Thanksgiving

I guess I haven't been keeping up with posting. I did upload pictures onto Facebook though! Click here to see them.

For Thanksgiving, the other 2 volunteers from my region and I got together and prepared a big meal. I brought 2 loaves of cornbread and 2 apple cakes to Katie's house, about 5 miles from my site. When I arrived around 11, Zach was busy feathering and gutting the 4 ducks that we had bought, while Katie was scrubbing and chopping a mountain of potatoes. I helped with the chopping, boiling, and mashing of the potatoes, and everything was done by around 2 pm. In the end, our menu included:

• Roasted ducks with stuffing
• Mashed potatoes
• Papaya salad with a sweet chile sauce
• Cornbread
• Rice pudding
• Apple cake

Everything came out really well. A lot better than I was expecting really. And all done under $50, the largest cost being the ducks at a total of about $25. I think about 50 people from Katie's site showed up wanting food, and the president and treasurer from my school's parents' association came over to join us also. Not bad. There are pictures in the Facebook album. We saved a duck and servings of everything else for ourselves, and had a spread for everyone else to share. There's nothing like free food to bring people together.

Flavors that I will forever associate with Africa

• Powdered milk
• Sauteed okra
• Tomato paste
• Toasty peanut butter (by which I mean they burnt the peanuts...but you know, whatever)
• Last but not least, Pepto Bismol.

Yep.

Tabaski

Last Friday, October 26th was the holiday Tabaski. It's a big Muslim holiday commemorating the prophet Abraham demonstrating his obedience to God by agreeing to sacrifice his son at God's command. He blindfolded himself before going to cut his son's throat, but when he took the blindfold off he discovered his son had been saved and replaced by a ram. I got this from Wikipedia, by the way. Sorry if I'm wrong.

The locals celebrate by having a big prayer in an open space in the village around 10 am, which culminates in the sacrifice of a ram by the imam. Then everyone goes back home, and every family kills one ram for each wife. (Polygamy is a big thing here...more on that later.) A third of the meat is saved for the family, a third is given to friends and non-Muslim freeloaders like me, and a third is given to the poor who can't afford their own meat.

About a third of my village's population is Muslim, the rest being either Protestant or Catholic. I asked one of the village vieilles (grandmas, basically) that I sometimes talk to if I could go to the morning prayer with her, so she agreed to take me along. Later in the day, I biked to Kaya, my regional capital, where my school principal had invited me to celebrate with him and his wife.

It was an interesting day I guess. Mostly it was filled with even more awkward moments than usual. Frankly I felt a little let down by the celebrations...I was expecting more partying and abundant/exciting food, but it was actually pretty quiet. The food was not bad, but nothing that exciting.

Procession toward the prayer site

I started the day by meeting up with Alimata, the vieille who agreed to take me along, at 9 am. I didn't have a scarf that I could use to cover my head, so I brought a brightly colored bolt of fabric that clashed horribly with all of my clothes but was the only thing I had, and she helped me tie it on. From the market where we had met up, we made our way slowly to the prayer area, stopping along the way at the houses of their Muslim friends. At one point we saw the village chief sitting in a chair, and he motioned for me to come over to see him. I started walking toward him. Then I remembered I was supposed to take off my shoes when I approached him so I did that. Then I was walking toward him, but there was an old woman also approaching him, but she did so crawling on her elbows and knees. Gah, was I supposed to be doing that to? So I kind of backed up and then did the same thing. Then everyone who could see me started cracking up. So awkward. Then the chief said hi and wished me a happy holiday and excused me. Oh come on. But I asked Alimata later if that was really what I was supposed to do, and she said yes, so whatever.

Around 10 we finally made it to the prayer site. All of the men were up in front, and women and children were further back, separated by an open space. First everyone sang a song, and then everyone went through a series of motions for about 20 minutes that I kind of followed along with. Presumably if you were up in the men's area there was more explanation. But whatever. Then we sat there for awhile. And then the men were still doing something, but suddenly all of the women and children broke off and started chatting and dispersing. Vendors sold sachets of ginger juice and fried dough balls. Huh? Then we left and I went home.

From the women's area, you can see the men in the distance

That afternoon, I biked 30 km to Kaya, my regional capital. I made it in about an hour and 45 minutes, and then headed to the Proviseur's (the principal) house. He has a nice house. I hadn't seen it before. His wife lives there with their 2 year old son, and he goes there to stay with them on the weekends. When I got there, it was just the 3 of them plus 2 of their friends watching a soccer match on the TV...they gave me some food and a Coke (I guess you can't drink at a Muslim holiday party), which was good I guess. Having ice in my beverage kind of blew my mind. The food was reasonably good although not super exciting. 3 other teachers dropped by later, as did some other school-related people I hadn't met before. By 6 pm, it was evident that it was about to start storming, so I left the party to stay at the house of another volunteer. I don't know what I was expecting, but they were just kind of sitting around...and eating, but not that much...Oh well. It was amusing to see the Proviseur's interaction with his son; I hadn't seen men interact with their young children before, and it was pretty cute even though the kid was a little brat.

I don't know how to end this post. Culmination of the weekend: realizing how ridiculously excited I was to be eating meat, first of all, and that was less than half gristle. I guess I've changed.

Biker

I was kind of nervous about biking before I got here. After my parents made me learn how to ride a bike as a 9-year-old so that I would grow up with the basic competencies of a normal person (joke's on you! 23 and still can't drive a car!), I spent the next 12 years determinedly proving the fact that you really can forget how to ride a bike. By my senior year in college, though, things were getting embarrassing. One memorable Ohioan afternoon, I re-learned how to cycle on the kiddie bike of a friend.

That brings us to this past June, when I got here and was told that I would be issued a 21-speed 13" women's mountain bike for all my transportation needs. I knew I could manage it...but I was nervous. We had a 2-hour session before moving in with our host families on basic bike repair and maintenance, which mostly involved teaching us how to take off wheels and repair flats. Then, that was it. They were assuming we already knew how to do things like turn with less than a 20' radius. I was on my own. I had never even shifted gears while riding a bike before.

The first time I rode my bike was when I went home with my host family. Loaded down with a heavy backpack and with my mandolin case thumping on my right knee, desperately trying to follow my host mother through a cloud of dust as she motorcycled down uneven dirt roads, I thought about crying. Kids here learn to bike when they're 3, and I did not want their first impression to be of me falling off of my shiny expensive brand-new bike because of my own incompetence. Thankfully I made it back, barely. Who knows what they thought. Things got dicey by the second day of training when I got my first flat. I didn't even know I had a flat. My host brother had to tell me. I sat there waiting for half an hour with my flat front tire while my host brother went to get my host mother, because he said we were too far from the house to walk back. Eventually, though, we walked back. We were 7 minutes from the house.

What really freaked me out was how self-sufficient I had to be with the whole thing. I got a little repair kit with my bike, which included patches, glue, a bottle of mineral oil, and a bunch of mysterious metal tools that I didn't know how to use. I also got a bike repair and maintenance handbook that I still haven't opened. Was I supposed to figure out how to do this all on my own? I had witnessed flats being fixed, but could I really do it in the heat of the moment? What if something went horribly wrong with my bike but I had no idea because I was clueless about my bike anyway, and then one day it broke and I crashed? After the first time I got a flat and didn't know it, I became really paranoid about getting more flats and not noticing them. I imagined living forever in shame after ruining the rims on my wheels. I was not a competent enough biker to look down at the tires while biking.

Things came slowly. I shifted gears a couple of times over the next month. Not actually that hard. I got to the point where I could take my right hand off the handlebars long enough to wave at people. (Only my right hand though. Couldn't do it with the left hand.) My host brother told me that my tires needed air, so I tried to pump them up. A few weeks later I figured out that I wasn't using the pump right and that's why it was really difficult and the tires weren't actually inflating. I took my back wheel off by myself. After 2 months I heard someone talking about oiling her chain, so I oiled my chain, and suddenly my bike ran so smoothly and quietly. Someone showed me how to tighten my brakes. By the end of training, I sort of felt okay about the whole thing.

Now, I'm on my own, and the bike repair guy isn't there every day to help me anymore. Intimidating. At first. Biking 8 km to my friend's site was one of the longest bike rides I had ever been on, ever. I had to reinflate my own tires when I myself noticed they were getting low. I had to oil the chain when I heard it getting squeaky.

But suddenly, 2 months after getting to site, I realize that I am totally fine with all of it. In fact, I enjoy it. I can now look down and check both my front and back tires while riding my bike, I know immediately when I get a flat, and I can talk on my cell phone using either hand while I ride (er, not that I ever do that). I went from only using the lowest gears to only using the highest gears, and a 30 km bike ride to the regional capital is no big deal. It seems like there was never a time when I couldn't do it all. I still don't fix my own flats, but that's only because the pump is a major pain to use, and why bother anyway when I can pay someone to fix it for me for 50 francs, the equivalent of 10 cents. I enjoy keeping everything clean and taught and running smoothly. Tightening the brakes, adjusting the seat, it's just part of my day. Nothing intimidating about it.

I could go on about the whole thing being a metaphor for getting used to life in a foreign culture, but I'll fast-forward over the cheesy explanations. You can think about it for yourself. At least I never fell off my bike. I will say, though, that my progress with bicycling has grown closely with my integration here, and also my overall sense of self-reliance. I kind of feel like a grown-up who can take care of herself now. And maybe, maybe now that I've gotten to the biking skill level of the average 12-year-old, it will just be another decade or two until I get there with driving.