Food Fun

I’ve noticed I tend to write about food a lot.  Maybe this is because I eat pretty much the same thing each day with my only variety coming from whether my rice was covered in tomato sauce or peanut sauce.  And maybe it also stems from missing the tastes of home and the refreshing satisfaction of a cold glass of milk.  Fun fact: I used to drink at least 3 cups of milk a day…I have yet to even SEE real milk (as opposed to powdered milk) in Africa yet, more or less actually drink even a tablespoon of real milk.  I’ve basically quit milk cold-turkey, as if I were a smoker and drinking milk was the bad habit I needed to get rid of.  I’m just praying I don’t end up becoming lactose intolerant.  That would be sad.   Which reminds me, I haven’t eaten my daily yogurt (the only dairy available in Burkina) yet today.  Anyways, I think my frequent texts concerning food are also because food happens to be an easy topic to write about.  Explaining the nuances of a culture’s values and what certain physical gestures or facial expressions mean compared to what they represent in America is difficult.  But explaining food is considerably less complex.  And it’s also probably relatively easy for those of you back in America – who, no matter how hard you try, will never fully comprehend what I’m experiencing – to understand and relate to.

So here’s some more on my experiences with food…

Peanut butter is a staple food/ingredient found in almost every American’s kitchen.  It’s eaten alone right out of the jar; on bread, celery, and apples; with chocolate; in cookies, bars, and ice cream.  Pretty much anything you can think of (even pizza and tacos) has been eaten with peanut butter by at least one American before, if not by hundreds of people.  Fortunately for us Americans currently in Burkina, peanuts are plentiful.  Which means there’s also peanut butter.  In its most natural and simple state of existence.  It’s not at all like Skippy or Jiff, with the extra salt or sugar or honey mixed in, and it’s not even all that similar to the natural, organic stuff we have in America either.  But it’s close.  Close enough, anyways.  The crushed up dark brown peanut sauce here has been a life-saver and a comfort food.  We’ll eat it on anything.  Typically, the Burkinabe only add it to a watery sauce accompanied by onions and chunks of fat/meat which is served over rice or couscous.  But we put it on our dry bread, eat it with bananas, smother it between rock-hard cookie/biscuit/cake-like things, and more.  Some of the guys have even begun mixing it into their yogurt with crushed up cookies and a spoonful of chocolate powder in hopes of recreating the yumminess of a Dairy Queen blizzard.  The Burkinabe think we’re weird and disgusting for all the different ways they’ve seen us eat peanut butter.  But they’ve started to get used to it and have stopped giving us puzzled looks when we stop at their table in the marche and ask to buy both a baggie of peanut butter and a loaf of bread, along with a banana.   Although I have yet to make myself a peanut butter & banana sandwich (a popular lunch-time creation among most the stagiaires, and for some people in America as well), I do enjoy peanut butter on bread, and peanut butter on bananas.  Just not all together.  But I’m sure that day will come.  It’s not uncommon for me to eat 3 or 4 bananas dipped in peanut butter for my lunch.  Or for breakfast.  Or with my supper.  Or for each meal of the day.

This past week, I had bought a bunch of bananas on my way home after class.  Like 8 bananas, to be exact.  I planned to eat two with my supper (to supplement the rice/noodles I was sure to be served), save two for my breakfast the next morning, and give the other four to my family as a “gift.”  I don’t see them eat fruits/vegetables very often, unless I bring it home for them.  After they thanked me for the gift of bananas, I sat down in my chair and took my peanut butter out of my backpack.  I told them I really enjoyed eating my bananas with peanut and that it tastes great.  My mom and Valerie gave me a weird look, but said they would like to try it and see whether or not I was correct in it tasting good.  They each spread a bit of peanut butter on their banana and took a little bite.  Instantly, their faces lit up and they said, “Wow, this is good!” and proceeded to smother the rest of the bananas in peanut butter.  They even gave little bites to baby Cecilia, who also gobbled it right up.  I then informed them that “pâte arachide” was full of protein and other healthy nutrients, and so it was a good thing to eat on a regular basis and to help the kids grow. Now to convince them to try peanut butter on bread…and add a few more things to their white rice/noodle diet…like cabbage.

While this is a rough season for finding fresh fruits and vegetables – with this year in particular being more difficult than usual – the marche generally sports bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, green peppers, eggplant, and cabbage on a regular basis.  That’s a lot of good stuff, whether it’s eaten raw or cooked in a soup.  Unfortunately, however, they do cost a bit more…though really, it’s not that expensive.  And sometimes there are even avocadoes, oranges, grapefruit, and apples.  (Right now there are no mangoes because mango season is finished, but normally mangoes are plentiful.)  Eating fresh veggies is not common here, but adding an onion or a few tomatoes to a sauce served over rice is a bit more typical.  Every now and then, there might even be a few cabbage leaves added to the sauce as well.  Unfortunately, any nutrients originally found in the veggies are completely lost though, as everything here is boiled for hours and cooked down to a liquid purée.  So I’ve been trying to encourage eating fresh foods, or at least not so thoroughly cooked veggies.

One night I brought home a head of cabbage, an onion, cucumber, and a few tomatoes and proceeded to make a salad, using mayonnaise and vinegar with a dash of salt as dressing.  They watched in awe as I sliced up the cucumber and diced the onion, surprised by the fact that it looked like I knew what I was doing when it came to cooking and was skilled with a knife.  I made a whole bowl full of salad with the intention of inviting my family to share it with me, but of course they wouldn’t touch it.  I ate my fill (there was no way I was gonna let those good veggies go to waste!), pretended to eat the noodles I was served, and then gave the rest of my food to my family.  I told them I was finished, but if they would like to eat it the salad, they should, because it wouldn’t keep overnight and I didn’t want it to go to waste.  They smiled politely and nodded, setting the bowl inside the house.  But I have no idea if they ever ate it or not, and if they did, whether or not they liked it.  I only had used about half of the head of cabbage, so I also gave that to my host mom and asked her if she could prepare it in a sauce for tomorrow’s supper.

I was so excited the next evening to see that she did cook the cabbage for me.  I savored every bite of my boiled cabbage that had an onion/tomato sauce over it, almost reminiscent to a stew, sans the meat, potatoes, and carrots.  Several times, I said something along the lines of cabbage being my favorite food (it’s not. yup, I lied) and that I wouldn’t mind eating it every day, in order to get the point across that I REALLY like vegetables and would love it if my mom prepared this dish for me again.  Having bought the cabbage myself, I knew it wasn’t overly expensive and that my family could definitely afford to buy it with the food allowance they are given from the Peace Corps.  But even if they couldn’t, I have no problem buying my own vegetables and giving them to my mom to cook for me.  Whatever it takes to eat something other than blah carbs.  Although, strangely, I’ve also started to become indifferent to eating the same thing over and over: I’ve had benga (beans and rice) for lunch six days in a row now, including a couple nights for supper also.  In fact, it’s amazing how “happy” I find myself to see what my meals are each night.  “Oh man, rice with peanut sauce.  This is good stuff!  Just what I was hoping for.  I haven’t had rice since…lunch time.  And peanut sauce for…2 days now.”  And so, you can probably imagine then, how thankfully thrilled I am whenever I have the opportunity to eat something that’s not a blah carb…or even if it still is a blah carb, as long as it’s served with a vegetable-based sauce. 

Take the green leafy stuff my mom serves as a sauce to eat with tô, for example.  The first time I saw it, I was a little skeptical.  I saw them picking leaves that morning.  And now I was being served boiled leaves.  Great. Looks like I’ll be going to bed hungry again.  Before I permanently pushed aside the bowl of slimy green stuff, I decided to try a bite.  And you know what?  It wasn’t bad.  A bitter aftertaste.  But besides that, I found it to be extremely edible and quite satisfying.  I stirred a few tablespoons of salt into my pot of leaf-sauce to kill the bitterness, and voila!  Magic.  I ate the WHOLE pot, practically licking it clean.  I took a large scoop of tô out of the bowl that had been prepared for me, feeding it to the dog so that it looked like I had eaten the sauce with my tô, like I was supposed to.  No one here eats only sauce; it’s always rice or noodles or tô with a splash of sauce as an afterthought, not the other way around like I had done.  When I gave my dishes to my host family, I made sure to tell them how much I enjoyed the sauce.  I also was certain to point out that although I had eaten every last drop of the sauce, I was very full and did not need any more to eat. 

I find it ironic that within the past few weeks, as I’ve been bringing home random fruits and vegetables and telling my family that I REALLY enjoy certain foods, they’ve also become more accommodating to me and have really made a strong effort to vary my food a bit more.  For example, after over 2 months straight of dry bread every morning for breakfast and nothing else with it --no butter.  no jelly.  nothing. – I was finally served something else: an omelet sandwich.  Granted it was still dry bread, but now it had an “omelet” shoved inside it.  And granted the omelet was mainly oil and onions, mixed in with maybe two small eggs.  Maybe.  It really was mainly just oil and onions, very little egg.  But nonetheless, it was something different.  My host dad said to me, “It’s not good for you to eat only bread.  We’ll try to find other food for you.”  I wasn’t sure if I should say “Yes, that’s great,” or “No thanks, it’s not necessary, the bread is fine” so I just nodded and gave them my "I'm confused and don't understand what you're saying" look.  Since then, I’ve now had a deep-fried onion/egg sandwich about once a week (usually on Sundays), along with a hot rice porridge/pudding once, which I added some sugar to and a sprinkle of the cinnamon sent to me from America.  Good stuff.  My mom has also given me my favorite green-leaf sauce 3 times since my first encounter with it, and now makes sure to put about half a head of cabbage in my peanut-sauce that is served over rice.  I’ve even had watermelon once, and sweet corn twice.  Well, not exactly sweet corn like in America.  But corn that’s on a cob nonetheless.  It’s cooked over/on hot coals until it’s almost all black in order to soften the kernels, otherwise the kernels are rather hard.  I’m pretty sure the corn that people eat here is actually what we Americans feed our animals.  Oh well, it’s edible.  Even without butter or salt on it. 

Restaurant Delicacies & More

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 4^th 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 12^th 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.

Trees, Auction, Harry, & Milo

August 21, 2011

Here’s some more “recent” events. And by recent, I mean they’ve occurred sometime within the past 3 weeks…  (and as today is September 3 when this is finally being posted, it's actually been a month since this stuff occured...)

Tree Planting

One of the goals of PC Burkina Faso is to improve Burkina’s environment, namely, by planting trees.  Starting this year with my stage, every volunteer, whether working in Education or Health, will be required to plant (and keep alive!) at least 625 new trees each year, with those volunteers who are in the DABA sector being responsible for at least 1000 trees each year.  With these efforts, by the year 2016, PC will have planted over 1 million new trees throughout Burkina Faso.  Which, by the way, is enough trees to reach from Ouaga to Paris.  That’s a lot of trees.  Especially when you consider the fact that Burkina Faso is located in the sub-Sahel, and thus a good portion of the country (northern Burkina) is essentially a desert and doesn’t grow much of anything.  Planting trees will not only improve the environment by physically enhancing the soil and adding nutrients to the ground, but of course trees will add a visual, aesthetic appeal to Burkina.  We’ll be teaching our communities how to plant trees (or anything else that grows in the ground, such as gardens, for that matter) and how to ensure the plant’s survival by adding compost and natural fertilizers to the soil.  And then there’s the food.  Mangoes, oranges, bananas, karite, papaya, lemons, limes, weda, and lots of other good things grow on trees.  In Africa.  Right here in Burkina.  Thus, if we plant fruit trees, eventually, in a few years, there will be nourishment for people to eat -- and it will contain 500% more vitamins and nutrients than the white carbs everyone here currently supplements their diets with.  Thus, our tree planting efforts will also serve to teach the Burkinabe about nutrition and eating balanced diets.  Malnourishment, particularly in children, is a big issue in Burkina, and so our tree planting is also a way of combatting that.  Although, trees are a long term answer -- which is a good thing because it’s more sustainable! -- so unfortunately we won’t be able to see many of our tree planting’s immediate affects, whether for combatting malnourishment or for simply helping Burkina look pretty and green.  But if we ever come back and visit 10 or 20 years from now, then maybe we’ll be able to see if our work ever amounted to anything.

So.  In order to teach Burkinabe to plant trees, we first need to teach/learn how to plant and care for trees ourselves.  The DABA kids have had TONS of sessions on this topic, since it will be one of their main focuses, but us Education people haven’t received any information on how to go about ensuring the survival of 600+ trees.  Until this past week, that is, when we finally had a session on tree planting and got to get our hands dirty.  We mixed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full of compost, sand, and clay to culture the perfect growing environment for our tree seeds.  Then we each filled 100 little plastic bags with the dirt mixture and set them up in our designated pepiniere (i.e. “Tree Nursery”).  It was a long and dirty process, so most of us opted to throw on shorts and a t-shirt – even the females, though our shorts exposed our knees and then some, resulting in us feeing really self-conscious and half-naked, but we kept our shorts on anyways… cuz there was no one around except for the other Americans, cuz it was nice to wear something other than a long skirt or pants for once, and cuz we were going to get dirty, and dirty legs are a lot easier to wash than dirty khacki pants.  We all enjoyed chatting while listening to music and filling our bags of dirt.  I thought it was a perfectly picturesque Peace Corps scene.  Like exactly what people picture when they think of Peace Corps and try to imagine what PC Volunteers do: ya know, dig wells, plant trees, etc.  Yes, it was such a perfect PC moment.  We’re in Africa, sitting in a big circle with other young, well-educated colleagues, planting trees (well, getting ready to plant trees, anyways), discussing world peace and global hunger and American politics, while listening to music.  Classical music, at that!  Where else would you find a group of people doing all of these things, besides Peace Corps?!?  I think the Classical music topped it off and made the whole experience almost surreal.  And everything became even more magical when the ipod (which was on random shuffle) switched from a Chopin mazurka to Blink-182’s “All the Small Things,” causing everyone to revert back to their pre-teen years and sing along at the top of their lungs.  Now if only a verse or two of “Kumbayah” had broken out, the perfectly Peace Corps picturesque scene would have been complete.  Anyways, finally, once all our bags were filled, we planted the seeds.  We could choose from a variety of tree seeds, including mango, baobab, merengue, papaya, and more.  Some are good for producing fruit or edible leaves, others are for shade, and still others are used to build live fences/barriers.  We’re in charge of caring for and nurturing our seedlings until we leave Sapone in about a month, and after that, they’ll be given to our host families and other places throughout the community to be planted.  Unfortunately the 100 trees I planted (assuming they all survive) don’t count towards my quota of 625.  These 100 were just practice; my 625 starts once I move in to my site in September.  Oh, and good news: after only a few days of watering and lots of love, some of my seeds are already sprouting! 

We also had a tree-planting session on planting actual trees (as opposed to seeds). We planted nine 3-foot-tall mango trees, as well as several hundred twigs that will become fences/shade but currently are only about 1-foot tall.  We got to plant the several hundred trees with our model school class at a nearby school; every grade/classroom and their teachers (i.e. 3-5 of us) were assigned a spot in Sapone.  It was really nice to hang out with my students outside of a formal school setting and just have fun with them, teaching them how to plant trees and them teaching us how to pump water from a well.  They thought it was HILARIOUS to see Madame Hauth filling buckets of water at the pump.  My 12-year-old boys were showing off on their bikes, popping wheelies, riding without hands, and doing other cool tricks for me, and the girls and I had some good conversations: “Mme. Hauth, did you plant a tree?”  “Yes, I did.”  Girls: “What?!?!?! You did?  Where? Which one?”  Me: “Which one?!?! What do you mean ‘which one?’ I helped plant half the trees here!”  Girls: hehe haha hehe…  Keep in mind that we planted several hundred trees around the school…and that Burkinabe find it strange to see Americans to do any kind of physical work, especially if it’s an American female working…

Silent Auction

It was a normal day, just like any other day for a PC trainee in Burkina.  It was lunch time, so most people were eating at a nearby restaurant, but a few of us were still at the FDC.  One of our Burkinabe facilitators who’s in charge of our training program announced that mail was here.  We quickly looked through all the packages and letters to see if we had gotten anything…and then we saw it:  2 big boxes addressed to Amanda.  Yes, Amanda.  Sadly, we no longer had an Amanda in our group; she had returned to America shortly after we first arrived in Africa.  Despite her packages being sent to her in the beginning of June, they were first arriving now, in the middle of August…with Amanda lonnnnng gone.  Sending packages back to America is possible, but ridiculously expensive and not worth it, unless whatever is being mailed is extremely valuable.  We opened up Amanda’s boxes to see what was in there, if it was still good after 2 months in transit (or had turned moldy), and if there was anything personal or really valuable that should be sent back to Amanda in America.  We were thrilled to see that both boxes were filled with food: cheese sauce, spinach tortellini, JellyBelly beans in every flavor, yogurt-covered raisins, Fiber One bars, pistachios, Goldfish, and more.  But then came the hard part: what to do with this package sent from heaven?  Sure, the few of us there could have kept it to ourselves, split up the goodies, and not told anyone else.  But that would have been mean.  And we’re nice people.  So we wanted to share the treats with everyone.  But how, exactly, were we to share the treats?  Yeah, I suppose we could each pick one thing, or we could pass around the jellybeans and hope that everyone gets a few, but more than likely, this would result in drama, with people getting angry that they didn’t get what they wanted or that they didn’t get as much as other people got, etc.  So we decided against that, too.  Then Alynn came up with a brilliant idea: we would hold a silent auction!  And donate the money we raise to a good cause, such as one of the grant programs used to fund Peace Corps activities in Burkina Faso, or perhaps give it to Valerie, the owner of a small boutique/restaurant right near the FDC (our training building) that all of us go to multiple times a day because she makes some of the best benga (beans and rice) around, as well as these almondish-flavored biscuit things that are the closet thing to cookies we’ve seen in Burkina. She’s also open every day, all day whenever we have class (which is pretty much every day of the week), is really nice and always helpful with whatever questions we have about Burkina culture, and furthermore, is rather cheap: a plate of rice and peanut sauce costs 50 CFA, or 15 cents American. In my opinion, she severely undercharges us and thus probably isn’t making a profit.  Which is exactly why some people thought it’d be nice to give the money to her, as an investment in her restaurant/boutique.

So it was decided, a silent auction would be held…and where the money was going would be voted on at a later date, after we saw how much money we had to work with.  I worked with Alynn on sorting through all the food items and grouping some of the smaller treats together, like the two 100% organic strawberry fruit roll-ups with the lone 100-calorie pouch of pretzels.  A few days later, the auction was held, and man, did some people get a little crazy when it came to food.  For example, the goldfish were a hot item.  And the girl who REALLY wanted them opted to stand by the table the whole time and proceeded to threaten anybody who tried to outbid her…  Since the money would be going for a good cause, I played devil’s advocate or whatever you wanna call it, and bid on pretty much everything to get prices started and to get people to outbid me.  “Gosh Beth, why did you put 1000 CFA for the Fiber One bars?  The previous bid was only 500 CFA.  You only need to increase bids by 100 CFA…”  Me: “Yeah, I know, but I really like FiberOne bars and will happily pay 1000 CFA for them.  Plus, other people who want them also will outbid me…if they really want them as bad as I do.”  And sure enough. Three minutes later, I was outbid by the person who wanted them even more than I did and was willing to cough up more money.  Besides, let’s be honest.  1000 CFA?  Even 2000 CFA?  That’s still only $4 American.  That’s nothing.  That’s pretty much what the item would cost normally in America, and if you have your family send it here, you have to tack on the outrageous shipping fee also.  So really, it’s still a good deal.  Yes, you could have bought 20 bowls of beans and rice or 40 bananas with that 2000 CFA…but these are FiberOne bars (or goldfish, or M&M’s, or cheese…) and you’re not going to find this stuff anywhere else… so suck it up, use the money you were planning to spend on beer, and pay the dang 2000 CFA for the little pack of cheese sauce.  Despite bidding on pretty much everything several times, I actually ended up walking away with only a few items: Rustic Organic Spaghetti Sauce, Trail Mix, a bag of dried fruit, and 2 FiberOne bars.  Yes, I really did desire those FiberOne bars – they’re good for you and they were covered in dark chocolate (which is a rarity in Burkina)!  But I only got 2, not all 6, because me and the other 2 people who were constantly outbidding each other decided to make an alliance and split the box 3 ways.  It was a good compromise, and we all ended up happy and got to enjoy a little bit of FiberOne goodness drizzled in chocolate.  I would have gladly bought every item in the auction, should no one have outbid me, but fortunately my devil’s advocate scheme worked.  Others did outbid me and I didn’t have to choke forth the huge sum of money that everything in the auction would have cost: 42,000 CFA.  The grand total was a whopping sum equivalent to about $85 dollars American, which maybe doesn’t sound like much, but here is HUGE – it’s enough money to buy 10 pagnes and have them all taken to a tailor and made into fancy outfits, or enough to buy 90 bottles of Coke, or 420 loaves of bread.  It’s more money than most people see each month, if not a 3-4 month period.  So we were pretty proud of ourselves for raising that much money off of our pathetic bids for American food, driven mainly by how badly we craved chocolate or pistachios, rather than how badly we wanted to help out a good cause… but hey, whatever works.  (Or gets us to spend our money.) 

Harry Potter Marathon

Electricity may be scarce, but there’s no shortage of DVD files/movie clips (which may or may not have been downloaded illegally) amongst us stagieres.  Amongst the 47 of us, we have everything from Aladdin and other Disney classics to Indiana Jones to Mean Girls to Harry Potter, plus tons of complete TV show seasons, like Friends and The Big Bang Theory.  Most of us came to Africa with a laptop and/or very large external hard drive equipped to handle storing thousands of movie, music, and book files (yes, electronic books, like “The DaVinci Code” and “Pride and Prejudice”), all in hopes of having an outlet to keep us sane when we’re bored in village with nothing to do (very common, especially if it’s a rainy day) or really missing the comforts of America (i.e. watching Glee every Tuesday night).  Of course everyone shares their goodies with everyone else, and so by now, most people have copied all the media files they could possibly desire onto their computer.  I came with one movie on my hard drive (Inception); I now have several hundred to entertain me once at site…provided I have electricity to run my computer since my computer battery is basically worthless and only lasts for about an hour when not plugged in.  Awesome.  Anyways, as most people in America know, the last Harry Potter finally came out: Harry Potter 7, Part II.  And though there are no movie theaters anywhere near us right now, we still got to transport ourselves to Hogwarts for the night and enjoy the final film of this epic series.  The movie was great – I thoroughly enjoyed it! – and the Russian subtitles didn’t take away from the experience at all.  Really, besides for the Russian and occasional shaking and slightly misaligned timing between lip movement and audio, you never would’ve guessed that this particular Harry Potter film wasn’t from America. 

Milo

My host family’s dog, Milo, isn’t exactly the nicest dog in the world.  You may recall me telling about the first few weeks in Sapone when Milo would constantly growl and bark at me, even to the point of not letting me out of my house at night when I had to go to the bathroom.   Whenever my language teacher would come by to visit after school and check on my situation with the host family (this generally occurs about once a week), he would always comment on how mean Milo was, especially towards strangers.   But eventually Milo got used to me and accepted me as one of the family.  It probably also helped that I always fed Milo my leftover bone/fat chunks and other scraps, along with anything else I deemed inedible but didn’t want the family to know I hadn’t even attempted to take a single bite of whatever they had prepared…  In fact, Milo has come to expect that if I’m eating, he will also get fed.  He’ll sit right next to me, staring intently at me with sad puppy dog eyes as I eat, waiting for me to drop something or to sneak him a piece of my “inedible” cuisine.  The family always yells, “Milo!  Allez!” (i.e. get/go away!) and sometimes they even throw little rocks at him, though I’ve tried telling them it’s alright if Milo is by me when I eat and that he doesn’t bother me.  It’s not like Milo is jumping on my lap or anything.  He’s just sitting there, by my feet, like a good, loving dog should.  So.  For the past month, I’ve been pretty certain Milo likes me.  But this certainty was confirmed a few nights ago when it rained.  Like all rains, it was a crazy and intense storm.  It was about 2am when I awoke to the sound of strong wind gusts and rumbling thunder, and I knew it was about to downpour.  Unless I wanted my entire room to be filled with water, I had to shut my metal door, which I normally keep open at night.  I opened up my screen door so I could remove the large rock that keeps the metal door open and in place against the house wall, when all of a sudden, something huge dashes into my room.  It was slightly terrifying.  With it being dark, I wasn’t sure what had just ran past me and brushed against my leg, and was now in my room right near me.  I got my cell phone and shone it at the creature, only to discover it was Milo.  Weird.  Milo has NEVER attempted to come into my house before.  But it was also such a relief.  I was very happy to see it was Milo and not some other random animal or hyena or who knows what.  I tried to get Milo to go outside, but he wouldn’t budge.  He plopped himself down on the floor near my bed, as far away from the door as possible, and curled up into a little ball, right as the rain started pelting the metal roof and thunder cracked overhead.  Poor dog.  I wouldn’t want to be outside in the storm either.  I decided Milo could stay in my room until morning…it’d only be a few hours until it was time to get up for the day anyways.  Plus, having a dog that will growl ferociously at any strange person or animal that comes within the vicinity was kinda comforting.  And made me realize that when I get to site, one of the first things I’m going to do is find a puppy to claim as my own and train it to only like me and to bark/growl like crazy whenever anyone else appears.  Like a watchdog.  My dog will probably end up being racist, only tolerating “white” people like me and getting really defensive whenever anyone else (i.e. a black person) is around.  But oh well.  Safety first, right?   My only other thought as I climbed back into bed that night and listened to the patter of the falling rain was that I just hoped Milo wouldn’t do anything weird during the night, like get into my boxes of food or pee on my suitcase of clothes…  and no worries, he didn’t.  He was a perfectly good dog.  Until it was time for him to leave.  I had to go to class, which meant locking the door to my house before I left.  But of course, I couldn’t lock the door if Milo was still inside.  I tried prodding Milo and nudging him with my foot, but he would not move.  I almost thought he was dead.  Turns out, he’s just really good at playing dead and ignoring me.  I was going to be late for class if I didn’t get going, so finally I went to my family to tell them about the situation, knowing full well that they wouldn’t be happy with Milo and would probably throw a rock or two at him.  After going through the typical “Bonjour! Ca va?” and other necessary greetings, I said that Milo was in my room.  My dad smiled and nodded.  So again I say that because of the rain last night, Milo is in my room.  NOW.  Still.  Again my family smiles.  Clearly they weren’t comprehending my French.  Which was sad, because I knew all of the words to say “rain” and “room” and “currently/now” and I’m pretty sure I was pronouncing them right… So I try again, speaking very slowly: “Milo – the DOG – is in MY room, RIGHT NOW and won’t leave.”  That was it; they finally understood.  My dad: “Agh! Milo? The dog?  Milo?  In your room? Oh no!  Not good.  So sorry.”  He marched straight to my room and pretty much grabbed Milo by the collar and threw him out the door.  Sorry Milo, I tried to avoid this; if only you had moved the first time I asked, then all this violence could have been avoided.  Oh well, at least I know Milo likes me.

Camp Glow

August 19, 2011

Camp Glow

From August 8-11, in three separate groups, each a day apart, we traveled on nice coach busses (clean, air conditioned, padded seats, and equipped with a flat screen to show movies!) three hours south to the city/village of Boromo to check out Camp GLOW.  Actually, it’s Camp G2LOW (G^2, i.e. G-squared), which stands for “Guys and Girls Leading Our World.”  Camp Glow is a Peace Corps sponsored initiative that is held all over the world in many (if not most) of the countries where there are currently Peace Corps Volunteers serving.  This year was the premiere year of Camp Glow in Burkina Faso, and so we were there to help with its kick-off and get ideas for what we’ll do next year, when we plan our own Camp Glow for whatever region of Burkina we’re living in.  We were there during the girls’ week (the boys’ camp was being held the following the week) and got to see over 60 middle-school aged girls participate in the 5-day intense leadership/life-skills camp, which included sessions on hand-washing, goal-setting, journal-decorating, tie-dye-T-shirt-making, malaria-and-AIDS-prevention-educating, and more. 

The camp was held at a school, so the girls and counselors (i.e. PC Volunteers and Burkinabe homologues) slept on the floor in classrooms.  Unfortunately it rained the first night and flooded the classrooms and all the girls’ stuff.  So, when my group arrived, we got the privilege of cleaning out other classrooms for the girls to sleep in.  Which meant first taking out over 100 heavy 4-foot long desk/table contraption things and stacking them on top of other desks in other classrooms, then sweeping with little hand-held brooms that essentially resemble a witch’s broom but without the stick.  The rest of this laborious (and dirty) task included: moving all the girls’ clothes and sleeping mats, untying every girl’s mosquito net, carrying it to the new classroom, and then re-hanging all the nets from the walls/ceilings.  Fun. Speaking of rain.  It was raining (aka pouring) when our nice coach bus first pulled into Boromo.  And we had a 3 mile walk from the bus station to the camp/school.  While carrying our awkwardly-sized bags of luggage, of course.  Lovely.  However, much to our surprise, before we started walking a Peace Corps vehicle pulled up and told us that we no longer had to walk – we would get to ride in the car, 4 people at a time.  It took a while to finally get everyone at the camp site, but waiting at the bus station for the car to come back was definitely much better than walking in the rain with our bags.  Plus the bus station was the equivalent of an American mall, with tons of vendors located alongside the station walls and yummy treats being thrust into our face by little children entrepreneurs. There were dried mangoes, fresh apples, loaves of sweet bread, whole roasted chickens, hard-boiled eggs, and more.  Naturally, it’s assumed that we foreigners have money (and well, let’s be honest, we do), and so EVERYONE follows us and swarms around us.  No matter how many times we politely (or not so politely) say, “No, thank you,” they persist on trying to sell us their products: “Madame, bananas.  2 for 100 CFA.  Madame. Please, Madame! Bananas!” (and the whole time the look in their eyes is screaming, “Why would you refuse me? Madame, I’m hungry.  I’m a hungry little child.  How can you say no to me? Please, I beg you, buy my bananas.)  It’s difficult, but we do refuse them. Sometimes.  Yeah, we’re kind of jerks like that, not spending all our money on whatever items they’re selling.

While visiting Camp Glow, we slept at a Catholic mission that was about 2km away from the school.  The mission was operated by a little old nun from Germany; she was really cute and super nice.  There were four beds in each room, but my room had 6 girls in it, so we pushed the four twin-size beds together to make one giant bed and had a slumber party.  It was all fun and games, playing truth and dare, deciding which male in our group was the cutest, gossiping about each other’s clothes, and other activities common amongst 13-year-olds…until we heard scratching and clawing coming from inside the walls.  Despite there being a crucifix on one wall and a picture of Mary on the other, we were not kept safe from hearing the disturbing sounds of bats fluttering throughout the building’s walls and roofs ALL night long.  Our room was nice, clean, and actually had real walls (stained wood, as opposed to dirt), along with comfy beds (compared to what we have with our host families), and yet none of us were able to enjoy these niceties and get a good night’s rest for the few days we were at Camp Glow, all because of the stupid bats.  We couldn’t believe it, but we were actually looking forward to returning home to Sapone’s screaming donkeys and crowing roosters, since we would be able to get at least a few hours of shuteye there.

The mission was equipped with a small kitchen, and so we pooled our resources and money and attempted to make banana bread.  The “other” Beth in our training group (aka Elizabeth N.) and I headed up the baking, along with a few other helpers, aka people who stood and watched us work, and then tried to snitch samples of the batter.  There was no baking powder or baking soda in Boromo, so Beth and I experimented with using regular yeast.  It worked.  Kind of. 35 mashed-up bananas and a bag of flour later, we had 4 large cake pans full of warm, delicious banana bread/cake-like goodness that were instantly attacked and devoured by all of us Peace Corps Trainees. Me: “Careful, it’s hot.”  Others: “I don’t care, I want a piece now!”…*takes a big bite*… “Ouch! Dang that’s really hot! It burned my tongue!”  Me: “I told you so…”   Everyone loved it, and I even had people begging to eat the burnt crust corners.  Yes, our taste buds have been destroyed by being in Africa – anything and everything seems to taste good now, such as burnt crust.  Raw peanuts and dry bread slathered with mayonnaise have also become popular favorites amongst us stagiares.  Don’t be surprised if we come back to America and try to order bread with mayonnaise in a fancy restaurant or ask for a hot glass of powdered milk.  In addition to people trying to eat what I had deemed as inedible, there were also others bribing me (though sometimes “threatening” me was more like it!) to give them a third or fourth piece: “Come on, both you Beths, please.  My first piece fell in the dirt.  So I didn’t get one.  Then Joe ate my second piece.  And my third piece was way smaller than everyone else’s.  Please, just one more piece!”  The secret to our banana bread was that we DIDN’T follow a recipe (we just threw stuff into a big bowl) and then made a crumb/sugar topping to sprinkle on top.  In our Peace Corps Burkina Faso Recipe Book, there’s a recipe for “Big Julie’s Bitchin’ Banana Bread,” so the joke amongst everyone was that we should name our recipe “Big Beth’s^2 Bitchin’ Banana Bread,” (Beth-squared) in honor of the two Beth’s that made it.  I’m fine with that. 

Also, while at Camp Glow, I met the infamous Sam – the other current volunteer in Burkina who went to St. Ben’s / St. John’s with Lindsay and me.  Sam was helping run the camp, but we got some time over lunch to chat and reminisce about Bennie/Johnnie events, SJU football games, and our favorite professors, while everyone else stared and wondered what in the world we were even talking about: What the heck is The Link?  Who is David Arnott?  Gary’s Pizza? The Rat Pack?  Tommies suck? Huh?  All in all, it was a good experience to observe Camp Glow for a couple days.  For being its first year, there were a lot of good things happening and thus a lot of potential to work off of for any future camps.  But, because this was the first year, there were also a lot of downsides, mainly dealing with logistics and scheduling.  From an American perspective, any typical American kid probably would’ve been thinking, “This is dumb.  I’m bored.”  But for the Burkinabe adolescents, this camp was a big deal.  Camps (as in Basketball Camp, Leadership, Boy Scouts, Bible…etc. or any other topic there might possibly be a camp held for, as we know of them in the USA), aren’t necessarily unheard of here in Burkina.  But at the same time, they’re pretty rare.  And thus, seriously, camp is a BIG deal.  For many of the girls, it was the first time they had ever left their village.  They got to meet other girls from nearby towns, decorate journals with pictures representative of their goals, and eat s’mores.  From an American perspective, there wasn’t anything too special or exciting at this camp, but for the Burkinabe, everything was a treat.  It was reassuring to see that even the simplest of activities are well-received by the Burkinabe, which means that when we’re planning our own camps next summer, we don’t have to put all of our energy into thinking of “fun” and “new” things to entertain kids with, like we would if we were in America.  Instead, we can simply draw from all the typical camp things we did as kids at camp in America, and focus more on the actual logistics of the camp, like resources, money, transportation, and involvement/leadership/facilitation of camp sessions by Burkinabe locals, so that they can run similar camps in the future without depending on the assistance of a Peace Corps Volunteer, which is the long-term goal of all Peace Corps programs throughout the world: empower the people of a country to empower themselves.

Since I’ll be in the Sourou Valley (aka DABA valley aka Party Valley) with over a dozen PC friends nearby, we’ve already begun talking about ideas for a massive Camp GLOW in our region.  It’s gonna happen.  And it’s gonna be awesome.  I’m personally going to invest some effort into composing a camp song or cheer or something of that nature. 

On the way home from camp, I picked up a bunch of goodies from the mall/bus station to bring home for my host family: dried mangoes, sugar-covered peanuts, a loaf of sweet bread, 2 apples, 2 oranges, and a banana.  All for a grand total of $2 American.  My family was really grateful for the gifts and ate everything that evening for supper, but they were also shocked/concerned that I spent “so much” money on them and tried to repay me, as well as serve me some of the treats.  I had to convince them it was solely a gift for THEM and that I didn’t spend very much money; I also had to lie and tell them that I wasn’t going to eat any of their gift because I had my own loaf of sweet bread and apples in my room… I SHOULD have had my own treats, but they didn’t make it home: I ended up eating them on the bus ride back.  But my family didn’t need to know that.  I wasn’t going to eat any of their gift, and that was final.  Oh yes, I also had spared a little piece of my epic banana bread for my family to sample.  They were excited to try “American” gateau (gateau, pronounced “ga-toe,” is French for cake/dessert), but they didn’t really like it.  I’m pretty sure they actually fed it to the chickens.  The banana bread was too flavorful and sweet for them – everything they eat here tends to be blah-tasting, whether it’s white rice or fried balls of flour with a hint of sugar in them – so it’s no surprise our banana bread (with all its sugar, oil, and cinnamon-streusel-sugar crumb topping) was a bit too much for them.  What a shame.  I’m sure the chickens liked it, but I’m thinkin’ any American currently in Burkina would have given a million dollars to eat that 2-day-old chunk of banana bread with streusel topping.