Sleepovers

The bedroom hut is on the left and kitchen hut is on the right

I don’t know the last time you had a sleepover but I’m betting that you and I didn’t have the same checklists when I packed my bags to go spend a week with my friend Christy. As I sit in my air-conditioned, electrified apartment complete with running water, refrigerator and oven range it’s crazy to me that just a two-hour drive away I spent the past week in an honest-to-goodness thatch-roofed hut in a village (Silmidougou, pop. 2500) with no running water, no electricity and no reseau/cell coverage (actually the more common of the three).

Christy's kitchen hut

Before my trip I had to consider things like the availability of food, water and toilet paper. I packed some just-add-water meals we could eat for dinner, peanut butter, eggs, apples and of course toilet paper (none of the above available there). During the two market (as in farmer’s market) days I was there I only saw one man selling a negligible amount of tomatoes and onions and several women selling mangoes, and that was the extent of produce available. There was no shortage of meat though with men selling various pieces of pork, sheep and beef. I did find it bizarre that Christy seems to live in the only village in all of the country where peanut butter is not available for purchase. Instead, the boutique in Silmidougou sells peanut powder which Christy often mixes with powdered milk and eats by the spoonful. Ew.

We drank tea every night at the clinic with the staff/friends

So the real reason for my visit was a recon mission for TINGO to try and to uncover some of the reasons why our market gardening project-slash-irrigated site in Silmidougou has not exactly inspired a frenzy of market gardening like we had hoped. Christy lives in the village with our project participants so the idea was that I would go on “vacation” to visit her. I also decided to do a couple of soap trainings (liquid soap and shea soap) while I was there since we (TINGO) have received requests from women saying their lives would be better if only they knew how to make soap.

molding soap balls
the finished product...lavender-smelling soap balls
liquid soap training

The week pretty much went off without a hitch. It rained Monday night so we were forced to sleep inside which was fine and dandy as long as it was raining and breezy outside, but as soon as the rain stopped the heat and humidity were suffocating. We both woke up the next morning worse for the wear, but we pulled ourselves together and shoved off to begin our shea (as in shea butter) soap training. We had a great turnout with about 30 women and even one guy. That night we squished onto Christy’s twin size mattress in her mosquito tent and slept outside. Wednesday we did part one of the liquid soap training. Then on Thursday we moved on to part two which also included an explanation of how to use the liquid soap. Woops. I guess that is information we should have taken into account before training the village on how to make the stuff. Amid all of the soap-making and a funeral for the death of a village elder my recon mission sort of went by the wayside as I never found myself in a position to get information of any real value. At the very least the soap trainings were no doubt perceived as a goodwill gesture on the part of the villagers and hopefully will help generate income for some of them.

This picture was taken in the prenatal unit of the clinic by

Christy on a different day...I guess they want to have their babies there too

On my last day in village while I waited for the TINGO car to pick me up I was sitting at the CSPS (local health clinic where Christy works) with half a dozen pregnant women awaiting their prenatal consultations when a chicken casually sauntered in. No one batted so much as an eyelash. When women got up to walk outside I was sure she would shoo the chicken out, but she just casually walked on by minding her own business while the hen minded hers. It was a classic “only in Burkina” moment and it made me smile.

Angry black man in Africa

I was more impassioned when the incident originally happened weeks ago, but I’ll do my best to bring some of that fire back for all of you now that I’m finally sitting down to write this. The latest going on here when I first started writing was FESPACO (Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou). It’s the Cannes of Africa if you will, and there were tourists, mostly white people, EVERYWHERE!

That brings me to the point and more sensitive topic of this entry; race. And honestly, since I read The Onion interview with the author of Stuff White People Like, Christian Lander, I realize that it’s actually more of a discussion about class. Unfortunately, in America, classes often correspond to colors. Lander described in his interview that his popular book and website are less about white people specifically than stuff an upper-middle-class-who-just-happen-to-be-mostly-white like. Anyway, for all of my friends white, black and in-between, let this be a catalyst for starting an open discussion about race and color in the US. If we never have the uncomfortable talks, nothing will ever change.

So here’s the story. During FESPACO I did my best to get around and see as many movies as possible. One day in particular I popped in to watch a South African tv series submission entitled “When We Were Black” with two other PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) friends. Before the theatre was even close to full and the show started we began talking amongst ourselves. The newer volunteer began asking for directions somewhere in Ouaga. The discussion went something like this:

PCV 1: Do you know how to get to .
PCV 2: Yes, you go . When you get close you can always ask a Burkinabe….or actually that might not do you any good because even if they don’t know they’ll point you in some direction.
PCV 1: Yeah. Like, “Where does here?” and a Burkinabe will point you in some direction.
Erica: ha ha ha. Yeah. I mean, you could even ask where Albus Dumbledore lives and they would know.

At this point in the conversation the black man sitting behinds us chimes in in perfect American English:

ABM: Really?
Erica: Yes
ABM: Really?!
Erica: Yes really. I should know. I’ve lived here long enough.
ABM: I’m sure you have.

PCV 1 then tries to lighten the mood and engage the man in a conversation about FESPACO by asking if he was in town just for the festival or if he had submitted an entry. The man completely ignored him, got up and moved to a different seat three rows in front of us. As you can imagine, there was a lot of tension in the air. I can’t speak for the man, but I am sure he must have been as impassioned as we were.

What the hell did we do that made this man so mad, and what business or right did he have to interrupt our conversation just to be mean? Of course the thoughts in my mind jumped immediately to race. This man thinks I am insulting Africans because I am white, and since he is black he feels that he has that right. Nevermind the fact that he was a tourist visiting a country I call home, and probably speaks zero French let alone local language. For him, color was his privilege here….or so he thinks.

I want to be wrong in that thinking, but his friends did little to make me believe that possible. During the second or third episode, the main character and his wife went to visit white Johannesburg (the show is set during Apartheid). During the scene, they were pulled over by white police demanding paperwork permitting the couple to be in the city. The police then demanded the man get out of the car and dance like a baboon or be taken to jail. Of course the South African man, humiliated, obliged and danced around and made noises like a monkey. The police laughed, and then let the husband and wife go on their way with the looming threat and warning that they were the ones in power.

To say the scene was difficult to watch is an understatement. As I sat there frustrated and angry by a re-enactment of something that most definitely happened, I became ashamed of being something I didn’t choose and can’t change. After the incident, the rest of the episode revolved around the man as he spiraled into a drunken depression. At one point two of his teenage children were talking between each other and one said, “I hate white people.” The other responded, “Me too.” Then out of the audience a couple of not discreet “me too’s” from the black American tourists. Ouch.

As of right now I have started and stopped writing this entry several times. Like I said before, the whole incident was really close to my heart when I first started writing. Here and now over a month later some of the sting is gone and I’ve had more time to reflect, but I still have no answers or profound explanation for what happened. All I can really say for sure is that ignorant people, white, black and in-between, are everywhere. I can only control what I do and say, and I intend to do both with love and understanding. I forgive that man and his friends, and I will pray sincerely that they find some of that same love and understanding in their hearts.

And just a quick follow-up for those of you curious about our dialogue regarding Burkinabe and directions: In this culture, people are so eager to help and afraid to disappoint that the word “no” is almost non-existent. No matter what you ask someone they will almost always answer “yes” whether it’s to run a marathon tomorrow at 5am or if they know directions to a place they’ve never heard of.

Trouble with Air France

From Solenzo

I wouldn't normally do this, but as a last resort I am going to tell you my Air France story here in the hope that someone at Air France will see it and do something to help.

You see, dog kennels don't exist here in Burkina Faso.....anywhere. In fact, dog food is even hard to come by. There are a few grocery stores that import it and charge a fortune. Cooper gets by on street food (rice with sauce, the local specialty to, meat when he's really lucky and leftover bones from whatever I eat).

From Banzon, Banfora, PST and Solenzo

When I originally decided to adopt the African puppy it was for keeps. And after spending the last two years together I am determined to bring my best friend home with me. So while I was stateside in December for the holidays I dipped into my relocation allowance (money we accrue during our service with Peace Corps to help us "readjust" once we move back to the states). The only problem is that Cooper is big, hence the kennel was big.

Anticipating extra costs at the airport I contacted Air France before my return trip back to Burkina. I explained my situation as a volunteer living in Burkina, my inability to procure a kennel in my country of service, yadda yadda yadda. The people at Air France would hear none of it and were only concerned with the dimensions....which I couldn't exactly give them because I took the kennel apart and put the top upside down into the bottom so it was concave. Based on the length, width and height they quoted me at $450, but said the supervisor at the airport would have the final say.

Unfortunately Detroit Metro is over an hour drive from my parents' house and I couldn't exactly stop on by to have someone look at the kennel before the day of my flight. So the day of Bruce, Robin and I loaded the car up and decided to take our chances. Of course we arrived a couple of hours before departure time, but then we had to wait over an hour to check-in. When the supervisor on duty finally came over she had just finished a heated argument with someone else. I knew my answer before she even said "hello."

It turns out that the nice people at Air France customer service were kind enough to forward a telex of my conversation, and this supervisor woman already had all of the information. She took one look at me and the kennel and said, "I have the telex. They told you $450. We are getting ready to close the flight and I can't deal with this right now." Nothing like customer care. At this point I start to fall apart because all I could think about is how I'm going to have to leave Cooper behind.

From More Solenzo & 2nd year IST pics

After I nearly started crying while waiting for the next available representative to check me in, the supervisor must have begun to feel bad. She yelled from two counters over, "They told you $450." So I yelled back, "I'm a volunteer and I can't afford it." As I proceeded to check in the lady helping me asked how many bags. I intentionally only brought one (even though I left a lot of stuff behind) so that I could check the kennel as the second. At this point the lady said something to the supervisor who then came over and said, "I can't do two things for you. I can only do one." Huh? This left me in a total state of confusion. The long and short of it is that Air France at some point had bumped me up to business class but never informed me. The supervisor instructed the check-in lady to bump me back down to coach and let me check the kennel. WOO HOO! Cooper will live. I yelled, "Thank you. You're saving my dog," back down across the two counters.

I proceeded to push-run the luggage cart with oversized kennel down to the oversized luggage check. I hurried through security and then down the length of the McNamara terminal and onto my plane. Life was good. Cooper would make his way to America.....or so I thought.

When I arrived in Burkina, my checked luggage came out on the poor excuse for a conveyor belt at the airport in Ouagadougou, but the kennel never showed. I wasn't alone in missing luggage. The baggage claim counter was filled with people in line trying to file lost baggage claims. After waiting for 45 minutes I was the last person in line to give details of the missing kennel. Unlike in America though, these details were all written down on paper with a pen as opposed to being entered into a computer system. The Burkinabe Air France baggage people gave me a bogus file number and two contact numbers and sent me on my way.

From Banzon, Banfora, PST and Solenzo

In the days that followed I went back to the airport not once, not twice, not even three, but four times not to find the kennel. Dozens of phone calls on separate occassions led me nowhere. Desperate I filled out some form I found online and mailed it to Air France in Paris. Nothing. Just yesterday I finally wisened up and decided to contact Air France baggage help in the states via Skype.

So far the people have been helpful, but I am not hopeful. They typed the luggage tag number into a computer which pulled up my name. By some miracle I was already in the system (maybe all of those handwritten papers actually went somewhere). The Air France baggage people have since sent telexes to Detroit, Paris and Ouaga in search of the missing article, but it has been over a month and the woman I spoke with today advised me to contact customer relations for a reimbursement.

From Solenzo

At this point a reimbursement really means nothing. I still have no way of getting a kennel to bring my beloved Cooper home. Sorry to have bored you with my kennel troubles, but I truly hope someone over there at Air France reads this and realizes what I really need is the kennel I originally checked over a month ago to arrive here in Burkina. Money for the kennel will do me no good in a country where kennels don't exist.

Always wash your hands before you eat

Market gardening project farmers

Or use hand sanitizer. I did neither last week after shaking hands with several farmers out in the fields at our market gardening site in Silmidougou. It was after 3:00, I hadn't eaten lunch and I was starving, but we were in the car on our way back to Ouaga and I didn't have any running water, soap or even hand sanitizer at my disposal. I rationalized that I would lessen my chances of getting sick by eating with my left hand (considered the dirty one) because I had done all of the shaking with my right. Afterall, it was only crackers and cheese. It turns out that was poor logic and a bad gamble as I came down with a cold that sucked the life out of me Saturday night, Sunday, Monday and yesterday. I am back at the office today coughing up a storm, but at least I have some energy back. Between Cooper being sick throwing up everywhere for the past month and a half and me with this cold, my apartment is a less than inviting place to visit. Although you wouldn't know that judging by the revolving door of guests I've had coming in and out.

Farmer I interviewed for my project SWOT analysis


Luisa and I taking notes from the interview

You see, my place has become a kind of crashpad for both Burkina and non-Burkina PCVs alike. Burkina volunteers come in from the villages and call me when the hostel's full. Then, back in November during my trip to Ghana I had the good fortune of meeting quite a few Ghana PCVs. Four of whom had recently finished their service, did not speak French and planned to pass through Burkina en route to Mali. I offered to help them make their way through Burkina, and so the five us made the trip back to Ouaga together where they stayed at my place for a couple of days. Two weeks later a couple of more non-French speaking Ghana PCVs passing through Burkina stayed over.

Last week I received a call from a PCV from Mauritania who someone had given my number to. He and three others were in Bobo on their way up to Ouaga. Without knowing them I didn't hesitate to offer them a place to stay. That's just the kind of the bond we have as fellow Peace Corps volunteers. You can pretty much bet that any PCV is at least a halfway decent human being....and not crazy (since we're screened for that). Anyway, the four showed up after their five straight days of travel, and I picked them up from the bus station and took them straight to dinner at a restaurant where some of my fellow Burkina PCVs and two RPCVs from other countries awaited our arrival. Between the eight of us we represented PCVs that had worked in four different countries all over Africa. The dinner conversation spent talking about our individual experiences was just delightful (is that an old person word?). The next day I was village-bound for work, but I offered for the Mauritania PCVs to go ahead and continue staying at my place which they did. Then I received a text message asking where I was from in Michigan. One of the PCVs recognized the pictures of downtown Oxford I have hanging up in my apartment, and it turns out she lived there too. Oxford people, former gravel pit capital of the world boasting a population of less than 20,000 people, and here we have two wildcats that just happened to meet on the other side of the planet in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

That's not all. This past weekend my friend Byron who has been working (not as a PCV) in Ghana stopped in Ouaga on his moto trip to Senegal with his Norwegian friend Jostein. Saturday night we went to the French Cultural Center to see a modern/African dance exhibition. While we were sitting there the man behind us began talking to Jostein. Of all the people, in all the places, it was his uncle who currently lives in the US! The two hadn't seen each other in over two years proving once again, that it is a very small world on which we live.

Farmers and marketing

Justin training our partner staff at organization Tin Tua

I have spent the past three months learning how TINGO's agriculture department operates, and trying to understand how I might help with their agricultural marketing. Anymore I'm not so sure I have any help to offer.

The very nature of a Burkinabe who becomes a farmer (poor and un-educated with no other options) is in direct conflict with TINGO's strategy for capacity building (teaching farmers business skills like marketing in the hope that they will be incensed with the entrepreneurial spirit). It's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Take me for example. I am a marketing person. I work in marketing because it's what I like and what I know. It would serve no one at all to teach me about something like accounting because I am just plain not interested. Sure I am capable of understanding it and it could be financially beneficial to me, but it's not something I ultimately want to invest my time on because up to this point I've gotten by just fine without it. I would much rather pay someone or ask my dad to handle those affairs.

Tin Tua trainers practicing a skit

The marketing/business training modules carried out by us here at TINGO seem to force feed farmers without soliciting their input. Last week Justin managed to condense a four years worth of marketing concepts into 2 days to train the Tin Tua training staff so that they can in turn train sesame and cowpea farmers how to market sesame and cowpeas.

George training the sesame & cowpea farmers

Each trainer is responsible for seven villages around the province of Gnagna. On Thursday we accompanied all five trainers into a village to observe them execute a sensibilisation (Peace Corps word that kind of means training).As usual the sensibilisation with over 20 farmers took place under a big, shady tree in the middle of a field- complete with donkeys braying and other animals wandering nearby. The trainers did the sensibilisation in a local language called Gourmanche. I understood nothing, but I did observe that all but one of the farmers stayed awake and actively engaged in the presentation- no easy feat when the temperature is in the 90's. And while everything from the training of the trainers to the actual training itself went flawlessly, I'm not sure about the overall strategy. Unfortunately we won't have any insight on the effectiveness of the sensibilisation until the farmers have had a couple of years and harvests to apply the techniques (i.e., strategically price fixing). So at this point I need to see what I can learn from our partner organizations and farmers who received the same training back in 2005. MaeMouna translating Gourmanche to French during the farmer training

From Africa to America

You heard it here first. Remember when I told you to keep your eyes peeled for Moringa? Well it has finally made it's way into products at The Body Shop. http://www.thebodyshop.com.sg/Moringa.html

Read more about Moringa here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moringa_oleifera

This is great news. Hopefully The Body Shop inspires others to begin using Moringa in their products. If Moringa blows up like shea butter did then it has the potential to make a huge impact on the condition of the lives of the people here.

And sorry I've neglected to write. I was in Ghana last week. It was my first experience traveling alone to another country, and I have to say that I found the experience more interesting than the other times I've traveled. I am out of the office again this week. Justin and I are leaving to do a marketing training session with field agents in Bogande. I promise to write when I get back.

Burkina for Obama

What do you know about Burkina? What do you know about its president? Not much? Don't feel bad. I couldn't have found Burkina on a map before Peace Corps sent me here. Maybe you'll find it interesting to know how much the people of this relatively unknown country know about the US. My co-workers here at TINGO in the capital have been talking about Obama since I arrived here at the beginning of September, but they are some of the more-educated people in the country. What I have found more interesting is when I have come across people who barely speak French asking me about the election (i.e., a taxi driver upon discovering that I am American).

When I walked into work this morning after a night of intense GMAT studying it was my Burkinabe colleague who informed me that Obama had won. He was up at 4am listening to his radio to hear the results, and he could not believe that he knew before I did. All day long I have received "felicitations" from my Burkinabe counterparts for Barack's win. Everyone is truly in awe at the democracy that is the US and the possibilities that a free and true democracy can create. In a sense so am I. And today I am happy to say that I am very proud to be an American.