A motorcycle hit me last Wednesday… so I got that going for
me, which is nice. No worries; I’m alive and well. I do however have a nice
bruise and scrape on my knee, and my bike is rather discombobulated. After that
fun incident, we were whisked off to Ouagadougou for demystification. We spent
the night in Ouaga, and I had two hamburgers, that were combined to be about as
wide as 1/3 of a McDonald’s hamburger. After that, we headed over to Paridisio;
a restaurant that we were told was a bar. It was more a dimly lit outside patio
area. The lighting scheme resembled that of a bug zapper, very pleasant in that
squint to see five feet in front of you kind of way. They had liter beers,
which was pretty awesome. The best part: they were on TAP. I haven’t had a beer
on tap since before leaving the states. I had two, and then another half liter.
It was delicious. We went back to the transit house, a place with roughly
thirty beds, Wi-Fi, ceiling fans, and electricity. In other words, it’s
awesome. I spent the entire night drinking some beers with a couple other
people, some which were current volunteers, and a couple other trainees. We
picked their brains about everything; it was really nice.
When the
morning rolled around, I boarded a bus and went to the STAF bus station. I got
some coffee and an omelet, and then boarded another bus. This sucked. It is
hotter than hell on the bus, and Burkinabe do not like dust, ironically. This
means that when you open the window, they promptly close it. I argued with the
man behind me, and compromised to have it cracked a few inches so it would hit
me. I slept most of the way. The obnoxious kid I was partnered with made
“friends” with a young Burkinabe woman and of course she sat in between us. I
wanted to kill him. Luckily, I was extremely tired from staying up all night
and slept the whole way to Ouahigouya. When we arrived up North, I realized how
hot it could really be, and apparently it gets way worse in the hot season. It
was well over 100 and it wasn’t noon yet. We boarded a bush taxi, and traveled
the 30 kilometers to Zogore. 30 kilometers is not far. It just isn’t no matter
how you look at it… unless you take a bush taxi. The dynamics of a bush taxi
are as follows: jam as many people, goats, chickens, bikes, bags of rice and
corn and legumes, and motorcycles as you can into and onto one shitty looking
truck. Add in stops every five minutes or so to throw on another bike and
another person, and continue until you reach your destination. For us, this
took an hour and half, to go only 30 kilometers. Again, my counterpart I was
with made this SO MUCH WORSE. He’s damn obnoxious. I was miserable from the
moment I found out I was traveling with him to when I actually got a chance to hang
out with our host, who was also named David. Anyways, my travel partner decided
it would be a good idea to dance the entire time. Mind that there is not enough
room to breath, let alone dance. I could see the looks on everybody else’s
faces as they stared and laughed. I could also tell that they were waiting for
me to blow up at the guy, and I was pretty damn close.
Finally,
after his obnoxious singing and dancing, we arrived in Zogore, and were greeted
by a lot of locals, and a white guy; this was obviously David. David was a cool
guy. He is COSing (Close of service) in December, and had a lot of insight to
pass along to me. He also liked to drink. When we got in Zogore, we went back
to his house, which consisted of two fairly large rooms, a living room and a
bedroom. It is extremely hot up North like I said before, so it was very
uncomfortable in his house. I bucket bathed, threw on the same clothes, and we
departed for a local maquis (bar) where a nearby restaurant brought us dinner.
We got spaghetti, which was excellent, baguettes, grilled chicken, and chicken
in sauce… and a beer. It was wonderful! Unfortunately, I believe that the
chicken I had this weekend is the reason that I’ve been sick for week straight,
but I’ll get to that. After eating, we went back to his place, and I spent the
night in my bug hut outside. It was comfortable because it really cools down at
night up north. So much so that I had to borrow a ponya and use it as a
makeshift blanket. It was awesome to be cold again. Unfortunately, that night
was when the diarrhea started, thanks chicken.
I woke up
the next morning and we went to get some café au lait (coffee and milk) and a
baguette. It’s like an African doughnut. It was damn good. Then, we visited the
head of one of the competing bush taxi services and the Imam of the village. It
was Tabasky (or Ede everywhere else in the world) so it was an extremely holy
day. We went where everybody was praying and I “prayed” with them. I was
uncomfortable, but it was a really cool experience that I probably won’t get to
relive too many times in the future. We watched them slaughter a ram, brutally.
We watched them dig through the stomach to get to the liver and fry it up
immediately. Luckily they did not hand me a piece. We went and had tofu for
lunch after that. By the way, I haven’t talked about tofu at all, and that is
the greatest shit in the world. It takes like chicken, is full of protein, and
is readily available up here where protein is few and far between. It’s
something that I will be pushing when I move into my actual village because we
will learn how to make it later on in stage. Anyways, it was really good. Fast
forward again, and I’ll explain that on Tabasky it is tradition to kill and eat
rams and/or goats, so meat is everywhere. Somehow I managed to avoid those two,
but had a lot of chicken. When we visited the Préfé’s house (non-elected
official that competes for power with the mayor), we were fed chicken, popcorn,
and these shrimp chips that were amazingly delicious. He also had a rooster
that was bigger than anything I’d ever seen in the United States, which is
saying something when we feed ours steroids.
We arrived
back at David’s house in the evening, and his neighbor Barnaby shows up and
basically throws a live chicken at us. It was an excellent gift, but totally
took me by surprise. We left for dinner, and when we arrived, I got a surprise
when they asked me to slaughter the chicken. They do things differently here.
By that, I mean they don’t break its neck or anything smart like that. Rather,
they step on its feet with one foot, its wings with the other, and grab the
beak and hold it up. Then you take the dullest knife you can find, and shred
until you slit its throat. Needless to say this was an experience for me. I can
now say I know how to kill what I eat, but I was very confident there are
smarter ways to do this. We ate my chicken later that night amongst a couple
beers; I was proud. While we ate, we watched the Africans dance at the local
bar, where there were roughly 400 people. My fellow staigaire danced with them,
and looked ridiculous, but at least he had fun… I guess. The highlight of my
night was that the locals danced and drank and got hammered…. on the Muslim
holy day. Oh the differences between Africa and the rest of the world.
The next
day another volunteer came from her village 20 kilometers away, and we made our
rounds visiting random people including the mayor. He was cool, I guess. It was
a standard day, but that night when we finished our work, we went to the maquis
and drank under the almost full moon, which is just unreal here. We ate more
chicken, including the liver, was really good actually, and the innards, which
I avoided. We went to the same bar as the night before, and drank more and then
headed back for bed. All in all, it was a very good day.
We woke up
the next day and jumped on the bush taxi. My travel partner puked five minutes
in because he didn’t eat with his malaria medicine, which we are directly
instructed to do. This ride was much smoother, and we got there in about
fifteen minutes less time, which was nice. Unfortunately, when we got on the
next bus, he had made friends with another young African girl, and she sat in
between us again. This bus had higher windows, and the same deal happened with
the cracked window. It was way hotter this time, and I was pissed off. He took
his shirt off when we got on, a complete faux pas in this country, and switched
to a shirt with no sleeves, another blatant no-no here. Also, I was jammed like
a sardine near the window, and THE BUS WASN”T FULL. I was infuriated, but I
sucked it up, and made it through. We got back to Ouagadougou after a very,
very long two hours, and I went and ate shawarma, and played on the internet in
an air conditioned room until we left. It was truly amazing.
We arrived
back in Zoro that night and a storm was setting in. I missed the cool 90
degrees in Zoro compared to the steaming heat in Zogore, and it was actually
nice to see my “family” after the long weekend. That night was when my real
issues started. I had to get four times, in the pouring rain and lightning, and
go use my latrine (which I haven’t talked about I don’t think but is a hole in
the ground that drops about six feet) where I dealt with some wonderful
explosive diarrhea. I ran out of toilet paper after the second time. Let’s just
say I’m down two pairs of boxers. Whatever, I over-packed anyways. The next day
was much more of the same, many visits to the bathroom, and a lot of stomach
pain…. Whatever.
Yesterday was
Halloween. It was a long day because we had to stay in Zoro all day, which
means no seeing the other 21 volunteers. I had much more of the same stomach
issues, but that night I checked what was up, and I was shitting blood. Sorry for that wonderful visual, but this is
life here, and people should know it! I called the PCMO (medical officer) and
she said, “It’s not good, but you probably won’t die.” That was promising. We
went to our buddy Chris’ abode and watched the shining projected on his wall.
Dude is a G with technology solely because he brought a projector. The locals
swarmed us and watched the entire two and a half hour movie, in English, and it
was exactly like a joke-stereotypical movie theater in the US. They were loud
the whole time, and kind of ruined the scary effect of it. They freaked out
with the whole naked young white woman thing. It was actually hilarious.
Anyways,
I’m alive still, and today my stomach is cooperating a little bit more.
Unfortunately, my host dad’s “father” died this morning. I put that in
quotations because father here is a relative term. He was the oldest man in the
region, and there are tons of people from Kayoro, Zoro, Songa, and Beha here to
lend their condolences. We were told he was between the age of 120 and 130… so
he was probably about 75. They count by rainy seasons here, so if there was a
double rainy season. He gets double the years, its very interesting. We
canceled all activities for the day and will be attending the funeral today at
14:00. That’s right, I speak in military time now. Here, funerals are joyous,
but it does put everything in perspective. Death happens all the time, and if
you get down every time like we do, you’d be a pretty miserable person here.
Fortunately our first death was a very elderly person, and not a small child.
I’m sure I will have a mild heart attack when that happens, but I’ll try to
hold it together. Anyways, this is getting lengthy, but a lot has happened.
Moral is low currently amongst the group, but hopefully we will all have stage-wide
movie night on Saturday, which would raise spirits. It’s the little things in
life here. I’ll talk later about why we have dubbed ourselves Seal Stage (or
Hardcore Stage, or Sober Stage) as our nickname. I need to get moving and get
some lunch before heading back for the funeral, so I hope all is well
everybody, as always.
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