Le Fete du Dindon

Just because you're stuck in Burkina Faso for Thanksgiving doesn't mean that you can't eat yourself in to a tryptophan induced food coma. A few volunteers got together for the holidays in Bobo and we had our own little feast with all the fixings. They only thing missing was the passed out relatives and football blaring in the background. We found a guy that raised turkeys here in Bobo and bought 3 from him for about US$ 80.00. They were pretty expensive for still being alive. We took the machete to them out back behind the barn and after a few long hours of plucking we had ourselves 3 good looking birds. We had a nearby restaurant grill them up for us and we made the rest of the sides, we had it all, from stuffing to pumpkin pie. Here are a few pictures of the slaughter the night before the big day and everyone eating themselves silly on Friday.

As some of you may know, a few of the volunteers were robbed last month in Ouagadougou, in which I was included. They broke in to our Peace Corps house late one night and selected mostly electronics and cash, then used my backpack as the get a away bag. I apologize for the lack of blog postings and photos, but without my camera it has been a little difficult. Along with my camera all the photos I have taken since leaving the states are gone too. I used someone else’s camera here to show you that we didn't starve this Thanksgiving. The food should have put on a few pounds by the amount of turkey and potatoes I ate, but a recent battle with girardia again left me passing most of my meal right on through. I am shopping on line for a new camera that will be sent over here so that I can keep updating everyone with photos for the next two years. School is going well and I only have about a month till our Christmas break. I am thinking about taking a trip to Ghana for a couple of weeks over the holidays and playing with the idea of celebrating Christmas on the beach. It can't be that hard to make a sandman in stead of a snowman.

Just wanted to add that Burkina Faso tied with 4 other countries as the poorest country in the world according to the United Nations International Development Index. Mali, Niger and Sierra Leon were the others at the bottom of the list. The Index calculates development with variables like; life expectancy, literacy rate, annual income, and GDP. Needless to say things in those areas a need a little work here, and life is not easy for the Burkabe.

Transportation in Burkina

Getting around in BF can be a pretty wild ride. Its mostly done with small Peugeot pickups. They are rigged with a huge cage over the bed, and can carry ridiculous amounts of goods (corn, millet, goats, sheep, cows, chickens, donkeys, and people.) You name it, they can find a place for it, or just tie it on somewhere. It is not uncommon to find yourself having to hold a few chickens in your lap, with a goat on one side, and a mother breast feeding a two year old on the other. They usually jack up the struts super strong to carry huge loads to make a little more money each trip. Last month I was sitting in the back of one of these little bush taxi's next to a huge bull; it was tied up of course. Its legs were bound together and horns lashed to the frame, basically in the fetal position and its owner was sitting on him. He seemed pretty relaxed all tied up like that, and had no idea that in a few hours he would be someones' dinner. I was constantly thinking what would happen if the ropes came loose and he decided to get a little rowdy. Those huge horns of his could do some pretty good damage and a shift in his weight could easily overturn the tiny top heavy Peugeot. But the ride was uneventful and everyone arrived safely, that trip.

Two weeks after I was taking the same bush taxi into Bobo, and we were way over loaded this time with huge sacks of corn. This time I sat in the cab. It was so full that people were hanging off the sides with their random bags and produce tied on top. Then we picked up two small girls with their baskets of fresh tomatoes to sell at the market in Bobo. I have learned that transport in Burkina can never ever be completely full, there is always more room. Their was no space for the girls in back, so they climbed on top of the cab and held their baskets in their laps. As we descended a little too quickly down a small hill our back right tire fell off. The weight from the ridiculous load had cut all 5 of the lug nuts that connect the rim to the hub. When our tire fell off we obviously came to a pretty quick stop, and the girls on top, obeying newtons' law of objects in motion, went flying off the truck. The tire that broke off went zinging by their heads as they rolled into the ditch. Tomatoes were everywhere and the rest of the passengers were pretty shook up. I was fine in the cab, with the driver and others laughing at the girls. It wasn't all that funny to me, seeing that they could have easily been run over, and a summers worth of tomatoes smashed on the ground is not very easily explained to parents. The driver took off one of the bikes sent one of the boys to get new lug nuts in the next village. It took about 2 hours and three jacks to get the truck up high enough to put the tire back on. While all this was happening I sat in the shade under a mango tree and got through a few chapters of my book. Transportation, like all things in Burkina is an adventure.

School has started in Balla

Teaching

School started this week on Monday; and I was the only teacher ready to start teaching. The other teachers had yet to come to village, and were taking their time arriving. I have been told that some teachers in Burkina don't even show up at all, they just come to administer the midterm and final exams, and students are sometimes are left to learn from only the text with no formal classroom instruction. This is due to the fact that each teacher is required by the government to serve a few years in a village after obtaining their diploma in secondary education. Often this is in a small remote village like Balla, and they are usually not too happy about spending time away from more developed cities, and spend as little time as possible in the assigned village. Even during the school year teachers spend most of the week in the major cities and commute to village to teach when absolutely necessary. The first week of class was mostly students sitting around and parents arriving throughout the day to pay for the years' tuition. This Monday class will start for good and I will start teaching 3 math classes and one Physics/Chemistry class. The students' ages range from 11 in the youngest class, up to 19 in the oldest class. Their is only 4 classes in our school but students often fail start late, and have to retake a class, or take a year off to work for their families. I taught my first few classes last week in French and it went pretty well being as the students know almost less French than I do after our 3 months of intensive training. The above photo was taken during model school in training, no power or lights in Balla yet, and my class size will only be around 40.

Cuisine of Burkina

Dog, it’s pretty good really, grilled that is. A few weeks ago we ate my puppies’ father. He was a few years old and had been fatting up over the rainy season. The meat was really lean and tender. I realized that it was the first meat I have eaten of a carnivorous mammal, which I found interesting. I am not sure how much I will eat in the future because I think of who will eat my dog when I leave after two years and how he will taste, and sometimes it is a little hard to swallow. If I work things out with customs and all the paperwork in brining a dog back to the states I might be able to save him from being someone’s supper. Dog’s here are more considered as livestock and guardians of the house. A full grown dog goes for about US$ 4.00, one of the cheapest meats in my region. I also got a little grill and started doing chickens, goat and beef for the people in my courtyard. Hopefully fish will be on the menu soon.

Village Life

The first month in Balla was spent meeting the important people of the village and sitting around drinking Dolo (Millet beer fermenting below). I have been eating mostly Tô and other burkanabe food, and my colon has finally come to terms with its new residents. Even the Tô is more appealing and I find myself craving it when I am hungry. It has very little nutritional value, but is quite filling. Other than that I have spent most of my days drinking tea and working my way through the Lord of the Rings in my hammock. Which is even better, I might add when taking Larium (Mefloquin, look up the side effects online) contre Malaria. If you read the warnings from taking Larium you will see that it is a pretty crazy drug, and has some pretty interesting side effects. Nonetheless, I have had some pretty vivid dreams; luckily they have only been good ones. But now the integration period of village has ended and with the start of school. I will be spending most of my nights preparing my lesson plans in French. This has proven to be a bit of a challenge and takes up more time than I had first imagined. I have a pretty good battery powered light and it seems I will be spending most of my nights swatting at mosquitoes, figuring out how to explain things like diffusion in French.

As for my health, I have been feeling pretty good lately. I have been running a lot and have put up some make shift Rock Rings (Pull-Up bar) and started doing Yoga. The villagers get a kick out of watching me run early in the morning. The first few days I had a pack of little kids that would run with me for the first few hundred yards. It is pretty sad when little girls can keep up with you with a bucket of water balanced on their heads. They have no idea why anyone would want to wake up and just start running a few miles in the morning. I tell them ‘I am training for soccer’ and then they understand. I also tell them it is ‘good for my health’, but with no education in biology or general health the soccer explanation works better. The children and women, I pass on the way to work in the fields, always say good morning and stare at me in wonder. They are getting used to it now, and if I don't go for a run in the morning they think that something is wrong and come check on me.

That’s all for now, finally here are some photos. The Post Office in Bobo just got two new computers that are going to make my life much easier.

Here I am sun burnt as usual, on the night of our swearing in ceremony with a few of the Peace Corps language teachers I worked with during our training.

Farms in the west, and two ox and a plow, learning to farm just like great grandpa back in Iowa.

Warris my little host brother.

My host families house during our training in Ouahigouya.

The huge tree in front of my house in the center of Balla.

One of my new classrooms in Balla.

My school in Balla.

My tailor in Ouahigouya. Shirt custom fit for around $US 3.00.

Here is my little courtyard, and Christan my neighbor and new friend, with my puppy Lutigi Filana.

Balla

So I am finally a real Peace Corps volunteer. Last Friday we had our Swearing-In Ceremony at the Ambassadors Residence next to the US Embassy. It was a pretty big news in Burkina and was even on TV! The ambassadors residence was ridiculously nice, and the food at the party was boarder-line American. After many long winded and repetitive speeches thanking various contributors to our training, 5 volunteers gave five different speeches in the 5 main languages of Burkina; French, Moore, Jula, Fufulde, and Gormanche. After the ceremony we had a party to say goodbye to our language and cultural teachers. It was hard to actually say goodbye to some of them after spending so many hours with them everyday trying to learn French. I met some really good people and really good teachers. Most of the Peace Corps trainers live in Ouagadougou and are teachers during the school year at public or private high schools. I have heard that a job with the Peace Corps is one of the most sought after jobs in all of Burkina, I was told that they make more during our 11 week training, than they do for the rest of the year as Burkinabe teachers. They are worth every penny and are the best teachers in Burkina.

My Village

Balla = French

Baala = Jula

Bala = Not correct but commonly used.

There is some discrepancy on how to actually spell the name of my village and I find that funny since the village was named prior to the knowledge of written languages. The French write is as Balla, but locals say that in Jula it is written Baala. Anyway, it is a cool little village. One of the Peace Corps Land Cruisers dropped me off at my little house last Tuesday, and I was greeted by my coworkers and neighbors. My house is actually really nice in Peace Corps terms. It has four rooms; Kitchen, Living Room, Bed Room and Shower Room (room with sloped floor and drain in the wall). It obviously has no power or running water, but I am getting pretty good at taking a bucket bath. I have a private latrine next to my courtyard. ( No seat, just a hole in a cement slab over a deep pit) I have been getting some really great quad workouts lately. I am the third volunteer at this site, thus my house virtually came fully furnished. The last volunteer left me all the essentials; bed, stove, tables, chairs, etc. Being a replacement volunteer is also easier in the fact that you don't have to explain why you are there over and over. The first volunteer at a site usually spends most of the first month explaining the Peace Corps, America and their job to the villagers. Being a replacement volunteer has its downfalls too, I am constantly compared to the old volunteers. They say things like, "Well she did this and gave me this much money taught this way" But it shouldn't be too bad since the last two volunteers were girls.

There is a huge tree in front of my house straight out of the Jungle Book. It's awesome and serves as my reference point to find my way home when I get lost in village. Balla is really green right now and the crops are starting to come in. Harvest is about the same time as it is back in Iowa. Lots of corn, millet, and cotton in the surrounding fields. This area of Burkina has more rain and seems more tropical, not really tropical rain forest, just not Sahara Desert like what the north of Burkina feels like. I am only about 2 hours from Bobo-Dioulasso the second biggest city in Burkina where is can get a lot of western things. My new address for the rest of Peace Corps is

Jonathan Schultz

Corps de la Paix American

B.P. 1065

Bobo-Dioulasso

Burkina Faso

Also I finally caved and have a cell phone here, which I still find ridiculous in a country where I live in a mud house with no power/water, but I can use my cell phone if I climb the nearby hill. I won’t often have reception but text messages will get to me, here is my number: 226-76-14-82-67

More news from Burkina

August 8, 2006

Yesterday was my two month African anniversary, and I am starting to appreciate Burkina more and more. There are many things that I still don’t understand about this culture and probably never will, but am starting to accept them. Most of the things I can’t come to grips with deal with efficiency. For example women here are always bent over while working and sweeping is no exception; women use a clump of grass like a broom with no handle. I just don’t understand why they just don’t attach a long stick to the clump of grass and stand up straight. It drives me freaking nuts, but they have been doing things this way for centuries and it seems they are in no hurry to change. Similarly the workers in the fields use a type of hoe called a “Daba” that is at most only three feet long. Again bending over all day; just put a freaking longer stick on that thing and it would be much easier. I have informed them about my grand idea, but they think it would result in working slower and becoming lazy. Anyway enough venting, you can’t change the world in two months.

My French has now reached the required level for swearing in as a volunteer, and now for the next few weeks I am going to be focusing more on learning my villages’ local language of Jula. Jula is only spoken in western Burkina but it is also spoken in many other West African countries. The main native language of Burkina is Moore, but is only spoken in central Burkina. I am pretty excited to be learning a language that is more widely spoken and the resulting benefits. Jula is also spoken in Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal. I am planning on learning as much Jula as I possibly can since most villagers will speak little French.

In terms of health I have just finished my third round with E.Coli. I have been able to conquer the little buggers each time with the help of Cypro, the same antibiotic they give you if you are exposed to anthrax. Peace Corps Burkina Faso is the long standing leader in number of cases of diarrhea out of all of the Peace Corps countries, and so far I am definitely helping us stay on top. The change in diet and lack of protein has definitely decreased my muscle mass. I am looking skinnier everyday; thank God there is no light beer here. There are about 4 local types of beer and Guinuss is the only import I have seen with any regularity. No American beers yet. Luckily when I was in Bobo, the super market called Marina Market or “the white mans market” did have a surprisingly good selection of Scotch. Which I believe will make my stay in Burkina much more tolerable.

Now there are only two weeks left in Ouahigouya with my host family. It has been a great experience living with a Burkinabe family, but I am definitely ready to get my own place. Also during the training, the Peace Corps can have a very bureaucratic way of watching every move the you make and the babysitting can get old fast. Thus I am ready to get to my village chill out on my own.

Model School

Midway through our training our model school started. The model school is basically a summer school for the local high school students and is organized by the Peace Corps and the participating high school. There are 4 different classes where the students range in age from around 10 to over 20. The model school is a way to give us some experience teaching in the Burkina school system prior to commencement this fall. It is a great opportunity for us to deal with potential problems resulting from discipline and language. Each day we teach for an hour in our respective subjects. I am teaching Physics/Chemistry to the oldest class of students. My class of about 100 students has an average age of around 18. I have had only a few problems with discipline. Last week when I arrived in class there were three girls in my class sleeping, and had been doing so for the previous volunteers’ class. So I made them stand for my entire hour lecture. This may seem harsh back in the states but I assure you it is mild in comparison to the punishment given by the native teachers. Just yesterday I also had a student passing a note in class. I made him stand up and read the entire note aloud for the class. I wasn’t really sure what it was about since some of it was in Moore, the local language, but the entire class was erupting with laughter, he was embarrassed and my point was made. I really enjoy teaching and students here are a lot of fun. The older classes have been very helpful with my French, especially when I confuse the gender of an object. Confusing Le for La is one of the most amusing mistakes for my students. In village the students will have less exposure to French, and I have heard horror stories from current volunteers saying that when the younger students barely know French and you barely know any French the lectures can become very entertaining exercises in charades. One of the biggest problems in class is lack of materials, most importantly textbooks. Most students can’t afford the textbook, so their only resource to study at home is their notebook. Due to this there has been an extreme importance put on exactly copying what the teacher writes on the chalkboard. This means that even a simple drawing that would take students 30 seconds to sketch in the states, requires a ruler, a compass different colored pens and about 5 minutes. This makes the pace of most lessons ridiculously slow. Even if I underline a title or an important word on the board, they use their ruler to underline it in their notebook. This anal retentive tendency must have been brought here by the French colonists. Anyway it slows things down a lot, and I have learned that I can only finish about half of what I would think should take an hour in class due to the amount of time required for copying. Nonetheless teaching is really going to be fun and I am pumped to meet my real students.

Second Post from Burkina Faso

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

The last week was spent traveling around Burkina. The first part of the week was spent in Ouagadougou, the capital, where we first met our counterparts from each of our villages. Each village school chooses a counterpart that becomes our informant in the village. Their responsibility is primarily to ensure an easy integration and to answer any questions that may come up when we arrive at our village. Most of the counterparts are other teachers or principles of the school. In one case both, since the entire school staff consisted of one person; soon to be two, once the volunteer arrives. My counterpart is one of 5 teachers at my school. He seems like a real nice guy. It seems that my village is excited to get a male volunteer, since the preceding two have been women. And his suggestions for secondary projects all involved construction of something for the school. After a two day seminar to provide our counterparts with information concerning the Peace Corps expectations and rules, I was off to see my first actual Peace Corps site, and meet the people of that village. Stephanie the volunteer who was our guide for the rest of the week is a math teacher at her school. Her village is only about 30km from my village as the crow flies, but there is no actual road between the two villages. There is a swamp/river/lake or something between them with hippos. But the villagers say that it is possible to get there by bike. But a few months ago there was a hippo that attacked a fisherman on shore, the man survived the attack, the village retaliated and everyone ate hippo for the next month. Anyway Stephanie is close bye, but it could be an adventure to make the trip. Also there is some type of river where I can go fishing between the two villages. So I might need to have the rod and reel sent over if there is anything worth catching. Another trainee placed in the west came with me on our site visit. Her name is Radhika, she is 30, and has a PhD in Neuroscience from John Hopkins. It has been comforting meeting so many people with resumes much better than mine, choosing to join the Peace Corps, avoiding corporate America. She is really cool and it was a great person to spend the week with. Anyway the ride from Ouagadougou to the small of village of Padema took the entire day. Padema is small, really small, maybe 1,000 people live there, and I think that my village will be smaller. There is no power in the village, but people use car batteries to run lights, stereos, and TV’s in their houses. They have to take the batteries to a larger village with power about once a week to recharge them for a price. Battery charging is a business here. Padema is much greener than up north in Ouahigouya. The increased rainfall of the south changes many aspects of village life. Agriculture is much easier in the south, and is evident in the prices and quantities of produce at the local market. Needless to say I will most likely be eating better than my fellow volunteers in the northern part of Burkina. Stephanie our host volunteer is dating a Burkinabe and it was very interesting learning about the culture from a local, and observing the villagers impression of a mixed race couple. As we toured the village and school where she taught, we were introduced to everyone. I am beginning to realize the importance of greetings and introductions in this country. In all of our cross cultural sessions during training we learn about the ways of Burkina, they instructors always have stressed that lengthy greetings are almost mandatory. The majority of our time in village was most likely spent introducing ourselves. And these introductions are not just simple “Hellos”. They involve very lengthy questioning, like “Good evening, how is the family, how is the work, etc” and it is that way with every person you meet, and every time you meet them again. And if this script of questions is not asked it can be considered rude. We ate the village food with our hands with the locals, and so far so good. The mangos are still my favorite food of Burkina. Village life is very peaceful and has a very slow pace. Most volunteers say that they read a lot, and perfect a least a few hobbies. I think that Yoga, Guitar and exercising will be the majority of my free time. Not to mention trying my hand at brewing the millet beer, locally called Dolo. Anyway the trip to village was a much needed break from the rigorous training, but now it is back to language classes and tech sessions for 8 hours a day. But there are only 6 more weeks, and I think that the time will fly by with the anticipation of going to my own village. Now off to bed, where I can roll around in my own sweat for eight hours.

Again on the heat, today we observed a Burkinabe teacher in class at the high school today. We were there to observe his teaching techniques and his interaction with the students. The classroom was packed with about a hundred students, which is pretty average, with 3 to a desk. The bench for the desk is about 5 inches wide and is painful to sit on for more than 10 min, but they sit there for hours at a time. Anyway, it was so hot in the classroom it was painful. There was no thermometer in the class but I am sure I wouldn’t have wanted to see it anyway. There was no wind even with the windows open, and the tin roof above us was just radiating heat down on us. I kept thinking of my heat transfer class in ChemE and of all the ways the heat was collecting in the room and being trapped there. And as pools of sweat collected around my elbows on the desk, and my all my clothes became soaked, the local students around me were not even damp. Somehow the Burkinabe have evolved without sweating until there bodies need to, or at least only when it is over 130F. I wondered in physiological terms why I was almost passing out and sweating profusely while all the locals seemed perfectly content. Anyway sorry for the venting session… it’s really hot here.

For those of you financially interested. I have lost 10 lbs so far.

First Post from Africa

My one month African aniversiery has come and gone. This is my first blog post and I am realizing that this may be harder to keep updated than I first assumed. The internet here is pretty expensive and painfully slow. I hope that some of my photos will upload so that you can see a little of Ouahigouya, the city where my 11 weeks of training is taking place. Ouahigouya is the 4^th largest city in Burkina, and even sports a stop light. It has a few two story buildings and even a round-about. It is pretty modern; there is electricity and running water in most of the city. Which is guess is a luxury in comparison to most of the villages where volunteers are stationed.

Well more on my city later, I have just finished the first round (Le Primier) of tea with my host father. It is a common custom here to drink tea after dinner or in the afternoon after lunch. It is a green tea from China, called Chinese Gunpowder, and is extremely strong. One shot of this stuff must have more caffeine than two cups of coffee. All the current volunteers say not to drink the stuff after 4pm unless you want to be up all night. But tonight I am going all out, since I have borrowed a friends laptop computer for the night to write a bit for my blog. Trying to type anything of length at the internet cafes is ridiculously slow since all the keyboards are formatted to the French keyboard. I am beginning to despise all aspects of the French colonization, anyway where do I begin, a lot has happened in the past month so I will try and recap the major events.

The two days in DC were filled with ice breakers to get to know the other new volunteers and informational sessions to prepare us for our training in Burkina. We learned about the history of the Peace Corps and went over our goals for the next two years. I also thought that when I arrived in DC the seemingly endless required paperwork would be over. I was wrong. Like all bureaucratic organizations the paper work is never over. They rest of our time in DC was spent filling out more forms for the government, and getting the first series of many vaccinations. The fight to Paris was uneventful. The flight from Paris to Ouagadougou was an interesting trip. While in line to board the flight to Burkina, it was funny to watch as the native Africans recheck their tickets, seeing if they were on the correct flight, since the boarding line contained 33 Americans. We very obviously did fit in to the average Paris-Ouaga passenger profile. The flight down to Ouaga was only 4 hours. We were spoiled with Air France. I was very impressed with their service. Each seat had its own personal flat screen TV, and one of the many options for viewing was either the pilots oncoming view, or the view directly below the jet. As the sun set over the desert that night, I had a cloudless birds eye view of the Sahara. It was awesome to watch the sand dunes, mountains, and random settlements thousands of feet below.

We arrived in Ouagadougou in the dark around 8:00 pm. The first thing I noticed was the heat. It was night and still in the 90’s. The airport was about as big as my high school gym with one runway and then what felt like mass hysteria with the 33 of us trying to collect our luggage from the tiny baggage area along with everyone else on the flight. There were Peace Corps Staff who met us after we got off the plane and to help us collect and find our proper baggage. We were quickly escorted to new white Peace Corps Land Cruisers that whisked us off to a private compound where we spent the next couple of nights. They definitely are trying to slowly integrate us into the culture. It seems that the Peace Corps is afraid to show us, or let us experience anything too extreme, too soon, in hopes to prevent and early evacuation. The compound where we stayed was a private Christian missionary that the Peace Corps had rented for a few days. It had a ping pong table, showers, even every meal was prepared for us. Most of our time in Ouagadougou was spent doing general administrative stuff - medical interview, language test, bike fitting, getting walk around money, more shots... (7 shots and counting for those keeping track at home.)

Sunday night was the Adoption Ceremony, which reminded me of picking teams for kickball in elementary. All the families were on one side of the field, all of the new volunteers on the other. Each family’s father was called to the middle of the ceremony, and their new “Nasara” was then called to meet their new host family. I was picked last just like in elementary. The family stay has been the best part of our training so far. I have a little room to myself. My host father is History/Geography teacher at the High School in town. My host mother takes care of the two boys. One is 5 years and the other is 14 months. They are a handful for my host Mom, and are mesmerized by my guitar. It took about a week to figure out who was actually in my family. Polygamy is very widespread here and multiple wives are very common. Our courtyard is always full of people to who I am constantly being introduced, and keeping names straight for the first week was pretty difficult. Their house is one of 5 in a small courtyard that is about the size of basketball court. Everyday the courtyard is full of kids running around and the mothers cooking, cleaning, or doing laundry. The division between genders is extreme here, women work ridiculously hard.

One day last Sunday I went with my neighbor to his fields to try my skill at farming. We biked for about a mile outside of town to a little plot next to a well and shade tree. The ownership of land here is beyond me, and he had no idea of the concept of ownership. All I could figure out was that he had to ask the local chief if he could farm his plot of land, and had to prove to him that he could make good use of the land. The soil was red like that of most deserts, and pretty hard. There were already rows plowed from the previous season. We used a Daba, a small 2.5 foot long hoe to till the soil. Everyone in Burkina Faso has been raised with the concept that work must be performed while bending over. Every tool or task requires bending over. I am not sure if the idea of longer handles has reached Burkina yet, but everyone seems content bent over all day long. Sweeping, washing, cooking, farming, everything is done bent over. It kind of drives me crazy. Needless to say the next day after barely being able to walk and blistered bloody hands, I decided that technology and farming are pretty good together.

My days are pretty packed right now. We have training almost every day except for Sunday and it goes from 8am until 5:15pm. It's consisting of technical training, language training, cross cultural training, and safety and security training. It is extremely hot pretty much all the time and it's definitely not a comfortable, dry heat. You pretty much learn to live your life constantly sweating and sticky. Even at night time, it doesn't cool down very much.

Food

The staple carbohydrate here is called To (Toe) and is included in every meal with some type of sauce. To is made of ground millet or corn. It is pounded by hand normally or my machine if you have the money and are in a city, into a course flour similar to cornmeal. Then it is boiled until it reaches the consistency of thick mashed potatoes. It has a gelantenous quality that allows it to hold its shape of the spoon used to remove it. The favorite sauces of this region all include leaves of the Baobob Tree. The leaves provide the consistency of snot. That is not a very appealing way to describe the texture but it is very accurate. Most of the sauces really have the look and feel of snot. That along with the texture of the To make it really hard to get down. Also biting down on random rocks and san, that has not been filtered out of the grain or rice is not so pleasing on the teeth. The first few meals including To have been interesting, and have been a challenge to my gag reflex. But my family knows that I can’t eat very much of it, so they make me other meals, most often with goat or dried fish. Dried fish is also a common sauce addition. They pound the entire fish into a fine powder and add it to many sauces to add flavor. These have also been a challenge to stomach. I am going to lose a lot of weight at this rate, but some of the current volunteers say that they are really going to miss the To.

Hygiene and Health

The second week of training I obtained a new strain of E.Coli, whom my body was not acquainted. I think I got it from some pork I got off the street. It was really good and had fresh veggies with it. I watched as the butcher cut them up in front of me and was kidding with myself and a friend that I bet that guy didn’t even wash his hands after he used the restroom last and that we were probably going to get sick. My buddy threw up about 20 minutes later. I felt fine, and I thought it must be because my stomach was stronger. I was wrong. The next day my intestines were in knots. It was the worst pain I have felt in a long time. I didn’t really eat anything for the next few days. They took a stool sample, which the Peace Corps calls a MIF Kit and sent it in to the Embassy Lab to determine what type of parasite was doing summersaults in my colon. Once I got the proper antibiotics for the bacteria I felt fine. After three days of a drug called Bactrum, I felt much better but in a few days later the pain came back. So I sent off another MIF kit to the lab, and they told me I still had the E.Coli, so the Med Officer put me on Cypro a stronger drug and since the last treatment I have felt fine. I am still pushing my limits on questionable food, since all the current volunteers say that your tolerance for new bacteria will increase. The Peace Corps Medical Officers say that most of us will get E.Coli, Girardia, Amebas, and possibily parasitic worms during our 2 year stint in Burkina. Burkina Faso has the highest percentage of GI problems out of any Peace Corps country in Africa. So this topic I am sure will be a common theme in my blog. Most volunteers lose a lot of weight during training, and some of the numbers in the past would make the Atkins Diet look like a joke. Once training is over, it is much easier to control what you eat since you will be cooking for yourself in village. Now every meal I eat is cooked by someone else, and I am always wondering what type of little critter is in there waiting cause havoc on my GI tract.

The Weather

The rainy season has just kicked into full swing here in Burkina. I am in the northern part of the country about 70 miles from the boarder with Mali. It rains about 1-2 times a week. The storms have been very impressive. One afternoon I was biking back to my host family’s house and I knew that my first real storm might be coming that evening. The sky was a dark red and on the way home I saw a few people running. I thought it was sort of odd, since I had never yet seen anyone ever run in Burkina. I thought nothing of it. Then I heard some kids screaming in the local language of Moore, “Nasara, Nasara, the wind, the wind” Still nothing clicked. So I strolled by on my bike smiling and waving, saying “Hello”. At thins point I saw a few other people running too and finally I thought that they must want to get some work done before the rain started. At this point it was getting darker. About two blocks from my house I turned the last corner, and a wall of red sand and dust was screaming towards me. It was something out of a movie. It was engulfing everything in its path, and nearly knocked me off my bike, and I had to walk my bike the rest of the way home. The wind was ridiculous, and no one else was in the street but me. A dust mask would have been nice about then, since I could barely breath. When I got home my family was worried about me and couldn’t imagine that I would be out in the storm. The kids were all laughing at me. Once inside the house, the rain started, which settles the dust and cools down the temp about 10 degrees. That was my first experience with the Harmattan Winds that bring sand storms south off the Sahara Desert. The heat has also been more of a challenge to me than I expected. I thought I was a pretty tough guy, but the heat here is nothing like I am used to, in that you can never escape it. Back home if you are ever too hot you can just go in the A/C or down to the basement to cool off. That is not the case here. There is no where to get out of the heat, and that in itself is mentally draining. Everyday it nearly hits 100 in the shade, and this is not even the hot season. The sun can be brutal, and a lot of our day is spent biking around town to different lesson locations. Being unable to escape the heat is tough, but the Burkinabe always have an afternoon siesta, during which it is hard to get much done at local businesses. One other aspect of the heat is that I am getting used to always being wet. I am constantly sweating and drinking water. The sweating is fine during the day but worst at night when I am trying to sleep. The houses in town are made of cement or mud with brick with tin roofs. They are amazingly efficient at storing heat, so at night my room barely drops below 90. A wet bed, soaked in sweat is something I am also starting to realize will be normal for the next two years. Every time I get up for the bathroom and comeback to bed, or even rollover, you can feel that the sheets are soaking wet with my own sweat. It is kind of nice since it cools you off, but in terms of hygiene… well I just block some things out now. The wet sweaty bed is another thing that current volunteers say you grow to love, but I am not so sure about that one.

The World Cup 2006

Soccer in any other country than the US is the most important sport. Africa is the same story. Even though Burkina has no team even close to being able to play in the World Cup, every TV in the country is tuned in when any African team is playing. Africa had 4 teams in the cup, all of which have been eliminated now. Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, and some central African country were all in the prelims. Anyone who has seen the way that other countries live and die soccer can understand the atmosphere surrounding a big game. Each night an African team played, you could hear each courtyard erupt in cheers while they were huddled around their radio or TV. Soccer is not just a spectator sport here. I too have been playing a little bit in pick up games. There are fields everywhere; any open space is considered a perfect place for a match. In Burkina any two random pieces of junk can be a goal, any round object can be a ball, and that in itself can be a match that lasts for hours. I love the ingenuity of these people, they are content with so little. The toughness of their feet is a whole other story. Most of games I have tried to play in are against teammates with no shoes. The ground is same grade of rock as a gravel road in Iowa, with not a patch of grass on the entire field. There are rocks the size of baseballs mixed in the field just for the added obstacle for spraining an ankle. It would take me about 3-4 min to walk from goal to goal on these fields with no shoes, and they can sprint across in seconds faster than I can in shoes. It is a little embarrassing to say the least. I am thinking that I may need some soccer shoes and shin guards sent here from the States when I get to my site. All of my friends who know and play soccer would be amazed at the skill of the players I have seen so far, not to mention the lack of equipment and playing surfaces

Site Announcements

Today was a long awaited day, today I found out where I will be spending the next two years of my life. The Peace Corps determines where you will be located, but each volunteer has some say in where they want to be placed in their country. I did a bit of lobbying to end up in a place where I wanted to be. The Peace Corps Staff asks each volunteer what is their most important aspect they want to have at their site, or village. I ended up in just an hour north of Bobo-Dioulasso, the capital of the west, in a small village named Bala. I will be teaching Math and Chemistry/Physics. I am replacing a current volunteer who taught the same subjects. I am really excited to see the village of Bala and my house, and all the aspects of my village. My village is on the way to a tourist lake where there are rumored to be Hippos, and to the east there is another national park where there is supposed to be Elephants. I have yet to see any natural wildlife, but have been confined to Ouahigouya. The next coming week I will be leaving my host family for a week touring the country. The first part of next week all of the science teachers will be meeting our village counterparts down in the capital, Ouagadougou. Our counterparts will be our go to person in our school; they most likely will be teachers or administrative staff from our respective villages. They will answer most of our technical questions on the teaching aspects of village life. After three days with our counterparts we are meeting up with current volunteers who live in our regions of the country to learn about the other aspects of village life. We will go with these volunteers to their actual villages for the rest of the week. So after this week I will have a really good idea of the climate, and characteristics of my site. The volunteers in the western part of the country will also be staying in Bobo for a night. I am ready to see a little more of the country and get a break from all the training classes.

First Class as an African Science Teacher

Yesterday I completed my first practice class teaching physics in French to real Burkinabe students. The class was pretty small, with only 33 students, and only lasted a half an hour. But the entire lesson was in French! We are allowed to use notes, so it mostly contained me writing on the board in French and struggling through the pronunciation of technical physics terms. The lesson was on pulleys and the forces resulting from pulley systems. I even had a lesson example with weights and scales that worked pretty well for a first try. We had actual teachers sit in on our lessons and critique our teaching techniques, language and classroom control. Their input has been extremely helpful and will be for the next two months to come. I was really nervous teaching my first class ever, and even more so since it was in French. But after I started talking, I became much calmer and felt that I had a real awareness and control of the classroom. I think that I will really enjoy teaching here in Burkina Faso.

If anyone's interested in writing, my address is below. If you do write, I'll definitely get back to you. However, keep in mind that letters take about 2-3 weeks each way.

Jonathan Schultz, PCV

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 1065

Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

West Africa