Oh, and...

Also, this. Kitten needs a name. Gender neutral if possible, as I do not know his or her sex.

goat

(Warning: if you're a vegetarian, or very concerned about the welfare of goats, or have never been to a butcher shop, you might not want to look too far in this post. Just saying.)

I have said this before, but Tabaski is my favorite holiday here. (Although there's apparently a fete in December for the king of this region that is held here in Tema. I'm told it's the best party of all. I'm stoked.) Goat sacrifices, bags of popcorn, and the fabulous fonctionnaire tradition of going from house to house, eating chicken and drinking at each stop.
The fete this year was very fun and... authentic. I saw my village pray together outdoors (too many people to fit in the mosque), I watched my host dad sacrifice a goat, and then I was gifted an entire leg of this goat, with miscellaneous organs, to somehow cook and eat.

Village prayer time.

My awesome host mom (my dad's First wife) running the family boutique.

Left: A host aunt. She speaks a little french, so we hang out. Right: My host dad's second wife. After I took this picture she ran around showing it to all the other women to show how pretty she looked.
Anndddd... here's the goat. This is the after picture. I did not take a "before" picture, nor did I take a "during" picture. I don't know if this is gruesome or not- after seeing it every day at the market, I'm pretty well desensitized to, well, most things. And yes, I ate one of those legs. In a stew. It was delicious.

mam kenga weoogo

(Translation: I went en brousse- uh, into the bush.)

A couple of weeks ago, I took advantage of my no-teaching-on-fridays situation (which I created for myself when I set up all the teacher schedules for my school) to hang out with my host moms! And by hang out, I mean go into the bush and help them harvest crops. Because that's how they roll.

I was initially going to just go with them, check it out, then bike back home for lunch, but there was a complication.

Turns out it was a little further and a little more challenging to get there than I had anticipated. So instead of trying to head back alone (they wouldn't have let me anyways- they'd have accompanied me home then would have had to go back again) I just decided to hang out there. Fortunately it was a cloudy day, so my lack of sunscreen only caught up with me mid-afternoon, when I covered myself with a cloth and hid under a tree.

My host... aunt? leading us to the field with her super new baby.

My host dad's second wife holding up what we were harvesting. They're called chouma in moore, pois de terre in french and who knows what in english. Possibly chickpeas? They're pretty delicious. We harvested all day, breaking only for lunch. I could show you a picture of what we ate, but it's not much to look at. Leftover To (millet flour pounded and cooked into a gelatinous solid), put into a bowl of well water and mushed by hand, then eaten/slurped. Delish.

Sleeping baby.

The super fun neighbor lady who came over at the end of the day and helped sort the chouma. This is one basket of many. Side note: I'm a pretty awesome harvester.

We biked home at sunset, and I got to feel awesome when I was greeted with a hero's welcome by all of my family and neighbors. "What? The nassara* went en brousse?" "Yeah, OUR nassara's name is Balguissa**. She went with us and harvested all day. She's a mossi***."


*Nassara = whitey
**Balguissa is my village name. Unfortunately, it's really caught on with my village. It's pronounced bahl-gee-zuh. Soo pretty. (My full name is Balguissa Sankara. Half my village are Ouedraogos, half are Sawadogos, and a couple of people are Sankaras. A really famous revolutionary/president, Thomas Sankara, came from my village. You can look him up.)
***Mossi is the ethnicity in my village. I'm so legit.

before and after: one month later

First, let's start with a photo update. Remember all those beautiful pictures of Tema I put up last time? (Hint: they're in the post below this.) This is what my village has become, one month later.


I suspect this is going to be a long dry season.

villageoise-y

 the hill.

New site, new site!  So exciting.  After getting back from Turkey (amazing, ask me later) I spent a week and a half in Tema, furnishing my house, sewing my fashion show dress (that's another story) and generally hanging the heck out with my host family.  My courtyard is private, but it's surrounded by the courtyards of one big family, and I've been getting to know them one awkward/delightful interaction at a time.

Sylvie, my cherie. She gets me water.

It's pretty much everything I've been wanting.  My ladies speak only moore, so I've been trying really hard to work on mine.  They're so excited with everything I say, and we actually manage to communicate pretty well (hand motions are the most useful things ever invented.)  I've tried my hand at pounding millet (they laughed at me and took away my pounding stick) and grinding flour with a stone (I'm kind of awesome.  They were all very impressed.  Then a six year old girl took my stone and showed me up.)  I get offered red To with green sauce for breakfast, then the kids give me ears of feed corn all morning long that they've grilled themselves. 

 Mural a Spanish dude painted on my school last year.  Quite nice, no?

A group of french people came last week to visit Tema because their town in France has partnered with our village to build school buildings and teacher housing.  They're really nice, and when they came the village threw them a little fete with chicken, goat, spaghetti, and drinks to which I was invited!  So much eating.

 Waiting for the frenchies.

Baobab trees GALORE!

Pretty much all I've done so far has been to greet everyone (Everyone) in my quartier, hang out with my family, explore on my bike, and furnish my house.  It's really chill and fun and I like my neighbors and my principal a lot.  And tomorrow, I go back to get ready for the school year!  It's gonna be good.

team tema!

I'm so excited. So so so. Last weekend I finally went to my future village, Tema, for a quick visit before I move up there permanently. I had heard a few conflicting things about it, and I had become resigned to the idea of it being a sort of larger village than I had hoped for. AND THEN.

I went. It's about a two-three hour trip from Ouaga, first on a paved main road and later on a fairly bad dirt road. You then come to Bokin (everyone always says Tema-Bokin because they're so close.) That's where the bush taxi stops. After that is a five kilometer bike ride to Tema, which wouldn't seem like much except for the HILL OF DEATH that you have to surmount to get there. It's like someone looked at this row of cliffs, decided they wanted to get over it, and built a track straight up. Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. Apparently cars are capable of making it over. But my mountain bike tires were spinning under me because they couldn't grip the dirt properly as I tried to go up this hill. I already know this hill will be the bane of my existence this coming year.

Okay. So I made it up the hill. Then, as I gasped what I imagined to be my last breaths, I looked down over... Tema! It's rainy season, so everything's deceptively pretty, but I thought it was just lovely. And teeny. Teeny teeny.

Things that I know about Tema:
Population: 973 (To be fair, that's from last year. My counterpart estimates that they're probably over a thousand by now.) 973 new best friends for Carolyn!!!
Number of quartiers in town: 3. One is the chief's quartier, the traditional king of the whole region. One is the president of the parent's association's quartier (and my quartier!) And the third is for... everyone else, I guess.
Number of teachers at my school: 4. Including the principal and myself.

As I just mentioned, I'm living in the quartier that's composed of the president of the PTA and all of his extended family. They just completed construction on my new house. I have my own courtyard but I'm very close neighbors with everyone, so I'm envisioning lots of family time. (Plus, it doesn't look like they speak a whole lot of french, so I anticipate a sharp acceleration in my Moore learning. Due to necessity.) My house is... quaint? I'm trying to think of adjectives other than teeny, Leslie is helping me. It's two rooms, and I can't accurately judge their size except that they're small. Combined, I estimate that they are smaller than my living room right now. Yeah, definitely. I was dumb and for like the first time ever I left my camera in Bagre, so pictures will be coming in September.

Other things. There are tons of baobab trees in Tema Bokin, which I love. I'm hoping for lots of monkeybread juice, which is made from baobab fruits. I'm also hoping that this juice will be cold, because they just brought ELECTRICITY to Tema! I didn't think I wanted electricity, but then I realized that yes, obviously, I do. They're electrifying my house right now. Fan!
The market is every three days, but it's in Bokin. So all produce will require a 10k bike ride. Ending in that hill. But the market's supposed to be really good.

That's going to have to do for now- I really only spent about three hours there, and one of those hours was biking. Another was hanging out with the chief. I'm sure I'll have plenty to tell after I actually live there for a few weeks, which will start after my vacation to Turkey!! August 25: move out of Bagre. August 27: Turkey vacation. September 13: Move to Tema.

I'm excited.

Le General

There is a person at every school called the "Surveillant General." This man is in charge of discipline at the school, so if you kick a kid out of class you send him to the dreaded Surveillant. Or in our case, Le General.

Le General is this tall, skinny, chain-smoking guy who comes up with the most creative, funniest insults you can imagine. According to him, he used to work as a bush taxi guy in Ghana and later as an elephant poacher. While I would normally call BS on that, he does speak some Ghanaian english and knows an awful lot about the price of elephant tusks. He is also Super nice and tries to teach me Moore every day.

I say all this to preface a couple of anecdotes about Burkina schools. Or maybe just my school. Or maybe just the General.

One day, I was planning to give a test in the afternoon. I had given the test copy to the secretary to type up (on the typewriter) and print out (on the... hm. I just tried to google search what this machine actually is and failed. It's not on wikipedia, at least not under "obselete printing techniques" or "ancient printing methods." My friend just suggested "printing press," but I'm pretty sure that's not right. In any case, it's the machine where you put in the typed sheet with the purple carbon copy, then you turn the crank for however many copies you need. That thing. ...Dictograph? No.) So she had printed out my copies in the morning, then left for the day and locked her office. I showed up in the afternoon to find my students waiting, and no way to get the test. I could have written it on the chalkboard except that the secretary had my original copy too. I walked over to the General's house to see if he had a key. He didn't, but he grapped a set of random keys and we set out for the office. He proceeded to show some unusual expertise in the field of lock-picking. Apparently if you use a similar key and jiggle it a lot and lift the door at exactly the right time, you can pop open the lock, as he then demonstrated. It took about fifteen seconds. On our way back to his house with the copies in hand, he jokingly requested that I not mention this particular skill to anyone.

Another day, maybe even that same week, I was sitting on a bench next to the office during a break between my classes and I heard a loud BANG from somewhere close by. Looking around, I didn't see anything, and assumed it must have been a malfunctioning moto somewhere. Several minutes later, however, who comes striding through the school grounds with a rifle and a dead bird? Le General.

schooooool's out! for! summer!

[Alright MOM, I'll write an update. Although, you know, while I rarely have internet access I almost always have phone access....]

The school year finally ended, after a bonus week of striking just in time to destroy my testing schedule. I don't think I've written about the striking situation that's been going on since... February? There was an entire month without school, then a couple more weeks of strikes close to the end of the third trimester of this year. It wasn't pretty, but we did manage to finish out the school year. All the disturbances had an impact on the national exams- this year's success rate was pretty low. My school's passing rate was something like 35%, which, although pretty normal for rural Burkina, isn't too hot. The typical response of adults in village is "It's the kids' fault, they never study." Although this may be true in some cases, I might venture to say that the MONTH AND A HALF OF STRIKING might also have something to do with it.

One of the lycee kids, Abasse, who has kind of adopted me as his "tantie" (aunt), took the exam this year and totally got a kick out of coming to my house, acting super sad, and telling me that he failed, when actually- fake out!- he passed. After I consoled him by being sympathetic and saying "ca va aller" many times, he relented and told me the truth. Jerk. A few of my favorite students from last year came by to tell me they passed, but there were a lot who didn't get it this year. (There are still options for those who failed- they can retake the school year and try again next year, either at our school or at the bigger school in town or another one elsewhere. If their parents will pay.)

There's still the BAC coming up in a week or so- based on the French system, it's the exam to pass high school/get into university. The amount of studying kids (or adults) put into studying for this exam is unbelievable. There are students who just sleep at the high school now, because they study so late into the night.

As for my summer, I've been in and out of site a lot. There's nothing going on in village, so I've been doing a lot of workshops and trainings in Ouaga and elsewhere. This past month I did a TEFL training (in case I teach english next year), a workshop on how to help run a reading camp a friend's NGO is doing in August, and am now here for a GAD meeting (abbreviations!) It's keeping me busy, but I'm pretty sick of bush taxis at this point.

(The last time, I was basically curled up in my seat because of the rice sacks and chickens under me, the seat was a covered plank of wood, the lady next to me was sleeping on me, as was her baby, I couldn't drown out the Burkinabe rap music with my headphones, and there was a pervasive smell of butchered meat coming from the seat behind me. And the shocking part was that I didn't realize that it was a particularly bad bush taxi experience until I got to Ouaga and realized that my clothes still smelled like goat meat.)

I'm using a friend's computer, having left my power cable in village, so I'll end here. Look out for more updates, with anecdotes on teaching and consolidation parties!

sandtastic

Remember this?

The cattle market, plus the man at the market selling "medicaments"?

Fada is pretty much just the coolest place ever (when it's not being blocked by tanks.) I went again with a couple of good friends who are leaving soon, and the aim of our trip was to have our futures told by a sand reader. It's very traditional, and still popular- apparently many African leaders in the area use it to make important decisions (doesn't that make you feel optimistic? But hey, we did it too....)

We biked over to the sand reader's house in the early evening. He wasn't there yet, so we hung out with his family as the cows and sheep came home and the kids took their baths. Finally when it was dark out the sand reader came home. While the rest of the family watched TV on a small set they brought out in the courtyard, we went over and sat on a mat on the sand. He sat next to the mat and had us take turns asking questions and having our futures read.

One of us would come forward and put our hand on the sand. Then he would draw patterns and lines in the sand, and would interpret what the sand was saying about us. Colette was told that wherever she worked (boutique, auto repair...) she had to be the boss; Bovard was told to sacrifice a medium, white, four-legged sheep; and I was told that I will marry an older man, but I'll only find love if my father prays for a husband for me. (Get on that, would you Dad?)

Overall, I mainly just felt it was one of those cool experiences you should take advantage of when available. It was dark, the courtyard was quiet, the sand reader's cute family was hanging out, and the process of drawing in the sand and interpreting it was super soothing and pleasant. And then we all got to go out, eat fried chicken and analyze everything he'd said.

surprise!

Welp, guess what I decided! If you're a member of my family, I'm sure my parents have already shared the terrible news: I'm staying a third year. I don't know that it's much of a surprise- I've been thinking about it since I started applying to the Peace Corps, honestly. I just wasn't sure in what capacity I'd want to stay. I could stay in my village, doing the same thing for another school year, I could work with an NGO in a larger city, I could transfer to another country and use my teaching experience in a new setting... so many options! And what I decided on is not at all what I initially expected, but I'm sooo excited about it.

I had been planning to work at the teacher's college, teaching sessions about how to include Life Skills in the classroom. But then I realized what I've been learning for two years: teachers stress me out. I have teacher friends, and a lot of them are lovely, welcoming, helpful people. Others, however, are extremely frustrating, and the functionnaire (government employee) complex of hating living in a village and not being friends with villagers can get very oppressive. It's a weird community, and while my job idea was theoretically good, the practical aspect of working entirely with functionnaires would have been... awful.

So then I thought about what I like about being here. I enjoy teaching, and I love my students. I've also been realizing how limiting it is not to speak local language very well. I want to be friends with little old ladies who don't speak french, but the language barrier keeps me from forming real friendships with them. I haven't needed to speak Moore to be a good teacher or to do side projects, so I haven't had the impetus to learn it well, but I want to.

Here's my plan. I'm going to move to a small village to teach in a newly opened school. The school is smaller, hopefully with smaller class sizes, and I'll be able to teach almost any subject they need me to teach- math, physics, chemistry, biology, or english (and they definitely need teachers- there are zero physics/chemistry teachers right now, and only one math/biology teacher.) The village speaks Moore, which I already know a little, and I'll spend the next five months studying it so I can integrate quickly. I want to live in a courtyard with a family, without electricity (who'd have thought, right? I love my fan!)

I'm really happy with this decision for a few other reasons as well. PC Burkina was going to get 33 new education volunteers this summer, but it's been cut down to 22 so there aren't going to be enough to fill the planned sites. I already have a lot of experience in teaching and I feel like I understand life here pretty well now, so I think I'll have a very effective third year and can make a significant impact in a small village. And lastly, as cheesy as this sounds, I know that I'll regret it if I leave now. I just... like it here. I don't want to leave yet. It's a perfect opportunity, and I'll never have another time in my life when it's this simple to spend another year in Africa. Instead of going home and bumming around for a year while I apply to graduate schools, I can do it here! More adventures! A gogo!


I'll get a month's paid (ha) leave in America, which I'll probably take over Christmas, so I'll be able to visit people then. I also promised my mother I'd get a phone with internet if I stayed a third year, so I should have regular access to email and facebook and Suzanne's blog (seriously, what else is there? Not even kidding.) Plus, this just gives all of you an extra year to come and visit me!! I promise you a real village experience.

fa-daa!

(Sorry, I could only get one picture to load... good one though, right?)


A couple of weeks ago I went up to Fada N'Gourma with a whole group of other volunteers. Fada is a pretty chill city in the east of the country. We went up to do a "chicken crawl," which was like a pub crawl but with fried chicken. I repeat: fried chicken. This is not a common thing in Burkina- the fanciest we usually get here is grilled, more often boiled (most often we just get dried fish or boiled goat meat.) But Fada is full of geniuses who realize the magic of frying, so we went and ate a whole lot of deliciousness.

While I was there my friend Ebben took me to the cattle market- the largest cattle market in West Africa, I believe. I'm going to try to get back up there during the rainy season- apparently the market is packed with cattle at that time of the year. Also, you can get your fortune read in the sand, but turns out the sand reader can't live just off of tourists so he was busy working at his real job to do it this time. So I'll definitely need to go back for that.

While there we also stumbled across a snake charmer and a dude selling "medicaments" (medicines.) His wares included: alligator skull and skin, bird heads, ostrich feet, dried hedgehogs, cow feet, snake skin, and so much more! My personal favorite was the basket of dried chameleons. Only a dollar apiece: what a steal! I bought one so the dude would let me take pictures. He wouldn't tell me what the chameleon did, per se, just that it wasn't mal and it was "medicament." I'll give you fifty dollars to eat it and find out.

mise a jour

Now, for a brief update.

Schoolwise we have a little bit of an unexpected vacation right now, so I'm profiting by spending an extra day in Tenkodogo. I never get to hang out here really- I'm always just passing through- so as soon as I leave the cyber cafe I'm planning to do some intense marche shopping. I need blonde weave (gotta get my hair did) and new shoes. Then, tomorrow, back to village to start painting my World Map on an outside wall of the high school! That's... going to take a while. I'll keep you updated, but it's not sure that it'll be done before April.

Whenever school starts up again, I'll be able to finish doing my school-wide sex-ed sessions that I mentioned last time. I started with the youngest girls (6th/7th grade) and the oldest boys (9th/10th grade), the latter with help from a couple of male teachers. Good thing, too, because those boys... oof. Some things are universal, and one of those things happens to be teenage boys. Not something a young, single, limited-french-speaking american girl can exactly handle on her own, as I have learned through doing World AIDS Day lessons with these hooligans (I also learned that mixed groups are a DISASTER, which is why these are totally separate.) The girls, on the other hand, were shy and cute and amazed by everything I told them. Periods? They had no clue. And when I finally got them asking questions, they had plenty. I'm excited to work with the older girls, and to scare the rest of the boys with pictures of STDs.

I should also mention the ambulance project. It's still not done yet, unfortunately- there are some more hoops the Ouaga office is going to make me jump through, including meeting with the community and writing a completely new budget. But hopefully once I fulfill all these new requirements I'll get approval right away, and once I do I'll start pleading for help from friends and family.

The end! I probably won't have internet again until the last few days of March when I go into Ouaga for our "close of service conference." We don't actually finish our service until August, but this is a preliminary attempt on the Peace Corps' part to get us ready for life outside of Burkina, where there are such things as working hours and resumes. Yeah, good luck with that, guys.

girl talk

Okay, yes, I bribe girls with nail polish and fashion magazines
Then I teach them how to use my camera
And let them use my mirror to primp
And take their pictures.

So yes, I may be reinforcing certain gender sterotypes, bribing girls, and luring them in by letting them play with my stuff, but I'm pretty okay with that. It means they like coming to my house, they have stuff to do so we end up having fun conversations, and when I do life skills activities with them they listen and participate. And they bring their school notebooks so after we have our club I help them with their homework. I might not have the most organized, intentional girls' club in Burkina (which makes me a little insecure sometimes) but we have fun, and I love it.


Burkina flag fingernails!

joy of travelling

This bus company is called KGB. It uses yellow Bluebird schoolbuses and its logo is this alligator, with wheels. I dunno, all that put together just makes me so happy every time I think about it.

And this is how they load buses here- there's a rack on top where they tie motos, as well as bikes, bags of rice, and goats. Here is a goat being put on top. As you might imagine, he was less than thrilled about it.

videooo

The Zongo brothers separating their rice harvest- grains fall, husks fly away. I tried to help (not pictured.) I hope the sound works- that was my favorite part. The metal shovel going into the pile, scchinckk, and the rice being thrown into the air, flwhoosh!

I think I have reverted to being a five year old.



** okay, working on it. **
Hey, just kidding, I didn't do anything to fix it but apparently it works if you're on an internet connection that actually functions!

evening ride home

we've got weather

THIS is how cold it was here in January. Pants, sweater, fleecy hoodie, scarf, every morning. I would often try to find creative ways to wrap the scarf around my head. And biking to school at 6:30am was even worse. It was FREEZING, sometimes as low as 68 degrees!! Ridiculous. And I loved it.

Now, it is hot. It is hot already. It started in January, and for the past week and a half it's been around a hundred degrees in my house every day. Hot season is supposed to start in March. This is unconscionable.

only a little lame

I was trying to think of other anecdotes or interesting things to share, and was mentally complaining to myself that I've done so very little lately. This past Sunday in particular, I felt very boring because I stayed at my house the entire day grading math tests. But as the day progressed, I realized just how many visitors I get. I was visited by M Seagda, who came to talk about the ambulance repair grant, two of my girls' club girls, who dropped off a book they borrowed and asked for help on a presentation, M Drabo, my pseudo-dad, Leopold, the painter who's going to paint two of my rooms (seafoam green and yellow- ridiculous, yes) Marie, a neighbor girl/friend who came to do physics exercises, and my favorite vegetable lady, Pauline, who stumbled on my courtyard while looking for a different house. All unannounced, all before 3pm.

So even on days when I feel completely lame and isolated and never leave my courtyard, I still have visits from friends, neighbors, coworkers, all sorts of people. It's quite nice now that I'm used to it, and I'm sure I'll miss it when I go back to America.

sage advice

Il ne faut pas devancer l'iguane dans l'eau

Don't go into the water before the iguana

My favorite proverb so far. Folks here have tons of 'em, for all occasions. This one means “don't put the cart before the horse” (which they also say (but in french)) but sounds far cooler. It comes from when you're, you know, trying to catch an iguana, because if it falls into the water it'll stay there without moving and you can catch it. But if you go in first, it won't follow you in and you'll never be able to get it. Just something to keep in mind next time you go iguana hunting.

go internet go

Hooray!! Finally. Pictures!

Fishing boats in Dix Cove
Sunrise on the beach

Old colonial buildings

Cape Coast Castle
Yaayy Ghana!

boo

*Imagine that you're seeing exciting, dramatic pictures of waves crashing on the beach and brightly painted fishing boats with multicolored flags waving in the sunset.*

Sorry, the whole point of this post was initially to post pictures from Ghana. But the internet here at the Peace Corps house here in Ouaga isn't letting me do that. So... update?
I'm here, in Ouaga, on my way back to village from our trip to Ghana. We went to the beach for two weeks and it was lovely. I probably gained five pounds and got a wicked tan. It was excellent. Then on the way back I got to do the only really touristy thing I wanted to do- visit the Cape Coast Castle, a major slave castle on the Gold Coast. It's the one the Obamas visited on their trip to Ghana (not why I wanted to go, but I did see the remembrance wreath Michelle brought, molding in the slave dungeon.)
Christmas was great- we had roast pig and hot chocolate and listened to Sufjan Christmas albums and played Christmas scrabble, Christmas Bam, and a very fun Swedish stick-throwing game. Hopefully I'll be able to put up the pictures of us wearing Christmas sweaters and ski hats with our swimsuits on the beach.
Now I'm headed back to village to start the second trimester, for which I have prepared... not at all. It'll be okay. I think. Teaching should be fine, and I'm optimistic about being able to do projects I've been planning, like painting a world map at the high school and doing sex-ed classes with the students at my school (they seriously aren't taught Anything until 3eme, which could mean that they could be 18 or 19 before they learn about the stuff we're taught in 6th grade in the US.) Oh, and finally submitting my ambulance grant proposal. (Almost done. M Seagda is working on getting some more data from the head doctor at the health center, which has taken a while because they've been super busy with vaccination campaigns.) Hooray, projects!

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot. The most exciting part of being in Ghana: FanIce. It's like a rectangular pouch of ice cream. Here in Burkina we have FanChoco and FanLait, which are delicious, but they're not FanIce. FanIce tasted like.. generic grocery store vanilla ice cream that you buy in tubs and feel horrible about eating because they're so bad for you but Delicious. Burkina has nothing to compare. Even the fanciest ice cream you buy in Ouaga is nothing compared to this amazingness (and it's only 50 pesoes! 30 cents?) Like, . I bought it literally every time I saw it for sale (carried on someone's head in a wooden box or in a cooler attached to the front of a bike with the trademark Fan horn honking), which was... often. Like, I ate a lot. Possibly five sachets a day, when I could get it. ... May have contributed to the five pounds.