Moving on, I’m enjoying reading the questions I’ve been getting!  The last time I checked email there was one comment with several, so I’ll try to address what I remember from it now and answer the rest when I can read it again.  One of the questions was: do they use toilet paper here?  It’s actually a very good question because it might surprise some of you to learn that no, in fact, they don’t use toilet paper.  I guess I should begin by explaining that toilets are very rare here; they do have them, but usually they are only in wealthy homes and nice hotels.  Also, for some reason, the toilet seats are never properly attached and always slide off while you’re attempting to sit down.  Anyway, the more common apparatus for relieving yourself is the latrine (or a mildly-concealed mud wall if you’re a man, and occasionally the desperate elderly woman; children here have free reign over squatting locales, so the middle of an open field with walking paths is as good as anyplace).  A latrine is just a hole in the ground with a large empty space below, much like Porta-Potties in the U.S. except without a seat.  You have to squat, but it’s a nice way to build up leg muscles.  While they do sell toilet paper here, locals clean themselves using a plastic tea kettle (the actual name of which I forget) filled with water that they pour over themselves.  I imagine it’s a bit like a tiny, hand-held bidet, but you need to grow up using one to know how to control the water stream; I say this because every attempt I’ve made has gone horribly awry and I end up looking more like I wet myself than I cleaned myself.  Also, when they clean themselves they always use their left hand, which is the origin of the “it’s rude to hand people things with your left hand” rule.  Traditionally, you use your left hand to complete the dirty tasks such as using the bathroom, and thus it’s polite to use your right hand to greet people and eat with.  I say traditionally because, while it is still a rule that is very much observed, members of the higher class here in Burkina might use toilets and often eat with utensils rather than their hands, so they’re less stringent about it.

They also have different types of latrines here.  For example, when you arrive at a bus station you can usually pay to use their latrines.  There might be four lined up in a row, but if you want to use toilet paper you better pay attention to which one you walk into; there are latrines specifically for urinating and others that allow you more leeway.  The ones that are reserved for urinating only have a small hole in one corner that is connected to a pipe leading out of the latrine (so if you want to use toilet paper you’re out of luck because there’s nowhere to put it).  The other type of latrine has a hole that opens into an empty space into which you can drop things.  In fact, now that I think about it, there really is quite a bit of variety in terms of latrines.  I used one at a bus station once that was strictly for women and was hidden behind the larger latrines that I just described.  There were a series of stalls that were cut off about waist-high, so you could wave to or converse with your neighbors while you all squatted over mini toilets with no seats.

Altogether, latrines are awful when you spend a month adjusting to the Burkinabé diet with explosive diarrhea, but once you get used to them they’re not so bad.  You can also begin to tell the difference between latrines that are nicer or well-cared for and those that are not.  Certainly, using a small tea kettle to wash yourself afterwards is difficult unless you grow up here, and even the Peace Corps encourages us not to bother trying to learn that trick.

The second question that I remember was whether or not we eat a lot of goat.  The most common meats eaten here are goat, sheep, fish, and chicken (my site is renowned for its grilled chicken!).  I’ve heard of the occasional meal of dog, cat, or horse as well, but those are less common (it does make the idea of getting a dog a bit daunting, though).  Goat and sheep are commonly sold on the side of the road and added to most sauces, along with fish; I’m not a huge fan of any of those, but it depends on the cut and how it is prepared.  When you get rice with sauce or soup there is usually some type of meat in it, but it could be anything from straight fat, to fairly tender meat on bone, to hide.  Grilled chicken is delicious (if you know the right guy to go to), but it’s expensive.  The animals here are free range and roam through schools, work spaces, courtyards, you name it; somehow, they always find their way back home by nightfall.  A lot of what you eat depends on where you live.  I’m spoiled since I live in a city and have access to most types of fruits, vegetables, and additives on a daily basis; however, people living in villages might only have a market every 3 to 6 days and can only buy food such as Laughing Cow cheese or oatmeal when they travel into their regional capitals.  Thus, they might rely heavily on their neighbors’ cooking, while I’m able to prepare meals at my house that are closer to what I would eat at home (mashed potatoes, pasta, etc.).

Thanks again for reading and all your supportive comments.  Keep the questions coming!

                I gave an exam to my students in the afternoon but didn’t want to take the night bus into the city, so I bumped up the testing times and left myself about a 20 minute window to rush home, grab a few necessities, and head to the bus station.  This meant that I ended up leaving my house about 5 minutes before the bus’s departure time, but I only live about a 3 minute bike ride from the station, and transportation here is always, always late.  So, I figured no problem.  However, as I was heading up the incline towards the bus station I saw the giant STAF bus paused in the station like a horse in the gate, waiting for the gun.  My site is home to a fairly large bus station, or gare, but the easiest way to know where a bus is going is by which direction it’s pointing in.  There is only one paved road going between Ouagadougou and Ouahigouya, a large city just north of Yako, so if the bus is heading south, you know where it’s going, and vice versa.  All told, I knew this was my bus. 

                I sped up to the door and hopped off, sweat trickling past my ears.  “Ouaga?” they asked.  “Yep, but not with the bike,” I replied.  Some of the bigger stations have guys who will watch your bike or moto while you’re gone, but you have to pay.  He was off halfway across the station lounging in a chair, so one of the bus workers started whistling and yelling to grab his attention while I yanked my bag off the back.  The bus, in the meantime, had started moving, so another onlooker banged on the side a few times to let them know that they weren’t quite finished boarding.  Just as I thought I’d have to leave my bike and hope for the best, someone shoved a bike ticket in my face (meaning the guard must have sprinted over from his post) and I hopped on.  This entire interaction took place over the course of about a minute and a half.  I then got to lounge on the bus for an hour and a half, shoved shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh with my neighbor and sweating like I was in menopause, until we reached Ouaga where, upon entering the bus station, we actually wedged ourselves against another bus that was leaving, and had to sit tight while the driver slammed on the gas and forcibly (and audibly) removed it from our side. 

On the plus side, I got to learn a bit about traditional Chinese and Indian medicine during my sojourn.  Oftentimes, buses are used as marketing platforms here in Burkina (and in West Africa in general).  For instance, on a bus ride down to Bobo, Leigh and I got to listen to a local man spouting the benefits of another medicine he was promoting, and in Ghana I sat on a bus where a man conducted an awareness raising campaign that involved waiving a wooden penis wildly to and fro.  This time was much more subdued, since my promoter forgo the usual lecturing and shouting that accompanies the production pitch and opted instead for a congenial “hey, how are ya?” while he handed out candies and a short strip of paper discussing the medicinal benefits of his products.  Unfortunately, I decided halfway through my reading that I wouldn’t be investing in any of Mr. Shoo’s merchandise because I honestly don’t believe that the same product can prevent both malaria and premature ejaculation (do they even share any overlapping triggers?  I can’t imagine so.). 

Hmm, what else about transportation here?  I suppose there’s really no end to what I could discuss, given that it’s all so different from what you see at home.  For starters, there are no traffic rules.  Well, there are, but really there aren’t.  They have street lights, but it is always a question of whether they will actually be followed (and the answer is usually no unless the cross street has a formidable amount of cars lined up in it).  Cars and motos are plentiful in the capital, but outside the preferred form of transportation is the moto, accompanied by bush taxis and buses that are ferrying travelers.  Speed has no specified limit but is determined by the driver’s comfort level, which results in being stuck behind motos that I can bike past and being overrun by those whose tailwind nearly knocks me over.  Accidents, as you can guess, are plentiful, and when they happen they rarely involve only two people.  That’s because people load people, animals, and goods onto transport until there rests literally no room for movement, and then they add a bit more.  It’s very common to see bush taxis careening through traffic with an overhead capacity comprised of leaking foodstuffs, furniture tied on at rakish angles, and screaming livestock, whose overall square footage rivals that of the actual vehicle on which it rests.  At the larger bus stations in Ouaga, buses sit awaiting their charges with labels across their fronts, such as “Ouaga-Kaya,” which presumably tell you where the bus is headed.  Beware: this is a lie.  In fact, that bus could be headed anywhere, so you better check with a station worker to find out its true destination.  And forget about getting on it.  There are no such things as lines here, so even if you have a reservation, once the bus opens its doors half the bus station swarms them pushing, jostling, and generally trying to displace one another to gain a foot.  When your name is called, you better yell out your presence, and even then it’s a fight to the front.  God forbid you don’t have a reservation during prime travel time!  The reason for the crowding is that once all the reservations have been read through, the workers will allow others that are waiting to get on until the bus is full.  In an otherwise polite culture, the transportation system is one of the only lasting safe havens for assholes.

Regardless of what you may think, the system works.  It’s frustrating and seems to lack any system of rules or regulations, but in the end they’ll usually get you where you’re going – even if it takes all day.  There is a method to the madness!  But it is probably one of the most frustrating aspects of living here.

I could go on and on about travel here, but it seems a bit overwhelming to cover all the aspects in one entry.  What if I miss something!  I’ve also realized that, after living here for nearly 8 months, aspects of the culture and lifestyle that at one point would have seemed incredibly different or shocking or confusing have become normal.  So, as much as I love all of your encouraging comments (you can still send those!), I have a request: write to me about what you want to know!  What facets of the culture are you curious about?  Are there things you do at home that you wonder if and how they are done here?  Rumors or stories you’ve heard that you would like clarification on?  As much as this blog exists to tell my stories and experiences, it is equally here as an outlet for me to share this culture with all of you, so let me know what you want to hear about.  And thank you for all of your words of support and kindness – trust me, they are much appreciated.  Here’s looking forward to your ideas…cheers!

Yesterday (Saturday), I attended a funeral here and I thought I would share the experience with all of you:

I have a friend that I met at the dolo hut just beside my house (a large hangar where people sit around and socialize and drink locally-brewed millet beer, called dolo).  He’s older, probably somewhere in his 50s, but incredibly sprightly and energetic.  I always run into him at the Post Office – at this point I’m assuming he works there, because aside from receiving mail, packages, or money, I can’t exactly classify spending the day at the Post as truly that exciting – and he greets me by jumping out of his seat, shouting “MON AMI!” in a coarse, boyish voice, and slapping his hand roughly into mine for a vigorous handshake.  Obviously, I like the guy – he’s got a lot of spunk.

Last week when I made a trip to the Post, he was there, as usual, and informed me that both of his parents had died and they were holding the funeral this Saturday.  In fact, at first I didn’t understand what he had said because he seemed so jovial about it.  His house – which I had previously been invited to but had yet to visit – was supposedly just around the corner from mine, and later that week I gathered that the actual funeral mass was Saturday morning at 9 am, after which everyone would troop on over to the house for drinks, food, and generally an after-party.  Deciding that this would not only be a great cultural opportunity but also a chance to show my support for my neighbors, I resolved to go.

Saturday morning I got cleaned up, put on a nice dress, and made my way to the Catholic Church where I was told the mass would be held.  Cars and motos littered the lawn in front of the church, so I figured I was at the right place.  Most people seemed to be lingering just outside the church and, seeing as it was the first time I would ever set foot inside, I decided to follow suit, lest I unintentionally burst in on some personal family viewing or other intimate ceremony.  As the clock struck 9 am, people began crowding toward the church’s side doors, heads bowed solemnly and hands raised or clasped in reverence.  Seeing as this was a Catholic Church, I assumed what they began speaking next to be Hail Mary’s in local language, but since I don’t know how to say those in English, I just stood quietly and waited with them.  Getting nervous, I figured that since nobody here really speaks fluent English, if anyone stopped me from entering the church because they noticed I hadn’t said my Hail Mary’s I could just bow my head and recite whatever song lyrics or Arrested Development monologue struck me…luckily, it never came to that.

After the prayers we all entered the church and filed into pews.  I wanted a good view of the ceremony so I found a seat in one of the first sections.  As people began filling in the seats around me, I mentally remarked on the fact that an overwhelming amount of the churchgoers were male.  In fact, every single one of my neighbors was a man.  Suddenly, I flashed back to conversations I’d had with fellow trainees who had attended church in Saponé and their comments on how surprised they were to find that men and women sat on separate sides of the church.  Ahh, yes.  To confirm my suspicions, I sneaked a glance across the aisle and observed sections of pews overflowing with women.  Right, I figured, reaching down to grab my purse so that I could casually make my way over the women’s section, as if I had planned all along to sit there but just decided to take a break midway through my 10 second trek to pause for a breather and to turn off my cellphone.  However, just as I was rising from my seat, a very ancient looking man slid onto the other end of my pew, blocking my path.  It would be a tight squeeze, and a cruelty to make the man take to his feet again after finally reaching his destination, so, groaning under my breath, I slid back into my original place.  At least being awkward wasn’t a new experience for me.

The mass began and was given largely in Mooré, so I could only guess at what was being said most of the time.  There were several portraits lined up in the front of the church, I’m assuming of the man and woman who died, but other than that I saw no sign of the deceased; no coffins, no urns, not even the family member I knew.  We went through the motions of a normal mass, including taking the Sacrament and saying the Peace to each other, but when everyone exited after the hour and a half ceremony, I couldn’t find any indicators that it had actually been a funeral ceremony.  I stood on the lawn outside the church looking for someone – anyone – that I knew but, finding no one, I dejectedly trooped back to my own house.  I halfway wanted to follow the crowd of people heading from the church into the neighborhood, but the more convincing half of me strongly rejected the idea of finding myself crowding around two bodies (they had to be somewhere!) to mourn with a group of strangers who were all wondering why I was there.  I can do awkward, but I try to draw the line at inappropriate, and I really wasn’t sure if it was acceptable for me to wander into a funeral ceremony alone solely for the cultural experience.

I passed several frustrating hours at my house, trying to contact people who might be at the ceremony but coming up empty-handed.  Finally, on a last-ditch-effort phone call my counterpart picked up.  Shortly thereafter, she swung by my house and invited me to join her ensemble of friends and family who were heading over to pay their condolences.  We walked over and I realized how absolutely embarrassing, in retrospect, it would have been for me to say that I didn’t come by because I didn’t know where the house was.  We literally left my house, walked about twenty yards (passing the dolo hut on the way), the road led between two houses and as soon as we emerged we could see a large field filled with people and modes of transportation.  A few neighbors called me over to say hi as we walked, and then we greeted my friend from the Post, who was standing outside and talking to visitors.  He was absolutely ecstatic that I had come!  There are many occasions in Burkina where it is customary to present a gift, and this happened to be one of those circumstances, so I gave him a mille franc, which he thanked me for graciously.  Mille franc is not much, but it’s not meant to be a gift of a lump sum or anything like that – it’s just the thought behind the donation that matters.  We briefly rejoined the group in which we had arrived, who were busy greeting the elders; these members of the family and the community were sitting under a hangar on one side while visitors sat across from them and paid their respects, and those of us who could not fit under the hangar squatted or kneeled behind them.

Afterwards, we were invited by my friend to enter his family’s courtyard and view the tombs.  There was a short corridor through which we entered that opened into an average sized yard bordered by the family’s houses.  However, our eyes were immediately drawn to the center of yard, in which sat the reason for our visit: two enormous, beautiful tombs sat next to each other, made out of sparkling white porcelain tiles.  They had obviously been cleaned and tended to with care, as I’ve never seen that color exist in this country (a result of all the dust, for starters).  Both tombs had framed portraits of their inhabitants, and the father’s actually had a second picture on the other side of the tomb in which he glared into the camera with a cigarette butt hanging off his lip at such a brash angle he could have been the Burkinabé version of Bob Dylan or James Dean.

I was told to take a look around, so I reverently circled and admired the handiwork; the tombs were constructed by family members, and their intricacy led me to believe that these two people had been loved and respected.  There’s nothing to break a good reverie, though, like a camera in your face, so when I rounded the last corner and that’s what I found, I was a bit surprised.  If I had ever harbored aspirations of one day becoming a celebrity, my experience in Burkina has thus far firmly squashed those dreams.  Two girls pounced on me as I finished my tour of the tombs and attempted to capture me on film as a funeral-goer, so I invited each to take a picture with me – and unfortunately they still insisted on the ever-so-awkward photo of the white person alone, the allure of which I will never understand.

After viewing the tombs, we continued into a neighboring courtyard where we were served chicken, meat skewers, tô, and drinks.  As we ate, vultures hungrily prowled the yard and pecked just below our feet, gnawing on previously-ejected chicken bones, and neighborhood kids waited anxiously to receive our leftovers.  We socialized for a bit before saying our farewells and heading home.  All-in-all, it was a very joyous funeral with a beautiful homage to those who had passed.  In Burkina, funerals for old people that have died are generally happy occasions, celebrating the full life that was lived by the person.  If it had been a young person that had died, it would have been a much more mournful occasion; however, I like the idea of commemorating someone’s life and accomplishments.  Here, not everyone is lucky enough to live to an old age and raise a family that will care for them – and they know it – so for those who achieve that goal, there is much less to lament than to rejoice.

                Well all, it’s winter time here in Burkina, and as you all cozy up to your fireplaces and hot cocoa and spacious Snuggies, I would like to take a minute to describe for you my own winter wonderland – in the desert. 

                I’m going to begin my dissertation with an assumption (and that’s usually very taboo, I know, but generally more fun).  My assumption is: you think it doesn’t get cold here.  Ever.  Honestly, I can’t say that I blame you.  Seeing as I do live on the fringes of the Sahara desert, it would be logical to conclude (going off of whatever mathematical theory it is that states)

if a = b

and b = c

then a = c,

that

if my home = desert,

and desert = hot,

then my home = hot. 

And you would be right.  And now I’m about to blow your mind.  It gets COLD here.  Downright frigid, even.  The desert does this crazy thing where it jumps from one extreme temperature to another during the day.  During the heat of the day, noon to three pm-ish, it is scorching (as long as you’re in the sun, because it’s not very humid up here); the temperature is probably somewhere around 90s to 100s, but that’s just a guess.  Either way, you get the picture – I emerge from my courtyard and bike to class, showing up ten minutes later sweating profusely with other teachers asking me if I just worked out.  It remains fairly warm until late in the night (I’ve gone to bed at midnight or 1 am and still felt hot), and waits until you’ve just fallen into your first or second REM cycle, then…BAM!  Like some nighttime bandit, chilling winds sweep through and temperatures drop to the low 60s or high 50s.  It has been literally impossible for me to sleep through the night without waking up at 2 am or 3 am shivering, grabbing about in a frantic, sleep-induced haze for sweats and socks and some piece of fabric I can use as a blanket.  When I crawl out of my cave in the mornings shivering and cursing the wind, I do feel slightly ridiculous remembering that I live in Africa, but suddenly the Burkinabé biking around in ski hats and winter coats don’t seem so crazy.

                The wind is another element of wintertime/dry season here worth mentioning.  It gets incredibly windy here, and that means that the dust is constantly being blown into your mouth, eyes, nose.  I cleaned my house before leaving for In-Service Training, and when I returned 10 days later, my house looked like it had been abandoned for 10 years.  The wind we have here is a tricky little minx, too.  It likes to play with you.  I thoroughly sweep my house once a week, but unfortunately the only door to my house that I can sweep out of is exactly in the line of Wind’s favorite jogging track.  So, naturally, I manage to gather all the dust that has collected in my house into the hallway in preparation for its complete expulsion, and then suddenly a gust of wind comes chuckling through my doorway and sends me scurrying, trying to trap all of the dust I had just collected with a defective broom.  Most of it just gets all over me, and by the end of a cleaning session (or a normal day) I’m covered from head to foot like I was Mary Poppins’s chimney sweep.

                Biking is even more of an undertaking during the windy seasons.  To begin with, no matter which direction you bike in there is a headwind.  I feel a bit like a conspiracy theorist, but honestly, how is that possible?  You head out for a nice bike ride and the wind’s whipping you in the face, but you promise yourself that it will be an easier trek on the way back, and after literally turning around on the same road you’ve been on the whole way to start your return trip you realize that, in fact, the wind is just as strong the other way.  How?  The mystery remains.  But as much as the wind loves kicking up dust, so do cars and bush taxis, so everyone wears surgical masks when they take to the dusty roads (which is all of them, because there is only one paved road that goes through my city…and it’s still dusty).  It’s also impossible to see if you find yourself in the wake of a large bus, and I’ve often imagined how I must look to someone watching me slowly reappear from the dust storm that’s kicked up, careening from side to side on a very unmarked dirt road with my eyes barely open and wheezing like a 90 year old chain smoker.  But that’s not the worst of it.  Ever tried biking in a skirt?  Probably not.  Why would you?  Biking in a skirt is annoying at best on a good day, especially living in a conservative culture where flashing a stray knee could up the ogling quota on the way to work.  However, biking in a skirt with the wind and dust whipping around your two-wheeler is absolute hell.  Most of the fabrics here are stiff or heavy, but during the windy season you can see their advantage – I might as well wear my little cotton skirt as a bonnet on my afternoon commute.  As if I didn’t get enough attention on a daily basis simply from being white, picture me biking to class, one hand on the handlebars attempting to steer myself up and over hills and in between rocks and ditches, the other hand pinning my skirt to my seat in a desperate attempt to retain some of the dignity of a professor, all the while coughing and sneezing and veering and holding my breath as cars pass me by.  I’ve even had young men in trucks or policemen on motos pull up beside me and try to chat me up as I’m huffing and puffing my way up a hill that I can barely make out through the dusty haze; let’s be honest, that’s probably not a moment where I’m really on my best game. 

                So, in conclusion, it’s surprisingly cold and dusty here for the winter; we’re in the cold season now but supposedly February is the “dusty season,” so we’ll see what that’s like.  That’s the weather – I’ll try to make my next update about how people here celebrate the holidays!

This past week has been a mix of helping us get acclimated to our new surroundings and the beginnings of some basic Burkina survival training.  For instance, this morning we learned how to make a proper DNA slide for malaria testing while at our site by pricking our fingers and bleeding them out onto the glass slides.  Did you not learn how to do that for your job?  Odd.  Anyway, we also received our first series of shots earlier in the week and took our mountain bikes out for a quick jaunt to practice biking in Burkina (in case you think that biking dirt roads in West Africa is the same as biking dirt roads at home, it’s most certainly not; go out for a casual ride and then imagine that you are being repeatedly overtaken by swarms of crazed moped drivers while simultaneously dodging frantic livestock).  We have also had some opportunities to sample the local food which consists of rice with sauces, spaghetti and others I have yet to explore, and complete a language test.  The test consisted of sitting in an office opposite a French Language Coordinator and a voice recorder pointed menacingly towards its victim, keeping tabs on all of the awkward stumbling and long pauses, which was the case for most of us.  There are nine language levels: Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced, with each of those broken up by Low, Med, and High.  As Education volunteers, we need to pass our exams at the Intermediate-Med level to qualify as volunteers, which essentially means that we can hold basic conversations, which will help us learn more from neighbors at our sites.  I managed to test into Intermediate-Low, but my brief moment of jubilation faded once I experienced my first language class and spent most of it staring dumbly back at my language facilitator (LCF) or nodding my head and pretending I understood like everyone else in my group.  Luckily, the LCFs will be available for extra tutoring at the village I am heading to tomorrow, and it might behoove me to take advantage of that.

Speaking of my impending move, we were recently informed that there is no Internet in the village.  Literally, none.  Apparently there is a group that has been talking about setting up an internet café, but as of yet, nada.  We are not allowed to leave the training site during our months of training, which ends when we swear in September 22, so, yes, as you all may have deduced by now, I won’t be able to blog/email/reach any form of social media for the next three months, unless I luck out and that internet café becomes a reality REAL quickly (in my experience…that will NOT happen).  If there is the slightest chance I can find a way to connect to the Internet, I’ll write up a blog and upload it when I find a connection; if not, I’ll be keeping a journal, so when I do finally get a connection several months from now, I’ll be able to sift through all that’s gone on and write up the very best for all of you!

There’s so much that I want to write about, but it’s late here and I only just discovered how to charge my computer, so my time is limited.  I wanted to let you all know about the issues with finding Internet so that you don’t worry about why I have (as if this wasn’t the case since I got on the plane) ACTUALLY fallen off the face of the earth and can’t be reached; also, try checking in every once in a while, you never know when I might luck out and be able to upload something.  And last, while I would love to describe for you all more about my job description (it’s exciting for me because I just received that information today), I should say a few things about Burkina as well.  It is incredibly hot, dusty, and flat, which many of you probably predicted.  A beer or a soda may cost more than your meal, and crossing the road here is akin to playing real-life Frogger with you, a steady stream of bikers, the occasional bush taxi/car/bus, and a tidal wave of wide-eyed, reckless moped drivers.  Today, I actually watched a stray dog limp up, look both ways, and pull off a far better performance weaving across the road than I could hope to attain, so I suppose it’s good that we’re heading to a smaller village tomorrow. 

In Burkina the people are very friendly, although the language barrier is extremely frustrating for me right now.  However, many of the current volunteers in-country have come by to meet us, and even those who have only been at site for a year are fluent in French, many of whom started at Novice levels, and that definitely gives me hope.  And while I will be training to be a formal education volunteer, which means I will be teaching in a classroom, all of the education volunteers are required to focus on a host of other issues (ie. we each have to plant 625 trees per year) and can work on secondary projects in any field, be it because the community has identified it as a need, or it is an interest/passion of the volunteer.  Having heard our Country Director’s philosophy on development and direction in which she plans to take our program here in Burkina Faso, I feel incredibly excited about the work I will be doing and confident that our projects will be focused enough to leave an impact on Burkina after we are gone.  Information Technology sounds especially interesting, because currently it is not part of Burkina’s national education curriculum, but the Peace Corps has been pushing strongly for its integration, so we IT volunteers (there are only 4 of us in this group, or stage with a French pronunciation as we call it here) have the added challenge of figuring out how to weave our classes into the curriculum and draw attention to the need for IT education in all schools. 

Thank you all for reading and, as I said before, I will do my best to update and blog whenever I can, but if you don’t hear from me for some time, don’t worry – I’m just living off the map!

My name is Kelsey Mills and I’ve spent most of my life as a West Chester native, graduating from East High School in 2006 and proceeding to receive my bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University in central PA.  I applied to the Peace Corps in January of 2010, and after a year of impatient waiting I finally received an invite last February to serve as an Information Technology teacher in Burkina.  Obviously, I jumped at the opportunity, and now here I am, jotting down this blog post in a Philly hotel before spending the next day and a half traveling to a part of the world people most often view as being cloaked in mystery and darkness.

I will, assuming I complete the training phase, be gone for 27 months living in a culture most people know little about.  People have often asked me why I would do such a thing.  The goals of the Peace Corps, which was founded in 1961 by good ole JFK, center around helping people in places of need, teaching them about American culture, and learning about theirs from an American perspective.  While it can be an arduous, frustrating, and sometimes lonely process, PC volunteers combine American ingenuity and local thought processes to create and implement projects that are applicable and self-sustaining in the realities of a given culture.  Despite being quite a challenge, the Peace Corps prides itself on being “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” and the chance to interact with people from other cultures and to have the opportunity to positively impact their lives are alluring qualities that draw many Americans to PC service.

For me, serving in Burkina Faso offers a unique opportunity to return to a continent I’ve fallen in love with.  I briefly traveled around the southern parts of Africa in the summer of 2007, and then studied abroad in Ghana in the spring of 2009, each time vowing as I left to return to the red dirt of Africa.  While most people only know what they read in the news about conflict and bloodshed, to me Africa is a place of optimism, hope, and vibrant life that has the capacity to refresh your soul.

I’ve been preparing to leave for nearly four months now so, naturally, I found myself running madly throughout my house at 2 am the night before departure in desperate search of items that had mysteriously eluded my luggage.  But now I have made it here and, at least for the time being, I have the opportunity to learn about life from a variety of different perspectives and to view it from the Burkinabé (Burkina-bay) perspective.  Hopefully, I bring with me knowledge and skills that I can foster and develop during my time there in order to help my community with various needs.  Burkina Faso is one of the ten poorest countries in the world and has one of the lowest ranks on the Human Development Index.  However, the people of Burkina Faso are notoriously friendly, welcoming, and open, and I simply cannot wait to meet them and experience life as they do.  The point of this blog is both to catalogue my experiences and to pass on what I learn about the Burkinabé and their country to everyone that is interested.  While I may not be able to post again for some time because of the travel and several days/weeks it will take to settle into our site, I hope that you continue reading my blog during my service so that you can learn a bit about a part of the world many people have never heard of, but one that everyone should.  I promise to make it entertaining!

P.S. A quick note about the title of my blog.  For the past nine months, I’ve taken kickboxing lessons at Mr. Stuart’s Martial Arts in downtown West Chester.  From about the second time he met me, Mr. Stuart has called me Gidget, because he said I remind him of a character from the 1950s and 60s.  Personally, I thought a gidget sounded like a little robot, but he assured me it was a compliment.  Recently, after class one night, I got curious about the origins of my nickname, so I looked it up.  I began watching the original 1959 “Gidget” movie (based on the book) to get a feel for the character, and by 3 am I had stayed up and watched the whole thing.  Gidget was a teenage tomboy who wanted more to do with surfing than with boys; she was persistent, optimistic, and scrappy in her attempts to break into a male dominated pursuit, and her success made her one of the first empowered women during the time when that was only beginning to come into style.  I feel honored to have received such a nickname, and I hope that during times of hardship or frustration, I can channel the Gidge and keep up the fight.