at the poste, at the poste

So I sat down to write a blog entry this morning while at home. I've been tickled by having so much access to the internet right at my fingertips. But here I am, at the poste...I arrived just after they closed, checked my PO Box to discover that I had a package waiting for me. Bummer, huh? But no. The poste guys re-opened their doors, re-took out their books, and got me my package so I could have it today. "Even though you are late, we will give you your box, because you are nice" one of the guys says to me in English, which he loves practicing whenever I come in to get money or send/get mail.

...and here they are, with their cyber poste up and running! How could I resist sitting down for 15 minutes? I was type typing a text message to a PCV friend, informing him of the good internet news and my Poste Office friend was very pleased that I was spreading the good word. There are three of them here, working out kinks...there aren't even chairs at all the computers yet...the internet guy stood over me as I typed in the code he handed me, just to make sure everything would work right.

So it's a bike ride into town...how much better do I feel giving my money to these guys here than to Zain, big huge phone conglomorate? So much better. And man...radio hill internet lady better step it up a notch! It's cheaper, faster, and there are more computers here at the poste...and I'm preettttyyyyy sure it'll be timlier than up there.


My todays blog will come to you at a later date :)

...and break is over!

So here I am, sitting in my house, lots of thoughts in my head. My PCV friend just took off towards his home 40k away. So I am solo in my house once again.

It is getting late-ish here and I'd like to right-en a sleep schedule that has been wronged by a long weekend in Ouaga, an Easter fete in town, a visitor at my home and basically two weeks of having even less responsibilities than I do normally...as in none at all.



Tomorrow classes begin again. Next week I am going to a training on "Positive Deviance"--or from how I understand it, how to use good role models within a community to inspire change in others--with Sister Elisabeth in Ouahigouya. I am looking forward to this not so much for the conference itself but more for the time I will be able to spend with Sis E to discuss things about our town and the school here and stuff we can do. Blahdy blahdy blah. There are about fifty questionably-applicable questions about "my community" that I have been told to find answers to in order to prepare for this conference...so I'm going to have a hard core answer-finding mission in town one of the days this week. Probably Wednesday. Take that, conference.

part of the path I will take from Lioudougou into town. bike bike bike. or walk.

I dunno, I've talked a lot about my site and my sitch and my feelings and stuff a lot lately and I always come back to being happy with the way I'm doing things here, but I do wonder sometimes if maybe I should start trying a different approach now too, maybe go out and be a little more formal, a little more I-Have-A-Job ish. I want to be proud of what I'm doing and I am. I think I need to go even further above and beyond the stupid challenges that I have due to the fact that my site is ridiculous...I'm already doing a good job, finding niches, finding people who want to work with me to do things to better their lives, slowly and surely making things work...but I want more more more!


There are always going to be difficult things that come up when you're trying to do things that are important to you. There are always reasons not to do something. It's easy to blame your stress and disappointments on other things. Even if other things really ARE the cause of your stress and disappointments...why give them the damned benefit of affecting your life? Easier said than done. And there's nothing like living alone on the top of the hill in a country that is not your own during the hot season to re-notice things like how hormonal certain weeks of the month can be. But hey, what is life for if not to learn (and relearn)?


This is a random jump back but I had a lovely Easter. I went to a giant party at a friend's house in town...their family had cooked tons and tons and TONS of food, they had dozens of cases of beer and soda, endless amounts of dolo (local beer), and people just kept coming and going, sitting and eating and chatting and laughing, the church choir came by after mass and after they had finished eating they sang and danced all in a circle and it was just a joyous and nice time. I sported some pretty nice clothes and hung out with some of the Ste B students who were there as well as friends I knew from town and everyone and anyone. I love social butterflying and that's what I did.

me in my pretty new complet at Easter (Paques)...and what is that, a ponytail?? yes.

better shot of the swanky outfit perhaps. me talking to my friend Therese, coolest nun ever in the background.

...and then today, I did almost nothing! But I don't feel too bad. I'm going to kick myself back into gear with this new and final 2009-2010 trimester. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing and really work on opening up real GEE-esque conversations with more people...parents' association people, Lioudougou people, Ste Bs people. Can you believe I've been in country for just about 10 months? I wouldn't scoff at an iced vanilla latte with whipped cream and caramel sauce.

And that is where I will sign off this time. Seven weeks and three days 'til my 'rents arrive!

The Peace Corps is

all about doing the best with what you've got. That's what I do and that's what I'ma do.

hot dusty wind. hard working girls.

Lots of space between the school building and the dorms, and it feels even longer when 100 degree sandy wind is blowing against your body. Go kids go!

One of my cuisinaire girls, work finished for the evening, diligently practicing writing some short French sentences.

way up in the sky, the little birds cry

A little bit of a housing identity crisis going on currently. Was glad to have my concerns validated by the new country director this weekend. Don't know what'll happen with all of this, but it's probably up to me to make the first move...and I'm not sure what I want that move to be.

I like where I live...I love Sister Elisabeth, I love my cuisinaire girls...but it's not a good place to be, up on a castle on a hill, not integrated into any community, not a part of any neighborhood or village or anything, seperated in Westerner visitor housing. I've worked and worked to make it my home as much as possible over the past seven months, I've been putting continuous effort into building connections in Lioudougou, in my town, around my school...and a lot of the time, I'm quite happy and comfortable. ...but when I look into my heart and I ask myself honestly, I just don't think that it was a good decision to put me at this boarding school. It wasn't a good idea to put any of us at boarding schools, gating us into our work environments where there is a questionable amount of work for us to do in the first place. I don't want to stir a pot that doesn't need to be stirred. I don't want to fix something that isn't broken. That isn't what the Peace Corps is for.

It was just really nice to have my (very real and important) concerns validated, concerns about where we live and what sort of use we are for our high-functioning, priviliged private schools where the girls have tons and tons of work to do and days that are highly structured. I'm finding a niche, I'm helping the cuisinaire girls, those who have fallen through the cracks a little bit...but a big huge part of the experience here isn't happening for me. And I'm glad Shannon finds this important too...and I hope I can talk to her more about it.

I really like being a Peace Corps volunteer, I really like the people at my school, I really like living in where I live...but some things are just not adding up. And I have to advocate for myself. Here and everywhere.

NASARA!!! NASARA!!! NASAAAAAAAAARAAAA!!!!!

And hello to YOU, little screaming child.

Don't have an entry all typed out in advance to post today but since I am here I might as well say something.

So hi! It's hot in Burkina Faso these days. That does not stop fonctionnaire women from wearing lots of perfume. It's all good.

I came into town today to get notebooks and pens for my cuisinaire friends because tonight we are going to start a little Cours de Soir to begin learning how to read and speak French. I'm looking forward to it because I really love these girls and this activity just sort of reared its head on its own, and I think it'll be good. No big expectations or plans as of this point, just gonna test the water. I also wanted to do a little research on literacy resources in Kongoussi today, but oddly its not looking too pro,ising. I'm going to stop by my APE friend's bureau after this to see what he has to say.

Yay! So tonight I will sit down with Valarie, Kali, Lizetta, Marie and maybe Jeanette to apprendre some chose. Peace Corps.

In other news, I'm planning on posting an updated packing list based on my experiences here thus far...things like that were really helpful for me when I was getting ready to come over, so if I can be of any help to anyone reading this who's counting down I'll be happy.

bachelorette chef extraordinaire (19th of Feb)

"Hey, you went to school in the Valley," I say to my closest Peace Corps neighbor who is sitting on my mat in the heat of my house during a brief visit on his way back home. "I know it's kind of a downer to talk about food that we can't have, but you know what I've been really craving lately? A burrito from..."
"...Bueno y Sano?" he asked.

...uhh, YEAH.

We determined that it would be completely possible to have one sent over here if the sender was willing to pack it in dry ice and that even if things went wrong and it got here gross, we'd be no worse off than we are now, not eating Bueno y Sano.

However, I was duly inspired this evening to try my hand at as Mexican a dish as I could create with the contents of my kitchen shelves.


First I took the rest of the tomatos that I had, which amounted to three, and chopped them up along with a small onion, half a clove of garlic, and a bit of piment (probably habenero pepper, but I'm not completely sure). I put this in a small bowl and added salt, cumin seeds that I'd crushed, powdered cumin and cilantro. Yum.

Originally I sliced up half a thin loaf of village bread to fry into really greasy crispy toast to serve as makeshift chips for this salsa concoction of mine. Appetizer.

Scoop rice out of my plastic canister a bit at a time, check for rocks and bugs, dump in water, rinse the yucky rice powder residue off, add fresh water, cook. Simple.

Now, tortillas...using the easiest recipie in our "Where There Is No Microwave" cookbook, which entails water oil and flour. How hard can that be, right? Let me tell you, it is a pain in the butt striking the right balance between "pliable" and "non-sticky." I think the cookbook assumes that we're going to mess up and/or improvise anyway, so pretty much everything is generalized and vague.

Flour, oil, salt, warmed water little by little. Gooey balls of mush, roll roll roll. Sticky flour dough covered hands, counter, and improvised salt canister rolling pin, flour all over my cutting board sheet, utensils, spice packets, cell phone, pagne and probably face. Stick sticky flour balls into flour container, smush more flour in bit by bit, understand the fine line between sticky and pliable. First tortilla fat...impatient...plop, into the frying pan to warm.

Oh no, the rice! Checked just in time. Turn burner off with gooey hands, move pot to the back of the stove, mismatched lid and all. Back to tortillas. Flour flour flour. I roll out three, each one better than its predecessor, then lump the remaining balls into one big clump and stick it in my flour container, to be worried about at a later date.

Juicy salsa juice...maybe it'll taste like Bueno. Tiny can of tomato paste that takes three tries to open with my can opener (what is with these things?) plus water plus garlic plus piment. Stir it up, taste it, add salt...and more salt...and more salt...and some powdered piment...and you know what, it doesn't taste too bad. And it is SPICY. Good.

The two thinnest tortillas I made turned out ok cooking in the pan...a little on the crunchy side. I break up the fattest one into pieces and try to make them crispy, like chips.

Add some spices to my neglected rice to try and give it some flavor...same Mexican type spices...cumin, cilantro, piment, salt...hmm...ah well.

And that's what I've got. Sort of crunchy tortillas with seasoned white rice, pico de gallo, and juicy tomato salsa stuff. I decided to forego the Vacche Qui Rit because I'm running low on wedges and really I've eaten a ton of that stuff recently. Gotta pace myself with the one cheese product I have at my disposal here. FOOOOD. Didn't exactly hit the same spot as a Bueno burrito but it was what it was and it wasn't so bad. It was pretty good actually. I'm a pretty good improvisational cook.

Since we're on the subject of food, lemme tell you about my favorite thing to make for myself recently. Sautee eggplant and grill a loaf of village bread (small lil breads) which you've sliced into halves in a bit of oil (already used for fry-frying purposes). Spread a wedge of Vac Qui Rit (Laughing Cow chesse, available at your local supermarket maybe) on one half of the bread, add sliced of tomato on top, sprinkle salt and piment and basil on top of the tomato, add slices of onion and you have got yourself the best sandwich ever. Lunch ramba. I never knew I'd move to Burkina Faso and a) see so much eggplant, or b) start to love eggplant. My favorite marche lady loads me up with eggplant cadeaux whenever I buy things from her because she can see in my eyes how much I loooovveeee itttttt.


Yum. Yum yum yum.
Ok...but now I must get ready to go to sleep. It is rather lateish here, being 10:30pm and all. I have yet to bathe, which is odd...so I will fill up a pitcher of drinking water to last me through the hot hot night and then get myself all bathed and jump into bed and try to fall asleep before I completely dry off. Good luck.

miscellany

The cold season is over, if it was even ever here. It never really got cold during the day, though nights and mornings and speedy bike rides were chilly for a little while. Everyone seems to agree that the cold never really came in full force this year.

And now the air feels different. And smells different. And I'm unsure about what to expect exactly, which reminds me that I'm a newbie here in this country still. And the sweat has arrived. As have the flies. The later is much more annoying than the former.

And cooking is losing its novelty a little. It steadily has been I guess. I really enjoy cooking actually, and I'm pretty good at making something out of nothing on those days when I haven't been into town in a while and don't want to wander over and eat with the cuisinaire girls. ...but it really does take a chunk of time, especially when you consider that in order to do it you must end the activity you are engaged in to go back home before leaving your home again. It really breaks up the day, this cooking for yourself all the time stuff. Losing my motivation to cook has caused my motivation to eat to diminish a little. I love delicious food, yum yum yum...but eh. Making it? And then eating it? And then cleaning up after the preparation, creation, and ingestion? Sometimes that's a hefty task to consider.

Really I'm just procrastinating. It's been 7 hours since I made and ate and cleaned up after my last meal. I should go and do it again. The wonders of having a laptop here, stream of conscious-ing my way through this blog business. Much better than the pressured, at the internet cafe style entries. Sort of.

If anyone has anything in particular that they'd like to read about, please feel free to comment or email and let me know. I'm going to go and see what there is to put in my belly.

Oh and hey, did you all know that my parents are going to be here in Burkina Faso visiting me in fourteen weeks? I literally don't know what I'll do in my head with all of my free time after their visit comes and goes, I spend so much time thinking about how great it's going to be!

The Peace Corps Story

This is it as we're told it, we in the precious Peace Corps sectors where structure is something that's been left behind with our favorite hooded sweatshirts (of the excessively pricey, justified-by-graduating brown and blue Mount Holyoke variety in my case). Where really all we needed to hear during training was “you're a Girls' Education and Empowerment volunteer...nnnnow go.”

You're putzing along, chatting with neighbors and engaging in small activities in your community for months. Many of them. A year goes by. Your feelings of insecurity about your place in the community have never quite gone away. Maybe you've grown exasperated from all of the waiting around and have tried initiating something completely on your own (better something than nothing you think, even if it isn't completely community driven, completely hands-off on your part, or completely sustainable). Said something that you have tried initiating turned out to be a huge failure (people assured you they'd show up and didn't, no one indicated how drastically availability would change with the changing seasons, local politics froze any and all progress, etc) when out of the blue something hits you! An opportunity! A motivated community member who has identified an issue and wants a solution! After months and months and months of hanging out, literally just sitting around with people, it just came up in a random conversation. ...and suddenly you have a project staring you in the face! AND EVERYTHING FALLS INTO PLACE AND LIFE IS GOOD.

So yes, that's what's supposed to happen as far as we've been told. Don't worry about it, nothing really gets done during your first year. It's not until the end of your second year that projects really take off, things really start to come together. This is advice steeped in certainty, and advice I internalized pretty quickly. But...how much of a self fulfilling prophecy is this? Where's the line between letting things happen as they happen and not doing anything? And while at the end of the day if pressed I will always end up admitting that I think I'm doing a good job of laying groundwork and such, I sometimes wonder if I've taken that advice in too easily. It's a complex layering of stress, as those who know me well might not be too surprised to hear. We are reassured so much not to worry not to worry, that it is obviously implied that we are expected to be worrying...and I worry when I realize that I'm not worried. I should be worried. Right? Maybe that's part of the process, being worried. And then I GET worried, and then it's just all a ridiculous mental mess that takes me a little while to slosh through. Like a field full of slushy, icy mounds of snow. Which is just about as far from being around me as possible.

I'm a pretty strong individualist (American) and I have always been able to do things and do them well. ...and though I've been known to race a deadline or two I am confident in my ability to self motivate and get things done. And I like having freedom from a strict teaching schedule and harsh standardized test requirements. I do. But on more than one occasion I have been tempted to lift my head to the heavens and scream “OK! JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO! Give me ONE thing, make ONE choice clear for me and I'll go for it!”

Because often when I think think think about the way things are going (progressing) I feel myself tugging myself back towards square one of life here. And I wonder if I'm strengthening connections with the right groups of people. If there are organizations in town I should be more acquainted with. If I should try to socialize with influential people more. Am I spending too much time on my campus? Am I spending too much time in town? Three kilometers is a pain in the rear distance to live from the center of your town, you know? And that's a deceptive distance anyhow, because all of the organizations, educational offices, NGOs, governmental buildings are PAST the town center.

But none of this is new information about Molly and her experience here. So I'll leave it be, and maybe write a lil' somethin' else.

happy viewing

Look at all these posts! I'm about to head back home but seeing as how the novelty of the garre has officially worn off, I am prolonging my taxi ride over for as long as possible.

My friend Aime. He helps me learn Moore. I think he thinks I just understand everything he says to me all of the time. I like to try to make that true.

eye candy again

Took a bunch of photos lately, thought I'd share a couple...no real rhyme or reason to any of them.

Below you will a find a view of my house (complete with straw-type hangar) as taken from next to the smelly pig house where about a million little grunting piggies live down wind of my open windows.

And here we have me sitting in my chair watching the pretty sunset just outside of my home.

Ok, so this is kind of funny. Pretty much the day after having one of a couple of Sontag-inspired debates with a Peace Corps neighbor friend of mine about the merits of photography and photographic representation and how I'm just not entirely comfortable whipping my camera out all of the time at this stage in my life here, I walk out of the school building at the end of the day to find the fields on fire. Which was wild, and I really wanted to take pictures. So I did. The girls had been sent out to burn down the tall dry grasses in order to scare off the invading population of snakes...which I have not seen and am hoping now will not have to.

Umm...more later maybe! It's late and I'm tired.

fam thoughts blog thingy 29th of January

Looking at Christmastime photos my fam sent me in a care package, my family is so goofy and funny! I'm just sitting here click click clicking through them and laughing and smiling and loving. There are about ten Christmas Eve pictures of my mom and aunts in a row, looking off in different directions and smiling various degrees of smiles, eyes closed various degrees of shut, and I am cracking up, I can feel myself there for that photo shoot that has unwittingly become a Christmas tradition. Sixty shots of the three of them all in a row trying to eventually end up with something that they’ll deem passable. They all look beautiful to me!

There's my cutie little grown up baby cousins and the newest baby in the family, a product of my ACTUAL grown up cousin (whose hair and new house are both looking fabulous these days). Photos of family members caught laughing their heads off while holding the baby or eating whipped cream out of the bottle (you know who you are!), and a couple of the inevitable "take a picture of me taking a picture of you," which is par for the course when you give a kid a camera. And by kid I mean Al. :) ...and I didn't realize that dust busters are still around, but I'm glad someone got one for Pam! And Christmas day photos of my aunts and the little puppy that is decked out in a fancy little Santa outfit, and the beautifully decorated table and tree. Chairs and sweaters and sitting and eating and family and it's so funny how we all get stuck together like this!

I have a nice family over there in America.

....


Just finished writing this up when I got the news that one of my GEE family members has to go home to the states for good. Not an easy choice, not an easy situation. What a ray of sunshine we’ll miss in Burkina. We’re such a good group, us GEEs. I think Charlie put it best in his blog…I don’t know if every becomes as bonded as we have, but we certainly have. This isn't an easy thing to process. Devin baby the world's a better place because you're in it, no matter where in it you are! Love you girl.

a lil somethin from the 28th of Jan...

I had an un-bloggably good weekend in Ouahigouya this past weekend, full of delicious food, delicious company and delicious travel adventures. It was really nice. Sometimes things happen that remind me that I love being a Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina Faso, and sometimes things happen that remind me that I simply love being in Burkina Faso. This weekend was the opportunity for the latter.

Being a GEE volunteer here is a wild job, kind of like summer camp in that I’m always ON, even when I’m not really doing anything that to the outside observer might look like work. I wander around my campus and I’m on, I visit a friend’s village and I’m on, I go into Kongoussi and I’m on, I sleep in and I’m on, I do my laundry and I’m on. It’s tiring sometimes, when you stop to think about it.

So being in Ouahigouya was nice. I could causer (cooooooozaayyyyyyy) with people and speak Moore and stuff, but I could also ignore people and laugh really loudly and buy sachets of gin and go out for dinner and bike bike bike and not feel like I needed to be a Peace Corps Volunteer all of the time. I could be Molly. I was just chillin’, travelling a little bit and enjoying a weekend in a familiar town. Getting lifts from nice people, voyaging under the stars…I love when coming back to Kongoussi feels so good.

I talk a lot about being “on” while doing work that doesn’t look like work, but I actually do have a few different things that I do around here. Not everything is a sustainable project in terms of the stuff we were told we might be doing during training (…what? You mean Peace Corps life might bear little to no resemblance to the things you’re told during stage?), but it’s helpful and I really have no interest in starting clubs or projects that aren’t asked of me and that I am not completely into because I know that’ll make life sucky and stressful. So I will describe some of the things I do, to give you an idea of how I spend some of my time (and also to validate myself…but anyhow).

There are 4 grade levels at my school and each grade (classe) has a test (devoir) in some subject every Monday and Friday. End of trimester grades (moyens) are calculated solely by the marks received on devoirs. For most secondary schools, students maybe have one or two devoirs in each class for the trimester, period. PRESSURE! My school’s ridiculously huge amount comes from the fact that it’s a high-functioning private school with a well organized director and good teachers. So the teachers write up their devoirs a week to a few days ahead of when they’re going to be given and I type them all up and get them spell checked and make corrections and then photocopy them and organize them for dispersal. Pretty secretary-like. I also proctor (surveiller) two devoirs on Monday and two on Friday. So that’s maybe 3 to 5 hours of typing work per week plus 6 to 8 hours of sitting in a classroom and reading a book while making sure that the veritable angels who go to this school don’t cheat on their tests, which really they never do. Either that or they’re really, really good at it.

I also go to the English Club in Kongoussi on Saturdays for two hours to play the role of Native Speaker, which is cool, especially since it’s not my club and the two teachers who run it are fluent in English as well as French and are thus completely better suited than me to lead the thing. I think I’m going to start dividing my Saturdays between English Club and computer lessons that my computer-teaching counterpart (informatique) holds for the teachers at my school. I’ve been avoiding the informatique classroom like the friggin plague since I was in mortal danger of being confused as an computer teacher when placed at Ste B’s (apparently due to my “IT background”, but that is a whole separate tangential subject matter that is pretty well situated in the past at this point). However, it might be a cool way for me to spend time with some of the teachers here (so hard to do with most since they come in for their classes and leave right after to go teach others at different schools) as well as with my smart friendly and motivated official counterpart. I’m going to ask him if I can join. They’re starting Excel this weekend. ‘Bout time I learned how the heck that program works.

The girls have 2 hours study time every night except Saturday, so I head over whenever I can…or want to…really I need to start being more regular about this…to hang out and chat (distracting?) or help them with English or math (plus do high school level math myself, which rocks my world) or if they’re all busy and in no need of me I read a book in French or chat with the two guys from Lioudougou who help out during study hours as well.
* edit 2/2/01: last night I promised the 4eme students that if every one of them spoke in English on the debate topic they were “discussing” I would stand on the table and sing and dance for them. Looks like they’ll have to try harder next time…!

I try to hang out with my nun friend here, who is one of my favorite women in the world really, as much as I can. I like to accompany her on her errands and trips when the opportunity arises so we can chat and stuff and I can pry my way into helping her with the big funding stuff she does for the school. I do little things for her whenever opportunities arise, from helping her design a brochure for the school to taking photos of the classrooms to helping her send emails to getting her mail for her at the post office…lots of little errands. Very personal assistant-ish. There’s another term for it as well, which I am tempted to use in the kindest and least self-deprecating sense of the word…but kids read this stuff.

Hmm…so we’ve got Devoir Master, English Club Goer, Study Hour Crasher and Sister Elisabeth’s…Enthusiastic-Menial-Task-Assistant. “EM-TA”…ha! So far nothing I’ve designed and implemented myself but ça va aller. I’m starting out by helping out.

I have done some other little things already so far. I teamed up with a PCV neighbor of mine to run a three-day girls camp for the 10 secondary school girls in her village where we talked about health and decision making and puberty and AIDS. It was a smashingly ridiculous and wild success because we did it the right way…she’s been in her village for 2 years and knows the place and the girls really well, we combined our interests and personalities to present subject matter that we were comfortable with that related to what the girls wanted to learn about and do, and we took it day by day. We should get medals for how great it went and how great we were, to be perfectly modest.

I also got two of the cook girls (cuisinares) at Ste B’s who had been out of school for a year or two, who work here because they are various degrees of orphaned and didn’t want to be forced into early marriage, officially enrolled for this year. It didn’t take any eye opening social education (sensibilisation) on my part because they are under the care of the nuns who run the school here who CLEARLY are down with GEE (yeah you know me), but it did take talking to them a whole lot, finding out that they wanted to go to school, talking with my nun friend about it, and going to the schools in town to argue a place for them even though the school year had already started. One of the girls, Denise, is doing great. She’s in this really crappy night school program where each class meets once a week maybe if the professor feels like showing up, and she’s been out of school for two years working (or “rien”—nothing—if you ask her what it is she’s been doing) but she’s kicking its butt. –edit: she just came into my little secretariat office to grab something for one of the nuns and told me excitedly that she’s getting two of her devoirs back next week and she knows that she did a good job and she’ll bring them to me so that I can see them and she has another devoir at the end of February and she’s studying for it already and my goodness I’m so glad this girl is in school.

Kids who can make it through the entirety of the Burkina Faso public school system can probably persevere through just about anything in the world.

I’ve got a few “am going tos” on my agenda at the moment, though in true Burkinabè fashion they aren’t exactly being rushed into, for various reasons both in and out of my control. Maybe I’ll update on those another time. And you know, really the most important part of being here, in my view, is wanting to live here, wanting to go out and spend time with people. Maybe in some ways its better to not have a job or clubs, to just be hanging out and enjoying life and convincing people that I want to live with them, that I’m not anxious to go back to the States…I want to live in this country that’s hot and hard and poor, that I enjoy living in for numerous reasons. I’m not here to change the country, to change the world…just to do the little things that I can do to help out, to make people laugh and smile and feel comfortable in their lives…like I would want to be doing anywhere else. I just get to live in Burkina Faso while doing it.

sometimes it's all

blllraaaaaaahhhhhggghhhhhhhhaaaaaaahhhhhh.

And sometimes it's not.

a new perspective

My hill adventure...! Pictures of my pretty town.