Demyst

Over Halloween weekend, all of us stagiers (as they call us in French) went on demyst visits. Kind of a weird name, but it's just a demystification of what a PCV actually does. We spent a day in Ouaga all together, then split up into smaller groups. I traveled with Puja, Kate and our LCF/language teacher, Konfe to Banzon, a village in the SW of Burkina. As luck would have it, this also happened to be the farthest away site visit.

The bush taxi experience

We had a long journey ahead of us, and had to get up quite early to catch our 7 am bus.

-Bus from Ouaga, the capital, to Bobo, a regional capital: 5.5 hours

-Bush taxi from Bobo to Banzon: 2 hours

The bus from Ouaga to Bobo was similar to any coach bus in the US. Air conditioning, tv playing interesting music videos, etc. The interesting part of traveling was the bush taxi. These are basically van/truck/trolleys for transporting livestock, people, and all their belongings to smaller villages that larger buses don't go past. Actually, maybe a better description would be a very large jeep. There are probably around 6 rows of about 5 seats across, but they manage to fit many more than 30 people in one bush taxi. There are generally also a few guys who ride on top of the taxi. The combination of open air windows and dirt roads meant that by the time we reached Banzon, everything was covered by a noticeable layer of red dust. Pretty sure I still haven't been able to get it completely off my backpack. Needless to say, it was quite an experience. There weren't any cows or goats on our taxi taking up space and being loud, but I'm sure we won't be as lucky next time.

Keith the PCV

We visited one of the new SED PCVs, Keith. He's from the group that came to Burkina in June and swore-in in August, so he's only been at site for about 2 months. This means that he's still in the etude de milieu (might not be the right spelling) stage. For the first 3 months at site, you're supposed to spend time getting to know people in your community and not really doing any projects. This allows you to integrate into your village better and assess the needs of the community so that you can do projects that people want and support. It seemed like Keith was pretty integrated already, and knew a lot of people throughout Banzon. He has also adopted some Burkinabe mannerisms, lol.

Each PCV has a local counterpart, who they work with as their primary project. Keith is working with a local development agency, and we met with some of the leaders of the association briefly in an informal meeting. PC also gives organizations a max of 6 years of volunteers, which I didn't know before, and Keith is the 3^rd and last volunteer to work with this group, at least for a while. It seemed like they really appreciated having a PCV to work with, and were very welcoming and supportive of PC in general. One of the guys in his association owns a banana farm and gave us a huge box of bananas and papayas.

Another activity we did during demyst was soap making. One thing that SED volunteers focus on developing is Income Generating Activities (IGAs). A way to do this is to teach specific skills to others that will allow them to create a product and sell it. Soap making is a pretty popular IGA here because it combines business and health. You can teach about proper hygiene while teaching a group of women to make soap, and also provide them with a way to get some income for themselves. Often, men are the ones who work, so women rely on their husbands to give them spending money. However, with IGAs, women get the opportunity to profit on their own and get a bit of financial independence. Keith's host sister had expressed interest in selling bottled liquid soap at the market, so we got instructions and soap making materials provided by PC, and ended up learning how to make soap that weekend! Keith's host mom and brother helped out. We made probably about 16 liters of liquid soap, and put that into used and cleaned soda bottles for his sister to sell. That's another thing about Burkina—everything is reused. Soda or water bottles are used to hold soap or homemade drinks. Food is generally finished and little of it is wasted. Keith said his host family often finds uses for things he throws out as trash. Every little thing is very precious and saved.

A Jack-O-Lantern watermelon

Our demyst fell over Halloween, and we decided to try to celebrate it, with a few adjustments. We actually did find squash or pumpkin that we could have carved, but it was easier to get a watermelon, and tastier too, in my opinion. Kate cleaned out the inside of the watermelon, Puja designed the face, and I carved it out. During the cleaning, we accidentally got a large crack in the watermelon, and thus decided to go with a two-faced theme, and you'll hopefully be able to see in the pictures, if they upload correctly. And then, since I can't let good watermelon go to waste, I ended up eating about half of it, since everyone else was full and didn't want any more. So tasty! And now I'm ready for any future watermelon eating contests. Our finished result was named “Fato”, which means “crazy” in Jula, one of the local languages in Banzon. Pretty fitting name. Keith's host family got a kick out of what we silly Americans were doing. They seemed to like Fato, and laughed hysterically at it. I had brought along some candy, and we tried to teach Keith's young host brothers to say “trick or treat” for a piece of candy, but not quite sure if they really got it. It was a fun time though, and during dinner, we put a candle in Fato, and he lit up our meal.

And speaking of meals, we had such good food in Banzon! Keith really enjoys cooking, and he made things like curry, spaghetti with homemade marinara, and fried eggplant for us. I think we all enjoyed the change from the usual Burkinabe rice and sauce dish that we eat. His house doesn't have electricity, but he bought a car battery and solar panel and thus gets enough power to recharge his phone and power a light that makes cooking way easier. It gets dark around 6/6:30 pm here, so to be able to do anything after then, you need a light. And cooking, with the whole fire and boiling water thing, is something you want to be able to see.