Nine Million Black Bags to Titao

One of the first things many people do when they get the letter from the Peace Corps saying they're going to Burkina Faso is to read Nine Hills to Nambonkaha by Sarah Erdman, an RPCV from Côte D'Ivoire. Côte D'Ivoire borders Burkina Faso and shares a lot of the same culture, religious beliefs, and even people, like our Ivoirian grill guy Moussa, who's responsible for the slaughter in our courtyard last Thanksgiving. Markus read the book before we came to Burkina and found it very interesting. I waited till the end of my service to read it and found it very annoying. My friend Joel, who'd read the book, summed up my annoyance: "It's scientifically impossible to have that positive of a Peace Corps experience."

Erdman, who was a health worker, talks about AIDS, weighing babies, teaching women about birth control, villagers' sense of fatality, and most of all kids. Kids dancing, kids playing, kids constantly at her house, kids everywhere. This is a woman who's crazy about kids. Me, not so much. What's the big deal? They're just little people. Now that I'm living in a country where almost 50% of the population is 14 years old or younger, I'm even less impressed with kids. While Erdman taught the alphabet to a handful of smart and charming boys, I'm responsible for introducing science to almost 500 students of various levels of intelligence and charm. For her, dealing with kids was a hobby; for me, it's my job. On bad days, I look out at the sea of white headlight-eyes and just see all the tests I'm going to have to grade.

Erdman's love of African kids is a symptom of her serious case of Africa Awe. Every chapter ends with flowery descriptions of baobabs silhouetted against the setting sun or people singing and dancing at an all night funeral. She seems completely enchanted by the place. Africa Awe isn't a bad thing. We all experience it, even after twenty months. The other day I was biking home from school and noticed that a woman biking in my direction didn't pay any attention to the blindingly white woman on her shiny blue bike. For a moment I truly believed I was black. Most of the time, I look around at the baobabs, the pants-less kids, the women with babies on their backs and don't even register it, just like that woman didn't register me. I'm sure Erdman only emphasizes the "Africanness" of her experience in order to make her story more interesting and didn't really go around looking at everything with wonder. But sometimes I think she takes her Africa Awe too far.

Erdman's so in love with Africa, she even starts thinking like an African. She was obviously well integrated in her village. While describing a conversation she had with her village friend and his friend who'd moved from the village to a city, she claims that the guy from the city seemed less comfortable in the village than she was. I'm skeptical that an Ivoirian would feel less comfortable in the village he grew up than an American who'd only been living there a few months. But regardless of how he felt, she obviously felt very comfortable there. So much so that she changes at least one of her old beliefs. She says she initially thought polygamy was Africa's downfall, but she softens her view, saying that it allows women to share the work and, citing no evidence, says that it might reduce the AIDS rate because men would be less likely to go to prostitutes if they have more than one wife at home.

I felt like despite being a development worker, Erdman didn't really want her village to develop. She wanted it to stay just the way it was. When the village gets a gas-powered corn pounder, all the women in the village line up to use it. When it breaks down, Erdman feels elated because although she admits that the corn pounder would save the women time, she missed the sound of them manually pounding corn all day. And when electricity finally comes to the village after years of waiting, Erdman is the only one not celebrating. Instead of thinking of all the improvements that could be made at the health clinic now that there's electricity, she just complains about how bright the street lights are. Like her village, Titao desperately wants electricity. People seem to think that by building more and more buildings with lights, ceiling fans, and electrical outlets, they can speed up its arrival, which is only a few years late. As soon as electricity finally does come, Titao will be transformed--for the better, I think. I don't see why an African village shouldn't have electricity, something Americans have taken for granted for generations. Africans want electricity, so why doesn't Erdman?

I let this book sit on my bookshelf collecting pounds of red dust before blowing it off and opening it because I thought it'd be a nice treat at the end of my service. Since it was written by an RPCV, I expected it to be well-rounded, with fewer descriptions of adorable black kids and more frank discussions of things that need improvement. Erdman does talk about many common problems in Africa like men having girlfriends in addition to their wife or wives and people in power stealing money. But these criticisms are dwarfed by descriptions of dancing at ceremonies and still more cute kids. I'm sure she glossed over the negative so as not to leave a bad impression of her beloved village. If I wrote a book about my experience, I'd probably do the same thing. I love Titao. It recharges me. But I would also mention the bad. Like the black bags littered all over the ground that, to me, are more "African" than baobabs and cute kids.