When in Doubt, Sacrifice a Chicken!

Who knew. But when you're in the 'royal' family--the chief's family---its natural to turn to animal sacrifice, as this is the family responsible for carrying the culture and traditions of their village, which is rooted in animism. The Toussian people in particular are known for their sacrifices, to bless the fields for a good harvest, to bless those who have already passed, and to bless the sick.

As rainy season teases us with its brief winds and rains during a sweltering heat, I have seen many a sacrifice (oftentimes, it is because the sacrifice will HAVE to take place on a specific rock that sits right outside my house). In case you want to do this at home, here's how it goes:

The chicken is always a white chicken, and always alive, and the men who do it always seem to be shirtless. Some water and ash is thrown on the rock. Then, the chicken's neck is cut several times to draw a lot of blood. The head is NOT severed, this is important. Once the neck is cut, the man conducting the sacrifice lets go of the chicken and the chicken proceeds to sporadically jump off the ground multiple times, its wings flapping in its last attempt to escape death. Once it lands for good, its last breaths upon him, man determines whether the chicken's distance from the rock where it was originally cut is large enough, as that is what determines whether the sacrifice will work. The chicken, still barely alive, is then taken and stripped of its feathers which are placed (with the blood) on the rock where the sacrifice was done. The chicken is then eaten and the family gets some much needed protein in their diets. As an overactive animal lover, you can imagine the facial expressions I am unable to hide during these sacrifices...

In other news, I'm working on a similar mural project in Takaledougou that is going very well, though it is very tiring work when there's no shade 6 out of the 8 hours I'm outside painting. The community has been incredible encouraging and supportive, and I've even had some help this time! Expect pictures during my next (hopefully timely) entry.

I never really got a chance to talk about my trip to Senegal. Since it looks like I will be transferring there next year, I'll hold back on what I have to say about Senegal, other than it was glorious. Here are some photos that hopefully exude some of its splendor.




Also, here are some pictures from a mask festival I attended shortly after my trip to Senegal. It is THE mask festival of Burkina, held only 2 years, and features masks and dances from all over West Africa. Props to Leslie for taking some wonderful pictures!

Fandjora

The last two weeks in January was spent in Fandjora, a satellite village 30km away, through sugar cane fields on rough roads and sandy paths. Fandjora does not have a CSPS--if they require medical attention they need to go to the CSPS in my village. This is not easy, especially when most don't own a moto (and even if they did, it takes nearly an hour to get there--kinda hard to do when you're bleeding profusely or your wife is about to give birth).


So, that's why I decided to live in Fandjora for 2 weeks. Its neglected relationship with the CSPS (and vice versa) is evident in a lot of respects. I was there in particular for the health of the mothers and children. Many of the children in Fandjora are malnourished, some severely malnourished (imagine a 20 month old child with a forearm circumference of 9cm). The Hearth Model is a program in which mothers of malnourished children make enriched porridge using only local ingredients every morning for 12 days. By the end of the 12 day period, children have gained significant amounts of weight as a result of the Hearth.


A typical Hearth group is composed of 8-10 women with children of similar ages. Because I was only staying in Fandjora for one 2-week period, guilt provoked me to take on a group of 28 women with children ages 6 months to 3 years. This led to some very chaotic mornings and difficult situations for children. With 28 women, it was very difficult to keep track of women and their children; they individually felt less obligated to attend to each session; younger children required lighter porridge and older children required heavier porridge; as a stranger in the community the women did not put the trust in me that women in Takaledougou would. On top of it all, my counterpart for this project (the nurse at my CSPS) insisted on watering down the porridge far too much to do anything for these children. Women are not used to cooking porridge for nearly 30 children, so when I pleaded that the women add more ingredients (for example, more than 8 tomatoes for a vegetable porridge to feed 30 children) they freaked out. "Its too much" they would say. It wasn't until the last half of the Hearth, after battling with them every morning, that they finally started to believe and trust in me.

So, after the Hearth every morning, I would spend the rest of the day until sundown painting 3 murals on a house along a path that was heavily trafficked. These were wordless murals (since many people, especially women, are illiterate) with messages encouraging healthy practices for mothers and their children. The process was not easy. First the walls were smoothed, then a layer of base paint. After that, I drew grid lines that would me draw and enlarge images that I had drawn on paper. The murals were drawn, then, using black, white, red, blue and yellow paint I mixed and matched colors to paint. While this required a lot of attention to detail, it was actually a huge stress reliever after my Hearth every morning.


The mural project turned out to be a huge success. Villagers stopped along the way to look at the images and explain their meaning to one another--the importance of going to vaccination days to get your child vaccinated, the kinds of foods to put in a nutritious meal, to go to the CSPS when you're about to give birth. Since CSPS staff only come out once a month, these images will be here every day, sensibilizing and reminding villagers of healthy practices.

Water Water Ev--Uh....Where?

Can you imagine having to leave your house to collect water? During my first few months at site, my water was supplied to me by lines women carefully walking into my house carrying over 20 liters of water on their heads and dumping it into my 260 liter trashcan of a water reserve. This lasted about a month or two. In an effort to be independent, I attempted to pull water myself. Unfortunately, this effort was thwarted--not only by my feeble upper arms, but also by my counterpart who thinks I can't be trusted with my own life and fall helplessly to my dark, wet death. Independent or not, the closest well (within 100 m of my house) dried up. All that was left was brown and opaque. So, my next water source was the water pump 1.5K (about a mile). I'd attach a big yellow 20 liter jug to the back of my bike (as if I didn't already look cool enough with my rad helmet), bike to the one of two pumps in my village, wait around and chat with the group of women in line to get water, pump my water and head back. Depending on how many women are in line and how lazy I'm feeling, this can take anywhere from 15-30 minutes. Sometimes I would make several trips a day, most days however I try to go as little as possible, adapting to a lifestyle of less than 20 liters a day. You can imagine what that lifestyle looks and smells like.

I'm still biking to get water (though I've been known to coax friends into doing it for me), though, now the twist cap to close the opening of my jug has sadly disappeared, so my bike ride back home can sometimes result in an unfortunately large loss of water. I was just informed this week though that we will be getting faucet water within months! This is not faucet-from-your-home water. This is 4 faucets that are being strategically placed in village to accommodate as many villagers as possible. Thankfully, one is being placed within 300m of my house, making this water endeavor far easier.

Speaking of water. Other than in the pumps and soon to be faucets, there's none. Its dry season once again. It hasn't rained since August and it probably won't until May or June. But gardens are blooming with all kinds of vegetables, its not too hot and its cool at night so all is good. Now that is in full force, harvest begins, wedding and funeral parties are in abundance, women are busy pounding corn and millet into flour, and villagers are looking for work to make some money for their families. Association Gonyonmon, the women's savings and credit group aimed to help entrepreneur and vulnerable women alike, is dwindling in membership. Many of the women sell mangoes and other seasonal fruit on the side of the road. That is their priority because that puts money in their hands immediately. So, setting aside 100 CFA every other week is a difficult commitment, even if it is used to take out loans of 50,000 CFA later down the road. Membership has certainly declined, though many have just lately showed up again to pay their late dues. Word is getting out that women are learning important skills to help themselves and their families and their earnings is slowing but steadily increasing, so I think membership will bounce back up.

The next two weeks will prove themselves to be rather interesting. Fandjora is a satellite village in my CSPS's "aire sanitaire" (health region). It is 30 k away on very rough dirt roads. No one speaks French. So, their relationship with the CSPS is rather, uh, neglected. A CSPS worker will go there once a month to give vaccinations to children (if they're informed about it) and thats it. If someone in Fandjora needed medical attention, they would be expected to transport themselves to the CSPS to get that attention. So when my counterpart and I travelled there to measure babies for malnutrition, the results were expected. Nearly half of the children measured were malnourished--many of them were even considered severely malnourished. So, I decided I would live there for the next two weeks to conduct two separate HEARTH models, a program designed to help mothers prepare nutritous meals for their children as well as sensibilize them on other health and sanitation topics. I also plan to paint several murals of health maternal and child practices to sensibilize villagers on a day to day basis. This is the most ambitious project I have started, and if half of it works out I'll be thrilled. I still don't know where exactly I'm staying, who I'm staying with and how I will cook or bathe (or get water...) but I'm really hoping all those things will sort themselves out.

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.