Hello lovely people,

Well the past few weeks in village have flown by - I've given 4 trainings, held my first soccer match and attended the night of 'Zuk' in village, not to mention went on a 3 day worldwind tour of Southern Burkina...

I'll go ahead and start with the Zuk. It's a dance and as far as names go for dances, it sounds pretty cool right? None of that Waltz or Fox Trot stuff... So this 'Night of Zuk' is held yearly by the local radio station which I closely work with and so for a week leading up to the magical night pretty much everyone working there asked me about 7 times each day whether or not I was going. The only thing was, no one could ever seem to describe to me what the Zuk actually was rather than saying, 'oh it's just a dance.' The night of the dance rolls around and luckily enough for me my friend from my courtyard got permission to go to the dance from her older brother, who happens to be a very strict Muslim. Unfortunately the strictness meant that he could change his mind at any time so we had to set off towards the dance at the very uncool hour of 8:45. Besides the people that were actually working the dance we were literally the only ones there for at least 30 minutes. Not to mention they seated us under a glaring spotlight so everyone who came in could see how incredibly uncool we actually were... So we sit there for about 3 hours watching the one incredibly intoxicated person dancing solely on the dance floor (which turned out to be almost anything better than I could have watched on T.V. back home). Finally when enough people showed up my friend turned to me and goes 'Okay, this is the Zuk!' I looked at the dance floor expecting to see some kind of insane African Hip-Hop/Dirty Dancing/Salsa style dance but instead it was couples hugging each other while swaying on the dance floor. Major let down. Absolutely could of headed right back to an Eastview High School dance if I had wanted to be a part of that... But overall the night was pretty great and it made me feel young again to stay out past the normal 8:30 bed time!!

In sports news, the Solenzo girl's soccer team had their first match of... ever! My 15-19 year old girls lost to 8-10 year old boys by an incredibly score of 10 - 2 in what was probably a 50 minute match overall. You could say that we've got some work to do... Despite the fact that it was a pretty hefty loss, I am very proud that they were able to go out there in front of a crowd of unsupporting males and still try. I don't think it was easy for any of them to hear some of the comments that the guys on the sideline were making not to mention get down right laughed at, but they kept trying and actually had about 5 minutes of brilliance in there! At least it's something to build on! I also have to say thank you a million times to everyone who has been helping us with the equipment aspect, it makes both the girls and the community feel like we are a legitimate team. Honestly, thank you all so much for the generous donations!! Hopefully the winning part will follow...!

I was also able to hold some of the first formations on the plastic bag purses that I've been working on. Unfortunately for the community there exists a large rift between the women who are native to my village and those that moved here from elsewhere. The two groups want basically nothing to do with each other so whenever I teach something to one group I always have to make sure I teach it to the other one or else there's even more bickering... It's so frustrating that they don't realize that this is a huge reason that Burkinabe women in general aren't able to become more developed - I mean they don't even need the men to hold them down, they're doing a great job by fighting amongst themselves. It's incredibly hard to watch to say the least... Anyway I ended up doing the same formation with both groups and was really happy to see how excited they were to make these purses! The second formation was by far my favorite - the first day about 20-25 women showed up and couldn't figure out how to string their 'looms' or how to do a basic over/under weaving. By the end of the day there were only about 3 women who were able to adequately grasp the concept. Day 2 however, just about every women finally understood how to make the purses and were all contently weaving away. They would get really excited to show me their purses and overall just really motivated not to stop at one but to keep trying with plastic sachets until they could get professional looking purses. I took one of the better made purses back to my courtyard with me and all the ladies were telling me they wanted to buy a purse just like it, meaning that these ladies are going to be able to make money off of something that people literally cover the ground with. Very cool. The next few weeks we'll be holding quite a few more trainings on how to make more designs, how to incorporate different 'trash,' and how to make rugs from clothing scraps thrown out by tailors.

Finally the Burkina Faso Bike Tour 2009. It's not quite as big as the name might lead you to believe... it was only 3 days long but we were able to take in the Peaks of Sindou, and 3 other villages. I went from biking about 2k every 3 weeks or so to biking 76k in one day, which at the time felt like one of the worst decisions of my life. The 40k and 50k days afterwards didn't do much to help me change my mind not to mention despite the impossibility of it, I'm pretty sure the entire trip was uphill... But despite how brutal it is to sit on a bike seat for hours straight, it was by far one of the coolest things I've ever done in my life. We passed a lot of villages where the kids chased after us waving their greetings, raced Burkinabe for fun on their no gear, no brake bikes (lost of course but they bike every day...) and took in some of the beautiful orchard scenery that the South of Burkina has to offer. It was both painful and awesome and I'm glad to have done it but will probably never have the desire to do it again...!!

Tomorrow I head back to village to spend Thanksgiving there and participate in Tabaski round 2!! I hope you all have wonderful holidays as well!!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

ONE YEAR!!!!!!!! That's right, I've managed to combat suffocating heat, battle the African wildlife (and this is more along the lines of cockroaches, rats and bats and less along the lines of lions, elephants, zebras or giraffes...), not fall into the abyss that is my latrine and do just a little bit of work in the process! Basically it feels good to have survived! One down, one to go...

Since this is nearly our half-way mark of service us in the Small Enterprise Development (SED) group got pulled into Ouaga for our mid-service conference. During that time we got a thorough (seriously) medical exam and started filling out our first of many mountains of paper. It was sooooooooooooooo incredibly good to see everyone since we haven't all been together for about 6 months now. We also had our own little 'show and tell' section of the conference where we all got up and shared our past few months, what went well vs. what didn't and projects we plan on doing in the future. Like before when we presented it was so cool to see what everyone's life was like in their village and how successful they've all been in the past year. Legitimately, despite the fact that I'm incredibly biased, this SED group that I swore in with is incredibly impressive. The whole time it was just this huge brainstorming, teamwork fest where everyone was giving out ideas and helping solve problems. There are people starting their own loan systems, people planting fields of Moringa, people starting clubs of all sorts, basically anything we can think of that'll keep us busy enough not to watch that 3rd season of Gossip Girl. It's very easy to feel alone during this Peace Corps process since normally you are the only minority, spend hours in a day talking to plants and animals, get stared at by ever male, female, child and toothless old man, go weeks and even months without seeing another American.... With all those factors working against us, I find it a bit astounding that our group can be so much more team orientated. Basically without all the support that is passed around, I don't know if I would have survived this first year.

The past week has pretty much been a reflection period of the year that's past and the year that is to come. All I can say is that I cannot wait to see what's going to happen this second year. Already I have a sweet present to bring back to my village.... Soccer uniforms!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks to the absolute generosity of my old coach and team (for those of you who didn't closely follow my career that would be the UWEC Blugolds) I'll be giving my soccer team the awesome present of a complete uniform (Normally the teams here just wear shirts that resemble each other so this is huge!!!), T-shirts to practice in and 3 brand new shiny soccer balls - also a huge feat since quality balls here are basically non-existent and very expensive which is why most kids end up forming plastic bags into soccer balls. Not incredibly durable believe it or not.... Anyway despite the fact that this team is decently terrible and has yet to figure out the concept of 'team' and 'teamwork,' it's still really cool to see the younger girls trying to play games on the sidelines in attempt to be like the older ones and to see the men at our practices actually make positive comments about how the team is playing. Other things on the agenda for the upcoming year: continue to utilize my knowledge of crafts thanks to my Girls Scout training and my mother's love of craft fairs to turn 'trash into treasures/lots of money;' attempt to win thousands of dollars for my women's shea butter group; give out trainings on Moringa, composting and other good stuff over the radio; start an English Only club; work with village women groups to teach them the basic soap making skills, and anything/everything else that I can find. I'm looking forward to the next year and hope I won't even have time to carry on long, deep conversations with my tomato plants. :)

One thing which will remain constant throughout this service is that I still miss all of you guys!! Thanks for all of your emails, calls and mail - definitely makes living over here a lot easier.

Much love.

Well hello from Africa,

I've been hiding out in village for a bit so I haven't been that great about updating this thing lately... So luckily for you that means another long tale of the glamorous life in Burkina Faso!

I think I'll start off with my bat. The thing had been living in my house for about 3 months clearly not comprehending that I didn't actually want a roommate. I had fear of being anywhere but safely tucked away inside my mosquito net after 7:00 when the sun went down because if I wasn't careful that thing would fly out of nowhere straight for my head and despite the fact I realize that vampires aren't real, I can't say I get too excited about things flying towards my head... It would somehow get out of my house and then proceed to wake me up at 4:30a.m. when it would return. Well, one night when it decided to invite 3 playmates over to play in flight battle/mating for about 4 hours, I decided that I'd had enough. After explaining to my counterpart and about 20 other people that I don't leave my door open at night and therefore it doesn't get in through there (because that's not the first thing I would have thought of...?) they called someone to seal up all the holes in my house. I was incredibly happy and excited until it becomes nighttime and I realized that no exit point means flying around my house the entire night. Great. So as it was turning dark I frantically pleaded with my neighbors to come over and find it's hiding spot. In mid-search for the hiding spot the bat comes flying out of nowhere straight for my face. Naturally I started screaming and hid behind a chair while my neighbors decide that instead of trying to hit the thing (yes that is how sophisticated our bat killing machine was - a stick about the same diameter as a golf club...) that they'll instead decide to not even attempt because they're too busy laughing at me trying to army crawl my way out of the house. This whole time the thing realizes who the weak link is and continues bomb diving me, doesn't even concern itself with the others... Fortunately I made it out of the house alive. Just happened to leave every amount of respect that I earned thus far in the house with the bat. It didn't help that numerous neighbors who actually lived in different courtyards sent people over to see who was dying. Turns out they pretty much all have bats that live in there houses and weren't super impressed about the fuss I was making over one... Happily my neighbor (did I mention that she's 9) finally killed the thing so now I am able to sleep soundly through the nights. The one good thing I've discovered about all my different creature encounters is that it seems as with ever new discovery, I become a little less afraid of every other bug/animal. For example, I never used to turn my back on the giant spiders that reside on my walls for fear they'd crawl onto me.... until I discovered cockroaches. And now that I had my bat experiences cockroaches aren't really that big deal... 2 words - Personal Growth.

I guess my biggest project for these past couple months has been somewhat of individual work since those few that were left in village all took about a month long break to flock to our village's very own Hamptons (Bobo - probably the only thing they have in common is that sometimes the houses are bigger....).So seeing as I couldn't keep checking my tomatoes every 5 minutes to see if a new one has emerged, I decided to try and do something about all the trash that gets thrown out. And by thrown out I mean literally chucked out your front door (or if you prefer, the window) since all of the land here is designated as your very own trash can. One of the biggest problems is all the sachets that literally line every road. Not only do the animals, which are the livelihood of many people here, choke on them and die, the people tend to burn piles of them which is about just as destructive as throwing them everywhere. In Bobo a very successful group of women has transformed the sachets into fashionable purses which is awesome.... only they don't like to share their 'how to' with any other groups of women which is not awesome. So I decided to take those sachets, it's equally abundant partner the discarded fabric, and my hazy elementary school knowledge of weaving potholders in order to try and make something that people would be willing to buy. The purses that I attempted were nowhere near as good as the women's in Bobo's but have surprisingly gotten very positive feedback. The same thing goes for the mat that I weaved with the discarded fabric which is more or less your average 8th grade art project but interest to learn how to make and purchase these has been repeatedly expressed as well. .

My other favorite pet project as of right now is my girl's soccer team. My months of hoping and wishing finally came true thanks to the help of one of the incredibly motivated guys who came with me to OAG. Pretty much the day we returned he was out in the village searching for potential players and much to my delight he was actually able to find some! So I went into our first meeting super motivated and even managed to stay that way after only 4 girls showed up. But then my friend started talking to the girls about the team and about how the girls should always remember to hold their heads up even though pretty much everyone in Solenzo will watch them, critique them and talk about them. I did not really get the significance of starting a female team here until that moment, until I looked around at those girls and saw that they couldn't even make eye contact or speak up with just us. Throughout all of my experience playing on teams I've never had to worry about people outright pointing and laughing at me. Of course as soon as I stepped on the soil here in Burkina, I've gotten rather used to people pointing and laughing at me... And if it's still sometimes really hard for me, I cannot even imagine what it's like for these girls that have rarely heard encouraging comments in their lives. I'm not going to lie, I walked out of that first meeting unbelievably discouraged, thinking that this team would just fall into another one of those 'talk a lot and take no action' categories that Africa seems to put just about everything into. I didn't have too high of spirits for our second meeting, expecting us to be down to 0 again. However, I think walking up to that meeting location was probably one of the best moments of my life. All of the girls had come back and this time there were 5 more players with them brining our grand total to 9! Not enough for a team quite yet but what I perceive to be a huge step forward. Slowly but surely more people are starting to come to practices and although we are probably the equivalent of the ball clumping team's of my very young years, this is one project that I am incredibly proud of and believe has quite a bit of potential

My final bit of excitement these past two months has come from manipulating some fellow peace corps volunteers into coming up to my site. My talented friends are able to make high quality homemade soap and jewelry for the women to sell so I lured them into coming to my village to teach my women by promising chocolate and Velveeta Cheesy Shells! So much to my delight and the shock of my fellow villagers, 5 of my friends decided to take the trip up. Before the scheduled formation day, Kat and Amanda (two volunteers) decided to come up a day earlier so Kat could play her flute live on my 'American hour' on the radio station while Amanda helped me DJ. Being able to talk in English over the radio with someone other than myself was a lot more fun, and I can say it didn't hurt that we could say pretty much whatever we found amusing since there are no Burkinabe in my region who could understand (no worries though, we always remained appropriate...). The next day, joined by 3 other volunteers, we held a formation at our Maison de la Femme with about 20 women in attendants to teach my friends how to make tie dye, followed by Kat's master soapmaking skills and Amanda's artsy jewelry. The women were super engaged and seemed to enjoy everything we had to teach them - all in all an incredibly successful formation. The following day we biked out to the highest peak near my village which turned out to be roughly a 4 minute hike up a small hill... But it was a beautiful 10K bike ride and the view from the top was rather spectacular. The villages we passed on the way not to mention the crowd of kids, sheep and cows at the top of the hill all came out to watch us seeing as we were the closest thing to a circus/parade that they've ever seen! I'm hoping to be able to find something to entice people up to my village again in the near future because not being the only one with the 'doesn't belong here' label is kinda great...

So after a long stretch in village, myself and a huge chunk of the volunteers are now heading to OAG to have our send off party for our next departing group. I almost can't comprehend the fact that we've been here for almost a year now and that the half way point is fast approaching. Which means there's still about a million more things to get done here but as they say here after just about everything, 'it'll all be fine." (seriously, advice for everything...)

Hope all is well for everyone back home!!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

Since I haven't written in a bit and since life here has actually been moving more like that of an American life... this might get a bit long so I'll try to mix it up with some pictures...!

So Ghana... Absolutely is/was the land of dreams. Crossing the boarder the grass immediately turned a stunning shade of green, birds sang louder and while the sun was shining brighter, it wasn't the stifling humidity of Burkina. Basically Ghana was brilliant. Eight of us made the journey to what is known as West Africa's 'success story' in order to see more than 5 scragly trees clumped together, splash in a large body of water that wouldn't immediately send us to the infirmary, eat anything and everything that didn't look like a lump of white play-dough, and basically not hear our pet nicknames, Tubabo and Nasara for 10 days.

We kicked the trip off in Ghana's capital of Accra where we spent a couple days wandering through the streets and eating all sorts of unAfrican food. Cape Coast was next on the agenda where a trip to West Africa's oldest standing, slave-trading fort was a must. (Unfortunately for us we missed Barack Obama's speech there by a little over a week). Despite the fact that I've unfortunately never been much into the historical aspects of sightseeing, I'm unbelievably glad I got to check this place out. To be able to able to catch a glimpse of the living conditions that the West African's were subjected to at this time was pretty powerful. Our next stop on the trip was my absolute favorite - the Canopy walk through the Kakum National Park. First of all this place is an actual rainforest so that automatically makes it cool. Secondly, you can spend the night in the park in cabin type tents. Thirdly, the have a canopy walk high above the forest that gives you the most spectacular views. We were lucky enough to be able to spend the night in the park (and be lulled to sleep and frightened awake by all the animal noises) and were therefore able to get to the canopy walk before the busloads of school children and tourists came through. Despite the fact that we didn't get to see much wildlife, not to mention almost fell to our death when the 40m platform we were on started to shift downwards, the view from up above was one of the most stunning things I have ever seen. After being dazzled by the sights of the rainforest, we turned towards Ghana's other biggest sight for us scenery/nature starved Burkina volunteers - the ocean. The rest of the trip was spent relaxing by Ghana's beaches, diving through waves and eating burritos. By the time the bus was departing from Ghana back to Burkina, we were all seriously considering ways to get ourselves transferred.

I did manage to drag myself back to village though for 7 short days and actually had some work to accomplish before heading out again. Thanks to hard work of a fellow volunteer, Burkina will be getting computers shipped over from the U.S. that are high in quality and incredibly low in price. Since my city is one of the bigger ones in Burkina, I thought it was absolutely necessary that we receive some of those and had already spread the good word and gotten local organizations excited about purchasing them. I was incredibly excited about the response from the organizations and the local mayor about purchasing computers and developing our village... And then I found out once again how things work in Burkina. Both getting people to actually commit to a number of computers and then giving me the money in time was a huge headache. I spent every day at nearly the same organizations reminding them that they needed to tell me a number and to get me the money before I left again or find their own means of getting it to the other volunteer. It was actually incredibly disappointing to see such little follow through on their part for such huge opportunity for development. I felt like it was a chance of a lifetime that people should be jumping at yet I felt like I was begging them to take these computers that would change their village and lives. Once again it brings up a lot of questions on development - what's right, how to do it, etc...

While I wasn't continuously showing my face at these organizations I went out to the fields in order to plant some crops for the upcoming season. I was looking for any excuse to get out of it... but am actually extremely happy that I went! Oddly enough being out in the fields reminds me of one of those big church potluck picnics. Kids running around, parents chatting, animals braying, hundreds of people eating out of the same dishes... It was an awesome community feeling with everyone calling out encouraging words as they passed by. My hamstrings were of similar tightness to that of piano chords the following day but it was a very good bonding experience, not to mention earns you some respect for being able to cultivate for more than the expected 5 minutes!

A short 7 days after I returned I was back bumping along our unpaved roads towards Ouaga, and this time it was for something which was quite possibly even better than the paradise of Ghana - Coaching for Hope. Coaching for Hope is this genius idea that takes soccer coaches from villages in West Africa, brings them to the capital city, and for 8 days teaches them how to combine soccer techniques and drills with information on AIDS. I can't even begin to describe how ridiculously excited I was to be able to attend this camp - playing soccer for 8 days straight on one of the only grass surfaces in all of Burkina Faso... I probably would have even road a donkey cart to Ouaga. Coaching for Hope met all of my expectations and then some. From day one, everyone was enthusiastic, encouraging and incredibly into the training. The main coaches were extremely knowledgeable in giving out advice on how to be a better coach on the field and off as well as how to incorporate AIDS (or any other sort of life lessons for that matter) into drills. The participants were all more than willing to do all of the drills, pay attention and participate during all of the lectures and in true African fashion, lead cheers, songs and dances at the end of each day. And us volunteers... well lets just say we were ridiculously happy to be outside, to receive good food, and just be a part of a training that had so much energy. The last day of training was like the last day of camp - the big intra-squad match took place, everyone gave out numbers, people were taking all sorts of photos, awards were presented and there was a big closing ceremony which ended with our weeklong chant and dance. I'm just going to go ahead and say that Coaching for Hope was one of the best things I have done thus far in my life and I'm hoping that my two guys from village were similarly effected enough to apply all that they've learned in village.

So once again after an incredible time outside of village, here I sit in Bobo waiting for my bus to take me back to my home here in Africa. Once again it's the mixed feelings of wanting to get back into village in order to turn everyone into CFA (BF's currency) millionaires, miraculously grow crops for everyone to eat and sell and cure all types of diseases... but at the same time it's always a little daunting to head back to a place that you never really have or will fit into not to mention can't necessarily figure out what role to even be playing... But nonetheless that's where I'll be hanging out for hopefully the next month straight.. And I'll probably have some amazing hamstrings by the end of it from all the cultivating I'm going to be volunteering to do!

Hope all is well back home and a special congrats to Becky and Nate Ness on getting married!!!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

So the rains are starting to come pouring down on Burkina Faso. This means that I no longer have to meticulously try to stay absolutely still for fear that the slightest movement may cause wave loads of sweat. It does mean, however, that periods of time are spent during the day inside for fear you might drown in a giant puddle.

Rain also means over here that it's time to start getting the fields ready for this year's harvest. Pretty much everyone has a field as well so the village is starting to empty out as everyone spends their days out in the fields. Our local high school kids were one of those groups to leave after finishing up with exams. In my village of the 500 third years who took the BEPC exam (some test that gets you something or other.. not sure what since the schooling system over here is quite a bit more than complicated...) only 32 passed. 32. That should probably give you a little bit of insight as to how the education system is run here...

Most everyone else here has taken their equipment and headed towards the field as well. And by equipment I don't mean tractors, sprinkler systems, fertilizer... Nope, I mean their two hands, pile of seeds, dauba and cow. With just that is how about 80% of the people here in Burkina Faso earn their living. As you can probably guess, it's not much. And as you can probably guess, it's not easy. Trust me. I haven't been able to steer a cow yet in order to plow the fields but I have used the dauba, (which is exactly like a hoe except much shorter so you have to bend over to in order to use it) cleared about a 2 meter radious circle in roughly 4 hours and couldn't get out of bed the next day. It's a killer!! It's starting to be a very good thing that most people thought I was joking when I said I'd help them out in their fields...

Fortunately not everyone has left quite yet and their are some people that will remain and not be doing any sort of body-breaking activity for the next 3 months, aka my new best friends in village... But we have been able to get another tiedye formation in which once again I was able to show off my girl scout knowledge which is being referred to as the 'white foreign girls' tiedye models. This group of women has just made their group official though and are extremely motivated to learn all sorts of incoming generating activities so I'm hoping to be able to get some partnership 'we'll teach you tiedye you teach us what you know' sort of formations going on. I'm hoping that this women's group isn't going to completely shut down for the rainy season as well and that they'll provide me with a good excuse stay in village rather than bend at the waist for 6 hours straight... :)

I've also been able to do a Moringa formation with another women's group in town which I'm hopeful will lead to a Moringa field that the women can use not only for the nutritional benefits for themselves and families but also for a potential incoming generating activity. They seemed really excited about it at the time, so I'm hoping their excitement will remain and they'll really want to do this... rather than just saying they want to and then never following through with it... quite the common trend here in Burkina. All of us volunteers, not to mention international organizations around the globe, are fairly excited about this tree as well so if you don't know much about it yet you should definitely check it out. Without going into too much detail it's a fast growing tree (rare) that can grow in all types of soil including the rocky/sandy/clay type here in Burkina (again - rare) and contains within the leaves and pods quite a bit of vitamins, calcium and a lot of other things a body needs at a minimal price (extremely rare). It's also been said to purify water, act as a fertalizer for other crops, has oil which can be used in soapmaking... so basically a miracle in a land where not a lot of them grow...

So right now a group of 7 of us are hanging out in Ouaga, (the capital) waiting to head to the paradise land of Ghana tomorrow. English speakers, beaches, malls.... Absolute bliss!! Who knows if we'll ever want to come back...

Well that's all for now, hope all is going well over there and that you're enjoying summer!!

Much love.

Hello once again from the ragingly hot Burkina Faso,

Unfortunately I have no rat incidents to spice up the blog this time...

But there was another exciting event of sorts that recently took place in our village, the Mask Festival. Now I don't know about you but when I think of an African Mask Festival my mind automatically conjures up images from National Geographic and Discovery Channel, of people dancing around fires with painted faces, spears and chanting. As it turns out, the view of Africa that's portrayed to us in the U.S. through films, t.v., magazines, etc., is definitely not how life really is for most in Africa (something I definitely should have learned by now) or at the very least not of my village in Burkina Faso. The mask festival in my village means that men walk around in groups/lines of about 10 holding sticks and hitting people with 2 of those people being dressed up in... leaves. So... the masks here are really just walking bushes. Who hit people. Nonetheless, pretty much all of Solenzo turned up to watch the first day of this week long event and I of course did too, seeing as it was something other than lizards to stare at! On the last day of the festival everyone was talking about how exciting the grand finale night was and how huge it was going to be so once again I thought that just maybe this would mean scary painted faces, fires, drums and chanting. Again, I was wrong. What this really meant was more walking bushes, longer lines of men, more hitting and as a new twist, quite a lot of drunkenness. (I would like to proudly say though that I never was one of the ones to get hit since I told everyone that my personal friend Barak Obama would be VERY disappointed if anything happened to me. Not a sole touched me and people actually hid behind me!) When people asked me whether or not we had mask festivals in the U.S. at first I would always answer no... but by the end I realized that yes we do. It's called Halloween. Or every weekend at college where people drink way too much, dress up in ridiculous outfits and hit each other. Just like being at home.

After the excitement of the mask festival, I got to attend a Shea Butter formation that our women's group was putting on. While attending a formation spoken in a language where you can only pick out words like 'child,' onions,' and 'work,' (which oddly enough were actually never used together in a sentence..) may not seem like the most wonderful of adventures, I was incredibly glad to receive that invitation. Surprisingly enough to me I've been able to get decently involved and establish relationships with the directors of the government organizations, the radio crew, cotton union etc... but for some reason it's been really hard to get a foot in the doorway of any of the women's groups. There are probably quite a few reasons that a white female can get in easier with previously mentioned male dominated organizations/groups/sectors and not with the women's groups... but I won't take the time to analyze all of that. I'll just say that I was surprised and grateful to get the chance to make some connections with this group. Despite the fact that I could pick out less than 15 words, the formation was a ton of fun. I was really impressed by a lot of these women, mainly the president and vice-president, for their organizational skills (sometime that quite a few lack here) as well as all of their hard work. And they did actually do something that I would have stereotypically called 'African' before coming here, they sang and clapped while they worked. That most certainly made my list of favorite top 10 things that I've experienced in Africa. It was cool to be welcomed into that group of women, at the very least for two days, although I did little other than take pictures and attempt to make Shea Butter... attempts which they all laughed at and enjoyed making me do for that sole purpose... But hey, when in Africa! Since the formation I've been able to have another meeting with the president and am hoping to find them some buyers within Burkina while they're just getting started and then maybe, just maybe, be able to get them the organizational skills, knowledge and certificates to bring them into the international level.

After the Shea Butter formation I actually got the chance to see another women's group do a tye-dye formation. Luckily for me I attended Girl Scout camps way back in the day and my tye-dying knowledge still remained stored, although quite far away, in my brain. Again, I was very excited to work with a women's group and to actually be able to do some of the work this time. Like the other women's group they asked me to participate in some of the pre-dying steps and I think to their surprise I was actually able to not only do all of their models but show them some new ones. Thank you Girl Scouts. This group seemed to have a ton of fun just making fun of themselves and each other, so again, another good experience with a women's group. They promised to get me next time they do tye-dying again so until then I'll be revisiting my elementary school days in attempts to think up some more of those tye-dye models that everyone loved sporting.

Other than that it's been a lot of the same hanging out at the radio/office, chatting it up with the neighbor ladies and planting trees at the environment! And I have recently discovered that I have an insane passion for head-wraps. I have no idea why it took me so long...

Hope all is well for everyone!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

So I skillfully navigated public transportation and made it back again to my lovely village. Once again it was wonderful to hear the 'Welcome back' in different languages.. that was until they followed it up with another sentence 'Tu est plus grosse!' Literally translates into 'you look fatter!' Great. Thanks. It's really good to see you too. I'm just going to keep telling myself that it's a cultural comment meant to flatter and not actually true...

I'm going to go ahead and jump right to my most eventful moment of the month. I had been working late at the Cotton Union/Radio office playing secretary, (which I complained about not having anything to do before so I probably shouldn't complain about having to do secretary type work...) so that by the time I arrived home it was dark. I grabbed one of my water buckets along with my nifty little flashlight phone and headed over to the well in our courtyard to start pulling my water. After the first pull I poured about half the amount of water into my bucket when I heard a weird splash. One of my neighbor girls had come over to the well with me and I turned to her and said 'Wow, must be a big fish!' I was of course incredibly excited because I've never been all that good at fishing or any of those type of chance carnival type games, but for once I had just become one of those lucky few winners! So my neighbor girl grabs my light and shines it on my bucket. Definitely not a fish. Definitely a giant rat. Not a winner. I started yelling (in English of course, couldn't think of enough bad words in French to say at the time), enough so that another neighbor came over, took one look in my bucket, went back into his house and returned with a machete. He walked about 10 feet away from us, poured the bucket out and started trying to hack the thing to death. Not successful. Instead it started running frantically around the courtyard so I took off to hide in my neighbor’s house while screaming in English and leaping over buckets and small children. Not the bravest moment in my life... but it was definitely a life or rabies type of choice. Moral of the story is that I will never again pull my water at night. Now all the courtyard kids like to say 'It's a big fish!' to me and even taught the only girl in the courtyard who speaks no French how to say it in French. At least now when she actually does see a big fish she'll know what to say in French. I'm always trying to help people learn. Huh.

Actually things around here have started to pick up quite a bit. My counterpart and I have gone out to a few surrounding villages now to do compost formations which have all had a decently large turn out... of men. It's definitely a little disappointing to see that the women are never included in any of these formations, seeing as they work just as much and as hard as the men in the fields. The compost is pretty essential here due to the terrible conditions of the soil and these men, who could have continuously done the compost since right after harvesting, have waited until after the last possible moment to start their composts. This means that it won't be ready for the end of May/beginning of June when fields are being prepped, which is a really disappointing since so many of these farmers struggle to have enough money to cover an entire year. I have a feeling that the women would be a lot better at making sure to do it in time as well as be able to use some of the compost for the gardens that most of them have during the non-rainy season. Hopefully we'll be able to hold some composting formations for them as well at the end of the harvesting season, but this means that someone will have to contribute money to the compost supplies and I'm not entirely hopeful that the men will be willing to do that...

Since I've been playing secretary to the Cotton Union lately, I've been able to spend quite a bit of time over at the office which houses both the Union and the Radio. Despite the fact that over here they don't ever rigorously work to establish 'a positive work environment' or have numerous 'team bonding' workshops, the office has such an awesome work rapport. Basically they spend quite a bit of time making fun of each other and handing out sarcastic comments, which believe it or not is something I'm a big fan of! I'm also slightly obsessed with music so it's fun to be able to play my music for them and even get them to play some of it on the radio (which I'm sure is highly illegal).

Thanks to a lot of hard work from fellow PeaceCorps Volunteers, a lot of chances for already funded opportunities have come through (funding is not something we find a lot of in the PeaceCorps). One such chance was to have our village host an agriculture expert to speak with our community about harvesting, planting, fertilizing, etc. Fortunately Solenzo was one of the villages that got to host an expert so the past week we had our 3-day training seminar. We picked team leaders, so to speak, from our surrounding villages and started off the first day in a classroom. The first day was not pretty. We discussed rotation of the crops and spent what felt like 4 hours doing examples of how to rotate crops. Literally the Ag expert would put up a big box, divided into four different boxes with names of crops in each box, and ask the farmers there to rotate the crops throughout 4 years, not repeating the same one in the same box. That first day not one person in that room could do it. It was a very hard and frustrating thing to watch, both because for us that would be something in the ball park of 2nd grade math, but also because it just shows how much the education system here fails the Burkinabe. The truly wonderful thing to watch though was that these guys asked for homework example from the ag expert, came in the next day, and got the problem on the first try. I was very impressed by their desire to learn as well as help their fellow villagers and cultivators improve their field.

So I think that’s quite enough for one post…

Hope all is well for everyone back in the states and that you’re enjoying spring!

Much love.

Hello lovely people,

Today is officially the last day of In-Service Training (IST) for us fellow SED volunteers and it’s definitely a bit bittersweet…

We kicked off IST in what has now officially become my favorite region of all of Burkina Faso, Banfora. Those of us located within the Southern region got together for a week worth of language studying, exploring and eating at the world’s favorite restaurant….McDonalds!! Okay not the real golden arch kind but a restaurant with the name, incredibly good burgers and probably the world’s sweetest T’s. As of now it’s my life goal to be just like the wait staff there and somehow get a McDonald’s T with a huge hamburger on the front and wear it every day in village. Besides eating at Micky D’s, we’d have about 4+ hours of language a day along with 2 hours to go visit with a fellow NGO, womens’ groups, Burkina ministry of something or other, etc. Our teacher was unbelievably good and I’m telling you, by the end I was speaking French like a native… well a native Burkinabe at least. We also got to see what must be one of the more well-organized and bigger women’s groups in all of Burkina along with some small organizations, environmental agencies, etc. All in all it was a great week and to top it all off at the end of it we biked to one of our fellow PCV’s sites 8K away and saw the Domes and Cascades. Beautiful is not a word that us PCVs often use in describing the landscape aspects of Burkina Faso, so it came as a pleasant shock to be able to see such beautiful scenery. To put it rather cheesily, it was the perfect ending to our first week of IST!

The following week the SED crew was reunited in Bobo for our first week of technical training. It was wonderful to be able to see everyone again and get updated on everyone’s running to the latrine in the middle of the night horror stories. We spent the first week more or less going over what we did during Pre-Service Training (PST), discussing how we could improve on PST and the SED program, met NGO’s and mainly hung out together and laughed at how sweaty each one of us was capable of getting. For a couple days our counterparts also made the journey down to visit us and we held a workshop to draw up plans for future projects for our sites. It’s always a lot of fun when we have these workshops because by the end all of us PCVs and our counterparts are ready to head back to village and change the world.

But, there has been no changing of the world yet because we had one final week in Ouaga to spend some more time on SED and cross training. Before any of that began though… There was the Burkina Faso vs. Guinea qualifier game for the world cup!!!!!!!!! For a total of 2 dollars we got to cheer while our home team of Burkina Faso crushed those Guineans. Seriously awesome. It was all the better because before the game started they were watering the lawn with a sprinkler, the score-board was broken and the clock was a hand clock that was also broken. Gotta love it. There was quite a few people in Ouaga for the event and we wrapped ourselves up in flags and took to the stands singing with the Burkinabe. At one point we even attempted to start the wave… unfortunately no one besides us Americans seemed to catch on. Hopefully that was all just a warm up for the actual 2010 WC in South Africa… Anyone in? As for work during our Ouaga stay, we took a field trip out of the city to look in on a fellow SED PCV’s site who had been there for over a year. At his site he’s worked a bunch with Moringa (a tree which grows very rapidly in West Africa with little water, in of itself a miracle, but whose leaves also contain large amounts of nutrition) so we got to see some of his fields, how he processed the leaves and how he sold it. It was very impressive and I think we all left feeling a little inspired and wanting to plant thousands of Moringa trees ourselves.

So basically during our three weeks of training we learned a lot both in the way of language and technical information. I can’t say enough about how inspiring it was to be with the fellow volunteers. Just to sit around, bounce ideas off of each other, give each other advice, and plan together was such a difference from the solitude of village. It definitely made it seem as if we would approach everything as a team and less like individual… Very comforting since after spending 3 weeks speaking English, hanging out with friends, eating good food, having access to internet, etc., village once again seems, well, a bit daunting. Fortunately it won’t be starting from scratch like before and my counterpart and I have some projects to take care of for April… So I’m crossing my fingers that the villagers haven’t forgotten about me yet and that I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for the next 20ish months..!

Oh yeah and I was able to upload some pictures while I had all this internet time! The pretty scenery is of the cascades and domes, unfortunately not my village. There’s one with myself and my host family (Burkinabe think it’s cooler to not smile in pictures.. And seeing as they were a wealthy family they could eat more…), the one with the weird dresses is from the swear in, there’s one of 10 of us in that taxi (very safe parents), a couple from Tabaski and a couple from before and during the soccer game.

Hope all is well for everyone.

Much love.

Well hello lovely people,

So Burkina Faso has gotten increasingly hotter, as in over 100 degrees hot. It’s really fun to explain why I have that perfect circle appearing on my stomach… I haven’t quite figured out the word for sweat in either French or Jula so I either tell people that my skin’s crying or that I’m melting. Rumor is April’s even worse…

So I kicked this past month off down in Orodara for an AIDS formation, where 9 volunteers, including myself, brought 4 fellow villagers along in order to further educate the masses on one of Africa’s biggest killers. Like most things in PeaceCorps it seemed to be thrown together at the last minute, but despite the down to the wire planning all of our fellow villagers seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. The volunteers, however, had minimal participation in the formation since most of it was done in Jula by a doctor from the region. I thought this could potentially be problematic seeing as sometimes the Burkinabe are reluctant to talk about the subject of AIDS, such as how one can contract it, what one needs to do for protection, etc., but I was incredibly pleased by how much energy the audience had and how much willingness there was to participate. I guess for those of us volunteers it was more of a chance to see one another and swap the major cultural blunders of the month. The time in Orodara flew by and before I knew it, it was time to head back to my ville.

I can say that the one thing I thought I would never have to do upon arrival in village is sell myself to the people. I knew all about the Burkinabe’s addiction to Maggi, the scorpion carriers and the hot season but had no idea that there wouldn’t be a line of people through my courtyard waiting for advice and ideas. This is after all a country that always finishes near the end in literacy rates and even making it through some of high school is a considered a high accomplishment. Along with the college degree I also figured the word America would give me some credit since just about everyone in the village has begged me to take them back to (which of course I always say yes to… and hope that none of them take me seriously…). However, instead of waiting for the pounding on the door it’s you who has to take the long walks through the community in order to find people to work with, it’s you who has to make a fool out of yourself attempting to speak languages that you don’t know to the constant laughter of others and you who has to all but badger people into meetings and follow-ups. I now completely understand why so many successful politicians have Peace Corps on their resume… Fortunately at that point some of the walks and talks were starting to pay off. I could at least walk down the main street and hear my name being called rather than some form of ‘Hey whitey.’

Before I had a chance to conquer all of the town though, it was time to once again leave. This time I was meeting up with almost everyone who I flew into Burkina with for the BF’s biggest claim to fame, FESPACO. I have no idea what it stands for, but I do know that it’s West Africa’s biggest film festival that’s only held once every 2 years. Of course this alone made it pretty necessary to attend but even more excitingly, I had heard rumors that some of the greatest movies done about Africa such as Blood Diamond and The Last King of Africa had showed in previous years. Being as this is Burkina though, choosing films such as those proved to be pretty difficult seeing as all we had to go by were the films’ titles. If I wasn’t before, I am now a firm believer in ‘don’t choose a book by it’s cover’ because that’s exactly what we did and that’s exactly how we struck out every time. While I’m sure there was some sort of art to washing a dead corps for 20 minutes without saying more than 5 words, I just couldn’t seem to figure it out. We even stayed up to watch a showing of one of the most talked about films in FESPACO only to find ourselves watching some sort choppy chick flick that oddly incorporated a woman’s rights in Egypt. Despite the lack of seeing this event’s Hotel Rwanda, it was still an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

When returning back to village this time around, I walked that main strip from the bus station to my house and pretty much everyone I passed along the way gave me the ‘welcome back’ greeting in Jula or French . I can’t lie, that was an awesome moment. That alone made all those seemingly pointless and relentless walks worth it. Luckily enough the community integration didn’t stop there, thanks to International Women’s Day. Yeah, I never knew it existed either. It’s on March 8th. For those of you who now want to celebrate. The day before the main event a bunch of us women gathered at the House of the Women and prepared to clean the village. Cleaning the village here consists of using a broom (and by broom I mean one with out a handle so one has to bend at the waist and sweep) and sweeping the dirt and garbage into piles to burn. Huh. Despite the fact that to me sweeping dirt seems to be the most pointless activity ever invented, (which I pretty much refuse to do around my house here and is probably why the neighbors think I’m a filthy individual) I grabbed up a broom and swept around town for four hours with somewhere around 30-40 other women. I also should include that there was one male who decided to help us… Although I think he might have been drunk and joined by accident… The next day there was a large parade/gathering and a female soccer game (with some males dressed in the female apparel playing both for and against). The second of the two was by far my favorite event of the day. The women that played were all the ‘old’ women of the village and they were throwing elbows, grabbing on to bodies, picking up the soccer ball, and pulling out pretty much all the same tricks that my teams used to do when we played against the boys. I couldn’t stop laughing at the site of the slightly overweight, older women in WalMart sweatpants and bi-focals thundering after the smaller man wrapped in a skirt, completely ignoring the ball and instead hurling him to the ground like it was no big thing. I wish every day was International Women’s day.

So after that day it feels more like things are clicking between myself and the village. People now stop me on my walks and will say more than just the ‘take me to America’ or ‘do you have a husband’ and I’ve actually had requests for meetings! The only downside to all of this is that I’m once again leaving village, this time for 3 weeks for the In-Service Training. Of course I am incredibly excited about being reunited with the SED crew but I’m also hoping that it doesn’t mean 5-6 steps backwards in integration… Because it would pretty much be terrible to have to go on long walks in more than 110 degree weather and to attempt to explain that there wasn’t a rain cloud over me and that I actually just sweating that much… Can’t wait.

Hope all is well back there and you all made it through the winter okay! Thank you all very much as well for the birthday wishes. It was very nice to receive emails, cards and calls from the other side of the world!

Much love.

Well another month has passed here in village. I really can’t say that it’s been a blur of activity since once again I’ve frequently found myself staring at walls and carrying on conversations with lizards, but I’ll spare you those details and instead recap the more exciting parts of the month…

At the end of the January I attended my first formal Burkina dance of sorts. It brought back memories of 8th grade dances where one awkward soul is dancing on the dance floor and everyone else is just watching and waiting for everyone to start dancing. I think I passed about 2 hours nodding my head to the beat and wondering when I could go home. After a while of synchronized head bopping and toe tapping though, a few more brave souls ventured onto the dance floor and before long pretty much everyone was dancing. Well by that time it was unfortunately about 3 hours passed my bed time so the only thing I could do at that point was head home. I was surprised though, seeing as I thought all the parties/dances would include more African drums, chanting and dancing around a fire pit and less like 8th grade… Cultural exchange right?

The next morning I biked with some people to a village 8kish away for a large Catholic prayer gathering. It’s a special event that happens only one time a year so every Catholic in neighboring villages dresses up and heads to the outdoor church, although I wasn’t able to figure out the significance behind the first Sunday in February… It was another cultural moment and was more of what I pictured Africa to be with the African gospel choir singing and dancing and all the people sporting bright African floral prints.

Other than that most days here are about the same and more or less it’s all about what you can do here to pass some time. One of the ways I try and do that is by taking long, meandering walks around the village (which is actually more like a small town but everyone refers to places as villages here..) so people can get used to the site of a white person living among them. Most the time I either feel like I’m either running for office or competing in a Miss. America pageant with all the smiling, waving and greeting that I do. For however much I don’t particularly love being stared at, there are some moments of absolute brillance on these walks. For example, this morning I came across an old lady (old ladies are by far my favorite group of people here) who was munching on some sort of peanut butter sauce. I gave her the typical smile, wave and the African greeting and she gave me the biggest, peanut butter/toothless filled grin back and gave me the one American phrase that all Burkinabe seem to know ‘Bye-bye.’ I don’t really know why I enjoyed it so much, maybe it was how proud she looked after she said those words or maybe it was the fact that she was so happily smiling with peanut butter all over her face, but I‘m pretty sure I now love her.

I’ve had a few more meetings as well, another one with the Director of the Women’s House and one with the head members of the cotton union. The Director showed me all the items that were to be assembled into a schedule for 2009 and there were definitely a lot of things that I felt I could help with. The only disappointing part was that he had yet to set any sort of dates for the events and seeing as time is a bit different in Africa, I’m thinking that nothing will get scheduled for another month or so… I rather enjoyed the cotton union meeting as well, despite the fact that it was mainly held in Jula and I waited about 2 and ½ hours for it to begin. It kind of reminded me of one of those mafia meetings where the heads of the different families all get together for some important event… Except this gathering was more or less only about cotton… Nonetheless it had all the big-league cotton farmers from around the area present and it was interesting to watch how they conducted their meetings.

Other than that just continuing to live life one day at a time here! And trying to figure out how I’m going to survive the next few months seeing as I’m pretty sure it’s already a billion degrees during the day here and will only get hotter in the next few months…

Much love

Dear Americans,

So life in an African village… Probably not quite as glamorous as you all were expecting.

Us volunteers (no longer trainees, now official) spent our Christmas together and a little over half of us took off the next morning at about 5:30am to catch our bus. Those of us who represent the dirty South spent about 10 hours in travel that day and finally reached the splendid city of Bobo. Bobo is one of the other major cities in Burkina Faso, is located in the South and is also the only other city in country that has a Peace Corps transit-house. It also has a wonderful pizza place, a quaint little burger shop and a much, much smaller version of a SuperTarget. I chose to spend my time there wisely and pretty much spent all of it in those three places…!

Before I knew it though, it was time to head off to the next two years of my life. They piled all my stuff and another guys into the same van and we took off towards the African bush. Now I think all of us volunteers have all heard stories and nervously joked about how the Peace Corps vehicle drops all of your stuff off and you… and then drives away. And then it’s just… you. It was exactly like that. I think it took about 20 minutes for all my stuff to get unloaded and before I knew it the driver and the other volunteer had pulled out of my courtyard and I was standing there wondering what in the world to do.

Well it’s been about three weeks now and I can’t say that thought has exactly gone away. We went from having structured classes from 8-5 almost every day out of the week for two months to having no agenda for the next two years. It is just about as opposite as you can get.

I’d say the first week was one of the hardest ones in Peace Corps thus far. Besides meeting all the high up people in the village, such as the Mayor, prefet, high commissioner, police, etc., your only other real job is battling all the cockroaches, spiders and potentially mice that have taken over your home. There was definitely a lot of down time and I probably read as many books as I normally get through in a year in that first week alone. A lot of time to sit and stare and contemplate your life…

However, each passing day got a little bit better. The ladies that live in my same courtyard are incredibly welcoming and wonderful. I enjoy sitting around with them and their families, attempting to help in any way I can and am also incredibly glad that they have a t.v. This of course means I get to continue watching Burkina Faso’s favorite soap opera. Probably incredibly similar Guiding Light. Or Lizzy McGuire.

Leaving the courtyard is an entirely new adjustment as well. Whenever I leave and walk down the road I can expect pretty much everyone to stop what there doing and stare at me. As flattering as it is, it takes quite a bit of concentration to not accidentally trip or get hit by a moto. Just like everything else here though, it seems to get easier with every day. Everyone is always willing to smile, wave and give the obligatory ‘how’s the family, the life, the activities, the day, the morning’ greeting questions. It’s almost like being back in the good ‘ol Midwest…

Probably my favorite thing about my village so far is that there are a lot of opportunities here. Which means I won’t be reading quite as much or staring at that same wall for the next two years, a definite plus. The past week I had a meeting with a group of women and got to ask them what they wanted for their village. The thing that surprised me the most is that they didn’t ask for money or brand new equipment, something I had thought for sure would be demanded of me. Instead they were interested in solving problems and coming up with new ideas concerning cultivation, exportation, marketing and the environment, the last one being something that I am grossly excited to work with!!

That about sums up life in the African village so far. Not as many elephants, giraffes, zebras and lions that I hoped for… But still pretty cool.

Much love.