Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! Oh how I miss the fall. I miss the weather cooling down and carving pumpkins. I came to Leo to have a pretend Halloween with Sam, Hugo, Lindsay and our new friend Bill.

Today I am very proud of myself. I am smiling with a HUGE sense of accomplishment. This morning I was up before the roosters and I BIKED to Leo. My house to Leo is approximately 35km, or 22 MILES. Last night I finished reading a very inspiring book that was written in rememberance of a Peace Corps Volunteer. So I dedicate my bike ride this morning to her. I strapped up my backpack and water bottle, said a little prayer and pedaled. It was nice to watch the sunrise, but I’d be lying if I said that the ride was easy by any means. Lately I have decided to set little daily goals for myself, I do this so that on days that I don’t really know what I’m doing I can strive to meet a small goal. Today my goal was to make it to Leo is 2 hours….guess what? ONE hour and 54 minutes later I was sitting at a table with Lindsay and Bill. I was exhausted but couldn’t stop smiling. I had done it. It was a great start to the day. Lindsay lent me the shower in her room so I could remove the layers of sand and clay from my face and legs. It was great!

I have to say that I have been in an incredible mood for the past week. My spirits have really been up. Last Thursday the boys at my house (that I now refer to as my little brothers because they all call me Tantie) took me to the fields with them. We picked sweet potatoes, corn, peanuts, onions, hot peppers. We ate vegetables straight out of the ground! It was something I’ve never done before and it was awesome. We ended up spending like 4 hours walking around in the fields. It was really fun. I made bissap for the kids (juice made out of hisbiscus flowers). They we really happy and it was great. I’ve read a lot of books lately and things have really been going well.

Time to drink sangria and go to the pool J

Until next time….. J   

Camp Glow

So today I spent the day in meetings discussing something called Camp Glow. It’s a 2 week long sleepover camp for girls and boys, the first week for girls and the second for boys. Camp Glow stands for “Guys and Gals Leading Our World”. It’s basically a camp for the kids to learn about hygiene, life skills, and stuff like that. I went to visit the first Burkina Camp Glow when I was in training, and I was hooked. I was really interested in helping out with next year’s camp. So when given the opportunity to attend a meeting to discuss future plans for the camp of course I wanted to attend. This past August the camp was held in 2 locations and for next year they were looking to expand to 4. Luckily Leo was chosen as one of the 4 sites! I am not the “secretary and supplies coordinator.” So I hopefully have a lot of work ahead of me to get ready to put on an awesome camp next year. I’m really excited about it. So far, Ouaga has been great. I went shopping for groceries to take back to site since a lot of options at home, I picked up some mail. I totally know that some of my mail is missing because Andrew numbers his letters to my and like 8 are missing haha. It’s sad. I love mail. Tomorrow I have meetings in the morning and then I am going to enjoy Ouaga for one more afternoon. I’ll write again soon.    

Electricity!

Oh electricity how I have missed you. Actually not really, more so when I want to charge my ipod. So, I’m about a month into site now, and let me just say it hasn’t been easy. Let me start from the beginning…

So when it was time to head to site Brandon, Sam, Lindsay and I headed to Leo on September 27^th. We had the day and we were spending the night there so I did some shopping for my house and we went to the pool. It was a great time, but the nervousness of heading to site was really intense. The driver came to pick Lindsay and me up the next day. I was super nervous, we asked the driver to take Lindsay first so that we could hang out together longer. We had a hard time figuring out where Lindsay’s house was, but then we got her all moved in and we had a tearful goodbye, even though we are only 15km away from each other. Then I was off to my site. When we got there, nobody had even known that I was coming. I just happened to run in to the director of the school on the road. There was no lock on my door so the poor driver had to drive over to Leo (30 km away) to get the door fixed, there also was so screen on my door to stop the mosquitos and other critters from coming in. I share a courtyard with a family, and they were gone to Ouaga because the dad had had a moto accident. So needless to say, it wasn’t quite the welcoming I had invisioned.

I would love to say that that was the one bad day that I had, and that everything was magical and wonderful after that, but I would be lying. Literally for the entire first week at site I cried more times than I really care to admit. I was having such a hard time with everything. My biggest struggles were not being able to communicate and the isolation of being alone in village. Sudakshina is like 9 hrs away from me, and Nate is like 6, it’s unfair!  Lindsay came to my village that first weekend and it was great, but when she left I was super lonely. That first Sunday at site I was dangerously close to quitting and coming back home. My first week of site was as lonely as depressing as I have ever been in my life.  A couple days later was a marche so I  went to Lindsay’s village and spent the night there. When I was back at my house I was really set on making it work here. There still was not a screen on my door, so after a bat came out of nowhere in the middle of the day in my house I called and demanded that one get there. It was up by the next day. At least one thing was starting to come together. I still really had nothing to do with my time, so I just started hanging out at the school. I met the teachers at the school and they invited me to drink tea with them! Things were starting to look up.

My village is very tiny. It has one primary school, and one little boutique for my to buy things at. The marche is non exsistant. There is no electrcitiy or running water. The kids in my village are so sweet. We play soccer with a flat ball. I’m on the hunt for a decent ball for them. One of the kids said that he had a present for me…it was 2 baby birds! I named them Bert and Ernie. I biked with them over to Lindsay’s village and unfortunately they didn’t make it back. I suspect that her neighbor took them. Hopefully that doesn’t happen when I get my puppy. I’m getting a puppy that I am going to name Simba, my neighbor is giving him to me J

Last week Lindsay and I were invited to a party with all these important people. The inspector of our Commune was reassigned to a different village and a new one was coming in so we were invited to the going away/welcoming party. It was quite fun. We had music and lots of food and drinks. We ate huge plates of riz gras with our hands! It was so great I may never use a fork again! I was finally able to get a bit of furniture for my house. It’s really starting to come together. School finally started in my village. I was beginning to wonder if we were ever going to do anything besides watch the children cut the grass every day. Here grass is not liked because of the snakes so the kids dig up all the grass until all there is, is dirt at the school. I sit in the classes and observe. Pretty soon I hope to be doing other things but for now, observing and meeting people is good. The other day in my house was a huge scorpion and a bat! Gah! That same day when I headed to the school after killing the scorpion there was a snake!!!!! I always said that when I see a snake I’m going to e.t. Well, I’ve seen a snake and I’m still here, so there went that haha. Also to (toh) has grown on me. I find myself looking forward to eating it for dinner with the family, and the other night I even had seconds! Haha. Oh jeeze.

I got to spend the last 2 days in Leo. Leo is a magical place. I went swimming both days. It was great. I took the bus this morning at 6 am and now I’m at the Transit House in Ouaga. It was cool to bike in Ouaga. I went to the Bureau to check for mail. I had 3 letters. I think that a lot of my mail is missing because I received number 17 from Andrew but I’m not sure where 13-16 is haha. Ca va aller. Now that I have given everyone my Leo address hopefully they all get to me. I’m in Ouaga for a meeting about Camp Glow, and hopefully seeing what it takes to create one in the Leo region. That would be a good project.

Well, slowly but surely I'm getting accustomed to life in village. It’s wonderful, scary, boring, exciting, and lonely all at the same time. I’m lucky to have such great friends that are supportive and wonderful Andrew as well, who is always there to listen to me cry and laugh and act like a maniac all in the same phone conversation. Things are all going to be ok. Hopefully haha. I’ll write again before I leave Ouaga. I love and miss everyone.