nomaDZ: January 2014

Hey there lil' guy!

Wow, it's been a while! Well I'm back in the fold now and wrote a nice long post to bring you up to speed. I'm currently at MSC (mid-service conference) even though I've been here for 16 months and leave in about nine. Anyways, without further ado, here is a post. Read it, love it, live it. Oh, and watch my music video 5-6x for proper absorption.

So first off I guess I should say that I have done what I said I would not do. I have completely neglected this blog and left all of my faithful and wonderful readers in the dark about what is happening in my life. When I first got to this country and was very ambitious about my blog, I thought this would be a relatively easy thing to keep up with. It’s not like I have a lack of free time, and this is always a great way to express frustration, happiness, boredom, and just what is happening on the day-to-day. At the beginning, people would say how they haven’t written in their respective blog in months and had just given up on it. I didn’t understand why you would do that and let the good and bad days go to waste instead of recording them for future volunteers and a way to look back on your past after getting back to America and forgetting everything that you struggled with for two years within the first month of fast food, full size gyms, and traffic laws. I have now figured out that it isn’t that they just decided to say screw it and give up. It was more that they just didn’t have all that much to say. After you’ve really delved into the life here, the actual day-to-day activity level is pretty low, and there isn’t that much to say that hasn’t already been said. However, being the oh-so talkative wordsmith and vernacular aficionado I consider myself to be, I’m going to try and keep this going, despite the fact that some of it may just be the same crap that I’ve said in the past.

Anyways, life is a bit bizarre at this stage of service. I’ve been here for more than 15 months now. It isn’t novel anymore, its just life. While I still grin at the little things and get infuriated by the same measure, I’ve grown accustomed to living here and am rarely surprised by anything. The same rapping on my windows or climbing on my roof at night that used to scare the hell out of me doesn’t even change my heart rate anymore. The same obnoxious sounds bellowed by one donkey…and then the next…and the next doesn’t faze me anymore. Side note, every toy with a donkey in it needs to be changed to have accurate donkey sounds. Everything else is close enough, but donkeys and their hee-haw we hear as children is nonsense. The actual sound is like a dolphin crying mixed with a shrieking seventy-year old woman. It is awful. Meanwhile, I have grown to appreciate some things. Even if all you can say to somebody is, “hello, good afternoon, how are you?” they are still amazed by the fact that you are speaking their language; that you are giving it a go. Of course, they then proceed to speak to you only in said language, here it’s Mooré while 20 km away it is Bissa, until you shake your head in comprehension, smile, and move away slowly, trying not to make too much more eye contact lest they ask you to eat some tô or something. Still, being able to some a bit everyday on something you’ve accomplished, as little as it may be, is a great way to keep yourself from spiraling into that black abyss of Peace Corps depression, that I’m sure anybody who has read this form the beginning knows I’ve been through.

I pulled myself out of that though. Like I said before, this is just life now. Sure I think about coming home everyday. Sure I still imagine everything I eat is a delicious Chipotle burrito, but it isn’t weird anymore. I wake up; I drink coffee and eat breakfast (or lunch, I’ve been really bad about getting up early lately); I watch TV on my computer while I wake up. I go to the marché to search for eggs that aren’t there. I can certainly say that I’m much happier with this set up than I was in Bouldié. I am able to use my computer whenever I want. Boredom isn’t too much of a problem for me now, because I have two terabytes of movies and television to keep me entertained. If moving has done one horrible thing to me, it is definitely that I all but quit on reading. When I have electricity and entertainment on a computer, it is basically a given that I’m going to spend a lot of time staring at that screen. Still I have a couple books on my mind. My wonderful childhood friend Karen sent me a birthday package with Rules of Attraction, which is a fantastic movie, so I do plan on reading that. Another book is about running, which I have found to be a nice outlet for my mind, but the activity absolutely hates my body, which I’ll get to. I also have an Arabic for Dummies book sent by my wonderful mother, so getting a little base knowledge on that language would be nice. Lastly I have my dreaded GRE study book. While the quizzes are actually fairly enjoyable since that whole test is basically one mind trick after another, the results are unbelievably frustrating. When you think you got most of something right, and find out half of them are wrong, you don’t feel super motivated to keep going. Alas, I shall, as I am planning on taking that test in April, when I come home for a vacation!

A lot of people have started to ask me what I am going to do when I come back to the states. The truth is, I have absolutely no idea. These two years were supposed to aid in that decision-making process. While this experience has given me plenty of time to think about it, instead of deciding on something I have added like 400 things to the list of potential career choices. Before I left for Peace Corps I thought I would finish up here, go home, attend law school while living probably with my family, and then figuring it out from there. Now I only know one thing: I am sure as hell not going to law school. Instead, if I decide to go to graduate school at all, I am considering journalism…still this is not particularly appealing to me. It’s weird to me that people leave here with jobs lined up, careers all laid out, and an idea of how they are going to contribute to society. Meanwhile, here I sit, having absolutely no idea what direction I want my life to go. Am I going to move to Colorado like half of my graduating classes from both high school and college? Am I going to move to San Diego and become a beach bum? Will I move to LA, get a job waiting tables and try to get discovered for all of my wondrous talents and remarkable good looks? Will I say screw it and move to Sydney to find a nice Aussie to have lots of beautiful blonde children with the world’s greatest accent? Honestly, I have no idea. But I guess that’s all right at this stage. I still have nine months to figure it out. That’s what your twenties are for, right? I hope so, or I’m in for a world of hurt when I get back.

Yet, I’m not so worried about what the future will bring. I’ve done a lot of growing up here (and also become way more immature if that makes sense). After two years in a place like this, I don’t think I’ll need much comfort when I get back, and hopefully my newfound patience will be a permanent thing. I can sleep on a floor and poop in a hole. I can make a small amount of money go a long way. I can now calm myself down when something is so infuriating I am fit to burst. I did not used to be able to do that. However when you grow accustomed to being stuffed five people deep into a row meant to fit three and have to sit like that, unmoving with no legroom, for three to ten hours, you learn to breathe when situations are beyond your control. That fact that none of us have killed a bush taxi driver by this point is astounding; we must all really be in control of our tempers.

So since I’ve moved I have been trying to figure out what I can do in this new community. Since I leave at the end of this November or the beginning of December (I want to be back long before Christmas), I do not have a lot of time to screw around. If I want to be part of doing something meaningful and sustainable in this community, I need to get cracking, now. The thing is this place is so far ahead of where I was in Bouldié that I am actually having kind of the same problem, but for different reasons. I taught the many wives of this center how to make liquid soap the first week I was here. That was the only thing that I have actually done. Other than that, I have been reading the grant that the Centre de Formation Catechist got from the Rotary Club. In Bouldié, seemingly nobody was actually interested in doing any projects, so despite my efforts I didn’t really do anything. Here, I am helping to implement a $75,000 grant. They have a tractor and metal fencing around all the gardens. They have a pump that they have dug deeper and expanded. They have bio-digesters that provide composted material, electricity, and cooking gas. They installed electricity into all of the houses. Here, the grant has done much of the work that I may have been able to do, so my work has been translating emails back and forth.

Don’t get me wrong; I am thrilled to be seeing a project like this. This place is transforming before my eyes. When I arrived in November, no houses had electricity. Now every single one does. The gardens were all unprotected from animals. Now they all have protective fencing. They had no composted material. Now they have enormous vats of fermented crap that makes an enormous difference in a garden. It is pretty incredible to watch, but it would all be happening whether I was here or not. Still I have some ideas lined up. There is a cook here who knows how to make tofu from soy, so I want her to lead a training on how to do that. It is a simple business opportunity when all of these women return to their respective villages, and it is a healthy source of protein that the children here desperately need. When mango season is in full swing, I want to teach them how to make jam since it is unbelievably easy and lucrative, if you can find jars to put it in. I have also spoken to the head person at the CSPS (here we call them a major, but I suppose he is like the head doctor?) about doing some lessons about malaria and other maladies before I take my leave in March. The current big idea that I’m coming up with my friend Natalie is a malaria rap that we will write and have some children perform in front of the school before or after doing a school-wide lesson on malaria. Before that we will probably make a music video. Hopefully this comes together. Then I’ll come home, refresh, and be all motivated and ready to kick ass when I arrive in Burkina again in May.

Genius artesian skills

G27 Thanksgiving!

Meanwhile, I’ve been up to some good in other communities these last couple months. Thanksgiving was a joyous event where my entire training group (sans three people) came in to Ouaga and had an enormous, amazing meal at our DPT’s house. In the morning we did a Turkey Trot to the bureau and back, which is about a mile. It was hilarious. For the meal itself, we had micro-brewed beer made by an embassy employee and ate unruly amounts of turkey and pie. It was wonderful. After that, the Centre-Est region (Emily, Natalie, Emma, and I) gathered together and headed to Komtoega, Natalie’s village, for a World AIDS Day celebration and teaching
opportunity. We had about forty students watch ten videos about HIV/AIDS with some discussion before and after each one. We made them do pre and posttests to gauge if and what they were learning. After that we headed to the market and set up a stand with a Q&A game, condom usage demonstrations, and face (which turned into hand) painting. I ran the Q&A game for a while, and then took over the painting. I created a masterpiece. Take the Burkina Faso flag and replace the star in the middle with a yellow AIDS ribbon. It was a thing of beauty. It was a successful day of teaching and the most productive I’d felt in a while.

This is the second mouse I've caught with pliers.

When my second and final birthday in Burkina rolled around on December 14^th, I met up with the Centre-Est crew as well as a couple other friends form around the country in Tenkodogo. We swam and we drank and we ate chicken. It was swell. Then we grabbed a bush taxi back to Dialgaye. Amazingly, we managed to get all seven of us onto one bush taxi. Usually there is enough space for maybe two people. I got seven in there, and fairly comfortably at that. We ate carrots that appeared out of nowhere and sang and were jolly. The people in the taxi must have thought we were insane…or drunk… which would have been a fair guess either way. We got back to Dialgaye, headed to my house to drop off our stuff, and then back out to get some dinner and beers. I made a new friend at the bar outside of my compound. He asked me for a present (as is the norm here). I told him my friendship was a gift. C’est la vie. We headed back to my house, played beer pong, which I haven’t played in a dog’s age, and just hung out. Eventually Amelia broke out the glow sticks, which were way more fun than they should have been. When they got boring we moved the table in the middle of the room, cut the glow sticks in half, spread the shiny stuff all over the walls, and had an impromptu rave inside of my house. After the terrifying moment we thought Amelia was going blind when she got some in her eye, it was an absolute blast.

The next day we headed into Ouaga again because the 17^th was the swearing in of the new group of volunteers. That party was a lot of fun. It was just much more of the usual stuff we do in Ouagadougou, but with a lot more people. We drank at the transit house, went to Deniro’s and played pool and what not, and then went out dancing. It was a fun time, but much like any other night for us. I guess your swear in is always going to be more fun than other people’s, understandably. The next day was spent as a buffer to get rid of hangovers and prepare for the journey the following day. We made eggnog for about twelve people, which entailed 16 raw eggs, two liters of milk, a lot of heavy cream, and bourbon…which you can’t find in this country, so we used rum. It was a bad idea overall, the whole thing. It actually tasted great before we added in the booze. The rum made it very strange, but it was still pretty good. We realized as we were making it that maybe concocting a drink with a bunch of raw eggs and other dairy products and feeding it to Peace Corps volunteers whom only eat dairy every few weeks was a bad idea. I thought this was especially dumb for Chris and I, as we were to take a bus for ten hours the next day across the whole country to Diapaga, just before the border of Niger, where Chris lives. We ignored that inner monologue. Unbelievably, except for immediately after waking up, the transport the next day was pretty easy. We left the transit house at 6:00 AM. We got off the bus at 6:30 PM. It was a long day.

Chris’ site is awesome. It is too bad it is so hard to get to, because I would be out there all the time. That is where you leave from if you are going on safari, and there are bars with Heineken and Pelforth (Pelforth is advertised everywhere in the country, but extremely hard to actually find). Chris’

Camp ruins from the 1920s for the game reserve near Diapaga

house is small, but he did what he could with it. He installed windows and an air conditioner, bought a fridge and blender, and brought a projector with him from America. On his computer he has a bunch of games from N64, NES, SNES, and Sega and I brought controllers. So at one point we were sitting there drinking margaritas in air conditioning while playing Mario Kart on a fifty inch screen. It was heaven in Burkina, no question. He also made pulled pork sandwiches with coleslaw. It was amazing!

There was a reason that I went out there. We went to his host organization and filmed a series of videos in both French and his local language of Gourmanche about malaria prevention, family planning, malnutrition, and hygiene. We edited them down and then converted them to a file type that the Burkinabe can put on their phones. The idea behind this is that Burkinabe will spread the videos around and they will get mass circulation. With development work, the more people hear things, the more they are to actually listen. If they are being constantly bombarded with people telling them you should use soap when you wash your hands, or use a latrine instead of a tree, eventually the message will click. That was probably the most useful project I have done. Those will be around long after we leave, and hopefully will make an impact on somebody’s life.

I made a pit stop en route back to Dialgaye to see my new neighbor. Mandy lives 30km north of me in a city named Koupela. In case there is ever Mooré on Jeopardy, you now know that Koupela translates to “white stone” in English. I very distinctly remember how hard it was to arrive at site right before Christmas. The bureau expects you to stay at site through New Years. Anybody with half a
brain can see why every volunteer finds that to be incredibly moronic. Apparently they are now realizing how stupid and honestly cruel that is, and they are changing the format of training groups. The next group will arrive in June, as is normal. The group after that will come in January instead of October. Good job Peace Corps. Anyways, I knew she was probably lonely and terrified, as everybody is when they arrive at site. She’d been there for four days at that point. Another girl from her same group also came to visit that day, which happened to Christmas Eve, which I should have said beforehand. I decided to stay for the night. It was a fun, low-key night that ended with the first viewing of the timeless classic, A Christmas Story.

The next day I had to get back to site. I told everybody I would be there for Christmas, and I was sticking to it. However nobody likes to be alone on Christmas, so I invited the new kids along. It didn’t take much convincing and after waiting way longer than normal for a bush taxi (it was Christmas), we departed to Dialgaye. I must have had a real urge to get sick because I suggested we make eggnog…again. I ran all over the marché looking for the materials. We successfully found eggs, sugar, and whiskey. The whiskey was in little plastic bags. I should have taken a picture, but you can find those anywhere here so I’ll do that later. It’s the same way you get water when you buy it from somebody. It is a small, sealed, plastic bag. Minus the complete and total destruction it does to the environment, it is actually quite a nifty little method of packaging. That was off topic.

The delicious concoction

We were unable to find cream or milk. Naturally, we decided to make these on our own. We had powdered milk, so that was easy. The cream was a hassle. We found a recipe online that said milk and a cup of butter. We had Nido powdered milk and a Blue Band margarine wanna-be. It didn’t really mix right…the fake butter continued to separate itself. I skimmed the excess off the top; we added the whiskey and lots of cinnamon, and presto! It tasted a bit buttery, but was delicious. It was way better than the eggnog made in Ouaga, and once again I didn’t get sick. I think we are all cesspools of infection, bacteria, and disease all the time so our immune systems are stellar. Some of the Burkinabe liked it. It was obvious that others absolutely did not. The adults aren’t much for sweets here.

After our delicious dinner of duck, chicken, salad, eggnog, beer, and gin and tonics, we headed back to my house, added the rest of the whiskey to the eggnog we had left, and put on the remainder of A Christmas Story that we had started while making eggnog. Afterwards we watched Christmas episodes of other shows. It was great.

The next day the new kids left and I was alone to fend for myself. Everybody left that day from the center, so instead of the normal 140 people, there were about ten. I spent a lot of time watching TV on my computer and figuring out how to pass the time before going to Ouaga for New Years. I decided to write a rap. I’d been meaning to write a song for a while, and this was the prefect opportunity. I already had the video camera from the project out in Diapaga, so I decided to make a music video too. I wrote and recorded the song one day, and made the video the next. A Peace Corps rap almost writes itself. Touch on the subjects of national corruption, the PC bureau, alcohol, camaraderie, and people calling you a Nasara and you’re done. It came together quite nicely. I’ll post the link immediately following this paragraph…or right now. Make this bad boy go viral! (Click this link)

I went into Ouaga on New Years Eve day. Amber and Kelly from my training group and my section were the only people in the transit house and I thought we were in for a lame New Years. Amber and I did an Avengers puzzle and then three of us played an epic game of Jenga. Finally people

Epic Jenga game

started showing up. We played a fun drinking game with dice called 3-Man. It is a very fun game, remind me to teach you next time I see you (except you random person in Alaska and random person in Russia who read this, I don’t know if we’ll ever meet). A slew of Benin volunteers were in Burkina for vacation which none of us understood but we let it go. They claimed Burkina is way better than Benin. I’ve been to Benin, recently. When somebody from a country with a beach and waterfalls, really cool animals, and variations of food tells you your country is better, all you want to do is slap them and trade places. We just let it go. It was New Years after all.

We went to a house party at an expat’s house, which was weird. I haven’t been to a house party in a long time. All we did was sit on couches with music playing, but it was fun. We left there and headed to a usual bar cleverly named Bar-K (“barka” is Mooré for “thank you”). There was some pretty good live music and a lot of people. When the music started to get terrible, I took upon myself to make it better. I made eye contact with the person playing the keyboard who was motioning me to come up on stage and sing. I listened. Normally I can sing about anything, all the time. This was not one of those times. Too much to drink and a slow reggae beat made my mind go completely blank. There I was, standing

Looks like I know what I'm doing...

in front of a mic with fifty people staring at me, and nothing in my mind. After muttering a bunch of nothingness, I placed the mic back in it’s stand, said, “this is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever experienced in my life,” and walked off stage. Luckily not too many people remembered, because it was HORRIBLE. We went to the nightclub we were at for New Years 2012-2013 where we had a blast. It sucked. We stayed for a bit, not really dancing, and then headed home. It was a fun night all in all.

Since then not much has happened. I’ve been at site, figuring out what to do and how to do it. I’m just sort of living day-to-day right now. I try and exercise almost everyday, and eat as healthily as I can with my limited options. Overall I’m fine and I don’t really have the rapid mood swings I had for the first year. Now it is more of a feel useful one day and useless the next kind of thing. It will probably be like up until almost the end. But I’m all right with that. The days when you feel like you made a difference go a long way. The days where you feel useless have gotten pretty normal, and I drown that feeling with an episode of New Girl or something. I knew before I left that barring some unforeseen circumstance I was going to stick out my full commitment. The whole first year here I didn’t really know if that was going to happen. I was still sure that I was going to stay, but I hated the idea of it, and easily could have seen myself on a plane quitting this whole thing. Maybe it’s the fact that I have nine months left. Maybe it’s because I’ve already completed 15 months here. Maybe it’s just that this is life now and it just seems normal. What I know now is that I will be here through the end and the prospect of being here until only December seems crazy because it’ll be over so soon…and then what?

Random thoughts and current events:

I was going to run the marathon in February. I’ve since learned that my knees are absolute crap. I worked up to ten miles and after that haven’t even gotten close because it just causes too much pain. The medical officers here can’t do anything for me. They aren’t physical therapists and they don’t specialize in sports injuries. Damn, I miss college athletics. Still, this helped kicked me into gear and I remembered how much I enjoy not looking like a piece of crap. I won’t look like I did in America while I’m here, but I’ll try to make the transition easier when I get back by not being a lazy piece of garbage here.

Ukraine is going nuts right now. Full on riots. I don’t really understand why, but I get it. I’d be pissed if I were there too. It’s so damn cold.

Central African Republic just elected a new female president. She was the mayor of Bangui, where all the fighting between the Christians and Muslims originated. She could do nothing to curb the violence then, so they decided to elect her president. Wise decision-making indeed.

Burkina Faso is on the verge of either regime change or probably heavy rioting. 27-year incumbent president Blaise Campoare is trying to pass Article 37, allowing him to run for another term, bringing his total to 32 years. Two weeks ago 75 people within high levels of government quit the CDP (Blaise’s party). Last weekend, 500,000 people protested nationwide. Things are going to really heat up this year in Burkina with the election looming in 2015.

The Broncos and Seahawks are in the Superbowl. I guess I want the Broncos to win because I like Peyton Manning, and it’s fun to see old people succeed. Plus Russell Wilson isn’t that good and I don’t want him getting a ring before RGIII.

The Wizards really might slip into the playoffs this year! Absolutely nuts!

I wish I could be in Louisville this fall for the home game against Florida State!

Hockey is still really, really stupid. It’s just a bunch of bandwagon fans in DC who want a team that wins games because the Wizards and Redskins make us all want to cry.

Take care America! Have some photos: