After today, I'll be fiiiiiine!

Today is the last day. The very last day that I can say that I am not, have never been a teacher. Because tomorrow I will be a teacher. I will be standing up in front of a classroom filled with girls, professing knowledge in what I hope is an interesting and creative (but not too ostricizingly and weridly-creative) way. I am prepared but not too prepared. I have a special packet of delicious instant coffee for the morning. Excellent.

This is a picture of a future tree, one of at least five that are now growing in my courtyard. Look out, deforestation!!

years and years

It's nice to see a new place. It's been becoming very easy for me to get stuck in my own head lately. The one year mark has come and gone and I've been thinking so much about the past (reflecting on times before Peace Corps, living the past a little too much) and about the future (totally unsure of where I'll be, what I'll be doing, who I'll be with a year from now) that I've sort of come out of the present. I've always known I was going to go to college after high school, and I figured out pretty quickly that I was going to join the Peace Corps after that...I may have even known that in high school as well. So, next up...a big mysterious turn in the road. I guess they all look big and unique and mysterious from this vantage point though. And I do have a bit of a goldfish memory at times...thinking that this thing or this event is huge and new when maybe it's not. Shock and surprise. There are a lot of challenges up ahead, a lot I've got going on. What's next is what's here, what's now.

But it was nice to see a new place and old familiar people. To maybe talk a little too much about what's on my mind and in my heart with one friend, to put into words why speaking Mooré is so important with another friend, to commiserate about having to deal with tiring and annoying comments and suggestions from men on the street with another one.

Arrive back in Ouaga and see my town's name on a bus and smile because I really like it there.

Next Tuesday is my first day as a teacher. Better get prepared...but I don't really know if anything but my first day will prepare me. Only have a few hours of classes each week. I hope I enjoy them. I think that I will.

Gotta find a way to live more calmly, take the pressure off. I'm feeling so un-Burkinabè. Worried, rushed, no time, stressed out that I'm not doing things right, that if I'm somewhere I should be somewhere else. Gotta chill. Just be. I need to find some ways to do that.

Being here can be hard in ways that are kind of unexpected. And when you sit back and think about them, you realize that it's just life, life is what can be hard in ways that are unexpected.

Bobo Dioulasso

I decided to come down to Bobo Dioulasso for a couple of days. A fellow volunteer's 30th birthday was the excuse...I've never been down here before and don't have a lot going on since school's start is a weekish away.

It's a nice town city. I like the feel.

I just wanted to say hi.

chez qui? chez me!

Dear Mom and Dad,

Do you recognize this place pictured below?

It is the path leading from my school down into the village (where I now live). We took this path on our way to visit Ono. Look at all that green! This has been a good, rainy year for the folks of Burkina Faso. All signs point to the rain continuing through the end of this month, which will be good news for crops as well as for weather. I love me some fresh air!

And if you were to follow that path and turn right and push your way through some close-growing millet you would soon get to my new house!

This is part of my new house, latrine/douche area over to the right there. Three rooms, lots o' space for little me. Let's go in, why dont we? Ah, but upon getting to the doorway, let's look out into my courtyard!

If you look closely you can see a kid in green (camoflauge) getting water from the well. My walls are not very high at the moment!

...and to the right, the entrance to my courtyard, temporary clothesline up above, a little place where I might eventually compost some stuff, the tree that currently provides me with daytime shade...

And inside my house?

I should be embarassed that this huge mess of a room is on the internet for all to see, but I took these pictures right as I was heading out to the internet and...it's really not that bad! Got my bed down there, bookshelf, notorious chairs, scattered things...

...and this is where I cook. On the other side of this room is where I keep my get-myself-clean stuff and my water and things. But yes. Voilà chez moi. I must get off the internet and bike back there right now.

Bye!

Here I am...

Today, for the very first time ever, I French braided my hair into pigtails. Hair, it turns out, can actually start to get long when you stop cutting it.

I've tried to do this before, quite recently actually, but it hasn't been altogether successful.

This task was made interesting by the fact that I haven't washed my hair in quite some time. Those of you who know me might not be too surprised to discover that I decided a while ago to stop washing my hair just for fun. Just because I thought I might like how it feels and looks. Kind of chunky without all of the social and physical aspects of dreadlocks. Kind of cartoon character hair is how I imagined it.

Well, deciding not to wash your hair for an undefined period of time is one thing when you live in a house with running water that flows like wine and from a particularly useful thing called a shower head, but when you live in a house slightly more removed from this luxury the choice aspect of the decision starts to come from a slightly different angle. The whole process included, it takes me about an hour to get ten and a half gallons of water. I take two 20-liter plastic bidons halfway across my quartier to a faucet where I pay a teeny bit per jug to fill 'em up before attaching them to my bike and walking them back to my home. There is a much closer source of water to my house, a well about ten feet from my courtyard that is literally a hundred feet deep with a cement barrier around it that only goes up to just below my knees. Not only is it incredibly difficult to pull buckets of water up from such a profound depth, it is also incredibly slippery and dangerous near this well. I help the ladies with their buckets from time to time in order to get badass cred, but my nun friend pretty much told that if I didn't fall in and die she'd come down and kill me if she found out I was getting my water from there.

Imagine a large jolly lady in a habit laughing after saying this. My nun friend has an interesting way of getting her points across and a fun sense of humor.

So yes...it takes a lot more effort to get water, and it would currently take a lot more water than normal to really wash my hair, so the choice becomes pretty easy nowadays when I fill up my bath bucket and take it to my little shower space outside.

Someday I'll wash my hair again.


I am incredibly happy in my new house, my real house, my house in a community with kids and neighbors and Burkinabè. I am incredibly happy with my flashlight and my dust and my little moringa tree seeds planted in my courtyard. I am so happy to wander over to Claudia's house at night and eat tô with her and her family, and sit and chat and look up at the stars until I am too tired to keep my eyes open and must walk through the millet and corn and bean fields to my house to go to sleep. I am very excited about working with the health center in my quartier and with my school up on the hill.

Year two is lookin' good.