!!Pictures!!

My house in Koudougou

My Burkinabe Momma & Omeima

My Burkinabe Family! Rassida-tou is holding Omeima, Maguid, Rashida-tou & Alima!

 

 

 

 

 

The Airport

Cell Phone!

IMPORTANT NEWS

I HAVE A CELL PHONE.
if you are so inclined, you can purchase international calling cards, or skype minutes, or gmail phone time and call me. i have great service and i will definitely pick up (if i am not in class) please call me! Its VERY expensive for me to call you guys, its way cheaper for you to get skype mins, so if you want to talk to me (which i hope you do...) you are going to have to do some leg work.

International Code: 226
Kates Cell: 74 51 03 51

I can't wait to hear from you!

My Daily, but anything but routine, Routine

In the morning when I wake up, Rassi-Ratou gets me a large bucket of water and places it in my “shower. This process was surprisingly not difficult to get used to and is really refreshing everyday. Sitting in class in the sweltering heat, I am already looking forward to my nightly bucket bath. In any event, the bucket is a large plastic one that we in the states use for mopping floors. Rassi-Ratou fills it with water from the well ( I am not allowed to get the water for myself…yet because it takes some finesse and strength that I don’t possess, not to mention I could fall in) There is a cinderblock in the shower that I can sit on and then I take cup-fulls of water and dump it over myself. After I get all soapy, then I dunk my head into the bucket to wet my hair, then wash my hair and finally dump the remaining bucket contents over myself to rinse off. Between squatting when I bathe, use the latrine and riding my bike all over creation, I am certain that my legs are getting stronger quickly.

By the time I wake up at 6:15 everyday, my family has already been up for 2-3 hours. My family is Muslim, and there is a call to prayer each morning at 4:15 am so for the first few days I would wake up then for a few mins and then go back to sleep, but last night I didn’t hear it at all. After I am all clean from my very cold but refreshing bucket bath, I sit down and eat breakfast by myself. Since I got here my breakfast has consisted of 1 baguette with butter and jam, a cup of tea or instant coffee, and an anti-malarial pill.

On Wed morning last week, my first morning eating breakfast at my new home, I made the mistake of taking my anti-malarial pill before I ate. Even though I was able to eat the rather odd dinner of spaghetti with fish/goat and some to (essentially cream of wheat) with a sauce made of vegetables and peanuts without incident, when I sat down the next morning to eat my very plain breakfast I took like 3 bites and had to run to the latrine and throw up, then back again a few minutes later. Because it was my first day there, and my language skills are not quite there yet, it was quite difficult to explain to my sister-in-law that it wasn’t the very delicious breakfast that she had made me that made me sick, but rather the medicine. Even though that was quite embarrassing, I think we have finally moved beyond it.

After breakfast, I get on my bike and ride to school. The trip takes about 10-15 minutes,  it’s not very far at all. It would be like riding from my house in GP to Grosse Pointe South. Here in Burkina, there are a quite a number of spoken languages. My family speaks French, Djula, Moore and some Arabic (for religious reasons) my sister Rassi-Ratou, Rashida-tou and Maumauni also speak some English. In Koudougou where I live now, Moore is the dominant language other than French. Whenever any of us leave our homes or training center, we are greeted by the people on the streets yelling “nasara nasara!!” or “le blanc le blanc!” Nasara is the Moore word for foreigner and le blanc is French for white. Even in casual conversation at home, my family refers to me as nasara.

The other night at dinner (when I finally got them to eat with me, not by myself) I used all the French I could muster to tell them as directly as possible that my name is NOT "nasara" and that they can call me Kate or Kaytah (my new Moore name) only. Since we had this discussion and after they all spent a good amount of time laughing at me, (which is a favorite pastime at my home) they no longer refer to me as nasara in my presence. I have taken this as a sign that my language skills are improving. 

Right around the same time as Thanksgiving, (which we are planning as a stage group) is the Muslim holiday of Tabaski. I am really excited because the staff will give us the afternoon off the celebrate with our families and I could not be more excited to finally spend some time with my family and learn about their religion and cultural traditions.  Ill keep you posted on how that goes.

Adoption Ceremony 10-19-10

I moved in with my host family last week on Tuesday. We had a session devoted entirely to home stays where we learned the cultural practices and norms for living with a Burkinabe family. This session was probably the most useful one that we have had thus far.  We learned about the family structures here and the best ways to interpret behaviors. My family is atypical because there is no patriarch. My Mama is the head of the household because her husband died awhile back. I would guess that she is in her 40s or 50s, but it is difficult to tell because its extremely difficult to tell people’s ages here. Mama has 2 daughters Rashida-tou, who is 18, and Alima who is 11. She has one son, Maumauni and I don’t know how old he is, but he is probably in his 20s or so and works at the marche (market) selling pagne (fabric). Maumauni is married to Rassi-Ratou and they have 2 children who also live with us. Maguid is a 3 year old boy and Omeima (baby girl) who is 4 months old.  The children are super cute, although they were a little leery of me when I first arrived.

On Tuesday after the home stay session, we packed up all our stuff and went into a large hall where all the family heads or representatives were seated and there was a brief ceremony. The families were called up to the front of the room and then they called us up to meet our families. Mama, Maguid, and Rassi-Ratou and Omeima were there to greet me. The PCVFs (Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitators) made fun of me later on because I had such a large entourage to take me to my new home. After the ceremony, I followed them on my bike while they rode their motos. There are no “baby bjorns” here (which incidentally were invented by a Peace Corps Volunteer) so babies are literally tossed on the backs of their mothers and tied in with a large piece of fabric. When my sister-in-law Rassi-Ratou faces me with the baby on her back, there are two tiny feet that stick out from her hips which make her look like she has two extra arms which move independently of her. I find this pretty hilarious, but because we have such strict laws in the U.S. with car seats and seatbelts, I am extremely nervous when I see women traveling on motos with their children strapped in with little more than a bed sheet, but c’est la vie.

My home is very nice by Burkinabe standards. There are two residences in our compound, one for Mama, Rashida-tou, Alima and me and one for Rassi-Ratou, Maumauni, Maguid and Omeima. In my house, There are two bedrooms, one for Mama and one for me, a main room which hase some couches and a tv, and a small closet with a tile floor and drain where I take my bucket baths twice a day. We spend most of our time in the courtyard because it is significantly cooler out there. I keep wanting to sleep outside in my bughut because my room is so hot, but I have not ventured out there yet.

Some of the volunteers were nervous about living with their host families, and it would be a lie if I said that I didn’t have concerns, but it has really been a smooth transition. My family is extremely welcoming and patient with me and we have a lot of fun together. I am their 3^rd Peace Corps Trainee to stay with them so the first night I spent time looking at 5 pictures of the family with the former volunteer who stayed with them. I think they liked him a lot because in one of the pictures, they are all wearing matching outfits, I can only hope that will be me in time. I have some pictures of my family below.

Arrival in Burkina!

Hello Everyone! Sorry I haven't written in awhile, I have had no internet access for the last few weeks, but one of my fellow stagieres lives with a family that owns a cyber cafe, so get ready for more regular postings. I wrote the following few entries on my arrival so I know they are a little dated, but I thought you might like to get my first impressions anyway.

Burkina Faso is an amazing place. Simply arriving at the airport was an adventure in and of itself. When we were flying in, all we could see out of the giant plane coming from Brussels was red; red ground, red roads, red homes, red everything. In fact, in flying I got an opportunity to see how into color coordination the good Lord really is. Ocean,:blue Europe: green, Sahara: yellow/orange, Burkina: RED. This is quite the change coming from the mid-west where everything is green or changing colors, as Im sure it is now as Halloweeen approaches.

In any event, the airport is a few strips of pavement with a small lookout tower where you would have traditionally seen very technologically advanced looking air traffic control command center. Although I laughed to myself as the stair-car approached the plane exit because I love the tv show “Arrested Development,” when we finally exited the plane, the steamy air hit me so hard that I was sure I wouldn’t make it to the bottom of those hilarious stair-car stairs. We took a bus approximately 20 yards to the “terminal” which is a cinder block building with cement/dirt floors and plywood all around. There is no fancy customs check-in or metal detectors, no surly and miserable looking TSA agents, just a few policemen behind a desk and a bunch of people who sat staring at the gaggle of mostly white foreigners who just landed looking deliriously excited. “Baggage claim” is some large 12x12  blocks that the air staff sets your bag on. The staff literally tows the luggage into the terminal on large drays, the likes of which I haven’t seen since my time on Mackinac Island, and even then the horses towed the weight. Here, everything is different. 

When we got through customs, the Peace Corps staff was waiting for us, holding signs with the Peace Corps symbol on it beckoning us into our new home country. After getting our 80lbs of essentials, we walked out into the street to find our vehicles. Waiting for us at the bus were more Peace Corps staff with GIGANTIC water bottles, they were the most welcome sight I have ever seen and I have never drank 2 litres of water so quickly in my life. After packing 31 anxious volunteers onto a bus, we started the drive from the airport to our hotel.

I had oh, so many misconceptions about Ouaga. First, when I used to think of a big city, a capital, I would think of it having a few large buildings, paved roads, street lights. This is absolutely not the case in Ouaga (pronounced Waa-gaa). Virtually the entire city is the same height level, with probably 2 stories -3 stories max but the vast majority are 1 story. As if I wasn’t excited enough, the drive from the airport to the hotel was probably only like 20 mins, but there was just SO much to see! Everyone wears such colorful clothes, its so beautiful to look out into the streets and see the red roads contrasted with a medley of colored cloth and goods. My senses were overwhelmed with the sights of the city. I only considered for a second that I might be doing something rude sitting with my faced pressed against the window gaping at the people and sights of the streets of Ouaga, but as you can imagine I got over that pretty quickly.