I'm still me

Well, less of me.  I bottomed out at 170lbs a few weeks ago, looks like ill be hovering around 170-175 for a bit as I can't really see my lifestyle changing.  That's the funny thing that I've noticed about people in general in Burkina and elsewhere:  There seems to be this belief sometimes that our personalities and habits are based on our immediate environment.  I am still pretty much exactly the same.  I have no desire to have a tidy living space, I'm not even there for most of the day.  I'm still shy with meeting new people, still fairly quiet.  I don't meet many new people in my village day to day.  During my training from June-August, other people would say things like "im not usually like this, it's just the stress of the situation", the situation being hungry and sweaty in a new country.  I think stressful situations just make the personality characteristics that you repress appear more strongly. 

After 6 months in Burkina I've hit a routine that I am happy with and am comfortable in my environment.  I just spent 14 days in Ouagadougou for IST (in service training).  I just got back to my region yesterday and was really relieved to hear people speaking in Jula again.  It's almost comforting now.  Im going to get into full gear as far as project work goes.  I will have my 10 hours of teaching every week like normal, but I will start the other parts of my job.  IST was kind of the end of the new volunteer trial period, now I'm supposed to do it all.  Teaching villagers about malnutrition and AIDS, having after school clubs with the kids and continuing to learn about the culture here. 

I'm happy with the balance so far between staying in my site and getting away to bigger cities.  One or two days every weekend I go to Banfora or Bobo.  Banfora is my regional capitol and is only 12km away, I typically bike but there are lots of bush taxis too (see earlier transportation post).  I hang out there with Matt and or Marlow, two volunteers near me.  There are two super fancy hotels with fast and free wifi internet.  I use my old smartphone or a friends computer, catch up on news and reddit and starcraft.  Really miss starcraft.  Beta happening now, so sad, and I'm returning to USA maybe a year after the expansion is released.  There is a pool at one of the hotels and they both have great food.  I also stock up on things like eggs, pasta and laughing cow cheese there.

Bobo is more of a once per month things.  I am in the bureau right now, a Peace Corps building for volunteers to use who don't want to go all the way to Ouaga, a 4 hour bus ride from here.  Lots of volunteers in the region to hang out with.  Fast internet on two computers and fans.  Even a medical room if I get sick and want to stay here.  It's very reassuring to be able to take a 90min bush tqxi fqirly cheaply and have a place to go, with a cheap place to camp in a tent only a few minutes away.  Plus the shower, that's cool.  Printer, scanner, you get the idea.  When I want a night out of site, I have two great locations and lots of cool people to be around. 

I'm going back to site in an hour or two.  Xmas break is coming so I will have a lot of time to explore my site now that the weather is getting bearable.  It was actually kind of chilly last night.

The bright light of education

Young Burkinabé boy doing math in elementary school.  I had happened to be there to take pictures for the school.  They don't have enough desks for the 80 kids so about a third of them have to sit on the ground.  They still have a blast though.  It's great how engaged and excited the kids are to learn here.  They love to do examples at the board, they practically spring out of their desks to get my attention to call on them.  Of course, I have middle school students and can't imagine having the little kids who have no french.  I thought this would be a cool, inspirationalish photo.

Waterfalls!

I live in a region called Cascades and this is why.  I got to visit Takeledougou a few weeks ago, there is a married couple of volunteers there.  We biked about 15 minutes to the falls, then went back and made some fajitas with the tortilla press that was left at my house.  After dinner, we went to a talent show that the village put on and I got to sit in the front row and drink a cold coke.  My life is really difficult here.

This is the view looking out away from the falls.  The region is very hilly and here you can see in the distance the valley with one of the only sugar cane fields in Burkina.  Many people here go every year during the harvest season to harvest sugar cane in the Ivory Coast.

There is a platform above the falls here that we all stood on.  The camera is about 50 feet away and I barely made it running during the 10sec timer.  Im on the left, the 3 on the right are volunteers leaving the country in the next couple of months.  It was interesting being the new guy around the volunteers who had aready been here for 2 years.  In the middle we have a couple of friends, one Burkinabe and on Portuguese, who work for NGOs around the country. 

There are more cascades in the region, cant wait to visit those too!

I know who I'm teaching now

The way the school years work here is like this:  you start in primary school for 6 years.  After that comes middle school, called college here with a soft 'g'.  I'll be teaching the second year of middle schoolers.  They go for 4 years, starting as 6th years and leaving when they are 3rd years.  High school (lycee) is 2nd years, 1st years and terminal year, so 3 years.  I will be teaching 5th year middle schoolers, I'll have two classes of about 80 kids and I'll be teaching math.  The ages should range from 14 year olds to 20ish year olds.  I did practice teaching on 3rd year kids and I only had 7, so this will be a step down in their french skills, while increasing the number by a factor of 10.  I have no idea what to expect, but I really just need to be scary the first couple of weeks and then they will behave better for the year.  I start on October 1st.  Hopefully I'll have some pictures with my students sometime soon.  I just bought a book on learning Dioula, so hopefully my skills will start to skyrocket.  Water fall pictures coming within a week.

I read a lot

I cant remember when exactly I decided I like reading, but I think Dune sealed the deal.  Sure, accelerated reader probably helped, but I mainly did that for the points, because I like things like points; always have.  I have the most JROTC ribbons and medals in high school because I like things like ribbons and metals.  But Dune made me decide to be a reader and now Ive read something like 8 books in 3 months Ive been here.  Just finished catch22 and am surprised that no one in my past that Ive known, or not known, has ever told me to read that book. 

The person I replaced left several hundred newspaper comic sections that I assume her parents sent her over the course of her service and they have really come in handy during the first boring couple of weeks before I get to know a lot of people.  There are crosswords and sudokos and get fuzzy, the rest of the comics are just so incredibly bad.  And this is a big paper in California.  I think Americans should pay more attention to the funnies so that the quality will rise and future volunteers that discover hundreds of future comic sections in their new village houses can laugh more.  Maybe that can be my legacy in the Peace Corps.

Now things are starting to pick up pace and I read a little less.  There are people to got sit and drink tea with on Friday afternoons, under a tree.  The tea is amazing and strong and minty and they serve it in little glasses.  That's how you get things done in village.  Find the tea.

Host Family

Here is me outside my host family's house.  The Burkinabe literally cultivate every inch of free ground no their property, so their corn fields tough their house.  There is my mom on the left and my dad on the right.  I gave them tobaggan hats and they gave me a special Sapone hat when I left.  It's pretty awesome and even has NCState colors.  BTW I met an NCSU fan in Ouaga at a restaurant, he was a cool guy.  My host dad is a hunter, but everyone here does everything so he farms and sells clay bricks also.  My host mom is hilarious and could very easily break me in half, along with many women here.  They are incredibly strong because they handle the food and haul the water.  She is always an instant away from a smile even when the kids are being little jerks.  The little one is Leonce, she is the daughter of the eldest daughter of Benoit and Elizabeth (dad and mom).  Leonce is easily the most adorable child I have seen anywhere and is surprisingly clever.  One time she played a prank on Isaac, my 9yo host brother.  They have chairs here that are metal frames with cloth that hangs parallel with your body, like a hammock.  It is attached on the top fixed and on the bottom the fabric goes through a slit and is held there by a long, thin piece of wood slid into the fabric loop.  Essentially, if you remove the wood, the fabric falls through the frame.  Leonce and Isaac always fight for a seat in the house.  One time, Isaac got called out of the house for a quick chore and Leonce, unknown to the rest of us, removed the piece of wood, so that the fabric rested in the usual place, but was unattached.  She then waited in the middle of the room until she saw Isaac returning.  This is the really ingenius part; the second Isaac entered the room, Leonce bolted for the chair and, naturally, so did Isaac.  She let him edge into the chair and he fell right on through to the floor, like if you sat on a toilet without the seat down.  Isaac sat there, butt through the chair, wondering how it could have gone so wrong.  Leonce was skipping around the room, cackling with glee.  It took me 2 months to get to the level of understanding to see these kinds of things happen in the family, and it made it all the harder to say goodbye.

Here is Windinda (25, top) the mom of Leonce (5, right) and Isaac (9) and Ezekial (17), technically the uncles of Leonce.  But they all think of each other as brother and sister because there isnt really a word in Moore for uncle/cousin/niece etc.  Ezekial helped me alot to learn French because he was the one that I was usually talking to on a regular basis, the mom and dad speak only a little french.  Ezekial wants to be a pilot and Isaac wants to be a diplomat.

This is Jean (15) with the familly steer.  About to plow for the the cornfield.  He really likes blackjack.

Here is me with a neighbor mom and my host sister Rebecca (21, soon to be mom again) and her son Serge (2) and of course Leonce.  I didn't get to see much of Rebecca or Windinda because they lived/worked elsewhere, but they used to get a big kick out of me washing my own clothes.

Somehow I didn't manage to get a picture with Windabo (19).  He worked as a mason, among other things, and is a great guy.  He was the first place I went to when I was confused about someone's behaviour, which was often.  There is one other host brother, Frederick (24?) who lives in Ouaga so I only saw him once.  These are the people I lived with for 2 months.  I can't wait to visit again.

I have a kitty!

The one on the left is mine, I'm holding the other one for a friend.  She is 3 months old and hilarious.  No idea what to name her, contemplating Skittles or something in Dioula.  Cats are even more awesome here because they kill mice and bugs and make the house less lonely. 

This is me with another new volunteer; John, and my LCF (language coordination facilitator) Konfe.  If there were rock stars in BF they would look like Konfe.  He's awesome though, and a big reason why I can speak the French that I can.  He is actually a journalist in another city here.  I had to do a serious picture to see if I could look as intimidating as he does.  Time will tell.  John with the 'stach completes the trio nicely. 

I'm dressed here in what is called a booboo.  They are the typical formal wear here, worn slightly more often by Muslim men or high officials, but really everyone wears them when they want to look sharp.  They are incredibly comfortable, thought a little hot.  Mine is a full booboo, with pants cut like any other slacks, and the long sleeve shirt that goes down to the knees.  To get one, one simply needs to buy the cloth for it, sold as "peignes" (pronounced panyas by Americans) and take them to your local tailor.  A tailor is a good friend to have here.

Hopefully I get to visit and hang out with Konfe in the future.  He was goofy occaisionally; one time I was trying to explain snowballs to him in french.  I asked if he ever saw snowballs in BF, he said "no, perhaps balls of heat or sun balls" and then proceeded to mime catching heat into a ball and chuckle to himself.  He's a cool dude.

Moving in tomorrow

No pictures yet, but I move into my site tomorrow.  Then its 2 years of me and my village.  After training, there are 30 pounds less of me and I now know how to cook here, buy iportant things and even speak a little Diuolla.  I just began getting my paycheck along with a little extra for moving in.  I got a blender and will save up for a fridge for maybe 2 months.  Ill be eating alot of eggs, rice with various sauces and macaroni with laughing cow cheese, the only cheese really available.  Most of my time in the first 3 months will be spent getting familiar with my village, meeting people and learning language.  School starts in early October so I will begin teaching then.  More coming soon!

Video of my Site

This is my house in Siniena.  I will be very comfortable there.  It's hard to see the shower room, but that's what the dark room is.  I say shower, naturally I mean the bucket-bath room, not to be confused with a bucket bathroom, which would be uncomfortable.  I now have about 3 weeks left in training.  I'm going to be so sad to leave my host family behind, but so happy to begin integrating in my community in Siniena.  This is the land of mangoes, so be jealous.  The fruit is bountiful and meat should be pretty available, so I will be in pretty good shape health and nutrition-wise.  We even get a class on how to cook here and some good American-style recipes that other volunteers have come up with.  When I get more internet I will do a big post on my host family with pictures.  BTW I'm doing awesomely

Transportation is cool

Getting around the country is fairly easy in Burkina, one simply needs decent french and small change, as in most other situations here.  Long trips can be accomplished on large buses, old tour buses usually, I took one from Ouagadougou to Banfora, my regional capital, and it was a pleasant experience, besides getting slightly felt up by a woman on the last "leg" of the trip, I crack myself up.  Its easy for me as a dude, but can be dangerous or at least uncomfortable for a lady, because of the lack of a bubble of personal space and handsy Burkinabe guys.  So thats the big buses.  It is forbidden for me to ride in a car or a motorcycle (moto) because of the dangerous traffic, so for routes that lack a big bus, it is necessary to take a bush taxi.  A bush taxi is a singular experience and involves much haggling and stinkiness at first, with the amount of haggling diminishing with practice.  A bush taxi is a van the size of a VW van and can usually fit 18 passenger, thats right, 18, with several boys in the employ of the driver who tie your bag and bike to the top of the van.  To get to my site from Ouagadougou, it is necessary to take a 6 hour big bus to Banfora and a 15 to 30 minute bush taxi to Siniena, so I have it very easy compared to some volunteers who only have bush taxis near their sites.  Bush taxis run near my site often, and it is a simple as flagging it down on the side of the road.  I can also bike the 12km to Siniena if I want.

Let me tell you a little something about hygiene...

Turns out its fairly easy to be clean here in Burkina.  My shower areas, both with my host family and at my future house in Siniena, are made of concrete and about the size 6'X6', with a hole at the bottom of one wall and a slight slant to the floor, one takes a bucket of water, a cup for pouring the water over ones self, and any desired cleaning products, soap and shampoo are cheap and easy to find, the price of everything can be haggled here.  For a shower, one simply pours water to wet oneself, applies soap and shampoo, and then rinses, I typically do this before breakfast and before dinner.  My shower is outside with my host family, taking a shower under the stars is pretty sweet, my shower is indoors at my future house in Siniena.  Im going to go ahead and say I prefer the bathroom method here to the toilets of the USA.  The squeemish of stomach might want to skip ahead past the next paragraph,


There is a plastic teakettle called a bouilloir I believe, filled with water, that one takes into the latrine, a concrete enclosure similar to the shower, but with a hole in the middle of the floor, I also opt to take my soap.  One simply squats over the hole, a naturally comfortable position, at least for my legs, and does one's business over the hole.  Ones toilet paper is ones hand :) when the business is complete, one simply rinses the hand and the other areas with water from the bouilloir and then, after the clothes are resituated, one can wash the hand with the soap.  When the technique is mastered, its actually cleaner to rinse with water than to spread all of the gunk around with toilet paper.  There, I said it.  Its also much easier on the muscles that control the bowels and is more effective at clearing your body out, we'll get through this together guys, and can actually reduce the risk of colon cancer.  Here it is a cultural norm, more predominate with muslims, to do everyting public with your right hand, shake hands, give money and objects, because the left hand is typically for wiping,


so the next time you are in a developing country, be sure to do everything with your right hand.

My Site!

Ne y windaga everyone.  Thats good afternoon in Moore.  I am
currently visiting my site and am absolutely in love with the place.
I am replacing a departing volunteer, the amazing Celinia, in a
village called Siniena, 12km south of Banfora.  I am in the region
called Cascades, named for the waterfalls.  My house has 2 bedrooms,
an indoor shower room and electricity!  Not running water naturally.
This is as rainforest as it gets in Burkina, so I am excited, and will
continue using runon sentences because the period is inconviniently
placed here.  My french is progressing, there are 9 levels of
progression, novice, intermediate and advanced, each with
low/mid/high, I started at novice mid and am now at inter low, needing
to make interhigh by the end of training.  I will begin learning
Dioula sometime in the near future as well.  I will return to Banfora
tomorrow, so I will post more info and maybe pics :)

Contact1

Mail can be sent to the Ouagadougou office and it will reach me, sometimes apparently in 3 weeks, at most 4 months.

Corps de la Paix Americain
01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso (West Africa)

I am leaving today for a village near Ouagadougou for my 3 months of training, so I will rarely be on.  I am fine though, we have an excellent medical supply kit and a constant avenue of communication with the health admin and several other contacts, so I will actually never be isolated.  Everyone is reachable by phone 24/7 and I have an extra phone battery. 

I will be meeting my host family in about 6 hours.  Super excited to get to know my future family; by the time I am done with training, I will be able to live anywhere in BF essentially. 

Hopefully I will be able to post something in the next month.  Bye everyone!

Why you should watch "The Vow"

I rarely see new romantic movies because they rarely have anything new to offer.  My flight across the Atlantic Ocean played the movie so I decided to watch it.  Spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen it, watch it before reading the rest.

Story

The premise of "The Vow" is the story of a young married couple who gets into a car accident.  Channing Tatum is fine but Rachael McAdams takes a hit on the noggin and can't remember who her husband is.  She can't, in fact, remember anything past a certain date in her early life, where she was attending law school and dating some other dude.  In her current life, she is an emotionally driven artist and married to Channing; I can't remember character names.  The vows that they shared at their wedding are fairly typical and, most importantly, they are about never giving up on their love.  Channing obviously is not going to give up on his wife simply because she doesn't know who he is.  The rest of the movie is about Rachael being torn between remembering her love with Channing or going back to her old life with her rich dad, going to law school and dating the other dude, who is definitely still interested. 

What I liked

This movie had incredibly powerful moments in it that I have not seen since "P.S. I Love You", namely the scene where Channing finaly has to let his wife go back to her old life and the moment where she decides to date him again (she never actually regains her memory".  The writing for Channing's narration is not notable, but the dialog between the couple in these two moments shows that a great amount of care went into the script.  There weren't any cringe worthy cheesy moments that make me really hate the romance genre sometimes.  The editor didn't get cut-happy and the music didn't ramp up.  The really emotional moments were subtle in technique, this allowed the emotion coming from the actors to saturate your senses and the result was several tears.  BTW Channing really surprised me in this movie, I expected him to be more of a Ryan Reynolds or Ashton Kutcher, two guys who haven't shown well in movies I've seen.

Rachael wasn't an inferior character in this movie.  It wasn't up to Channing to WIN her back.  This was SO refreshing because the idea of the man needing to win the woman is rediculous and entirely the wrong message to send to young women:  "you are a prize to be won by the guy with the best work ethic".  Much like life, you want the person best suited for the job in their natural ability, not some idiot who will put on an invigorating act for the position.  The other guy interested in Rachael was not remotely a bad guy for her.  In fact he did everything right to her, he just wasn't what she was interested in.  Rachael didn't turn that dude down to go back to Channing, she did it to go be herself.  The decision to go back with Channing came naturally, exactly how it did pre-accident.  The couple came together again like couples should.  One might argue that Channing had the right to be with her post-accident, and I doubt anyone would have been mad if the movie had him winning her.  I am a big fan of how the story ended because I hate seeing the reinforcement of the idea that women are dust in the wind blown by men.

I loved that the dad had an affair with Rachael's friend.  Movies these days are too scared to be real and that was something fresh, I thought.

No cheesy stereotypical characters.  There was an absence of the loud hilarious girlfriend to the main female character.  No overcompensating douchebags threatening the male characters.  No token minority characters there only for one-liners.  I really hate when they do that.

What I hated

Channing's monologues.  I guess they were true to the perceived intelligence of Channing Tatum as an actor, but I think both the actor and the character are smarter than that.  I only watched the movie once so I don't have any quote, but I got the sense that the monologue was thrown in the movie as a list minute way of providing exposition and a driving force for the plot.

In closing, watch "The Vow".  Also "The Young Victoria" is a good period bio pic.  I probably won't see any other movies anytime soon so I will post entertaining stories. 

Driving around Ouaga and the hotel I'm staying at for 3 days.

Journey to Ouagadougou

I'm here and ok everyone!  Arrived just fine around 4pm 6/6 Ouaga time, 12pm EST.  Borrowing Diego's computer in order to write this.  I will use U.S. time here a bit, but from this post on will us Burkina time, only 4 hours ahead of EST.  At the end of each post I will try to give an estimate of when I will be able to post again, depending on internet availability.

Staging in Philly allowed me to meet the other 33 volunteers who are going to Burkina for education.  In about 2 weeks I hear the agriculture people will be going to staging.  The other sector is Health.  Every single one of these volunteers are amazing people,  I cannot stress that enough.  I got the lightest packer award, seemingly by a great margin.  Pretty psyched about not having to worry about getting more than 2 bags of junk everywhere.  We did a bunch of ice breakers in Philly before taking the bus to NYC Tuesday 6/5 morning.  We then got to hang around the airport for 5 hours before the flight.

After leaving NYC around 6pm on 6/5, we arrived in Brussels 9ish hours later.  I was able to sleep a little and there were some movies on.  We watched The Vow and The Young Victoria.  After a 5 hour layover in Brussels, we left for a direct flight to Ouagadougou.  There was a personal entertainment screen for every seat, so I played some games and watched the Hangover 2 and Darjeeling Limited.  The last flight was the first one that I got a little nauseous on, but that cleared up the second I got on the ground at Ouaga. 

I am in the hotel now and we are taking care of everything administrative before leaving for the village of Sapone on Saturday, where I will meet my host family and life will really begin. 

My next post should be 6/8 or 6/9.

Night before departure

Sitting in my Philadelphia hotel room, getting ready for my flight to Africa tomorrow.  There are about 34 of us new PC volunteers here at staging and they are all amazing people.  I am going to have a great support network from these peeps and the people already in Burkina.  All of my anxieties are gone and I am super stoked to get on the ground in Burkina.  I will get a few days in the luxury of the Capitol, Ouagadougou, before we travel to the training village.  I can't even begin to describe how happy I am with this decision.  Shoutout to my Mom and Dad, without their support at home I wouldn't be financially able to do this, nor would I be well equipped.  You two are the greatest supporters, so I will keep my word and upload tons of pictures.  Later brohans, I'm off to Africa!

Shoutout to the Parsons' Group

You guys were the greatest to work with.  I had so much fun in that lab, I will not soon forget it.  With that REI card I went and got a solar panel so I can now charge my new kindle and my ipod, so I will not be entirely without technology.  Pictures coming in a week or two hopefully.

Basic Information

The Peace Corps is a U.S. government ran volunteer program designed, in part, to deliver assistance to developing countries in the form of education, community development and water sanitation services.  I will be a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Burkina Faso, a country just south of the Sahara Desert and inland from the Ivory Coast in Africa.  My job will be Math education to children at a high school age.  While I will spend around 10-20 hours in the classroom every week, I will also serve as a resource to the community in order to develop extracurricular activities for boys and girls in order to further promote education.  Apart from my job, I will likely be living in a small village alongside the average Burkinabe person, with a similar income to theirs.  Integrating with the community will be important in my success as a teacher and community leader.

I am leaving from Dallas, TX on June 4th for Philadelphia, where I will have a quick orientation.  There will be a group of fresh PCV's, I'm not sure if they all are going to Burkina or if there will be a larger collection of countries present.  On June 5th we will board a bus for NY, leaving early in the morning of the 6th from JFK airport.  There will be a quick leg stretching stop in Brussels, Belgium, followed by the second flight to the capitol of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou (roughly pronounced Wah-gah-doo-goo).  There I will begin a 3 month training while living with a host family.  The training will focus on language, both French for the formal classes and any of the dozens of local languages that exist in the villages.  It is here that they (PC) will decide where I fit in best, assigning me to a specific village.  The next 3 months will be more focused at the school in which I will teach, developing lesson plans and working with local teachers and the like.  then the next 21 months will be me and my new friends.  I will get a vacation day or two every month if I am not mistaken.

That's the gist of it.  Future posts will be more geared to any adventures I might get into or interesting experiences.  I'm very open to answering any questions while I am in Burkina, so feel free to message me about anything.  The catch is, don't expect a response for maybe a month because that is about how often I am expecting to have internet access.  Thanks for reading!

Barry

My departure itinerary.

6/4/12 - Fly to Philadelphia for orientation
6/5/12 - Bus to NY for departure flight
6/6/12 - Arrive in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso for training (3 months)