably the most picturesque views I have seen since coming to Africa. Several castles line the coast of Ghana, as they were once used to keep far too many Africans in far too small, unkempt spaces to be shipped to Europe and America as slaves. The floors, while made of rock, were covered in a thick layer of what looked like tar. Our tour guide explained to us that this layer was actually human waste of these tortured Africans that had long since become one with the castle.

From Cape Coast we headed to the National Park. Unfortunately, we saw no exotic wildlife like monkeys or elephants, but we did nearly die on a canopy walk! Wooden platforms were suspended 200 ft high on massive, beautiful trees which were connected by a thin, wobbly bridge made out of some rope, metal, and a little bit of plastic. You’d think it would be these bridges that would be unstable. It was actually the wooden platforms that proved us wrong, when one fell about a foot and a half down the tree as 9 of us stood atop it. Two fellow volunteers had their hands trapped between the tree and the metal cords that become taught against the tree from the fall, and the rest of us panicked, unproductively, with our lives flashing before our eyes. Their hands were quickly freed, though, and we all managed to return to solid ground. And after calming down a bit, we all ranked our near death experience as one of the best parts of the trip. Naturally.

The rest of the trip was spent beach side, relaxing and eating burritos as often as we could. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a vacation as much as I appreciated Ghana—running water and electricity for 2 weeks in and of itself was a luxury. Throw in some wonderful friends, great food and drink (including lobster and red wine, a classy touch to a classy vacation), shopping, the beach, and an exciting near death experience and you’ve got yourself an incredible time.

So, all in all, the past two months have flown by in a wonderful way. And it appears as if the next two will fly by the same way. Right after my girls camp finishes, my parents and brother, who is just coming back home from his two year Peace Corps service in China will be flying into Burkina for a two week visit, and then I will go completely crazy in Paris with them, not knowing what to do with myself first. It has been 10 months since I've seen my parents and nearly a year and a half since I've seen my brother, so I am so thrilled to see them.

Redefining Success

Four people attended my 2-day agriculture formation.

It took a lot of time and reflection before I could say this with a sense of accomplishment. Time, energy and emotion were invested into this project--searching for and collaborating with a counterpart and trainer, developing a theme for the formation and going door to door to inform the 2,500 inhabitants of my village. And after waiting 2.5 hours on the first day of my formation inside an empty classroom, four people walked in.

The following week, I planted Moringa trees with the students at the school garden (see some of it on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvXPjZlbCpU). Hundreds of children were there to watch and to plant. They asked for seeds as if it were candy, pushing and shoving each other at times just to get more seeds to plant. Over 100 seeds were planted that day, all by the students themselves.





Several days later, I had my first soap formation with the womens group in my village. All 6 of them were eager and attentive--I barely even lifted a finger to make the soap. And before the soap even hardened, people crowded around to watch and ask for prices. And the women really did it all; they were so excited they even told me they wanted to finance a building just for making soap.



So whether its four people or a whole classroom full of people, I've learned that something, anything they can take away from a formation or a lesson is meaningful. Its not about numbers or times here--its about quality. And when two women walked away from the formation, with money in their pockets from avid customers, referring to me as Amanda Traore (the family name of the chief's family), I must be doing something right.

Who's Driving This Flying Umbrella?

So, last month was not my best, though it was certainly a character building experience. I hope I didn't worry anyone with my last post. Granted, I was discouraged--as anyone would be if their puppy was whacked with the blade of a knife--but, dogs are not as valued here as they are in the states. When there is food on the ground (meat, in the middle of being cut for dinner, no less. A very valued commodity) and if we were as poverty stricken as the villagers are here, perhaps we would treat animals the same way if they came near us mid-meat preparation...Right?

But, just like Buddha's scar, things are getting better. Much better than expected actually. I'll try to go in order.

Funerals: I know I was saying things were getting better, and now I decide to talk about funerals. But funerals are a much more positive event here than in many Western cultures. When its hot as hell, the wells are drying up and no one has any money, people spend what little they have on massive, 2 to 3 day funeral fetes celebrating the past death of a family member. Enough liters of dolo (locally brewed beer out of millet, tastes kind of like cider if you've lived in Burkina Faso long enough) and kilos rice and sause for everyone to enjoy. There's music and dancing. Several animals are slaughtered and eaten (as gruesome as it looks, I don't mind it nearly as much when I know literally EVERY part of the animal will be used). In a time of the year where people are burning in the relentless heat, anticipating the rains that will signal the begging of intensive work in the fields, it is a perfect time to enjoy oneself.

Agricultural Formation: I had organized a three-day agricultural formation on the maximization of small farm land plots and on the production of cereal grains. I found someone in village who I thought would be a great help to me in organizing the project. He was absolutely fantastic--motivated, hardworking and very knowledgeable. He really good charge of the planning of the formation, which I was refreshing from the typical inept mentality that transcends village life. And the community has been incredibly receptive. The formation was postponed to the 16th to the 17th of this month so I'm really keeping my fingers crossed. Will make sure to take plenty of pictures too.

RAIN: rainy season is upon us lucky Southern folk of Burkina. I have never been in such awe at the sight of a rain storm. Its beautiful here. All day is spent sweating out everything you could possibly have in your body. Then, the sun begins to set and the winds pick up, kicking up waves of sand and trash that line the ground as a wall of thick dark clouds inch nearer. Then, the sky will just open up, unleashing massive amounts of water. Rain drops will pound against the tin roofs, too loud to hear anything else. And the temperature will just drop radically (by radically I guess I mean from 110 to 80...).

Satellite Villages: I visited a satellite village (a village in the same health district, and thus "members" of the CSPS in my village) and was in complete shock at their state of livelihood. No money. No market for food. Completely isolated with nearly passable roads (if you even want to call them roads, they were more like paths). Ridden with malaria and malnutrition. And, on top of all that, they had no water wells or pumps. A woman showed me a cooking bowl full of the water she and all the villagers use: it looked like she scooped it out of a muddy river or puddle of water. And that's exactly what she did. This is a village that needs serious help, and while I was there just to shadow the nurse to give vaccinations (only four that day...), there was nothing I could do at the moment but slip on my overpriced gortex rain jacket and be on my way. Even since being here, I've never felt such a painful guilt such as that moment.

Busy month ahead: While I have learned by now that nothing seems to go as planned, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the rest of this month because I have a lot going on. I will be holding an interest meeting for a girls camp I would like to run over the school break, I will be presenting on Moringa to the school and we will be planting Moringa seeds in time for rainy season. And I will be making soap to sell with a woman's group I am a part of. So, while it's not always easy, I'm hoping for the best.

A Lot of Blood, Sweat and Tears This Past Week.

Every Peace Corps Volunteer undergoes some serious challenges in their two-year service. Sometimes its the unbearable, unavoidable heat. Sometimes its coming back to village with so much motivation and enthusiasm to take on all sorts of projects for the community, only to be stifled by the slow, inert culture of the villageois. Sometimes, its feeling more alone than you ever have before. And sometimes, its your neighbor hitting your dog with a knife.

This is how I spent the eve of my 6 month anniversary in Burkina Faso:


Trying to stop the bleeding after my neighbor hit Buddah right on the bridge of the nose with a knife. Then, while securing Buddah with one hand, cleaning the gaping hole in his face and attempting to forge a makeshift lampshade out of a file folder to prevent him from scratching at it. Then, the next morning, I carried now 15-20 lbs. Buddah (still sporting his lampshade) 1.5K away to the CSPS where I was hoping he could get some stitches. No one was there but the maternity nurse, who made no effort to help Buddah or comfort my sad, tired, tear-stained self. After trying to deal with the fact that I was incredibly upsest and no one seemed to care, I couldn't help but wonder how much worse this would be if I were a pregnant woman ready to give birth, or someone with a terrible illness or serious injury. No one would be there to help me, and I would have to wait over an hour before the doctor finally arrived. How do the circumstances at the CSPS motivate anyone who needs help to go to the CSPS when no one is readily available to help them? And how can the affectation of more staff be justified when not enough people go to the CSPS? But I digress.

After struggling to put iodine on Buddah, the doctor told me there was no way Buddah could get stitches so he'll have to heal on his own. Which is happening very slowly, but hopefully surely. My neighbor feels terrible, and I trust him when he tells me he didn't mean to (a Burkinabe would never kneel down to a dog to apologize unless it was genuine). And if you didn't see the cut on his face, you never would guess that Buddah was in any pain. So really I'm the only one who needs to get over it, which is happening quicker than I expected. But I really don't have a choice.

But a PCVs service wouldn't be so memorable and filled with valuable lessons if it weren't filled with an abundance of challenging, uncomfortable situations. If I don't get anything done in village (which I will make sure is not the case) I will still walk away with many more times the experience, understanding and patience than I could get from any other 2 year period.

So, in honor of my first 6 months here, I would like to make a list of all the challenges I have so far endured:

• I have (consistently) gone without running water and electricity.
• I have managed to sweat 24+ hours without stopping.
• I have (presumably) had more creatures crawl near or on me while I sleep than I care to think about.
• I literally thought I was going to die via scorpion. On the bright side, this has only happened once.
• I have conquered every bacteria and parasite that has attempted to wreck havoc on my intestines (though not without the loss of some dignity).
• I have biked several miles on gravel, dust filled roads (uphill, both ways…).
• I am dealing with the struggles of overcoming language barriers in a bilingual community (or perhaps I’ve just become really good at pretending I understand).
• The wells are drying up in this heat, so I am currently living with very little water each day for washing, bathing, cooking and drinking.
  
• I have experienced moments where I have felt more alone that I ever have in my entire life.
• I’ve taken the role of man, woman and child since I’ve been here, none of which seem to fit.
• I have been asked time and time again for money and gifts, which is never a comfortable conversation to have.
• Similar to the previous point, I have been immediately labeled based on the color of my skin.
• I have been proposed to on too many occasions, in which I either say I’m already married or I’m single and don’t want a husband, or something in between. My inconsistency will probably cause me some trouble down the line…
• I have been stolen from.
• I have been made very, very uncomfortable.
• I’ve experienced my first panic attack (I’d like to think my anti-malarial medication has something to do with it).
• I have been the butt of many, many jokes.
• I have been without the luxury of a nice western toilet.
• I have witnessed children getting beaten, children and adults alike defecating in the fields, and girls far too young to be pregnant.
• And now, I have mended the knife wound of my poor puppy.

I realize that this post is entirely depressing, but in a way I can't help but feel a little proud that I've managed to endure these hard times. So if this is what my first 6 months has been filled with, I'm ready for the next 20. I just hope my dog is left out of it.

The Only Thing Sustainable Here is Cynicism. And Overactive Sweat Glands.

In all development work, one of the major issues is of sustainability. If you find a problem and develop a solution, that solution must maintain even after all the NGOs, IGOs and westerners have packed up and moved out. That's why (a lot of) development work has failed so miserably in the past: an NGO comes in, gives money or builds water pumps or mosquito nets or food or medicine or whatever, and leaves--without teaching the villagers what or how or when. So the villagers use it (if they even know how to) and when its finished or broken its over and they wait for the next rich westerner to give them something else. And the more this happens, the more the behavior of the villageois is reinforced.

Here's a Burkina specific example: the Burkina goverment, along with an international organization (perhaps several, none of which I care to name right now) developed the idea to conduct vaccination campaigns at the village level for things like Polio, Elephantitis, Meningitis, etc. because very few people take their children to the CSPS to get these vaccinations administered (even though they're FREE if the child is under a certain age). So, these several day-long campaigns are composed of going from house to house, finding the target population (in many cases, its children), administering the medicine, marking the target population with a marker, marking the house and leaving.

So what are we teaching the villageois? What has been reinforced? Essentially, we're encouraging mothers, fathers and children to stay in their homes and do nothing but wait for doctors or westerners to give them something for a disease they have no understanding of. They are not learning any lessons about the importance of these vaccinations, the diseases they're preventing or the necessity to go to the CSPS themselves--unprovoked--to take preventative measures.

Here's another example: mosquito nets. I have heard way too many stories of NGOs giving mosquito nets to every family in a village--and even though everyone now has a net to sleep under and prevent the deadly disease of malaria--they don't use it. We westerners fail to realize that its not necessarily the lack of a product or administration of a service that is the problem, but its the comprehension of what the problem is, where it comes from and how to go about preventing the problem that is truly in need.

PCVs aren't exactly like NGOs because we stay for two years--but the same kind of problem arises--unfortunatly fairly often. As a volunteer (and I can second these sentiments) its so easy to get discouraged when you don't see any visual successes (like a school or running water or what have you), so we end up investing our time in these kinds of "monuments" only to discover a year or two or ten later that our monumental project has been completely neglected.

I read a letter yesterday from the Country Director of Cameroon, who goes into great detail about this "Edifice Complex." He reinforces the idea that the best monuments are typically the living, breathing ones--the people who have been influenced and invested in the intangible messages you have helped produce and spread in your service. You may never see the fruits of your labor during your service, but the impacts has the potential to last far beyond a box of mosquito nets.

That being said, it is incredibly difficult to restrain from being cynical in a world that demands cadeaux because they are so habituated to recieving gifts from white people with no idea what to do with it. This cynicism in no way will deter me from trying many (MANY) overly ambitious projects during my next two years....

...But the heat might. Its now in the 100s--even at night. Even with fans blowing in my face I cannot stop from sweating. Not just sweating, but sweating A LOT. And CONSTANTLY. I'll let your imaginations run wild as to how lovely I might look completely dripping in sweat in a conservative top and shirts or pants that fall below the knee...

Sad News in Benin

Some of you may have already heard, but sometime last week a Peace Corps Volunteer in Benin (a country bordering Burkina) was murdered in her village late one night. She was described as being very well-respected and well-liked within her community, and was nearly finished with her two years of service. She was 24 and a college graduate of William and Mary. I am overwhelmed with sadness, concern and even fear, but I have been reassured by the PC Burkina Faso staff that this was an isolated incident and (I agree) this in no way reflects the people of Benin or any other country or village in West Africa. Despite the anxiety I'm having over the news, I still feel very safe in my village and will take all the advised percautions to maintain that safety. I'm also currently in the middle of three full weeks of in-service training out of my site, which is probably best given the timing of this sad news. I had had a great last few weeks in village that I would love to share with you at a later time. I just ask that you keep Kate in your thoughts as I know it is a difficult time for her family, friends and fellow PCVs in Benin.