This week in BFA

Sorry for the delay it has been a busy week. Let's start with last weekend. The Peace Corps had a COS party (close of service) for the group who will be leaving sometime in the next few months. We hosted the party for them on our roof-top. Yes it was loads of fun and you should have been here.

In my classes this week the conversation topic was education. Nearly every night without fail the conversation led to a discussion of marriage. There are three keys to shifting the conversation to marriage. Those keys are; girls, village, education. Girls in the villages (not Ouga) are normally finished with education by the age of 12-14, not because they are university graduates or even high school graduates, but because usually they are married off by this time.

Let me tell you about some of the rational behind the young marriage age. My favorite (not) is the girls are put into arranged (at times forced) marriage at this age because "they will become pregnant". Apparently pregnancy in some of the villages here is cause by girls turning 14 (at least that's the impression that I get). This represents a gigantic step in biological sciences everywhere.

Another reason for the termination of girl's education is because once a daughter is married she belongs/is the responsibility of her new husband/his parents. Public school tuition here ranges from around 20,000 cfa ($40) in large cities - 2,000 cfa ($4) in the villages per year. The new families often can't or won't shell out the 2,000 cfa for a daughter in-law's education in the villages. That sounds harsh but often times the families can only legitimately afford the education of the son. Go ahead and say it, "gosh we're lucky to live in a place where we can go to public school for free/relatively free".

In Ouga however, the views on education are much more "progressive". Girls here often finish high school (in French, college, pronounced Frenchly) and even manage to turn 15 without getting pregnant. My friend from Peace Corps lives in a village whose size I will classify as not quite tiny but slightly less than small. From that area there are two students who are at the University of Ougadougou. Not bad for a small place but not great considering I have four university students in my Thursday night class, and one in my Tuesday night class. That equals five university students that I teach three of whom are girls. Did I mention they all came from Ouga not the villages and they have managed to turn almost 18 years old without getting pregnant.

Please do not take any of this as an indictment on the education system here or of the social norms in the villages. Yes there is room for improvement but I will not make the suggestions rather I'll let you read what some of my students suggested as improvements. One suggestion was to eliminate school fees for girls, another to eliminate school fees for everyone. The need for improved infrastructure was sighted so that teachers can actually make it to the schools in the villages. Giving teachers a house in the village was floated as an idea because often the teachers do not show up to class. Two of my students cited the need for orphanages for the large number of parent less children living on the streets.

Those are suggestions from real people who, if ever implemented, would see the benefits. Please note that when I asked my students about how to change their education system they did not say that Burkina Faso needed to be a sparkling example of modern democracy in the world before we could fix education issues. Although one student did mention the need for protection against corruption in the classroom such as; teachers dating students and giving them high marks as a result. That's right, there's not really a line here, teachers can date students. Personally I'm not OK with that and for the record I am completely freaked out when my female students flirt with me and I avoid or promptly remove myself from any questionable situation (happily it does not happen often.

All in all it has been a big learning week. Why? you ask, because I did way more listening that talking this week, try it.

Peace,
Ben

Re-naming the Constellations

Sorry I know I've not written in for a bit but this should be worth it. For the most part I've just been hanging around town here in Ouga, we have had a long break that ends tomorrow (thank God). I managed to take a quick trip up north to visit some Peace Corps friends.

Adventure #1: taking public transportation long distance in Burkina Faso. It was necessary to take the bus up to Dori, about a 260KM trip, so roughly 4 hours. If you are on the bus and the person next to you needs you to hold something you hold it, goats, food, glasses, babies, whatever. Bus babies tend to pee on you, and no they don't wear diapers, so i was on my guard for bus babies. What I ended up with was some one's shopping, so just glasses for me this trip. The buses I took were pretty nice, it is however one of those things where the "service engine" light is constantly on but, naw forget it no reason to check on that it will just be back on next week. Every time the bus stops loads of folks run up to sell products like fried dough, eggs, veggies, fruit, you know whatever. Good times tho.

Adventure #2: getting off at the stop your friends told you to. Uh...oops, so I blew that one. My bus went from Ouga to Dori and no further, Kaits instructions to me were "get off at Sebba road"...issue, the bus does not stop at Sebba road you have to request that stop, so that's my bad. I ended up in the Dori Gare (station). Luckily I had my cell phone so I could call someone, oh right my cell phone wasn't working because that would be too easy. SO, white guy in the bus station is pretty much like walking into a room full of fat people with cake, everybody wants a piece. I asked how to get to Sebba road, the reply I got was, "Sebba's far away, there's a bush taxi in the morning", with a very cool poker face I acknowledged the situation while in my head i thought "OH CRAP!!" (substitute the word you think I really thought). I walked out of the station with some guy who wouldn't stop talking about whatever he wanted me to fund, I asked him where a phone was. No one tells you they walk you there, that's nice of them but it also doesn't get me a way from their sales pitch. Lucky me Kait called and said she was only three blocks away and I was rescued.

Adventure #3: eating home made gyros with the peace corps. Three new volunteers plus three veteran volunteers and there first Dori area team meeting equals, really really good food. Now then, three old volunteers plus three new volunteers plus Sahel rain/wind/dust storm equals fun sleeping arrangements and a scramble to catch all the stuff in the yard before it blows away. good times.

Adventure #4: I'm tired of this adventure labelling thing (it felt like a good idea)...any way I spent one night up in Dori then headed south to Bani to Kait's village. Very small place but home to some pretty famous mosques. The mosques were built by an imam who "thought highly of himself"...Built some smaller mosques on the hill, some didn't face mecca/most didn't...the imam wanted to start an alternate hajj to this place (it didn't catch on)...in the dry season the area is very desert like with little vegetation...it's in a geographical area called the Sahel...pretty much the Sarah expands and contracts with the dry and wet season, the areas that change (going green then very brown/red) are the Sahel...So right now, for my trip, it was very pretty.

With horizons of green hills and fields full of tall millet you would never know that in the next few months that area is going to look like Mars. Any way there was loads to learn on this trip. Most notably the local language fa-ful-day (that's not how you spell it) in Ouga it's Mooree. So here's your lesson for this instalment "fo-fo" is hey and thanks, very useful phrase.

So Kait's house is mud brink like the rest of Bani. Mud brick traps heat really well, so going in the house (two rooms) doesn't happen much, just to cook and maby change clothes. Kait has a hanger over her porch made mostly from millet stalk which provides a much better place to hide from the sun. That's basically the routine, cook do what work you've got, and escape the sun as often as you can.

So on we took one day to look around, see the mosques and the villages. The mosque recently finished it's large mud brick dome. More recently it fell down...again. Got to go out and climb some of the hills that ended up being a very relaxing 6 mile walking day through the hottest part of the day with not enough water. I loved it.

On our way we found a village Kait had not been to yet and when one of the local families they invited us in saying "hey you stupid white people don't you know it's really frick'n hot what are you doing walking around right now, come have a seat and rest with us" or something like that. That was a fun time, got to see how you sort out chaff from the millet, you use a woven thing that looks like a large coaster. Put some millet on top and then bounce it so the wind blows away some chaff while the millet falls toward you into a bowl...good times. Also on our way out I got to scare a little kid because he had never seen a white person before...I think he may have been three years old, old enough to run looking back over his shoulder with a constant scared whine that if we had ran after him would have surly turned into an all out scream. FUN TIMES!

At night we slept outside in the Kait's court yard on a large comfortable mattress with a mesh tent on top...very nice...The stars were incredible and for the first time ever I got to see the milky way, very cool...we also took the time to up-date the constellations because I decided that none of the current ones look like what they are called...so we came up with, straight line constellation, bubble letter S constellation, stick figure dog constellation, closed lap top constellation, open lap top constellation and many many other, you should try it out sometime.

In any case it was a lovely trip and a great way to see some of the country...I'll be making more trips don't you worry.

Peace,

Ben

Lucky

Apparently getting nearly 1/3 of the total year's rain fall in 10 hours is a bad thing. So if you didn't see on the news (which you most likely did not) Ouga got way to much rain the other day and we had some flooding issues. 5 people have been reported dead and 150,000 have lost their homes. There are two main roads near my house one to the north the other to the south. The one to the north got washed out in certain areas less than a mile from our house. The main/national/only hospital was flooded and they had to evacuate patience from the some of the wards.

All this took place roughly a mile from our house near the lake no damage here at the house however lucky us. One power supply station was flooded so there have been extra supply problem with electricity. We really only lost power for the day of the storm and part of the next day. Water pressure returned yesterday the storm was on Tuesday/Wednesday. We have been dodging rain since then just kind of waiting for more problems I guess. I'm pretty sure the storm that hit us will soon turn into hurricane Fred and if it doesn't then the east coast of the United States should consider it-self lucky as well.

In other news the bank is almost as much fun as the market. We have a "repose" I believe is the word we have been using here. That is a three hour nap-time from about 12-3. So at the bank come 2:30 there's a long line of people waiting to get in. Oh and the main bank we normally go to got flooded so all their customers were re-routed to the smaller bank around the corner, yay. If you happen to leave more than 4 inches of space between you and the person in-front of you in line, you will be immediately corrected by the 30 people behind you for not moving forward. I rather liked this bank however because I was not greeted at the front door by an AK-47, I'll take the crowd over the gun.

And finally my friend Azz's baby started walking on her own this weekend. That's all I got.

Peace,
Ben

12 times, that's every 2 hours

I've been a little sick the past two days. Let's just say that yesterday I went to the restroom 12 times which averages out to once every two hours, and it wasn't cause I was drinking a lot of water. Andy said something similar happened to him in Ghana and after at time number 8 he could do nothing but laugh. Number 8 wasn't funny for me and neither were #'s 9 through 11, 12 was kind of funny. Any way just one more thing to love about being abroad. I'm not looking forward to getting home and having to let my stomach readjust once again.

I did get to do something fun however. Tuesday night the Peace Corps had their swearing in ceremony at the US ambassador's house (currently vacant). Our group was invited so two of us went as representatives. We've managed to make some friends with some of the volunteers who are entering their second year of service so it was fun to watch them interact with the new group. The cheese quesidillas were very good. We went out dancing afterwards, funny thing about going dancing on a Tuesday night, we were literally the only people in the club. The DJ perceiving that we were a large group of Americans treated us to a 5 or 6 song Michael Jackson tribute to start the night (exactly what we all wanted).

I will not be moving to the Niger boarder in Fada in October. The group wants to find another way to staff that position without splitting up the team we have here in Ouga. Hopefully the will be other opportunities to get around the country to see what my local friend Siddo calls "real Burkina". I could be down in Bobo next week with my friend from World Food Program.

Went to the big central market on Monday. While fun, next time I go I'd like to be able to walk around without attracting an 8 person entourage. Normally a following would be a good thing, but in this case it's just annoying. Seeing as how (mistakenly) white=money everyone wants you to come look at their shop and buy their crap (That one and my next few sentences may be considered insensitive, I don't care you try living here).

So the following crowds in on you starts grabbing you trying to pull you to their shop and apparently never hear the word no. Now I'm sorry but every day someone wants me to buy something from them 1. I don't have the money, 2. If I did have the money I still wouldn't buy it. 3. I'm wearing a pair of sandals why would I buy the one's your trying to sell me? 4. The Burkina soccer jersey I'm wearing only cost 3000cfa, why on earth would I pay 6000cfa for the one you're offering?

Best way to get the Burkiabe to leave you alone when they're trying to sell you something is to joke with them. Hard to do when 6 of them are literally pulling you in different directions and not gently I might add, the kind of tug that gets you hit or yelled at in the States. However the guy with the sandals made the mistake of following us to the taxi. So as he made a finial attempt to sell me the flip-flops he was holding I took mine off and tried to sell them to him. Aside from being far too over stimulating the market was fun.

Sad news about the international school that's located just around the corner from our house; the milkshakes are not as good as the ones from the embassy. I know what you're thinking that's awful news and I couldn't agree more. Good news the United Methodist Church General Board of Discipleship is doing an event in September in the Ivory Coast, I'm going to try and make my way down if the money works out, yay! Those of you who are, good luck starting back with classes.

Peace,
Ben

CHUCK

No there's attention grabbing way to stat this post. We've managed however to make new friends. Turns out the Peace Corps transit house for Burkina Faso is a few blocks away from our house. We ran into a few of them at a restaurant the Friday night. They come and go taking some breaks here from their assigned villages. It's nice to hear their takes on what life is like here. Most have been here longer than we have, although a new batch are sworn in tomorrow night (I'll be there and let you know how it goes).

Any way one new friend's name is Brad but his friend Greg told me it was Chuck so after fifteen minutes of calling him Chuck, then switching to Bryan I finally arrived at Brad. His village is down in the south and he has been gracious in sharing some knowledge with us. It is really good hear some of the local customs explained in better detail that just my brain trying to piece things together is very useful. It's even better to hear that even the peace corps workers have plenty of time when they get board. I think at some point I will have to take some of these guys up on their offers to come out to the villages for a few days when I've got another break.

Other than that things are starting to move into routine mode. May not be the best thing but it's good for motivating me to want to work again. Dealing with the feeling of uselessness during this time off is eating at me. There is plenty of time spent trying to convince myself that the teaching I'm doing (when I'm doing it) is useful, sadly the benefits are not immediately visible, so I'll pray for patience and after 10 years what we're doing should hopefully show up in changes for the better. I envy doctors and people who distribute food, mostly anything where impact is immediately visible, even the trash donkey driver. But that was a lesson learned years ago and something we all need to work on. Almost nothing any of us do will be immediately visible and I think our culture needs a lesson in moving away from instant gratification.

On a lighter note, mango milkshakes are the bomb and the International School Recreation center serves a good breakfast and even has bacon. Our papaya tree has some good looking fruit on it and hopefully soon we will have fresh papaya form the back yard. I'll try and do something interesting in the next few days and then tell you all about it.

peace,
Ben

World at my fingertips

Have some more pictures please.

However I do want to share something that I've been thinking about today.

So today Collins (housemate and old friend) and I went to play a little soccer/football just to get out of the house and get a bit of exercise. Can't really walk down the street here with a soccer ball in your hand without drawing attention. Anyway we made our way to the field near our house. We picked up a small following of street kids. Let's pause here for a vocabulary and culture lesson.

Street kids; kids ranging from young to not as young. Street kids come in wide verities from the street kid who begs for money using a tomato paste can tide to a rope, to the street kids who rummage through trash on the street looking for glass or anything worth some money or food whatever. Some street kids are not legitimate street kids, some have just been sent out by their parents to beg money during the time they would normally be in school, don't be fooled by imitators. (like it really matters, they're frick'n hungry and i can't do anything for them but the take off your finger trick and play some soccer)

Ok so, yeah get pumped we're going to play some soccer with some street kids. Time for some feel good central. Heck yeh let's go! Right you wish, if you thought this would be the thing I find to make me feel useful you're dreaming. There is the distinct possibility that we did provide some joy for these kids for roughly 45 minutes. However I couldn't help but notice that there trash bags full of stuff they would later undoubtedly be selling for some sort of food were sitting on the side of the field. I also couldn't help but notice that our ball kept going into the ditch.

Have I told you about the ditch? If not here's another lesson, the ditch runs all over town, some areas it has an open top others it's covered. It acts primarily as a ditch, which means it also acts as a toilet for, well street kids and anyone else who needs to pee while standing near it. It also acts as a trash can because of all the trash on the street that gets washed into the ditch.

Anyway point is this, yes soccer with the street kids was loads of fun and hopefully it was the same for them. Now imagine telling the kids you have to leave, sorry kids back to the trash piles with you I've got other things to do that don't involve the ditch. What's that we have some water and you're thirsty? Well sure you can have some. Here's where I turned into what I love to hate.

Kids get the water bottle and they fight over it, bigger kids get bigger amounts of water. Pushing ensues and of course I don't like that. So I take control of the water bottle (see if you can follow the metaphor). Each kid will have water so long as I am in control, and as long as I'm in control there will be pushing or fighting. Never mind how you've operated your entire lives and how you will continue to operate when I'm not looking. I'm here now so things will be different and I WILL FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF (not). So I took the water bottle and had the kids stop pushing and poured a little bit into each of their mouths, fairly evenly I might add until we had used all the water and all had something to drink (even the smallest kid). Now how should I feel?

Can't really explain to a street kid that there's no need to fight over what is most likely the only clean water you will see all day. Can't really explain to a street kid that there's plenty of water, shoot I even take a shower almost everyday, sometimes twice and most likely as soon as I'm done playing with you. And who would want to? No, can't change a street kid's reality just because mine is different and I know better. Oh well, hope you had fun playing soccer for 45 minutes.

It's no problem to go out and play soccer with the kids, I do really enjoy it and it's nice to see them smile for a change. I just didn't like the fact that i turned into a first world power controlling the resource and rationing it out. It's just up setting to see the world's political/economic situation played out on the small scale with my hands doing the dealing.

Peace,

Ben

Is that the same cow?

Yesterday (Monday), Siddo took me on an adventure. We left Ouga and headed north. There's a large lake on the north side of Ouga, I had never seen it before yesterday. We traveled about 30 minutes north on the moto, so my lower extremities had been shaken to within an inch of their life. We were heading to a place with stone carvings, a place where loads of artist come from around the world to just make some sculptures for this museum/sculpture garden/person's farm.

On our way in we were greeted by a small heard of cattle that took up the whole road and were moving in the opposite direction. So on our small moto we sat while all the cows passed by us, there was a last minute mounting attempt off our starboard side (not trying to mount us thankfully but I'm still glad i had my helmet on.

We got to the place, I don't know what I was expecting but I'm close to giving up expecting anything. Pretty much there are loads of sculptures and you tour yourself around to look at them all. Along the way you dodge cows, chickens and goats. First thing we came to was a large stone banana. Very nice, then there were loads of carved faces in the rocks, then we turned down a path that went to Ihavenoideawhere. So as we guessed our way through the exhibit we came across a large carved sea turtle, so i took a moment to do my rendition of "Finding Nemo".

So we left sculpture place, after running into our friend the white cow one more time. On our way out we passed back through the heard of cows and i spotted small hill, so we went to climb it. From on that hill I saw some big rocks and junk and body of water. And what do we do when we see large rocks? That's right we climb them. So after i climbed over these large rocks to get on top of the biggest one, I realized there was a much easier way to get up there that didn't involve more than walking, but whatever it was fun for me. On top of the largest rock there was about a 30 or so foot drop down into some water. I checked the depth by tossing a large rock into the water. It's deep enough I thought. "Siddo I wanna jump" he convinced me not to by saying things like "No, no, you shouldn't". Very convincing Siddo I didn't get to jump, I'm tired of things like the threat of disease stopping me from having fun, so what if I'd get some crazy large worm in the bottom of my foot we could take it out. Any way after scaring and being scared by some unreasonably large birds we left.

So then it was off to the Zoo/collection of animals at the president's house. If you're a PETA person I don't recommend going you will only find fault. However if you are a person who likes to look at animals very closely and understand that rich people in Africa have loads of money and often buy themselves some animals, I recommend going.

There were giraffes, one Zebra, some cow/buffalo things from South Africa, I have no idea the best I could do was get the french name for stuff then immediately forget that because a camel or something would come out of no where and scare me. I saw a giraffe, a zebra, an animal with horns, another animal with horns that was shy, a frick'n tiger that was about 2 feet away from me, some baboons, a 7 meter python, large tortus having sex, loudly and for an impressive amount of time in the African heat, saw some small elephants, and got to feed a gigantic hippopotamus. It was a full day. Hippos are fricking scary epically when you've got it's hand by it's mouth which could easily fit half of you inside it. Oh it was fun, but the lions wouldn't come out into the heat of the day, smart lion.

I know what you're thinking, must have been crowed, probably couldn't get to the glass to see anything good. Oh no, there was a grand total of 5 of us taking this tour and the only thing between me and that tiger was a small fence, same goes for the hippo, they python, baboons, crocodiles, and hiding lions. I got to scratch a hyena, and feed one of those horned animals not to mention the hippo, that's right, he was a hungry hungry hippo. All in all a good outing.

Later I went to my friend Azedeen's house to work on some English with him. Then he took me to this restaurant, one of the nicest restaurants I've ever been in. It is called Godavan, it has four themed rooms and off the chain food and through the roof prices. Turns out the manager is one of the guys that played in the tennis tournament last week. Fun times. Well that's an up date.

Peace

Ben