Land of the Upright and Honorable People

Yesterday at the training center, I helped my friend Kailey work on a project decorating watering cans that are being used as a thank you gift. We went to a boutique down the road and bought some paint to use. There isn’t anything similar to an art supply store in Burkina, so we found a shack on the side of the road selling all sorts of knick knacks. We saw little cans of paint, picked out colors and were on our way with them. We decided to paint handprints all over the watering can in different colors. So, I offered up my hands and was soon covered in red, green and yellow paint. I could tell once we started that the paint was stronger than typical craft paint because it felt thicker on my hands. When we finished decorating the watering cans, Kailey and I went to wash my hands off with a faucet near the latrines.

The paint was completely waterproof. As I held my hands under the running water, not a single drop of color came off. Not having any clue what to do, we went and asked one our tutors for some advice. Without any hesitation, he said, “Oh you need gasoline. Let me go get you some.” Then he got on his moto and came back five minutes later with a water bottle full of fuel. The fuel just spread the paint all over my hands and forearms more. Then, Kailey grabbed some paper and tried to scrape the paint off with it.

After struggling for a good 15 minutes, two random Burkinabe women walk up to us and grab my hands. They didn’t say one word to us; they just went to work. They had picked up a handful of sand and a rock from the ground outside. They used the sand to exfoliate and lift the paint and they scrubbed it with the rock. The paint started to come off immediately. Once we were seeing some results, Kailey and I began thanking the women profusely. They didn’t say anything in return; they just smiled at us and continued until my hands were completely paint free.

This experience is a great example of Burkinabe culture. These two women had been busy doing laundry outside when they saw two strangers struggling with a problem. Without being prompted, they put their work aside and came to offer aid. They found a solution utilizing completely free, local resources that were all around us and readily available, but neither Kailey nor myself had thought to use them. They asked for nothing in return. They simply smiled at us in response to our gratitude and they returned to their work.

While I was preparing to leave the US I remember reading a story from a returned Peace Corps Volunteer. They recounted a time when they were stranded in the middle of nowhere because their bicycle had broken. A Burkinabe was passing by and immediately stopped and started helping the PCV without being asked. He strapped the PCV and their broken bike to his own and took them some exorbitant distance to their destination. I remember reading this and being really surprised at the kindness this stranger offered to a foreigner.

After being in Burkina for two months, I now realize that I see random acts of kindness like this every single day. I am now so used to the hospitality of the Burkinabe that it has become the norm. These two women that helped me yesterday reminded me that I need to continue to appreciate every act of kindness that I encounter while I am here. The hospitality of the Burkinabe has made my transition to Burkina Faso very quick and easy. I really like it here and I now understand why so many of the PCV’s I’ve met applied for a third year of service.

Finishing up Training!

Written Sunday, December 12, 2010

I can’t believe it but I’m almost finished with stage (my training) and I’m going to be dropped off at my village this weekend! The second half of stage went by so quickly once I got into a routine schedule: wake up, bucket bath, eat breakfast, go to class until 5:15pm, hang out after class for a bit, bike home, bucket bath, dinner, homework and sleep! Tomorrow is our goodbye ceremony with our host families, and then Tuesday morning we move out. My host family has been really great; they definitely helped me transition into life in Burkina. I’m sad to be leaving them, but I’m definitely ready to get to my village and start figuring out life there. So, I wanted to make sure that I wrote down some of the things that have happened towards the end of stage before I go to village with no electricity.

We had a really great Thanksgiving celebration where we cooked way too much food and all got to sleepover at the training center together. My cooking group made tortillas, salsa, guacamole, corn salad and garlic bread. My family called me from California and we compared what we were cooking for Thanksgiving. After I listed what I was in the middle of making, my sister said “Oh my god, you have avocados? You can survive for 2 years there if they have avocados…” That was my exact reaction when I discovered the avocados being sold at the fruit vendors J Our LCF’s (tutors) joined our celebration to see what this American holiday is like. We had to explain the history of Thanksgiving during a French class. So we told them all about the pilgrims and the Indians. After our feast, one of the LCF’s said, “So, basically the point of this holiday is to eat a ton of food. Then that night and the next day, you have to rest because you are so full.” We all laughed and told them that that was pretty accurate.

When I got back to my host family the next day, we had a brand new puppy named Toby! I was really excited to have a cute little puppy to play with…then I realized that one of our older dogs, Rex, was missing. This is the conversation that followed with my 12 year old sister:

Me: What happened to Rex?

Elise: He was a bad guard dog. He would bark all of the time at nothing. When a dog does that, it means he’s being haunted by a spirit. Milou (our other dog) is a good guard dog. He only barks when there are people around and he killed that rat in the courtyard.

Me: Oh, so what did you do with Rex?

Elise: We gave him to the neighbors and they ate him.

Me: They ate him?!

Elise: Yes. We don’t like the taste of dog meat, so we gave him to the neighbors and they ate him. Now we have Toby to be our new guard dog.

Me: Oh.

Elise: And when Milou dies, we will bury him because he was a good guard dog. We won’t let anybody eat him because he was good.

Burkinabe do not have pets; every animal they own has a work-related purpose. I’ve explained the concept of a pet in the US to my host family and they think it’s weird. I play with our baby goat, puppy and kitten. I’ll pet them, feed them from my plate and get upset when they hit them or throw them aside. This is really a foreign concept to my family. So, the story behind the rat that Elise said Milou caught…the other week, I woke up in the middle of the night to an animal screaming. I walked outside into the courtyard and saw Milou standing over something. I shined my light onto it and it was a GIANT rat. I took a picture of my brother Sidoine holding it by its tail the next morning. Sidoine is over 6 feet tall and the rat is as long as his torso. My family thought it was hilarious that I was disgusted by the size of the rat. They told me they were going to eat it for dinner that night…and they did. Thankfully, it was Thanksgiving Day and I was not home for dinner that night!

My family also got a baby kitten the following week! It’s really tiny and its name is Pipou. My mom said they got the kitten to kill the mice around the house. The funny thing is that my entire family is deathly afraid of cats. So, they got this kitten to kill mice, but they’re afraid of it. This poor little kitten will go up to my mom or sisters and purr against their feet. Then, they freeze up and scream and I have to move the kitten away. They think it’s funny when I’m afraid of a giant rat or the bats in the latrine…but they’re afraid of a little orange kitten that’s the size of my palm!

I was sitting in my room today and I saw a mouse run under my door and into my bedroom. I called my sisters over and I told them there was a mouse so they ran and got Pipou. In my small bedroom there was me, Elise, Marie Fidel, a neighbor and her baby brother and Pipou. We would see the mouse and one of them would pick up Pipou and throw the kitten into the corner where the mouse was. Pipou would get scared and run away from the mouse. This cycle went on for 15 minutes. All of us would scream when the mouse ran by us and then laugh when Pipou ran away from the mouse. All of the noise made the baby start crying. This situation was a little ridiculous, but also hilarious. We decided to leave Pipou in there to take care of this mouse business…and to overcome his fear of mice. We stood outside of my screen door and Pipou started meowing and climbing my screen door to get away from the mouse. We felt bad for him so we let him out. Apparently Pipou is afraid of mice…I’m not sure how long he’s going to last in this family if he can’t fulfill his only purpose and my family is afraid of him.

I wanted to thank my family for hosting me so two of my friends, Emily and Hayley, came over to cook an American lunch for them last Sunday. My family was really excited to have other Americans come over. Elise was the most excited. I told her she could go with me to meet my friends at the market to buy the produce. When I came out of my room to leave she had put on a dress, my older sister’s high heels, and a wig. I immediately called my friends to warn them about this new hair that Elise would be sporting to make sure that they didn’t have a shocked reaction when they saw her. It was really cute that she got so dressed up for us! We made tortillas, Mexican rice, corn salad and salsa. We made slight adjustments to the meal so that it would be something more familiar for them. We fried the tortillas and combined all of the other stuff together to make tostadas. All of the ingredients we used were things that Burkinabe use daily- rice, tomatoes and bread- but we added new spices and put a Californian twist on it. I don’t think my family liked the meal at all, but they were great sports about it. One of the main foods in Burkina is called tô; it’s made out of flour and water and is used to dip into various sauces. We told them that tortillas are the tô of California. They liked this analogy and smiled as they picked at the food. It was fun to cook for them and share with them some of my favorite food since they cook for me every day.