August 29, 2011
Restaurant Delicacies
I have no idea what I just ate. Actually, no, I take that back. I’m pretty sure I know EXACTLY what I just ate, and that’s what grosses me out. My family took me out to a local restaurant for supper tonight. At first I thought we were just having drinks -- beer for my dad, while my mom, Valerie, Christi, and I all chose Coke. Then my dad ordered another round for everyone. Okay, two bottles of Coke, no problem. I’d rather not, cuz that’s a lot of sugar and I’d prefer to sleep tonight and not have to go to the bathroom every hour, but oh well, two bottles won’t kill me. Then my dad asks if I like soup. Sure, who doesn’t like soup? While we waited for our soup, my family and I had a good conversation about life in America. They asked me if we eat the meat of dog; I said no, our pets are like members of our family, and sometimes people even dress their pet in clothes or bury them in a pet cemetery when they die. My host family was shocked, and then asked me if I’d like to try dog meat sometime this week – they’d prepare it for me, if I’d like. Once again I replied with no. I was also asked if America has chimpanzees that run wild in the brush. No, no we don’t. We don’t really have “brush” to begin with (in the same sense that Africa does), and we also don’t have chimpanzees, unless they’re in a zoo. My dad was curious about gangsters, and demanded I tell him about the gangsters of America and if girls like men who are gangsterish. That was fun to answer. I was very amused that my host dad even knew the word gangster and that he described them as being men who smoke, ride motorcycles, wear jeans, and sport bandanas around their head. Finally our food arrived. I know I should have expected it – after all, this is Africa and my friends have told me plenty of their own horror stories, like being served sheep head for breakfast – but I didn’t. Floating in my bowl of broth were chunks. But not chunks of meat. Or fat. Or even bone. No, there was not a single piece of “meat” (which in the African sense also includes fat and bone) in the liquid. Instead, there were spleens. Hearts. Liver. And let’s not forget about the multiple 3-inch long tubes of small intestine. Yummy. I wish I could recall my biology and anatomy classes better, like when we dissected frogs, because then I would know precisely what each chunk was. I’m not surprised that all this good stuff is made into a soup and served as a delicacy or a treat in Africa, but I am surprised that I actually ate it. Yes, I ate it. All of it, in fact. And I didn’t throw up or gag even once…not yet anyways…the night is still young. I would have rather not eaten the oddly-shaped chunks, and instead just slurped up the broth, which was quite good, by the way. Full of flavor with just enough salt, as well as a kick of spiciness due to the hot pepper pieces it contained. My initial plan of action for attacking this soup was to drink the broth, and little by little, drop the chunks of body organs onto the ground when my family wasn’t looking. But then I realized the floor was cement, and not dirt. Dirt is easy to drop food into and hide by simply kicking some dirt over the food. Cement is not. So I couldn’t fake eating my chunks; I’d have to do something else. I briefly thought about just not eating it and leaving every chunk untouched. But then I felt really bad. My family was gobbling up the chunks like crazy, and so for me to not eat at least a few pieces would have offended them, especially since I did say that I like soup and it was much more expensive than what my normal supper of spaghetti noodles slathered in oil would have cost. So that route was a no-go also. Dang. My only other option was to eat the chunks, or at least make an effort. If I threw up, I could always just say I was sick with the flu and not have to admit to it being caused by the food. (We use excuses a lot here; some people would call it lying…but you gotta do what you gotta do. And if telling your family you’re deathly allergic to anything fish – fish, fish bones in soup, fish powder, fish eggs, fake fish-flavored seasoning that isn’t actually made with any real fish, etc. – is the only way to get the point across to your family that you don’t like fish, then so be it. Invent an illness. Fake an allergy. Whatever it takes.) I put the first odd-shaped organ in my mouth and chewed it up. It was spiral-shaped with a very…different…texture. But its taste wasn’t bad; the flavor was tolerable, and I didn’t notice any weird aftertastes or anything else too bizarre. It was mainly just the chewy, rubbery texture that bothered me, but remarkably, my stomach (and brain) was able to hand it and not let it show on my face that I was not particularly “enjoying” this meal. I somehow managed to eat just about every piece of organ on my plate, only leaving a few select pieces behind. I was pretty proud of myself. If I’m ever in a similar situation again, I now know I can handle it. I would never purposely order animal organ soup, but if it’s served to me and I have no way to secretly dispose of the chunks, then I’ll swallow it down, and (hopefully) it will be fine, like it was tonight. Ironically, once we got home around 8:30pm (way past my normal bedtime!), my host mom brought me a pot of spaghetti and cold fish sauce. Just what I wanted. More not-so-great food. Everyone always wants to feed us SO much here. (Our host family’s worst fear is that we’ll go back to America skinny, as that would be a sign that we weren’t “well-nourished” in Africa. Africa has tons of starving and malnourished people the way it is; they don’t want their beloved and respected “foreigners” falling into this category also. So they’re always trying to fatten us up. In fact, I’ve even been told on several occasions that if I eat a lot, and I eat fast, then I will be smart and speak good French/Moore/Jula. If only that were true and acquiring intelligence truly worked in such a manner…) But no worries, I was safe from having to over-stuff myself tonight. After taking a plate-full of pasta (which was immediately tossed into the garden for the dog to eat as soon as my family wasn’t looking), I smooshed the pot’s remaining noodles together to make it look like I had eaten at least half of the food. I poked around for 10 more minutes pretending to eat, and then I said I was finished, handed the remaining spaghetti and my plate to my host sister, and that I was really fatigued and going to go to bed. Hmm. Another lie, as I’m not that tired, I’m still awake, on my computer, and I don’t even have to get up early tomorrow, since tomorrow is Ramadan (a Muslim holiday) and we don’t have class…
Lizards & Mosquito Nets
On a daily basis, I see little lizards. Sometimes they’re scampering across the ground or crawling up the building walls. Other times they’re running for their lives, being chased by hungry chickens. The lizards don’t really bother me, although I wouldn’t be too happy if one ran up my back or across my foot… that would be gross. But not as bad as having a lizard in your house. I have a lizard in my house. Or at least I did a couple days ago, and it’s probably still there. I don’t know how it would get out of my house, besides through the doorway (the sole hole cut into my dirt/cement walls), and I have yet to see it exit whenever I open my door.
Yesterday, I got home from class and unlocked the door to my house like usual. As I pushed the door open, a little lizard ran in and quickly streaked across my floor towards my suitcase of clothes, which was lying wide-open of course. I tried to spot the location of the lizard, in hopes of capturing it or killing it or scaring it enough to run back outside, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. But it had to be there. Somewhere. In my room. Possibly amongst my clothes. Or maybe in my bed. I searched everywhere, but had no luck in finding it, or even hearing it rustle against the plastic bags and pieces of paper I have lying around my room. I told my family there was a lizard in my room, but they also couldn’t find it. I went to bed that night, knowing full well that the lizard was probably still there. Had this happened when I first arrived in Burkina, I would have been too creeped out to sleep in my room. But a lot has changed in the 2 months I’ve been here, and so now the fact that there was a lizard in my room didn’t faze me. Not too much, anyways. I just really hoped that the lizard had somehow escaped without me noticing and that I would be safe from waking up to a reptile on me in the middle of the night or finding it inside my towel the next morning during my bucket bath. And also that it would stay out of my food. Should my almonds from America been nibbled on or my bag of Craisens chewed through, I would not have been very happy. Also – theoretically speaking – I had a mosquito net to protect me from the lizard crawling into bed alongside me. I’ve come to sincerely appreciate my mosquito net and don’t hesitate tucking it tightly around my mattress each night. Although there’s not a whole lot of mosquitoes buzzing around, every now and then I get a bite, and so the mosquito net helps me stay completely bite-free at night. Plus it insures that nothing else can get into my bed, too. Like lizards, for example. Or cockroaches. Or spiders. Or any of the other bugs I’ve seen crawling around. Every night before I go to sleep, I follow the same routine of ensuring my bed is bug-free. First I strip the sheets of my bed and fiercely shake them out, just in case any bugs have gotten into my blankets or on my pillow case. Next, I remake my bed, shining my cell phone light over every inch of the mattress, as I double check for bugs and spread my sheets out. Then I finally crawl in and tuck the mosquito net around on all sides, feeling assured my bed is clean and completely safe to sleep in.
Oh yeah, I never did see that lizard again. Hopefully it escaped and it’s not lying dead somewhere within my stuff. But I guess I won’t know until I discover it…whether by sight or smell.
The Stagies
“And the award for the stagiaire most likely to marry a Burkinabe goes to…” Every other weekend or so, we PCTs plan a social event to entertain ourselves. Past events include our 4th of July celebration, movie nights, a toga party, and Stage Prom. This past Saturday, August 27, we added an awards ceremony: “The Stagies.” Having been together for what’s soon-to-be 3 months, we’ve all gotten to know each other really well. Perhaps too well. Everyone gets along. But at the same, we can’t stand each other anymore. We’re around each other every day, all day. We have class together. We eat together. We endure boring training sessions together. We’re sick with diarrhea, giardia, runny noses, and parasites together. We do everything together. The environment we’re stuck in (and that we’ve created for ourselves) is one similar to that of high school, with little cliques and preferred groups of friends forming, gossip floating around, everyone knowing everything about each other and their past life (aka life/family/friends in America) and their host family situations, and even couples who are now dating.
Every stage has a unique social environment during training, dependent upon numerous factors, with the biggest factor probably being age of the trainees. With nearly every single one of us between the ages of 21 and 25, and no married couples (whether young or old), nor any retired senior citizens (aka grandparents) to help keep us “mature” and in line, our stage’s atmosphere has progressed – well, actually, regressed is more like it – from college-like to high-schoolesque. Maybe even junior high. No, hopefully we’re not that bad. Think of us as behaving like 12th grade seniors. We no longer want to go to class and do whatever we can to start late and end early, we complain about our teachers and each other, we make tons of drama over the stupidest things, and we are counting down the days until training ends and we can be free. We know we’ll miss each other, but really, this extra month of training is going to be brutal. Stage is normally about 12 weeks long. Ours is going to be close to 4 months. And with a month to go yet, we just might kill each other.
So, to combat the tensions brewing amongst everyone, we decided it was time for another social event; hence, the creation of “The Stagies.” Just like for the senior-year yearbook when you voted for “Most Likely to Be President” and “Best Hair,” we came up with appropriate categories representative of Peace Corps and Stage and cast our votes. Stage Angel. Stage Devil. Stage Hottie. Best Dancer. Best Bien-Intégré (aka most well-integrated into Burkina culture). Cutest Couple. Most Fashionable. Most Athletic. Most Often Sick. Most likely to start the Burkinabe Revolution. Most likely to marry a Burkinabe. Most likely to marry someone else from this Stage. Most likely to be admin-sepped (i.e. sent home because they didn’t comply to Peace Corps rules). Most likely to kill a small Burkinabe child after being called “Nasara” too many times. And more. There was an award for everyone. I was nominated for several of the categories, but I ended up winning “Most Likely to Work for the U.S. Peace Corps.” Interesting. I wasn’t expecting that. Best Cook, sure. Or Most Artistic, yes, I can see that being me. But working for Peace Corps in the future? Perhaps…but there are several people in my stage who have already expressed a strong desire to that…I haven’t. Yet. But I guess that’s something I can ponder during my 2 years of service.
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