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