The Wilds

So a while back, I was told that there are crocodiles in the area. Ha! The closest thing to crocodiles I have seen are the countless number of little lizards which crawl over everything outside and are especially found of racing across my porch and clinging to my house in the midday sun. As you can see in the photo to the left, they are everywhere. They are also completely harmless, like 99 percent of all African lizards, and although quite annoying, they definitely cannot be confused with its larger and more fearsome cousin. But finally, after so many people have said they exist, I have proof. I have seen my first ¨wild¨ African animal (if you don't count the lizards and birds). A few weeks ago, I was brought to the local dam about 1km from my house by a fellow villager. When we arrived, he pointed across the water to the other side. ¨You see? There they are!¨ I, of course, looked across the water only to see a flock of birds along the bank, but as we rode our bikes around to the far side, it became more apparent. We do have crocodiles here! We saw about six that day (out of about 50, they say), lounging out along the shore, most probably between five and six feet in length. Of course, my village friend wouldn't let me get anywhere close to them, so obviously I had to return a few days later to move in closer to the crocs and snap a few pics. All the men working at the dam watched with concern as I inch my way closer and closer to the animals. Apparently in a nearby dam, two women drowned in the water last year and the crocs ate their bodies afterwards, so I'm sure the men didn't like me moving in closer, but I kept a good running distance in case the need presented itself (it didn't, thankfully). Many crocodile ponds here in Burkina and across West Africa are sacred, and while I haven't heard them talk about these crocs as such, I am sure everyone respects them enough to keep their distance.

In other news, I have one last photo to share with you to give you a better picture of where I work. If you have followed this blog, you know that I work with a group called CoGes (Comité de Gestion), as well as with the local health clinic, called the CSPS, here in Aorema. In the photo here to the left, you can the four buildings that make up the CSPS. This picture is taken right by my house, so you can see how close I am. From the left, we have the maternity in the distance. The next building is where patients can stay if they need to spend the night to be observed. It also houses our abulance (rare for a CSPS), which costs 10,000 CFA to use (roughly $20). The next building is the main building, where the office of the head nurse is located and where patients come for consultations. The last building on the far right side is the pharmacy where they store and sell around 80 to 100 different medications most commonly needed. The metal pole that you can see is for electricity, which we have yet to obtain. They usually put in the poles and the lines long before they actually get around to dishing out the juice, but perhaps at some point while I am here, Aorema will get electricity. The cable that you can see goes from the CSPS to my compound, so if Aorema does get power, it appears I would be able to get it too. It would be nice to have a light at night and an electric fan when it's hot. Until then, it's candles and hand fans.

Toto, I Don't Think We're Africa Anymore

It is cold! And I'm talking bundle yourself up in a winter jacket cold. Of course, I only brought a thin sweatshirt with me to Burkina. It's Africa. How cold can it get, right? Well thanks to the harmattan winds that blow from the Sahara, pretty chilly. Of course, because of these powerful gales, biking riding has exponentially grow to be the bain of my existence, at least during the headwinds that I have to face everytime I come back from Ouahigouya. I have quickly learned that the wind is a cruel mistress, who will turn on you whenever she gets the chance. This past Thursday and Friday we had a vaccination campaign for the surrounded villages that do not have a CSPS. Of course, the winds were the srongest I've seen them and my major was on his moto the entire time, crawling at a dismal pace while I struggled to keep my bike's momentum. It was perhaps 6km or so to the other villages which felt more than 60 to me. Anyway, enough of that.

I know it has been awhile since my last post. I had planned to do a nice lengthy one when I was in the capital this past week. I had gone to visit with friends, pick up packages, and watch the presidential inauguration at the US Embassy, and the PC house we stay at in Ouaga has wireless internet, so I thought it would be ideal to get something grandiose accomplished, but I put fair too much faith in the power of wireless. The connection was so slow, I couldn't get any work done. So here we are instead, at my cozy internet café in Ouahigouya, which I actually prefer much better. And with that, allow me to show you around my house.

Welcome to chez moi. It is a quaint, two-room, concrete house with a half-built latrine outside. Pictures of the exterior will come once it is presentatable to the world and finished to my satisfaction. I will try to describe in as much detail what you are looking at with each picture. Let us begin in my kitchen/living room. In this photo, you can see the bulk of what I call the kitchen. I had a carpenter build the counter, which set me back about $50, including varnish. I have two bowls which sit in holes on the top to act as sinks. The teapot is, not for tea, but rather as a faucet, watercan, and any other job I need in for. The burkinabe use these kinds of teapots in lieu of toilet paper. You can see my white four-burner stove which connects to a gas tank in the corner. It works rather well for my needs. The bottom shelf contains my most used cooking essentials on the left and my utensils, bowls and such on the right. The metal trunk (a cantine in French) houses more food stuffs (care-package goodies) and protects them against any insects or other creatures that might try to nibble their way in. The thing hanging in the corner is a set of calbashes that I made to keep my fruits and veggies out of the grasp of bugs as well. And the light-blue thing to the right of the picture is my trash can.

The next photo is a close-up shot of the ingredients I use most often when cooking, enough to keep them out on the shelf. From the left, I have two pots that I use for boiling water, cooking pasta, making sauces, and popping popcorn among other things. I have several small cans of tomato paste which I use to make spaghetti sauce. I have two jars of Burkinabe peanut butter which I have filled at the market inside old jelly jars. Next to those is the honey which I use to sweeten the peanut butter. The other whitish bottle is vinegar which I rarely use, but you never know. The flat round disc in front is the closest thing to real cheese that we have. It is called Laughing Cow, and is something like cream cheese. Luckily it doesn't need to be refridgerated and is a great source of calcium (which is often lacking in my diet here). The yellow tub in front is Blue Band, not butter but not margarine. I am sure that it would kill a man in large quantities, but it's the closest thing we have to butter here. To the right of that are all my spice bottles from the US, which I go through quickly. Since I cook a lot of pasta, I use garlic powder and oregano beaucoup. The tall white thing on the far right is salt, a coarse sea-variety which comes from Spain. It is quite nice. Behind that, I have my bottle of the palm oil, the cheapest and least healthy option for oil you can buy here. One of these days I'll splurge on vegetable or canola oil, or, don't hold your breathe, olive olive. These are the staple ingredients in my Burkina diet.

As we move around the room, you can see my lit pico, basically a beach lounge chair that is built stronger, which I use as a couch. It is actually quite comfortable. An organization which provides work for handicapped people that another PCV works with here in Ouahigouya makes these for about $50 each. In the corner I have my water filter and a terracota pot (called a canari) which I used to store my drinking water, since this keeps it much much cooler than my filter. Some days, it feels like my water came right out of the fridge. On the back wall above the lit pico, you can see my map of Burkina Faso that Peace Corps gave us and as well part of my world map. You may not know this about me, but I love maps, especially antique ones. I spend a lot of time just studying the maps I have, planning my next adventure.

Moving right, this is my table, where I eat and read and study. You have a better view of my world map and my map of West Africa. Yeah, I like maps. I made a make-shift bookshelf out of a cardboard box, which houses several PC books, as well as French books, travel books, and magazines. I also have a framed picture of my family in Paris that I keep on top of my books. I paid about $15 for the wooden table and then drapped an old pagne (piece of clothe) over it. The blue plastic chairs I book here in the marché, and are actually some of the nicest and most comfortable kind of chairs you can buy relatively cheap here. I think at some point I want to buy a few more chairs to keep outside, since currently these are the only two I have. But these work for now. I think I paid maybe $7 for each one, so it didn't dig into my budget too much.

In this next photo, you can see the door to my bedroom, and what might look like a large trashcan. Since people here usually burn their garbage or throw it anywhere outside, garbage cans are not usually used for trash. It is actually contains my water. I have a young girl come a few times a week, and she fills up a smaller jug and make several trips between the pump and my house until it is full. She also washes my clothes once a week, and I pay here 500 CFA (about $1) each week for here help, which is actually 500 CFA more than my coworkers pay their water girls, so it works out nicely for all involved. The red bucket next to it is what I fill up to take my bucket baths each day, sometimes heating up some water on those especially cold mornings. I also have a broom leaning against the wall, which I don't use nearly as often as I should. This conlcudes the first room of my house. Take a moment to sit, breath, and take it all in.

The next room, my bedroom, is about half the size, which made getting good photo angles a challenge, so I have only two photos to share. This corner of the room is where I keep all my ¨stuff¨. My suitcase on the left acts as my dresser where I store all of my clean clothes. In the corner I made a make-shift table out of two boxes which I use to organize all of my toiletries. The cantine (have you been paying attention) has random papers, as well as my any valuables I own, which I always keep locked up inside just in case. On my walls, I have a long mirror with some other family pictures squeezed along its borders and another world map. Did I mention I like maps? The door to the other room is just to the right of the mirror; you'll have to use your imagination.

Finally, this last photo of my house is my bed. I used to have an actually mosquito net hanging over my bed, but then I realized it was much easier to simply leave my matress inside my bug tent. It has worked act rather well. The matress ran about $30 and it simply a large slab of foam inside a covering. By the following morning, I usually have a nice impression of my body when I wake up. Despite this, it is actually very comfortable and beats sleeping like most Burkinabe do - on the floor. The blanket on the foot of the matress is actually a length of really nice hand-wooven and hand-dyed fabric that was given to me by my host family when I left my first village of Somyaga. And with that, I have covered basically all the important parts of my house. I hope I haven't bored you too much. Oh, and did anyone catch my little play-on-words with this entry's title: Toto was not only Dorothy's dog but also a popular 80s band who had a hit song entitled ¨Africa.¨ No, ok, just checking.

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.