Holy Cannoli Time is Flying By!

Not relevant, but this is my cat Mittens from when I lived in Louisville!

Every time I actually post something on here I am angry at myself because the last time I posted was too long ago...so I think I'm just going to accept that I am probably going to only blog every 3 weeks to a month. I hope you all aren't too hurt by it. Here's another one that I wrote on March 8, 2014! Tonight is the CoS party for G26. It is Comic Con themed. I am going as Goku from Dragon Ball Z and my buddy is going as Krillin...it should be epic. Pictures to come... but to the blog post from the 8th first:     

         Well here we are again, updating one day before we hit the 17-month mark. I’ve been here for damn year a year and half. Absolutely crazy to me. I have friends who have left, and many who have their dates set to head out pretty soon. When that happens things are going to get really weird for my group (G27). We came in four months after G26 arrived, and while they really are close to us in time spent here, it feels like they are the parent figures to my group. Some of my closest friends are in that group and I’ll be sad to see them go. When they head out, we become the seniors, which is just a bizarre idea considering we’ll still be here for quite a few months after they head out. A new group shows up in June. That will be extremely strange because we’ll barely get to know them before heading out. Already I am looking forward to getting out of here. I know I should be embracing the time that I have left here, and I really am trying to get a lot of things done, but I am looking forward to getting back to the developed world. It’s selfish I know considering none of these people will be able to get out of here. I’ll be back in the states, or Australia, or Lithuania, or who knows where, and they’ll be here, keeping on keeping on. Well, life goes on for everybody I suppose.

            Anyways, in my last post I wrote about how life here has come to be normal. The things that used to really bother me rarely get on my nerves now, like the donkey’s hee-hawing and what not. Well, this place has a really incredible habit of biting you in the ass. I can definitely say that I am in a far better place now than I was at probably any point in my service, but Peace Corps is a very strange creature. I said before that the mood swings are not an hour-by-hour thing like they used to be. I would agree with that still. However, it is incredible how things can change for you so quickly. One minute I’m content watching How I Met Your Mother, and the next I’m fuming because my counterpart is being non-responsive to an idea that I really want to get done. That is where I am now. I am finally coming up with things that would be useful and maybe make some sort of an impact, and the people who would be able to help me get them done just nod their heads and move along. It is quite frustrating.

            Let’s back up a little bit though. Since my last post, we had our mid-service conference… two months after when we should have. It’s funny because my group’s service has been such a whirlwind of mistakes by the bureau that this just fit right in with all of the others. The delay was good and bad.

G27 at Mid-Service Conference

Usually there is a serious bump you hit half way through your actual service (excluding the two months of training). We hit that point in December. It just kind of passed by because we didn’t have that conference at the right time. Many of my friends went back home for the holiday, which was pretty tough, but I expected it so was able to brush it off with relative ease. Then the time did roll around for the conference and we were all excited to see each other again. Well, somehow it was like all of the negative things that usually happen around the one-year mark were just delayed until we got into the sessions. It was funny how it happened actually because I posted the last post that said how chipper I was and what not, and then BOOM! We hit the MSC wall. I thought I was the only one having a tough time, but as it continued I learned that basically everybody was feeling the same thing, which is sad, but was very reassuring at the same time.

            We learned a lot of helpful things at the conference, and almost all of the sessions were actually relevant and useful, which is a very rare thing for bureau-sponsored events. I got my teeth cleaned,

G27 getting all crazy-like!

which was weird, and had a medical appointment, which was fine. I’m healthy as an ox by the way. I have officially shed all the weight that I gained in my horrible period last year and have managed to get my resting heart rate down to a solid 58, which is solid, though still not necessarily where I want it.

            The two weeks following MSC were maybe the hardest two weeks I’ve had in this country. I had a bit of a spat with a friend (you could call it that), and that, amongst many other frustrations such as feeling like I’ve done absolutely nothing useful in the past year and a half, made it really challenging. I also still had nothing going on here. But I did have softball to look forward to, and thank goodness for that. I can honestly say that the two week period in between MSC and softball weekend was the closest I have been to ETing (early terminating) and getting off of this continent. I never thought that’d be an option for me, but I was in a bad place. Don’t worry, things are fine now, and I’m actually pretty happy. This just goes to show that like I said before, Peace Corps does strange things to people’s emotions. Somebody in the states asked me why I was having such a hard time. I’d post what I said back on here; because it was a true diatribe, but I’d be worried my dearest mother would fly here and pick me up. Don’t worry mom, I’m fine.

            I pushed through the hard time, trying to think of projects to do and going to baby-weighings at the CSPS (local want-to-be hospital). Then came one of the best weekends I’ve had in this country, SOFTBALL WEEKEND. I’d been growing a beard for damn near two months, as was my buddy

Peace Corps Burkina Faso Softball 2014

who “coached” the team. Then we shaved our epic hobo-beards into some ridiculous moustaches. He went with the classic Lemmy from Motorhead look, and I went with the never-out-of-style porn star/sheriff look. Naturally the tournament was played at a school (the International School of Ouagadougou), with plenty of American families around. You can imagine how creepy I looked. Actually you can look at the pictures here and see how creepy I looked. I was scared to go near playgrounds because I did not want parents to get the wrong idea. But as is the norm, Peace Corps was the really weird team. We wore strange outfits and the girls drew moustaches on their faces so we weren’t alone.

            They tell me the Peace Corps team has not won a game in the past three years, which is just pathetic. Maybe it’s because they were always drinking too much. Maybe it’s because PCVs are not the most athletically inclined group in the world. This year we planned it out. We put together a pretty athletic team and played appropriate positions based on skill sets. I took shortstop. The first pitch of the game our opponents who were some random NGO hit a home run. The next person got a single. The next pitch was hit almost past me, but I scooped it before it bounced and threw to first base. We got a double play and the game was on. We ended up with a tie… the best game in three years. We got our butts kicked the next game by another NGO, and then again the game after that by a team of Burkinabe kids. I can’t say I’m surprised; they actually had uniforms. Then came the ultimate showdown. Our last

Note the score. We dominated.

game was against the Embassy team/Marines. This was the only one that mattered. They also hit a homerun the first pitch of the game. We recovered, and in the bottom of the inning we went through the entire batting order and scored eight runs before the rules said we had to go to the field again. We routed them; kicked the crap out of them. It was an epic victory. We have since learned that they want to restore their dignity and play us again. Bring it on spoiled government employees; we’ll be ready!

            It was the most normal I’ve felt in a long time. We played softball, a legitimate game of basketball, and drank beer on tap and spoke English all the time. It was great and was like a mini-vacation. I made some great friends that I’d never met before within other groups, and strengthened relationships with others that I’d known, but maybe not that well. It was a truly fantastic weekend.

            I went back to site for a couple weeks looking forward to the Dedougou Mask Festival, or FESTIMA. Every two years there is a massive weeklong festival in Dedougou, which is located about two hours past Koudougou, my former regional capital, and pretty close to the Malian border. This is

Great picture of G29er Julia and G27ers Amber, Hallie, and I

arguably the biggest festival that Burkina Faso has. It is a competition between FESTIMA, SIAO, which is a big art festival, and FESPACO, which is the biggest foreign film festival in Africa. All of these are bi-annual. Each FESTIMA, tourists actually come to Burkina in droves (this place isn’t exactly known for it’s tourism). I have never seen so many white people in one place. It was very strange and at one point, I actually yelled at a group of them thinking they were my friends… I quickly found out I was wrong. Anyways, there are masks from all over the place: Diapaga out east near Niger, Dedougou itself, Ouahigouya up north, Bobo-Dioulasso in the southwest, and even masks from Mali made an appearance. It was an impressive display and very interesting to see the differences in cultures. Of course, in these regions you never see these masks which makes me wonder where they tuck them away for the 103 weeks in a row they don’t use them.

I didn’t see too many masks, which I’m only slightly ashamed of. Mask festival was the most fun weekend I’ve had in this country, hands down. I was in Ouaga beforehand because I had a dentist appointment again to get cavities filled, which was done without Novocain by the way and I’m very interested to see what my dentist says about it in the states. The night before we left a large group of us went out to Bar-K, a bar we frequent far too regularly. We played pool and drank beer on tap. We enjoyed each other’s company and just had a lot of fun. We didn’t get back to our respective places to sleep until around four in the morning and I fell asleep at around five. Our bus was to leave at seven-thirty.  Lucky for me one of my best friends lives in Ouagadougou, so I rarely stay at the transit house anymore. Unlucky for me, I had to bike there, which was dangerous needless to say. Sorry again Mom. I had called a cab the night before so we would actually make it to the bus station in time. Somehow I got myself out of bed, and managed to rally all of the troops at the transit house who were going with us. It was a MIRACLE that we all made it on that bus, but sure enough, the six of us were on our way, half-drunk and half-hung over.

The bus ride was about five hours long and was spent sleeping and regretting life decisions from the evening before. Finally we arrived, found our friend who lives there’s house, dropped our stuff off, and went to get food. A group was going to a nearby pool, so we joined in there. There were about fifteen volunteers there. It was a blast. We failed at making a whirlpool, played Marco Polo, and drank beer. That night we met up with another group of volunteers. We were probably around twenty-five strong. While this might be normal in Ouagadougou, it is absolutely not in people’s villages/cities. It was way more fun to hang out in large groups where people live. You are much more of a novelty there, but people are usually nicer and there are things to do that you haven’t experienced before.

We went and watched the night show for the masks. There was a wide-open field and whoever was performing just takes over the space and dances and what not. These guys were from down south and kind of resembled zebras. It was cool, but lasted far too long. It would have been cooler if they had three acts and each one was out there for only about thirty minutes. That was not the case. They performed for like two hours. It got boring. Afterwards we were all feeling pretty good, so we went to a bar, shocker. We started playing a game called “Truth or Scare.” I’ll make it very clear that this was

Wandering the streets of Dedougou.

They carried sticks and would smack you with them.

exactly “Truth or Dare” with a different name, and you were very much encouraged to pick Scare. I cannot go into detail about what happened in this game. While I very much doubt that anybody important reads this because I would have gotten in some sort trouble long ago, I am not going to put the details of this game on here until I have CoS’ed and am trying to publish this bad boy, if I decide to publish it. If you want details, ask me personally, or wait for your personalized signed copy of the book! On sale in 2015 for the low, low price of one million dollars sold in every Barnes & Noble worldwide! The only clue I can give you is that another volunteer and I convinced our entire ten-person table that we were about to be arrested (though really we weren’t, at all) and had to bribe them 40,000 FCFA, or $80 USD, to let us go. We ended the night by walking home singing the theme song of the Lion King. It was another late night. At one point in the night, somebody, either our host Gregory, or my friend Tanya, gave me a little stuffed bear he/she had found. Tanya and I named her Becky the Bear. She will now be featured in a picture everywhere I go. You can see her below. That was in Dedougou at Gregory’s house in his genius hanging-garden idea. Finally, we got back to Gregory’s and slept outside on top of dirt and rocks. It was miserably cold that close to the desert. In this country, though it is not exactly like Algeria or anything, the general rule of thumb is that the hotter it is during the day, the cooler is going to be at night. With no cover and only shorts to sleep in, I think I almost died.
 

Note Becky the Bear on top of the vertical garden.

The next day we screwed around for a while, killed Gregory’s Heineken mini-keg sized keg, and started our day. For the record, Mask Festival is a HUGE party that happens to fall right on Carnival. There are masks, beer companies sponsor it, and again, it falls on Carnival in a country that isn’t America. Whilst we look like raging alcoholics, this was the thing to do here, so let it go. Anyways, we went to the festival, but it was an act we’d already seen. They were plant people I suppose you could call them. They made suits completely out of leaves, which were really cool. They carried sticks and when they weren’t performing, they meandered about and hit people with the sticks. It was quite funny and as much as I tried to provoke them, they wouldn’t hit me. They usually aimed for the pretty girls. Big surprise there.

The zebra masks.

Anyways we went to a bar that we’d already been to, but this time they managed to concoct some actual drinks instead of the usual Brakina. They made rum and mango and they were delicious. After only about fifteen minutes there a man showed up with a traditional African guitar. One of the volunteers grabbed a drum that was right near us and started banging on it a little bit. After about ten more minutes one of the employees at the bar grabbed another, and within no time there were four djembes (traditional African drum) and a guitar and they were rocking out. It was really cool. We had live music and great drinks served to us by the nicest Rasta Burkinabe I’ve met. For the record, the nicest people that I’ve met in this country have been Rasta. They don’t hit you up for money or make fun of you; they just try to talk to you and learn about your culture. It is always a fresh breath of air. If you ever meet a Rasta and you are feeling adventurous, give it a go. This does not include Jamaica. Those were the meanest people I’ve ever met in my life.

Playing the drums with Hallie and Jade

At one point we jumped on one of the drums and some kids danced and it was terrific fun. Then I had the bright idea that if the volunteers all got up and started dancing to the music, more people would join in and we’d end up with a big dance party in the streets. What happened was not what I expected. Before long there were around one hundred people standing around, with kids dancing and everybody having fun. We took turns subbing in and out playing the drums with them, and finally we asked if we could play an all-volunteer song. It was awesome. Once we figured out some rhythm we were actually quite good. We played two songs and got lots of applause from the crowd. It was by far the most fun I’ve had in a four-hour stretch, and was actually an incredible cultural exchange. It has inspired some ideas for projects as well. If those come to fruition I’ll explain them, but this is getting a little lengthy so let’s move along.

We finally left the bar and went to eat dinner and then headed to what we thought was going to be a concert. The same guys that we had been playing drums with told us that they were playing the concert and they were going to call us on stage to play a song or two, which would have been awesome. Somehow the whole concert fell apart. There was however a massive block-party-esque party going on that we all attended. We danced and partied for a couple hours and were the life of the party. I don’t think it is too often that twenty white people show up at these things and are very raucous, as we all were. Despite what you think we actually set a good example. We danced with the kids and tried to get the shy ones involved. We had an impressively long conga line. We had a break-dancing circle and I did a backflip that could have ended my life (but didn’t, so we’re good). It was one hell of an amazing day.

The next morning I woke up and the place had cleared out. It went from twenty-plus the night before to four, including Gregory, who lives there, Tanya, a new volunteer also named David (who has his JD and passed the bar might I add), and myself. We recovered for a while and went to the pool. Then we went and did the whole thing again, but in a smaller group. Two more volunteers had missed their bus that day, so they came and hung out with us too. It was a blast. I can’t say I’ve ever played a game of F*** the Dealer immediately followed by Kings, but somehow we pulled it off. Seriously, my mom is going to kill me after reading this post.

What an incredible trip it was. Finally it was time to leave. We helped Gregory clean up since his house had turned into a refugee camp for a week’s time, and headed to our respective homes. I stopped into Ouaga for a night en route to Dialgaye, and now here I am, a couple days later, rehashing the whole experience and trying to figure out how to best manage my time for the next month. In one month from today I will board a plane and head back to the states for almost a month. It will probably be around 110 degrees when I leave, and about 120 degrees when I get back. I am really looking forward to enjoying some April rain and cold temperatures. I have attending baseball games with old friends planned, lots of bar time, something called Beerfest is happening in DC whilst I’ll be there, and apparently my best friends growing up Pat and Mike are taking me to hunt people? Yes, you read that right. Imagine paintball, but with military grade air soft guns and ex-Marines as the people playing. It should be a blast. Then I’ll jet off to Louisville for my friend from college’s wedding. I honestly have no idea who reads this blog. I hope he doesn’t, because me showing up at his bachelor party on the Bourbon Trail is supposed to be a surprise. I am pumped to see all of my friends in Maryland and in Kentucky, and I can’t wait to get through this month!

Before then, I am doing some entrepreneur training this next week as well as the first week in April in Dialgaye. Then there is the Youth Development Conference, and then I am having lunch with the US ambassador in Tenkodogo on April 4^th. I look forward to that. There is definitely a busy slate coming up, and it will be good to get some things under my belt that I can report before heading back to the states, where I will likely speak to a class at my high school, another at my alma mater the University of Louisville, and then another via Skype with a cute little kindergarten class in Jacksonville, FL that my friend Melissa teaches. I look forward to all of these opportunities. I want to teach people about the people I’ve met here and the experiences that I’ve had.

People in the states don’t know much about Africa. Even those that think they do, like I thought before coming here, have no idea how unrealistic and honestly ridiculous everything we think we know is. Western media portrays Africa in a light that until seeing it first hand, you don’t really understand how insulting and ludicrous it is. These people are more than charity cases. They aren’t all miserable all the time and they don’t want our pity, or our shoes (Toms for example are another example of what continually sets back development work as well as entire micro-economies. Just search why are Toms bad for the world and you’ll understand). They are prideful, strong people who manage to have a smile on their faces more often than we do, despite all the things that they don’t have and all of the struggles that they face on a day-to-day basis. If I’ve learned one thing since I’ve been here, it is appreciation for the gifts that we are given just being born in America. The opportunities that we are given solely because of where our parents lived are absolutely incredible. Most of the kids here, and it is sad to say, have no future, no matter what we do for them. Education systems are too flawed, there is too much corruption for things to change quickly, and people are just too poor to change their own futures (amongst a plethora of other issues). Until these structural problems have been repaired and institutionalized, there is not really much that can be done on a large scale.

We as volunteers can teach gardening techniques or how to create a business plan with soy products, but that doesn’t do anything to change the institutional flaws that have plagued this country since its inception, as well as many other poor West African nations. For example, this country was recently discovered to have massive gold deposits, which has invited foreign investment. The money brokered from that should be funneled into education, what I believe to be the single most important factor for the future of Africa. Instead it ends up in the pockets of local political powers and the international organizations that set them up. It much resembles how diamonds were worth thousands internationally, but locally worth almost nothing in Sierra Leone (minus the murder and what not to get the diamonds, which is not happening here thank goodness). Instead these mines, which should help the country, actually hurt communities by bringing in foreign workers, as well as domestic, and putting them in poor, rural communities with cheap amenities and lots of beer and turning them loose. Something that should be benefitting every community that finds gold actually hurts them by increasing rape, murder, and violent crime. They also take community members away from their farms in hopes of finding gold (these are the people who take it upon themselves instead of working with foreign companies). Gold is rarely found in these scenarios and money is actually lost in the long run. Farms yield no crops as everything dies with their owner’s absence, and things are made substantially worse. Structural issues such as these continue to afflict small communities here, and it does not seem like there is any plan to try and stop it from the government. You can probably guess why.

Just being American and being forced to get an education and learn how to think logically is a beautiful gift that everybody should appreciate. Do I sound pretentious right now? Probably. Is everything I’m saying completely true? Absolutely. When you walk outside this summer and it is one hundred degrees with 100% humidity and you are walking to your car which after four minutes has cooled to seventy, think about the family that I live next to who are in the same heat (sans humidity on the most part) and their only reprieve is to hang out under a tree. I hope that when I return to the states in April and again after I CoS, that these things stick with me. I don’t ever want to return to the same spoiled person that I was before I left, though I am pretty sure it won’t take longer than six months before I need to slap myself across the face and look at some old pictures. The point is, thank your lucky stars and stripes that you are American and have the opportunities that you do; that you don’t have to work in a field for seven hours a day hoping the rain will eventually come so you can eat the same meal every night (which they freaking love, so that’s cool), and that despite our broken, nonfunctional government system and struggling economy, we are still so lucky to live our lives the way that we do.

I think that is all the ranting I have left in me for right now, though realistically I can do this all day, every day. I hope everything is well in America and that Russia doesn’t force us to go to World War Three. March Madness is about to start again. I’m hoping for another long run into April for the Cards. Back-to-back national champs would be pretty badass, and if the game is on the ninth, I’ll actually be able to watch it.

If you haven’t been keeping up with my Thursday Facebook posts about international politics, make sure to check them out. Know somebody who works in the field and wants to give me a job? Let me know. I need to start figuring out my life after Peace Corps!

Go Cards, Go Krogering, Go America.

Update on March 30, 2014: Cards lost to the Cats. Depression sets in. Going home in nine days!!

Random croc I saw in between Tenkodogo and Garango.

This guy did not have a good day.

Some of the group from softball and our dirty moustaches.

Jorgen about to get schooled by the big turtle.

See? Even the girls had moustaches!