L'installation d'Erik

Wow, it's been about two weeks since moving into my new home, what the French and Burkinabe call l'installation, or settling-in, so to speak. Some days have flown by and others drag like a tugboat pulling the Titanic, but all in all, I'd say it's been an interesting couple of weeks.

To start, my major has been back and forth between our village and Ouahigouya several times for meetings and training, so things have been so much more slower than I had originally planned. I get up most mornings around 6:30, get cleaned up and spend the first part of the day, from 8:00 until 11:00 or so, at the CSPS. Most days I bring my French grammar book and study, sit in on consultations (which I can't understand since it's all in Mooré), and hang out at the pharmacy. To give a picture (before I actually put up pictures), the CSPS is the local clinic I work with and is comprised of several small buildings. There is the main building where consultations take place and treatments and vaccines are given out. There is a seperate building, the maternity, where pregnant woman give birth. Our pharmacy attendent (la gerente in French) just gave birth there a few days ago. Jokingly, the midwife said she should name the baby Erik and asked why I wasn't there for the delivery. Ha! I think it a little soon to be naming babies after me or stepping anywhere in the proximity of the maternity during a birth. Back on track, there is a another building simply full of beds, where patients can spend the night for observation if necessary and there is a small pharmacy with maybe a hundred or so medications. One day I was able to help the CSPS do their end of the year inventory of their these medicines, recording the amount and total prices of each one left in supply, a process taking over three hours.

Aside from these basic tasks , my number one goal during these first three months is integration. This may seem like an easy task, but I have learned quickly it is ten times more difficult but ten times more important than I had previously thought. When you can't communicate as fully as you want and you feel like the spotlight is on you everytime you step outside, it is easier to shut yourself inside your house than face the world. I have people coming to my door at any hour telling me I have to go here or there, greet so and so, do this or that. It is something I knew would happen and have tried to use it positively as a way to expand myself, practice the PC virtues of patience and flexibility. I know eventually down the road, I will have my own activities planned, know the people in my village well enough to go greet them myself, and have an understanding of the language to go beyond ¨Good morning¨ and ¨I speak Mooré a little.¨

I did have a great moment last night actually that calmed my soul for lack of a better expression. After sitting it on consultations with my major, he asked me if I wanted to take a walk around the village. It was at my favorite time of day here in Burkina; it was about 5pm, the sun was beginning to set, but not quite yet. It's the cooler season here, and the gusts of wind which chill the average Burkinabe felt to me like a summer evening on the beach if you closed your eyes. We walked around and greeted people, and along the way we met some of the CoGes members I also will work with, who tagged along with us. I met the elder from the oldest neighborhood in Aorema, the ones who started the village, and he was more than welcoming. As we walked by people who called me Nassara (the Mooré word for a white person or foreigner, not malicious but a bit distancing), I could tell that the men would correct them. ¨His name is Erik. When you see him, call him Erik.¨

So yeah, that's where things stand in this crazy melange that is my life. I'm here in town to celebrate my friend Ilana's birthday and get some groceries. It is nice to know I can go a week in village and not go crazy though and, because I forgot to take money out last time I was in town, get by on less than $2 if I have to. Other good things so far include: real loaves of bread (not bagettes) and orange ¨popcicles¨ in the local marché, my major and his wife treating me to lunch when I visited his home in town (as well as three beers, a glass of champagne, and some dolo), perfecting the art that is spaghetti, a bag of peanuts for 5 cents, and the almost completion of my own shower and latrine, gradually understanding more of what people say, and popcorn.