December

The past month in photos. Too lazy to write in-depth about any deep Burkinabe issue present in my site so for now I'll just present my iPhone pictures from the month of December.

I mentioned to my fellow teachers that I was digging some holes in my courtyard to plant trees. The earth in my courtyard is all rock so it's very taxing to dig. So, the next day a group of my students showed-up to help dig. Everyone loves to help me with anything I need and never ask for anything in return.

A list of the Presidential Candidates. The man on the right, second from the bottom ended up winning. It's going to be interesting watching his presidency unfold since he was a big player in the former presidential regime and only pulled-out a couple years before the coup.

The MPP political party held a rally just outside my house. It seems like there was a political rally every other day before the elections, even in my remote village.

The historic day. The first democratic elections in Burkina Faso. The elections were held in our primary school and almost every single villager came out to vote.

The start of our nutrition and moringa trainings with our women's savings groups. My job is to empower my counterpart, which is why I let him do all the work :)

My counterpart's new baby boy, Laurent. 

I needed to make some natural insecticide so I sent my little posse out into the bush to find some "Neem" tree seeds, which have a very strong smell. We then transformed it into a natural insecticide for our moringa trees (chemical free!)

Spraying our trees. 

I went to visit a village nearby to present our organization and potentially start a new savings group. It was an all Muslim village, so no drinking is allowed. During the middle of the meeting, the old village chief flashes this beer to be and asks if I drink beer. I said yes, and together we sat there drinking warm, canned beer. A unique experience.

The local Crocodile in Ramsa. There are women washing clothes and children playing in the water just 50 feet away. But, the crocodile is Ramsa's totem so they treat it sacredly.

A picture of my English class. At the end of the trimester I paired-up with a teacher in Vermont and started a Pen-Pals project. This is a picture of my students receiving their first letters. They were really stoked to have an American interested in their life. Writing the response letters was a tough project but we got it done. Funny questions like "Do you like Black (people)?" or "What do you farm?" were a constant within these letters.

The start of our moringa and community garden project. The entire project took us a week and we finished without too many problems. Here we are digging the foundation where we put the fencing.

After we placed all of the iron fencing posts, and shortly thereafter the fence.

Then we put the cement. This part took 3 days to cement 240 meters of fencing.

Everyday we took a break at midday to eat some beans and rice. No soap, no spoons no problem. Everybody just digs in and feasts.

After the fencing was installed, we put our first drip irrigation system. This technology is pretty cool and will water our 500 square meter surface just by filling one water barrel.

Another view of our drip irrigation system. We are going to install two more after I return from the Ivory Coast in January.

The 22nd of December, my friend and I went to Eastern Burkina Faso to visit our good friend and help out with his first big project. We held a cabbage festival to promote the vegetable sales of his small village, where they sell at better prices then the bigger regional market 5 km away. The festival was crazy. There was dancing, feasting and plenty of drinking. Here I am with my good buddy Cameron sipping on some dolo.

Cameron, Henry and I having a beer at the end of the festival. We worked a lot just keeping the festival running, but we always found time to sit back and have a cold one.

Our favorite little villager. Always looks like he was just...can you guess?

Hope you enjoyed these pictures.

Until next time,

MB

Back to School

The end of the rainy-season is finally here. All of the villagers are transitioning to harvesting and subsequently drying their crops, which they will eat/sell over the next year. School finally started the second week of October and once again I’ll be teaching English (this time only 1 class, not 3 since I have to commit more time to my other business projects). I’m with the quatrième students (which is their 9^th year in school) who have already had two previous years of English instruction. Even though their English level is novice at best, the fact that they are in their 9^th year of school signifies that they are strong students who have endured all the way to this year in school. I gave them a pre-test the 2^nd week of school to gauge their initial English levels and hopefully by the end of the year they will have improved.

A picture of my house in its entirety. Far left is my shower/latrine, middle-left is my hand-washing station and to the far right is my front gate. Took this at the end of the rainy season standing in my neighbors courtyard.

Before school started, my school director and I discussed the most pragmatic class for me to teach. We opted for the 9^th year class because I will be able to speak more English with my students instead of just teaching them in French. Having them hear my authentic English accent will train them on the correct pronunciations and sentence structures. Before school started I unrealistically wanted to only speak English and implement an “immersion” style course, where the kids would eventually pick-up on English due to the fact that it would be the only language that I speak. However, a month into class I find it difficult to do this because explications in French are almost always necessary for complete comprehension of my lessons. Later on in the academic year I’m sure I’ll switch to more English.

When living in a weakly fortified house in Africa...(There were four in total in one night)

Overall teaching is going great so far. My much smaller class size and easy schedule gives me something to do each week, yet leaves ample time to work on other projects. I’m also holding office hours and English club each week to let students ask questions 1-on-1 as well as do some cooler activities in English (last week we translated and learned the lyrics to “Tree Little Birds” by Bob Marley, which they thought was super fun).  My students are responsive; not too much baby-sitting going on which makes it more durable for me. To make things more interesting I split my class into teams and award points for various accomplishments with a “special” prize awaiting the team with the most points. My students love this. It’s a great way to “hack” students into learning and participating more in class. They are doing all this extra work to win points for that prize at the end, but what they don’t know is that they are actually learning English at the same time haha!

I went to my neighbor Sarah's village to help set-up a hand-washing station for her family compound (She's an English Teaching Volunteer who lives 7km from me). Washing hands with soap properly seems like an elementary activity yet many kids here didn't know how to. We then did a mini training with her family on how to wash hands with soap and why it's important. Not only is it dirty here, but people wipe after going number 2 with their hands as well as eat with them, but most don't use soap. Such a simple project with such large benefits.

Going back to school to the school environment has been good so far, but it also reiterates to me how hard it is to succeed with academics here in Burkina Faso. I often look back to my upbringing to recap my educational experience and what was available to me as a student. I had parents who read to me at night, top-notch schools with highly-trained teachers and all sorts of external resources to help further my academic studies. In Burkina, and especially in smaller villages such as Ramsa, the educational experience is almost the exact opposite of mine. First, they must undergo schooling in French which is not their native tongue. French is never spoken in the household which makes it hard for students to learn the language. Even some of my 9^th year students have trouble speaking basic French. There are no books (academic or novels) so students can only learn from what is written on the chalk-board. Their informational intake is very limited in this respect. At the household level, parents aren’t involved on a daily basis with their children’s studies. It’s tough because most parents don’t speak French but even so they typically don’t give any motivation or follow their students’ progress. Instead, I mainly hear parents calling their kids “stupid” when their studies are failing, instead of encouraging them to do better. And finally, the school environment isn’t a very positive place that doesn’t foster both education and personal development. Most teachers didn’t want to be teachers when choosing their professions. They wanted a government job with a salary, so they decided to settle for teaching since there are many openings. I’ve had many talks with my teachers and they are all concerned with the development of their country and all agree how important education is, but when I see them in class it’s hard to agree that their teaching methods are efficiently contributing to the country’s human development. Almost all teachers yell and shame students not only if they misbehave, but if they try and are incorrect. This makes students extremely shy and timid. As a result their public speaking skills and overall confidence at low levels. I don’t think physical violence is a daily practice but I’ve seen it happen a few times. This last part definitely derives from the “hitting” culture here, where parents hit their kids daily and kids hit each-other just as much. Hitting would cause an outrage in the States but here it’s so common that women often joke about which of their actions would make their husbands hit them.

Hanging-out with my Village Chief drinking dolo. He's an extraordinary Burkinabe.

I’m doing my best to change this culture little by little. I tell my colleagues the importance of positive discipline and how physical violence is not effective. But most importantly my changes are taking place in my classroom. I give participation points to those who volunteer in class, even if they’re wrong. If someone laughs at another for making a mistake, I put them in their place. I talk about the importance of school and how with hard-work and determination anything is possible. Writing this blog it’s so apparent the cultural differences between our countries. Back in the US we do everything for our kids to give them the best chances to succeed, but here in Burkina hardly anything is being done. A kid’s success in life is almost solely dependent on themselves. I wish it wasn’t like this. But, as most development practitioners know the biggest roadblocks are often cultural.

My English class taking their first test. 48 kids in total.

Maybe my student has the words "father" and "great-great-grandfather" mixed up haha. Whatever the case, 115 years old and still a farmer? Impressive.

After my students finished their tests I told them to draw on the back. One of my favorite students left me this note. He also got a 100% on the test. It's little things like this, appreciation and seeing improvement, which make this job worth-while.

Outside of the educational sphere, my CED related work is starting to pick-up. The moringa garden is almost underway once we cement in the fencing to the ground. Our soybeans are in the process of drying and afterwards we will start out tofu transformations. My counterpart and I are also preparing a multitude of other trainings to present to our saving’s groups which will take place over the course of the dry season. One thing that particularly excites me is the heightened interest in opening a village pre-school. I’ve shared with my community that other volunteers have started local pre-schools/kinder-gardens to help prepare children before entering primary school. We would teach them some basic writing skills, basic French, classroom behaviors, motor-skills and other activities to make the transition easier. It would start-out very small and informal with the potential to grow in size and legitimacy. It would be great to see this particular project come to fruition since as show in the paragraphs up above, the educational situation here in Ramsa needs all the help it can get.

In other news, it’s still blazing hot during the day but at night it’s finally getting cold! I finally slept inside my house for the first time by choice since coming to Ramsa. Group 29 (the volunteers who came in October 2013) are finally leaving back to the US which makes my Group 31 officially “juniors”. It’s crazy that I’ve already been here for 10+ months. I know that they next 17 months will go by even faster. Trip to the Ivory Coast hopefully just after Christmas.

Hope all is well back in the US.

Until next time,

MB

Coup in Burkina

Life took quite a turn two weeks ago here in Burkina Faso. On September 16^th the President and Prime Minister of Burkina Faso were seized by a group called the RSP (Presidential Guard) in an apparent coup attempt. This event came out of nowhere and caught everyone off guard.

When I heard the news from my friends that same day, I couldn’t believe the words coming from their mouths. Why was this happening? The scheduled presidential elections were only a month away so this timing couldn’t have been worse. I immediately pictured the worst for my fellow volunteers and me: having to leave Burkina. Of course this train of thought coming from the fact that we are government employees and the American government takes extreme caution with its citizens abroad. So if there is a political crisis and things get violent, the State Department would probably make us evacuate.

However, my village life had not changed one bit in Ramsa. I went along as normal to my garden and to drink with my neighbors. More educated people had some clue as to what was going on and were upset, but most villagers didn’t know what was happening or didn’t seem to care. My PC friends and I thought that everything was going to blow over, but we didn’t know the back story of the RSP and how dangerous they really were. The US Embassy and PC Bureau did know this, which is why they decided to consolidate all volunteers to one location on September 21^st. This was a bigger shock to me than hearing about the coup, because consolidation of volunteers is the final step before evacuation. Some people packed their stuff thinking that they were never returning to their village. Personally, that thought didn’t even cross my mind and I told all my neighbors that I’d be back in a week. As we approach our two week mark in Leo (our consolidation city), that clearly wasn’t true.

My 3 buddies and I went to the same bar where we had our first beer in country. We constantly show our friends the first picture to show how different and "clean" we were back then. 

The Peace Corps decided to consolidate us in Leo because the RSP is the most dangerous group in Burkina Faso and there was no telling what they were going to do during their one week in power. Turns out the RSP was in a fragile situation since the popular uprising last October. The RSP was formed by former 27-year President Blaise Compaore during his administration. They were essentially his personal 1,200 person security force, and to make things worse each solider was highly trained and had access to the most advanced weaponry. The RSP is rumored to have silenced some of Burkina’s political dissenters in the past, with the leader Gen Gilbert Diendere supposedly taking part in the Thomas Sankara assassination.

The RSP had one fatal flaw in their existence: their allegiance to Blaise Compaore’s political party and not to the office of the presidency. So, after Compaore was thrown out of office last October big question that loomed was what to do with the RSP. The RSP claimed the presidential seat for about 2 weeks last year until international pressure gave way to a civilian led government led by Michel Kafando. The logical option concerning the RSP would have been to dissolve it (because they no longer served a purpose), but this wasn’t possible because no group had the ability or the force to do so. So, over the past year the transition government has been contemplating the options, whether to let the RSP continually exist (and possible make a play at the presidential seat in the upcoming elections) or to make an attempt to disband them. The transition government made a decision a couple of months ago and ruled that after the planned October elections, the RSP would have no legal authority and would be dissolved immediately. This also meant that RSP members would be stripped of their luscious power and possibly persecuted for their previous crimes.

This decision clearly infuriated the RSP and prompted them to implement the stupidest and most desperate coup d’état ever. The day of the coup, not all members of the RSP were on board with the coup and some didn’t even know that it was going on. The coup lasted only a single week because the RSP had no legitimate plan to maintain power and authority. Yes, they had weapons and used fear to intimidate the masses, but they had no backing from anyone. The international community, African Union, the Burkinabe Military and the most importantly the general population were vehemently against the RSP and were going to take strong measures to end their rule.

Once the interim President Michel Kafando was reinstated 1 week after the coup on September 23, it still took many days to determine the fate of the RSP. Clearly the RSP had to be eliminated, but to give them full justice while avoiding violence was the tricky part. This is why the negotiations carried on for weeks. The international community was about to grant some RSP members amnesty, but the general population revolted and would not stand for it. The Burkinabe population has been the unsung hero during the past two political crises because they would not relent until justice was achieved. Usually corrupt officials can sneak away with things in weak African countries, but here in Burkina the people “are ready to die until justice and liberty is achieved” says one of my Burkinabe friends. This passionate mentality is the key to change all of the negatives in Burkina Faso.

Eventually, the RSP was completely dissolved (with all weapons) and their leader, Diendere, has been handed over to the authorities. The presidential elections will hopefully be sometime in November and shortly thereafter this country will have a democratically elected president.

As for all us Peace Corps volunteers, these past two weeks have been mentally taxing. The teetering of thinking that we were going back to the US or staying consolidated for even longer was difficult to say the least. Thankfully our Peace Corps staff was awesome, all volunteers stayed relatively positive and we got to stay at a luxurious hotel with a pool and air conditioning. We organized events, trainings, games and even a community-wide health fair because that’s just what Peace Corps volunteers do in their spare time.

Swimming in the pool every single day has been my favorite part of this trip. We had a pool dodgeball tournament and my team (with the boys in the back) got 1st prize!

At our mini health fair we had a game to show the importance of sleeping under a mosquito net every day. We didn't publicize this event to the public, but within minutes of us arriving at this dirt lot, around 70-100 kids showed up and played games and learned with us.

I’m stoked to head back to site. The grant money for my moringa garden project came in so my work organization and I can finally get started! The rest of this year is going to fly with other projects, English teaching and possibly some vacations to other West African countries.

Until next time,

MB

The last month and a half through my pictures

What's up people.

It’s been almost two months since my last blog post. I’d like to say that much has happened in-between, but personally I feel like it’s been the same week after week. So instead of boring you with my sub-par story telling capabilities I’ll showcase the past month and a half using pictures.

Malaria awareness-raising using students as facilitators. The two students who I took to the youth conference back in July ran a few malaria activities. During our market day they went around and gave villagers a course on malaria 101. I really enjoyed seeing them do this because it was a great leadership activity for them while also providing a very valuable service to our community.

The vegetable garden that I’m doing with two students is coming along nicely. We’ve ran into our fair share of problems but for the most part it’s been a success. My village has enjoyed a surprising injection of vegetables into their daily diets and we will hopefully make enough profits to cover the tuitions of my two student helpers.

Last month I went to G29’s COS Conference Prom (The 29^th group of volunteers to come to Burkina; Close of Service). It’s sad that they will be leaving by the end of this year but after two years of living here I bet they are ready to go home. Here I’m with my regional neighbor Leanne who lives 40k west of Ramsa. We danced the night away!

Rainy season has been in full swing, with some weeks having rained 3-5 times. Unfortunately the showers here aren’t pleasant, but more torrential with gusting winds. But it could be worse. The drop in temperatures is nice and I’ll take the rain over the heat any day. 

It's funny when we see these rain clouds start forming. Everybody is out in the fields and suddenly the small clouds become HUGE and overtake the sun. It's always a game to see how long you can stay outside before making a mad dash back into the house before it starts pouring. 

If I build it, will he come?

Korean Food in Ouaga. Just discovered that this restaurant is an “authentic” Korean restaurant owned by a Korean woman. I recognize almost everything on the menu. I’ve been dreaming of Korean food a lot lately so it was blissful to actually be able to eat some while here in Burkina.

Drinking with the boys in Ouaga.

My work organization members started preparations for our Moringa garden. Here’s a picture of them digging almost 200 holes in which we will plant the trees. I just submitted my moringa grant and hopefully the funding will come in time for us to put the fencing and plant the tress so that we can use up the last of the rains to help feed the trees.

These men can dig!

One of my fellow volunteers just put on a youth camp focusing on sexual education and gender equality. I was lucky enough to be able to join and help run a few of the sessions. I had a great time and after doing this camp, it’s so clear how important gender equality education is in this country.

Playing a game and learning about HIV/AIDS and STDs.

The boys and I prepping for a condom/balloon game.

Having a relay race between boys and girls. Girls carry traditionally mens "things" (cigarettes and farming hoe) while boys carry girls "stuff" (a skirt, a backpack representing a baby and a basin for water). This activity is to show the boys the difficulties of being a women and all the daily responsibilities they have.

The volunteers who helped run the camp.

A family planning mural that the students are helping paint as part of the camp.

A random picture, but these small cuts finally just healed after 1.5 months. My bike pedals glanced my ankles, and since it’s extremely dirty in my village these cuts got infected. It’s almost stupid how easily cuts can get infected here, which is why now I’m OCD with even the smallest scrapes.  

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Many more to come in the future.

Until next time,

MB

Two Indisputable Truths in the Village of Ramsa

Six months down, 21 more to go. Life here has been great so far. I’ve been lucky enough to do some meaningful work already while integrating myself into my new community. I hope that the next two years are filled with an abundance of work projects for my community and me, because that is what I came here to do. Work. However, if I were only to share my work updates then I’d be excluding the other major platform of the Peace Corps mission, which is to share the local culture and lifestyle with my fellow Americans back home.

A picture of my garden. Here we are looking at our tomato beds where we just transplanted our saplings from the nursery.

As I get to know more people in my community I am able to find people to hang-out with. Sitting and chatting among friends is a daily activity here since there is no TV or internet to hold people hostage in their homes. For the most part I chat with my counterpart Hermane, a group of women who live next door or students around 18-22 years old who speak good French. I’ve recently found myself hanging-out more with these students because they are extremely curious about the outside world and all have strong opinions. However, most of what they think they know is completely false. The lack of information reaching this tiny African village is apparent. These students may see a film in school or read an article in the internet café, and this single exposure will solidify their opinions as if they were fact. They don’t have the ability to do research and find supporting evidence to their claims. Some examples: The Illuminati control the world and chose the amount of people who died during WWII, all homosexuals are evil because one video showed a group of them trafficking adolescent boys, and France currently is doing everything they can to oppress Burkina Faso. These are just some examples of topics that have come-up during our conversations. Of course I try and present the opposing argument but their minds can hardly be swayed. 

Here is a picture of our cucumber section. We will plant some corn inbetween.

I also must be cautious when reaching heavier subjects here in Burkina Faso. During our training we were told not to talk about certain topics, like politics, religion and homosexuality. The reason for this is because the local mentality concerning these topics is essentially set in stone so persuasion is impossible. It’s sad that I have to hold back or lie about my personal beliefs, but in some cases it is necessary. The two big ones are religion and homosexuality. Religion is everything here and I can see it everywhere. Muslims pray at least two or three times a day. Christians don’t just go to church on Sunday but every single day at 6 AM. This is why people here cannot understand someone who is atheist or doesn’t identify with a religion. For this reason the Peace Corps told us that to avoid constant questioning and/or arguments it’s best to say we are religious whether or not it’s true. The same with topics surrounding homosexuality. When the subject comes up I do my best to tell them everything I know but I can never say if I support it or not, as much as I want to. My alibi is that the Peace Corps said we’re not allowed to share that information. What it comes down to is job security. If a Peace Corps volunteer openly admits that they support homosexuality then they could personally be at risk in their village. This single piece of knowledge would make people resent the volunteer and prevent any meaningful work from being done. In the past the Peace Corps had to “medically evacuate” a volunteer from their site because he/she shared their views with the community and shortly thereafter the community wanted him/her to leave. It’s sad, but over here that’s just the way it is…for now. Hopefully in the future things change. 

A picutre of some of the members who will be running the Moringa garden with me. We usually meet twice a week to talk over details of the grant, as well as to start mapping out rules and guidelines for this project.

So, now to the title of this blog post. 

Two indisputable truths in Ramsa. Recently I had a conversation with two friends in my village. We discussed many deep topics, and for each of them my two friends had a warped perception of reality. I did my best to try and persuade them using my sub-par French, but in the end we weren’t really getting anywhere. I decided to try something new and ask them to try and prove two indisputable, 100% true facts that are present in my village of Ramsa. These are educated men so I told them I wanted evidence and everything so that they could prove the legitimacy of these claims. After deliberating for 15 minutes, this is what they came up with: 

• In Ramsa, there exists a sacred location, where if any type of animal is sacrificed then perfect farming weather is guaranteed for the next year.
• Life was better in the olden days when women had no power in the family structure. Now that women have more power / rights (which results from Western culture influence since the start of colonization), life is worse because women spread family secrets and ruin the integrity of the family.

I was blown away at these two responses, because first of all they are not facts but secondly because I expected educated men who have a legitimate chance of going to university to have more sense. I dissected each of these claims with my friends to see what they were thinking. For the sacred sacrificial location, I asked why they wouldn’t sacrifice an animal every year to guarantee good weather but they couldn’t really give me a straight answer. I told them that I would be willing to buy 10 chickens (for $40) and sacrifice them myself to help out this village. I hope that take me up on this offer. 

The HIV/AIDS session at the youth conference I attended. It was awesome to see all of the students engaged in learning about what are typically "taboo" topics.

For the other claim, I was very upset because they claim that every single person in Ramsa feels the same way about women. How could they not see the importance of women and all that they do in their culture? They actually knew that women are extremely successful in the US and in Europe, but this claim was only about small-village African women. Now, personally, I understand that I need to focus much more on women’s empowerment in my village. Here is a fact: all humans are the same and can contribute equally to society if given to chance. So, if women were given an equal opportunity and elevated to the same level of men, wouldn’t Burkina Faso be able to utilize ~50% of its workforce that wasn’t previously available? I’m enthusiastic that over 75% of the members of my host organization are women. Others, with less bias, have said that women are the only ones who work in Ramsa. In the dry season they have their small business and in the rainy season they farm. All the while they have to cook, clean and run the household too. And the best part is that studies show that when women make money in developing countries they tend to spend it on things for others, like medicine for their family or their children’s school fees. I’ll stop here.

Here I'm with the two students that I brought to the youth conference, Zalissa and Philippe. They both killed it and I can't wait to see how they share the information back with our community members.

In other news, I’ve been pretty busy this past month. I’ve been out of site for 3 of the past 4 weeks so I’m glad to be heading back to village for at least a month without any more trips. My two week In-Service-Training was great. I got to see all of my friends in one place again. We learned a lot and will start implementing projects and trainings very soon. This past week I was also at a Youth Development Conference. I brought two students from my village to learn how to be an active citizen and a leader in the community. We will partner together to carry out some malaria awareness raising activities immediately, and in the future collaborate more on other projects. It seemed like these students really got a lot out of it, so I’ll be looking for other conferences to take my community members to. My garden is growing and I’m pretty much there all day long. Three hours in the morning and afternoon, picking weeds and watering the plants. I hope this goes well so that people next rainy season will pick up rainy-season gardening and make some more income. But, behavior change is extremely difficult here so we’ll just have to wait and see. 

Until next time,

MB