dry season

The following is a demonstration of how skewed my view of the world is right now. I went for a bike ride to my lake the other day and took a few photos. I thought: these are nice, look- there's water! and grass! and animals! What a pretty area! Example:



Then I actually looked at the pictures, and realized that the cows are starving, the grass is mostly mud, and so is the water. You can hardly even see the other shore because of all the dust in the air. So to give myself a little reality check (and to give you all one too, albeit in the other direction) I thought I'd do a little before-and-after photo montage.

my courtyard in October

last week: sandstorm!!


before: trees with leaves


after: not so much


before


after


this one's good- same shot, before...


and... after!


So, as you can see, Burkina in the dry season is... less than picturesque. My world is not super pretty right now. Looking at my pictures from the fall I can't BELIEVE I used to think Burkina was kind of scrubby and sad. I realize now that it was GORGEOUS. Now, on the other hand....

So you can possibly get some sense of my excitement when I tell you that it rained last night!!!! We had a huge windstorm a few days ago that bent all the metal telephone poles to the ground and blew off half the sheet-metal roofs in town, but that only came with a few drops of rain. Last night we got the wind again, but this time it poured for about an hour, then it calmed down into a steady rain until stopping early this morning. It was 78 degrees in my house and I put on a flannel shirt. I am currently wearing my hair down, and there are no signs of prickly heat. I might just survive this hot season.

yup, pretty nice

togo à go-go

Togo!! I went there for our spring break (whoo!) with a group of seven other volunteers, and we spent the entire five days on the beach. It was amazing. Completely un-Peace Corps; we did nothing constructive except teaching the hotel guys how to play beer pong, which is obviously the second goal of the Peace Corps: teaching about American culture. We're putting that in our quarterly reports.
So we swam, and ate, and... yeah, that's about it. Which was perfect. I know I should go sightseeing, and explore, and have adventures, but I'm pretty okay with a legit vacation once in a while with good people in a beautiful place. Pictures to come, maybe next weekend.
And now, back to reality. Or whatever version of reality it is that I live here. School starts again next week, and the trimester is only about six weeks long. That means that I have 54 hours of class left this year, over the course of which I have to write, review for, administer, grade, hand back and do in-class corrections for six tests. Plus actually teach. Teacher challenge!! Not looking forward to all that.

4

Okay, last post! This past Monday was March 8th, International Women's Day! It was a day off of school, and I got to participate in a couple of activities that I surprisingly enjoyed a lot. Surprisingly, because one of them involved me, in front of my entire village, attempting to play football. There was a women vs. men match, and I was recruited. I would have felt super lame if I'd refused, as much as I wanted to sit it out. So I played, and was terrible, obviously, but it was Not a true competitive match, and my skills were possibly on par with those of the other women. We had a couple of men dressed in pagnes (skirts) on our team, and after a while the game devolved into a sort of rugby match with the women throwing the ball into the goal. It was a really fun time and I learned just how awesome the women in my village are (answer: extremely awesome.)
Second event: a women's dinner, with dancing afterwards. And again, me, dancing, in front of many, many people. Not something I would generally attempt. But I think I may be getting over my self-consciousness, or just accepting embarrassment as inevitable, because I did, in fact, dance. And I enjoyed it. As did the other women. P.S. Turns out dance circles are universal- who knew?

Overall, great 8 Mars, and I've certainly felt more integrated into my village because of it- I've gotten many, many, many comments on my football skills and amazing dance moves.

3

I started my girls' club!! It's made up of the girls from my 4eme (8th grade) class, and since there are only twelve (out of almost seventy kids, which is a ridiculous proportion) it's a really good size for a club. And these girls are awesome. The club itself is nothing special- every Saturday morning we drink tea and hang out and draw and paint our nails and maybe practice some english, and I lead an activity on self-esteem or gender roles or whatever else I think they might be interested in. Basically what I love is just talking to them and learning about their lives, what they think about school, what they want to do in the future (I've got several nurses and doctors, a journalist, and a government minister) and it's very illuminating. Last week they got to sharing war stories from the beatings they received in elementary school (it was apparently worst on days when the teacher was drunk.) I told them that in the US a teacher would be put in prison for that, and they thought that was pretty cool. [I know I don't normally write negative things about Burkina on this blog, but that was one of those conversations where I stopped feeling at home here and started feeling a little overwhelmed and depressed about the state of things. Those conversations happen occasionally, and I don't want to dwell on them too much when I'm sharing my experiences with you all, but it is a part of my life.]
But these girls are wonderful and I love spending time with them, and Saturday mornings are quickly becoming the best time of my week.

2

I got to learn how to make pottery! My friend knows a lady who makes clay jars, so I went over to her house one morning and she taught me how to do it. It makes a lot of sense when you see it. There are these rounded basins in the ground, in all different sizes, and you put the clay in a basin and pound it with a smooth rock until it's thin and pottery-like. Then you sort of stand it on end and add more clay in the basin, and pound that out. So eventually you get a jar shape, and you can cut holes in the sides if it's going to be a water dish for chickens or you can add a neck if it's going to be for holding drinking water, then you let it dry before baking it. I made two: one for chickens/my cat, and one for cooling my water.












Because these pots are the most beautiful invention ever, and I'll tell you why. I even taught this in physics, that's how cool it is. The walls of a cannari (I have no idea how to spell it, or even what language it is- it means clay pot) are very porous, so the water that you put inside can evaporate through the walls. And since that process requires energy, it takes the necessary energy in form of heat from the water inside the jar, making the water that remains significantly cooler. So, on a hot afternoon, when all the water in my house is at room temperature (invariably higher than my body temperature) I can drink beautifully cool water from my cannari. And you can call me a nerd for loving this concept, but only after you drink hot water all day every day for a month or two.

1

I'm alive! I'm pretty sure a dead person wouldn't sweat this much. Sorry about the lack of blogging- since my Taiwanese friends left I haven't had much access to internet. So... exciting life events:

Water faucet news: They put in eight of them in a row next to the school, for all the students who came for the conference, then the day after the conference they took ALL of them out. Which just seems spiteful to me- I mean, the work was already done. It was more work for them to take them out again. Fortunately the principal managed to get them to put one back in, so I now have a water faucet I can see from my house! I walk my bike over to it with my bidons (water jugs) and then put them on my bike one at a time to walk back to my house. SO much easier. And yes, there has been a marked improvement in my garden's health as well as in my hygiene level .

NEW!! PHOTO: The view from my house- the faucet is by the woman in the burqa


Also: I met the president. My closest neighbor Dylan came down to Bagre in the hopes of seeing Blaise, and what a success! We were at the fish farm Sunday morning just to hang out, since Eddie (from Taiwan) invited us, when Blaise made a surprise visit. So we were in grungy clothes (Dylan was even wearing shorts- shocking!) and I hadn't showered in two days, so I think we made a pretty good impression. Maybe it was true to the spirit of Peace Corps? Minus the cultural appropriateness part. But it was kind of cool (for my true feelings on the political situation in Burkina, give me a call) in a historical sense at least and we got to shake Blaise's hand. Here's a picture of the visit!



Basically, that was the weirdest day ever, topped off by Eddie giving us squid to use for dinner (he was leaving the next day, so he was cleaning out his freezer.) So for dinner that night I thawed and cooked up some Szechuan squid, learning how Not to cut up a squid in the process. Getting inked by a squid in a village in Burkina Faso the day I met the president was just one of those moments, you know?