Oh Turtle.

Okay, this is really sad, and I'm going to talk about it briefly and generally. I mentioned my sick dog once before- and I've avoided mentioning her since, because I kind of knew what was going to have to happen. She got sicker and sicker, and yesterday, finally, I had her put down. This is the extremely abbreviated version- there was much more agonizing involved, emergency texts to my mother to PLEASE CALL ME I NEED DOG ADVICE and hours of impossible conversations in a culture where humane treatment of animals is a luxury at best and the vet's main job is to inspect animals for slaughter. So this has been the hardest part of my service so far, having to make ethical pet decisions (which is a new responsibility for me) in a remote village in Burkina Faso. And about a dog that someone else loved for years before I inherited her, and to whom I felt accountable. But Turtle was a very good dog, and I'm glad I had her, even though it's been rough and I've sort of jumped ahead in cultural adjustment to the stage where the novelty has worn off and I already hit that point of "why can't things just be EASY, everything's so DIFFICULT here."
So that's the end of my dog story. And I still have my fabulous cat Jack who eats lizards and meows like a goat and loves to sleep on my lap.

cat, dog, and garden

I'm going to Bagré!! This means nothing to anyone. But it's actually unbelievably exciting. Bagré is a largeish village in the southeastern region of Burkina, pretty close to the borders of both Ghana and Togo. It's mostly known for the huge dammed-up lake right next to it. The way I find it on my map is by looking for the symbol of the hippo, by the big blue region (lake) and I'm right next to it. Hippopotames!
And what I'm most excited about, honestly, are the few particulars I've learned by texting the volunteer who lives there now. I'll be replacing her when she ends her service, which means I'll work at her school and even move into her house, inheriting certain items. Such as: a cat, a dog, and a garden!!! I told our education advisor/boss/generally awesome guy, Seb, that I was hoping to be somewhere friendly (climate and people) with potential for vegetables. And he seriously hooked me up. With bonus lake!

So this week we have a workshop here in Ouahi with our homologues: our host country national counterparts who are from our village and will be our guides/advisors/cultural references/saviors when we move to site. We'll meet them and do conference-y things for two days, then they'll bring us to our respective sites for a several-day tour. I'll probably be staying with the current volunteer, and then during the day go out into the community with my homologue to meet future co-workers, the chief of police, the village chief, and other important people to know. And I'll finally get a visual on what my life will be like for these two years, and even some concrete information! I'm hoping I'll be inspired to work super hard through the rest of training, but I think it's more likely that I'll just be more stir-crazy stuck here in Ouahi and antsy to get started with my life already.

I'm already a little bit like that because I finally took a trip out to the villages where half of us are living right now. I was expecting villages to be smaller than where I live, with more basic houses and lots of children, but I was not expecting it to be so beautiful. The bike ride out is gorgeous, with a little dirt road leading through fields and very slight hills and a surprisingly green landscape (rainy season) dotted with trees. Then you get to village and it's all very clean and neat, with little cluster mazes of courtyards kind of scattered across the area. In between the clusters of houses are more fields and little dirt paths and baobab trees. Which are amazing. When we got into village we didn't know where we were going, so we asked for the nassaras (white people) and some kids took us over to the baobab where Emily and Julie had spent the entire day, reading and hanging out on a mat in the shade of the tree. Which is overly idyllic, I know, but it was still lovely. Then all of us who came, maybe 3/4 of our stage, had dinner in Emily's courtyard. The sky was clear and starry, but in the distance there was lightning so a few of us walked into the field to watch the storm roll in. Because of the rain we had to split off into a few people's houses to sleep, instead of all of us sleeping outside in one courtyard. It was an excellent slumber party and great experience and the people in village are so welcoming and lovely and I want to move to a village right now. I'm definitely starting to see how I can actually become a part of this country. Stars in my eyes, but I'm okay with idealism right now.