oh hey

Evidently I no longer blog. There are a few reasons: I went home for a month over Christmas, I lost my digital camera charger and got a manual film camera over vacation (thus no pictures to post), and I've been generally pretty boring lately. Teaching, coming to Ouaga, teaching some more... not too much to write about. ALTHOUGH, there was one incredible thing I went to a couple of weeks ago: the Dedougou mask festival. It takes place every two years and is almost definitely the coolest thing I've seen in Burkina.

This is me, standing in front of a bush taxi being loaded with masks. And by mask, I mean full-body costume made of crazy materials and inhabited by a spirit. Sweet, right?


Again, I've been using film (not very successfully thus far - operator error, with tragic consequences) so I have no pictures of my own to share, but you should absolutely look at my friend's pictures. Seriously. Coolest experience ever; amazing pictures.
http://sworthy10.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/mask-festival-festima-2012/

In other news, I've started teaching english classes at my school. Our english teacher is moving to another school for the rest of the year, so my principal asked me if I could add ten hours a week. It's pretty fun so far, but completely different from math and requiring all new classroom management strategies. We'll see how having 20 hours of teaching a week goes, especially during hot season.


Lastly, some of my friends have been linking to this article. It's a pretty good overview of all the chaos that happened last spring and the current situation in Burkina, if you're interested.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95060/Analysis-Burkina-Faso-s-uneasy-peace

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.