Bullet list

I have a bunch of good post ideas, but they're going to have to wait for now. My blog's prose form needs some work. Anyway, here are some more bullet points.

• Today I swore in as a volunteer. Training is officially over. I move to my site on Saturday morning. I am excited, but also a little terrified of being on my own with no structure every day. Only white person in a 6-mile radius! But this means I have a lot more time to do whatever I want. It will be an experience for me.
• My computer died last week on its 5th birthday. Luckily I was able to salvage the data with some help. I'm looking forward to getting a new laptop. (Already in the mail.)
• I was elected to Peace Corps Burkina's Food Security Task Force, PCBF's FSTF. (We create community by using excessive and unnecessary acronyms, apparently.) What does that mean? We'll find out. I really wanted to do it though. I know there is a lot of teaching people about edible plants and better organic agriculture techniques, but there are other fun things too like teaching people how to make tofu. Anyway, I get the travel reimbursed to visit Ouaga once every few months for meetings.
• I'm pretty sure I was going to say more, but I'm really tired and I'm blanking. Anyway, here's a picture from The Day When We Learned How To Plant Trees during training.

Mango-tree-planting bosses.

A day

5:00 am - Cell phone alarm rings. Consider getting up to go running. Don't.
5:40 am - Wake up thinking I've overslept. Realize I haven't. Go back to sleep.
5:42 am - Actually, wake up again to go to the latrine.
6:24 am - For some reason, I always wake up at exactly this time.
6:30 am - Bucket bath. Exciting when my host sister gives me heated water.
6:45 am - Host sisters have a knack for bringing me breakfast right before I have a chance to put clothes on.
7:30 am - Meet another trainee Susan who lives near me, and bike 15 minutes to training. Shoot dirty looks at small children yelling "Nasaara! Comment tu t'appelles!" (White person! What's your name!) every 10 feet.
8 - 12 - Model school: I teach for 1 hour a day. The rest of the time is spent lesson planning or, more likely, procrastinating while sitting around eating fried dough balls and reading The New Yorker.
12:15 pm - Get in line for lunch at Chez Valerie, a stand near the training center with some of the better Burkinabè food I've had here.
1:15 pm - Watch chickens fight over an empty plastic bag, then get freaked out by a butterfly and run away. Contemplate the relative levels of intelligence of flies, chickens, and jellyfish. Ranking does not come out well for chickens. Makes me feel good about myself.
2:00 pm - Afternoon training sessions. They always follow the same formula: a statement of objectives, an overabundance of flip charts, and counting off into groups for practice scenarios.
2:30 pm - Try to stay awake.
2:45 pm - Daydream about food.
5:15 pm - Training over; head back to Chez Valerie with other trainees for cookies and café au lait. Beer or 10-cent whiskey shots a possibility. Feeling good.
6:00 pm - Go back home
6:30 pm - Bucket bath #2
6:45 pm - Sit around listening to the radio with host parents. Don't really listen because the mixture of static and fast French makes it difficult to understand. Nod and agree with whatever they say.
7:15 pm - Dinner
7:45 pm - More half-listening to radio.
8:15 pm - Try to plan lessons, end up procrastinating and reading more on my Kindle.
8:45 pm - Sweat. Alarm clock thermometer says 95 degrees inside my house. Read labels on items in med kit saying not to store above 80 degrees.
9:15 pm - Remember I was supposed to do push-ups tonight. Spend 10 minutes texting other trainees to psych myself up. Do them. Sweat some more.
9:45 pm - Set out running clothes so I'll go running tomorrow. Go to sleep.

Care package items

Suggested care package items, in the order that I thought of them, you know, just in case you wanted to know:

• Protein bars (Clif bars)
• *Sriracha sauce/Thai curry paste/curry powder
• Other herbs/spices (spicy is good, Mexican)
• *Dark chocolate bars (just not in March-June, which is hot season)
• Dutch-process cocoa powder, powdered buttermilk, old-fashioned oats
• Instant miso soup packets
• *Packaged or freeze-dried meats/sausages that don't need refrigeration (forget vegetarianism)
• Hard cheese that doesn't need refrigeration
• *Instant sauce packets (cheese sauce, taco seasoning, whatever seems good), and also soy sauce packets
• Toasted almonds/*walnuts/pecans (but not peanuts)
• Prunes
• Jars of artichoke hearts/whole-grain mustard/stuffed olives (keeping classy)
• Tea bags (Japanese green tea, rooibos, mate, others)
• Issues of The New Yorker, American Scientist (not to be confused with the wider-circulated Scientific American), Harper's Magazine
• Food magazines with pictures
• Pilot G2 pens (black, or any color)
• Bars of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, any scent
• Uh, boxes of See's?

*Priority.

Boy do I sound like a snob. More added as I think of it.
(Note: peanuts, peanut butter, pasta, rice, tomato paste, condensed milk, and honey are plentiful here.)

But what are you doing

It occurs to me that I haven't written much about what I was sent here to do. I am a math education volunteer in Burkina Faso; so what? I only teach a maximum of 10 hours a week, so there's a lot else going on.

Within Burkina, the Peace Corps has 5 main priorities that all volunteers, regardless of sector, are required to work on:

1. Malaria prevention - pretty self-explanatory. Burkina has one of the highest prevalences of malaria of any country in the world, and an estimate says that over 50% of Burkina Faso's yearly deaths are caused by malaria. My host mother got malaria last week. (She's better now.) At the same time, there are people here who think you get malaria from eating unripe mangoes. A lot of people. Also from riding in a bus with the window open. Or from sorcerers. I am here to tell them to use mosquito nets, and to please open the bus windows. (Fact I didn't know before: malaria used to be a problem in the southeastern United States. The government wiped it out with DDT.)

2. Reforestation - I have to oversee the planting of 625 trees per year while I'm here. In comparison, the agriculture/environment sector volunteers are responsible for the planting of 5000 trees per year. Tree cutting for lumber and firewood is an issue. Trees slow down the harmattan winds (those huge dust storms I wrote about before) and do other magical things, like improve soil quality and water retention. Also, people eat tree leaves. Did you know you can eat baobab leaves? The Little Prince had no idea.

3. HIV/AIDS prevention - again, pretty self-explanatory. The HIV rate is actually quite low in Burkina. Wikipedia tells me that Burkina's adult HIV prevalence rate is 1.6%, compared to .6% in the US. Still, there's more to be done.

4. Youth education - well, I'm a teacher. I also have to start youth clubs to teach life skills, plus lead summer camps. There are a lot of possibilities there. Clubs and camps are where I really expect to work on the other 4 goals. Girls' empowerment falls somewhere in here.

5. Hygiene promotion - teaching hand-washing and bleach to prevent diarrhea. (note: diarrhoea is a disgusting-looking word)


Outside of Burkina-specific goals, what you are probably imagining to be my job as a Peace Corps volunteer is really only 1/3 of the overall mission. I am expected to do a good job on the above 5 goals, plus be an effective math teacher, but the other 2/3 of my mission are to share American culture with the Burkinabè and to share Burkina culture with Americans. So sitting around and chatting with people counts for work. As does blogging, right? I feel pretty good about my progress on that last goal already, in that half the time when I told people I was going to Burkina Faso their response was "Is that a country?" Educating people before I even left the States.


I only have 2 and a half weeks of training left. As of this coming Monday, we will have been in country for 2 months. August 23rd is the date that we swear in as volunteers, which is a big deal, I guess. There is a big ceremony and a party afterward, and then on the 24th and 25th we move to our sites.
How is it August already?