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.