Pictures

Storm is a brewin'! This is the veiw from my porch.

Children in my village along the road next to my house. I gave my camera to my neighbor the other day and he took it around town and took pictures. It actually was probably a stupid idea, but my camera found its way back to me.

The children on my porch very excited about recieving the pens that little did they know were of no use to them.

What a happy african family! My host parents and I after the swear in ceremony. The last thing that I said to them was that I was going to learn french at some point in these next two years and then I would come back and we could actually have a conversation

Matiakoali sign on the way in from Fada with one of its many spellings

The path through the fields of corn. Not the best picture, but I have gotten lost many a time in the corn maze that is my village

Whistles, the roosters of Matiakoali

I have been at site now for three weeks and some change, but it feels for like three years. Not to give the impression that I am not enjoying myself. I am, but that is also the problem. All there is is myself. There are other people in the village, but they are either out in the fields working, or on the middle of the day repose shen everyone just takes a nap from 12-3. The nap part I dont mind. I am a huge fan of the nap. I actually think that sleeping is one of my all time favorite activities. I comes in at #3, #2 being eating tasty food (hard to do here), and #1 being speaking my mother tongue of American (also a bit difficult), so I settle for #3 and enjoy a nice mid-day nap.

On a related note, I am almost positive that by the end of my 2 years of Peace Corps service that I will be crazy, that is if I am not there already. Whether this be due to the fact that I am on Larium, which if you look up on Wikipedia you will see has an extensive list of side effects, or due to the fact that I have always been a little crazy and Africa is just pushing me over the edge. I often catch myself talking to myself and I dont even realize that I am doing it, but I cant stop. The other day, I went on a bike ride, and about halfway through I realized I was talking, but I couldnt stop. One possible explanation is that, foolishly, I did not bring enough water and I was becoming delirious from dehydration, or that I didnt put on sunscreen anywhere but my arms and neck and I was developing the sun sickness. Now that I think about it, maybe I am not going crazy, maybe I am just stupid. However, another point for the crazy side, I am becoming the person who keeps everything and has trouble throwing things away. It is difficult for me to throw away cans, toilet paper tubes, strips of cloth, strings, plastic bags, and the list goes on. I went for a walk and on the side of the path was part of an old t-shirt. I found myself wondering, "Hmm... what can I use that for?", the correct answer is nothing, you can accomplish nothing with it. It is trash. Some part of me wanted it for that rainy day when I have that part of old t-shirt and find some awesome use for it. But I left it there and against my better judgement kept walking. That is personal growth.

Whistles...... Why whistles? Somehow, by some act of evil, every small child, every child recieved whistles in my village. The would just walk around constantly blowing the whistle seeming never to stop to take a breath. It was as if the evil itself, and not the small child was blowing the whistle for them with its never ending putrid wind. At first I thought it was merely and isolated incident, and only a few children possessed these satanic whistles. I tried to figure out what I could trade these kids for their whistles so they would stop annoying me, but I feared the price would be my soul. As I was walking to the market to find some candy that would be approximately the same value as a soul, I realized that it was not just a few kids with whistles, they had multiplied as if overnight and now every kid had a whistle. It was like that movie that I always think is called "Children of the Corn", but really it is called something else. It is the movie where all of the children have white hair and are evil, if you know that movie, that is what it was like. Anyway, I dont know if it was some type of cruel joke played by an NGO, but it seems that over the past few days interest in the whistles has been lost, hopefully banished forever into some nether region.

The Larium, on top of that whole crazy thing, is turning me into an insomniac. I have had so really whacked out dreams either about violence or just about being back in highschool and talking to people I probably have said two words to my entire life. I woke up one night at 2am and found a huge african roach on my mosquito net. Roaches dont bother me, except for the fact that they live in my latrine and this is probably where this one came from, so I flicked it outside. Going back to bed, another one crawled across my foot, so again I flicked it outside and finally got back to sleep. I woke up again when my internal african alarm clock went off at 5am. I dont even think that 5am exists in the US, that is unless it is your birthday and you are trying to stay up as late as possible the next morning so that it will remain your birthday. If you are unaware of the rule, it states that it remains a persons birthday from the time they wake up on the day until the time they go to bed. Therefore, if I were to be able to stay awake from the morning of June 10 to the night of June 11, my birthday would last for 2 days. That defies all laws of space and time... well maybe just time... anyway, the point is that I woke up at 5am. I got out of my protective bug bubble that is my mosquito net to find my house riddled with dead roach bodies, 10 in all. What could have made tham all die? I quickly checked the gas to see if it was on, but no, I dont know what could have caused it. Roaches can survive a nuclear holocaust, but they can not survive one night in my bedroom. Do I really stink that bad? I guess I should be thankful that my super power is that all roaches die in my presence. I wonder if in order for my power to work, I must be asleep...hmm. I will test this theory and let everyone know.

I have tried to fill all of my free time with the study of french, but my brain can only take so much. The french verb demander, means to ask, but when you say it, it sounds like the english word demand. I have trouble realizing this and get annoyed when anyone says it. For example, in class when a studen wants to leave class to go to the bathroom, or something like that, they say Je demande...., which basically translates to can I do something, bit I hear I demand that you let me do this!, and I immediately say no. In my mind I think, "if they had just asked me, I would have said yes, but demanding like that, never". A little bit later, I remember what it really means but by then the moment is gone. I also hear this constantly as I am walking through village as little kids ask me for presents. I always respond with, "No, I have no present". Some kids in the familys courtyard that I live in came into my house the other day and asked my for a gift, so thinking quickly, I remember that I still had that big bag of pens I brought with me that because of the heat in Africa dont work. I gave them those and they got so excited. This makes me think that I could put to good use all of the random crap that I have been saving. What little kid would not be excited, and love a peice of string and a TP tube?

Lastly, it is a well known fact that I have an emense love and obsession with the union of honey mustard and chicken. Well, I attempted to duplicate this phenomenon african style with rice, chicken flavoring, honey, and dijon mustard. At first, the result was a tasty treat, but I believe this was simply bacause I was very hungry, because after that it became very gross. I am not going to give up on this though. I will find a way to have african honey mustard chicken delight and market it to the masses. This bring me to the list of

THINGS I CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH OF FROM THE USA

• Sauce mixes and seasonings (cheese, taco, etc.)
• Peanut butter that Zack sent, the chocolate and white chocolate, and also other types of PB
• Beef jerky
• Bars (cliff, protein, power, granola, nutragrain, etc.)
• Meat (tuna, chicken, etc.)
• Free sauce packets from restaurants (any and all, jelly, soy sauce, mustard, *honey mustard*)

NOTE: If an item does not appear on this list, this doesnt mean that it will not be happily recieved and put to good use.

Tomorrow I am going in to Ouaga and I will post some pictures

Village Life and les choses comme ça

Life has been a lot less hectic since the end of training, swearing in, and moving to a tiny village in the far east of Burkina Faso. Swear-in, I believe, was a good time had by all. The ambassador came and gave a speech, and several volunteers gave speeches in the local languages of their various regions, and there was really good food and music. Contrary to popular belief, I was allowed to swear in, and then in turn move to village, and let me tell you village life is quite different than living in Ouahigouya and having class in America land. It is still the rainy season, so all of the villagers are still out in the fields cultivating, and none of the other secondary school teachers have come to village yet. Most of them live in Ouaga when school is not in session. I now am the only American in my village of Matiakouali,(which I am not really sure how to spell because on every sign and map it is spelled differently) which forces me to speak french which for me is both a good and a bad thing. The fact that I am forced to practice is what is good about it, but man do I miss the english language. The other day I met the English teacher at the primary school in Mati and spoke English with him for some time and it was great. Without that conversation, I think that for the first week I probably would have spoken for a total of 5 minutes. Be that as it may, everyday I talk a walk around the village and at least say hello to people in French, but the only problem is that most of the people, at least most of the older villagers, do not speak French, they speak Gulmancema. Since I was so low in my French level I only had two hours worth of class in the local language, so I am stuck with French. They just smile and laugh at me, and then say something back to me in Gulmancema and I respond with the one word that I know, which is rarely every correct. Peace Corps has an awesome program where they will pay for tutoring in the local language or french, so I am going to try to find a tutor in the local language pretty soon and probably also in french.

On one of my walks in the village the other day, I met one of the few old women in the village that spoke french. I am going to refer to her as old woman because several times when she told me her name she said it was la vieille, which in french just translates to the old woman. I guess, at least in this woman's case, once a person reaches a certain age they lose their name and are just refered to as being old. Anyway, I had gotten lost in the fields of corn and milet that are riddled throughout the village, and she was going to help me find my way home. She was a very nice old lady and couldnt believe that I had come to the east and couldnt speak Gulmancema. Instead of taking me back to my house, she ended up taking me back to hers where I met her entire family. It was very interesting to meet them and discover that anly the kids from about 10-16 spoke french. I stayed there for a time and taught the old lady english words for things and she taught me Gulmancema for the same things.

Yet another disclamer: The following story involves bodily functions so if you are offended by these actions do not read on.

The other day I had an every orifice day. For those of you questioning it is basically what it sounds like. Lets start with a mad lib and you can decide what it was.... While I was vomiting, I also __(verb)__ ed and __(verb)__ed and ruined my one and only pair of jeans. Now I know that this sounds like a pretty awesome day and it should be accompanied by balloons, people shouting "Happy every orifice day!", and perhaps even a clown, but this is not the case. Every orifice day is a sad occasion that, at least for me, was followed not by cake, but by me feeling like I was going to die for the rest of the day. I feel fine now though.

There is supposed to be dial up internet in my village somewhere, but I have yet to find it. When I do find it, I will porobably start to post more, but this is probably going to be the last post for a month or so. However, I am still alive unless you hear otherwise.

Host Family Goodbye

Swear in. I took my final language test yesterday, and I passed on to swear in level. I am now an intermediate high. I dont really have much today to say besides the fact that I leave to the isolation that is my village on Sunday, and cant travel out of my region for 3 months, so I dont know how often I will be able to update/email.

Tuesday was the last night that all of the secondary education volunteers spent with their host families, and I wasnt really sure how mine was going to go. It has been a little weird the last couple of weeks because I still have problems speaking the french. Anyways, it turned out to be really great, and I am going to miss my host family. I bought them some presents at the marchè and some stuff from American, and they ended up getting me a sweet Burkinabè shirt. The weird thing was that they hired a photographer and he took pictures of me handing them a box with my gift in it and them handing me a shirt. For dinner we had probably the best food I have had since I have lived in Ouahigouya, fried chicken. Other stuff happened, but I am really tired right now.

I Hate Couscous!!!!

Couscous.....why? Before I came to Africa, I had no idea what this substance known as couscous was, and I wish that were still the case. I am sure everyone knows what couscous is and I just had a sheltered life in Missouri, but for those of you like me who are couscous illiterate, couscous is a grain that is similar to rice, except for the fact that it is horrible. There are pretty much four foods that are widely available for human consumption in Burkina Faso. The list consists of pasta, rice, to, and couscous ranked in order of awesomeness. Everytime couscous is placed in front of me, according to onlookers, I make a face that describes just how upset at the fact that I am about to eat couscous. About a month ago, we went to a fancy hotel restaurant in Ouahigouya that you had to make reservations at the day before, so I figured it would be pretty fancy, and it was. The first course was salad, which sounds pretty boring, but there isnt a whole lot of salad in the country of Burkina, or at least salad that wont give you some type of tropical disease. In the next courses we got a pizza-ish thing, some type of eggplant, and these fried dough mystery balls, all of which were good. I was thinking to myself, "self, if all of this food has come so far, and we are still waiting for the main course, the main course is going to be awesome!" A huge tray was brought out and on this tray was a huge pile of.......... couscous. Seriously, I mean seriously what kind of a main course is that. Couscous runs rampant in Africa. You can get it anywhere and everywhere, but why at a "nice" restaurant is the main course couscous? I am pretty sure that is all of the ranting that I have about couscous, but be warned.

Model school ended this week, and only 11 out of 39 of my students passed. I have been assured though that that is good in Burkinabé standards. We had a ceremony yesterday where we gave the top three guys and girls of each class prizes of textbooks, notebooks, and other school supplies. Before each class could get their prizes, they had to choose a representative to lip sync a song for the teachers and all of the other students. I thought it was very odd, but apparently it is a natural occurence here. The performers would also dance whilst siging and pull us up out of the audience to dance with them. This is a picture of Julia, another soon to be volunteer, doin a little dance. All in all, it turned out very well. Model school was a useful experience, but I am very glad that it is over.

I took my final language test today. I only have to go up one more level to see if I go to site in a week or spend two weeks in Ouaga boning up on my French. I dont think that I did very well though, but I will find out tomorrow. Swear in is a week from today!

Saving Momma E

First thing is first, today is my brother Zacks birthday, so I would like to tell him to have a Happy Day O' Birth!

Here is just a picture of myself to prove that I am still alive. Yaneth on the left, another trainee, and Sara a volunteer that is going home in a few weeks.

The one thing that I dislike about Africa so far, besides the heat of course, is that there is trash everywhere. Africa, or at least Burkina Faso is without any sort of trash collection program, so trash is everywhere. The common practice is to make a pile of your trash outside of your courtyard on the street and then every now and again set it ablaze. This would be an alright idea if the set it ablaze everytime someone added trash to the pile, because children look at these piles of trash as playgrounds. I have heard from other volunteers that they have stopped throwing out their trash and started throwing it down their latrines. This is a pretty good idea, and I will probably adopt it. When I went on my site visit and was checking out my house, I took a glance down the latrine and saw a lot more trash than feces from the previous volunteer. Currently, however, I have two boxes of trash sitting in my room at my house. I fear, and know that I have let it accumulate far too long to send it down to the depths of the latrine, so I am stuck with it. I am also sad to admit that I have thrown trash on the ground, but not before looking for a trash bin to place it in, only realizing that I was in Africa, and such a place does not exist.

Drinks. When you order a drink here that is not a soda or a beer, it comes in not a bottle or a can, but in a sac. Water, juice, milk, and everything else is drank from a sac. I found this very odd at first, but it is actually quite convenient. You just tear off one of the corners and drink yourself a sac of liquid. Speaking of milk two sentences ago, I found a place in Ouahigouya to buy cold cows milk. It is the best thing ever. I joked with everyone that I was going to have to find myself a skim milk cow somewhere in Africa, and believe me I did look, but this will do just as well.

Teaching should be in my blood in theory. I mean really, my mom is a teacher, one of my grandmothers is a teacher, and practically half of my highschool graduating class are teachers. I think somehow though, I got skipped. I think it is something like to story of my Uncle Larry, who out of a large number of sibblings, eight or something, he is the youngest and only baldish one. When I was younger, I decided that this was due to the fact that all off the hair in the family was used up on the children that came before him. My teaching skills, I believe, have the same problem. All the teaching power was given to my grandma, mom, and friends in highschool, and I was left with little to no skill. Anyway, the moral of this story is that another week of model school is now nearing completion. For Sarah, model school is something similar to summer school in the states that the peace corps uses to train us. I started this week with a new class and new subject. I am teaching Geology, which I dont think I have ever had a class in in my entire life, to 4eme class, which is similar to 8th grade. The kids think it is funny to ask me what words mean in french, and watch me struggle through trying to define it off of the top of my head..... in french. I am not even sure if I know what these words mean in English, let alone French. This happened the first two days, and everyday I went home and wanted to die. Today, however, I went in prepared. I defined everyword that they could try to ask me the definition of and also came up with french synnonymes, and to get them back for making me feel stupid I gave them a pop quiz. After today I feel much better and am excited to give them a test on Monday, then Tuesday is the last day of model school, and hopefully I didnt screw these kids up too much for the real school year.

The Poop Scale

When I came to Africa, I was told that everyone talks about their poop experiences. I doubted this, but come to find out it is true. Poop has become a regular topic of lunch-time discussion. Thus a poop scale has been developed that most of you might find gross, so grandma, if you are reading this you might want to skip this part. I wont go into graphic detail, but everyone knows the difference between a number one and a number two. The offical poop scale has a range from one, being pure liquid (most common), to three, which is when there is nothing coming out. With the help of this scale, one can now just go up to someone and say "Man, I had a 1.3 last night." and everyone will know what that means. I hope that I have enlightened you all. This scale however can only be used in Africa, so dont try this at home. On a side story loosely related to the scale, another trainee.... lets call her Stanley, came here and in the first three weeks did not poop once. That is what we call a number three.

On a happier note, I have gotten so many packages in the past couple weeks, I dont know if I am going to be able to transport it all with me across the country. I have recieved numerous from my partents, and I also have recieved some from Grandma Mary, bro Zack, and the Lawson crew. Thanks for everything. There was one day that I got four packages at once, I think it was pretty much the best day of my life.

I went to a concert last weekend. Thats right, I am in Africa and I went to a concert. It was an interesting experience. The band I think is called Seika Seika, or maybe that is just the name of one of their songs. I am not really sure, but it was cool. It was supposed to start at 4pm, which I thought was very early/hot for a concert to start, but then it actually started at about 7pm, which makes sense in Africa time. Aparently I am told by the other volunteers that if you want to set up a meeting with a Brukinabé, you have to say that the meeting starts an hour before it actually does so that they will make it there on time.

Model school is going better, I guess. I gave both of my classes tests on Wednesday, and I thought they were both relatively easy, but apparently not. The day before in my sixieme class we played Jeopardy to review. It was a lot of fun, but trying to explain the rules of Jeopardy in French is a little difficult. Once they got the hang of it they seemed like they new everything. I had a bag of jolly ranchers in my bag for prizes for the winning team, and that turned out to be a bad idea. I started handing them out, and it was like a bomb went off. Kids were standing on desks screaming that someone stole their piece or that they didnt get a piece, so I just started kind of throwing candy around the room. Then I had probably the stupidest idea in the history of teaching, I thought to myself, I will just give the bag to a kid and he will rip it open and everyone can grab.... wow it sounds even worse when I type it out. So I did, and they all pounced on this kid and people got hurt and it was just a mess. To resolve the situation, I took the candy back and ran away. The next day when they took their tests, it was a different story. The class average out of 20 was a 4.05. I am blamming it on the fact that it is summer and it is not real school. My cinqieme class did a lot better. I think the average was about a 14.