I wanna burn out bright: October 2009

Hey friends and family. I've now been at site for 2 months and still enjoying it. Things related to work are slow and frustrating, but village life and making friends is going really well. There is so much happening and so many great people there. However, I stayed a little long and am quite glad to have a couple days break and see some other volunteers a bit in the capital. Start the journey back tomorrow though. The following was written originally in my journal but has been edited for your viewing pleasure :)

September 24, 2009

It's 8am and all I've done today is bucket shower, fed my cat, ate breakfast, washed dishes, doctored my semi-infected mosquito bites, cleaned bloody fish, cooked and served said fish; pas des problems. I feel like I could stop for the day and be accomplished, but I've still got to go get water, clean a lot more dishes, clean my house, try and study 2 languages I need to learn, go talk with about 10 different people, cook again, try to do something/learn something related to Girls Education in Bilanga, all while checking in on my cat who thinks he's starving every couple hours. Pas des problems, as long as I don't have to repeat yesterday.

Yesterday started with a nice but not so relaxing bike ride as I was really too tired. After that was the usual bucket bath, eat, try to read a little. Then I decided I really needed to do laundry, I leave for 5 minutes to get soap and come back to find my cat looking like he's going to die because some little kid hurt him. And while most of the time I don't really like the cat, he's still mine and my responsibility but I really hope when he gets bigger he's not so needy. So I finished my laundry which quite frankly is hard and I do not enjoy, but it has to be done.

All this is happening while this horrible smell is coming from my house of fish that my neighbor/brother gave me the night before but I didn't know what to do with. My other neighbor comes but I ask her and she tells me I need to do it asap or it will become "gater" or spoiled. But I seriously don't know what to do, the fish is still whole and I know some need to be gutted before cooked. As the day before I went with my friend to the dam and watched her buy and clean the fish to prepare them to fry and sell.

My neighbor tells me she'll come back in a little to help. My counterpart comes and tells me to throw it out but then my neighbor comes back and it is embarrassing, hilarious and fun cooking with her. It's tricky a bit because I don't have the same things as the people in my village do for cooking and I also have no experience with this. The two times I think I've prepared fish, it came frozen in a box and I all I had to do was stick it in the oven. Most people here have never heard of an oven.

Though eating here has made me realize how wasteful we are as Americans. For example, the meat we buy comes ready and simple, but how much meat was thrown out before you get the pieces you wan? Here, if possible, you eat it. People are starving here but you wouldn't realize it at first because there is always a lot of food around. But in reality, most people just eat a little at a time of the stuff they have to buy and all other time it is To, which only temporarily feeds the appetite, it doesn't really feed the body, nor does most of the food they have here. I find myself wanting to eat a lot more than necessary because my diet always seems to be lacking something, and I have more money than others to get whatever food I really want, that's available.

Anyways, background info. So we prepare the fish but my neighbor/brother comes and tastes it and says it's gone bad already. So he has to go throw out this big pot of fish and I feel like such a failure. He assures me it's fine but I know it is not, he worked hard to catch that fish and if he had sold it he could've made enough money to eat off of for a couple days, or eat the fish himself. It was the only food I've really seen go to waste since coming to Burkina.

But Burkinabe are patient and understanding. I feel like I've made 100 mistakes here but people keep helping me out, showing me the way. My brother went fishing again the next night and this morning we prepared the fish together and it turned out really good.

After the fish extravaganza, my 2 brothers retrieved 2 watermelons, or pas sec, which were a treat except for one of my brothers sliced his finger (really really badly, should have gone to doctor) and I tried to doctor him up. I played guitar with someone for a while, actually I watched him play. Then I visited several people before calling it a night and despite the unbearable heat I managed to crash quickly and deeply, of course, after feeding my ever hungry cat.

For someone who strongly believes in a common worldwide humanity, sometimes I am really taken aback by how different it is here. More than anything its just exposure, living in village definitely limits your perspective. I so badly sometimes just want to take people here for one day to shown them the US, to show them a grocery store, sky scrappers, boats, ovens, cities without farm animals everywhere, sidewalks, restaurants, the list can continue...
Not to say no one knows about these things, Ouaga has a lot and a lot of people have traveled, but definitely not the majority.

Then, I get asked a lot of questions. Some simple, like do you have corn in the US? yes lots, but not millet. Do you have sheep? yes, but they look different. And other questions that are quite difficult to answer, like, do you have lots of hungry skinny children in the US like here? Or other things like trying to explain the educational system in the US or why being 23 without a husband and kids is quite normal, or why it is hard for me to remember everyone's names, or to not use my left hand, ever, or why I don't know how to prepare To (what everyone eats) or prepare much for that matter.

But as frustrating as that all can seem to be, it is also the beauty of this experience, and a large goal of this experience, we learn from each other, everyday, and do so in an open and understanding manner.

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okay, hope all is well with you. talk to you again in a month, and thanks everyone for all the support you've been sending my way, much appreciated!

Here's just a few photos that's I've been holding on to. My camera isn't really working too well so I haven't been able to really take pictures of my house and village, but I managed to snag a couple of my cat!

His name is Umanli which means luck in Gulmanchema (my local language). My neighbors/brothers named him because he had a lot of luck that I found him. His mom got killed and his brothers all died and he was going to but I found him so he lived, thus the luck. I've had him a month now, so you can imagine how little he was then. He's quite honestly a pain but he keeps me company. He provides for a lot of fun interaction with my community members as well. I often get asked "A buga te?" or "How is your child?" and I respond "beeni" or "good" because now I have a "kid" and we laugh a lot.

The other photos I have are from the swearing in ceremony in Ouaga when I became an official volunteer. We all got traditional complets made for the event. My host sister helped me pick out the pagne (material) and the tailor.