That's a wrap

After the somewhat ominous last line of our previous blog entry, I really should've followed up sooner. However, as it was, our lives got really busy from that moment on and we never really got down to writing the next/final installment. Here's the quick-and-dirty version:

In early April we returned back to school, but students' motivation was at an all time low. Attendance dropped severely. I personally added some afternoon and weekend classes to get students up to speed, but the attendance of those supplementary classes was worse than ever, so I decided it was best to just proceed as normal.

Towards the end of April there was further unrest with the military, and the Peace Corps decided to consolidate volunteers into clusters for a week so that it would be easier to keep track of everyone. As one of the consolidation sites, we welcomed 10 other volunteers to Tougan. Over the course of their stay they joined in on Jessi's dance club practice and girls club activities, cut veggies for an annual black-eyed-peas cooking contest, participated my English club, and celebrated Easter with our neighbors and family in Tougan. All in all, it was actually an enjoyable week.

Jessi was extremely busy in April and May collaborating with community members to put on a girls conference on planning for the future. All of Jessi's efforts paid off brilliantly with the three day conference at the end of May. Speakers from the community talked about everything from resume building, to the challenges of being a mom who attends high school, to setting goals for the next 5, 10 and 20 years, to learning about the necessary steps to attend college or work for the government, to job shadowing at the various employers and agencies in Tougan. I was lucky enough to sit in on a couple of the sessions and see the conference play out. The conference ended with closing ceremonies for the two girls clubs and the conference, and we were happy to welcome PC Burkina Director Shannon and our friend Bovard to the ceremony. This conference was an incredible culminating event for her service, and she did an incredible job of collaborating closely with the community members to provide a insightful program for the 30 girls that attended.

The end of the school year followed shortly after, but not without further problems. The last week of school the teachers went on strike, which threw me in to an interesting political situation: as a volunteer, I'm supposed to teach unless the school administration tells me not to. So, I continued teaching. On Wednesday when I arrived at school the teachers informed me that nobody was teaching that day, including me. After feeling a little awkward about teaching the past two days I decided I probably should just give it a rest, and dropped my briefcase in the classroom and called Peace Corps to inform them. As I walked back into the room, two of my colleagues came in, dismissed my students, picked up my briefcase, and walked out of the room. My colleagues understood PC policy and didn't hold it against me, but more or less relieved me of my obligations. I have to admit, it was a relief!

School coming to an end was bittersweet. The students hadn't learned as much as they should've, and that wasn't their fault. I tried my best to make up for that, but in exhauation realized it was beyond my power. I was glad this bizarre, roller coaster second half of the school year was finished, but wished the past few months had gone differently.

In early June we welcomed our good friends Jen, Justin and Vern to Burkina for a visit. We got a real scare just before they came as a military camp declared mutiny, but the situation was handled before the friends arrived. Vern gave the whole airport a show as he charged at Jessi and I and carried us a good 10 yards. (Our taxi driver was convinced that Vern was professional wrestler, and imitated wrestling slams as out taxi swerved down the roads of Ouaga). These three got a different trip flavor than the Vachtas, complete with public transportation, hot-and-humid weather, mangoes, digestive issues, and biking. Vern even got to be a tow truck has he sat on the back of a moto and pulled his pedal-less bike back to the hotel. We got to spend some great time with our friends, family and neighbors in Tougan. We did some touristy things like seeing hippos, visiting the cascades and taking a dip in a pool as well. They brought flag T-shirts for our friends, candy and frisbees for the kids, and people absolutely loved them. We got in some much needed chill-time, and they got to meet a bunch of our PCV friends. It was incredible and meaningful to us for them to come all that way to visit us (on Jen's only week of vacation) and see first-hand our lives in Burkina.

With the month and a half that remained we tackled the paperwork involved in leaving Peace Corps (a governmental organization, need we say more). We had the privilege of meeting the two volunteers who followed us, and showing about 10 different volunteers around Tougan. We also set about taking photos of the people and places we knew and loved. Saying good bye took a long time, and was anything but easy. People were incredibly generous, as they always had been. Our friends and colleagues really affirmed the work that Jessi and I did. Students stopped by to thank me, parents of Jessi's girls voiced their appreciation of all her work, my vice principal bragged to our replacements about the work we did, the superintendant's office threw a going-away party for Jessi and presented her with a certificate, neighbors came by with gifts and kind words. Saying good bye was hard. The neighbor kids. Our friends. Our Burkinabe family. The morning that we left our house for the last time the neighbor kids came over for one last good bye. Brahima, the oldest and most loyal of the boys, started tearing up and had to walk away, leaving us blurry eyed all the way to the bus stop. Good byes didn't stop there, and our family the Yaros took the five hour bumpy ride to Ouaga to have one more meal with us and see us off at the airport.

As of August 18th, 2009, Jessi and I became RPCVs - Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. It was truly surreal at first, and it still is. When we got on that airplane and left, we were emotionally exhausted, and couldn't fathom what it was going to be anywhere but Burkina. Now, after a 3 week COS trip and visiting family and friends back in the US for a month and a half, it is still unreal, but in a different way. It almost feels like Burkina was a dream. A good dream.

We really haven't slowed down enough to process it all, but I'm sure that it'll be a very emotional time when we do. Here's what I can say for the moment:

Peace Corps Burkina was an intense, and overwhelming experience. Learning to live and work in another culture, speak a new language, and be thousands of miles away from the people we knew and loved was challenging. The flood of tastes, smells, textures, colors, storms and living conditions on our physical senses were so much more intense than we knew in the convenient, sterilized, air conditioned US. Realizing how insignificant and limited we are was profoundly humbling. It was equaling hubling to learn to accept the moving generosity of those who have much less than we do. Witnessing the impact we had, the growth that we made, the height of the trees we planted, and the appreciation of our community was empowering. Reflecting on the limited opportunities and pitiful resources afforded to intelligent kids and motivated adults was disheartening. Hearing the hopeful aspirations and dreaming of a better future for our friends and neighbors in Burkina was motivating. Sharing holiday meals with Muslims and Christians, without animosity, where the human bond came first, was heartwarming.

Burkina has changed us far more than we have changed it. "Thank you" US taxpayers for supporting the Peace Corps and continue pushing your congressmen to support the PC - our annual budget is less than the cost of 5 hours of the Iraq war. Thank you family and friends for your emails, calls, letters, packages and support over the past two years.

Education on Hold...

Safety First

First of all, you may have heard that Burkina has been experiencing some political unrest, dating back to the end of February, continuing today. There have been a number of protests, but the situation IS NOT anything like what has happened in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Ivory Coast, etc. You can search for news on Burkina, but be warned that some of the stories are highly embellished, and the french word for “military transport” has been mistranslated as “tank” in a few stories. Jessi and I are both safe and sound, presently in the capital. Peace Corps keeps us very informed about the security situation. It's hard to read about these things from 4000 miles away and not worry, but please rest assured that we are safe and being taken care of.

Classes Canceled

One of the effects of this month long political unrest is that elementary schools, high schools, and universities have been closed since the end of February (more or less). Schools attempted to resume classes Monday, but by Wednesday were already shut down again.

Unfortunately, school closures are not a dream come true for anyone. The kids are BORED out of their minds! Just one week into the closure our neighbor kids began to congregate under our hangar to avoid the sun and simply hang out. They were willing to do anything to stay busy: wash dishes, sweep the dirt courtyard, go out to the bush to find firewood, etc (though Burkinabe children are generally more willing, dare I say happy, to do chores.) Perhaps half of Burkina's high school teachers are employed by the government and continue to receive a paycheck during the closures. However, the other half are temporary contract workers, who get paid only for the hours they actually teach.

For Jessi and I, the closures have meant being frustrated and bored. Jessi gave her best efforts to continue clubs, but the students didn't show up. Parents seem to think that since school is closed that the girls shouldn't go to club, despite those girls being as bored as everyone else. I lesson planned a lot at first, in an effort to get ahead, but in the middle of the second week my motivation really dropped.

The situation here is particularly complicated for students in exam classes, who have exit tests at the end of the year. These students are at a serious disadvantage because they have missed so much school. If a blank year is declared, everyone loses. A blank year was declared one year after long standing political unrest, which meant that the school year ended early and none of the students advanced to the next year. That means everyone is one year behind in a system where students already graduate late, and that schools and parents have wasted one years worth of school funding.

Where it's Way Worse

In a talk about humanitarian work vs. development this past week, our country director Shannon talked about her work in various crisis situations over the years, including in Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, and Guinea. She talked about international requirements for basic needs in disaster situations, and refugee camps in particular: 20 liters of water per day, per person, 1 outhouse for 40 people, basic shelter basic medical care, etc. One of the basic needs that is not covered by international law is that of education.

When we hear of refugee camps, we think of people fleeing their homes with nothing, and settling in these camps for short periods of time. The unfortunate reality is that many of these conflicts are not short term, and that people spend years of their lives in these camps. Few of these refugees are granted refuge in the US or Places like Somalia and Uguanda have sustained long term conflicts for over two decades. That means nearly two decades that virtually no one in the country has attended school, resulting in a generation of people that have no formal education. In a couple of decades this generation will be responsible for leading their country. As if the countries weren't going to be messed up enough already from the conflict. It's like their being setup for further unrest and failure.

It's important for Westerners to remember that war, military coups, genocide, etc. are NOT parts of everyday life in most African countries, though watching a 24 hour news station may give you the opposite impression. Poverty, hardship, and tragedy disproportionately effect this continent, but we can't simply dismiss these atrocities and say “that's just how it is in Africa.” After living in Burkina for nearly two years, I know that it's not normal here. I know that my friends and neighbors are proud of Burkina's relatively peaceful past. I know they want a bright future for their children, and work for it daily. Of course they do. I'm hopeful. They're my kids too.

Acts of Kindness and Saying Thank You

So it all started the other day when our neighbor boy Brahima asked to borrow my bike to run an errand. Brahima does a lot for us, from watering our trees to taking care of our cats while we're gone, so I didn't hesitate to let him take it and run his errands. However, our definitions of being back “in a few minutes” differed slightly, and I found myself irritated when he arrived back over an hour later, as I myself needed to run errands now.

“Where's his bike?” I thought to myself. I knew that his family had a bike, so why couldn't he use their bike for errands. As it turned out the front tire had chunks of rubber missing and the air chamber had seen better days as well. The situation wasn't new, but the family just hadn't fixed the bike yet. I thought about the situation briefly. Should I just fix it for them? Should I just leave it for their family? It is their bike after all, and I can't fix it every time it breaks. Well, after all the ghosts of Christmases past, this scrooge decided to fix the bike. What kid shouldn't have a bike to ride?

Well the bike tire fix turned out to be more expensive than I expected. It cost $6 for the new tire and $1 for the air chamber, which adds up to a full day's pay for me here. This family, like many others around us, lives off subsistence farming and sells peanuts and grain on the side to pay for their kids education. They might make $7 in a week.

So I brought the tire and air chamber back home, and the kids were thrilled. Like most 10 year olds here, they knew how to take off the old tire and install the new one. When all was said and done they had a working bike, at least to Burkinabe standards. (I noted that one of the pedals was missing as well, and that the chain falls off the bent gears. Next time...) Brahima rode off to show his dad that the bike was fixed.

As is customary here, his father promptly came over to thank us. But it was no small thank you. He held his elbow as he shook my hand, which is a sign of respect. He lifted my hand up in the air above his head as he wished blessing after blessing upon Jessi and I. This was certainly the most extravagant thank you I'd ever seen, but it didn't stop there.

Brahima's dad told the whole neighborhood that we fixed their bike, so every time we ran into someone they stopped to shake our hand and thank us, even though it wasn't for them or their family. We even had some of our other neighbors come over to our house to thank us and give their benedictions. Phew! I guess it's sort of a West-African thing. If someone does something nice for you but you can't repay them you tell everyone about the good deed. It's a form of social credit. I guess we've just never seen it to that level.

The day after he came over again to thank us (to let us know that he really appreciated it and hadn't forgotten it). We said it was no problem, that the kids do a lot for us and that we're happy to help.

He told us that the kids aren't just his but the whole neighborhood's, and thus ours. The village is responsible for the child, but the child is responsible to the whole village as well. It's another way people are intimately connected with their neighbors here. Its a good thing.

Eating Seasonally

March 2011 Uploads

A short photo album of life in Burkina. Check out Brian's Facebook for photos from their trip.

Eating Seasonally
Are we obsessed with food? Yes. I would say so, but this time I want to obsess about the things we DO get to eat here. In most developping countries what you eat is closely linked to the season. Back home I know this happens to some extent as well. But you can get canned/frozen corn, green beans, fruits, etc at grocery stores for very cheap. Surprisingly canned food is rare and expensive here. The only canned food that people rugularly purchase is tomato paste. Thus, any other fruit or vegetable consumed has picked from somebody's orchard or garden only a day or two before it's eaten.

The Wonders
Eating seasonal fruits and vegetables means that they're being eaten at their peak ripeness, enhanced by the fact that most of our fruits and veggies come from less than 60 miles away. I can't remember the last time I bit into a carrot in the US and thought "wow, that tastes amazing!" Part of that is that, yes, our food selection here is limited. But the carrots back home sit in stores and refrigerators forever, and while they may still be cruncy, they are usually not fresh tasting like they are here. Lettuce is in season here as well, meaning lots of salads over the past month (well washed lettuce, don't worry). Back in the US I don't find lettuce to be very flavorful or exciting, bar garden grown lettuce during the summer.

The other cool thing about eating seasonally is that you're looking forward to what's just around the seasonal corner. Mangos and potatos are just arriving, something I've been looking forward to all year. When you can't get access to something all the time you appreciate it a lot more.

The Struggles
The downside to all of the seasonal eating here is that there is no other choice. People in the US has the option to eat seasonally/locally, or buy as much imported and preserved food as they like. Here, there is no other option (unless you live in the capital city). On top of that, food does not preserve here well. The heat severly reduces the shelf life of most fresh fruits and veggies here. When potato season arrived last year I wanted to buy 100 pounds of potatos and just save them in our house. I was sad to learn that a sack of potatoes will last 2 weeks in the coldest part of our house, whereas it would last months in the basement back home. Onions go bad in a month or so. Tomatos may last two days on the counter. Green beans that aren't eaten the same day get limp. The inability to conserve fruits and veggies means that we can only buy groceries for a day or two at a time, meaning frequent visits to our fruit and veggie ladies.

Seasonal eating becomes a struggle in May and June when nothing is in season, and it's even hard to find decent onions. People make sauces with dried leaves and dried tomatos, which have an oddly sour taste here. Mangos and Karité fruit (which Shea butter is derived from) are in season, but it's hard to make a meal out of them.

In sum, I think seasonal eating has made me appreciate the food I eat more than I did back home, though some days I would trade it for convenience.

What would you do if...a sorceress lived next door?

Well, I'll bet that most of you have never contemplated such a question. About two months ago an old woman moved into our neighborhood. We first met her when she came over to our house to ask for food and work. We said we would pay her to sweep our yard (Side note: It actually is like that scene from the Flintstones where Betty rubble is sweeping the dirt off the dirt floor. That happens here all the time, and the world actually does look better for it). After she swept our yard a couple of our neighbors warned us to keep our distance from her, that she was a sorceress.

How do you know someone practices sorcery? The fact that she lives alone and has no family are pretty solid grounds in and of themselves for accusing someone of sorcery here. Additionally, people claim to seen her practicing sorcery (making incantations, working with certain local plants).

What is sorcery here? Well it's a sort of “black magic” I guess (not voodoo) that certain people practice to cause harm to others. Sorcery can only be used for bad things. Everyone here seems to believe in it, from village kids to well educated citizens. When bad times befall a family, particularly with mysterious deaths, sorcery is to blame. Our neighbors are all firm in their belief that sorcery exists, and there's no changing that.

So what's complicated? Well it's that whole “be kind to your neighbors” thing. The woman is very very poor, so if she comes begging for food we want to help her out. However, in doing so our neighbors believe we are ignoring their well-intentioned advice to stay away from her. More than that, our neighbors believe she could cause harm to their families, and we are helping her! I can understand why they would feel insulted! Do I believe she can cause harm to their families? No. Therefore, I should continue to be neighborly to her, right? The complicated thing is being kind and neighborly to her without hurting the good relations we have established with our neighbors, which are extremely important to us here. I know that it involves finding a balance, but I'm just not sure where that lies yet.

Sante Avant Tout

“Health Comes First”

This past week we mourned the death of one of my 11th grade students, and the child of one of my 12th grade students, both of whom died after unidentified short term illnesses. I wasn't particularly close to the students in either case, but I was shocked by their sudden deaths. Hence, a reflection on perspectives of health and death in Burkina.

Dealing with Death
Death of a classmate isn't entirely uncommon in the USA. Indeed, most classes are rocked by a death of a classmate at least once during their four years of high school. These deaths are most often due to alcohol, an accident, or a long term battle with illness. In the USA it is incredibly rare to see someone die of a short term illness. What, with incredible medical facilities and endless batteries of tests that can be conducted on a person, doctors are skilled at pinpointing the cause of most illnesses and putting patients on a course of resolution.

Not the case in Burkina. In both of these cases the cause of death isn't known, nor will it ever be known. The doctors weren't ever entirely sure what the student and baby were suffering from, and autopsies are too expensive to be conducted in already overwhelmed medical facilities (except in situations where foul-play is suspected). The deaths were a surprise, but not as out-of-the-ordinary as back home. The statistics for Burkina say a lot: one out of ten children dies before the age of one, and another before the age of five (compared to 1 out of 100 in the US), the national life expectancy is just under 50 years (thirty years less than in the US), and less than half of the population is over 17 (in the USA the median age is 35). In addition to the student and baby this week, I went to three funerals in the past six months for men in their 30s that died after very short illnesses. After 18 months here, I am still surprised at how readily people accept not knowing why the person died. People don't search for the cause because there is nothing to gain by knowing it. There's nothing more to do for the deceased, and there's probably no way to prevent it from happening again. God gives, God takes, and there's no one to blame for it. Death, even of a young and healthy person, is just a normal part of life.

Health Comes First
The phrase “Santé avant tout” literally means “health before everything,” and is taken pretty seriously here. If you're not in good health you should stay home and get better. The theory certainly stood up when Jessi and I had dengué fever last year and spent 10 days in bed. The theory is, once your health goes, there's no way to get it back, which is truer here than back home. Little illnesses can escalate quickly anywhere. For Americans, this escalation means more expensive medical bills, a longer recovery, and sometimes long-term complications. Not the case here. Death is a real possibility, and given the limited medical care available, it is sometimes unavoidable.

Medical Facilities
The contrast between medical facilities couldn't be starker than between Burkina and the USA. In the United States hospitals are filled with the latest gadgets and instruments to poke and prod you until a diagnosis can be made. People in the worst of situations can often be kept (medically) alive almost indefinitely. Babies born well below their birth-weight or with serious birth defects can grow up to be healthy and strong kids.

Admittedly, Burkina is doing better at providing widespread health care to people than a lot of countries. In a city of 30,000 people there is one ambulance, one hospital, and one clinic, staffed by a dozen or so nurses and a doctor (in Burkina there is 1 doctor for every 25,000 inhabitants). There is no access to an X-Ray machine, respirator, stomach pump, ultrasound, or a medical laboratory. Simple surgeries can be performed here if absolutely necessary, but recovery time is incredibly long and risks of infection are high. The primary clients of hospitals are pregnant women and people hard-hit by malaria. For every-day illnesses people simply go to the pharmacy, tell the pharmacist their symptoms, and buy the medication on the spot. (You can actually just tell the pharmacist what you want, like antibiotics or cholesterol meds, and get them without a prescription.) The big medical miracles here over the past 20 years have been decreased mortality for mothers and babies during childbirth (still 1 out of 100 mothers die during childbirth, compared with 1 out of 5000 in the US), and the implementation of medications to combat serious cases of malaria, which are actually quite significant.

Mental Disabilities
Mental illness in Burkina is present in entirely different ways than back home. The prevalence of mental illness is exacerbated here by malnutrition and lack of treatment. Facilities for the mentally ill are virtually non-existent here. Most often people with mental illnesses do not have a family to live with and will roam the streets, partially clothed (at best) in dirt-brown clothes that have never been washed, yelling nonsense at passers-by, begging for food and money. As Jessi and I witnessed in horror, many of the mentally ill are abused by store owners and restaurant owners that literally beat them away so they won't bother their clients (these same owners can be very generous in giving left-over food and provisions to the same people under good circumstances). During my family's visit, we were walking down a street in Ouaga and my parents were shocked to see a man in the dirt-brown clothing scooting along the road on his hands, with the stubs of his legs dragging on the ground, begging for food and money. It's a sad, disturbing sight, but one has to wonder how much more humane it is to hiding the mentally ill in an asylum away from the public's eyes.

Physical Disabilities
Physical disabilities are surprisingly well supported for many people here. There are numerous associations that help people afflicted with physical disabilities gain access to the Burkinabé equivalent of a wheel-chair (which is actually more like a hand-powered tricycle, and is designed more for people to get around a village than inside a building). Many of the physical disabilities here are a direct result of polio, a disease which most Americans have been vaccinated against, though the vaccinations have only been in Burkina for a decade or two.

What to think?
Hard to know really. I could rant for hours probably without coming up with a conclusive commentary, so I guess I'll leave that for you to ponder. My one additional thought: in America it seems that people have come to expect medical miracles daily (and threaten malpractice suits if the miracles don't turn out right). Don't get me wrong, I appreciate medical miracles immensely, especially when my loved ones are benefiting from them, but expecting so much seems wrong after living in a place where one can't even imagine, much less hope for, such great things.