Jill and Markus in Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso RPCVs

2008-07-23T05:42:00.000-05:00

Since Markus and I can't claim to be Burkina Faso PCVs anymore (we tried, but we kept getting threatening letters from the US government), this blog is kaput. But never fear. If you just can't get enough of that zany little African town called Titao, check out our replacements' blog: aaronandamyrose.blogspot.com. If you dig my style, Ill be writing at eekgodjilla.blogspot.com. Markus fans, don't fret! He'll be an occasional guest writer. It'll be pretty much the same thing but with considerably fewer black people.

Thanks for reading!

Escape from Titao

2008-07-22T15:58:00.003-05:00

By guest writer Kurt Russell*

Thunder shook the tin roof. As the first drops panged on the metal, Markus's cell phone rang.

“Marku. . .It. . .ylvie. We nee. . .stool sample. . .mediately!” The phone cut out, but Markus knew what he had to do. He had to escape from Titao.

“JILL! Get your stuff! We gotta get our stool samples to Ouaga!” Jill frantically picked up the six cats that seemed to multiply like gremlins.

“What do I do with these?!” she yelled.

“Get rid of 'em!” Markus shouted.

Jill threw the cats in Markus's direction, creating a screaming ball of claws and fur. Markus jumped dramatically to the side to avoid the striped cloud of death that was heading straight for him.

Amy and Aaron, the replacements who were in Titao to see their site, looked at each other. “What's going on?” Amy said. Aaron just shook his head, confused.

The rain was pouring as they ran to their bikes. Markus cursed. “Someone slashed our tires!”

Jill frantically picked up all the bikes. “What do I do with these?!”

“Get rid of 'em!” Markus shouted.

Jill threw the bikes in Aaron's direction, creating a devastating wave of spokes and handlebars. Aaron jumped dramatically to the side.

“LET'S GO, LET'S GO, LET'S GO!” Markus commanded.

The four set out, stool samples in hand, toward the bus station. “Oh no!” Jill shouted. “The road's covered in water! We're trapped!”

“We can do it!” Markus replied as he grabbed Jill's hand and the two of them sloshed their way through the six inches of muddy water. When they got to the other side, they heard screams and turned to see Amy and Aaron wash away. Markus dropped to his knees. “NOOOOO!”

“We have to keep going,” Jill said to Markus as she yanked him to his feet.

A few minutes later they spotted the bus. “Go, go, go!” Markus yelled.

As they got nearer, they had to push their way through a crowd of villagers moaning, “Take us to America!” Women held up their babies and screeched, “Take my baby! Take my baby!” Markus pushed everyone aside, but Jill frantically picked up all the babies.

“What do I do with these?!”

“Get rid of 'em!” Markus shouted.

Jill threw the babies in the villagers' direction, creating a squealy ball of baby. The villagers jumped dramatically to the side.

Jill and Markus climbed into the bus. “Floor it!” Markus yelled at the bus driver. As the bus picked up speed, the driver started panicking. “What is it?” Markus said.

“Look up ahead,” the driver said, nervously.

Markus squinted through the windshield and saw a group of four-year-old bandits who'd set up a toll booth made of twigs. “Damn!”

“I have to stop and pay them,” the driver said.

“Not this time,” Markus growled as he stepped on the driver's foot and the bus crashed through the twig barricade. The four-year-olds jumped dramatically to the side.

“Phew,” Markus exclaimed, sinking into his seat and putting his arm around Jill. As they passed by the Titao sign, he said, “We're out. It's over.”

“But what about getting out of Ouaga?”

“Oh dear God.”

*Note: Inspired by Markus, written by Jill (not actually Kurt Russell)

Rose Colored Memory

2008-07-21T07:38:00.005-05:00

Something weird happens every time I take transport in Burkina. I sit on a sack full of carrots, struggling to avoid the pointy ends and waving my hands around to keep the carrot-loving fly army at bay. One, two, six hours later the bus shows up. Or rather the ex-bus, considering how many vital bus parts are missing--windows, seats, axles, tires. I push, pull, and bite my way through the crowd to get a seat and we're off. Kind of. We'll get going once the driver feels like it and right now he's more keen on eating, praying, and holding hands with his buddies than driving a rickety old bus. At last we shake, rattle, and roll our way down the scenic dirt roads of Burkina, and I keep my fingers crossed that the bus doesn't run out of gas, break down, or explode. But as soon as I get to where I'm going, I'm so happy to be there that I immediately forget how horrible the experience had been.

I feel the same thing happening with my Peace Corps experience. Already the view's getting rosier, which is great. Bring it on. But I don't want to completely forget the bad things. That sounds so pessimistic, but nothing's more obnoxious than listening to someone returning from living in Africa who won't shut up about how cute the kids are and how interesting the culture is and how pretty the language is and how delicious the food is. Yeah right. No PCV goes around all day saying, “I'm so happy to be here! This is just so amazing!” If they do, they should probably cut back on the Larium. Instead we struggle through all the little difficulties and actively try to have a good time, which most people succeed in doing. No one would stay for two long years if they weren't having a good time.

But it's been really hard, and I'm glad I'm leaving. Most of my problems with this place stem from my being a married woman in Africa. It's not culturally appropriate for men to be friends with married women, so after greeting me, they turn to Markus and don't look back. That's the official line, anyway; I think the real reason men don't talk to me is because they're not at all interested in what women have to say. Men and women have very little interaction aside from the obvious, which they do all the time judging by all the tiny, pantsless kids running around, so they don't know how to talk to each other. Even the Burkinabé men working in the Peace Corps bureau--educated men who work with Americans--treat me differently than Markus. After two years the head of Secondary Education still isn't quite sure if my last name is Markus or Fleisch, but he's pretty sure it's Markus.

Not only does Markus have the good luck to have been born male, he also happens to be nice and charming. So after the initial, “You have a penis?! No way! I do too! Let's be best friends” interest died away, the Burkinabé stuck around because they liked him and became even less interested in me. Our neighbor, who is also a teacher at the school, would come up to me and say, “Go tell your husband that he and I are going to go get some beers and leave you and my wife at home.” Instead, Markus and I went out for beers and left him at home. So at least I got to benefit from Markus being nice and charming.

I don't want to forget what it was like to live and work in a village where no matter how many times I corrected people, they always called me Madame Markus because that shaped every aspect of my experience here. Paradoxically, it made me enjoy teaching even more than I would have because I relished hearing my students call me Madame McKay and listening to everything I said--they might not have respected me as a woman, but they sure respected the red pen I wielded. I also really enjoyed teaching because although the digestive system of a cow isn't a lifelong passion of mine, I love biology and I like teaching, especially when I get to do goofy stuff like pretending I'm a crab walking sideways. Teaching was my therapy for the neurosis I developed from the way people who weren't my students treated me.

No transport story's complete without describing the goat that peed on your foot, the baby that vomited on your lap, and the spit from the dude in front of you that flew back through the window and smacked you in the face. So I'll definitely come back with rose colored stories about how much I enjoyed teaching in Burkina, but I'll also tell poop brown/snot green/yellow vomit colored stories of sexism.

Au revoir, Titao!

2008-07-20T16:37:00.007-05:00

For the past few months I've been meaning to get a picture of the cute little Titao sign that says "Au revoir et bonne route" and another sign that has a picture of a giant goat, sheep, and chicken threatening to eat some normal-sized fields. But it was hot and it rained last night so now it's all muddy and my back kind of hurts and my tire's flat and I'm kind of hungry and oh man I ate too much and where'd I put my sweat rag and oh I feel a little sleepy and zzz. So instead here's a picture of a couple of dudes in tiny shirts. Enjoy!

Adventures in nostalgia

2008-07-12T05:44:00.000-05:00

On our last day in Ouahigouya, Markus and I invited our friends to get chicken and beer with us later that night, set out the half empty bottle of gin we planned on making gin and tonics with at the bar, and allowed ourselves to feel a tiny bit nostalgic.

At five I asked Markus if the sound I was hearing was thunder, and he said it was just the wind. At quarter to six, Markus stood outside and looked up at the dark clouds. I joined him and asked him what he thought. In uncharacteristically optimistic style, he said he thought they would pass us. At a little after six it suddenly started pouring. I shouted at Markus over the rain that I didn't want to bike through all that mud; Markus shouted back that he was leaving as soon as the rain stopped. At 6:30 the electricity turned off. At 6:31 Markus and I took out our frustrations by snapping at each other. I shined my bike light on the book I was reading, Expat, and he used his cell phone to light the book he was reading, State of Fear, the Michael Crichton book in which he argues (badly) that global warming is a myth. I shouted at Markus asking if he wanted to sit next to me to share my bike light; he shouted no.

Cranky as hell, I cursed Ouahigouya and read my book, which was a collection of essays by women living abroad. I was in such a bad mood that I relished the parts when the author struggled with culture shock, weird food, and annoying people and glared at the page during the inevitable cultural assimilation and appreciation. Why couldn't my experience have a happy ending like that? Instead I was sitting in a humid room with rain hammering on the tin roof, mentally shaking my fist at the lights and fan that refused to turn on and daydreaming about how much fun I should have been having on my last night in Ouahigouya.

If Peace Corps's supposed to be such a life changing experience, how come I haven't been able to feel sad about leaving Burkina no matter how hard I've tried? I tried to feel it when I taught my last lesson, when I handed back my last test, when I left my last school meeting. But my lesson was about dysentery and my students' last impression of their white science teacher was her repeatedly telling them not to “défequer” outside. My students totally bombed their last test, and I formed my last impression of them while contending with a bunch of pissed off fifth graders. And after the school meeting, the other teachers neglected to tell us when lunch was and ate all the chicken without us, giving us a pity plate of chicken guts when we showed up late. Nope, not sorry about not teaching anymore.

Now here in Ouahigouya, I'm saying goodbye to the town where we had our three months of pre-service training. The town where I had all my first Burkinabé meals, including fish heads on rice and goat femur soup. The town that Markus and I escaped to when we were bored with Titao to drink ice cold beers and sleep in air conditioning. And it totally sucks. Instead of chatting with my friends about our first impressions of this place, I'm eating powdered mashed potatoes—the same thing I had for lunch—and tippy tapping out my frustrations.

But if nothing else, Burkina's taught me that nothing turns out like you thought it would. I know that if my students had surprised me and Markus with a giant “We'll miss you!” card that they'd all signed, I'd be totally weirded out. And if I'd had the perfect Ouahigouya goodbye, biking down to the bar without people yelling at me from all directions, then receiving excellent service from a smiling, attentive waitress, I'd think something was up. And if something like a ridiculously badly timed thunderstorm hadn't occurred, I'd be looking over my shoulder the whole evening, watching out for someone throwing dirt at me or stealing my iPod. The cynical moral of the story is that everything in this country goes wrong all the time. And that's ok. It wouldn't be nearly as interesting if everything went right.

Serenity now!

2008-07-12T05:43:00.000-05:00

I wish I could go back to those first few days in Burkina when I thought all the tiny kids running after me as I biked by were shouting “Ça va?! Ça va?!” Caught up in my initial excitement about being in Burkina, I enthusiastically answered them back, “Ça va!” And it really did ça va. It ça vaed pretty damn well because these adorable little black kids were politely asking how I was doing. Then I figured out that what they were really saying was “Nassara! Nassara!” Then it didn't ça va so well anymore.

This wasn't the jokey “gringo” I'd heard in Mexico. Or the descriptive “gaijin” I'd heard in Japan. It's true that sometimes “nassara” is jokey as in “Nassara speaks Mooré!” And it was certainly descriptive: Everyone from our faux typey boutique owner to our well-dressed landlord felt the need to remind us that we were, in fact, nassaras. As if we could ever forget. Not with the obnoxious adults yelling “Nassara!” and then laughing with their friends as I bike by, feeling extremely self-conscious and dorky in my bright blue helmet. And not with all the kids shouting “NASSARA! NASSARA!” in their screechy little voices—I got to the point where I actually felt scared when I saw a group of toddlers loitering on the street.

This isn't a unique problem, of course. Many volunteers deal by introducing themselves to all the gangs of roving children so that they screech their name instead of nassara. But as it turns out, “Jill” is about as difficult for a Burkinabé to pronounce as “Ouédraogo Fatao de Abdoulaye” is to a new American teacher. Most volunteers just try to ignore it. Easy enough. That is, until you crack and find yourself cursing and giving the finger to a bunch of four-year-olds. And finally there's the rare breed of volunteer who manages to just get over it. These volunteers, also called “third years” or “crazy,” have attained a level of serenity just below nirvana.

Recently I tried to convince myself that I've become nassara immune. Sure I flicked off a bunch of kids on the way to the internet café, but I didn't really mean it. And yeah, I noticed when the old lady I passed called me nassara, but it didn't bother me. But then Markus said, “What if we get to America and it turns out everyone there has turned into Burkinabés and yell nassara at us all the time?” Yeah, not so serene anymore.

My Perfect Marriage :)

2008-07-09T11:25:00.001-05:00

This blog has tried to be funny because lots of people have said that humor is the best medicine (probably Mark Twain, but I'm not sure and am too lazy to look it up). I think Jill and I have made a few people laugh and anybody who really knows us knows that we are both sarcastic, dry-humored people. Our marriage occasionally becomes the target of this difficult-to-interpret-over-the-internet-style of humor. If you like to make fun of people and the only person in the room is your spouse, guess who's getting made fun of?

I wanted to write this blog to let people know that Jill and I, despite my bad grammar, are better than ever. In fact, I invite anybody reading this blog to come with their spouse and try two years in the stinkiest, sweatiest, diseasiest, place in the world. Try staying up with your spouse as they are vomiting and running to the latrine every five minutes. Try sweating constantly and still trying to make yourself look appealing. Try supporting your spouse when people are rude to you, but you can't complain because picking on the white people is part of the culture. Try dealing with people who literally call your spouse “thing there.”

Most marriages aren't strong enough to make it. Jill has already mentioned the statistic; here we are, two years later, no divorce. Actually, Jill and I are really looking forward to re-starting our lives in America. Buying a car, renting an apartment, finding jobs, applying to grad school, cutting open monkey brains, brewing beer. (Second to last is mostly Jill, but that last one is mostly me; Jill does love the end product though—that's right, I married a woman who likes beer more than wine, how many of you can say that?)

So if we post a blog that is critical of the other person, know that we are being sarcastic and there's no need to question our devotion to each other. In fact, it's down right insulting, thus the creation of this post to clear up any misunderstandings our previous posts may have caused and future posts might create. The Africa offer still stands. Any takers . . . ?

Les blancs, part deux

2008-07-09T11:02:00.003-05:00

One of the worries running through volunteers' heads at the end of their service after “Will I be able to get a job?!” and “Oh God, I hope I don't end up living with my parents again!” is “Will I be replaced?” Technically you can be replaced as long as you're not the third volunteer at a site. But since there are a ridiculous amount of young, eager, unemployed college grads applying to the Peace Corps crying, “Send me to Africa!” in reality, the rules can be bent a little. In Titao, for instance, there was a volunteer a few years ago named Tom. All I know about Tom is that he was well liked at the school and that he left one memento for people to remember him by: a really bad picture of himself with a mullet. The volunteer after Tom was a woman named Anne, who was apparently a feisty one. She left after several months because she pissed off the principal. Hearing this story, we were a bit wary of our principal, who is himself a feisty one. But he has turned out to be a nice man as long as you're not a punk ass student who mouths off during class (I'm looking at you, Hamidou).

Since Anne and the principal had a conflict, the Peace Corps waited a few years before sending another volunteer to Titao. Enter Jill and Markus. Despite being the third (and fourth) volunteers in Titao, because there was a gap of a few years between us and our predecessors, we were considered the new first (and second) volunteers. Two years later, enter Amy and Aaron, our replacements. Before actually meeting Amy and Aaron, we knew them by reputation. Which is to say, we knew the most important thing about them to Burkinabé and Peace Corps Volunteers alike: They're married. Since they're the only married couple in the new group of volunteers, we knew that they were destined for Titao.

When we arrived in the Paris airport on our way back to Burkina after Patrick and Connie's wedding, we immediately spotted the large group of clean, excited looking white people with matching ribbons on their backpacks setting them apart as Peace Corps. After introducing ourselves as Burkina volunteers, we were swarmed. Many of the new group apologized for being so curious, but we enjoyed answering all their questions—it's quite an ego trip being surrounded by people who are dying to know all the minor details of your life. We were curious too and asked several people where the married couple was, despite knowing from experience how annoying it is to be stuck with the label “the married couple.” Soon a friendly blue-eyed dude and his friendly blue-eyed wife sat in front of us and said, “We're the married couple.”

We shouted, “You're going to Titao!” and babbled all about the grill guy Moussa, who makes the best chickens in town; my students coming by the house because they didn't quite understand what a flower was; the great Friday marché, which has people coming from as far as Ghana; that time Markus had amoebas and E. coli at the same time (that was so gross); and that weird, huge spider Markus got squirted by when he stomped on it before they had a chance to say “What's a Titao?” After clearing up the confusion, Markus and I rambled on and on about how great Titao is while watching our replacements get more and more excited about the next two years.

But Peace Corps likes to play hard to get, which is why it took Markus and me over a year to get through the application process—“Won't you please just let us go to Africa to teach children math and science, please, please, PLEASE?!” So Markus and I weren't too surprised when our boss implied that the couple might not actually go to Titao. We were pretty bummed at the idea because when we paused in our Titao pitch to take a breath, Amy and Aaron managed to get a word in and turned out to be charming people who we liked a lot. After all, he cooks! She teaches biology! What's not to like? But we're pleased to find out that they will in fact be replacing us in Titao.

Being the kind-of-sort-of first (and second) volunteers in Titao, Markus and I haven't experienced Replacement Syndrome, which is when the villagers let the new volunteer know what the old volunteer was really like. Sometimes this means the new volunteer sees people crossing themselves and forking the evil eye whenever the old volunteer's name is mentioned. More often, this means the new volunteer is told that their predecessor had better French/local language/cooking/teaching ability/all around awesomeness than they do. This is just the villagers' way of expressing appreciation for the old volunteer. Complimenting people to their faces is just not done in Burkina. I've heard three, maybe four compliments about my work in two years. Those compliments plus the compliments I've given myself—I've actually patted myself on the back—and the nice things I hope people will say about us after we're gone have kept me going.

So, cheers to Amy and Aaron for being brave/stupid enough to take on the challenge of teaching the hoards of Titaoramba* and I hope they have as interesting and fulfilling a time as we did.

*Mooré for “Titao people.”

Vive la politique!

2008-07-07T06:38:00.003-05:00

Growing up, I've moved from one political stereotype to another. The first stereotype was Texas, where I was the most liberal of my friends by far thanks to my family—when I asked future political scientist Amy what the difference between republicans and democrats is, she said “Republicans are bad and democrats are good.” I spent much of my time having heated debates with other high schoolers, grumbling about the constitutionality of prayer circles at a public school, and mocking the fundamentalist girl in my biology class who did her final project on evolution and how it's wrong.

But before I got pushed too far to the left and started wearing a Dennis Kucinich button, I went to college in Washington, where instead of kickers in cowboy hats, there were hippies playing hacky sack. Now I was one of the most centrist of my friends. I just didn't agree with the people who believed organized religion is the worst thing to happen to this country, said they wanted to move to Canada after 9/11, and threw their Nalgenes away in disgust when animal rights activists pointed out that the company makes cages for animals used in experiments.

When I joined the Peace Corps, I thought it would be more of the same. The University of Puget Sound is the number one small school in alumni joining the Peace Corps (the number one large school is the University of Washington). In many ways the political environment in the Peace Corps was the same as it was in Washington. But even though it sometimes felt like my only opportunity for political debate was with Obama supporters who called me conservative for supporting Clinton, it was soon clear that Peace Corps Volunteers are much more diverse than they seem.

Living in a foreign country, especially Africa, affects everyone's outlook. Many volunteers become more conservative and patriotic. It's easy to say that America should send more money to Africa to fight AIDS and malaria, build schools, and feed the hungry when you're in America. But when you're in Africa, you see the hoards of white Land Cruisers covered in NGO stickers driving down the washed away dirt roads covered in trash, past the naked kids with bloated stomachs, and the adults in raggedy clothes selling peanuts for a living or just sitting around, not able to read because they dropped out of school at 12. Where does all the money go? The cynical answer is that most of it's going into government officals' pockets and the rest isn't making a difference.

It's very hard not to become cynical about development work. It's also very hard not to appreciate America. I was reading an article about the effects of Katrina and couldn't muster up the sympathy I was supposed to feel looking at bleek black and white photos of trailers with cars parked next to them. That would look like a mansion to a family of ten living in a tiny mud hut with a donkey instead of a car. I'm about to go back to America, and my main money concern is what size apartment we can afford, not if I can afford to buy a sack of rice to feed my family.

Living in a place that changes your perspectives so much gives volunteers a more sophisticated political outlook. Among the volunteers who manage not to become cynical, some become very motivated to do development work but have much more realistic, scaled-down goals than they had before coming here. For me, the experience has helped me get a better grasp on international politics. I love listening to the contrast between new volunteers' often naive, optimistic perspective and old volunteers' cynical outlook. Add to that the opinions of volunteers who are about to start a third year in Burkina. They're just as cynical as the rest of us, but they've managed to think of things in a more positive way while acknowledging the things that suck. Listening to all the different perspectives has done the debating for me.

In high school and college I was an active participant in political debates. In the Peace Corps I've listenened more than I've debated. It seems like the issues are much more complicated here than they were back home. Or maybe I've become more mature—instead of “Gun control good, prayer in school bad” it's “If all the ex-pats left, would Africa be able to handle it? Would it be morally wrong to leave or is it condescending to think Africans need white help?” Um, good? For now I'm content with watching other people duke it out before figuring out what I think.

Ms. Strunk & White*

2008-07-05T06:49:00.001-05:00

Jill loves grammar. Whenever I write a post, Jill looks over it for grammar problems and generally there are tons. It begins with capitalization. She'll read the title and if an extraneous “Of” is capitalized she'll throw the computer and stomp around the room like a t-rex on speed. And that's just the title!

Once she starts reading the heart Of the post, she'll hold her horses at every cliché and find a tried and true replacement. I try my most hardest and think of everything my high school teachers taught me, but I always come up short. Even if I think I've put a comma in the right place, Jill likes to move it and say “GEHHHHH” while doing it. Don't even get her started on the incorrect use of “Jill and I.” Jill has LITERALLY picked me up and thrown me on the muddy street for that error. She LITERALLY has smoke coming out of her ears when she does it too. Sometimes it seems, Jill marches to the beat of her own drummer. I'll admit, after Jill looks over my posts, they usually come out better. It's like taking a butter cookie and turning it into an oreo and then a glass of milk magically appears, mmmmmm...

The editing process leaves Jill exhausted and very angry, but time heals all wounds, and soon her Incorrect Grammar Anger Center in the brain gets flooded with oxytocin, and all is well between Jill and I.

*Grammar errors and clichés brought to you by Markus**

**And not corrected by Jill

Editor's note: Markus is not actually an idiot, and I've never thrown a computer.

Shotgun Guy

2008-07-03T07:29:00.002-05:00

One of the Unsolved Mysteries of Burkina Faso is Shotgun Guy. Shotgun Guy sits in shotgun in cabs in Ouaga. He doesn't pump gas, he doesn't wash the windows, he doesn't check under the hood, he doesn't collect cab fares, he doesn't even talk much. All he does is sit in shotgun. Where is he going? What is his purpose? Why does he like sitting in shotgun so much? These are questions that demand answers.

I've often sat in the back of cabs staring at the back of Shotgun Guy's head, trying to figure out the mystery. Maybe there's a Shotgun Guy Depot where all the cabs go every morning to be assigned that day's Shotgun Guy. Not all cabs have Shotgun Guys. Maybe Shotgun Guys are rewards for the best cab drivers. Instead of a trophy they get a Shotgun Guy. Maybe there's a Taxi Institute that has done studies showing that the presence of a Shotgun Guy significantly increases the amount of passengers a cab picks up. People think, "Hey, that cab's good enough for that guy sitting in shotgun, so it's probably good enough for me!"

I don't expect to ever figure out the purpose of Shotgun Guy. It'll just be another Unsolved Mystery of Burkina Faso.

I am Markus Fleisch

2008-06-30T07:01:00.004-05:00

By guest writer Jill McKay

I've been meaning to write a proper blog post for approximately eleven months, but it's so hard. The last time I sat down to write, I was distracted by some shiny tin foil I saw hanging from a tree. And the time before that, I got really hungry and got up to make some popcorn and when I sat back down my fingers were too greasy to type. And the time before that, I couldn't think of anything to write so I went and got a beer instead and one beer turned into three and when I got back I really had to pee and couldn't remember what it was I'd been doing. So that's why I haven't written.

Here's what's up with me. I got back from San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I had a really nice time at Patrick and Connie's wedding. I really enjoyed the beer part. I also liked the food part. It was fun speaking German again, despite all the “ouis” and “d'accords” that snuck into my speech. Jill wanted to speak to my Austrian relatives herself, so she'd ask me, “Markus, how do I say 'I like your sweater'?” and I'd tell her “Ich bin ein Affe” and she'd say “I am a monkey” in German and everyone would laugh and she'd look very pleased with herself, old trilingual Jill.

It's our last month in Burkina, so I've been doing all of my favorite things, including buying souvenirs for people and haggling the seller down from the nassara price, having my clothes butchered by tailors who don't know how to use measuring tape, and eating all the delicious goat meat I can shove in my mouth and drinking all the tasteless Burkinabé lagers I can chug. I don't know if I can handle America, where everything costs the nassara price no matter how much you try to haggle and the meat comes from some giant animal called a “cow” and the beer comes in strange, dark colors. Jill assures me I'll be ok, but I'm not so sure.

Well, that's all the writing I can muster for now. Hope you've enjoyed it!

PS-I love Jill and hereby promise to make her all the chocolate chip cookies she wants whenever she wants when we get back to America.

Harassment

2008-06-30T06:51:00.005-05:00

Burkina is very hard to like sometimes. Regardless of how well integrated you are in your community, how well you speak the local language, how much your students' critical thinking skills have improved, as soon as you go somewhere people don't know you, you're just another white person. Since I'm a white person in Africa, I've been yelled at by children and adults, I've had touristy souvenirs shoved in my face so aggressively I have to push them out of the way so I can pass, men have grabbed me while I'm on my bike and through taxi windows, I've been laughed at, I've been stolen from. The way white people are treated is not going to change. The best a volunteer can do is try and ignore it and not let it get to you.

For two years I've had my blinders on, I've rationalized people's actions, and I've tried not to generalize one person's bad behavior to everyone. But yesterday, when I biked past a group of men doing road work and had dirt purposefully thrown at me, all my hard earned defenses against harassment broke down. Why would anyone throw dirt at a stranger? That's just awful no matter what country you're in and what race you are. Seeing that I was upset, Markus went back to the group of men, who just yelled and laughed at him. We sat down at the bar where we were meeting some friends, and I had a clear view of the road workers, who stared and laughed at me while I struggled not to cry. It didn't take long, though, before I had my emotions under control and was able to pay attention to the conversation.

It's my last month in Burkina, and I'd like very much to enjoy myself as I say goodbye to my home of two years, but things like this just make me happy to leave this place. It's hard, at the end of your service, not to instill every little experience with more meaning than it deserves. Just like it's hard not to feel incredibly silly when you catch yourself thinking, “Oh, poor little white me. I have so much money and opportunity and I'm being harassed by Africans.” But some behaviors just can't be excused by such major issues as slavery, colonialism, and poverty. Some behaviors are just people being assholes. Realizing that those men are just jerks and observing how quickly I squashed my feelings of self-pity made me feel much better about myself. Living in Burkina has made me much more resilient, which makes all the bad treatment I've experienced worth it.

L'homme de bière

2008-06-24T07:36:00.002-05:00

I'm close to finishing the second step in my life plan. Yes, I'm so Type Anal that I have a four step life plan. Step 1. College. Step 2. Peace Corps. Step 3. Grad school. Step 4. Moderately successful career teaching at a university and researching monkey brains and leech neurons. (And of course I have extensive to do lists for each step. To Do: Publish paradigm-shifting article in Science. Remember to compliment Markus's new beer.) However, things haven't gone completely according to my plan. I didn't expect that Peace Corps would take four years—one year to apply, two years to actually do it, and one year to quit speaking Franglais and making weird Burkinabé gestures and sounds. And I definitely didn't expect that I'd pick up a pesky husband along the way who'd follow me across the world like a puppy with a passport.

When I decided to do Peace Corps with Markus, some people warned me not to. They said that I'd miss out on the full experience and that we'd get divorced just like 70% of the other dumbass couples who think diarrhea, sweat stains, and copious amounts of vomit is a good start to a happy, long-lasting marriage. I'll never know if I would have had a better or worse time if I'd come as a single volunteer. Instead of guys hitting on me, I deal with guys ignoring me—the moral of the story seems to be that guys are annoying. But I do feel that after going through all this craziness—some good, some bad, some really fucking weird—we can handle the rest. The water bill's ridiculously expensive because Markus refuses to give up his daily bubble bath, but at least we have water. Markus and Joel have been hard at work playing video games and talking about their facial hair all week, but at least Markus isn't out marrying his second, third, or fourth wife. Jill Jr. poured sea monkeys into Markus's new batch of beer, but at least we can afford to buy her pants.

I don't know how closely real life will follow my life plan. The trend in neuroscience seems to be to make a career-derailing decision and accidentally discover something huge. Neuroscientists' success stories are like nerdy Bad Idea Jeans commercials: “Yeah, I had tenure at Harvard Medical School, but I figured why not quit my job, move to New Zealand, and study turtles?” Bad Idea Jeans. So, I have no idea if I'll end up in elbow patches or a scuba suit. But it is nice to know that Markus will always be there to provide me with plenty of beer.

Come to fabulous Burkina Faso!

2008-06-24T07:34:00.002-05:00

By guest writer Troy McClure, spokesman for the Burkinabé Ministry of Tourism

Enjoy the charming company of Burkina's world-renowned faux types. As soon as you leave the airport, you'll be pleased to find helpful men all around you offering to carry your bag, find you a taxi, sell you phone cards, and helpfully point you to their store where you can find the African drum you've always wanted. Don't listen to the cynical Peace Corps Volunteers who will tell you that “faux type” means “false type.” In Burkina Faso “faux” means “friendly.” That they are!

Play in Burkina's very own version of the Olympics: transport! The first event is the Mad Scramble for a Seat. Push, shove, claw, and climb your way to a primo spot on the bus. Next is a group event: The Sardine Squish. Just how many people can fit into a bus? All aisles, overhead shelves, and laps must be filled! And the final event is the most extreme event of all: Get off the Bus! Go! Go! Go! Who will be the first off the bus? Will it be you?

Go on an African safari! Have you ever seen a goat? How about a chicken? Burkina's got them all!

Experience the worst night of sleep of your life! Sleep outside and let the soothing sounds of nature lull you to sleep: donkeys squeaking, goats blehing, and of course malaria-riddled mosquitoes buzzing by your head. Too hot for you? Don't worry. A dust storm will cool you down while also depositing most of the Sahara in your bed. Night night!

America Faso

2008-06-24T07:29:00.002-05:00

The life cycle of a Peace Corps Volunteer is one of my favorite things. It's a chart of volunteers' freak outs and good days over their twenty-seven months of service and it has more loops and turns than a roller coaster. When they arrive in their host country, some people are skeptical that it will accurately reflect their experience. Not me. I'm not one of those there's-always-an-exception people. I like to shove square-shaped people into round holes and look at the overall pattern of behavior. So I wasn't surprised when my service followed the chart almost exactly.

Training was a zig-zag of “Aww, Peace Corps. I'm an amazing person because I'm doing an amazing thing for the world. This is all so amazing” and “Holy crap, we have another French class?! And it's all the way across town at a crappy bar with almost as many kids trying to sell you phone cards as there are flies. Booooo!” After moving to Titao, I rode the roller coaster up as I got more and more comfortable with teaching, then plummeted down when I hit the one year mark and realized I'd have to do it all over again. I climbed up again during my second year teaching, enjoying being more confident in everything I did. Drawing giant amoebas on the board, explaining complicated things like photosynthesis and the difference between asexual and sexual reproduction, keeping the class from rioting when I handed back tests, grading intimidating stacks of tests in record time—I could do it all.

Now I'm supposed to be on a down slope as I freak out about leaving. But thanks to the weirdly-timed vacation, I'm not. Instead, the psychology lobe in my brain has been lit up while I've compared the two countries and how I react to them. Americans use all their money, creativity, and hedonism to make their world as insanely colorful, comfortable, and interesting as they can. There's so much to look at—fancy shoes, hybrid cars, colorful billboards (not to mention the goat-sized house cats). When I came back to Burkina, I looked down at people's cracked feet stuffed into broken, paper-thin flip flops; I got into a gross old Mercedes taxi with sagging seats and no seatbelts or door handles; and I looked at all the hilariously bad drawings advertising telecenters and barber shops. But then I realized I was wearing the Burkinabé flip flops I'd felt so self-conscious wearing in America. I no longer had to remind myself to reach for the seatbelt and door handle. And the crappy pictures of dudes with misshapen heads sitting in barber chairs were familiar and comforting. Even though I probably looked like I knew what I was doing in America, I didn't feel like it. At times I felt as self-conscious as I had in junior high. But back in Burkina, despite everyone staring at the white woman—what's she going to do next?!—I felt completely at ease.

It's very strange to feel more comfortable in a foreign country than in your own country. But I think it means I've become well integrated into Burkinabé culture without even realizing it. And I had such a nice time in America I'm looking forward to going back after I've had time to say goodbye to Burkina. So I guess I'm a little more square-shaped than I'd thought.

The World's Greatest Wedding Speech

2008-06-23T05:04:00.001-05:00

By guest speaker Markus Fleisch

Wow, Patrick and Connie, you guys are getting married. As people mentioned yesterday, this is a very international wedding. Jill and I wanted to say thanks for getting us out of Africa. Incidentally I have two return tickets to Burkina Faso, which happens to be the honeymoon destination of choice for 12 million Burkinabe. And don’t worry about those Fiji tickets, Jill and I will take good care of them.

So I was trying to think about what to say last night—that's right, I’m a procrastinator and I thought I could start pulling out the stories and embarrass you—but I think the slide show did my job for me. As a quick side note, that little kid with the blond afro was not actually me; it was my twin. I had a much more sensible haircut.

So after that I thought maybe I could give you some advice since I’ve been married for three and a half years. Or at least I’m someone who you could call in case you need some advice on how to deal with a difficult situation. But then I started to think about which situations you might call me in. Being married in Africa is really different than being married in America. Say for example, you’re outside sleeping under your mosquito net and you’re giving Connie a back massage when out of the corner of your eye, you see a spider the size of your forearm crawling up the side of the tent. This is a situation where I can help you. Or maybe Connie comes home from a really hard day of work. She’s been trying to teach 100 African children the difference between living things and inanimate objects and they still think the wind is alive. What do you say? How do you comfort her? You can tell her, “I know it's not you. You taught me the wind isn't alive, so it's not your teaching; it's the kids.” So I thought giving advice is out too.

Finally, I thought maybe I could tell you what I think marriage is and how it's different than any relationship you have with friends, family, and even Connie while you guys were dating. We've all heard the life as a roller coaster metaphor. You've got your ups, your downs, loops, and those twisty things that make you really sick. For me, those twisty things have been giardia, E. coli, amoebas, and blasto. They're not as much fun as a roller coaster. So you have a roller coaster and all of your family and friends have roller coasters too. Sometimes your roller coasters might get pretty close and you may go through the same up, the same down, the same loop, or the same corkscrew, but eventually, the roller coasters will always diverge. You'll never be in the same cart as your friends and family. With Connie, it's different. Now that you're married, Connie has done the death-defying stunt of jumping from her cart into your cart. It was amazing, you guys should have been there to see it. For the feminists out there, Patrick, you've jumped into Connie's cart. What this means in real life is that you and Connie have the strongest bond you're going to find in this life. Everything you do affects Connie and everything Connie does affects you. With that in mind, I wish you two the best of luck and hope your marriage is as special, life-changing, and beneficial as mine is. Congratulations.

Jill and America sitting in a tree . . .

2008-06-04T12:52:00.005-05:00

Supposedly when you go back to the States after two years, you have a honeymoon period followed by reverse culture shock that's much worse than when you left the States. Me and America, we've been having a great time. We've been spending our honeymoon tucked into a giant bed with a firm mattress and fluffy pillows, snuggled in real tight because it's cold outside. We've been having a lot of yummy meals, eating way more sushi and cheesecake than any sane person should. We've been walking down the streets of San Francisco against a brisk wind, struggling to stay upright while walking up and down and up the hills. We've been riding the cable cars, unselfconsciously enjoying the operators' sassy attitudes intended for the tourists' enjoyment. We've been on a shopping spree, feeling like a million bucks while spending what might as well be a million bucks.

But we've also been confused as to what to do after finishing our hotel coffee in styrofoam cups before realizing you're supposed to throw them away after one use. We've been really annoyed by the small amounts of litter on the otherwise glistening streets. We've been worried we're acting strangely--always taking and giving things with our right hand; our feelings of extreme gratitude whenever a waiter asks us if we need anything; our savoring every drop of coffee that takes longer than five seconds to make and beer that's not the color of pee. We've felt very scared by the cars whizzing by us on the freeway.

So, while America and I are still going strong, we're aware that, as in any relationship, there might be rough times ahead. Especially since I haven't broken up with Burkina Faso yet.

Madame Markus no more

2008-06-04T12:31:00.001-05:00

Sitting in the stuffy teacher's lounge, gearing up to zone out for the next two tedious hours, during the end of year conseil, I was in full on nostalgic, this-is-the-end mode. But then the drink list came around. "Mr Markus" followed by "Mme Markus." I angrily crossed them both off and replaced one Markus with Fleisch and the other with McKay, just like I've done with every drink list and official school document I've seen in the past two years. Then I wrote "Fanta" in bold, angry letters. Instead of the orange, sickly sweet I've come to crave, my Fanta tasted like two years of not listening, not changing, and not caring. Any bittersweet feelings I'd had about leaving Burkina turned into just bitter feelings when I saw that damn drink list.

I've always thought names were important and I know I'm not the only one. Quick! Tiffany, Jamal, Alexander--which one's the cheerleader, which one's the basketball player, and which one's the rich kid? Also Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thompson vs. Sarah and John Williams--which one's the conservative couple? How about Jill and Markus McKay-Fleisch? We've decided that we're going to legally change our names soon after we get back to reflect that we're in an equal relationship (and that we're both quite fond of our "maiden" names--"the fiery and impetuous one" and "meat"). I'm looking forward to having an identity again after two years of Madame No Identity, Madame Not Worthy of a Proper Name, Madame Husband's Property. I know Madame Markus will be a funny story one day, but it's not that funny when it's the only name you've got.

Madame McKay no more

2008-05-17T05:34:00.007-05:00

I've really enjoyed being a teacher in Burkina. Notice I said "being a teacher" and not "teaching." There's a big difference. Teaching in Burkina means forcing yourself to start class at least five minutes late even though all the American cells in your body are yelling "You're late! You're late!" Then, as the late students stream into class, you look out the door and see the rest of the teachers cruising into the school yard on their motos, standing around chatting, and casually strolling to class twenty minutes after you started teaching. It means attempting to enlighten your students about the wonders of bugs while sweat drips off your face, down your armpits, and all over your back. Then going into the teachers' lounge and hearing the other teachers exclaim, "Madame! You sweat a lot!" Which gets them on the topic of how hot it is in Burkina and how white people can't handle the heat and is it hot in America like it's hot here? It means having English, which had been so solidly entrenched in your brain, conquered by French so that you struggle to pronounce simple words like "pollination" and "vertebrate" and don't even ask me what the English word for those pictures you draw on the board to represent things like the organization of the body of a snail is because I have no clue.

However, being a teacher in Burkina means that when someone asks you, "Are you a tourist?" and you say, "No, I'm a teacher at the Titao lycée," they immediately warm up to you, ask you how their little Fatimata is doing in SVT, and sometimes offer you rides to neighboring towns in their air conditioned Mercedes so you don't have to climb into the back of a truck full of cows. It means hearing "Bonjour, Madame" from respectfully curtsying students every time you go into town. It means getting two free beers and half of a delicious Moussa-grilled chicken as a reward for sitting through a tedious school meeting. It means receiving the occasional squirming, clucking, cock-a-doodle-dooing chicken from a student trying to kiss ass. It means knowing what you're doing and why you're doing it in this sweltering dust bowl of a country.

I've had a fun time being a teacher and teaching. I'll miss the review sessions when I ask a question like "What are the reproductive glands in a man?" and 100 students shout in unison "The testicles!" I'll miss handing back a paper with "Bon travail!" written on the top next to a sticker of a dinosaur and seeing the kid acting like a bad ass, fanning himself with his paper with a cocky look on his face, trying to make sure everyone around him sees his grade. I'll miss the time I got to announce to all the teachers in our end of trimester meeting that the highest scoring student in the class I calculate grades for was a girl and hearing their surprised, pleased reactions. I'll miss when I announce that the highest grade on a test was a perfect score and the whole class claps.

So, I was feeling a little sad when I walked into my last class ever. Luckily, my students are really very thoughtful. They went out of their way to bomb their last test. And in really dumb ways, too. Many of their answers were just the question rephrased. And knowing that I have a million tests to grade, some of them made it easier for me by answering "Why" questions with just "Oui." And the guys whose tests I graded last blatantly cheated so that the last thing I did as a teacher was to write "Cheating!" in big, red letters on their tests. They're so sweet!

And then there were the students who'd figured out that after being their teacher for two years, I'm not coming back next year. They're the ones who've been stopping by the house to exchange addresses so we can write, who've been very politely carrying my bag to my bike for me after class, and who wished me "Bon voyage!" as I left the classroom. Those jerks, making it hard for me to leave this place.

Recipe for Disaster

2008-05-11T09:53:00.003-05:00

Take 100 parts adolescent boys and girls,
1 part sexually repressed culture,
1 part white teacher,
and a twist of naughty words,
shake, shake, shake, and serve chilled.

I'm convinced the Burkina SVT textbook writers put sex ed at the end of the book to act as a litmus test for new teachers. “So you think you're a good teacher, huh? You've got your neatly organized lesson plans, your pretty little diagrams, and your stock discipline phrases. Now let's see how you do saying 'penis' to a classroom stuffed with immature 12-year-olds. Then we'll see who's a good teacher.”

When I taught sex ed last year, despite having taught for several months, I felt a little like I had during the first week of school: butterflies in my stomach, trying to get through it quickly. This year I'm just the opposite. I confidently write “testicules” and “scrotum” on the board in big, bold letters, feeling a bit like Martin Luther. Then I unselfconsciously explain how “les spermatozoîdes” fertilize “les ovules.” And the kids giggle and ask me to explain it again, so I do, and they giggle some more. I encourage them to laugh, just as long as they take it seriously and study it. God knows that with an average of six children to every woman, these kids need to learn about what happens when they have sex.

But the problem is, these kids are laughing at all the wrong things. They stoically listen as I list male and female genitalia, then crack up when I describe menstruation. I should give them a lesson on sex humor. Lesson one: testicles are way funnier than ovaries. Discuss.

I'd say I've passed the test. Once you've taught sex ed eight times to approximately 800 Africans (that's got to be a world record), you can do anything.

Choose Your Own Greeting Adventure!

2008-05-11T09:51:00.002-05:00

You are the last to arrive at school in the morning. You're a bit frazzled because on the bike ride to school you got pummeled by a windstorm (but at least your skin is soft and exfoliated!), then when you tried to get a drink of water you spilled it on your shirt, making it look like you're lactating, and to top it all off, your bike fell over on top of you. You go to the line of teacher. What do you do?
-For start shaking hands, go to number 1.
-For stop, look, and listen, go to number 2.

You spot an old man in a boubou shuffling toward you. Having never seen him before, you figure it's the village chief. What do you do?
-For respectfully shake his hand, go to number 3.
-For blow him off, go to number 4.

You're devouring one of Moussa's famous chickens, getting shinier and shinier with chicken grease when you spot your buddy Ibrahim walking toward you. What do you do?
-For snap him go to number 5.
-For wrist him go to number 6.

You're walking down the street when a gang of small, pants-less kids spots you. They run at you with their little hands out. What do you do?
-For shake their hands go to number 7.
-For bump fists go to number 8.

1. CRASH! You didn't see the beefy gym teacher coming down the line toward you. After accidentally knocking you down, he and the other teachers point and laugh at your shirt. Way to go, loser.

2. Holy shit, it's the gym teacher! You duck, narrowly avoiding getting clothes lined as he reaches out to shake the principal's hand. Everyone claps and pats you on the back, congratulating you on your athletic prowess.

3. You give him the ultimate handshake: you hold your right arm just above the elbow with your left hand as you shake, then you touch your right hand to your chest. While smugly congratulating yourself on your cultural appropriateness, you notice everyone laughing at you. Then you notice the chicken on the chief's head. That's not the chief! It's the village nut! Honored by your respectful handshake the village nut follows you around like a puppy, occasionally offering you his chicken hat.

4. What the . . . Is that a chicken?! Run away!

5. “Hey, dude,” you say and attempt to snap his fingers with your own. But all the chicken grease on your hand glues your hands together and now everyone thinks you're dating. How embarrassing.

6. You offer one shiny wrist, which he grasps. He's a little grossed out by all the grease (and the drumstick stuck in your teeth) but at least you're not stuck together.

7. Aww, how adorable! You shake each of their tiny hands one by one. After they run away, you notice your hand feels itchy. Oh dear God, what is that? Hopefully they won't have to amputate.

8. You make a fist and say “Tampon.” They tampon you back, bumping their tiny fists against yours. Just for fun, you then teach them to put their fists in the air and say “Black power!” Preach it.

How to Cheat

2008-05-11T09:41:00.000-05:00

By guest writer Kindo Angèle Fanta

I'm so ready for this math test. I know all the formulas and I memorized all the problems we did in class so there's no way I can fail. I better get started. I only have two hours.

Phew! I've been working for ten minutes and got half a problem done. Better take a break. Let's see what everyone else is up to. There's Belem Issoufou trying the oldest cheating move in the book, The Visor, put your hand on your brow and use your peripheral vision to see what's on your neighbors' paper. Too bad he sits next to the two stupidest kids in class. OH! Check out Zango Salimata, she just did the Stretch-and-Look. She put her hands way up in the air and, while yawning, casually glanced at her neighbor's paper. Damn, I hope she got an answer because Mr. Fleisch is walking over to take two points off for that one. Nice try, Salimata. Oh man, only one hour left. I should get going.

So tired! Three problems done out of ten, good enough for me! What else is happening in the classroom? There are thirty minutes left so people are starting to get desperate. Boïna Boureima is doing the Duck and Cover where you put your head in line with another student's head so Mr. Fleisch can't see you talking to your neighbor. Wow, Zorom Issouf is just looking at his neighbor's paper without hiding or covering. Ballsy! Ganamé Abdoul Rahim is doing the U-Turn where you turn around as if stretching your back and look at the tests behind you. Gamsonré Soumaïla is holding his test up and the people behind him are all copying his answers. What a nice guy. OH SNAP! Ganamé Boureima just picked up his paper, pointed to it, looked at his neighbor, and had a conversation about it. Mr. Fleisch just kicked both of them out.

Five minutes left. Ouermi Mariam is holding up a sign that says “#4.” That's a new one, but it seems to be working--someone just threw a piece of paper at her. Oh, too bad, Mr Fleisch saw that one too and they both got kicked out. Crap, time's up and I only did three problems. Oh well, I'll just cheat on the next test to make up for it.

Note from Markus: Thanks Fanta for your eye-opening report on cheating in the classroom. Yes, I have seen all of these methods except for the last one.

SVT: Science de la Vie et de la Pomme de Terre

2008-04-26T09:13:00.000-05:00

By guest writer Ouédraogo Doudou.

I've sure learned a lot from Madame McKay. She taught me about the scientific method. I now know that the reason biologists do experiments is because it's a fern. That explains a lot.

Madame also taught me a lot about plants. Basically, plants have three parts: the mushroom, the cat, and the goat. Plants are capable of reproducing two ways: good reproduction and bad reproduction. The difference between these two types of reproduction is peanut. And some plants live under water. These plants are called fish.

I also learned a lot about animals. I used to think that only goats, sheep, and donkeys were animals. Now I know that the wind and water are animals too. Also trotting is an animal and it moves by jumping. Animals are funny. Snakes, fish, and horses walk on two legs, which is really weird considering horses have no legs. And cows are carnivores that hunt down and kill herbs before eating them. These herbs are digested in their anus.

Madame also introduced us to new types of test questions like fill-in-the-blank and true or false. I think the fill-in-the-blanks are fun because I fill them in like Mad Libs with any word I want like “bile” or “beer.” I used to think the true or false part was really tough because it says to write a corrected sentence if the answer is false, but I didn't get it, so I just wrote “false” and Madame counted it wrong. Then I figured it out: Now I write “False. A corrected sentence.” I can tell by the look on Madame's face that she's really pleased with me now!

I've learned so much from Madame!

Note from Jill: These are actual answers that my friend Caroline and I have gotten on our SVT tests. I'm not making this up.

The Country Most Likely to be Ignored by National Geographic

2008-04-26T09:11:00.001-05:00

When volunteers get together, they invariably talk about food. Hot topics of conversation include “What do you miss more, burritos or sushi?” and “McDonald's or Burger King, which has the better breakfast?” (Answers: sushi and McDonald's.) And if someone back in the States asks me what I'm looking forward to, I'll probably say good food and air conditioning and hot showers. But I say that just because it's easier than saying what I'm really looking forward to. Which is reflecting on my experience here and figuring out what the hell happened over the past two years.

I didn't have any particular interest in Africa before coming to Africa. I had vague ideas about wood masks, tribal scars, and cool dancing as well as AIDS, malaria, and war. Not surprisingly, the reality hasn't been that good nor that bad. I'm bored with traditional dancing, which is way less aerobic than I was led to believe--it mostly consists of old ladies holding rags and droning a song while shuffling around in a circle. And as for the bad, the AIDS rate in Burkina is very low, Burkinabé catch malaria as if it were the common cold, and other than the occasional riot, the country's peaceful.

Frankly, Burkina Faso is boring. It's not really known for anything except for being a stop over on the way to more interesting countries like Mali. Even National Geographic agrees. In a cover story about the Sahel, they featured every country the Sahel passes through except Burkina. Sheesh.

So what's a girl supposed to do when she's just spent two years in what just might be the most boring country in a continent she really has no interest in? I guess I'll digest and reflect by reading what I've written about this place, talking to RPCVs, and looking at photos. I'm a little hesitant to look at photos, though, for two reasons. The first is that photos of this place have the eerie quality of changing the reality of things. I look out my front door and see my neighbor's pants-less kids playing with a bike tire. No big deal. then I take a picture and suddenly I have a photo of adorable little African kids playing with their little homemade toy, and oh look, they have no pants, isn't that just so cute?! It's very spooky. The other reason is I don't want my memories to be skewed by photos. Humans are so visual and so dumb that we make up stories that never even happened so our memories match our photos. So if I look at my photos that have that eerie AFRICAN quality to them, I'm going to think this place was way more interesting than it is. But that wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Cahier d'Awesome

2008-04-26T08:41:00.002-05:00

Cahier d'Awesome

Every teacher is required by the school to fill out the “Cahier de Texte” after every class describing what they taught that day. While writing down my lesson outlines, I often daydream about writing what I really taught.

-Drew a diagram of a fish on the board and added a smile just for fun, then chuckled as I walked around looking at all my students' smiling fish.

-While teaching sex ed, pointed to the funny words written on the board and made my students say them out loud: “Pénis! Testicules! Vagin!”

-Heard a student cry, “Non, Madame! C'est pas vrai!” after I told them that after praying mantises mate, the female eats the male.

-Demonstrated how quadrupeds walk by tip toeing around the classroom.

-Tried to get my students to realize how weird it is that the tenia is a hermaphrodite that fertilizes itself, but to no avail.

-Grossed out my students when I told them that the French love to eat snails.

-Pointed to myself to indicate where fish fins are located on the body and had to stop myself when I got to the anal fin.

-Walked around in circles to demonstrate a bee dance.

-Gave my most passionate lecture yet--about cow stomachs.

-Tried to get my students to stop talking by switching from teaching in French to English, but they just grinned and said, “Speak more Eengleesh.”

-Pretended I was a snail by closing my eyes, extending my arm-tentacles over my head, and “blinking” my hand-eyes.

Bonne fête!

2008-04-01T06:20:00.002-05:00

One of the things I'll miss about Africa is the weird parties. I've celebrated Thanksgiving on a camel, New Years on a hippo lake, and Christmas at the pyramids. Makes for way better stories than "I spent Christmas at grandmom's house. We had some cake." I also really enjoy the weird PCV parties. You have to be a little strange to want to leave America, The Most Amazing Place on Earth™ to go to Burkina Faso, You Know, It's Africa™ so it's no surprise that PCVs throw some pretty weird parties. For instance, to celebrate Easter, we slaughtered a sheep, watched the butcher dissect it, including pouring water into the intestines and squeezing out all the little poop balls (looked just like bubble tea), and ate fried sheep out of a huge wash basin. Totally normal, right?

To throw a good PCV party you need:
-several cases of beer
-so that you can get the courage to slaughter an animal
-so that you can have meat.

That's it. We're currently in the middle of an Animal Slaughtering Cold War. PCVs try to outdo each other with bigger, squealier, bloodier slaughters. Chickens, turkeys, pigs, and sheep have all been victims of PCVs' blood lust. And there's talk of slaughtering a cow. After that it'll be a slippery slope until slaughtering camels and elephants becomes the norm. And if that's not bad enough, it's also become standard to video the slaughter and even post it on the internet. Vegetarians need not apply.

So if you're tired of having the highlight of your Thanksgiving party be removing the bag of guts from your frozen turkey, take it from a Burkina Faso PCV--get yourself some livestock and a sharp knife.

Très chic

2008-04-01T06:12:00.001-05:00

Here's the thing about Burkinabe: They're dorks.

Take a second and imagine three American black dudes. That's right: James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, and Colin Powell. What do these guys have in common? They're cool. And before you say that Colin's pretty lame for letting Bush and Cheney push him around, keep in mind that he's been able to pull off those dorky wire-rimmed glasses since the '90s. Now that's cool.

Now imagine these three cool black dudes walking down the street trying to look all bad ass while munching on carrots. Or blasting Phil Collins and making tea. Or wearing safety goggles--a new, very alarming trend. Even Samuel L. couldn't make that look cool.

So the next time you're watching a movie where Africans are doing bad ass, butt wiggling dances to traditional drumming music, remember that in reality, they'd be badly lip synching to a song with a Casio keyboard samba beat and a crying baby singer. Pretty cool.

Jill and What's-His-Butt in Burkina Faso

2008-03-21T06:35:00.003-05:00

Why haven't I posted in a while? I like to write blogs that are funny. But lately, things just haven't been funny.

Our second iPod got stolen. We were at a bus station in Ouahigouya that we go to all the time, and I put my bag on the bus as usual to reserve our seats. Jill and I sat not more than twenty yards from the bus and our bag while we waited. Somebody saw that I was white, got on the bus, rifled through my bag, and took our iPod. What a jerk!

Beggar kids have been driving me nuts too. A group of us were at a street side bar in Ouaga and two beggar kids came up to the group of white people and started monotonously chanting like they've been taught to do in Muslim school. After a good five minutes of ignoring them, I asked them why they were bothering us, the white, Christian volunteers when there are nicely dressed, Muslim Burkinabe sitting right next to us? The answer: "Because you're white." If I were a beggar kid I'd make it rich by begging from people leaving mosques. I wouldn't even bother with white people who probably don't belong to a religion that makes giving to the poor mandatory.

I've also been re-thinking my friendships with Burkinabe. Not a conversation goes by with our grill guy, Moussa, where he doesn't remind me to look for a job for him in the United States--that magical land next to France--when I go back for Connie and Patrick's wedding. (By the way, C and P, do you know anyone who needs a French-speaking, grill guy who knows how to grow potatoes, grill chicken and goat, and pick up hot coals with his bare hands? Let me know.) Even after I tell him that the flight costs $2000 and that apartments cost $1000 a month, more money than he will see in twenty years, he still says, "Ok, but just look around for me." Our neighbor, another teacher, wants to keep contact because he wants me to look for monetary donors to his organization. (Organizations are like weeds here. There are hundreds competing for a few NGO dollars and they're basically killing each other off.) Even the guy who we buy instant coffee and mayonnaise from thinks that he will come to the United States and that I'll help him pay his way. HA! People only hear what they want to hear, like "United States" and "jobs," but don't listen to the other parts, like "expensive" and "not possible."

After living in a place for two years, you want to feel comfortable and that you're being accepted as an equal and not just seen as a wallet with legs. But you can never be that. All I want is to be in a culture where I'm normal again. I came here wanting to drink millet beer, eat tô, and get to know Burkinabe. Now, all I want is an Anchor Steam, some Taco Bell, and to blend in.

Nine Million Black Bags to Titao

2008-03-21T05:27:00.005-05:00

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.

Cracking the GRE by The Princeton Review

2008-03-09T09:56:00.001-05:00

Reviewed by Jill McKay, math whiz

Cracking the GRE reads like a fine novel, complete with plot twists--the GRE thinks the square root of a number is always positive!--and a thrilling conclusion.

I'm notoriously bad at math--Markus has banned me from taking any more of his 5e math tests after he caught me copying answers from a student's paper (I still only got a 3/20)--so I eyed the math section of the book warily. At first all the little t's and x's confused and frightened me. But after a while, I started remembering things from my high school math classes like the mnemonic I scratched into my desk, "Please Excuse My Dear Ass's Sounds."

I don't usually listen to what math nerds have to say, preferring to give them wedgies instead, but since Cracking the GRE doesn't wear underwear, I decided to pay attention to what it was trying to teach me. Eventually I had it all figured out from Addition to Zero.

Next up was the verbal section. I won't dissemble. This was an arduous undertaking. But soon my nascent vocabulary became urbane, and I essayed to impress Markus with my eloquent and erudite rhetoric, but he just called me garrulous and absconded with Cracking the GRE!

This was an exigent problem! After a thorough exegesis of the situation, I excoriated him harshly and even threatened to extirpate him. But he expiated his crime by giving an extemporaneous speech in which he execrated his actions. So I decided to exonerate him.

After our rancorous relationship became halcyon once again, I accepted his obsequious adulation of my redoubtable vocabulary with magnanimity.

In conclusion, I would recommend Cracking the GRE to anyone who wants to beat their twelve-year-old brother at math or impress their friends with a lot of pretentious vocab. It's great for squishing bugs too!

Get your rationalize on

2008-02-03T03:47:00.000-06:00

As if being white weren't different enough, I'm also a teacher, which makes me part of the Titao upper class. Along with the police and government officials, teachers are the ones who speak French, ride around on fancy motos, and drink beers at the bar while the rest of the villagers speak Mooré, ride around on donkey carts, and (more or less) follow Mohamed's teachings.

Of course Markus and I don't speak French to each other (it's kind of hard to talk politics when you're trying to translate “Hill's gonna kick BO's ass”) and instead of Peugeot, I tool around on a shiny blue bike. While the Wicked Witch of the West song plays in my head.

So our drinking at the bar several times a week is just so we can integrate as teachers and therefore do our jobs better. Making Peace Corps proud.

PS-Sadly, Markus was involved in a horrific six donkey cart pile up and has lost the use of all his fingers, which is why he hasn't posted in weeks. (Not actually true.)

Burkina is my prom date*

2008-01-14T05:48:00.000-06:00

Like prom, I had a lot of romantic ideas about what Burkina would be like: I'd be living in AFRICA teaching AFRICAN students about science; I'd have AFRICAN friends, who I'd chat with in an AFRICAN language. And, like prom, the reality wasn't so romantic.

After the initial Africa Awe wore off, I started complaining about things. First I complained about the flies. Who wouldn't? Flies suck. Then I complained about the food. No big deal, but I should probably make sure the cook's not around. Then I started complaining about the people. Uh oh.

Some Burkinabé traits are great. Like their ability to laugh at everything. Or the looks of unselfconscious amazement on my students' faces when I show them a picture of something they've never seen before like a sea cucumber or an amoeba. But sometimes these traits aren't so great. Like when they're staring and laughing at you. And I think some Burkinabé traits suck. Like their rigid gender roles and the still common practice of polygamy.

It would take a lot more than two years for me to really integrate into Burkinabé culture because I'd have to change. A lot. For instance, I don't cook. I don't like doing it and, more importantly, I suck at it. And this is a level of suck that can't be improved with practice. Markus, on the other hand, is a great cook. It doesn't seem fair to subject him to two years of burnt rice and crunchy noodles just so we can fit the traditional Burkinabé gender roles.

Since I can't be like a Burkinabé woman, maybe I could be like a Burkinabé man and drink tea and chat for hours and hours. This would be a lot easier for me to do than attempting to cook. But I spend at least as much time studying for the GRE, reading psychology books, and working on my grad school application essays as I do teaching, and I know that if I were to sit and get wired with friends all the time, I'd be preoccupied worrying about other things I could be doing. I know that developing the ability to relax and chat with friends even while caffeine is rushing to my head would be an asset, but it's just not me. Me is writing endless to do lists. (To do: Write to do list.)

So, I react to Burkina like I would a prom date with the wrong impression--by keeping it at arm's length. But just because I, an opinionated, type A feminist who's a terrible cook, don't really fit in here doesn't mean I can't appreciate the culture from the outside. Where else can I sit under a tree at my favorite bar on marché day, drinking cool beers, people watching, saying hello to friends, and being greeted by tiny elementary school students? You don't have to be just like a Burkinabé to appreciate things like that.

*Note to Keel: This doesn't apply to you. You were a great prom date!

Jillhotep and Markuses

2008-01-01T11:48:00.000-06:00

Egypt's the perfect trip for a nerd like me. I've wanted to go to Egypt since I did a report on Akhenaten and Nefertiti in 5th grade and in addition to making a convincing counterfeit bust of Nefertiti using a doll's head and some construction paper, I realized that Egypt's a whole lot more than just sideways walking. For instance, Akhenaten pissed off everyone by trying to enact monotheistic worship of a sun with rays ending in hands. Needless to say, Edward Sunrayhands wasn't very popular with the masses. And Nefertiti was a beer-guzzling drunk. My kind of people.

Being here has been even more exciting and overstimulating than I thought it would be. When I wasn't circling massive statues or peering into mummy cases, I was reading about Egypt, talking about Egypt, and, when I gave my brain a break, struggling to tune out the Egypt-themed songs playing on repeat in my head (stupid Bangles). I scampered around the Egyptian museum like a speed freak, squealing like a Beatles fan when I saw anything Akhenaten-related.

While seeing a lot of -est things--e.g., biggest pyramid, oldest boat, tallest obelisk, goldest mask--I realized that I'm not so much into the -ests as the other things. Like the statue of Ramses II sucking his finger in the Egyptian Museum. Or the little row of queens' pyramids demurely perched next to the Great Pyramid. And the snakes with pharaoh hats Markus and I spotted in the tourist-infested Luxor Temple. Markus shared my interest in spotting obscure and funny things, which made our role as tourists a helluva lot easier. While the masses crowded around yet another massive statue of Ramses II, we snooped around in dark corners, looking for weird, and--like the well-endowed Amun--sometimes disturbing carvings.

Although it's been a really fun and interesting trip, I'm looking forward to getting back to Burkina. I came here to see ancient Egypt, not realizing how much of modern Egypt I'd have to wade through to get there. In contrast to Burkinabe hecklers, who aggressively shove postcards and leather boxes in your face and walk next to you until they finally give up, often hissing “racist” as they do, Egyptian hecklers are smooth. Really smooth. On our first outing, we savvy Peace Corps Volunteers took the bait on a classic scam--a charming dude lured us away from the Egyptian Museum, where we were headed, by telling us it was closed and ushered us into his buddy's papyrus shop. His buddy then managed to sell us a few pictures by turning the charm way, WAY up, culminating in his giving us a “special price” because he said I looked like his daughter. Even though we knew we were being scammed, the guys doing it were so freakishly polite, we felt bad trying to get away. Now that's good scamming.

It felt really strange being in a place where you know that the taxi drivers, the tiny kids selling papyrus bookmarks, and the camel men are trying to rip you off, but not having the street smarts to know how to avoid it. So, I'm looking forward to going back “home” where I know all the scammers' scammy scams.

And I miss it a little, too.

Feliz Navidad!

2007-12-25T08:53:00.000-06:00

Markus and I have been celebrating Christmas in Egypt by doing everything wrong. You're supposed to go south in the winter, not north. Even birds know that, and they fly into windows. After a year and a half in Burkina, our concept of cold is a little off. We scan the area for anything flammable whenever the temperature drops below 70. Please send blankets, coats, mittens, and ear muffs--temperatures here drop to a death-defying 50 at night.

We celebrated one of the best and definitely the weirdest Christmas Eves I've ever had at the pyramids. The day before, Bryan, our PCV friend from Burkina who just happened to be in the neighborhood and just happened to pick up Arabic somewhere along the way, came and knocked on our door (we'd been waiting for him). The three of us had barely craned our heads up to the Great Pyramid before Markus was tackled by a guy with a camel who forcibly wrapped a turban around his head and tossed him on his camel. Bryan and I just stood back and laughed while poor Markus argued with Camel Man how much he owed him for the assault.

Several pyramids, one giant half lion/half man with a cute little tail, and several more near miss Camel Man attacks later, the three of us had a traditional Egyptian lunch:

followed by a traditional Egyptian show:

Later that evening at dinner an Egyptian man in a Santa bank robber mask put party hats on us. With tears in my eyes, I proclaimed, "This is the best Christmas ever. God bless us, every one."

Welcome to Our Hut

2007-12-11T05:54:00.000-06:00

By guest writer Joel Turner.

Titao. 45-55 km northeast of Ouahigouya (depending on which set of road meters you trust), on the cusp of the majestic, lip-chapping Sahel lies this burgeoning spud of a provincial capital. Even though this dusty town boasts such amenities as 100 franc meat sandwiches, tepid beer and a boutique equipped with over priced Pringles, I found Titao, at its heart, to have a lingering bucolic tranquility. Frankly, I could see myself retiring here. But I'm a few years away from retirement and I didn't come here to find out if the Nescafe/bread stand has a senior citizens discount (they don't). I came to Titao to see what all the fuss was surrounding the McKay-Fleisch estate.

Now, I am no expert in Burkina Faso real estate, but upon entering the paint-chipped, lockless gates of their courtyard, “cha-ching” were the only words that could escape my mouth, because the place was MONEY. If certain Peace Corps policies and basic codes of common decency existed not, I would move in with this happily married couple of three years. Just inside the courtyard, I see a lone, quaint structure to the right. “What is this cute little cottage with its own little chimney?” I ask, with furious curiosity. “Guest quarters? Teleportation chamber?” “Um, Joel, that is our latrine.”

A latrine is a place where people can do their business. Others would refer to it as a comfort salon. I'm not sure what that means. Anyway, if the relative opulence of their latrine was any indicator, I could not wait to set foot in their actual home. The anticipation was mounting like those mashed potatoes Richard Dreyfus was mounting in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The courtyard is a lovely sanctuary, a place where animal, insect, and human alike can enjoy Burkina Faso's diverse foliage. The courtyard is home to eleven species of noxious weeds, two cats, one chicken, six large rats, and a colony of lizards. Shade is provided by an encroaching shea plant and various west African endemic trees. The high courtyard walls allow you to have practically no idea what events may be unfolding outside, in the town of Titao in the country of Burkina Faso. If you're thinking, oasis, you've got it.

Perhaps my favorite part of the entire estate is the terrace. Shaded by a lattice inspired thatch hangar, this shady area is a great place to read one of Jill and Markus's many outdated National Geographic Magazines. Plenty of rocks are on hand to throw at the chicken, which is an old McKay-Fleisch Titao family tradition. Markus is generally on hand to help you with long division and adding fractions in between rounds of tea, if you are so inclined. Jill is on hand to tell you all about Sigmund Freud, evolutionary psychology, and how the two combine to epitomize her love for the social sciences.

Upon entering the house, be not surprised if you smell something tasty coming from your right. No, it is not the smell of the litter box situated just next to their very own solar panel power system. It is probably Markus, whipping up some concoction that involves mayonnaise, taco seasoning, and canned processed chicken. Snap! His cooking is good. The salon is a modest open floor plan, with the kitchen area to the right, and a petit bois table to the left, piled with all kinds of science magazines, GRE prep books, and old paperbacks. There is no shortage of pulp in this house. Their west-facing wall is clothed in postcards from around the world.

Beyond the salon is what saw as a labyrinth of rooms, corridors, secret passageways, and hidden staircases (probably). I am still not entirely certain how many rooms Jill and Markus have in their house. Frankly, I am not entirely certain that they know. I lost count at four, not counting the newly tiled bathroom, which I will get to in a moment. “What do they do with all those rooms?” you may ask. I asked the same question. Room 1: the master bedroom. This is, I assume, where Jill and Markus sleep the two months out of the year that it is not too hot to sleep inside. The water stain in the northwest corner of their paneled ceiling add a nature lover's feel to the bedroom. Moving on. Room2: this is where the care package cardboard boxes go to rest. Without this room, they would be forced to address the issue of their ever growing arsenal of cardboard. Luckily, the room is only 40% cardboard. Room 3: in the very back of the house, these is a hidden room, of equal size to the other rooms, which contains seasonal items. On one visit, I saw a table with two chairs. Another time, I saw two bikes and a confused cat. Hallway 1: when the bikes are not in room 3 nor are they transporting their owners to and from the high school, they are most often left in hallway 1. Other than that, I have no other comment on this dark corridor of sadness. Hallway 2: this hallway ultimately leads to a secret second entrance into the McKay-Fleisch residence; however, one must never open this door. Ever.

And finally, on to the bathroom. I know, I know, you must all be confused. If you refer to paragraph two of this piece, you will be reminded that they do have a latrine house. But nothing says bling like having a latrine AND an indoor douche, complete with non-functioning European style toilet and sink. The McKay-Fleisches recently went guns blazing and got their bathroom floor professionally tiled. I even think they made a friend out of the mason. Either that, or he simply fell in love with their house. Can you blame him?

All good things, like a smothered black bean burrito or a game of Scrabble must come to an end. Such was the case with regards to my visit of the McKay-Fleisch estate. The house alone leaves the guest satisfied, but let us not forget the wonderful hosts, Jill and Markus, for it is they who put the “we” in SWEET. Is it possible to fall in love with a married couple's home? Well, if this isn't love, I don't know what love is.

The End.

Law & Order: Very Special Victims Unit

2007-12-03T08:06:00.000-06:00

DUN DUN!

Green: What've we got here?
Cop: It was a massacre. Forensics is still sorting it all out, but they think we're looking at a nontuple homicide--one turkey, one pig, and seven chickens. And there might be some cow in there too.
Green: Good God.
Cop: And not only that. The victims were eaten and their bones thrown on the ground.
Briscoe: Some people, huh?
Green: Any witnesses?
Cop: Group of kids over there keeps saying "Nasara."
Green: So this Mr. Nasara must be our guy.
Briscoe: Sounds like Mr. Nasara is really the Big Bad Wolf.

DUN DUN!

The hazards of being a teacher in Africa

2007-11-17T03:14:00.000-06:00

Grading papers outside since it's 100+ degrees inside when a sudden dust storm blows all the tests around. Me screaming and scrabbling around in the vine, fetching rogue tests, Markus yelling and diving on the remaining tests like some kind of action star.

Senioritis

2007-11-17T03:12:00.000-06:00

While teaching about leaves for the eighth time, it hit me that I'm ready for my post Peace Corps life to begin. So I finished the lesson, left bits of chalk on the desk, and said goodbye to the class while dodging the students careening through the air to grab the precious morsels, said “bon appetit” to the other teachers, and biked home through a dust storm. Then I updated my résumé. What do you guys think?

Peace Corps Volunteer--Burkina Faso, 2006-2008
-taught biology to a sea of uncomprehending faces who still don't quite understand the difference between leaves and flowers
-learned how to entertain myself while sitting at a bus station for hours; can watch animals attempting to mate with the same enthusiasm that normal people show at a football game
-can haggle like nobody's business--“You want those flip flops for four dollars?! I'll take them for fifty cents.”
-have increased my tolerance to sketchy meat; no longer gag when I realize I'm nibbling something that has a sphincter
-can make ninety Burkinabé students freak out just by greeting them in their own language

Why I Hate Chickens

2007-11-17T03:04:00.000-06:00

-They cluck for no good reason.
-They make loud clicking noises when they groom their feathers.
-People keep giving them to us--we're on Clucky 3.
-They have to put their heads up to swallow. Intelligent design, my ass.
-They poop everywhere.
-They're dumb. Studies using chickens as subjects require hundreds of trials before they learn anything.
-They eat everything, including chicken meat and their own poop.
-They nibble our flowers.
-They shrilly crow all the damn time, not just in the morning--that would require intelligence.
-They can't even fly well. Useless.
-They're ugly. And they smell bad.
-Every night the chicken clumsily flies into a tree to sleep and usually falls out at least once.
-The chicken thinks he's smarter than me--eyeing me while sneaking over to the flowers in plain sight.
-Their eyelids go up. Freaky.
-They evolved from dinosaurs but they suck.
-They're hard to catch.
-They are pretty tasty, though.

The Weeds

2007-10-27T06:16:00.000-05:00

Another rainy season has come and gone, and with the rains come the weeds. Big weeds, small weeds, red weeds, blue weeds. Jill and I think the weeds create a lush, green aesthetic compared to the encroaching Sahara. Unfortunately, the Burkinabé don't share our greener, more eco-friendly vision. They seem to prefer staring at a tree-less, weed-less landscape characterized by tumbleweeds, coral snakes, and the occassional oasis. Titao will not be an oasis once the desert finishes it's war path, and to all thore people who criticized our courtyard and its weeds, I ask, What are you doing to fight the desert?

Our Burkinabé friends, our landlord, our neighbors, our professors, our principal, the list of people who hate our weeds goes on and on. The best part about it is that each person promised to send someone over to pull them. I didn't refuse since I could use the composted dirt. So we waited for someone to come and pull our weeds.

The Burkinabé have a strange concept of promises. For example, last November, the man who runs our main boutique promised to get us tuna, oatmeal, and Pringles. “Where's our stuff?” I would ask. “It arrives,” the boutique-owner would reply, “Check back Thursday.” What he meant by Thursday was some time the following year, specifically August.

This raises another interesting point, which is the concept of time to a people who have no concept of time. In Mooré time is measured by morning, afternoon, and evening. When Jill and I listen to people having conversations in Mooré, we always know what time they are going to do something because we hear “Blah blah blah sept heures blah blah blah too many vowels blah blah blah.” Even in French, the time concept of the old days is still used. There was a cultural festival in Titao (actually kind of boring) last weekend and no one told us when it started. I saw our principal at the local bar, his favorite place after the school, and here's what he said:

Markus: “So when do the activities start?”
Principal: “This evening”
Markus: “Okay . . . but when?”
Principal: “They will announce everything at the general meeting.”
Markus: “Oh, so when is the general meeting?”
Principal: “This evening”

YARGH!!!!

Situations like these happen all the time here, so was I surprised that no one showed up to pull our weeds? No. It's better this way, Jill and I had a great time recreating the opening scene from Apocalypse Now by lighting our weeds on fire. So it's back to that rocky, sandy desert look in our courtyard. But we have a few black patches to remind us of those, brave, lost, desert-fighters, the weeds.

Dr. Toughlove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blâme

2007-10-13T04:26:00.001-05:00

Recording grades is the most tedious tediosity in all of Tedious Town. For each student, you record the grades for their two tests and final exam and their weighted average in your subject. Then you write a comment and sign your initials. Wash, rinse, repeat 500 times. (Keep in mind that this is all done by hand. We don't have any of those fancy schmancy “computers” you have over their in “America.”)

The comment you write depends on the student's grade. If a student gets more than 90%, you write “excellent.” But very few students get the Bill and Ted treatment. Most students fall into the “good”-“average”-“weak” range. For the real idiots you write “nul” or “blâme.”

I had to put my hand on The Interpretation of Dreams and state “Positive reinforcement is the most effective means of changing behavior” to get my bachelor in psychology, so hearing teachers openly ridicule their students has been a bit of a shock. But over the past year, I've realized that all the très biens in the world won't turn a bandit into a scholar.

The more I disrespected my students, the more they respected me. I went from feeling bad subtracting five points for cheating to cheerfully giving no credit if I even caught a whiff of cheating; they kept right on cheating, but at least they attempted to hide it. I went from sheepishly handing back tests with bad grades to tearing up forged tests in front of them; they started creating more sophisticated forgeries. And as my students gradually realized that I was their teacher and not just a white circus freak, they went from coming to the house just to ask questions about America (“Do people in America live underground?”) to coming over to hold self-guided study sessions.

The year's worth of callouses prepared me for an after school special gone bad during the last week of school last year. One of my sixième students told me that if he didn't pass the year with a 60%, his father wouldn't let him stay in school. He showed me his grades and I calculated that the only way he could get 60% is if he got a 75% on his last math test--a very high grade.

So I spent my afternoon tutoring a student in a subject I don't teach for a test that wasn't mine. Then Markus tutored him. Then I tutored him. Then Markus again. While waiting for him to figure out what -2 + 4 was, I had the ultimate Peace Corps moment--I was personally helping a student stay in school. What could be better than that?

A week later, I was filling out grades when I saw his math grade: “blâme.” He did worse with our help than he had done without it. A couple of months later, I saw him loafing around the bus station with the other sixième drop outs.

The moral of the story: blâmes away.

Titao Trail

2007-10-13T04:21:00.000-05:00

Day 1, Ouaga

You are at a boutique. You have 20,000 F. The following things are for sale:
bottled water: 1,500 F
tap water: 50 F
toilet paper: 250 F
bike: 7,500 F
donkey cart: 3,000 F
moto: 300,000 F

You have bought four bags of tap water, eight rolls of toilet paper, and one bike. You now have 10,300 F.

You are on the street. The following things are for sale:
brochettes: 50 F
chicken: 1,000 F

You have bought four brochettes. You now have 10,100 F.

Day 2, Ouaga

You don't feel so good. You really should have sprung for that chicken. You have died of E. coli.

. . . You have bought one chicken. You now have 9,300 F.

Pick your pace: slow, medium, fast, grueling. You have chosen grueling.

Day 3, 4 K outside Ouaga

You have died of heat stroke.

. . . You have chosen slow.

Day 4, 113 K outside of Ouaga.

It's the middle of the day and you've run out of water. You are at a well. You can filter the water, add some bleach, and wait fifteen minutes before drinking it, or you can gulp it down right away. You drink the unfiltered well water.

Day 4, 114 K outside of Ouaga

You have died of arsenic poisoning. Fifteen minutes? Come on!

. . . You filter the well water before drinking it.

Day 5, Ouahigouya

You are at a pharmacy. You have 9,300 F. You can buy the following things:
Cipro: 1,000 F
Ceepro: 100 F

You have bought one Ceepro. You now have 9,200 F.

You are very hungry. You eat all the food you can get your hands on: fried grease balls, little bags of peanuts mixed with dirt, and guts on a stick. You have a sudden sharp pain in your stomach. You take a Ceepro. Turns out it was really baby aspirin. It cures your headache but not your amoebas. You have died of amoebas.

. . . You buy one Cipro. Now you are invincible!

Day 6, 200 K outside of Ouaga

You are at a river crossing. The water is one foot deep. You can pay a man to take you across in his canoe for 300 F or you can attempt to cross the river yourself. You take the boat. You now have 8,000 F.

Halfway across the river, the boat tips over. While bending down to pick up the owner of the boat, who is hysterically shouting, “I can't swim! I can't swim!” a herd of goats eats all your money.

. . . You decide to go for it. Good for you!

Day 6, 215 K outside of Ouaga

You get a flat tire. You flag down a passing bush taxi with “Air Titao” written on the side.

Day 6, 217 K outside of Ouaga

Air Titao has broken down. The driver is attempting to replace the axle with a tree branch. You have died of boredom.

. . . You give Air Titao the finger and continue biking on your flat tire.

Day 7, Titao

You celebrate the end of your journey by drinking a flat beer and eating a small chicken soaked in MSG.

GAME OVER

The Titao Tattler

2007-10-05T08:44:00.001-05:00

Local cat catches mouse, eats its head, pukes on it, then leaves the headless body on the ground. Cat's owners not amused.

Giant tortoise mysteriously appears in front of white couple's house, to the amazement of all.

A turtle named Sally.

School starts! But where are the teachers?

City council declares that wishful thinking will bring electricity to Titao. Some hopeful, others skeptical.

"Yea!"

"Nay!"

Short, heavy rainy season stunts crops. Disgruntled crops talk of forming a union.

White math teacher bien integré, confused about gender roles.

"Nu nu."

Local black cat runs away; other cats that much fatter.

Titao zoo, aka Chez le Blanc, closes down. Area kids disappointed.

FERME

Africa really hot, really drunk.

Oh, Markus.

Girls' Education and Empowerment: A One Act Play

2007-10-05T05:51:00.000-05:00

Scene 1
A Burkinabé man approaches an American couple.
Burkinabé: Hey, Markooos! (They shake and snap.) How are you?! (He turns to the woman as if just realizing she's there.) Madame, bonjour. (They shake.) He eagerly turns back to the man, physically blocking the woman out of the conversation and chatters on and on.)

Scene 2
Same as scene 1.

Scene 3
Same as scene 1.

Scene 4
Same as scene 1.

Scene 5
A couple of Burkinabé men stop by the couple's house for a visit. They sit facing the man. The woman, banished to the outskirts of the conversation, practices conjugating French verbs in her head.
Burkinabé 1: It's hot!
American man: Yes, it is.
Burkinabé 1: Is it hot like this in America?
American man: Yes. But everyone has air conditioning.
Burkinabé 1 and 2: Woooo! It's not true!
American man: Yes.
Burkinabé 2: Life here is hard.
American man: (Nods.)
Burkinabé 1: So, America is fighting Iraq.
American man: (Warily.) Yeah . . .
Burkinabé 1: Is Iraq to the north or the east of America?
American man: Uh . . .
Burkinabé 2: Liberia is not a part of Africa. It's a part of America.
American man: Is that so?
Burkinabé 2: (Nods confidently.)
Burkinabé 1: Are there black people in America?
American man: Yeah. Lots.
Burkinabé 1 and 2: Woooo! It's not true!
Burkinabé 2: It's hot.
American man: Yes, it is.
Burkinabé 1: Life here is hard.

Scene 6
Same as scene 5.

Fin

Bush Administration Unveils New Public Transportation System

2007-08-17T09:35:00.000-05:00

AP-Washington

During a speech at the White House Wednesday in which he said that terrorists plan to “somehow use our highways against us,” President Bush revealed that, effective immediately, all the interstates will be torn up and replaced with dirt roads. He also unveiled what he called “the latest innovation in public transport,” a fleet of ancient, white pickup trucks held together by string and “Allah Is One” stickers.

The president outlined what passengers should expect if the roads are flooded and washed out after a rainstorm. If the water covering the road is less than two feet deep, male passengers will be required to get out and push the truck through the water. Men with valid AARP cards are excepted from this rule. If the water is over two feet deep, all passengers will have to wade across the raging brown river while gripping the arm of a total stranger. Helpful young men will be there to take your bags across--for a price. “Be prepared to haggle,” President Bush chuckled over the boos of the press corps.

Those who manage to make it across the river alive will be herded into the back of a semi with dozens of other waterlogged passengers. Passengers are advised to wear helmets as rusty bolts, gasoline, and children may fall from the open ceiling. Catch up on your reading and fight claustrophobia while counting down the hours until the truck starts moving. “We'll get you there eventually,” Vice President Cheney cackled.

White House Spokesman Tony Snow denied that the administration's new plan has anything to do with the U.S.'s crushing debt. He added, “Well, maybe just a little.”

Piss Squad Part Deux*

2007-08-04T05:15:00.000-05:00

After a night of horrifying pee incidents, I devised a cat catching contraption while my coffee brewed.

I caught one of the bastards! Next step: take the asshole en brousse.** And shoot it.****

*two
**the bush***
***wilderness
****humanely release it

Mid Service Medical Results

2007-07-28T10:10:00.000-05:00

Markus: Blastocytes, lost 22 pounds (possibly in hair weight), no testicular cancer, though, and no cavities!

Jill: Freakishly healthy.

Geez Jill, you're so boring. Get some bacteria already.

With blasto (the most onomatopoeia of all the gut bacteria) I've brought my total number of different things that have resided in my intestines to four: E. coli, giardia, ameobas, and blasto. Welcome to the family, Blasto!

Cops: Ouagadougou

2007-07-28T10:03:00.000-05:00

Ouahigouya is the land of faux types. Faux types are dudes who hassle white people, trying to sell them shoes, magazines, watches, welcome mats, string, monkey blood health serum, anything you can imagine. If they don't have anything to sell, that doesn't stop them from hassling white folks. It's just so much fun! Our favorite Ouahigouya faux type is actually a faux typette who looks about 14 years old. Once he spots you, it's impossible to shake the little punk, which is really not fun when you're trying to look inconspicuous while buying something big, expensive, and flashy like a solar panel.

Our kinder, more patient friend who lives in Ouahigouya took pity on the brat and hired him to clean her house a few months ago. Not being an idiot, she always made sure to be in the house when he was there. But the one time she let him out of her sight, he found where she kept her money and stole the equivalent of $100 and left town, never to be seen again.

Turns out bowling is the little punk's weakness (well, bowling and stealing), and he strolled right into the bowling alley in Ouaga where some of us were busy upgrading from grungy flip flops to stylish bowling shoes. He recognized us and quietly said hello, which is not this loud mouthed punk’s style at all. We recognized him and started hassling him for the money. He denied it and did what any falsely accused person would do--he bolted. Everyone shouted “Voleur!”--robber--and the guy behind the counter immediately ran after him, chasing him down in the parking lot. But after a few minutes of questioning and demanding the money, there wasn't much else that could be done. We had to let him go since he didn't have the money anymore. He did have a brand spanking new cell phone and was noticeably chubbier--“Fat off of my money,” our friend said. She took out her anger by repeatedly throwing the bowling ball into the gutter. (We don’t get to go bowling very often.)

A few nights later, we were sleeping in the hostel in Ouaga when we were woken up at three in the morning by shouts of “Voleur!” and lots of people running. A robber had snuck into the hostel and stolen money, iPods, and a camera. A volunteer who was coming back from the bureau down the street interrupted his stealing spree and the robber hid in the upstairs bathroom. The volunteer walked into the bathroom in his boxers and spotted the guy hiding behind the door. He asked who he was, and the robber mumbled something and started to walk away. The volunteer then chased him down the hall, past several sleeping people who all woke up and started screaming, and out the door, where the robber got away with, among other things, a lot of Markus’s and my money and our iPod, which he had stolen out of the room where we’d been sleeping. Luckily, no one was hurt.

The next day, Peace Corps sprang into action, expressing lots of sympathy, writing down lots of details, and making lots of phone calls. They reimbursed us for the money that was stolen, but not our iPod. At least the robber got a bum deal. We bought our iPod a few months ago, and when I was taking it out of its box, it slipped out and hit a chair, cracking the screen. The pixel damage spread so that three-quarters of the screen was dark and you had to hold it at funky angles to see what you were listening to. I never thought I’d be happy I busted my brand new iPod, but imagining the disappointed look on our robber’s face makes me happy. But not as happy as our new DevilPod.

It’s a Training Bonanza Blowout! Get them before they’re gone!

2007-07-27T12:52:00.000-05:00

Fact: The latest crop of PCVs is part of the “Millennial Generation.” What’s that, you say? It’s a bunch of silly generalities written by some bitter Baby Boomer. What the hell are you going on about, you say? I’m getting this from my time spent sitting in a conference room for three days, listening to endless sessions like “How to Give Feedback” (“That was terrible!” = bad; What were you thinking?!” = also bad). All of these totally awesome sessions are a part of TOT, which all the PCVFs have to attend in order to help the PCTs during PST. That’s Peace Corpsese for a training session for the volunteers who are working during the three-month training of new Peace Corps trainees.

The new group of teachers arriving means I’ve been here for over a year. It’s the first time I’ve seen most of the Burkinabé trainers since swear-in and it’s made me feel a lot more confident about my French. Who knew they were speaking sentences and not just gibberish?! I always thought they were saying “Bonjour. Blah blah, famille, blah blibbety blah, travail?” And I love talking to the people who taught me French and having an entire conversation without saying “Huh?”

Mostly, though, a typical session is someone talking for thirty minutes to an hour, followed by group work and presentations, and finally an hour-long discussion. There was a long argument about the phrase “Ça va aller,” which literally means “It will go” and is used by Burkinabé to try to put a positive spin on things. Or does it trivialize people’s feelings? Discuss.

After four days of this, I went to Ghana and sat on the beach and ate lots of lobster. It was awesome and here’s why: Burkina = chickens, goats, baobabs, sand (the bad kind); Ghana = monkeys, lobsters, water, sand (the good kind).

Right after coming back from paradise, I had another training, this time for the Peer Support Network. It was pretty touchy feely, but a lot more fun than TOT. We even had a Mexican feast on the last day. As I was munching on a burrito, I had a brief suspicion that I was being bribed . . . but then they brought out more food and all I could think was, “Queso!”

A few weeks after that and I’m back in Ouaga for yet another training. This one’s for the teachers to sit around and discuss cheating, classroom management, lesson planning, and all the other stuff we discussed at our last training six months ago. And during Stage, six months before that. I bet you’re not too surprised to hear that it’s all very boring. But that’s the Peace Corps way.

I don’t really know why I thought you’d all be really, really interested in all my trainings this summer. Maybe I wanted to brag on how well trained I am. Leave a comment and I’ll give you some feedback on how good it was. Trust me. I’m an expert.

BURKINA ROCKS: Top 11 impressions and learnings

2007-06-01T08:51:00.000-05:00

Posted by: Theo Fleisch

1. Real men (and Jill) drink only large beers in 0.65l bottles (not the whimsical US sizes).

2. Who needs to stare at a bedroom ceiling when one can sleep under the stars?

3. Who needs the hype of CNN and ESPN when one can fall asleep watching the one French station?

4. Taxis are never occupied; there is always room for more customers.

5. Flip-flops rule: who needs hot confining Western shoes?

6. Be green and don't waste water: take a half bucket, 6 pint or 48 spoons "shower".

7. Women work whilst men manage the world as originally revealed in God's master plan.

8. Cars (Peugeots in particular) have longer lives than man (though aided by duct tape, wires and dirt)

9. Carrying lots of stuff on your head gives you great posture

10. Burkinese protect their land by covering it with a layer of black plastic bags

11. Who needs a trailer when one can conveniently store bikes, goats and potatoes on the unterutilized roofs of cars?

Burkina rocks. A land of red sand, plastic bags, goats and mangos and of some GREAT Peace Corps volunteers in Titao.

Best kept secret - Visit by Markus’ parents in Burkina Faso

2007-06-01T08:47:00.000-05:00

Posted by Renate Fleisch

Our visit to Titao beginning of May happened to fall into the hottest time of the year, 45 C; 115 F. Great planning on our side, but Austrians descend from tough mountainfolk and nothing can keep us away. One brief comment concerning boubous and pagnes – Burkinabe women, wearing extremely colorful pagnes, look very elegant and stylish. The decision was instantly settled for this mother of the groom (Patrick) that traditional beige is definitely out of the question.
For the benefit of our non-English speaking relatives and friends in Austria the following posting is a travel report in German.

Unsere Reise Anfang Mai nach Burkina Faso, West Afrika, war ein erlebnisreiches Abenteuer. Burkina Faso (bis 1984 Ober Volta genannt) liegt ca 10 Grad noerdlich des Aequators im Landesinneren. Die Einwohnerzahl liegt bei ungefaehr 13 millionen. Burkina Faso ist eines der aermsten Laender der Welt.
Markus und Jill warteten auf uns am Flughafen in Ouagadougou. Dies ist die Hauptstadt mit ca einer Million Einwohner. Eine Hitzewand von 42 C raubte uns gleich die ersten Atemzuege. Die erste Nacht verbrachten wir in luxurioesen Umstaenden in einem Hotelzimmer mit Klimaanlage. Am naechsten Morgen wurde unsere Reise mit oeffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln (40 Jahre alte Busse) fortgesetzt. Unsere Koffer, inclusive Zwiebel- und Kartoffelsaecke, sowie lebendige Schafe mit zusammengebundenen Beinen, wurden in den Gepaecksraum gestopft. Eine stattliche Anzahl von Motor- und Fahrraedern wurde noch auf das Dach geladen und mit vielen Schnueren geschickt festgebunden. Dann begann der lebensgefaehrliche Kampf um einen Sitzplatz. Diese Amerikanerin wird die Draengerei an oesterreichischen Skiliften von nun an als aeusserst zivilisiert betrachten.

Nach fuenfstuendiger Schwitzfahrt in zwei verschiedenen Bussen erreichten wir Titao. Dies ist der Ort wo Markus und Jill unterrichten. Er liegt im Norden von Burkina Faso, nahe an der Grenze zu Mali. 8000 freundliche Burkinabe wohnen hier mit ungeteerten Strassen, ohne Strom, fliessendem Wasser oder Kanalisation. Markus kocht mit Propangas und ist faehig, mit limitierten Zutaten schmackhafte Speisen aufzutischen. Unsere beiden freiwilligen Helfer sind in einem fuer oertliche Verhaeltnisse geraeumigen Haus untergebracht. Eine Mauer umgibt das gesamte Grundstueck und sorgt fuer Privatatmosphaere. Die heissen Naechte verbrachten wir auf einem Liegebett unter freiem Sternenhimmel. Die Regenzeit hatte noch nicht begonnen und malariaverbreitende Moskitos waren keine Gefahr. Um 4:00 Uhr fueh beginnen die Haehne zu kraehen und die Esel zu schreien. Eine bezaubernde Art, geweckt zu werden.

Natuerlich setzten wir uns in eine Schulbank, um Markus und Jill waehrend des Unterrichtens (Markus Mathematic, Jill Biologie) zu beobachten. Obervolta war eine franzoesische Kolonie und die Amtssprache ist auch heute noch Franzoesisch. Beide beherrschen diese Sprache bereits auf beneidenswerte Weise und es ist beeindruckend wie sie 90 Schueler im Alter von 12 bis 18 in den jeweiligen Klassen im Zaum halten. (Markus rettete seine Mutti des oefteren, um stammelnde Franzoesischkonversationen wieder in Fluss zu bringen.) 80% der Bevoelkerung sind Analphabeten. Fuer uns Eltern war es sehr befriedigend, zu sehen, wie sehr sie vom einheimischen Lehrpersonal geschaetzt werden.

Nach drei Tagen in Titao bestiegen wir wiederum den Bus, um noch zwei Tage in der chaotischen Haupstadt Ouagadougou zu verbringen. Wir verstehen nun vollkommen, warum Markus und Jill das Leben im ruhigen, stromlosen, freundlichen Titao einem Aufenthalt in der Stadt vorziehen. Markus hat vor kurzem eine Sonnenzelle installiert, um etwas Licht ins fruehe Dunkel zu bringen und vor allem auch, um die Musik vom geliebten I-pod abhorchen zu koennen.

Zum Abschluss muss ich doch noch bemerken, wie stolz wir auf unseren Sohn sind, der sich auch in schwierigen Situationen immer zu helfen weiss. Eine derartige Anpassung ist meiner Meinung nach nicht einfach, wennn man im Ueberfluss aufgewachsen ist. Der zweijaehrige Aufenthalt in Afrika wird fuer Markus und Jill eine lebenspraegende Erfahrung bringen.
Fuer uns brachte diese abenteuerliche Reise die beruhigende Gewissheit, dass die beiden in einem politisch stabilen Land in Sicherheit ihrer Lehrtaetigkeit nachgehen koennen.

When I say "PO" you say "TATO!" PO!

2007-05-22T10:06:00.000-05:00

TATO!

You harvest those potatoes.

What better way to celebrate potatoes, potatoes, the magical fruit by JUMPING . . .

. . . STACKING . . .

. . . and SHOUTING crazy things into a MEGAPHONE!

Even Dan Quayle got in on the action!

And the Village People came! Woo, POTATOES!

Cats!

2007-05-22T09:51:00.000-05:00

As you all know, we have three “official” cats: Kittenbo (aka Screamo, Kit, The Little One), Laafi (aka La Bomb, Laafdud, Tabs), and Sagbo (aka Soggy, The Sogmeister).

The Tabby got knocked up by one of the tomcat lotharios that prowl around our courtyard at night. A couple of months later, Jill and I chased her while she ran around, yowling, with a kitten sticking halfway out of her. Meet Tablet and Cowpie (aka the Laafettes), our fourth and fifth “official” cats (temporarily).

And who could forget the mom cat (aka Mombo) that lives on our roof with her three kittens?

One, two, three, four plus five equals nine freakin' cats running around our courtyard (two of them more like stumbling and flopping over on their sides). Our cats are great (well, two out of three of them are, anyway). And the Laafettes are ok, I guess. But those wild kittens are trouble. We call them The Piss Squad.

And now a word from our sponsors. “Do you like cats?! How about Cats?! Cats leaping and dancing and twirling and singing! Come see Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats! It's got a lot of cats in it!” And now back to your program.

Like any married couple, Jill and I have a lot of arguments. Ever since the hot season began, we've been arguing a lot about whether we should sleep inside or outside. I want to sleep outside because it's so hot inside it melts the wax off of candles; she wants to sleep inside because mosquitos love her and she wakes up light-headed and dizzy from the loss of blood. I won this argument. My reward is waking up slightly less drenched than I would be if I'd slept inside and having to bat away fat and happy mosquitos the size of baseballs.

The Piss Squad were born on our roof and lived up there until they could develop enough dexterity to walk down a branch. This created a dilemma: A cat has a urinary tract, and when that urinary tract is located on your straw roof, the force of gravity does its work, creating a delightful surprise for anything underneath the stream. That was Jill and me. We were woken on several occasions by drops of fresh cat pee landing on our faces, feet, chests, backs, and hands. I attempted to solve this pissy problem by making a piss shield out of paper and plastic, and eventually settled for the very attractive cardboard-wedged-in-between-the-boards-holding-up-our-seco look.. It gives our desert home a kind of white trash appearance, but sure is good at keeping the pee up and the dry down.

Not to be thwarted, the kittens upped the ante by peeing on one of our guests, the mild-mannered Brian Chambers. This is a guy who doesn't let a little thing like E. coli get him down, but cat pee got him a bit riled up.

And then there was the time the mom cat brought them a fresh mouse and--oops--forgot to kill it. The mouse came careening off the roof right into Jill's lap. Jill's reaction was straight from the cartoon pages: jumping onto her chair and screaming “EEEEEK!”

The kittens have finally learned to climb down the branches and instead of peeing on us are now eating our food and living in harmony with our cats. What a world!

The Monthly Comment Award! Oooh yeah!

2007-05-22T09:31:00.000-05:00

This month's award winner is Chris! His crafty undercover reporting uncovered the conspiracy taking place right here on this very blog. Shame on you, you know who, shame on you. We're still trying to exterminate the “termites of nepotism.” Thanks, Chris!

News Flash

2007-05-22T09:23:00.000-05:00

Jill has been selected to be on the Peer Support Network. As a PSN member, she'll be held personally responsible for volunteer happiness (or else).

Markus has been selected for nothing.
(Note from Markus: Hey! That's not very nice. This makes me unhappy.)

Jill and Markus are going to be working at Pre-Service Training in Ouahigouya this summer. They will enlighten the new group of stagiares about the wonders and perils of living and teaching in Burkina Faso by writing on a bunch of flip charts with stinky markers.

Jill's worn out from teaching way more hours than Markus (Note from Markus: Three more hours) and grading 527 final exams to Markus's 205 (Note from Markus: Actually, it's 208.). The stress of it all caused her to break out in hives (Note from Markus: HA HA HA!) and she's planning to relax on the beach in Ghana next week. Markus isn't invited. (Note from Markus: What the?!)

L'Education Sexuelle

2007-05-22T09:18:00.000-05:00

Me: “Bonjour! Comment ça va?”

Class: “Ça va.”

Me: What is the most important system in the body?”

Class: “The digestive system!” “The urinary system!” “The pancake system!”

Me: “Nope, it's the reproductive system because without reproduction there would be no new babies.”

Class: “Hee hee!”

Me: “The male genitals are les testicules, le pénis or la verge,* and a bunch of tubes that aren't very interesting.”

Punk kid: “Madame! What are the testicules?”

Me: “I don't know, Souleymane, what are the testicules?”

Class: “Hee hee hee!”

Me: “The female genitals are les ovaires, les trompes, l'utérus, and la vulve. The vulve is the part that is cut off during female genital mutilation.”

Class: “Hee hee!”

Me: “Why are you laughing? Girls that have this done to them often can't have children and sometimes die.”

Class: “Ha ha ha!”

Me: “You guys are messed up.”

Dumbass: “Madame, what is the vagin?”

Me: “If you don't know what that is, you're going to have some problems. Ok, where do
you think fertilization takes place?”

Class: “Le vagin!” “Les ovaires!” “Les testicules!”

Me: “Holy crap, I'm out of here.”

And that's why you don't try to teach sex ed. to a bunch of punk kids.

*rod (This is in the book. Really.)

All I need to know I learned in kindergarten (from a one-armed man)

2007-04-14T05:04:00.000-05:00

Once there was a little Burkinabé boy with a stuffy nose walking to school. To clear things out, he bent over, squeezed one nostril shut, and blew out a snot rocket that thwapped onto the ground. Breathing easy, he continued on his way, imagining all the cool things he was going to learn in SVT that day.

A minute later, a man who was walking door to door giving out free packets of tissue to prevent the spread of meningitis slipped on the fresh snot rocket and fell down. As he started to get back up, a moto ran over his arm, chopping it off.

And that's why you don't blow snot rockets.

A white guy who had just arrived in Burkina was biking down the road when he heard a bunch of kids hysterically crying, "NASARA! NASAWA! NASA! NGHAW!" Confused, he turned to look and didn't see the rabid donkey that ran up to him and bit off his arm.

And that's why you don't shot "nasara" at white people.

Once there was a man who had a lot of kids. And by a lot of kids, we're talking several dozen. But when you have four wives, you're bound to end up with a bunch of kids, c'est comme ça. Nothing gave the man more pleasure than watching his snot-nosed, fungus-covered, pantsless uniheights running around the courtyard, screaming their heads off.

One day, the man was on his way home from the marché, where'd he'd sold his entire crop of limes to a nasara with a bad case of scurvy. He was feeling spendy, so he bought some candy for his spawn. All the kids, from Abdoulaye to Zalissa, loved their candy and they loved their dad.

When the man got home the next day, a hoard of kids ran toward him, happily shouting, "Papa! Did you bring us any candy?!" The man chuckled and said, "No, not today." In a flash, the sea of smiling faces became snarling grimaces. The man watched helplessly as his beloved children rioted in the courtyard, tipping over his bike and setting fire to the mud huts. He yelled, "Hamidou! Hamadou! Hamadé! What are you doing?!" as a pack of kids lurched toward him like zombies and, in their sugar-deprived wrath, tore off his arm.

And that's why you don't have a ton of kids.

An old Burkinabé man was having trouble sleeping. He figured it was because he sat around all day chewing foul-tasting, caffeine-laden kola nuts with the other old guys, saying "Mbaaah" whenever someone greeted them. So, he gave up his filthy habit. And despite the terrible headaches that were so painful, he could only cry out "MBAAAGH!" he eventually got the monkey off his back.

But he still couldn't sleep. Then he realized that the cause of his insomnia was the blaring music that played in town all night, every night. After a particularly bad night, during which the little sleep he got was invaded by three men in Burkina Faso jerseys dancing and singing, "Red, red whine!" he went out to the fields to help his son-in-law harvest potatoes. He struggled to focus his bleary eyes as he hacked at the ground with a metal tool. But he had no trouble keeping his eyes open when, in his sleepy daze, he accidently hacked off his own arm.

And that's why you don't blast music all night long.

The Monthly Comment Award

2007-03-25T10:12:00.000-05:00

We loving getting comments as much as we love sunsets, puppies, kittens, comfort food, and watching a good movie. In order to increase the amount and quality of comments on our blog, we're introducing the monthly comment awards (applause)! Each month we'll select a lucky winner whose name will be featured in the sidebar of our blog. What a prize!!! You might be saying to yourself, "I know how to comment a lot, but how exactly do I make a quality comment?" Here's a helpful comment guide to ameliorate all of your concerns:

Examples of bad comments:

“Hello, Jill and Markus. Your blog is number one on Google for the word “goat.” Perhaps you would be interested in joining the Goat Order Against Tabaski. Help us stop the slaughter!”

“Uh, Jill. I just received a letter from the Friendswood library. They say your library card has expired. Would you like me to renew it? This is your mother.”
(Note from Jill: Yes.)

“How is Djibouti? I hear Asia's great this time of year!”

I know what you're thinking: “But Markus and Jill, your writing is so clever and informative, I just don't know how I can match it in one measly little comment!” Don't worry--here are some helpful hints:

Good comment: “Hi!”

Better comment: “Hello!”

Best comment: “Your recent analysis of Burkinabé fashion made some interesting points. The chicken head pagne is clearly meant to be a symbol of the government system. Is the government, represented by the chicken head, striving for a public body? Or does the chicken head represent a decapitated system? Perhaps the answer can be found in the writings of . . .”

This month's comment award winner is Theo Fleisch (aka my dad), he doesn't let chronic jet lag stop him from commenting from all over the world. Good job, Dad!

So everybody keep commenting and go for the gold!

Haute Couture.

2007-03-09T09:37:00.000-06:00

Forget South Africa. Burkina Faso is the real fashion capitol of Africa. Take a walk through the marché and you'll be overwhelmed by all the stylish clothes on display: shirts that say "Kiss Me Guick," "Britney Speas," "African Queen" (this one has your name written all over it, Mom), and, my favorite, "Cocky!"

If you think prêt à porter stifles your creativity, you can buy a pagne and have an outfit tailored. Popular pagnes include the one with hands spraying aerosol cans; a broom sweeping; and a living room with armchair, table, and lamp. And it goes without saying that you have a wide variety of chicken head pagnes to choose from. When you bring your lovely new pagne to the tailor, he'll ask you if you want it tight or super tight. A week later, you can show off the things that you value the most, such as electric fans, while strutting around in your new outfit.

If getting your clothes tailored is too expensive, no worries, just wrap your pagne around your waist. Not colorful enough? Wear a shirt made out of a different pagne, tie your baby on your back with a third pagne, and, if you're feeling really loud and colorful, tie a fulard around your head with a fourth pagne. Très chic!

But let's not forget the men. Men like to hide their muscles behind huge, billowing shirts or giant boubous. Men's taste in pagnes are a little more subdued than women's, although the Women's Day pagne and the "Blaise Compaore: Mon Président" pagnes are very popular. Markus is so taken with boubou fashion that he keeps threatening to wear one to Patrick and Connie's wedding. The only problem is he can't decide if he wants to wear a pink, baby blue, or Blaise Compaore boubou. (Note from Markus: Patrick, let me know if you want me to have boubous made for all your groomsmen!)

Not to be outdone, PCVs have their own style. I haven't heard so many “Nice Chacos!” since going to college in the Northwest. The women are just as shoe obsessed as they ever were, only now, they compliment other women's flip flops instead of their heels. Purses are also a hot commodity. A friend of mine showed up with a new bag made out of a colorful natte--a plastic woven prayer mat. I soon bought one too but only had a day to enjoy hearing compliments about my new bag before all the other women in my stage showed up with them. Now the PCVs are saturated with natte bags.

I have an article from a magazine about two women who'd been PCVs in Burkina and wrote the magazine asking for makeovers. In the before picture, they're standing in front of mud huts wearing t-shirts and pagnes; in the after picture, they're in skinny jeans and leopard print high heels. You know you've been in Africa too long when you look at the two photos and think, “Nice pagne!”

Remember, chicken head pagnes are the new black.

Rock that pagne!

Photos, Super!

2007-03-09T09:36:00.000-06:00

Yes, that's a Baobab. Yes, those big black clumps in the tree are vultures.

In case you were confused about our other picture, Sagbo's growth plates are in order, we just got another black kitten. Here's a nice size comparison. Sagbo is the little one. Just kidding.

Our students are incredibely artistic and here are some examples.

They may be artistic, but their English is lacking.

This is the school building where Jill and I spend most of our time.

That's the school in the background and in the foreground is a goat. This is normal.

The elusive guinea fowl treats itself to a morning snack in our courtyard.

This is a picture from the roof of a hotel in Ouagadougou. This is what the suburbs look like. Where are the neatly trimmed lawns?

This is the view from right outside of our main gate and I happened to get some kids spinning tires down the road. If they're not spinning tires, they're pulling cardboard boxes behind them with string. Kids!

We love black people!

Bored and Boredibility

2007-03-09T09:04:00.000-06:00

By guest writer Jane Austen.

“My mother will most certainly find it a folly of yours that you disagree with the commonly accepted belief that Ms. Austen is of the highest literary caliber,” Ms. McKay-Fleisch stated with utmost certainty.

“It is not a folly of my character if I find the style of Ms. Austen a terrible bore,” Mr. McKay-Fleisch responded. He struggled to continue his latest literary undertaking, Emma, and every turn of the page elicited a great sigh, which Ms. McKay-Fleisch found most dramatic. “I believe I will relieve my boredom by taking a walk to town,” said Mr. McKay-Fleisch.

“But the dreadful heat of this time of the day! The sun will surely persuade you otherwise. Continue your novel. I am convinced you will be persuaded that Ms. Austen's writing is most charming.”

“I can be neither persuaded nor do I have the persuasion to continue this work of literature.” As Mr. McKay-Fleisch said this, he slammed the book on the table in disgust and stood up. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead to his chin. “Perhaps I shall wait for the sun to wither in the sky a bit prior to my excursion.”

An interlude followed this statement as Ms. McKay-Fleisch continued to peruse her undoubtedly more fascinating book and Mr. McKay-Fleisch stared at a dark spot on the otherwise white wall. He soon grew bored with this activity and persuaded himself to pick up the novel. He found himself reading a ten page conversation about whether or not it was still snowing and safe to travel by carriage. “Thrilling!” Mr. McKay-Fleisch muttered.

The Sum of All Clichés

2007-02-23T13:27:00.000-06:00

By guest writer Tom Clancy

"John Moore--pizza delivery guy," Jill wrote on her fifth page of notes. Reading a bestseller by Tom "Tell, Don't Show" Clancy was tough. Wading through 900 pages of the cheesy spy novel with dozens of characters who are never referred to by the same name twice was tougher. That's why she took notes. Otherwise she wouldn't have known that John Moore was the same guy as Albert Johnathan Moore, former captain of the nuclear submarine U.S.S. Maine and current Secretary of Defense. "Why is the SecDef delivering pizzas?" the United States Peace Corps Volunteer thought.

McKay usually read non fiction books that made her feel smart and productive. Reading Clancy just made her feel angry. Especially passages like this:

"Mister President."
"Yes, Elizabeth?" Fowler said, chuckling.
"Has anyone told you lately how good a lover you are?"
"Not in the Cabinet Room. . . . Not in the Press Room either."
"Well you're hearing it from your National Security Advisor."
"Thank you, Dr. Elliot." They both had a good laugh.

Markus looked up from his book when he heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the table. He knew a rant was soon to follow. The math teacher at Lycée Provincial du Loroum watched, amused, as his wife of two years ranted about the many ways that Tom Clancy is a hack. He knew that telling her to stop reading would be ineffectual. Eventually, Julia Lynne ran out of insults and returned to her book. "Thanks for the history lesson, Clancy. Because I didn't know that the Vatican was its own country," she muttered. A few minutes later, "Oh, I'm so sure the terrorists are going to get away with blowing up the Super Bowl."

"Why don't you just read something else?" Monsieur Viande asked. "Because I'm on page 453," J. L. McKay, B. A., responded as she eagerly went back to her book.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm 24?

2007-02-23T13:14:00.000-06:00

Mom thinks this blog is negative, so here are some Hallmark Moments just to prove her wrong:

-Saying good morning to a math teacher who wants to learn English and being asked "How do you feel?" and having him answer his own question, "I think that . . . you feel . . . good!"

-Asking my sixième students if all animals have heads--"Oui!"--and seeing their shocked reaction when I say, "No, you're wrong" and describe a starfish to them.

-At least once a week, getting the student-to-teacher greeting--arms crossed and a little curtsy--from a couple of tiny primary students.

-Sitting at our bar in Titao, watching an old man take out a gold boubou he must have just picked up from the tailor, hold it up to himself, and, seemingly pleased, meticulously fold it and put it back in its bag and leave without having bought a drink.

-Walking in the packed marché on Fridays, not being able to take ten steps without being greeted by a student.

-Going into town and running into a very enthusiastic, very cheerful student carrying a little boy. Markus asked him if it was his son, and he replied, "It's my little brother!" We saw the family resemblance as he walked away and his tiny brother gave us a big, toothy grin over his shoulder.

-Seeing the oops! face on students' faces after they call me "Monsieur" (this happens a lot).

-Coming home from class on my birthday, petting the cats who've run out to greet me and rub their faces against my bike, saying hi to a very proud-looking Markus who's standing under a "Happy Birthday" banner.

And then there are the many Weirdmark Moments:

-Drinking beers at our favorite bar on marché day, watching a mother goat walk by with three baby goats trailing her like a line of ducks, shooing away a rooster that's threatening to crow, and discussing with Markus how people remember where they parked their donkey.

-Waiting at the bus station, sitting on a giant bag of carrots, seeing a guy with a shirt that has Saddam Hussein on the front and bombs falling down both sleeves.

-Watching goats that have strolled into our yard bolt when a tiny shepherd walks in and shouts “Dik! Dak! Dik!” at them.

-Pacing around my courtyard while on the phone, waving at dirty kids who keep ça va-ing me, and, after listening to Mom and Dad describe the latest fabulous restaurant they went to with the Fleisches, telling them about how excited I am to have French fries for dinner.

Brought to you by JillMark

Markus vs. The Water Boy

2007-02-23T12:46:00.000-06:00

Our water is brought to us bi-weekly (sometimes) by the son of the APE (the Burkinabé PTA) president. He is a sprightly young lad with the arrogance of a king and the angst of a teenager (because he is one). He's actually a seconde student, which meansthat he recently passed the BEPC (a test to get into the 2nd cycle of high school). We do not get along.

Round 1: Your water's dirty!

Ding Ding!

Our water boy looked into our 160 liter water barrel one day and told me that it is very dirty and that I should always keep the lid on since there is so much dust in the air. I calmly replied that I do keep the lid on and that it was his water that was dirty. Ancient Burkinabé proverb: “Don't ever point out the dirtiness of one's water lest he become enraged and irrational.” He took the comment as a personal insult and stormed out to his donkey cart, took the hose, pointed at the water coming out, and exclaimed, “Look! It's clean!” I explained to him the concept of ground water and how since it comes from THE GROUND it has dirt in it. He still didn't believe me so I showed him our Peace Corps issued water filters, which are quickly turning dark brown.. Only then did he finally realize that, hey, maybe this university-educated teacher at my school actually does know more about dirt in water than I do. Soon after this discussion, he switched pumps and I have found everything from bits of string to dead worms in the water. Perhaps he is trying to get back at me for proving him wrong. His thought process: “You thought your water was dirty before!” Touché, Water Boy, you win this round.

Round 2: Your door is dangerous!

Ding Ding!

The huge metal doors to our courtyard have always been a problem. The concrete pillars that hold the doors were falling apart. After bugging our landlord, he hired some guys who did a half-assed repair attempt. Soon after, the doors crashed to the ground, narrowly missing some students. During the four months when the doors were broken, I heard nothing but complaints from our water boy. He told me that it is was dangerous (thanks, I had no idea) and that he would actually stop bringing water unless we got it fixed because he was scared of it falling on him. After the doors fell over, we took them off their hinges and propped them against the wall. This was a great time for us because with no door, the whole town could play the fun game, Stare At the White People.

After some more bugging, our landlord finally got a more professional bunch of dudes to fix them. We got water delivered the day after they started working on them. Since the cement had just been poured that day, I wasn't convinced that it was dried yet, but since the water boy is an expert on everything from water filtration to cement, he knew that it was completely dry just by looking at it. We argued for a while about opening the door and I brought up the point that he had been complaining about this for months and now that it was finally repaired he wanted to tempt fate and ruin it again. I was prepared to transport the water across our courtyard, but he was insistent on bringing the donkey cart into the courtyard. We moved the door very carefully and everything was ok, but damn, what a punk. While helping him, I explained that although the pillars looked dry, the insides might still be wet. Despite the door not breaking, I'd like to think I gave him a little education on the concept of three dimensional objects, so we'll give this round to me. Markus rocks!

Round 3 - Where were you?!

Ding Ding!

On more than one occassion our water boy has decided to either change the day, not show up, or come at a time when he knows we won't be there and then get really mad at me for not being there. These days put me in a great mood. For example, there are no classes Thursday afternoons so that teachers can give tests. The water boy knows this because he is a student and he knows that we are teachers which means that from 3 to 5 on Thursday afternoons we will most likely be at the school. What time does he decide to show up? That's right, 4:30. He leaves us 4 buckets of water and nothing else for the next three days. I can't reach him by phone, no one is at his house, and I'm pissed. He shows up the following Sunday to deliver water and has the nerve to ask, “Where were you on Thursday?” Gritting my teeth and daydreaming about giving him a knuckle sandwich, I told him to deliver water on Thursdays after 5. The next Thursday, Jill and I are getting on our bikes to go to school and give a test, when we see him show up with his donkey cart. This round goes to the Water Jerk.

The fight for the heavywaterweight champion of the world will be held in Titao, Burkina Faso. Markus and The Water Boy will once again duke it out for water supremacy. Stay tuned for a round by round playback of the next match. Good night, good fight!

And now a word from our sponsors: Lowered Expectations.

2007-02-09T11:53:00.000-06:00

I learned in my psychology classes that when you smell something, your sensory cells keep firing (“The litter box is stinky!”) but your neurons, tired of saying the same thing, soon stop firing (“Get over it!”), which is why you don't continue to smell the same scent. It's like that with Burkina. I still sense the heat, the dirt, the stares, and the bizarre situations, but I don't really notice them anymore. With Theo and Renate visiting us in a few months and Amy and Jason hopefully coming soon after, I'm trying to remember what I thought of this place when I stepped off the plane, so I can later say, “Don't say I didn't warn you!”

The first thing you'll notice is the rush of hot air that hits you when the plane door opens. There are three things you absolutely need to survive the hot seasons, particularly the hot and rainy season: a bottle of water, a kafika--a woven fan that Burkinabé use to fan their fires and whiteys use to stay alive--and the all important sweat rag. Get used to sweating and treasure every breeze.

After you recover from heat stroke, you'll probably be a little hungry. You might be disgusted by some of the street food that Markus and I eagerly gobble down. For instance, every Friday marché day, we make a lunch out of gâteau--balls of flour dough fried in huge woks of village oil and sprinkled with piment (dried, crushed peppers). We call them fried grease balls or, when we're feeling nostalgic, donuts. (Note from Markus: I wish every day were Friday!) If we're really lucky, our meat guy has some unclaimed brochettes we can buy, although you probably shouldn't eat them unless you like goat. And E. coli. We like to wash down our delicious meal with our favorite beer, Sob.B.Bra, which is almost always skunky and makes MGD taste like a Belgian. But hey, it's beer.

Village life getting you down? Let's go to Ouahigouya. But first we need to find a ride. You have a better chance of finding a taco in Titao than catching the bus, so our choices are a random pickup truck or Air Titao, a green bush taxi that is the filthiest thing you'll ever set foot in--we're so coated with dust when we get off that we almost look Burkinabé. There's a 100% chance you'll feel like a sardine after they pick up a few more people along the way, a 50% chance of your ride breaking down (the windshield of the bush taxi we took last week was held on with a rubber cable and the sliding door was closed by wrapping some twine around a nail), and a 1% chance you'll be stuck in the middle of a Mooré screaming match. When you get off at the gare, brace yourself for all the faux types offering to take your bags ($1) put them on a small cart ($2) and take them wherever you need to go ($10). What a deal!

After your harrowing trip from Titao to Ouahigouya, take a load off at the nassara hotel, Hotel L'Amitié. We went to the hotel every Saturday during Stage to swim in the pool and eat five dollar burgers, which is extravagant when you can get full off of street food for less than fifty cents. To treat ourselves on our two-year anniversary, Markus and I did the unthinkable: we got a room. And what a room! Your own, hot water shower and an air conditioner. It's no better than a Holiday Inn, but to us, it's paradise.

And if all that doesn't appeal, now, for a limited time only, come to Burkina and get a free “I Survived Burkina Faso” t-shirt!

In other news, I'm worried about Sagbo. He seems to have stopped growing.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

2007-02-09T11:30:00.000-06:00

The next time you find yourself sitting around a campfire listening to stories about men with hooks for hands, bust out some of these scary stories from the Burkina Faso public school system and scare the pants off of everyone.

Thanks to a crazy colleague of mine who has the remarkable ability to change the size of her eyes from tiny slits to popping out of her head in 0.5 seconds and whose hobbies include going AWOL, our wrap up meeting for the first trimester took place at the beginning of the second. Instead of teaching (who do you think we are?!) all the teachers gathered in the teachers' lounge for a stimulating six-hour meeting about which students get honor roll and which get the dreaded “blâme” written on their report card.

We were discussing the top student in 5e and how he could do a lot better than his 75 average when, as if it were obligatory, one of the teachers, said, “He's a Peuhl” (in lieu of other races, Burkinabé like to make fun of other ethnic groups; Peuhls are lighter skinned than the super dark Mossi majority). The teachers laughed and I turned to Jill and asked, “Did they really just say that?!” (Note from Jill: He's also a punk. When I show my class pictures of the animals we're studying, I like to tell them which ones Americans eat; the usual response is “Eww!” but when I mentioned that I don't really like fish, he said, “There's a problem inside?”)

Speaking of blâming students, I recently gave my 5e class an algebra test that I thought they would ace. But high hopes always lead to frustration and anger. While grading the tests, I developed a nervous twitch due to answers like this: “Is 119 a primary number (show your work)?” “119 est un Oui!” Blâme! I take small revenge against my students by taking my red pen and writing comments like “Have you been paying attention in class?” or, more to the point, “NON!” Those punks deserve it: The average was around a 30.

Sometimes I have doubts and ask myself, “Is it me?” Remember your foreign professors in college who you couldn't understand? You're struggling in physics class to figure out why you need to know the formula for forks when the professor is actually trying to teach you about force. Maybe when I get frustrated because my students can't understand something as simple as the greatest common divisor, it's because they hear, “Greatest common divisor, to find, let decomposition flow freely, and multiply by the amount of people in the commune.” That would explain why some students wrote boutique owners divided by marché ladies equals 24 on their tests.

But somehow I doubt the problem is me.

BOO!

Minutes to a meeting.

2007-02-09T11:27:00.000-06:00

What's more important than teaching? Ringing in the new year by having a meeting during class time to wish the principal of our school and his family health success, and prosperity in 2007. And to get wasted with the other teachers.

16:00 - Jill and I show up. There are only two other people here. I hope none of the students from the class I just ditched notice the loud Burkinabé music playing.
16:05 - Five people show up; two people leave. Music starting to drive me crazy.
16:10 - Someone changes the tape. It sounds exactly the same. Sevon people arrive; eight people leave.
16:15 - Five people show up; nobody leaves. Progress! Music makes Markus something something. Jill says, “Go crazy?” Markus replies, “Don't mind if I do!”
16:20 - Nothing's happening.
16:25 - Nothing's happening.
16:30 - Nothing's happening.
16:35 - Nothing's happe...
16:45 - Took 10 minute nap; still nothing happening
16:55 - The guest of honor finally arrives and we commence the festivities.
17:00 - After an awkward silence, one of the English teachers gives a speech praising our principal's ability to kick kids out of school.
17:05 - The principal gives a speech, wishing the teachers a good year. Speeches, speeches, speeches in Mooré, more speeches.
17:10 - Chicken and beer!
17:15 - I point out to Jill that all the black people in the room are drinking orange soda and eating chicken. She tells me to shut up and stop being racist.
17:20 - My second beer arrives.
17:25 - I'm not the only one feeling the effects: teachers get up and start dancing. Whoever said black people have rhythm was an idiot, I say to Jill. She tells me to shut up again.
17:30 - Man, this dancing's awkward. The male English teacher. lightly brushed the female English teacher's ass. Ooooh!
17:76 - Secondd beeer feenished! Someone asks me to translate the Phil Collins song that's playing. I go on a rant about how much Phil Collins sucks. Jill kicks me under the table.
14:92 - I weave my way home and dread facing everyone tomorrow at school. But at least I didn't touch the female English teacher's ass! Ooooh!

Some Photos

2006-12-29T04:30:00.000-06:00

Hi Everyone,

Here are some photos of life in Titao:
It's very dark

Wow, that guy can carry a lot of stuff

The main road to Titao, it's no New York City

Our Marche on non-marche days (oh vegetables how I miss you)

I call this piece Guy Riding Donkey

There's always something interesting playing at the maison de jeune

Merry belated Christmas and Happy Holidays! Thanks for all the gifts and decorations:

Wonder Woman made a great angel

How many people saw hippos on Christmas day?

Hope everyone had a great Christmas we spent ours travelling to Banfora and spending a wonderful day going to a hippo lake and some waterfalls. We're currently in Ouaga for more training and school will start back up on the 8th of January. Have a great new years and I'll tell you all how 2007 is going before you get there (gotta love the time difference).

I'm turning Burkinabé, I think I'm turning Burkinabé, I really think so.

2006-12-22T05:18:00.000-06:00

A man from the Burkina Faso census recently came to our house and asked us how long we'll be in Titao. When we told him two years, he said, "That makes you residents" and painted a number on our courtyard door. It's a good thing we've got an address now, because we're so bien integré, people have been having trouble telling us apart from our Burkinabé neighbors.

1. Animal House.

We were sitting in our friend's courtyard, surrounded by several chickens, a herd of goats, and a donkey, and he told us, "It's hard living here without animals." That's for sure. Some days Chez McKay-Fleisch feels like living in a petting zoo. We've got a reptile house with a couple of turtles and dozens of lizards, a cat sanctuary, and a chicken coop.* We also occasionally get a traveling exhibit of several goats.

Having tons of animals around makes for some interesting conversations. Some recent animal-related quotes are "I can't get the chicken out of the tree," "I think I just heard a turtle fall," and "Des moutons ont mangé les arachides" ("Some goats ate the peanuts"). The latter seems like one of those useless phrases you learn from a language tape but never have an opportunity to use. That is, not until you move to Burkina Faso.

*Our chicken saga is complicated. Clucky, our white rooster, who was given to us along with a hen that promptly ran away, recently escaped to greener pastures--our neighbors' courtyard. Somehow sensing our loss, one of my sixième students brought us a new white rooster, which we named Clucky 2. Unfortunately, Clucky 2 was a terrible chicken. When he wasn't letting out ear-splitting cock-a-doodle-doos, he was pooping all over the hangar. Markus wanted to eat him, but I disagreed--he had five toes, which meant he was old and his meat wouldn't be any good. Also, that's messed up. After several days of chasing him around the courtyard "in a manner befitting a representative of the United States government," we finally succeeded in chasing him into the neighbors' courtyard. We celebrated by eating chicken for dinner.

2. Lefties beware.

The French brought their language, their wine, and their nonchalant waiters, but forgot to bring toilet paper. Sans Kleenex, the left hand is reserved for such lovely bodily functions as firing snot rockets out your nose. It's a cultural taboo to use your left hand to eat, take things, or hand things to someone else. At first all the hand switching was cumbersome; now it's just made us a little neurotic. Whenever someone gives you a hard time for not having exact change, for instance, you start worrying that it's because you accidently handed them your money with your left hand. But chances are that's just their Franco-charm shining through.

3. Oui, Madame.

At first I was appalled at the harsh way Burkinabé teachers treat their students. But after catching about thirty cheaters in my first trimester, I'm beginning to understand where they're coming from. I grade cheaters' tests like normal and write the grade they would have gotten on the top, cross it out, and put a big red zero and "Tricherie"--"Cheating"--on the top.

At the end of the trimester, I was calculating grades in the teachers' lounge, and a student came in, claiming I'd recorded the grade for his test incorrectly. I pointed to the hole he'd ripped in his test to remove the zero I'd given him for cheating and asked him, "What is this?!" He grabbed the paper out of my hands and sulked out. Another student brought in a completely forged test, complete with grades that I'd supposedly given him. I took one look at it, ripped it in half, and told him to leave. I definitely wouldn't have done that three months ago, but those punks had it coming.

4. Stop. Burkina Time.

Everyone says Burkinabé are some of the friendliest people around. They're absolutely right. What people neglect to mention is that due to the constant socializing, Burkinabé are also some of the slowest people around.

The other day, I was at the school and realized I'd left some graded papers at home. My journey from the teachers' lounge to my house and back was fraught with social interactions. I had to get the key from Markus, who was teaching one of the cinqième classes. Walking across the field toward the cinqième classroom I saw several students jump up. Several said "Bonjour, madame," one sixième student asked if I was starting class an hour early, and a cinqième student from the class I'd let out early asked if I was going to continue with the class. When I finally got to Markus's class, all the students gave me wide-eyed stares, as if I was there to spring a pop quiz on them (I've already given them two).

Key in hand, I walked back across the field, getting stopped along the way by a sixième kid who wanted to know what was on the upcoming test. I also ran into another teacher and stopped to chat with him for a bit. Biking home, I got several bonjours from students and a couple of women greeted me in Mooré. I said "Ne y yibeogo" to one set of neighbors and “Bonjour” to another. On the bike ride back to the school, I again got several bonjours and even a "Good morning! How do you feel?" At last back at the school, I looked at my watch and realized what should have been a twenty-minute trip took half an hour. That's what you call Burkina Time.

Night of the Living Elevès.

2006-12-02T03:26:00.000-06:00

On the first day of school, 80+ pairs of eyes stared at their new species of teacher (Nasarus lablanches) as it stated: “If you have any questions, you can visit me at my house between the hours of . . . ” Bad Idea Jeans.

At first the amount of students who came to our house was just a trickle. One of them even gave us a couple of live chickens as a gift. “All right, chickens! I could get used to this,” I naively thought.

Soon, the trickle turned into a stream, and the students brought questions instead of chickens. How rude.

Gradually, the stream turned into a river; when students showed up and we’d ask them, “Vous avez des questions de SVT ou de math?” they’d say, “Anglais!” They’d realized that English-speaking teachers + English homework = PROFIT. (I keep telling Markus that math only leads to trouble.)

Come test time, the river turned into a flood. I drowned under 300+ sixième students and Markus was kept busy by insatiable students coming again and again to get their practice exercise fix (“C’mon, man, just one more angle measurement problem! I need it!”)

The fun didn’t end after the tests were over. Then we had the pleasure of dealing with convicted cheaters. They ran the gamut from a student who didn’t say anything, just showed me his test and gave me puppy dog eyes, to a screechy, foot stamping student who refused to leave until Markus changed her grade on her test but not on his grade sheet.

The Elève Onslaught isn’t all bad, of course. The other night, one of my students gave me a big bag of fresh peanuts. The Burkinabe version of an apple, I guess.

But sometimes when you’re sitting outside in the evening, reading by lamp light, and you hear a rustling a few feet away and look up to see the whites of a students’ eyes . . . there’s not much scarier than that. What’s that tapping, tapping, on my courtyard door?

In culture clash news, I recently had an interesting experience.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that one of the students in the front row was wearing a watch with Bin Laden’s face on it. It didn’t really bug me--they sell Bin Laden watches, wallets, and shirts in the marché, and I’ve gotten over my initial shock. Or at least I thought it didn’t bug me until I suddenly got very impatient with all the usual class annoyances--chattering, not answering my questions, taking forever to write down the notes. I casually told the kid, “I don’t like that; you know I’m American, don’t you?” and he laughed as if I’d made a joke. That pissed me off and I ended class early so I could chill out. I’d hate to let the students see that they can get to me.

Markus encouraged me to give them a short speech, explaining why it’s disrespectful to wear a Bin Laden watch in my class. I felt much better, mentally preparing myself to set that kid straight and give the class a mini history lesson while I’m at it. But the next class, he wasn’t wearing the watch. I was surprised to find I was slightly disappointed and soon forgot about it.

The other day, I saw the watch sitting on his desk--not even open to the time--just sitting there, as if he were trying to provoke me. I held it up in front of the class, and asked, “Who knows who this man is?” Tons of hands shot up--a rare occurrence--and the kid I pointed at said, “Bin Laden!” with a big grin on his face. Then I asked, “How many people has this man killed?” Various kids gave bullshit responses ranging from a million to a billion. I said, “This man killed 3,000 Americans. I’m American.” That made them go quiet for a second. “You can see why I don’t want to see his face in my class.” Several students laughed, so I said, “What if someone killed 3,000 Burkinabe”--that shut them up--“and I wore a watch with the face of this man to class? You’d be angry, wouldn’t you?” “Oui!” “I don’t want to see pictures of Bin Laden in my class.” Although I’d said all this very calmly and without emotion, when I sat down and took a drink of water, I realized I was shaking from my adrenaline rush.

It might seem like I should be more upset by seeing a student wearing a Bin Laden watch to my class and having the rest of the students treat the issue as if it were a big joke, but these are kids whose class average for their last test was a whopping 35% and who think that the purpose of flowers is to hold plants in the soil. What do they know about 9/11? They’ve been told that Bin Laden is a hero, not a mass murderer. Most of them have probably never seen a white person before, let alone an American. It would be nice to think that after my little speech, they’ll think about what they’ve been told and realize that the people Bin Laden killed are normal people just like their teacher and just like their friends. But I doubt it. After all, they think that insects and flowers are enemies. First I’ll get them straightened out on flowers, then maybe I’ll get them straightened out on terrorism.

The top 6 things that bother me about the Burkinabé school system

2006-12-02T03:03:00.000-06:00

Before I begin, in case you were wondering, here is a picture of a typical classroom. We should be getting a projector for the room and computer terminals at every bench very soon. Right after a new paint job, dry erase board, windows, doors that actually work, benches that don't have writing and dents all over them and oh yeah, electricity.

1. Teachers never go to class on time
If class starts at 8:00, what time do you, as a teacher, go to class? That's right, 8:05. If a student takes your example and shows up 5 minutes late, what do you do? That's right, send them to the disciplinarian and make them scrub latrines. There have been times when Jill or I show up and go to class on time and only then do the other professors drive up on their motos.

2. Meetings are to be held during class time whenever possible and are never to be held during the excessively long 3 hour lunch break
Gotta love the European system of the long lunch break, but seriously, what the hell is the point of holding a meeting during class? It's hard enough to make it through the material as is. Three times now, we have been pulled away from class to have meetings (usually 1 hour long) on topics such as discipline problems and a secretary who has problems typing tests correctly. Of course, in true Burkinabé style, everybody weighs in with their opinion and not much gets decided, hence the need for more meetings (perhaps a meeting on why meetings are so pointless). After the meeting, of course the teachers run to their class and start teaching, right? Oh no, they ask the proviseur (the principal) if they really have to go to class since there are only 40 minutes left.

3. Cheating, cheating, cheating
I'll admit, I, at some point in time during my school career, have cheated. I will also say that circumstances here are conducive to cheating. Cram kids in to a classroom shoulder to shoulder and it's pretty tempting for them to look at their neighbor’s paper. However, I never thought it would be so easy to catch. As kids in the States try to cover their eyes and at least make sure the teacher isn't looking prior to copying answers, the Burkinabé students haven't mastered the fine art of the eye cover. I have stared at students looking at another student's papers and only after a minute do they realize I am looking and act like they were staring at the ceiling the whole time. The best part is that the person who they were copying from had all the wrong answers. A student asked me how I catch cheaters when I'm grading. I said it's easy, if one person has the wrong answers, and the person sitting next to them has the same wrong answers, I know they were cheating. Note to all students: if you are going to cheat, sit next to the smart people.
Another great form of cheating is changing your answer after you get your test back and arguing that you had the right answer the whole time. Here is an excerpt from the thought process of a student: see that tiny space between 'polinsateur' and 'directe' I bet I can add 'in' before 'directe' to make it 'polinsateur indirecte.' Damn I wrote it in blue and all I have is a red pen, no matter, the teacher will never know the difference. Oh wait, the teacher is a conscience being and can figure things out. At least I tried and now I'm going to storm back to my desk and look really pissed off that my grade didn't change, that teacher is so mean.

4. Je ne comprends pas!
“Je deteste cette phrase!” is usually the response I give. The students here don't understand that it is perfectly normal not to understand something after the first explanation. But they sure do like to yell “On ne comprend rien!” It is also the most unhelpful phrase to hear as a teacher. Which part don't you understand? I'm probably going to institute a Je ne comprends pas free zone in my classes. I'll tell them that if I hear the phrase, it's minus 1 on the next test. They'll probably respond with “Je ne comprends pas!”

5. Lack of critical thinking
Good God kid, think! I have wanted to yell this over and over again. Jill is attempting to get her students to write down what she says and not just what gets written on the board. The students have a problem with this because it is very complicated to listen when you have to make your notes as neat and tidy as possible. I remember taking notes in class and there were times I couldn't make sense of them afterwards. That's a bit extreme of course, but here, the notes are meticulous, colored, underlined, and everything takes twice as long as you think it will take. Circles must be drawn with a compass, squares with a ruler, triangles with a ruler and compass, no approximations of these shapes are allowed. Underlining words is done with a ruler and your notes must have a minimum of three colors used interchangeably or better yet used for every other word. Every letter must be formed exactly as you were taught in primary school and the handwriting style is incredibly cumbersome (a 2 takes three different strokes, try to figure that one out). Your name is to be written once and then you need to apply a shadow effect, which should take a minimum of 10 minutes. Jill says, “These students make Mary Fae look non-anal retentive.”

6. Uniforms
I have always thought that uniforms are stupid, but here, oh man are they stupid. The uniform is made of a cheap, khaki colored material that we used to make some cloth chairs. Most of the students have ripped or torn their uniforms and can’t afford new ones, which defeats the purpose of the uniform in Burkina Faso. The intended purpose is so you can’t tell the difference between the poor and rich students. For Peace Corps teachers who are encouraged to learn the student’s names, the purpose of the uniform is to make this nearly impossible.
Also, they have now begun to kick students out of class who don’t have uniforms. It’s very sad.

Overall, despite these complaints, we're having a good time and enjoying our jobs. It is incredibly frustrating at times, but definitely worth it.

In other news, here are the top 2 things I love about Thanksgiving in Burkina Faso!
1. Chicken! We ordered 2 chickens from our favorite bar/chicken place. It’s an old barnish/garage looking place where you can watch your chicken run around before it is served to you on a plate covered in oil, vinegar, and lots of MSG. We picked up the chickens, I made some mashed yams, cucumber salad, and pretzels, and peanut butter cookies (exactly what the pilgrims ate) and we proceeded to gorge ourselves until our belts had to be loosened.

2. After our feast and a good nights sleep, we continued to Djibo for a very traditional Thanksgiving camel ride. What better way to celebrate the pilgrims lengthy journey across the ocean than taking a short trip across the desert on a camel. Here are a few photos.

We have been blessed.

2006-10-28T04:22:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't heard the news, our house has become a bit more crowded with the addition of a little black baby boy and his sister. Here is a picture of our beautiful baby boy:

We named him Sagbo, which means Tô in Mooré (nicknames include: Soggy, Sagdud, and Batcat). We figured this was an appropriate name since Tô is white. We haven't determined if it is a cat or a bat, but it hasn't hung upside down from the ceiling yet, so we think it's a cat.

His sister is definitely a cat and we named her Laafi, which means health in Mooré and is the automatic response to the following questions: Morning News?, How's the job?, And the kids?. For example, a typical salutation in Mooré might go something like this:

Ouedraogo Salimata: And your Morning!
Sawadogo Issouf: The morning news?
Salimata: Health
Issouf: How's the family?
Salimata: Health
Issouf: How's work?
Salimata: Health
Salimata/Issouf: M'TAAAAAA/M'BAAAAAA

The last line is, respectively, what the women and men say at the end of conversations. It would be the equivalent of us saying “alright” or “right on.”

Back to the good stuff--kitten pictures! Here is a photo of Laafi:

They are typical kittens and enjoy the following activities: sleeping, eating, fighting, sleeping, making friends with different species, and of course sleeping.

In case you're wondering about the rooster, one of Jill's students brought over a rooster and a hen which enjoyed running around our courtyard for a few brief hours. When the sun was setting the chickens decided to jump on to our wall and fall asleep. The next morning we awoke to the wonderful sounds of a rooster, nature's alarm clock (if you have to get up at 4:30 AM). After they woke up, the chickens went exploring and decided not to return. We thought our chicken saga had ended and we relished the short, but intense relationship we had with the chickens. Later that afternoon, the rooster, which we named Clucky, decided to wander back in to our courtyard and our hearts.

MISSING: One hen.

Teaching 101.

2006-10-28T04:20:00.000-05:00

Here's the thing about teaching in Burkina: it's easy. All you need is a good lesson plan and to act like a teacher. Me and my lesson plans get very well acquainted since I teach the same lessons for two classes of cinqième and four classes of sixième. (I teach a total of eighteen hours a week—the maximum allowed for a first-year volunteer; it's also three hours more than Markus teaches and eight hours more than what a couple of my nearby friends teach, which makes me more Hard Corp than them.)

The textbook for sixie(backwards accent)me is a dream. It's written by a Burkinabé, so, unlike the French textbooks, it doesn't devote entire chapters to things a Burkinabé student will probably never see like volcanoes, the ocean, and animals other than goats and chickens. By contrast, the book for cinquie(backwards accent)me attempts to be clever by asking a lot of obnoxious questions that it never answers: “How do plants without flowers reproduce? They don't have flowers, so how do they reproduce? Look at this crappy, unlabeled picture. Have you figured out yet how plants without flowers reproduce?” If it were possible to strangle a book, I would.

As soon as I make sense of that mess, I have the ultimate weapon. With my trusty script in hand, I'm a genius: I have all the definitions, all the diagrams, and, most importantly, I know which words are masculine and which are feminine (it's wonderfully counterintuitive: sperm is feminine and egg is masculine).

Good thing the students don't realize how little I actually know (and care) about ferns and moss. I keep them in the dark by playing the part of a teacher. Sixteen years of school have taught many valuable techniques like creating uncomfortably long silences until someone answers my question, roaming the aisles with a stern look on my face, and—my favorite—raising an eyebrow at kids who know they're doing something bad. Who knew my little eyebrow was such an effective disciplinary tool?

It doesn't hurt that teachers here, unlike in the States, are both well paid and respected. When a teacher enters the classroom, all the students stand up and stay standing until the teacher tells them to sit down. They'd probably stand for the whole class if I didn't say anything (note to self: try this out). Teachers are so far above students that they don't even deign to shake hands with students. Instead, the student comes up to the teacher, crosses their arms like an Indian saying “How,” and does a little curtsy. The teacher usually only gives them a perfunctory nod for their trouble. (I sometimes discretely shake students' hands—shhh!—don't tell the other teachers.)

A lot of students stop by our house with questions or just to say “Bonjour.” I go up to them and greet them wearing my favorite grubby shorts, which are made of a fabric that proudly displays every drop of sweat I've shed for the past several hours in two huge dark spots on the fronts of my legs. Despite the fact that my students are often dressed much better than I am, I put on my teacher face and act like I deserve all the respect they dish out. And it works every time.

I can't believe they pay me for this! Oh, wait.

Blogdate 502370: Encountering . . . strange things in . . . new village of Titao.

2006-09-19T06:04:00.000-05:00

1. Boom Boom in the back room.*

No, "boom boom" is not a euphemism for "whoop whoop." It refers to our near death experience with a tiny, blue tank of propane. Ashley was visiting us, and we decided to set up our Dutch oven. A Dutch oven consists of a cast-iron marmite (a large, iron bowl) filled with two inches of sand and three empty aluminum cans to hold up your baking dish, and a propane tank with a special head that acts as a burner.

I went to buy the gas tank at a nearby gas station, where they installed the head. After a long bike ride back home with a heavy propane tank strapped to the back of my bike (first brush with death), I attempted to light the burner outside. There was too much wind, so I took the tank to the back bedroom of our house and got the burner going. The flame seemed a little big to me, but I thought nothing of it.

With a Dutch oven, it is necessary to cure the sand for two hours prior to using it for the first time, lest your first batch of cookies end up tasting like dirt. While it was curing, I left Jill and Ashley to buy some ingredients for what was going to be the best damn dinner I'd ever made: caramelized onions with a spinach, garlic stuffing. When I came back, Jill came out and said, "The bottom of the marmite fell off." Her tone was rather casual for what I construed to be a disaster. I pictured metal melting and flowing like lava to the other rooms of the house.

It turned out that sand was covering the majority of the burner, which was still burning, producing a wonderful odor of burnt sand. But now, the flame was being pushed outward and was melting the stand where the marmite sits. We couldn't reach the regulator for several reasons. The flame, it was covered in sand, and the plastic knob that helps turn it had molten off. (These heads are made in Canada, in case you were wondering who would put cheap plastic next to a very large flame.) With some quick thinking, we managed to pull off the marmite and the metal stand and used a pair of pliers to turn the regulator to the off position. CRISIS AVERTED?

We went to the other room to stop hyperventilating.

"Psssssss!"

"Oh shit," I exclaimed, "Propane leak!"

I rushed back to the room and tried to turn the regulator, but the propane was leaking from somewhere else. After more quick thinking, we managed to get the tank outside. It turned out, the head wasn't screwed on tightly and the leak was adding to the flame, making it a fire ball. When we tightened the head, it broke. In a country with no concept of exchange policies or angry customers, I had to buy a new head. A small price to pay for banana bread, peanut butter cookies, and our lives.

*This title is not Jill approved.

2. Oh, hangar, where art thou?

A hangar is a wood frame with a covering of seco, which is made of dried stalks of millet and corn. They are a big deal because they provide shade and, more importantly for we nasaras, privacy. It's not impenetrable to rain. In fact, it is completely destroyed during the rainy season, hence the need to replace the seco every year. It's Big Seco's way of sticking it to the little people.

Peace Corps requires that all volunteer houses have a hangar, but ours wasn't started when we arrived. A week after we moved in, two men came by with lumber. "Surely, it won't be long now," I mused. The two men, hard at work in the afternoon sun, dug holes for the posts. I went to take a bucket bath and upon my return, saw that the men had left. "No problem. They'll be back tomorrow," I naïvely thought. Tomorrow came and tomorrow went.

The next morning, a person walked into our courtyard with a bag of cement. He proceeded to place four upright beams in the pre-dug holes. A little lopsidedly, I might add. He left to wait for the cement to dry.

Two days passed, and the carpenter arrived to shake the poles and touch the two day-dried cement. He tells me he'll be back later to complete the frame. Later came and later went.

The next day, two men showed up to look at the poles and leave. In the afternoon, another man came. This man only spoke Mooré, but through a system of gestures, I deduced that he was waiting for other people to help him finish the hangar. Ten minutes turned into thirty, and thirty into an hour. The Mooré-speaking man took a nap on our front porch, and I was confused. After what looked like a comfortable, two hour nap, the man left.

Another couple of days passed, and finally, they built the rest of the frame.

3. Oh, seco, where art thou?
To be continued . . .

As I Lay In Titao.

2006-09-19T05:35:00.000-05:00

After three intense months of Stage, Markus and I are representing the U.S. as Peace Corps Volunteers by sitting around, drinking beers, and complaining about the heat. Our home for the next two years looks a lot like an Old West town but without all the white people. Titao is 30% marché, 30% boutiques (for all your pasta-, rice-, and sardine-buying needs), 30% goats, sheep, donkeys, and chickens, and 10% Mandé--our host dad's dad, his four wives, and their offspring and grandoffspring.

Marché day in Titao is an event. Every Friday Peuhls (an ethnic group) come from up north in the Sahel to show off their turban and plastic tennis shoes style and sell their milk, which is utterly foul (Markus and I stupidly bought it twice; as Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice . . . you won't fool me again.") People from Ghana come all the way up here to sell used clothing and yell, "HOW ARE YOU?" at the two nasaras.

One Thursday, Markus and I were drinking beers when we saw a huge truck pull up with several men sitting on top and furry legs sticking out the sides. The men climbed down and unloaded what seemed like an endless stream of goats. (You can tell you've been in Africa too long when something like that seems normal. We've gotten good at tuning out the sound of chickens being killed next to us while we sit at a bar.) The goats were headed for the livestock marché, where for only about $100, you can buy a goat, strap it into a basket with its head and legs sticking out in every direction, put the basket on the back of your bike, and bike around town while your new purchase bleats bloody murder.

Compared to marché day, Titao is a ghost town the rest of the week. Markus and I can either browse the wide array of onions at the skeletal marché, drink a beer, or just hang around the house and courtyard, where there are lots of things to do. We can use a stick to flip over the turtles in our turtle pond when they fall after attempting to escape by climbing the wall. Markus likes to lie in our hammock, but I'm weary of it after he first tested it out and fell on his back just like the turtles. Or we can tend to our garden in which only tomatoes (yuck) and cabbage (eh) grow. In fact, our courtyard is so nice, we have frequent visitors. One day, a duck and a line of ducklings waddled in; later, a herd of goats stopped by for lunch; and in the afternoon, a couple of kids sat down in the middle of the yard, waving at us and saying, "ça va?" Our courtyard is the place to be.

You might think that nights in village would be quiet and peaceful, but you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. Living in a town with no electricity doesn't stop Titaoramba (Mooré for "Titao people") from enjoying the finer things in life like cold beers and TV. One of our neighbors is an electrician. What's an electrician in a town with no electricity to do? Run his noisy generator all day, of course! As soon as his generator clicks off in the evening, our other neighbors' generator clicks on. On a good night, they watch the news for a couple of hours. On a bad night, like the other night, they have a loud, racous party with bright lights and music blasting from 8pm to 6am. During Stage, one of the other stagiares argued that the modern world is imposing itself on Burkina, and Burkina doesn't want it. Obviously, he'd never been to Titao.

The Titao virtual tour (not really virtual)

2006-09-02T06:09:00.000-05:00

Finally! Jill and I have arrived in our village. It's definitely overwhelming and a bit intimidating, but at least we can still get ice cold beers. The first night we arrived, the proviseur (director) of the lycée (high school) took us out for drinks and got us kind of drunk. A nice introduction to village life.

So what does our house look like? Here's a quick tour: Our court yard is massive and includes such amenities as a sunken concrete hole with two turtles in it. We have another enclosed cement area where Jill and I have started our compost pile. Next to that we have grand plans for a garden. Several trees create a nice shady area for sitting and enjoying the afternoon. We bought a hammock and have nailed it in to two trees. We currently don't have a hangar, but it's being built right along with our furniture. Our courtyard also has about 50 cement consturction pillars, which occupy about a quarter of the courtyard. Attention Burkina Faso: In case you need pillars to mark water crossings, I'm your man!

Our house is huge! Larger than any apartment we occupied in the states. There is a large entry room which is our kitchen/sitting area. Behind that is a hallway that leads to three other bedrooms and an indoor shower room. We have a library/study currently awaiting a large bookcase. Unfortunately, we haven't found a kitten yet.

We've made some freinds already and have had some funny interactions with the people who are generally very nice. One woman approaching us on the road with a baby in each arm asked, "Voulez-vous un enfant?" (Do you want a kid?) We politely declined.

Off to Titao

2006-08-26T09:14:00.000-05:00

I don't have much to say, but Jill and I are leaving for Titao on Tuesday and I don't know the next time I will get to use the internet so here is the last post from Ouagadougou.

It's official, Jill and I are now fully-functional Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV). We are now a part of a select group of people who are crazy enough to spend 2 years in a hot, unforgiving environment, but hey, it could be Siberia. Another benefit of being a PCV is that we can use a lot of acronyms. Here's a brief list:
PCV - Peace Corps Volunteer
PCT - Peace Corps Trainee
SE - Secondary Education
GEE - Girls Education and Empowerment
SED - Small Enterprise Development
Health - A health volunteer (duh)
BF or du Faso - Burkina Faso
CD - Country Director
APCD - Associate Peace Corps Director

TD - Training Director

GAD - Gender and Development
Admin Sep - Administrative seperation (you don't want this to happen to you)
Med Sep - Medical Seperation

There are hundreds more so if any PCVs (refer to list) out there have any suggestions, let me know.

Last night was our swearing in ceremony and party. Needless to say, it was fun. We got to stand up, raise our right hands, and recite an oath that states we must "...defend the constitution of the United States of America from all enemies foreign and domestic without any mental reservations...so help me God" The PEACE corps was mentioned somewhere in there but to be honest, I think I acidentally signed up for the military. I'm off to shoot knowledge in to the minds of classrooms full of hyper kids. So I guess, in a way, the classroom is a form of war. Good luck to all the new volunteers!

Our Letter to Kraft

2006-08-20T12:44:00.000-05:00

It started as kind of a joke, but then we really did send this letter to Kraft and are awaiting a response.

Dear kind people at Kraft,

We are six brave souls serving twenty-seven months of Peace Corps service in the small, land-locked West African country, Burkina Faso. We are two months into our service and have realized that the imposter recipe for “macaroni and cheese,” included in our Peace Corps cookbook, is no substitute for the golden, rich, and creamy favorite that graced our dinner tables many times a month in the United States. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese © has been a staple in our diets since we can remember. Adjusting to a world without Kraft Macaroni and Cheese © has been, at times, more difficult than adjusting to the various cultural differences we face everyday.

The national meal here is called Tô (pronounced toe). It is a white, amorphous blob that tastes like nothing and has the texture of gritty jello. Tô is simply a sauce delivery device and it is with the sauce that our troubles begin. The various types of sauces are made with leaves from trees such as baobabs and other native foliage. As interesting as this sounds, the final product is a gooey, greenish, and also fairly tasteless substance that passes for dinner at least three or four (sometimes daily) times a week. When we eat this dish, we try to envision a large bowl of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese © in all its cheesy goodness.

Included are photos of our attempts to make macaroni and cheese with local ingredients. We have raved about Kraft Macaroni and Cheese © to our Burkinabé friends, but they are less than impressed and losing faith in American cuisine with each attempt. If only we had the proper cheese powder to prove to them that macaroni and cheese can be and is indeed better than Tô.

Which brings us to our request. We would sing your praises across Burkina Faso if you could send the cheese packets (we have macaroni noodles in abundance) for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese ©. We would also love to send pictures of Burkinabé eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese ©. By our calculations, if the six of us eat Kraft Macaroni and Cheese © three times a week for the next twenty-four months, we should need about 1,872 packets (however, a few boxes would make us very happy too).

Eagerly awaiting your sauce packets,
Markus Fleisch
Ashley Gerfin
Jill McKay
Radhika Reddy
Jonathan Schultz
Lisa Stevens
And a country full of cheesy-goodness deprived people

P.S. We also noticed you are the fine makers of Sugar Free Kool-Aid © drink packets. When dehydration sets in--a daily occurrence in temperatures over 100F and no air-conditioning--we drink a terrible mixture of salt and sugar mixed with water. Sugar Free Kool-Aid © packets help us enjoy our dehydration remedy and, more importantly, keep us alive. Please help us stay well-fed and tastefully hydrated!

Warning: Teaching is Harmful to Your Health.

2006-08-13T11:21:00.000-05:00

As thrilled as I am that the end of Stage is near, I'm kind of sad that Model School is ending. One hour of teaching--learning how to deal with talkative kids, how to understand and answer their questions, and how to conduct a good review session--has been more informative than a dozen Cross Culture sessions, most of which consisted of breaking into small groups to answer questions like “What is culture?” and “What is respect?” Of the 33 +1 SE stagiares (the +1 is a PCV who's been here a year and recently decided to switch from GEE to SE) 25 are math teachers. There are two reasons why there are so many more math teachers than P/C or SVT teachers: like many West African countries, Burkina Faso is in dire need of math teachers; the other reason is because the vocabulary needed to teach math is a cinch compared to what's needed to teach P/C or SVT. For example, do you know what the “moelle épinière” is? How about the “courrbures normales”? Now, who can figure out what “soustraction” and “multiplication” are? But I probably shouldn't be too smug considering I used a calculator to make sure that 33 minus 8 is indeed 25.

Another reason why I've enjoyed Model School so much is because I've got a better feeling of which age students I want to teach and which ones I'll fight to the death not to get stuck with. Every grade is somewhat rotten--the rampant cheating is evidence of that--but the youngest and oldest kids are the rottenest. Sixième, which corresponds to about 6th or 7th grade in the States, and troisième, which is about 9th or 10th grade, are the absolute worst—the sixième kids because they're a bunch of prebuscent brats; the troisième kids because they're a bunch of know-it-all punks. I just finished a week teaching troisième, and I'm not exaggerating when I say it was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. One day, right before my class, I saw the door to the classroom burst open and the teacher before me stumble out, drenched in sweat after being stuck in the sauna-like classroom for an hour. Over the roar of almost 100 kids shouting, I heard him exclaim, “They're going crazy in there! Who's next?” And I thought teaching geology was painful.

Address

2006-08-12T12:51:00.000-05:00

As Jill said, send us stuff. We love junk food and junk food loves to travel long distances.

Jill or Markus McKay-Fleisch
01 BP 6031
Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso
West Africa

Cheaters!

2006-07-30T12:55:00.000-05:00

Last week was our first week of model school, during which we each teach at least one class a day in front of real Burkinabé students. I can't believe these kids actually paid for the privilege of sitting in a sweltering classroom, listening to a bunch of bumbling American first-time teachers attempt to speak French. Ironically, I had the great misfortune of having to teach geology--the one subject I've successfully avoided my entire life. After a week of that crap, all I can say is, Dad, what have you done with your life?!

Almost every day I have a moment where I stop and think, "Wow, I've never seen/heard/tasted/experienced that before!" Last week was the first time I've stood in front of a group of kids for an hour a day, teaching about something they've never even seen a picture of--in this case, volcanoes--in a language I've only been studying for half a year. I'm teaching a different SVT class this week, so hopefully my geology days are behind me, but if I ever do have to teach it again, I think it would be hilarious to teach a class full of African kids about glaciers.

Friday was a great day to be a summer school student in Ouahigouya because we all gave them quizzes. I'd heard many stories from PCVs about the cheating epidemic in Burkinabé classrooms, and I now have first-hand experience. I gave one boy a zero after I caught him obviously looking at another student's paper and, when grading them, noticed the same exact spelling mistakes. I also gave a girl a zero after my language teacher, who was observing my class, caught her with a piece of paper with answers to one of the questions on it. That one makes me really mad because I didn't catch whoever passed it to her.

Aside from the lame subject matter and the bad cheaters, I've really enjoyed teaching this week. After two months of being called "NASARA!" every time I leave the house and having everyone from cabbies to little tiny kids try to swindle me out of money, it's really nice to be treated with respect. I feel myself going on a bit of a power trip when I enter the classroom and all the students stand until I tell them to sit or when a group of my students says, "Bonjour, madame!" when I walk by. I deserve a little respect, dammit!

In other news, I've been getting a lot of people's sympathy when I point out that I haven't received a single phone call, letter, or care package since I've been here. Call me, write me, send me Kool-Aid!

Site Visit (In Pictures)

2006-07-29T11:27:00.000-05:00

Sorry for being in communicado. The internet has been out for 3 weeks. I'm trying to organize a photo collaboration project utilizing our server to host everyone's pictures. So hopefully I'll be able to send a CD of picutres to the States soon.

For now, here is a story in photos of our site visit to Yalgo. Yalgo is a town on the road from Ouaga to Dori. For reference, Ashley is another trainee who is now our cousin too, because our host dads are brothers.

For Jill, Ashley, and Markus, it was time to go on a great adventure. It started at the bus station where they saw many strange boxes from a far off lands.

Once aboard their bus, they travelled many miles sometimes over treacherous rivers that threatened to tip the bus over.

They arrived in the village of Yalgo and were met by their capable Peace Corps Volunteer, Patrice.

Patrice had a side kick appropriately named kitty.

The four brave souls decided to climb mini-mount Kilimanjaro to watch the sun set.

Once at the top, they decided to form a rock band and took this photo to put on the cover of their multi-platinum album.

Jill was so invigorated by the hike and the discussion, she decided to squish the sun, thus ending their first day in Yalgo.
On the second day, the group decided to wander to Patrice's favorite Baobab tree.
It was there that Markus discovered his true calling as the next Brawny Paper Towel Spokesperson.

His photo shoot was cut short by an impending thunderstorm that made Jill sad.

It was at this point that Markus's camera ran out of batteries, thankfully not much else happened except for Jill's 100-mosquito-bite-marathon.

(Someone else's) site visit.

2006-07-15T10:27:00.000-05:00

It's been an exciting few days. We had our mid-Stage language test and feedback session. Markus and I both tested intermediate high, which is the minimum level required for us to teach. I think we're going to hassle them to start teaching us some Moore, too.

We also had our site announcements. Markus and I are in Titao, which is about 50K north of Ouahigouya. We'll be teaching in a large (800 students) Lycee, which is roughly equivalent to a high school, and it sounds like we'll be able to teach math and physics/chemistry for Markus and SVT for me. There's also a chance that one or both of us will get to teach English, which I'm psyched about. Our house is supposedly pretty awesome--it was described as fairly large and used to be rented out to NGOs. We've even got our own courtyard complete with shady trees. Our nearest neighbor, who just happens to be pretty awesome, is only about 17K away. As if things couldn't get any better, our host dad is from Titao and many of his gigantic family still live there, so we already have a good in with the community.

It all sounded great until we met our counterparts at a workshop in Ouaga. One of them is a nice, youngish guy who teaches math. The other is the principal of the school. He's older and very intense. We started the workshop by playing an ice breaker where everyone writes down two truths and a lie about themselves. He seemed to think he was at the U.N. arguing for more money to be sent to Burkina rather than playing a silly little game. He even scoffed at one of my truths: "I'm a terrible cook."

And it just kept on coming. Throughout the meeting, he interjected long-winded comments that almost always had a negative spin on them. After two long, painful days, the workshop was finally over, and the woman in charge of Secondary Ed. came up to us and gave us some background on him. They'd had a female volunteer in Titao about three years ago, and it wasn't a good experience for anyone. She and the principal butted heads, especially after she joined a pro-women's rights union (joining political groups is frowned upon by the Peace Corps). It caused a bit of a community uproar and the volunteer early terminated. The Peace Corps usually only sends volunteers to places that have requested them, but Titao did not ask for us to come. She put us there because it was one of the few places that could take on two teachers. So, we're being sent to a place that had a bad experience with a volunteer, doesn't want us, and has a fiery pessimist as our boss. But at least our house is big.

Of course, we don't actually know what that fabulous house looks like since "Site Visit" on our calendars apparently has an invisible asterik: "Not actually your future site." Our soon-to-be neighbor, Markus, and I visited a PCV who lives in the northeast. Despite the fact that it was nowhere near where our site would be, it was good to see what a PCV's house looks like. We climbed a large hill to watch the sunset while a little boy herded his cows near us, walked to a huge baobab tree, played Scrabble and Cribbage, and ate delicious meals from the Peace Corps cookbook while watching her little kitty play with and eat lizards. At the end of our visit, we met some of the other stagiares who were having their site visits in the area to spend the night in a larger town in the north. Unfortunately, the trip was a bust since we got soaked and muddy walking through the rain to the bus station and the town didn't have any running water or, as it turned out, any entertainment besides drinking lots of beer. Now we're in Ouaga for the night before heading back up to Ouahigouya, which, surprisingly, I'm really happy to return to. It almost feels like home.

PS-The toilet paper post was written by me. Markus is not a very good plagiarizer.

Cell Phones

2006-07-11T12:30:00.001-05:00

Here are our cell phone numbers:
Jill: 70372278
Markus: 70123796

We love phone calls!

C'est l'afrique

2006-07-11T12:20:00.000-05:00

So we've talked about specifics, lets get down to the nitty-gritty. Day to day life, what's it like in Burkina Faso.

Transportation: picture Italy with the scooters, China with the bikes, and a small farm town in America with cars. Mix all those together, take away the paved roads and you get what riding a bike around here is like. I fear for my life every time I'm pedaling down the main street; especially when I'm turning left at the one stop light in town at night. There are also ghost bikes (bikes with no lights) that come out of nowhere. I forgot to mention the animals! Watch out for goats, cows, chickens, dogs, and many other animals that seem to out number people here. Many a time I have nearly slammed in to a goat when turning a corner. It's a good thing we have helmets.

Flies: Les mouches! Je deteste les mouches! There are millions of flies in this country and if you kill one it comes back 20 strong. When you're trying to eat and a fly lands on your food it really makes you think: In a country where everyone has open holed latrines, where has that fly been? Let me tell you a story. This story is about two noble chickens that just wanted to live and be chickens. Unfortunately, fate had something else in store, namely being slaughtered right in front of Jill and me and being served later on that night. In between that time though, two dead chickens lay on the ground, bleeding with hundreds of flies covering them. After some of the flies feasted on the blood of the dead chickens, they flew over to our tea cups and feasted on the sugar. Oh, the life of a fly.

Tea Ceremony: The tea here is outstanding. They have an elaborate tea ritual which involves a green tea called “Special Gunpowder,” sugar, and mint. The ritual involves pouring the tea back and forth between the small tea kettle and a glass to make the tea extra frothy. The froth is placed in to very small cups and after the remaining tea is heated up again, it is poured over the froth. This is repeated two additional times and each time the tea becomes less strong. The whole thing can take about 3-5 hours and its what the Burkinabe do when they discuss politics and life in general. For those with no caffeine tolerance, this tea is not for you. It works well for those late nights when Jill and I have to do our French lesson plans.

Shower and toilet: This one is simple. Can you tell a difference between these two photos:

Laundry: Laundry day is no longer an acivity where I can put my clothes in a machine and do other things. It becomes a two hour chore that is necessary in a country where I can't seem to stop sweating. Yes it's strange for a man to wash clothes here, but not unheard of. Many of the PCVs end up hiring someone to wash their clothes, which is probably the route we will take once we get to our site. Currently, however, I am actively living out the Peace Corps mission by promoting an exchange of cultures. The Director of Secondary Education was all for the idea of me washing clothes right along side Jill. No matter how many people laugh, I wouldn't allow anyone else to wash my boxers.

In general: Life here is an ordeal. Sometimes an incredibly painful ordeal. For now, I'll say that's it different and I can't say that I'm used to it yet, but it's growing on me. One thing I've learned: C'est l'afrique, on a le temp.

One Month Down

2006-07-11T12:18:00.000-05:00

In the month I’ve been here, I’ve started picking up some strange habits. Like swatting at the air around my head even when there aren’t armies of flies attacking. Or eagerly awaiting my my next Fanta fix (it’s like Christmas when I can get my hands on a Fanta Cocktail, pronounced “Fanta Coke-tie-l). And daydreaming about giving a verbal smackdown to the hordes of kids who yell “Nassara!” or “La blanche” at me every damn time I ride by. And willingly watching soccer.

I’ve also started appreciating things I’ve never appreciated before. Like toilet paper. The bathroom situation at the hotel where we have our classes is horrible. There are Western toilets--a definite plus compared to the stinky holes we have at home--but you have to pour a bucket of water into them to make them flush, and things get really bad really quickly whenever the water barrel dries up.

Not realizing that Americans are way more addicted to toilet paper than they are to oil, the staff puts out only one or two rolls of toilet paper in the morning. Not a day goes by when someone isn’t passed out on the floor, rubbing their belly and groaning, so one or two rolls is not nearly enough. Burkinabé don’t really get toilet paper. They use little plastic tea pots as bush bidets. Your toilet paper options are limited to either picking up a four pack at the super marché, which looks more like a gas station convenience store than a shopper’s paradise, or, if you’re desperate, stopping by a boutique to buy single rolls that are inexplicably pink. Any time I have the absolute pleasure of using a working Western toilet with toilet paper available, I excitedly tell anyone who’s around, “It flushed!” If the person I tell is a porcelain throne-deprived American, they immediately rush into the bathroom, whether they need to go or not.

Everyone said Peace Corps would be 90% bathroom talk, 10% everything else, and boy, were they right. A month ago, I wouldn’t have thought I’d devote an entire paragraph to toilet paper.

As far as the other 10%, things are pretty good. Yesterday we practiced teaching in front of students for the first time. Granted, there were only about a dozen, which is a tenth of the amount of students we could end up teaching in October, but it was still a lot harder than teaching to half a dozen helpful and patient stagiares and staff. These kids were anything but helpful and patient. I was teaching them about the digestive system and started by asking them what their favorite type of food was. Blank stares. Finally, Markus piped up from the back of the room, “Benga!” Yet another reason to love beans, rice, and oil with onions.

Speaking of Markus, he managed to remain totally unfrazzled despite being put in a crappy situation. The staff kept on giving him mixed information about when and where he was going to teach. When he finally got to teach, the students, who had already sat through two straight hours of nassara fumbling around at the chalkboard and speaking in broken French, were restless. He made them simmer down like an old pro.

We both got good feedback. I was shocked that everyone thought I was dynamic and looked comfortable. The kids even laughed when I asked them what kind of food carnivores eat and one of the kids, completely stone-faced, said, “Students.” I used that example for the rest of the lesson. Teaching’s pretty fun now, but I just know that in a few months, I’m going to wish I were a student-eating carnivore.

Le quatre juillet

2006-07-05T14:02:00.000-05:00

The Peace Corps decided that we would celebrate American independence by making us have a dinner where we'd only be allowed to speak French. A U.S.government organization actually forgot about the 4th of July. Needless to say, we rioted, and only got what we wanted--a proper American BBQ, no French allowed!--after we overturned the Peace Corps van.

I woke up at 3 am on the 4th to the delightful sound of ranting in Arabic. The mosque down the street usually just broadcasts their praying five times a day over the speakers, but something had really pissed that guy off, as he ranted for almost three hours. My cultural sensitivity has really taken a hit since I've been living near that mosque.

Once we got to ECLA, we had a cheerful, two-hour discussion about AIDS, female genital mutilation, and forced marriages. So much for celebrating. At one point, one of the staff brought over some Burkinabé dude I'd never seen before who was wearing an American flag shirt. It was a little surreal.

In the evening, we spoiled city kids crowded into air conditioned vans and drove to one of the local villages where the GEE kids--or, as we call them, the Village People--live. There we had hot dogs from a can, homemade tortillas, chili, potato salad, and, the crème de la crème, macaroni. Who needs fireworks when you could be drinking warm Fanta in the moonlight?

Les femmes sont très forts.

2006-06-20T04:20:00.000-05:00

I was very relieved to find out that our host family is not polygamous. Both our host mom and our host dad--I don't feel comfortable calling them "Mom" and "Dad" like we're supposed to because that would make Markus and me siblings--had three or four marâtres (stepmoms). Our host dad, Karim, has over 30 siblings! He explained to us over tea that he only wants one wife and maybe two kids because, duh, it's hard work supporting up to four wives and dozens of kids.

Despite their progressive views regarding polygamy, our host family is very traditional. All Karim has to do is call out his wife's or their paid helper's name and they are immediately by his side to do whatever he asks. The women work all day. They wash clothes in the morning, cook constantly, haul water, wash and sweep the porch, wash the babies, and pound millet incessantly. When they come home from work, the men socialize over tea, watch football, and eat.

I've noticed that Karim and many other men look Markus in the eye when they're talking to both of us. It's kind of nice not being the one who has to attempt to comprehend what they're saying and stammer out a response, but I really need to get some practice speaking. Lucky for me, there are about five other families who live in our courtyard with us, one of which has two girls that I've befriended--Sali, who is 14, and Iklasse, who is 7. Sali occasionally takes a break from her work to blurt out something in English to me. It almost always takes me by surprise: "Blah blah blah Mooré blah blah French blah blah HOW ARE YOU?!" Iklasse is not old enough to work all the time with the other women, so she often runs over and teaches me French or Mooré. If not for them, I probably wouldn't get to practice my French at home at all.

I like Iklasse a lot. Especially after she explained to Markus that men don't do laundry because they're too weak: "Les hommes sont trop faibles." Maybe. The women sure are stronger than anyone I've ever met.

Hey, Chief! Let's talk, why not?

2006-06-18T13:06:00.001-05:00

Last week, the stagiares visited the chief of the region, which is an exceptional honor granted to only a few fortunate people. It was an interesting ceremony with as much pomp and circumstance as this country can afford. We waited outside for quite some time until the chief was ready to receive us. We entered the sweltering room where his two sons flanked a grand chair. Both of the sons wore basketball jerseys (somehow, I don't think the ancient Moosi chiefs would approve). We all stood as the chief sauntered in, wearing a massive white boubou. The anachronistic cell phone in his hand was a nice touch. After some formal introductions by one of the Peace Corps workers, the chief welcomed us to his region and said that the town was open to us for all our needs. He explained to us that he is really a king and was picked from among many descendants of kings and had to visit all the villages in his region in an elaborate ritual before he could become chief. After we exchanged some gifts, we left the room and posed for pictures on the steps of his humble palais. I was standing in the middle of the steps, not knowing what was going on, when the chief walked up and stood next to me for the photos. I'm trying to get a copy.

***This portion contains graphic content***
In case you were wondering, Jill and I have both been ill. I'm just getting over a bad case that involved many buckets and visits to the "latrine," otherwise known as "hole." After feeling ill all day yesterday, I felt the need to reach for the bucket. I won't describe what happened then, but if anyone has seen "Team America: World Police," you'll get the idea. We're recovering nicely.
***End graphic content***

Jill and I washed our first set of clothes today. It was especially entertaining for the women in our courtyard to see a guy washing clothes, but they got used to it pretty quickly. Ikhlasse told me the other day that men are too weak to wash clothes, which is why the women do it. I proved her wrong! Karim found it shocking that I helped wash the clothes. Jill tried to explain that men do lots of things in the States. Karim responded, "But you're in Burkina Faso now!" It was funny.

That's all for now. Happy Father's Day to both dads! I'm working on the pictures and will try to post some soon.

Cow legs and fish heads.

2006-06-15T13:52:00.000-05:00

I think the best way to give you an idea of what this place is like is to describe a normal* day.

We wake up, covered in sweat, at about 6 and walk into the courtyard that our host family shares with about five other families, making sure to say, "Bonjour!" to everyone--it's rude not to greet people. We take turns taking bucket showers, then we go into the living room for breakfast with Karim, the host father. Breakfast is always baguettes with butter and instant coffee or hot chocolate. Honestly, I don't know how much more bread I can handle.

Then we strap on our dorky bike helmets, climb onto our sweet mountain bikes, and bike for about 10 minutes to the school. Along the way, people stare and shout various things to us. The adults usually just say, "Bonjour!" and "ça va?" and the kids all point and shout, "Nasara, nasara!", which is Mooré for "white." Rotten kids.

The school is actually a hotel called ECLA, which stands for Être Comme Les Autres. We have four classes a day, which are either two or an hour and a half long. They change each day. We usually have French class in small groups out in the community--my group goes to a local restaurant to drink Coke and Fanta and try to concentrate while beaucoup de kids bother us, trying to sell us things. We also have a cross cultural class and tech sessions, during which we learn details about teaching in Burkina.

We usually have lunch at the hotel, and the servers have yet to screw up people's orders. After lunch, everyone splays out on the couches to sweat in the brutal afternoon heat. Many people pass out on the floor. Remember, it's "The Hardest Job You'll Ever Love!"

At around 5, we bike back to our host families' houses. The ride is just like the morning ride except everyone says "Bonsoir!" At the house, Markus and I chat and play with the kids. My favorite people are Sali, a 14 year old, her sister Ikhalles, her 7 year old sister, and Latife, a punk of a 3 year old, and our "brother."

Dinner is usually delicious--my favorite has been the cous cous--but can be quite an adventure. The first night we were there, Markus scooped some innocent-looking pasta onto his plate, and I watched in horror as he pulled out a fish head. While I gingerly picked at my non-head fish, he asked how to eat the head, grabbed it by the eyes, and took a huge bite out of it. He's gotten a reputation among the stagiares (Peace Corps Trainees) as "the guy who loves fish heads."

Last night, I was having trouble scooping some beef stew onto my plate because there were huge white things in the pot that I couldn't identify. Karim saw me struggling, and scooped a huge cow bone onto my plate. I gnawed at it for a bit and tried a bit of marrow. That was too much for me, and I could feel a bit of vomit creeping up my throat, so I quickly passed it to Markus, who chowed down like a pro. One of our fellow stagiares suggested that he might be descended from barbarians.

We usually pass out at an absurdly early hour, like 8:30, and sweatily sleep until either the Mosque next door (prayers are broadcast over the speakers at 3 am), the roosters, or the goats (il y a beaucoup des moutons ici) wake us up from our sweaty, sweaty sleep.

Which is to say, things are great!

*Not actually normal.

Bonjour!

2006-06-08T09:41:00.000-05:00

After a hellacious time in the Paris airport and two flights that felt so long, I was convinced we had flown through a black hole, we are finally here. Looking out the window as we flew over, it looked just like Mars. The red sands of Africa, indeed. We flew in at night, and as we got closer to Ouagadougou, I noticed a few, scattered orange lights, which I think were probably lanterns. Then, all of a sudden, there was the airport and the city beyond, lit up like a Christmas tree. The drive from the airport to the Peace Corps compound was terrifying--not for us, but for all the other drivers and Burkinabé on mopeds. Imagine how people drive in your favorite big city and multiply that by a million. It was madness. If I had to describe Ouaga in one word, it would be mopeds. I am sitting in an internet café at 2:45 pm, and all I hear is typing and the sound of dozens of mopeds buzzing by. There are so many mopeds, they have a separate lane complete with their own traffic lights.

I am sure everyone is wondering about the heat. Well, it is pretty brutal, but I think I will survive. Speaking of, during one of our training activities, Markus was in a group that sang I Will Survive with lyrics about the Peace Corps. Instead of Ill learn how to get along, they sang Even when I get the runs. My husband, ladies and gentlemen.

By the way, please pardon the halting language. I have not found the apostrophe key yet.

Burkina Faso Ho!

2006-06-05T23:02:00.000-05:00

It's the last night in D.C., and I found it only appropriate to post one last time prior to leaving. I've met the other volunteers, sat through staging, and will get my initial vaccinations tomorrow morning. I nearly feel like a real Peace Corps Volunteer (as another volunteer said today, we're about 90% sure this is really going to happen now). Jill and I had a wonderful dinner at an Indian restuarant where we met another group of PCVs travelling to El Salvador. We came back to cold beers from the sink (no fridge provided in government hotel rooms. By the way, does anybody want one last beer? We've still got one in our room) and the hotel lounge. Vented some last minute frustrations, talked some last minute politics, and debated gender issues with some of the other fine people serving in Burkina Faso.

After the intial vaccinations, what most seem to call the beginning of the pin cushion, we will travel to Ouagadougou on Delta. I was expecting something more exotic like Air France or Air Burkina since Delta generally advertises their non-stop flights to Disneyland for only $250, but whatever gets us there will work for me. After two nights in Ouaga, we will go to Ouahigouya ("Why-ee-gou-ya") in the north where our training officially begins. We will meet our host families on June 11th in a supposedly strange "adoption ceremony." Needless to say, Jill and I are excited.

We are the only married couple in this group. To illustrate how we are coping with this, on the first day of staging, the coordinator asked, "where is our married couple?" Jill and I raised our hands from separate tables and the coordinator said, "As you can see, Jill and Markus are separate people; not joined at the hip. Feel free to treat them as such." Jill and Markus 1; Peace Corps 0.

Well, it's a big day tomorrow, and Jill and I are trying to prepare, which means sleep. We will post as soon as we can. Remember, no communication is good communication!

Boo, news.

2006-06-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

So, here we are in a swanky hotel a block away from Chinatown in D.C. After a nice brunch with all the parents at Intergalactic, we started our exciting Peace Corps adventure by sitting in an airplane with sporadic air conditioning waiting to take off for two hours. When we finally got to D.C., we met up with Chris and, after our long day of traveling (which followed our even longer nights of packing) tried not to fall asleep into our beers.

The next day, we set out bright and early--which, for those of you who aren't fluent in Jill Speak, means 11 am--and spent the morning at the Air and Space Museum and the afternoon at the Holocaust museum. I realized too late that we should have done the opposite--after the former, I felt overstimulated, as I do at all science museums, but after the latter, we both felt gloomy and contemplative. Both museums were remarkable, though. For instance, I remember the first time I went to the Air and Space Museum, I gave only a cursory glance at the the Soviet and American nuclear missiles, but now that nukes are in the news again, I gawked at them for quite a while.

I'm not sure if it's a byproduct of my getting mentally ready to leave the country for two years or if I'm just fed up with current events, but I'm really looking forward to waking up and not hearing anything about Iran, Iraq, global warming, wiretapping, and all the other stomach ache-inducing news. I was only a month into college when 9/11 happened, and ever since, I've been obsessed with the news. I feel compelled to follow every miniscule detail of the major stories as if my reading about them could somehow change things for the better. Maybe I'm addicted. Like a slot machine, the news is on a variable reinforcement schedule--you never know when you're going to get a reward, so you keep on pulling/reading again and again and again.

Maybe moving from the U.S. to Burkina will be like a gambler moving from Las Vegas to Iowa City. Cold turkey. Or maybe I'll just satisfy my news junky cravings by closely following all the village gossip. I can't believe what Loburu wore to the tribal ceremony yesterday!

In other news, Markus has developed a stress-related growth on his head.

All for vaccinations and vaccinations for all

2006-05-23T16:40:00.000-05:00

Check out this wicked list of vaccinations I found at the WHO website:
- Baccille Calmette Guerin
- Diptheria, Tetanus, Pottussis (1st and 3rd dose)
- Hepatitis B
- Influenza
- Measles
- Polio
- Vitamin A Doses
- Yellow Fever

Keep in mind, needles make me feel like this:

Who doesn't love peanuts?

2006-05-16T13:19:00.000-05:00

I just found a nonprofit called The Full Belly Project, which sends peanut shellers to Africa. It was co-created by a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa. The peanut shelleer that he and his engineer friend designed shells peanuts 40 times faster than shelling them by hand. Not having to shell peanuts by hand allows women to do other things and encourages people to plant more peanuts, which improve the quality of the soil. There currently isn't a project underway to bring peanut shellers to Burkina Faso, but hopefully, Markus and I can help set one up.

I can teach my students all about how their digestive systems work, but I can't put food in their stomachs. I'm really excited by the prospect of helping the Burkinabe help themselves.

Fact.

2006-05-07T18:07:00.000-05:00

Beep beep!

2006-04-19T18:49:00.000-05:00

Sprint/Nextel is now offering unlimited annoyance for just $40/month. If there is one thing I don't understand, it's a walkie-talkie phone. Who are the ad geniuses who came up with this one? Everybody can hear your generally pointless and stupid conversation. This is especially true for people on buses. Why do I need to listen to you and your friend drop the f-bomb over and over again at 6 in the morning? I think these phones are a substitute for people who don't have cars. If I can't blast my music really loud, I'll make my phone go "beep beep." In other and more current who's annoying Markus news, the tenant upstairs is once again playing his music much too loud.

Silence, that's what I'm going to enjoy when I'm Africa. I've heard that the nights are wonderfully quiet. No cell phones, No air conditioning hum, no wind chimes, and no stereos. It will actually be the first time Jill and I have our own house seperate from any other person, and we are looking forward to it. Although we will probably have many visitors at all hours of the day, human voices will be a welcome change from the other noisy distractions we experience here.

There will be many things I will miss. Especially watching the political situation unfold with the undoubtedly hilarious and biased coverage on Fox News. Maybe Bill O'Reilly will cry.

In movie news, go see Thank you for Smoking and when An Incovenient Truth opens, everyone should see it.

Still in the States

2006-04-04T17:46:00.000-05:00

It only took 20 months of applications, delays, misplaced paperwork, frustration, and occasionally some joy, but Jill and I finally did it. We'll be departing for Burkina Faso in June. If you're saying to yourself Burkina what, here are some helpful links:

CIA World Factbook - In case you ever wondered what the names of the 45 administrative districts of Burkina Faso are, this website is for you
AllAfrica.com/Burkina Faso - Great up-to-date news website. It's like Google news for Africa.
Peace Corps - Burkina Faso - Read about what the Peace Corps is doing in Burkina Faso
PCV - Cathy Seeley - A returned Peace Corps Volunteer's website with photos
Andy Burkina - Another returned Peace Corps Volunteer's site

I will be teaching math in French and in case that isn't shocking enough, I don't know French. It gets better, "Your classes will range in size from 50-100+ students." Holy Moly that's a lotta kids! Education is a top priority for one of the ten poorest countries in the world. Currently, Burkina is having somewhat of a population boom. They have around 12 million people (up from 3.5 million in 1960) and over 50% are under the age of 15 creating a big demand for teachers. I'm excited to share my knowledge of math, specifically algebra and geometry, with the Burkinabe (name of the Burkina people). I would love to hear if anyone has any suggestions for fun math activities. Keep in mind, we probably won't have any resources except dirt and sticks (maybe some pencils and paper if the kids are really lucky).

Until that time comes though, I'm spending my time in Houston working in the ever exciting mortgage industry. My weekends consist of studying French, more French, and then some more French before I go to bed. I've been watching the Simpsons in French. I wouldn't recommend it. Marge sounds like a man who's smoked a few too many packs and Jill and I have concluded that all the extras are voiced by the same guy who doesn't try very hard.

So I'll wrap it up for this time. Jill will be posting here too so you'll get to hear about all of her adventures as well. We'll be posting pictures and hopefully some audio eventually. Feel free to comment or email me. I won't be constantly connected like I am here, but I think I'll have internet access a couple times a month. I'll post my address as soon as I know it so you can always send snail mail, but no live animals. The 3-5 week journey might not fair to well on organic organisms. I hope everyone is doing well! Cheers!