travelrama!

So, Christmas! Was wonderful. If I couldn't be home for christmas, this was the absolute next best thing. I went to my lovely, dear friend Leah's house (with a number of other volunteers and some of her village friends) for the holiday, in Orodara, which is really far southwest in the country. We had a traditional... Ukranian? Christmas eve meal, which was really meaningful and it was nice to celebrate with her family traditions. And we went caroling around her neighborhood (some of us very reluctantly, but it turned out to be really cute and fun,)and did stockings, and a white elephant gift exchange (Yankee swap!) Then, in a Christmas miracle, we had pizza and salad for our Christmas day lunch.



After Christmas, seven of us went on a bike tour of the area as our winter break vacation. We biked to Banfora, where there are waterfalls and "the domes," which are very cool natural rock formations. Okay. Honestly, Burkina's not the most beautiful country. It's not lush, it's not mountainous, it's not along the water. Like, it's the Sahel. It's kind of scrubby and dusty. But the southwest region of the country is more tropical than the rest, and the difference between the Orodara-Banfora area and my site was pretty remarkable. There were trees everywhere, tall trees, that made it feel forested. There were also rice fields (okay, I have those) and sugar cane fields and tons of fruit trees. It was a seriously beautiful bike trip. I'm really glad I got to experience a much different Burkina than I'm used to. Except for the fact that we camped out a lot, and I about froze to death. Not used to that.



And the last super-exciting and potentially life-threatening activity of our trip was the visit to the hippo lake! I believe I mentioned this. Well, we (seven of us and two guides) went out in a charming, small, slightly leaky wooden canoe onto a lake (Tangrila, like Shangri-la) in which there were a number of alleged hippos. As we approached the area where they were supposed to be, one of the guides started knocking the side of the boat with the wooden paddle, making a lovely resonant thudding noise, to scare the hippos out of the water.
I wish typing could convey the tone of my voice right now. I'm trying to express some intense horror and "this is a terrible, terrible idea"-ness regarding this idea. Let's try again. They were hitting the side of the boat, to scare. the hippos. really dangerous hippos. out of the water. so they would come up and look at us. When there were five hippos (including a mother and baby) with their heads out of the water, STARING AT US, I got slightly nervous. One of those moments where you joke to everybody about what a bad idea it is, and how cool it would be to be killed by hippos, but also kind of thinking that it could potentially really happen and that you're in the middle of a really stupid life choice. But it turned out perfectly fine, and very cool, and we saw hippos and got waterlily crowns and had a lovely time overall. I took pictures, but the hippos are mostly underwater.

and... hippo!

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.