A daily "work" schedule

I've been at site for about 1.5 months now!I guess the time really does fly by here, as older volunteers have told us. This is a job that generally doesn't come with a lot of structure, so you have to make your own routine.  I've kind of settled into a basic schedule for each day now:

7 am: Wake up, heat up water for a bucket bath (though it'll soon be hot season so heating up water won't be necessary!), take my bucket bath and have some breakfast.

8:30 am: Leave the house and make my usual rounds in the village. This includes greeting various people in one of 4 languages (French, Moore, Gulmancema, Hausa). The salutations generally go something like this:

“Duan guam!” - Good morning, or literally, 'How did your bed sleep?' in Gulmancema

“Laafia” - It's going well, literally 'Health'

“A tuona te?” - And your work?

“Laafia”

“A dempo te?” - And your family?

“Laafia”

“A bila te?” - And your children?

“Laafia”

“Tu wari te?” - And the cold? Here, 60 degree weather means time to bust out the winter jacket.

“Laafia”

“Ka lam pugani!” - See you later!

“Too!” - Ok! Pronounced “toe”

And generally I'll causer, or chat, with various people during my morning walk. I even had a routine set up for some days! Mondays, I go help peel and cut veggies at a restaurant near my house, then go to the CSPS, a health clinic, and help out with the baby weighings. The CSPS tracks the weight of babies and their mothers, and gives special formula to the babies who are malnourished. Wednesdays, I go watch trials at the Ministry of Justice. Granted, I usually can't understand what's going on, but it's interesting nonetheless.

12 pm: Lunchtime! Depending on the day, I'll go home and eat leftovers from the last night's dinner, or go to a restaurant in town.

1 pm: Siesta time. Most offices are closed from 12:30 – 3 pm for the repos, or rest period. It's too bad this idea hasn't caught on in the US yet. If I'm really tired, I'll nap, but otherwise I'll read, clean a bit, or just enjoy some quiet time in my house.

3 pm: Round 2 of walking throughout the community. The area where I live conveniently lends itself to literally walking in circles. In the morning, I generally make one loop through all the shops to greet people and chat, and then make another loop (sometimes mixing it up and going in the opposite direction) in the afternoon.

5/5:30 pm: I end my tour of the village each night as a yogurt/juice stand. One of my friends owns the stand, and another makes ciceena, small fried cakes made with bean flour, and fried patates, sweet potatoes that aren't too sweet. I'll usually have a few snacks there before heading home.

6:30 pm: Arrive home. I generally chill for a bit, or chat with my neighbor, before starting dinner. In a combination of laziness and foresight, I try to go to the market 2 times a week to get the veggies I'll need for the week's meals.

9 pm: I've agreed to teach my neighbor to read and write French, which is an interesting feat, considering my own lack of French skills. But in the evenings, I'll often go over the alphabet with her, and teach her how to write some basic words. It's definitely been a lesson in patience and communication.

10/11 pm: Bedtime! I'm usually really tired by 10 or so. I can't imagine staying up until 2 am or so like I used to do in college. Maybe I'm just getting old.

And then the next day, it starts all over again. That's basically what I do with my time here! There's no real office for my association in my town, so I don't quite have a 9-5 job, as some other volunteers do. These first 3 months especially are for getting integrated into the community and figuring out potential projects. So far, I have some ideas, and we'll see how they play out in the next few months! 

Life at site photos

Me with my neighbor's 1 year old son! He's very cute and has way more energy than me.

My neighbor! Not the mother of the boy, but a relative who lives with her and watches her son, and helps out with housework.

The view from my front porch. I live in a celebetariam (that might not be the right spelling), which is 5 connected houses sharing a courtyard, as you can kind of see from the above photo. Notice the goat in the photo. It doesn't belong to anyone in the courtyard. Yeah, goats, sheep, pigs, and other animals just sort of wander wherever they please.

New address!

So, I finally made it over to the post office to open up my Boite Postale (PO box). My new address is:

Cindy Guo
BP 27
Diapaga, Burkina Faso

And hopefully things sent to that address will get here! lol. The address'll also be under the "send me mail" tab for future reference.

Some holiday pics

LC's house. about 2x the size of mine.

SW with the present the CC gave each of us new PCVs! It was filled with candy. Mmm.

Hanging out at JG's house and eating our X-mas eve tuna salad.

The taco spread for Christmas brunch.

Bonne fete and bonne annee!

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Hope you all had a fun holiday season. Mine was filled with Christmas spirit and carols, but lacking in snow. So I imagine it was kind of like what the holidays in Florida would be like?

Christmas traveling

I decided, kind of last minute, to take a bus and visit 2 friends in F for Christmas Eve. And by bus I actually mean “vehicle that is slightly bigger than a minivan, overcrowded, with bicycles, luggage and motos strapped onto the roof.” Using the transport here is always quite the experience. Anyway, I left my site at about 7:30 am and reached F at just before 11:30 am, a journey of a dust-filled 4 hours. At least I was able to nap a bit, since the drive wasn't too rough and was mostly on paved roads.

After getting to F, I met up with LC and dropped off my stuff at his house, which is much bigger and cleaner than mine. Then we headed to lunch with SW and a few Secondary Education Volunteers who were in town. I was told that the restaurant had amazing chicken, so I splurged and got an entire roasted chicken for 2000 CFA (about $4). Expensive! But also very tasty.

The Christmas Eve celebration was to be at another volunteer's house. He's a teacher at a high school, and actually lives on the school compound in a very nice house. With a toilet and running water even! He had decorated his house with some Christmas lights, a stocking, and even a small tree, so it was quite holiday-seasonesque. And of course, there was some Christmas music playing in the background. We started the evening off with tea, poured Burkina style with lots of sugar and foam at the top. Snacks included various American goodies that the PCV was nice enough to share from his care packages. Then was the appetizer of a Mediterranean-type of tuna salad, prepared by SW. We decided that that course should be followed by drinks, so a few people went off to buy some. The plan for dinner had been to make tacos with the 3 pounds of shredded, vacuum sealed beef sent from the US that the hosting PCV had. But we were so full from all the snacks and everything that we decided to leave that for the next day.

So, on Christmas morning, we all gathered back at JG's house for Christmas brunch! There were homemade tortillas, salsa, veggies, and shredded beef, which tasted quite good considering it had traversed 3 continents (made in Brazil, sold in the US, sent to Burkina Faso). My bus back to site was scheduled to leave at 11:45 am, so I had to quickly eat and bike the 20 minutes or so to the station. Overall, it was a pretty nice celebration of Christmas!

La nouvelle annee

And then a week later, it was New Year's! I decided to stay at my site to take part in the Burkinabe festivities. On New Year's Eve, people worked for the first half of the day, and then started preparing for the fete (party/celebration) in the afternoon. I spent some time walking around town, greeting people and wishing them “bonne fete.” One of my friends invited me to a New Year's party at the restaurant/bar her husband owns (I think that's her connection to the place), Le Soir au Village, or “Night in the Village.” I met her at her small grocery store next to the restaurant, and actually just ended up hanging out there for a couple hours, since she kept her store open until about 10 pm. Then we finally went into the restaurant. A description of the scene: people drinking and eating at tables around the restaurant, loud music and a DJ, a dance floor with no one dancing, and quite a few children, including babies. That last aspect surprised me a bit, but I guess it's perfectly normal for children to be out at a bar/restaurant/club celebrating with adults here. In fact, little kids were the first ones on the dance floor. And then the adults joined in.

There was no countdown or giant ball over a skyscraper (well, there are no skyscrapers here), but at midnight, the DJ paused the music to announce that it was 2011! The proper way to wish people a happy new year here is to kiss them on the cheek, alternating left and right, 4 times, though actually without the kissing part, so it's more like tapping your cheek to their cheek. And I think each “kiss” represents a wish the person has for you for the new year: prosperity, and 3 more that I don't remember. The party then continued, I assume into the early morning, but I was pretty tired so I left at around 1 am.

The next day, the festivities continued. On New Year's Day, you generally go around to wish friends and family a happy new year, sit for a while and spend time chatting and relaxing. And also eating. I stopped by the homes of 4 friends, and was fed lots of food and drink at each. Then when I returned back home, my neighbor had prepared food for me too. It was basically non-stop eating from noon until 5 pm. I think I probably gained about 5 pounds on January 1^st. But hopefully that'll be offset by all the walking I do each day.