Where There's No Microwave...or Fridge

July 7, 2011

It’s another hot day here in Burkina…but fortunately my body has finally started to adjust to the heat.   Yes, there’s no doubt it’s still overly warm here, but unlike before (when I would break into a massive sweat by just sitting motionlessly in the shade), I no longer perspire like crazy unless I’m directly in the sun or doing some kind of physical activity, like biking to class.   In fact, last night I actually thought it was it was cool enough to sleep indoors rather than outside like I normally have been.  This decision was also influenced by my being lazy and not wanting to take the 4 minutes necessary to set up my tent, and by the ground being damp from all the recent rainfall… And so, for only like the third or fourth time since I arrived in Sapone to live with my host family, I slept in my room on a real bed, which is SO much more comfortable than laying on a thin mat on rocks (imagine that!).  Furthermore, because I even covered up with a light sheet sometime during the night, I figured the average daily temperature must have dropped a good 10-15 degrees since we first arrived in Burkina about a month ago – after all, it’s currently “cold season” here – and thus, the temperature MUST be down to about 75-80 degrees Fahrenheit at night, if I can now sleep rather comfortably in my room and cover up with a blanket.   So out of curiosity, I dug out my thermometer (which was still buried deep inside my suitcase) and checked out the current temperature.  The results:  at 6am, the coolest time of each day, it was already a good 87 degrees.  Yikes.  Which means by the middle of the afternoon, it’s probably a scorching 105+.  Ha, and to think I thought 87 degrees was “comfortable” and “cool” enough to use a light blanket.  Come this time next year, don’t be surprised if you see pictures of me bundled up in heavy sweaters and scarves, just like all the locals do during cold season, even though it will be over 80 degrees…cuz here in Burkina, 80 degrees is the equivalent of it being below freezing in Minnesota.

Today I got to meet a fellow Bennie (aka graduate of the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University).  Lindsay (’09) has been volunteering here for about a year now, and so it was fun to connect with someone who not only is from Minnesota and shares the same Fargo-ish accent as me (as other volunteers like to point out), but also went to the same tiny Benedictine liberal arts college I did.  But wait. It gets better.  There’s also Sam, a fellow Johnnie (’09), who’s also been here about a year.  I haven’t met him yet, but should be meeting him in the near future.  What a small world!  Whoever would’ve thought that there’d be more than 1 or 2 people from Minnesota currently serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Burkina Faso, AND that they would all have graduated from the same college within the last 2 years?!?  It’s cool that we know many of the same people, professors, and, just in general, Minnesota cities, landmarks, events…  

I actually already knew of Lindsay (and likewise Sam) before meeting her in person, due to randomly (or perhaps not so randomly?) meeting her friend Rachel, also a current PC Volunteer, about 2 weeks ago while on a 4-day training visit deemed “Demystification,” which we just call “Demyst” for short.  The purpose of this training was to give us an idea about what a typical volunteer’s life is like: housing arrangements, the villages they live in, the work and specific projects they do in their communities, etc.  It was also to give us hands-on experience with traveling throughout Burkina Faso – buying a bus ticket, paying for a taxi, riding an overcrowded bush taxi (essentially a van that somehow always has room for one more person or bag or goat – it’s not uncommon for there to be over 18 people plus animals shoved into one of these vehicles!), and dealing with other cultures/languages/foods than what are found in our host city of Sapone or Ilpace.  We went in our language groups (so groups of 3-4 trainees in addition to our language instructor) and each group went to a different city or village somewhere in Burkina.  Some people only had an hour bus ride (like me) and others had to endure 6-7 hours of travel.  My language group, which consists of Jose, Maren, our teacher Saliou, and (obviously) me, went to the village of Niou, which is about an hour north of Ouaga.  ****Tangent: for those of you wondering what I mean by “language group” -- it’s the small group we learn/practice French in for several hours each day, and, if the trainees are really talented and already speak practically fluent French (which some of the 50 of us do!), they learn a different local language instead of French, like Moore or Jula.  Thus, the groups are determined by skill/proficiency level: Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, or Superior...and within each of those four categories, we’re split up further by being classified as Low, Medium, or High.  My group is made up of the “novice lows,” which basically means we know absolutely nothing when it comes to French.  There are a few other groups also deemed “novice lows,” and so Jose, Maren, and I didn’t feel quite so disappointed about being deemed stupid in French.  But then again, we know we’re pretty bad compared to everyone else.  Especially since none of us have ever studied French before (the three of us all studied Spanish), whereas most the other novice low’s had at least had a class or two in high school or college, and thus know more than us, despite also being classified as “novice low.”  Consequently, whenever anyone asks what level language we’re in, we say “Novice Low Low Low” to clarify that we’re the lowest of the lows, that we understand and know even less than the other novices, and that we probably should have had a separate category created below the current Novice Low classification to more accurately represent our French proficiency (or complete lack thereof).  But don’t worry, we are learning and we are undoubtedly getting significantly better by leaps and bounds every day!*****

Back to describing my Demyst.  We stayed with Rachel in the village of Niou, who is working in the sector of Girls’ Education and Empowerment, as well as with some health/hygiene projects.  She was very welcoming to us and made us some great food, including sweet potato French fries and an awesome tomato-cucumber-avocado salad.  We spent a lot of our time just hanging out at her house (which was equipped with electricity and Internet), playing cards, getting advice about being a volunteer and implementing projects, talking, and getting to know our small group better.  We also helped a bunch of her girls and boys make soap, which they sell at their local market to make money to cover school expenses.  I have some pictures of our soap-making extravaganza posted on my photo webpage – take a look!  Anyways, long story short, one afternoon Rachel got a phone call from her friend Lindsay.  Lindsay asked Rachel where the 3 of us stagiares (trainees) were from in the US, and as soon as Rachel said “one girl is from Minnesota,” Lindsay got really excited -- we could hear her shout “OMG! Another Minnesoooootan? No way! What city? Let me talk to her!” through the phone.  And so Rachel threw the phone at me and I had a quick conversation with my fellow Minnesotan that went something like this:

Me: Uh, hi….?  My name is Beth.

Lindsay: Hey!  I’m Lindsay!  I hear you’re from Minnesota!

Me: Yup!

Lindsay: Me too!  I’m from Duluth!  Where’d you go to school?

Me: St. Ben’s/St. John’s. 

L: What?!?!

Me: They’re Catholic liberal arts colleges by St. Clou-----

L: No, I know! OMG!!!! I’m a Bennie too!  This is awesome!  Did you know that there’s also a Johnnie in Burkina right now?  His name’s Sam!

Yes, this sure is a crazy, small and coincidental world we live in.  Lindsay has decided that we three CSB/SJU alums need to get together and take a picture of us doing something cool (Posing next to an elephant? Riding a camel? Climbing a banana tree?) while wearing one of our infamous Bennie/Johnnie shirts, in hopes of getting it posted on the CSB/SJU website for all to see!

Meeting a fellow Bennie was certainly a highlight of the day, but so were the classes and sessions we had in training.  Today’s classes were some of my favorite thus far.  We received a cookbook entitled “Where There’s No Microwave…or Fridge,” and it’s full of tried-and-true recipes from past Peace Corps Volunteers in Burkina that are feasible with the ingredients and resources available here.  From how to make some of the more popular local and traditional African cuisine to attempts at recreating favorite American treats like pizza and cookies in a homemade Dutch oven, this book has a bit of everything.  Even information on how to dry fruit (like mangoes and bananas, which are plentiful here) and how to make a decent ricotta cheese-like substitute using powdered milk and vinegar.  I’m excited to try all the recipes out and whip up a batch of brownies.  We also received tips on staying healthy and “well-fed” in Burkina.  Right now, along with it being “cool” season, it’s also “hunger” season, and so access to a variety of food (especially fresh produce) is limited and expensive, resulting in many people only eating rice or noodles for the next few weeks, and sometimes even cutting back to one meal a day if finances are really tight.  Because we live with host families, we don’t have much control over what we’re eating or how much, and some days this is really frustrating and our stomachs will rumble and grumble a lot.  Granted, none of us are going hungry – we are fed all the carbs we could possibly handle – we just don’t get much else besides empty nutrient-less carbs.  And because of this, a lot of us are losing weight. However, we’ve been told that guys do in fact tend to lose weight during training (due to a lack of protein and their solely-carb diet not tying them over) and that, unfortunately for most women, females might actually gain weight (since all the carbs go straight to our butts).  But thankfully today’s session informed us that it WILL get better: more fresh produce will be readily available in a month or so, and when we are done with training and living on our own at our site, we will have complete control over what we eat and how it’s prepared.  Plus, we are given more than enough money within our monthly living expense to be able to “splurge” on food items that are nutritious (like fresh produce, canned vegetables/fruit/meat, and powdered milk), whereas the majority of Burkinabe people can’t afford to purchase much more than cheap carbs and maybe an occasional tomato or chunk of meat (aka fat and/or bone) to mix in with the rice or noodles.  Furthermore, when we’re on our own, we can also plant a garden and grow lots of good stuff.  But for now, we’ll just have to be content eating the white rice slathered with oil so lovingly prepared for us by our host mothers…which really doesn’t taste too bad at all…if you’re hungry enough.

July 8, 2011

Yesterday was a big day, and there were a lot of topics I wanted to write about.  But sadly my computer battery died and so the rest of my stories had to wait until today to be written.  I’ll start with some of the sad news:  we’re down to 47 stagaires out of the original 50.  It seems we’re having an epidemic amongst our training group.  No, don’t worry, no one has died or been kidnapped by Al Qaida…but for medical and/or personal reasons, three of our group members have returned to America.  All three of them “left” us within a total time span of 5 days – it seemed like every 36 hours, there was yet another person announcing that they were leaving and going back home, leaving the rest of us totally shocked as we said our goodbyes.  We may not have known each other very long, but everyone has grown really close within our few weeks together so far, and each time someone left, it hurt and left the rest of the group in a state of confusion, and some people in tears.  Losing 3 people within 5 days is tough on everyone, and though most Peace Corps training groups do tend to have 1 or 2 volunteers who go home before their 2 years are up, us having 3 trainees leave so suddenly is extremely uncommon, not to mention alarming.  And so today, instead of getting a second dosage of vaccines like was scheduled, we had a nice heart-to-heart community meeting with some of our administration and country directors to discuss what was going on and how to deal with it, in addition to how to better help ourselves cope with all the changes of being in Burkina and avoid the drastic decision to go home.  By the end of the afternoon, we all felt much better.  It helped that they also fed us M&M’s during the community meeting.  Chocolate fixes any problem!