Apologies for the delay in blog entries (this one was actually written 5 days ago but we haven't had internet til now). Life has certainly been busy with meeting people, language tutoring, hosting other volunteers, my first week long teacher inservice, and making home. I realized this week that we’ve already completed over 10% of our service here. Holy cow! Here’s a couple highlights.
Floby
Jessi and I forgot to mention it last blog, but on our third night in Tougan we had a great opportunity for cultural integration: a Floby concert. Floby is a Burkinabé musician, who has sort of been a one-hit-wonder during our time here. All during training the Burkina television would play this one music video of his over and over, and the radio played this one song over and over. So we went with Nick, another volunteer from nearby, and Alice, Jessi’s counterpart, to this Floby concert. To no one’s surprise, the 8pm concert started at 11 (we are getting more accustomed to West African International Time, aka WAIT). It was sort of an outdoor venue, as most Burkinabe events are, with a covered center pavilion for Floby to perform on, and the audience sitting around the center. We had seats right up front. As we were waiting for the concert to start we kept noticing that the distant lightning wasn’t so distant anymore, and with the wind picking up we knew a storm was imminent.
Floby hadn’t been on the stage for more than two minutes when the rain started to pour. Everyone picked up their chairs and flooded the stage where Floby was performing, leaving him about a square yard to lip sync and dance in. Then about halfway thru the concert the sound system went out, and they couldn’t get it to come back on. Sound systems, and particularly microphones, here are pretty crappy and unreliable, which is why most musicians simply lip sync and dance instead of taking their chances with microphones. The system finally came online again for one last song, the infamous one from our training. Out of nowhere Floby came over to Nick and pulled him up from his seat to dance with him for about 15 seconds. People went wild, and we all thought it was hilarious. Then a minute later some of Nicks friends, Alice, and myself pushed Jessi out onto the stage to dance with him, which he had no objection to. The concert really turned out to be quite an event when all was said and done, and was certainly not something we expected to be doing three days into our life in Tougan.
My Birthday – Warning! FOOD rant
Our second week in Tougan my birthday rolled around, and Jessi worked some miracles to make the day special. She started the day off with a stack of pancakes and some black-raspberry syrup and then let me play games on the computer all morning. While I was enjoying that, Jessi was out on the town trying to figure out how to get ground beef. She went to a restaurant where we knew we’d seen it before, and they had somebody run and buy the beef, and then taught her how they put it through the grinder and cook it up for their meals. She said it was quite an experience and a lot of fun for everyone involved. She came home, made some homemade salsa, homemade tortillas, homemade lemonade, and taco meat using a packet of seasoning my parents had sent. She had also got our dutch oven set up and baked me a cake with chocolate frosting for my birthday. That evening we made popcorn and had a few friends over for popcorn, cake, and lemonade. They were all really impressed with the cake (you can’t find anything like cake back home here), and equally impressed with the dutch oven itself, and the lemonade. We wrapped up the day with a game of Phase 10. It was a really fun day for both of us.
Making home
I paid our first electric bill here this month, so I guess that means that we are official residents! We’ve slowly but surely been getting the furniture we ordered, which has really made our house feel more like home. We’re working on planting some flowers, trees, and other shrubs in our giant courtyard of nothing. I’ve come one step closer to being a true Burkinabé by weeding our courtyard of anything green that wasn’t actually planted there. Its kind of depressing that the end result is a much browner courtyard, but considering we don’t want rodents and have seen two scorpions in the house, the brown courtyard is probably worth it. We’ve got a kitten picked out that will be making home with us soon, if we can ever find a vet with a rabies vaccination. It’s all kept us very busy but has been a lot of fun to do.
Yaro’s family
We’ve felt very privileged to have met some really great people in Tougan already, especially the Yaro family. We met Mr. Yaro, who was assigned as our language tutor, on our site visit to Tougan when he had us over to his house for supper with his family both nights. There are seven kids in their family, plus a nephew and a girl that helps with house work. According to what Yaro told us, we are now to be included in those numbers too. Supper at the Yaro’s has become somewhat of a tradition for us now, and we probably share supper with them five nights a week. We’ve had a lot of fun watching TV, eating good food, and discussing cultural things together. We’ve had a good time doing language tutoring with Mr. Yaro too, which has been centered around reading the national newspaper aloud together to improve our horrid pronunciation, and discussing the current happenings around our host country. The Yaro family has really made us feel welcome here, and I can’t imagine how different it would be without them.
Ramadan
Yesterday marked the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Muslim holidays are on a lunar (11 month) calendar, so they fall at a different time every year, and nobody is exactly sure when the dates will fall until the night before, which makes it a little exciting. The end of Ramadan is marked with massive celebrations, and we joined in with our friends and neighbors and the Yaro family in celebrating. The night before Ramadan the Yaro girls helped Jessi put henna ‘tatoos’ on her hands and feet to prepare for the festival, and Jessi helped the neighbor girls make little gateau (cake like things) since they had invited us to eat with them. The morning of Ramadan we went to the Yaro house to help with food preparations, which were a lot of fun. We spent the afternoon and evening visiting neighbors and friends to wish them a ‘Happy Ramadan’ and share little candies with their kids. This visiting of nearby neighbors and friends is a cool little tradition that crosses religious boundaries, as Christians will go visit their Muslim friends to celebrate Ramadan and Tabasky, and Muslims will visit their Christian friends to celebrate Easter and Christmas. At every house we went to we were offered immense amounts of food and drink, and partook in more than our bodies could really handle. According to Jessi, it definitely ranked in her top ten “I’ve never eaten so much in my life” days. It was our first real holiday in Burkina and it was a lot of fun. Jessi and I are already trying to figure out how to make Christmas cookies to share with everyone, and are searching for fabric so we can have new clothes made for the next festival (Tabasky).
Like I said, life overall here has been very good here. We hope to get photos up online of Tougan soon, but we really don’t want to flash around our camera just yet. We’ve certainly felt homesick on a number of days, and we miss everyone back home a lot. Thank you all so much for your prayers, emails, letters, packages, and phone calls. I don’t know what we’d do without them. Until next time!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Swear-In... Its official!
We made it through training and have officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers! The last two weeks have been very exciting for us, full of changes and transition. We left our training city of Ouahigouya on August 23rd for the capital city of Ouagadougou. In Ouaga, Tyler and I enjoyed ourselves immensely with Chinese food, hamburgers, pizza, burritos, and even fried calamari (all the sort of things you can’t readily find outside of the capital)! Our swear-in ceremony was on August 25th and was held at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, which is right next to the U.S. embassy. There were nearly 200 people at the ceremony, including Burkina’s Minister of Primary Education. It was, in my opinion, a very successful event that really pumped us up for the next two years of service. The day after the ceremony, Tyler and I headed for our new home, Tougan.
Since our visit to Tougan last month, our opinion of the small city has remained positive and optimistic. We have had an extraordinary time in Tougan so far with visits to the marché (market), friendly conversations with neighbors, and meals eaten with my homologue Alice and our tutor Yaro. Almost everyone we interact with is incredibly kind and good humored. Tyler and I have found ourselves at one of the local cafés, Vis-à-vis, several times to partake in what we believe is the best yogurt in Burkina. We have also discovered a very scrumptious chicken soup (which is more like a big piece of chicken in broth than the noodles, meat, and veggies that people in the US usually consume) at Hotel Nerwaya, and a very acceptable ground beef sandwich, again, at Vis-à-vis. (Yes, we recognize that we have talked about food several times already in this blog, but it’s always a treat to enjoy something here that is not just rice! – yes Tom, I admit it, rice can be quite a bore J)
Life in Tougan, more than it has afforded us with good food options, has finally allowed us some of the independence we lacked during training. We have had a blast cooking for ourselves again (tuna melts have never tasted so good), organizing our new house, and having significantly more control over our daily schedule. Tyler has done a fantastic job searching our plants for our courtyard – lemon grass/citronella (which mosquitoes don’t like) and mint (which flies don’t like – both of which will make an exceptional tea). We are also looking forward to planting numerous flowers and trees, most of which produce fruit, but of course not before we leave Burkina. Perhaps some of the familial green thumb has finally rubbed off on Tyler (though he is skeptical to see if anything he has planted will survive). We also painted the inside of our house with a turquoise-like color, all with the help of our new friend Salam, the son of our landlord.
Salam has been a great help to us in our first few days here, fixing broken lights, painting, negotiating difficult rope for our clothesline, and dealing with our still broken French. All of it he has done with great enthusiasm, never asking for anything in return, except to practice some of his English. Salam, like many Muslims here right now, is also fasting for Ramadan. Fasting meaning no food or water during day-light hours. It is an amazing feat considering that those observing the fast still work all day in the fields, often in the scorching heat!
Fortunately, it has cooled down the last few days with a sudden downpour of rain. Unfortunately, however, that has meant major flooding for Ouagadougou and other parts of Burkina. The damage is significant, including impassable roads, falling bridges, and destroyed homes. Alice, who is originally from the Ouaga area, says she has never seen a flood like it. No flooding has occurred in Tougan, but we are worried about our Peace Corps comrades in and around Ouaga. We hope to hear more updates soon.
Other than that, Tyler and I have been spending most of our time getting comfortable in our house, having furniture made, doing two weeks worth of laundry, and all in all relishing in the time spent “making home” in our first home together.
Jessi
Since our visit to Tougan last month, our opinion of the small city has remained positive and optimistic. We have had an extraordinary time in Tougan so far with visits to the marché (market), friendly conversations with neighbors, and meals eaten with my homologue Alice and our tutor Yaro. Almost everyone we interact with is incredibly kind and good humored. Tyler and I have found ourselves at one of the local cafés, Vis-à-vis, several times to partake in what we believe is the best yogurt in Burkina. We have also discovered a very scrumptious chicken soup (which is more like a big piece of chicken in broth than the noodles, meat, and veggies that people in the US usually consume) at Hotel Nerwaya, and a very acceptable ground beef sandwich, again, at Vis-à-vis. (Yes, we recognize that we have talked about food several times already in this blog, but it’s always a treat to enjoy something here that is not just rice! – yes Tom, I admit it, rice can be quite a bore J)
Life in Tougan, more than it has afforded us with good food options, has finally allowed us some of the independence we lacked during training. We have had a blast cooking for ourselves again (tuna melts have never tasted so good), organizing our new house, and having significantly more control over our daily schedule. Tyler has done a fantastic job searching our plants for our courtyard – lemon grass/citronella (which mosquitoes don’t like) and mint (which flies don’t like – both of which will make an exceptional tea). We are also looking forward to planting numerous flowers and trees, most of which produce fruit, but of course not before we leave Burkina. Perhaps some of the familial green thumb has finally rubbed off on Tyler (though he is skeptical to see if anything he has planted will survive). We also painted the inside of our house with a turquoise-like color, all with the help of our new friend Salam, the son of our landlord.
Salam has been a great help to us in our first few days here, fixing broken lights, painting, negotiating difficult rope for our clothesline, and dealing with our still broken French. All of it he has done with great enthusiasm, never asking for anything in return, except to practice some of his English. Salam, like many Muslims here right now, is also fasting for Ramadan. Fasting meaning no food or water during day-light hours. It is an amazing feat considering that those observing the fast still work all day in the fields, often in the scorching heat!
Fortunately, it has cooled down the last few days with a sudden downpour of rain. Unfortunately, however, that has meant major flooding for Ouagadougou and other parts of Burkina. The damage is significant, including impassable roads, falling bridges, and destroyed homes. Alice, who is originally from the Ouaga area, says she has never seen a flood like it. No flooding has occurred in Tougan, but we are worried about our Peace Corps comrades in and around Ouaga. We hope to hear more updates soon.
Other than that, Tyler and I have been spending most of our time getting comfortable in our house, having furniture made, doing two weeks worth of laundry, and all in all relishing in the time spent “making home” in our first home together.
Jessi
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