David!
20 question time:
1) How are you?
2) How is Burkina now that you're doing service?
3) What are you doing?
4) What time do you wake up/go to bed?
5) Have you died yet?
6) What foods are you learning to love/avoiding like the plague?
7) What foods to do you miss the most?
8) What are you doing in your free time?
9) Do you have any free time?
10) Are you able to Skype, Facebook, etc. to keep in touch with people from home?
11) How are the living conditions?
12) Have you learned the language that they speak there or are you getting by with your French?
13) Have you been able to travel and see the rest of the country at all?
14) Have you been able to see other countries?
15) What do you miss most about the U.S.?
16) Have you made many friends?
17) Do you see other volunteers often?
18) How are you getting along with your neighbors?
19) Are your experiences shaping up to be what you expected them to be?
20 question time:
1) How are you?
2) How is Burkina now that you're doing service?
3) What are you doing?
4) What time do you wake up/go to bed?
5) Have you died yet?
6) What foods are you learning to love/avoiding like the plague?
7) What foods to do you miss the most?
8) What are you doing in your free time?
9) Do you have any free time?
10) Are you able to Skype, Facebook, etc. to keep in touch with people from home?
11) How are the living conditions?
12) Have you learned the language that they speak there or are you getting by with your French?
13) Have you been able to travel and see the rest of the country at all?
14) Have you been able to see other countries?
15) What do you miss most about the U.S.?
16) Have you made many friends?
17) Do you see other volunteers often?
18) How are you getting along with your neighbors?
19) Are your experiences shaping up to be what you expected them to be?
1. I'm alright. I've been in this country for
more than 4 months, but at my site for 2 months. It has gotten easier, but is
definitely still extremely difficult and frustrating because I haven't really
done anything useful for anybody.
2. Like I just said, it is frustrating because I
have done nothing helpful in all of the time that I have been here. Hopefully
that will change shortly. I plan on teaching them how to make liquid soap in
this next week.
3. I'm drinking a lot and reading a lot.
4. I usually get up around 7-8 and then go to
sleep around 10, but my door is shut at 8 PM and I watch stuff on my computer.
I bought a solar panel so I can charge it. Without electricity, you'd be amazed
how much you just want to sleep. I used to stay up until like 4 am in the US
regularly. Here that only happens on really drunken nights in Ouagadougou with
friends.
5. I've died twice.
6. I cook a lot of meat which is a questionable
idea when you have no idea how long its been sitting there. I don't care
though, it is necessary to eat protein... they don't seem to understand that,
so I take matters into my own hands. I have learned to like tomatoes, and when
I rarely get a burger, I leave all of the fixings on it, which I never did
before. I guess I've learned to really appreciate green food! There are a lot
of things I cannot stand food wise here. They mix spaghetti with rice or
macaroni with rice, which are both terrible carbo-filled catastrophes.
There is god-awful stuff called Sumbala... I don't really know what it's made
out of but it smells like old fish and is just horrid. They have African
eggplant which tastes like a bitter bite of garbage. They eat fish whole, eyes
and everything. I avoid the fish because they come from Cote D'Ivoire... that
is way too far away to be travelling unrefrigerated. I do not care how well
they are "preserved"; it just is not a good idea! The most eaten food
in this country, the national food, is called tô. It is either millet, corn, or
sorghum, mashed up with a smidgeon of water for consistency that and then
usually dipped into some sort of sauce made from leaves... It is basically just
a ball of muck. There are probably more, but I can't think of all of them. I
eat a lot of tuna sandwiches because they are really good for you and I like
things that come in cans...
7. I miss pizza so freaking much. Sometimes I
can get it, but it just isn't the same. I'd kill for some Tally-Ho all you Marylanders.
You have no idea how much you will miss them until you don't have them. I miss
fast food. I didn't eat McDonald's in the states, but it would be amazing right
about now... some delicious chicken nuggets or chicken selects... mmm... I miss
being able to get whatever I want whenever I want it. Here, if I really, really
want some kind of food, I have to make it. I'm about as useful as tits on a nun
in a kitchen, so I really don't have that option. I missed meat so much I
started just buying it, regardless of consequences, and sautéing it
with tomatoes and onions galore. It's a nice reprieve whenever I need something
that fairly resembles home. Most of all, I miss CHIPOTLE. My friend Kelly and I
are planning to make burritos. If it is anything like Chipotle...or even Qdoba,
I'll be pumped. Oh, and you can't really get cheese here unless you make it!
You do that by taking liquid milk, which I am yet to come across, boiling it,
and then adding vinegar. It ends up being kind of like Ricotta cheese. Americans
eat cheese with basically every meal, and you don't realize how much you devour
until you can't get it at all!
8. In my free time I read a lot. I've finished
more books since I got to site than I did in all of college. I also spend a lot
of time at the bar. Probably not the best thing, but there really is not much
else to do. I can practice the language, and I do, but you can really only do
that for so many hours a day... and I love beer.
9. I have more free time than you could ever imagine.
It is actually ridiculous. I do not technically have a schedule, so if I do not
want to do anything, I don't really have to. I commonly sit in my house for a
few hours in the morning reading newspaper articles sent to me in care
packages, or a book. Then after a lot of coffee and built up courage; I venture
out and do whatever tasks I need to for the day. Every day the community sees
my face, the more comfortable they get, and that's what I need in these first
few months.
10. I can get on Facebook whenever there is an
Internet connection. I can jump on my email less often that that because for
some reason Yahoo takes a lot of bandwidth. Skyping requires some serious
bandwidth that I really never have. At some point I may buy an Internet key,
and then maybe I could use it, but it is not easy at this point. When people
call me they use Skype and just call my African number, which can be attained
easily by people whom are my friends. I am posting this email as a blog, so
that will not happening in this. PS, genius idea on the 20 questions.
11. The living conditions are less than ideal.
It is hot and getting hotter. The hot season begins at the end of February-ish.
By the end of March it is going to be sweltering. We are talking temperatures
that get up to 130°F. My house is all right. I have more space that I
anticipated, but I have animals behind my house at all times, eating the old
millet stalks. In the middle of the night it sounds like somebody is walking
through the house, but it is actually just the animals meandering about out
there. I have no electricity, but finagled a light to hook up to my battery
that charges via solar panel. That makes cooking a hell of a lot easier, and
just makes it feel a bit homier. I have a nice little courtyard, though I
cannot make a garden in it yet as it is the only paved thing within a 40km
span… Weird that they chose to do that, but I appreciate the thought. Soon I
will build a little cabana for when the heat comes and it isn’t possible to
sleep indoors.
12. My French is exponentially better than is
was when I got here. Still, it is not great. I can say everything that I need
to say and I think if I visited France they’d be able to understand me, but I
do not think they’d enjoy it. The thing is, the French here is broken, so it is
not a big deal that I screw up a tense here or there. I have actually spent
this past week in my friend’s village, or city better yet (around 60,000
people), taking “classes” with her and our Peace Corps instructor we had in
training. We worked on tenses and vocabulary in Lyélé, our local language.
Actually, where I live they plainly call it Guaransi, which is the name of the
ethnic group. Here it is slightly more structured, and actually has a name.
This language has at least one accent in every single word. I could not imagine
a more difficult language to write… except learning Chinese characters… or
Russian… or a bunch of others. The language is actually very simple, but the
vocabulary is all, 100%, brand new. Still, I think I will be speaking it in no
time, as there are no articles. That is always a tricky part of learning a
language. All you have to do with this one is get the verbs down. Once you have
that, you’re good to go. That is tricky however. Ji means to water and to eat,
and it also means house. This is a common occurrence.
“À la ji jiba,” means, “I will water the onions.”
“À ma ji nama_kelanko,” means, “I will eat turkey meat.” “À la vo ji,” means, “I
will go home.” That can get confusing.
The best sentence ever has got to be: À yè yè Jɔ yé. That means, “I was
not in Réo.”
This language also uses the International
Phonetic Alphabet, which has a bunch of letters we do not, as you can in the
city Jɔ, which in French
is Réo.
13 & 14. I have been to Léo, which is down
South about 15km from the Ghanaian border. That is where I did my training for
the first nine weeks. I have been to Ouagadougou a bunch of times and actually
kind of know that city, or at least the parts that matter. Koudougou is my
regional capital so I’ve been there a few times. That is where I go to withdraw
money, so I know that city very well at this point. Yesterday we found a “movie
theater” which is like an outdoor atrium with a projector. We asked if we could
bring DVDs there and play them. They said that we could! We have the second
week of our technical in-service training there, so that is definitely in the
books. Other than that, I know the country pretty well. It is only roughly the
size of Colorado. Out East is where all the game parks are where you can lions and
elephants and what not. That is like 14 hours from me at this point. Down South
there are waterfalls and trees and fruit and awesome things like that. In the
North near Ouahigouya, which I’ve been in for a few hours to catch a bus, is
really dusty, and really, really hot. Up in the Northeast, terrorists from
Al-Qaeda are starting to get some footing moving down Mali, so that is off
limits to Peace Corps people.
I am yet to leave the
country, and I’m not allowed until after my in-service training in March. After
that, I will try to make my rounds all throughout the ECOWAS countries. I
really want to visit Senegal, Sierra Leone, Morocco, Ghana, Benin, and Togo. I
plan on going on safari out of either eastern Burkina, or northern Benin. I
also plan on going down south to see Bobo-Dioulasso and Banfora. Word on the
street is there is a restaurant named MacDonald’s there. It is a makeshift
McDonald’s, and supposedly tastes somewhat like the real thing. HOW IS THERE NO
MCDONALDS HERE?!
15. What do I miss the most about the United
States? That is really hard question to answer. Everything. I miss my family
and my friends. I miss sports, food, and beer, and enjoying the three together.
I miss getting a delicious fruity drink whenever I wanted one! I miss KFC and Popeye’s
and Chipotle. I miss watching Cardinals basketball and football and seeing the
Redskins. Of course the year I leave they are all awesome and worth watching
every second of every game. I miss air
conditioning. I miss cold weather and snow. I miss not sweating! I miss
driving a car. I actually miss diving! I miss absolutely everything about
America. This place has already really humbled me. I really did not understand
how incredible all of those things are, and how great America is until I left
and moved to one of the most impoverished places in the world. Even the nicest
places are roughly Motel 6s in comparison. It’s crazy honestly.
16. I have made many friends. I really only a
few that I am very, very close with. Those are the few that were in my training
and I spent a lot of time with. They are great people, and we all come from
such crazy different backgrounds. One worked on Wall Street, she is sitting
right next to me waiting for me to say something bad about her. Her real name
is Kelly, but we call her Jelly Pots or the President of the Sons of Zoro, our
biker gang from training. Amber worked for Congress and had a beautiful view of
the Capital Building. Abdul did government contracting in Chicago and had a
nice view from very high up in a high-rise. Then there is me. I graduated from
college… not as impressive.
17. I actually see other volunteers fairly
often. I see Kelly the most often. I have to go through Réo to get to Koudougou
and we often take our TAC (time away from community) weekends together either
in Ouagadougou, where there is always a ton of people at the appropriately
named Transit House, or in Koudougou, which is much calmer. The others I see
when we plan a trip to Ouagadougou together. I’m sure we will all see a bit
less of each other after IST, but we will still plan weekends every now and
then, and will probably vacation together at some point.
18. My neighbors are true Burkinabé. Some have
never left a radius of 15km. They are nice, but I get hit up for money a lot.
Sometimes they disguise it as money for food, but usually it is money for Dolo.
They also like to pretend they have no money, but when a funeral comes around
they have a tendency to find some and give it to the family in an interesting
fashion. I’ll have to get a video of a Guaransi funeral to really explain that
one. It is unfortunate because they don’t send their kids to school oftentimes
because they use all of their money at funerals or drinking Dolo. My American
neighbors are few and far between. Kelly is awesome. There are only two others
near me. I met one. He is a character. The other is a girl, and she seems nice
enough, but I am yet to actually meet her. With time I will I’m sure. Apparently
they have pool days in Koudougou as there are two pools there. One even has beer on tap. Fancy.
19. I don’t really think Peace Corps can be what
you necessarily expect it to be. If you come in with expectations, you are sure
to be let down. That is especially challenging because everybody comes in with
expectations. The first month was especially challenging because no matter how
hard you try, you get some sort of expectation of what your house will be like
or what the people will be like or the such. Really though, you have no idea
until you are here, biking up and down the dirt roads thinking about what a
ridiculous decision you’ve made. It is also challenging because everybody has
this grandiose idea that they are going to come in and make a big difference in
the world. It just is not realistic. I even knew this beforehand, but I thought
I’d be doing more by now. Like I said before, I spend more time reading than
anything else. That is just how it is. It takes a long time to get to the point
where things are really getting done. That is why the Peace Corps commitment is
for two years, and that is why they replace volunteers for a total of six years
before they move on.
Making a large impact
takes a long time, and there is just no getting around that. If I can make a
small impact, or even just set things up for the next volunteer after me, I
will call it a success. But really, only time will tell at this point. After
all, the three main goals of Peace Corps are to send trained workers, teach
locals about Americans and the many, many,
misconceptions they have (seeing pictures of me with friends has prompted
people to ask me if there are really black people in America, many times), and
teach Americans about countries and communities abroad. Even if I cannot really
get anything done, I will still have fulfilled two of the goals. Regardless,
teaching five people about expenses versus revenues makes an impact, so even
something small can make a big difference… or I keep telling myself.
Number 20 did not really relate. It was a
question asking if I will be going to Ghana to visit said friend. I think I’m
going to go drink some beers now before I have to go back to site tomorrow/
There’s a place with Heinekens after all! Enjoy these pictures!
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| Kelly and I are awesome. |
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| And we're creepy. |
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| Kevin Durant jersey I wanted to buy, but was too small. |
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| Kevin Durant's illegitimate son in Zoro. |
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| The back of the jersey. |
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| Pre long hair and long beard |
.JPG) |
| Adorable kid at the Heineken bar in Reo |
