Joyeux Noel and Bonne Annee everyone! Below you will find lots of Ghana pictures. It’s 2008 and what better place from which to make New Year’s Resolutions than the Peace Corps. Here are some of mine, in no particular order:
1) Improve the nutrition of my diet. Not like losing-weight; like nutrition.
2) Keep practicing ballroom – do it more regularly – in my spacious ballroom
3) Start a girls’ club. Make it awesome like Babette’s.
4) Write more letters. If I’m not going to do it now, when am I going to do it?
5) Get more serious about my Moore learning. Be able to have a non-stupid conversation by the end of this year.
6) Go birding more.
7) Go on a safari in the SW or the SE of Burkina Faso.
8) Persuade and succeed in having at least one of you come out and visit me this year. You really have no idea what you’re missing, and I mean that.
1) Improve the nutrition of my diet. Not like losing-weight; like nutrition.
2) Keep practicing ballroom – do it more regularly – in my spacious ballroom
3) Start a girls’ club. Make it awesome like Babette’s.
4) Write more letters. If I’m not going to do it now, when am I going to do it?
5) Get more serious about my Moore learning. Be able to have a non-stupid conversation by the end of this year.
6) Go birding more.
7) Go on a safari in the SW or the SE of Burkina Faso.
8) Persuade and succeed in having at least one of you come out and visit me this year. You really have no idea what you’re missing, and I mean that.
The trip to Ghana was great. It was exactly what we needed. Getting down there and getting back were filled with hours upon hours of fun transport stories. All told getting to where we were going took 33 hours from when we got to our Ouaga gare. Our bus left 4 hours late at 11 am. Here are Pete and Christina trying to talk to the transportation people about why our bus was so late to leave and that if they didn't pull out by a certain time then they owed us all bananas. Yes we got the bananas. We drove and drove and drove to the boarder of Ghana, got told repeatedly to get off the bus, walk a little ways and then get back on, sometimes after not having done anything at all while being off the bus. Got to a rest stop at about 11 pm; it was an area of concentrated egg sandwich/hot chocolate/Nescafe in the dark next to a market lit by candles. No one had been able to sleep a bit. The bus was just too hot/bumpy/uncomfortable for sleep to be possible. Look how pathetically tired we look.Ghana was beautiful. It was such a change to be in an African country that by anyone standards is pretty developed. Even as we crossed over the boarder it was clear: guardrails on the roads, cars that weren’t falling apart, houses made of things other than mud and thatch and tin, pagnes that were just a little bit brighter. We stayed for several days chez Christina's friend down there in a small town called Ada Foah. We were right on the beach with no tourists and only the locals who were hauling in fishing nets on the beach. Our own private Ghanain beach. The waves were really strong and I lost one of my pairs of glasses when a wave pulled me off my feet (I was only wading!) and planted me on my back. For Christmas Even night we went on a long walk down the beach to look for sea turtles with our hosts who study them. Leatherbacks and Olive Ridley's come up to nest on the beach. We left at about 10 pm and started on what would have been an 18km walk had we all not crapped out in the middle to rest before returning home no earlier than 2 am. No turtles.
Then we moved on to a more touristy town caled Bousuwa. The place we first arrived at was dark and dingy and was at the moment without electricity and running water and mosquito nets. The owners lit candles and stuck them to the tables and as the sweat started beading up on our dirt stained faces, we decided it was time to move out. So we took a walk down the road and found lodging on the beach at a nice place for only 5 dollars a night. Sweet.
Turtle a gueri! Turtle got better! Daniel called me on the bus as we were heading out of Burkina to say that one of my pigeons was dead and that Turtle could walk and run again. She was a gimp for almost a week, he said, and now she’s fine. Bizarre.But when I got back, and I went to see the Proviseur’s wife, it was a little difficult. Well I mean for one thing, when I brought Turtle over to them in the first place, it was sad. I mean the combination of how overwhelmed I was about leaving for Ghana the next day and then Turtle being so suddenly sick and the kids trying to call her and her not being able to move just was really sad so I cried a little in front of them. Not like sobbing but just quiet crying. Totally inappropriate, I knew that, but I couldn’t have not.
Well turns out it was stranger than even I thought. They’re my friends so they’re not going to be upset at me for crying, but they did do their fair share of making fun of me for it now that Turtle’s better. I swear madame must have told at least half the town that nassara was crying over her sick dog. I have all my friends coming up to me and asking if it’s really true. It’s seen like: crying in front of people = rare and crying over a dog = crazy and doesn’t happen, so crying in front of people about a dog = so strange it couldn’t even be true. So everyone mocked me for a couple days but I think it’s over. It’s easy to let things like this get under your skin, right? Cuz these people are supposed to be your friends and support system, not mock you for crying. But it’s how it is, they are my friends and support system, and mocking me is their way of enjoying that she’s better and finding humor in how strange their nassara is. If they weren’t being supportive then they would have just mocked me while I was crying, which they didn’t. The kids were just all scared and confused-looking – making their version of subtle but actually obvious hand signals to their mother that the nassara was crying.
A couple days later I was outside with Anise and Irene and another little girl I don’t know and I saw Moussa chasing the Proviseur’s goat around and around his courtyard, trying to make her leave and in the process find out where she had managed to sneak in. She refused. So when she was cornered, he picked up a handful of small rocks and started pelting them at her. (People throw rocks at animals all the time; I was barely even phased). She had eaten his one banana tree. Anise yelled “Basa! Basa! Basa!” (“Leave her alone!”) And Irene looked upset. I told him to stop, that I knew where she got in, and he let her go. I went into sit with Moussa and then we saw Irene walking her bike home, sobbing into her hands as she walked. You see, the goat was pregnant, and even though he was hitting her feet and legs mostly, it upset the kids, and Irene in particular. Later, the Provieseur’s wife seized an opportunity to make fun of her daughter crying over a goat, calling her my sister, a nassara in Africa, a crazy girl who cries over animals. Irene wasn’t pleased, and I went over and shook her hand, the equivalent of a hug in America.A few days ago Anise (Proviseur’s youngest) took pink chalk and he and his friend painted their entire faces with it. Then they snuck into my courtyard, up onto my porch and peered into my door until I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to look at them from my table. They bolted. I chased them around our houses, gave up and went to stand with his mother on the porch.
“What will you do to imitate him?” she asked me, doubled over laughing.
“Imitate him? Why do I want to imitate him?” I asked her.
“Because he’s imitating you of course!”
“Oh, I get it now,” I said. He had made himself into a nassara. Very cute. I told him I would put charcoal on my face to be a ni-sabalaga (a black person). I haven’t, but I have started calling him nasara Anise. He doesn’t like that too much.
Turtle is nearly 30 pounds now and runs like it’s her job. She has followed me to school a couple times in the morning, which is 10 km there and back, and she loves it. It’s great to have the company. In fact her following abilities are really amazing. I can go with her to market now and she’ll follow right with me like I was telling her to heel but without a leash or anything. She’s also completely fluent in dog language now. Taking her through Bagre means she runs into a lot of dogs and having to follow me on my bike means she has to run through all of their territories, which generally pisses them off. But she’s got it down now: a dog’ll come at her, she’ll put her hair up and tail between her legs, bear her teeth lay her ears flat and when the dog goes to bite her she falls down fast and lays on her back and looks away. The other dog lets her go and she runs to catch up with me. We passed 4 camels with their Peul (ethinicity) riders on the way to school the other day. Every time I see camels it blows me away how utterly huge they are and how proudly they carry their heads.The CB (Commander of the Gendarmes = Commandant de la Brigarde = CB) gave me a smoked wild hare to cook and a traditional mask of a bird’s face to hang in my house. I gave the hare to my neighbors and told them that if they prepared it for me then they could all eat it with me. It’s this black rigid vaguely rabbit shaped thing, arms and legs outstretched, ears back like it was running. They said it will be really good, that the meat’s really sweet. They also said I should teach Turtle to hunt rabbits for me. All Turtle does is chase goats, and I think that’s because she thinks they’re dogs.
The surveyant of the Lycee found a snake in his son’s bed. That’s 3 doors down from me. Must remember to close my screen doors ALL THE TIME.
My French really is picking up now. I think that my almost-month in an English-speaking country helped somehow. It feels as if a lot of the fuzziness of what is right and wrong just kind of dropped out. LOL this could all just be an illusion. I hope not. I’m going to start paying Moussa to do some French work with me. It’s not helping as much to just listen to villagers since now I can see that their French isn’t that good. And why would it need to be.Anatole and I went to market for to practice Moore and we went to the vegetable section of the market and I greeted everyone in Moore and Bissa. Their smiles are from ear to ear when I speak to them in local language. Then I told Anatole to go bargain a price for a big watermelon for me. The vegetable ladies are all very nice, and perhaps too generous with their prices with me, but the watermelon ladies are quite the opposite. Where as a Burkinabe might pay 200 CFA for a watermelon of a given size, I’ll pay 400 or 500 CFA. This is a good example of what can happen when nassaras have been somewhere before you, but they, not being poor Peace Corps Volunteers, don’t fight high prices so much and so then the villageois get used to this, and then some of them don’t mind charging me twice as much for a watermelon. At any rate, I hid myself over in the vegetable section, with Turtle and let Anatole go on ahead to get me a melon.
With Anatole gone, I felt absolutely naked. I’d already bought the tomatoes I needed, so I just stood there awkwardly, looking at my feet. Ladies sitting on mats, their legs outstretched in front of them, crossed at the ankles, up and down this aisle of the market path, all staring at me. Low tables or other mats spread out in front of them with their produce. Some old ladies motioned to me, so I went over and greeted them. One was sitting there on the mat selling her tomatoes, onions, eggplant, and zucchini, and the other was standing to my right. I held her hand with my right hand and put my left hand under my right forearm and bent my knees and looked down as I greeted her to show her respect (not to mention she was sitting down), and then I turned to greet the smaller woman next to me. “A wumda moore! A wumda moore!” the message passes down the line of women as if it’s still a big surprise that I know some Moore. The tiny woman was so old and fragile looking that I swear I could have blown her over if I sneezed. She was wrapped in several pagnes, hiding her form somewhat, but after looking at her more closely I saw that even though I thought she was bent over, she was really standing up. She was just so tiny! I gave her the most gentle of greetings. Her voice was as frail as she looked but I could hear that familiar enthusiasm that comes from so many older people here when they hear me speak their language. She walked past me, ever so slowly, and I found myself staring at her a little, amazed she was still alive here, wondering what her age must be. The woman sitting on the mat started speaking to me, “She’s an old woman, it’s hard.” I nodded and then stood there awkwardly again.
“How long does it take to buy a watermelon, really, Anatole?” I thought to myself. With everyone staring at me, I didn’t know what to do so I kneeled down next to the woman on her mat. Turtle came over under my arm and so I did the only thing that made sense at the time, I started introducing my dog. “This is my dog. Her name is Turtle. She lives with me at the Lycee. She is beautiful and kind and she is my family here.” (I know what you’re thinking: I’m practically fluent hahaha). The woman smiled, laughed, and then echoed what I had said. It was awkward Moore, it was awfully American, but it broke the ice, and I sat there until Anatole came back for me, proud that he had bargained the watermelon down to only 175 CFA (that’s just under 40 cents).So what can you find at the market anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever explicitly answered this question. Well the answer is: a lot. but for today I’ll try to explain the things that you eat. Foods are seasonal, so I’ll give you the list for now, the cold season. This holds for most Burkinabe markets, but obviously the list is longer at bigger towns and terrifyingly small in the smaller villages, Rice, beans (black eyed peas), rice, millet, sorghum, village peanut butter (not Jiff!), tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, green onions, eggplant, hot peppers, ignamme (kind of like a yam?), potate (kind of like a sweet potato?), garlic, salt, sugar, peppercorns, sesame seeds, MSG-filled chicken boullion cubes, soumbala, many other spices I don’t recognize and am still scared of, dried fish, fried fish, smoked fish, live chickens, hunks of all parts of goat, sheep, and cow.
Some things aren’t sold in what people call the market; they’re more out along the road in tiny one-room shops called boutiques. There you can buy pasta, tomato paste, canned sardines, palm oil, cotton oil, soap, glucose biscuits, credit for your cell phone, nails, powdered milk, tea, shea butter, Vaseline, bleach, and the list goes on, but not for very long, I just can’t remember. You step up to the opening to the little room, which is a screen covered window and you tell the person sitting there what you want and they fetch it, after you greet them of course.Also along the road is where you find fruit, which is highly variable throughout the year. I know that at least for me I wasn’t at all used to what it means to really eat seasonally. Right now there are watermelons, tiny bananas, some papaya, and pommes sauvages (don’t know a good translation for that but it literally means ‘wild apples’, which they don’t resemble at all). Women and girls walk around with huge platters balanced on their heads selling slices of watermelon or bananas.
It seems that almost all the women are selling the exact same fruits and vegetables and almost all the boutiques sell exactly the same things. Yes, it’s confusing how they’re all still there. And any image or stereotype you have ever been exposed to about what African women are capable of carrying on their heads is not short of the truth, I assure you. I’ve seen women carrying loads on their head, and by carrying I really mean balancing, that I wouldn’t come even close to being able to manage standing still, breastfeeding their infant while biking, and I just don’t understand how it’s possible. I guess everything comes down to a matter of habit. They start when they’re tiny and it’s just a matter of building on what they start with.
Classes are going well. Particularly in 5eme, the kids really work hard and sometimes they work so hard that I really have to question myself about whether I’m giving them hard enough tests, but I think the truth really is that they work hard. We have a new SVT teacher to replace the one that left at the end of last trimester, which is wonderful for me because it means that I don’t have to take anymore classes that I had at the end of last trimester. Being that the case, I have the time to try to get the beginnings of a girls’ club started. I hope that by the end of this school year I’ll have done enough so that next year I can have things running smoothly and if everything really goes well then I hope that in the end of it all it can be something sustainable. 
