Malaria Month (a little late because of lack of internet)

Recreation at school....a 30 minute break at 10 am where the teachers of my school sit around and chat about whatever. Today's topic? Malaria!

We were all sitting outside under the big neem tree, wishing that we had snacks to eat. One of the teachers brought out a bucket of shea fruit for us to snack on. I personally can't appreciate shea in any other form besides lotion, so I politely declined. The other teachers dug right in. The last teacher to join us was also offered some of the fruit to eat. He refused saying that when he eats shea fruit he gets malaria. WHAT?!

After some inner chuckling I look at him and asked him to repeat what he had said. He said "Chaque fois que je mange de karité je suis malade avec palu" (Every time I eat shea I get sick with malaria). The other teachers all seemed to agree with this statement. Wow. So I thought to myself, what a great time to teach about the real facts of malaria.

According to the World Health Organization-
 "Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is transmitted via the bites of infected mosquitoes. In the human body, the parasites multiply in the liver, and then infect red blood cells.

Symptoms of malaria include fever, headache, and vomiting, and usually appear between 10 and 15 days after the mosquito bite. If not treated, malaria can quickly become life-threatening by disrupting the blood supply to vital organs."

*In 2010 malaria caused an estimated 660 000 deaths (with an uncertainty range of 490 000 to 836 000), mostly among African children

Malaria is preventable and curable!

I asked the teachers at my school to give me some examples of how they thought people contracted malaria. Some of the answers are as follow-

1. If you take a shower too late at night you will get malaria

2. Eating shea will give you malaria

3. Travelling at night will give you malaria

4. Too much sun will give you malaria

5. Rainy season gives you malaria- Bingo!!!

I decided to take this last fact and start from there. I am not the sort of teacher that likes to just give away answers so I asked questions to try and get them to arrive at the right answer

-Rainy season gives you malaria?

-Yes

-Why?

-Because there is a lot of water, when there is a lot of water people get sick with malaria.

-Ok...this is true. But what is there a lot of when there is a lot of water?

-There are a lot of mosquitoes.

Tah-dah!

I explained to them that rainy season is that time of year when most people get sick with malaria but they can get sick with malaria year-round because it's actually the mosquitoes that bite them. I picked up a stick and drew a picture in the sand of how malaria is transmitted. I explained to them the mosquitoes are the ONLY way to get malaria, that the teacher could eat shea until he turned into shea butter and that was not how he was going to get malaria. We went over all the myths that they had heard and we discussed why they were not true. 

After talking about the ways that people contract malaria, it's EXTREMELY important to talk about the ways that malaria can be prevented. I told them that the easiest way to prevent malaria is to use the FREE bed nets that they get from the CSPS. Even if they sleep outside all they have to do is just hook it up and sleep under it. Also, removed stagnate water from courtyards and shower areas is an easy way to get rid of mosquito breeding grounds. 

The teachers were all really engaged and asked a lot of questions. It was amazing. We made a plan for me to come in the each class and teach all the kids of the school about malaria and malaria prevention. I'm also going to get out in the community and let people know the causes and prevention methods of malaria.

Also side-note, I'm a survivor of malaria. I got malaria last year, I had it on my birthday (happy birthday to me). I was feeling sort of feverish one day while traveling to Nate's site. I kept taking ibuprofen to keep it down. It would go away but it would eventually come back. The next day I was just feeling sort of crappy still but didn't think anything of it. I just wasn't feeling myself and had no appetite. I told Nate that I was going to take a nap, 2 hours later I woke up feeling just horrendous. I asked Nate for a thermometer and some medicine. I took my temp and it was 103.2. Yikes! I took medicine and it went away. I went to bed that night and suffered all night. I kept getting the fever, my head was killing me. The next morning after taking my temp and seeing that it was 104.8 Nate's sister walked me to the clinic. Where I was diagnosed with malaria and given the medication for it. I spent the next 3 days in and out of sleep and throwing up everything I ate, and then my insides. It was the worst I've ever felt in my life. I developed anemia and had lost 10 lbs. in that week. I had no energy at all. It literally sucked the life out of me. Luckily I recovered and all was fine. Now I want to help others prevent that horrible feeling.

Hopefully this year there will be less adults and less children that get malaria this year. 

The Holiday Season 2012

Christmas

This Christmas was better than I ever could have imagined. Sudawg and I made plans for her to come to my site for the holiday and it turned out that 5 others wanted to come too! The more the merrier! We all bought matching Christmas fabric and everyone was to get something made out of it to wear on Christmas day, and we drew names for "secret Santa". Amy, Kelsey, Elena, and Maren all came on Christmas Eve and Sudawg got there Christmas morning. 

Because we wanted to everyone to have a good time and remember Yoro well, Omar and I went a little crazy planning for the holiday. We bought 5 roosters to kill and eat and also 5 boxes of Sangria. I went in to Leo to buy a bunch of tomatoes and onions and other stuff we would need to cook with. I also ran all over Yoro borrowing pots, pans, and serving dishes from everyone (being by myself 90% of the time I literally own one pot haha)

So for Christmas Eve the mom of my family made us all foutou and chicken. it was really delicious. We all ate until we were stuffed and I took some over to Issaka's house. We all stayed at Issaka's house because his 3 bedroom house is way bigger than my tiny shack. Since everyone had traveled that day they were all tired and went to bed. I stayed up to wait for Issaka to come home. Some friends of mine came by to take me drinking but I didn't end up going.

Christmas day was good. We all woke up and had tea and bread and then headed to my house to start cooking. Sudawg showed up and I couldn't have been happier. We greeted all of my friends and put on our matching Christmas outfits.We spent the day cooking and then we ate with my host family, Issaka, the director of my school, the chief, and whoever else stumbled into the courtyard. After that we were tired so we went to my house to repose a bit. That night we went to my best friend Jonas' house to eat again and party. We drank so much. It was a great night, we had a lot of fun.

The day after Christmas we all went to Boura to visit Lindsay and her family. We went to the marche and then everyone went home and Sudawg and I went back to my village. We were tired so we mostly just hung out and went to bed. The next day we spent all day in my house listening to music, putting on makeup and acting silly. It was a lot of fun. Issaka told us to come over but we ended up going over to Jonas' again and eating and drinking wine. It was a perfect send off for Sudawg.

The 28th Sudawg and I headed in to Ouaga so that we could celebrate New Years here. I called Idrissa and he came to pick me up and we went over to his house. His friends wanted to take me out dancing so we all went drinking and dancing and it was a lot of fun. I ended up spending the night. The next day Idrissa and I went to his grandma's house and to visit a bunch of other people. I went back to the Transit House in the afternoon to head to the expat's house (see "The Social Experiment"). The next day Idrissa came and picked me up again and we went out with his friend Zakaria and this other guy. I ended up staying the night. 

New Year's 2013

After spending so much time with Idrissa it was decided that I would stay and celebrate New Year's with him and his friends. His friends were so much fun, I felt totally comfortable partying with them. During the day we hung out, ate and drank liquor and beer. At night we got all dressed up and went out to this club to go dancing. We got there early which was good because that place filled up really quickly. I danced all night with Idrissa and his friends. At midnight we all toasted the New Year and there were fireworks and more dancing. It was magical. We ended up going to bed around 4 am.

New Year's Day was even more fun. We got up around 9 am and bathed and stuff. Idrissa's mom cooked us an amazing lunch and all the guys came over and ate with us. After we got dressed to go greet people. We visited so many people and had at least a beer everywhere we went. Needless to say we had a lot to drink. People were so nice and everyone welcomed me into their homes. I took a lot of pictures with Idrissa and his family. He has a such a beautiful family. His mom is amazing. She treated me like part of the family. His little siblings all loved me, especially the baby Sharifa. Indescribable how amazing my New Year's was.

I had a fantastic time with Idrissa. He's someone that I can talk to about anything. We would literally fall asleep after talking forever and wake up laughing like idiots. He wasn't weird about people looking at us together. He did explain to me that it was a little strange for him. He told me that he grew up in the same neighborhood practically his whole life, everyone knows him there so no one really makes a big deal when he's around. When we were together people were not only looking at me, but him as well. He said that people were wondering what he did to get to spend time with me. It was cute but I get how that could be weird for him. At least now he understands how I feel everyday. I finally left his house the 2nd. Not that either of us wanted me to go, but I had other things that I needed to get done while in Ouaga.

This year's holiday season was really something to write home about :)

A social experiment...

What happens when you put 3 starving Burkina Faso volunteers in an expat's house for a night?

MADNESS!

While trying to figure out what to do with myself during my time in Ouagadougou I of course call my friend Amy to see what she's up to. She informs me that she is going to be house-sitting for someone right down the street from us. Obviously that means that I will be joining her. We get there and oh my God we are instantly overwhelmed. This house can fully stocked with 2 fridges, internet  t.v., and a phone-line that lets you make FREE calls to America. Boy were we in for a long night.

Walking into their house was like walking in to an American house. We were greeted by a HUGE golden retriever puppy named Holden. He was cute and fun for all of 5 minutes before he got annoying lol. They also and 3 huge cats as well. Their house was decorated in awesome Christmas decorations. It felt a little like being at home. There was a Christmas tree and lights everywhere. It was beautiful.

The first thing that we did upon arrival was check out the contents of their fridge. They told us to help ourselves to anything in there (mistake number one). It was fully loaded with beer, CHEESE, American candy, and all kinds of snacks. We surely did help ourselves. We literally ate like everything in their fridge. The wife told Amy that there was some meat in the fridge for the dog. She fed him a pice and then looked at it. Being from tiny villages where meat is rare and you defiantly don't waste it on your dog we decided to eat it. We stole food from a dog....that was a low point haha! We had pizza and wine and I even had a Reeses Peanut Butter Cup! Something I have not seen in the last 18 months!

We immediately tried out the internet and the phone. The phone really let us talk to America! Fist thing I did was call my mom. She didn't answer because she didnt recognize the number so I kept calling until she did. Also, it was like 8 am. we got to talk for a while. It was awesome. I also got to call Lauren and talk to her for almost 2 hours. That was the highlight of my day. In 18 months we literally haven't gotten a chance to talk for more than 10 minutes. We caught up on each others' lives. We downloaded the new Grey's Anatomy and a ton of music.

We joked so much about how much food we ate and how if anyone could see the way we were acting they would be mortified! But to us, it was a night of fun and good friends :)

P.S. The next day we all left before they got a chance to look in the fridge lol.

Oh Burkina...

It’s always hard to think of what to say in this blog considering the fact that I haven’t written a blog in months. How do you describe the emotional roller coaster that is being a volunteer???  I guess I’ll just recap the highlights of the last few months…

Highlights

1. ·         All the teachers and back in village and school has started in full force…FINALLY. There were only 3 of the same teachers from last year; Ada, Issaka, and Colette. We had added now Sawadogo, Kabore, and Yameogo. There’s one on materity leave how will be back later in the year and another guy who never actually showed up so who knows what happened to him. I’ve started my rotations there, going from CM2 to CP1. This year we really have a good group of teacher, especially Kabore, Issaka and Yameogo. Kabore is the CP1 teacher and by far the best teacher I’ve seen in this country. There is so much motivation and support in his class. He dances and acts silly, we sing “Mary had a little lamb,” and he never hits or raises his voice. He teaches the kids to work with each other and help each other. Inshallah he will keep this up all year. This year Issaka is in the second part of his exam. He passed the written part over the vacation so now this year he is the practice phase. He’s always working which is good for him and the school, kinda lame for me haha.
2. ·         Saiba and Yago both left me this year. Saiba as you may or may not know is my best African friend. He was literally my lifeline in village. I spent soooooo much time with him talking, laughing, drinking tea (sometimes beers), cooking, and just having a great time. He’s the guy I went to for all kinds of advice and we even had a heart-to-heart about our love lives. He got affectated to Koudougou and I miss him every day. We still talk all the time but it’s not the same, I can’t just head over to see him whenever I’m bored. I’m hopefully going to visit him next Sunday. Yago (my homologue) also got affectated this year to a school in Leo. I miss him a lot too.

• ·         I have so many new friends in village. My new village best friend is Omar. He’s my age and HILARIOUS. Our meeting was just super random too. One night I headed over to see Amos and buy some bread. Amos told me to sit down and hang out for a while, so I did. Omar and Kourka showed up and we literally sat there laughing like hyenas until 1 a.m. Now that has sort of become a rtual for us. I get out of school and 5p.m., chat with people on my way home,  chat with my family once I get home, bathe, eat dinner and head to the boutique to see Omar(usually not coming back home until way too late). Sometimes we stay and talk with Amos, other times we head over to Jonas’ house and hang out with him. Jonas is amazing. His wife and kid are awesome. I spend a lot of time there. I even learned to make To with Jonas’ wife. She was very patient with me and it came out really good! Jonas’ little boy is the love of my life. His name is Roman and he likes to listen to my IPod and hop on the back of my bike to ride around with me, he’s 2 haha. I don’t leave village much thses days because I just hate to be away from the people that I love there J (hence the lack of blog updates)



Omar and Me!



Baby Roman, my <3



Tabaski!

• ·         I’ve started going to Mosque on a regular basis now. I went yesterday here in Ouaga for the first time. In village I’m there every Friday. At first I was really nervous to walk in by myself but I was silly to be. They were all really happy to see me, and we all pray together and chat after. I was amazed at how welcomed I felt. I’m trying to get Omar to go with me sometime. I’m praying 5 times a day for the most part, and have finished memorizing the opening Sura of the Koran, Al-Fatihah. That was a big day for me. It wasn’t easy lol. I made it my goal to finish it by Tabaski and I DID IT! Speaking of tabaski that was so much fun. I celebrated with Issaka at his house. In the morning Issaka, his little brother, little sister, and I all went to the prayer. When we got there Issaka went off with Yameogo and the men and I stay with the kids and Madame Yameogo. It was great. Everyone was really happy to see me, and greeted me so much. An old lady even gave me an Islamic rosary. I have no idea how to use it but it was still pretty special. After the prayer we went back home and started to cook. We made spaghetti and rice and sheep. People came over and ate and kids came over to get candy. Once that died down a bit I went out to greet my friends and went over to so many people’s houses. Fatimata even did my henna for me. It was pretty awesome. I ran into Ismael and we drank wine with the guys and Gabriel. Ismael came over and I served him a plate and we told Issaka that were were going dancing that night. Ismael and I went dancing until 2 a.m. Then he walked me home and it was the end of a really fantastic day.

·          

Upcoming events/ projects

·         MY BIRTHDAY! Exactly one week until I turn 24! I’m currently in Ouaga for the food security meeting and then Monday I’m heading to Boulsa with Nate to spend the week there with him. On Friday we are heading to Fada to celebrate Thanksgiving and my birthday! I'm hoping to get my sand read while I’m there. We’ll see what he says.

·         Tomorrow Su-dawg is coming to Ouaga and we are going to celebrate my birthday/ go shopping for shoes and matching fabric to be matching on Christmas. She says that she wants to spend Christmas in Yoro so we are going to do that I think. Not sure what’s up for New Year’s Eve yet. I’ll probably go to Ouaga with Issaka.

·          Omar, the guys, and I are starting a community garden. I’m working on the grant so that we can start ASAP

·         Gabriel’s brother talked to me about wanting to start a garden at the school for the kids so when I get back to site we are going to sit down and find out if it will be possible.

·         Yameogo and I have been talking a lot about getting funding to finish the school. That’s definitely going to be finished before I leave this country.

·         Got a lot of big projects that I’m trying to do in my last 10 months here.

·         Hopefully going to figure out if I can stat a 3^rd year pretty soon. Will update that as soon as I figure it out

I think that for the most part that’s all that’s been going on here. 

Camp Glow

Camp Glow girl's week

Oh Camp Glow… There’s not a whole lot really to say about this. The phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” is very much true in this case. It was hard work but I’m glad that we did it and that those girls and boys got the chance to do something that they’ve never had the chance to do before.

Islam

Hawa, my Muslim mom

To me, religion has always been something that I feel very strongly about. I was born and raised Catholic. I’d say within the last 5 years I’ve become a lot more “religious” but I’ve sort of adapted religion into my own set of beliefs. I believe in God, I don’t however agree with all the doctrines of any church. For over a year now I’ve been really reading up on and researching Islam. Islam is a very personal religion. I’ve started praying 4 times a day (it’s really supposed to be 5 but that 4:30am prayer and I have been having some troubles lol). I fasted for 20 days during the holy month of Ramadan. I didn’t eat or drink (not even water) during daylight hours. It was hard but I honestly enjoyed doing it. When I was in Sapone I went to the mosque every evening to pray. I now have a Muslim name, it’s Djamilatou. It means beautiful flower. Souleymane gave me Islamic prayer books in English and a prayer rug. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to Hawa and Souleymane, Ismael and Issaka about Islam. It’s something that I definitely going to stick with for a while. The more that I learn about it, the more into it I get. Recently an aunt of mine had a lot of very negative things to say about it. It mad me so mad because she took a small percentage of Muslim extremists and put all of Islam into that category. That is ignorance at it’s finest. Learn about things before you judge people and try to stereotype.

Sapone

Me with Valerie and her family

Me and my family <3

Sapone…my home away from home. There are no words to describe how much I love Sapone, my family, and friends that live there. When I got to Sapone I really felt like I was coming home. I was there with Sudawg and Nina to work week 10 of stage. While I was there I went to mosque everyday with a family that I was very close with. I saw my family almost every day. Epie(my absolute favorite in the world) was so happy to see me. He makes my heart melt. Everyone there recognized us and welcomed us back. I told my family all about life in the village. My dad really likes to talk about how I didn’t speak any French when I got here. He told me that he was proud of how Burkinabe I have become. That made me smile. I have to get back there soon. My family wants Issaka to come with me next time so we’ll stop on our way back to village one day maybe. That should be great. Landry and Leopold have gotten so big! Landry is in his second year of primary school now! It’s crazy how fast time has been flying by. It seems like just yesterday that I was there with them. I always miss them like crazy when I’m not there.

Bobo

In the fields

My best friend Saiba

After Sapone I hauled my behind over to Bobo to celebrate Ramadan with my best friend Saiba and his family. The bus ride was in a cozy air-conditioned bus (not kidding, it was awesome) and the trip took a little over 6 hours. Upon arriving to Saiba’s house I did all the customary activities which invole greeting everyone, drinking water, then greeting everyone again and bathing. I had dinner with Saiba and then just hung out and met his family until it was til for bed. The next day was the Ramadan fete! I’m glad that I got a BouBou made to wear that day. We went and prayed and then all the fun started. I went with Fatim( Saiba’s sister) all over Bobo greeting family and eating at every house we went to. Needless to say it was an exhausting/filling day. That night we all went out dancing and had a great time. The next day I went to the fields with Saiba’s brothers Etienne and Andre. Those two are so silly and fun. Etienne took it upon himself to be my tour guide and he pointed out all sorts of cool stuff in Bobo. We went into the mountains where apparently there is a nudist colony that does a pilgrammage there. There is are so many incredible places in Burkina that I never would have gotten to see without those two. At the fields we marched around and had to wade through water to get to where they were planting. It was muddy and fun. In America I would have been scared to do something like that, but here it seems so normal for me. We had fun taking a lot of pictures, then headed back to the house. Andre’s girlfriend came over and we hung out with their friends and then had dinner. Unfortunately we didn’t get to go out that night because it was raining so much. My last day in Bobo was spent visiting a lot of friends. My friend from Ti lives in Bobo so we went to his house and he was happy to see me. We had day beers with him. After lunch and a nap I spent the afternoon with Etienne. We chatted for a while and then went to visit a friend of his and also a cabbage garden. I’ve never in my life seen what cabbage looks like in the ground. It’s really cool, I completely took for granted that the food that we eat in America is grown with someone’s hard work. The guy who owned the farm gave a tour and it was really interesting. When I got back I had dinner with everyone and then Saiba decided that since it was my last night we had to party. We went with his friends to a bar and danced all night! We were up bright and early the next day to do a few things before I was scheduled to leave. Saiba’s brother gave me a rooster so they killed it and cooked it and we all ate that for lunch before Etienne took me to the bus and I headed back to Ouaga. My trip was so amazing I didn’t want to leave at all! Luckily I’ll see Saiba again when I get back to village.

Another Adventure with Nate

Nate and I are notorious for our random, half thought-out ideas on things that we should do. This weeks adventure...Ouahigouya pool day. We had talked about it for a bit but I hadn't decided if I was going to go or not. Nate's infinite line "Come on Karina. It will be cool," is what got me. So he wakes me up yesterday morning and says that we are leaving in 10 minutes. I get up, throw my swim suit in my backpack and we head out the door. The plan was to go to the bank before hand but of course we didnt make it in time and all the money we had was enough to get us to Ouahigouya and that's it. So of course we decided to chance it and go anyway. The bus ride was fairly pleasant. It only took about 2.5 hours to get there, and the view was nice. When we got there we were both really surprised at how developed it really is up there, at least in Ouahigouya. For those of you who don't know Ouahigouya is in the north (a region I hadn't yet been to).   It was crazy nice there. A lot pf people throw out the world "Ville" to describe things that compared to Ouahigouya are just big villages. Our bikes however, did not make it on the bus with us so they were coming later. Fate was on our side because we found a bank that was open til 15h on a Saturday! Unfortunately fate threw us a curveball and the pool actually was closed because they were treating it! We headed all the way up to Ouahigouya only to not be able to use the pool. Sad sad day. We did however spend a lovely day eating good food and drinking. It turned out to be pretty good. 


Today is a cloudy/rainy day so Nate and I decided to head back to Ouaga. There is no point in staying there if there was going to be no pool day. So back to Ouaga it was. There are so many people at the transit house the have finished their service and they are all getting ready to go home. I didn't much feel like socializing that much so I headed to the bureau to get some work done and spent most of the time playing in the internet and talking to Ebben. It's been nice chatting with him. Now I need to stop playing around and do some work. :)

Mid-service conference

This week we had our mid-service conference. I can't believe that we have already made it this far. The days are long but the years are short, honestly. The first morning was medical stuff. We all were either at the dentist or at the med unit. That took an incredibly long time, but it all went well. I had lunch with Nate and then we headed back to the the hotel for afternoon sessions. We did a lot of sharing about our experiences and lives in village. It was cool to hear about all the things that people are doing and how their adjusting to being in village. I went to the dentist and had my teach clean. My favorite part was being able to be roommates with Su-dawg and laughing all night like we did at IST. I learned a lot.

Prom

A Mid-Service Night's Dream...prom number 2. There seems to be a trend in the fact that we always have to have a prom whenever we are together. This prom I would definitely put in the win category. Of course Su and I wore matching outfits...(as cutest couple duh!). We drank and danced all night long! It was an amazing night with amazing friends. Ismael and Seydou came as well and we all had a great time. I can't wait until COS prom!

What's to Come 

One year down...one to go. This time is almost going by too fast. I talked to my mom today about staying a third year. She supports it. Even though I know that she misses me like crazy, she is still 100% behind me on it. Pool day tomorrow with Nate, we have Camp Glow in the next week, I'll be at Week 10 stage, then Bobo for hanging out with Saiba, then back to Ouaga for the food security meeting. There's a whole lot that I'm looking forward to doing not only in this next couple of weeks, but in the next year. Stay tuned...it's gonna be good.