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.