Heat, Time Travel, and Foreign Language

First off, appologies for the sporatic nature of this blog. It’ not so much that little is happening as it is that internet is such a rarity. In Sabou—the town 13km from me, on the paved road—there’s a cyber café, with computers, a copier, electricity, etc. They put up a new sign (in addition to the old one), advertising INTERNET, PHOTO COPIER, COMPUTERS, so I thought maybe they finally got things hooked up. I made it out there to ask: Nope. They bought the sign advertising internet before buying the actual internet. Africa.

Today, we’ll talk about time travel. Not in the Wellsian sense, over billions of years. More in the Vonnegut sense, time within one person’s life, and it’s effect on outcomes… We’ll start about 17 months ago, when I first began my application to Peace Corps. I remember back then, in the cold Champaign winter, thinking, “Two Years? Easy! What’s two measly years in the grand scheme of things?” The error in this line of thought is, of course, it’s Wellsian nature. Sure, in the entire course of human history and future, one man’s two-year absence is pretty much nil. But what about that man’s history?

The four years of college seemed to go by rather quickly. Of course, retrospect accelerates those perceptions. There were certainly days that seemed to never end, distant final tests and papers whose approach reflected personal doom. During those four years of college, a lot certainly did happen. Many things whose importance I hardly realize—after all, I was there to witness them. They weren’t such a big deal.

Of course, I was wrong. A LOT can happen in two years: It only takes a day, for example, to get married. Some of my closest friends and relatives—the same age as me—are engaged! Some have already scheduled dates that seem far off, but are dates I’ll still be here, with only my imagination to illustrate what I’m missing. Others are having landmark birthdays. People are graduating, switching jobs, moving to new cities. Our first black president will be 75% finished with his term when I make my return.

So, selfishly, two years ain’t much. For me, it’ll be a few days I killed sweating and reading books. But I’m realizing that the place I’ll return to qt the end of 2011 won’t be the same as it was last June, when I left. Some of you will be married or living elsewhere. My gravest fear is that some won’t be around at all. A short trip home will be enough to give me a taste of how things have changed, but not enough to be much of a witness to them. While, overall, I don’t think I’ll regret my time here, there are a few things I’ll never forgive myself for missing. My apologies to those of you who hoped I’d be there. Know that your progressions perhaps mean more to me than to you, now that I know I’m missing them.

Well, how about an update? Teaching is going without problem. I can speak words in French, satisfy needs, discuss prices, but there’s a big old iceberg-like quality to a whole new language’s use. Many things—turns of phrase, colloquialisms, proper grammar—I am not learning here. It’s a foreign language for people here, too, and as long as it works for basic communication, there’s no need to be picky about it. Save existential thought for your natural language. I can barely understand Radio France International. Chances are; when I’m done here, I’ll be no more an expert on French language than I am on internal combustion engines. (I get the idea, but that’s about it.)

The school year is about 2/3rds finished. I’m really looking forward to the summer. I’ll get a chance to do a little traveling (let’s be honest; it’s the real reason I’m here), concentrate on language skills, and (maybe) work on some extra-curriculars. That little trip home will be awful nice, too. I hope you’ll be around! Thought, don’t peg me as a hypocrite: I’ll understand if you can’t be.Word is your winter’s extra long. Which really sucks because it’s looking like the hot season here will be uncharacteristically long: other volunteers say it’s never been this hot in February. Burkinabe say there wasn’t really much of a “cold” season this year… How unfair that my favorite season is extra long at home, snow still falling!

We’ll leave it there until next time. Gotta go chalk up my hands. (Sometimes, it does feel like gymnastics).

-Jon

New Year's!

Happy New Year, tout le monde. I’ve just returned from vacationing in Mali with a few other volunteers in my training class. We counted down to twenty-ten overlooking the desert from the top of the plateau in “Dogon Country”. We hiked between the villages where we stayed at night. Some were cozily situated at the base of the plateau. Some teetered on its edge. The ancient villages are built right into the plateau itself. In all cases, we slept on rooftops, on rather uncomfortable slabs of foam. Believe it or not, it got unpleasantly cold up there. Winter in Africa…

Posting a few pictures of the trip below, if bandwidth permits.

It certainly is strange to be abroad for the holidays. Volunteers are good at assembling themselves, though. So there was plenty going on. We cooked breakfast and dinner on Christmas. One of the higher-ups in the Peace Corps bureau donated a bunch of turkey and other goodies to our cause. Expatriation is pretty cushy work. Mom sent along the annual family end-of-year letter along with a few too many Christmas packages. It’s from this letter that I learned my family went skiing in Telluride after Christmas (they’re keeping things from me…).

It’s almost seven months in. That means four months of volunteer service are nearly complete. With the first trimester finished, things are feeling more natural, more normal, and I’m learning the plausibilities and possibilities of the various work (and play) I hope to do here.

Thyou likes to have me, there’s no doubt. My colleagues at the school are somewhat dismissive of my presence—uncomfortable getting involved in my work, more wary of what counsel I might have to add—though I do think they will warm up to me in time. I’ll need to extravert myself a tad more.

I’m a little nervous about the summer. During the school year, there’s hardly time to do more than lesson plan and teach. Yet, when summer comes around, I’ll have an empty schedule—I’ll have to do SOMEthing to work. Perhaps that’ll be helping other volunteers with their projects, or working in training. Probably a selfish amount of traveling. Anyways, that’s for later. Now I’ve got to gear up for the next trimester. I’ve got the routine down, so perhaps it’ll get easier. Maybe an extra-curricular project will materialize.

Not much more exciting on this end. Thanks to mom and dad for sending a spanking new laptop battery. With this sucker, I should have a decent amount of battery life to write out in the bush.

I haven’t made any official new years resolutions. I’m still working on last year’s! Hope everyone has a spectacular year. I should be making it home in June or July. Roll out them carpets.

A la prochaine.

Jon

Pics:


From the base


The Dogon hunted monkeys for practice in battle. They display the skulls to scare off enemies.


View from the top.

6 Months?

December 12th. I’ve been told it’s the second day of Channukah—somehow, it’s approach never even came to mind, given that even if it gets below 60 Fahrenheit in the morning, it’s still well over 85 by midday.

We made a makeshift menorah, using emptied beer and coke bottles. Christmas approaches, too. All the Christians in Thyou (that’s my village) are getting psyched up for it. My first trimester teaching here is almost over. Tests are done with, and I have to correct them, calculate grades (not so easy when lacking Excel), and continue teaching material to test on in January.

Planning a hiking trip in Mali for the break. You can count on pictures. It will be a nice vacation, and it’s the coolest time of year in the desert. Plus, it should all cost under 200 bucks: travel, lodging, food, etc. Not a bad deal. Other than this, there isn’t much that’s new. The exciting things in my life today involve all of YOU. Whether you’ve moved out of your parents’ house since I left, or you’re graduating soon, or you’re getting the kitchen cabinets redone, or you’ve recently gotten engaged… these are the things I’m thinking about on an average day after classes are out. There are a lot of changes happening on the home turf. Heck, a health care bill in the senate? Wow! I’ll tell you what health care is here:
“Don’t eat too many peanuts or you’ll get sick.”
“Don’t let a woman kill the chicken before you eat it or you’ll get sick.”
“Don’t take pictures during a storm because your camera attracts lighting. And if that doesn’t at least burn down your house and electrocute you, you could get sick.”

The other day, while rifling through my bookshelf for something or other, I happened upon the first little packet I received in the mail last April, inviting me to teach science in Burkina Faso. I highlighted the phrase “Your counterpart may help you hook a used car battery up to a fluorescent lamp to do work by at night,” because it sounded so foreign, so post-apocalyptic, so adventurous. Now, in retrospect, this little packet is more of a checklist: Hooked up the battery. I charge it with a solar panel every day. Taught photosynthesis to kids in French (at least a couple of them understood it). I wake up daily to the torturous sound of whining donkeys. There was a screaming goat under my seat on the three-hour bush taxi ride into the capital.

All these things are normal, though. Heck, expected. Unless it’s a particularly existential moment, I’m not stricken that my source of light is velcro-ed to a battery that runs it. The packet I got in the mail—the latter half of a year ago—didn’t lie, but everything in it is just normal happenstance now. What’ll be strangest is the things I have to reacclimatize to upon my return…

Well, my evenings are very free. It’d be sweet to get a call from you. If you don’t already have my number, talk to someone who does!

Alright, already

I'm on the other side of the planet, sunburning in August, lacking electricity, turkey, and internet, and people are STILL managing to make me feel guilty about the amount of time the blog's been left hanging.

Well, it's my first encounter with the cyberbeast that is the world wide web in a month. I've got 14 minutes left on my timecard to give you an update. It's Thanksgiving today. I celebrated last weekend with a few other volunteers. We substituted chicken (that's Poulet in french) for turkey (though, oddly enough, upon leaving saw two wild turkeys chatting it up), threw together some stuffing which included Peppers and for some reason reminded us of Pizza, mashed Potatoes, and two types of Pie. Pumpkin and Pudding. That's a lot of alliteration.

This weekend is the Muslim holiday Tabasky. I'm not entirely sure what goes down, though I've heard a lot of talk of a goat roast. Mmm-mmm. I suppose every locale has it's favored, traditional act of carnivorism. Thank god for it, too.

Teaching turns out to make time go by pretty quickly. I've got a busy Monday thru Wednesay, a nice relaxing one class on Thursday, and nada for Friday. As it's cooled off, finally (by which I mean high 70's--it's tolerable to be under the sun), I've been doing a lot of biking. Two weekends ago I visited Sapouy (google it) with another volunteer. Today I'm in Koudougou, to head back tomorrow and see what I can catch of the party. Goat leftovers anyone?

I'm thinking of you all back home this holiday! Eat a bunch of dessert for me, and tolerate a little american football.

Best wishes,

Jon

It's a day job. I just don't get nights off.

So I’ve come out to the capital again to do some work with our Burkina Peace Corps AIDS committee. We’re gearing up for World AIDS Day, and trying to encourage other volunteers to get motivated for side projects involving AIDS.

After our meetings, I solicited a fellow volunteer to cut my hair, as it’s been a few months since my shortest-ever buzz back in training. Today’s cut was a success, and it compliments nicely the beard I’m cultivating—possible only because it’s starting to cool off. We’ll see how long it lasts as it grows, and the hot season approaches.

Teaching is going well. A little bit of a rough start, but the students pay attention, seem to learn a thing or two, and can’t help but laugh at the non-verbal antics of their absurd, mad-scientist-looking Physics/Chemistry/Biology teacher. With lesson planning, I’m trying to think of new and creative ways to present the material to the students—not always effective with the heat, language issues, and jam-packed days.

But it feels just like your regular day job. I get up in the morning, make coffee, feed the dog, brush my teeth, grab the chalk and head for the classroom. I say hi to my boss (trying not to look like too much of a befuddled, wordless mute), shake hands with my colleagues, and think about what I’ll do for lunch. I look forward to the weekend, when I can sit in my hammock with a book, or perhaps visit another volunteer.

The trouble here is that all the while—waking up and going to work and writing lesson plans in my off hours—I need to be assessing the other needs in my community, trying to find ways that I can use my experience to improve things on a grass roots level. It’s sort of easy to just get up and go to work. It gets harder when I know I need to look for things out my door to improve upon, be creative about, take chances with. In any case, I feel like two years might go by pretty quickly. In a way that’s nice—I wont have to fight much boredom. On the other hand, non-education volunteers have more freedom when it comes to planning vacations, visits to other people, etc. But also more potential to really make a difference.

But, in case you were wondering, I’m quite alive. The care packages have all been wonderful (thanks to all), though it’s hard to take such volume back to my site! There are plenty of fresh veggies to get in my market, and with all my new imports, I think I’ll be able to last a good year or so on my SPAM and other canned goodies:

Pictures!

Pictures first, paragraphs later.

Caterpillar who fell from my tree (I found it, he ate it):


Some unwelcome roommates (he found them, I killed them):


The only welcome roommate:


A view of the courtyard:


Inside my house:


Tree (and hammock) in my courtyard:


Soccer field outside my house:


A class at model school (can you find me?):


With the host parents in Ouahigouya:



Life in Thyou, Burkina Faso, West Africa—you wonder—is like what? Well, it’s 3:45 in the morning. I’m in that country’s capital (Ouagadougou), at the volunteer house for my first visit as a tried-and-true volunteer. I’ve almost forgotten how to work this keyboard. I felt a vague, childish sense of discovery upon entering the bathroom and observing the strange, metal contraption from which water effortlessly falls to aid in my cleanliness. I saw my whole torso in the mirror (month-long beard and all), and said to the man inside, “You should probably change your underwear today.” It’s in the re-exposure to these conveniences that I notice the differences…

But, life ain’t bad in Thyou. For a month now, I’ve been doing essentially nothing but trying to meet some people, find some balance, stay positive, and pressure my school’s director into giving me something to prepare my courses with. I’ve taught the new dog a few tricks, had a few good conversations on the phone with those of you generous (and wealthy) enough to call, and figured out that if I don’t buy all my vegetables from the same lady at market, everybody competes for my business—donating extra onions, tomatoes, eggplants, or hot peppers to my cause.

There were certainly a few days of unrest. A few days of sickness. A day or two that I read, and re-read the symptoms and manifestations of malaria, thermometer in mouth. But with the first month over with, it’s feeling like this wont be so bad. I can live this way for a year or two. The occasional care package certainly helps. Last week, somebody from the Peace Corps was passing by my house in a jeep, so brought me SIX large boxes with my name on them, literally. After tearing into them, I was able to cook up a phenomenal tuna, tomato, onion and hot pepper pasta. Safe to say I’m eating just fine.

The problem now is, I’ve been on vacation—not that getting to know a place so removed from my own culture is an easy task, but I haven’t been given any due dates. School starts next week. That means I now have lessons to plan, more names to learn, technical french to understand. After a month, I finally feel calm, controlled, comfortable, and now it will change all over again. Much work to be done. And while a little work is a good thing, it doesn’t come without it stresses.

For now, I’m enjoying the few days in the capital, stuffing the gut on comfort foods, and taking a few cleansing showers—essentially gearing up to go back into hibernation. There is a town with an internet cafe and electricity 13 km from me. The man working there said the internet will be up and running in November. In Africa, a promise like this means close to nothing, but let’s hope he’s right! In the meantime, I’ll need to come out to the capital at least once more before November for professional reasons. So this just might work out…

Wish me luck in the coming school year. Miss you all very much. Thyou, while lovely, is a little lonely as an American. We’ll chat again soon.

-Jon

At site

Today marks one week and two days at my site, though by the time I manage to get to an internet café—and by the time you read this post—it’s probably well past today’s date. Nonetheless, I’m writing today (on the remaining moments of my laptop’s miniscule battery life) because, for one I’m a little bored, and for two I hope to chronicle my initial reactions as I start getting settled.

So the first week has come and gone. Upon my arrival in the big, fancy, one-way-ticket Peace Corps jeep, a tribe of children showed up to watch me unload my things. One boy, who I met two months ago, when visiting my site, informed me that the next day was “market day”. There is a market in my town once every three days. So, after my first rather restless night, I woke up and headed down the dirt path running by my new (for me at least) house. I wasn’t sure exactly where the market was, but I followed the people walking by, assuming they were headed for the same place.

Upon arrival at the market, I was hugely overwhelmed. It was much, much larger than I was expecting, packed with people. And to make things worse, all eyes were on me—the obviously clueless sore thumb. I tried to keep a low profile (impossible), tried to navigate the pathways (senseless), and narrowed my priorities down to simply finding a few vegetables for my chili recipe and getting the heck out of there. Lucky for me, I ran into the boy from the day before, who showed me the way, and translated prices for me from Moore to French.

I of course realized the strangeness of what was going on at the time. Dropped in a small town in the middle of Western Africa, my only acquaintance this eager-to-know-me-for-reasons-I’m-unsure-of youth, I tried to take things in stride. I bought a few tomatoes, onions and hot peppers, and split. Thankfully, the volunteer I replaced has left me a gas stove and a few pots and pans, and I had bought a few canned goods when I was still in Ouagadougou (the capital). I cooked up what I considered a rather phenomenal meal and started feeling comfortable.

My house is pretty nice. There is a wall with a gate surrounding it, which leaves me with a nice big courtyard and a big old tree from which a hammock hangs (thanks to the previous volunteer), for those African-afternoon-heat naps. I took pictures. When I get this entry posted, I’ll try to post the pics as well (though as you can imagine, uploading times here are not optimal).

So, it’s been a week. A few days ago, I hopped on my bike early in the morning and visited another volunteer from my training group. The village this volunteer lives in is even smaller than mine. While there, I didn’t meet a soul who spoke French. We hung out, made french toast, and spoke lots and lots of much-needed English. It’s good to know we’re having some of the same adjustment issues.

Today was the first day since getting to my site that I woke up feeling legitimately homesick. I felt this feeling during training a little bit, but we were so busy that there was hardly time to think about it. Now, after waking up, brushing my teeth, and putting water on the stove for some instant coffee, I suddenly realize that I have to find something to do today. I’ve already finished two books in the week that I’ve been here, and at this rate, I’m going to run out of material pretty quick. All this time sitting around, of course, makes me face West and wonder what YOU are up to. (So send letters…)

Today, I also bought a car battery to power the fluorescent light I will use to write lesson plans and grade papers.

There are three minutes left on my laptop battery, and I hate being pressed for time when writing. I miss you all very much. I took up four pages in my journal just describing people I want to hang out with (you—dear reader—are one of them), things I want to do, and time I’d like to waste back home. See you all before you know it.

News from week 2: I got a dog to keep me company. Not much else going on. Pictures posted below...

Jon

My house:

My dog (he figured out pretty quickly how to get on my good side):