Good-byes and dog bites

For a slew of reasons I have decided to end my service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Burkina Faso. I said tearful good-byes to my host family already. They will always hold a special place in my heart. I am finishing some end of service administrative stuff this weekend and I fly home Monday (getting me to Indy Tuesday).

So, last night I went out with some other volunteers here in Ouaga for a little good-bye celebration. As I was waiting (outside, with my back facing a waist-high wrought-iron fence) to use the restroom, I felt something grab the back of my leg, really hard. I thought it was one of the other volunteers just having fun, but when I turned around I came face to face with one of the biggest dogs I have seen in this country. He had stuck his head through the fence and bit me! OUCHY! I was wearing jeans and those teeth went right through and sunk into the back of my thigh. Not a ton of blood, but OUCHYYYYYYYY! So today I had to get a rabies shot. DOUBLE OUCHY! And I will have to have the follow-up shot Tuesday. TRIPLE OUCHY! Good Lord! Get me outta here! I'm kidding...but what the heck?

Anywho.

I will add a few more posts as I get my pictures uploaded (since that seems to be what people love the most:) A little more to share, so stay tuned. I am so happy to have had this opportunity to come here, see what I've seen, learned what I've learned, and share it all with you. If anyone has questions about my experience here please feel free to contact me at nanettemkelley@gmail.com. Thank you all for checking in to learn a little about my experiences here.

Just thinking

One thing I have time to do here is think. There are much fewer distractions from thinking here than there are in the U.S. I don't have TV or constant radio in the car (car? what car?), I don't spend an hour everyday "getting ready." I just have a lot more time to really think in silence; to ponder many things I have wondered about.
So I was sitting here frustrated to no end the other day and I started wondering why I was so grouchy. Life is hard here (and I have it easier than 99% of the people who live here) and I realized that there hasn’t been a whole day that I have lived in this country throughout which I was comfortable. I’m grouchy because I am constantly uncomfortable. But what gives me the right to expect to be comfortable? Because that’s all I’ve ever known. I have always had a temperature-regulated environment; I have always had access to cold beverages; I have always been able to eat what I want whenever I want; I have always been able to take a nap when I want, or go for a run, or visit my friends or family, or fly to Jamaica for vacation. All 30 years up until now have been comfortable and easy (and I know this is because I live in a country that allows me these freedoms, and I come from a family that has provided the means for me to do anything). My natural instinct is to seek comfort because that’s all I’ve ever known. I wonder what I would seek if I never knew comfort.
I have always all my life been able to get or do anything I want. I feel so fortunate to be a woman in this world and be able to do anything I want. If I want to move to a 3rd world country and live amongst the poorest of this world, I can. If I want to move to the U.S. and make $100,000 a year, I can do that too. If I want to watch a movie, get a massage, paint my toenails and go to the store in my bikini, I can. Imagine a life in which you couldn’t get or do what you want. Imagine being a Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia and not being allowed to walk to the store without being escorted by a man, just because you are a woman. Or imagine being born into a family here with no money and your only option is to work you family's fields in order to eat for the rest of your life. Or imagine a gazillion other scenerios you could be in. Having the luxuries of freedom and choices are the ones I treasure most. So many people in this world don’t have and will never know these.

More pics

How funny is this?? Meet Aaron, perhaps the funniest volunteer here in Burkina (except for me of course).
A view of the countryside on the way back to the waterfalls.
Rose, Veronica, me and Erica back at the falls. It's so wonderful there.
And you thought I wouldn't get the total international experience by coming here! These are our favorite non-Africans here in Bobo. Walid on left is Lebanese and owns the most beautiful nightclub here (Please notice the speakers, mirrors on the walls, air-conditioning in the background. It has tile floors and flushing toilets! We are talking NICE...considering most clubs here are outdoors in the dirt). And Rami on the right is Syrian and owns the supermarket where we get all our non-African goods (like Ben&Jerry's ice cream, cereal, milk, cheese, WINE!).
The roaches here are ridiculous! When I first moved to my house there were 40 of these crawling around my latrine at night. Can you imagine? I had to put a stop to that really quickly! I haven't seen any for a long time. Thank God!

Africa pics

Ok, ok gee-whiz! Technology these days has made people so demanding! The requests for pics is overwhelming, so here are some to pacify you...

I'm pretty sure this is who Jay-Z is rapping about when he talks about coming from "the school of the hard knocks!" No doubt. This is about as hard as it gets.
Have I posted this one before? Who knows, who cares. These are my boys Latif and Oseifa coloring on my front porch with the sidewalk chalk my dad sent. They are always running up to me saying "Nanette, dessiner SVP? dessiner?" (which means they want to draw please:). Genius idea dad!
I'm not sure who brought in the mass shipment of fussball tables to Burkina, but you can find one on EVERY street corner in this country.
Here is a typical vegetable market. I'm really lucky, because most volunteers don't get this many options in village.Yes, this picture absolutely means you are never, never allowed to complain about your commute to work again. Period.

When it rains it pours!

People who live here really love the rains because it cools everything off and it provides for a good harvest. I love the rain too. There is something peaceful about it. And when it's blue skies and scorching sun 99% of the time, a little rain is a nice change of pace. The only thing about rain here is that it comes without warning in a matter of minutes (no Dad, I can't just flip on the Weather Channel to check the radar...no TV. And even if i had one the Weather Channel wouldn't be an option. Only Burkina news and African dancing videos.), and when it rains it really does pour. So last weekend me and another volunteer were on the other side of town visiting friends and decided to head home around 9pm. We were a 20 minute bike ride from my house. About 5 minutes into the trip she got a flat tire. We asked around for a bike mechanic, but they were all closed. So we decided to walk our bikes. We noticed there was a lot of dust in the air, but figured it was because of all the cars driving past. Well 5 more minutes down the road and the winds kicked in. The winds are no joke! Dust was flying everywhere in hurricane-like winds, we couldn't even see. Then I felt a drop. Thank God for the kindness of people in this country. We were just walking past 2 girls and one of them yelled that we had to come into her house. Just like that! So we followed her and 5 seconds later the rains hit like Katrina. All the houses here (well, most of the houses here) have tin roofs, so when it rains it is defeaning. And this girl didn't have electricity, so we sat in the dark for a few minutes before she brought out a kerosene lamp. So there we were, sitting in this stranger's house, looking at each other by kerosene light, not able to speak because it was too loud, and I giggled as I thought to myself "I would never be in this situation back home." It rained for a long time and I must have dozed off because I woke up to this little old man with only one arm telling me in the local language that I could sleep on the mat that he had prepared for me on the floor. And if that wasn't ok, I could have the girl's bed. Never, never would this happen back home. I just smiled and thanked him profusely and told him it really wasn't necessary. I think it rained for like 45 minutes before we heard the rain calm enough to be able to continue walking. We thanked the girl and the old man for their hospitality and off we went. Many people offered us rides or just to push our bikes and walk with us. Gosh people are so helpful here. Sometimes on my rough days here I forget that. This was such a great reminder. We made it home eventually, grabbed a beer and stayed up laughing and talking about how funny the night turned out to be and how this was just another experience to add to the many we've had in Burkina. Never a dull moment.

Girls and nutrition

I had another meeting with my girls club last week. Since malnutrition is a big problem here (there are lots children with big bellies and skinny arms and legs, and children with light-colored hair due to a lack of essential vitamins, and those are just the visible signs), I decided to do this session on nutrition. A couple of weeks ago I asked the girls to write down everything they ate and drank over a period of a week so I could get an idea of what they were eating. There was little to no fruits or proteins in their diets. So, for this session I basically listed the essential vitamins and nutrients an average person should get on a regular basis, listed what each of the vitamins and nutrients did for the body (Vitamin C good for the eyes, etc) then listed which foods available here contained each of them. Since not everyone is literate in French, I drew pictures of the foods in each groups. The girls thought it was pretty funny. I took about a half hour to explain everything to them, then we played 2 games to see how much they really got out of my explanation. They were pretty good. It was interesting to see how little they knew about (1) the nutrients essential for good health and (2) the foods readily available to them that contained these nutrients. At the end of the day I just told them they had to had to had to eat fruits and vegetables and protein whenever they could. They all were very happy with the session and promised to remember to get a variety of fruits and vegetables every week and make sure to eat more meat, eggs and milk. So far, so good.

Elephants

Last week the mother of one of the other volunteers came to Burkina to visit and I decided to meet them at a town not far from Bobo that is famous for regular elephant sitings. We arrived on a Tuesday and just spent the day chatting and relaxing by the river. Since I live in Bobo I don't get the best view of the night sky because of all the "city lights." But out there in elephant land the sky was dazzling with millions of stars. And it was so peaceful as the three of us were the only ones at the site (even though nature is LOUD at night! goodness crickets and frogs and who knows what else, all harmonizing together). Our "guide" told us to meet him at 8 the next morning. Without any briefing, warning, etc. he came and got us and we set off on foot to find the elephants, our guide in front, then me, the other volunteer, her mom, and then another Burkinabe guy bringing up the rear hanging on to a 4 foot stick - like one he just broke off the tree. I wondered to myself what exactly he thought that stick might come in useful for, but I assumed he knew what he was doing. So off we (the white people) went chatting and laughing along the way until we noticed that our guide had started stepping a little more cautiously, then the talking stopped. After about 10 minutes of walking he started walking REALLY cautiously and stopping and squatting down to look under the trees. So of course we followed his lead, and looked so funny, all crouched down together peering around. The other volunteer gave our guide the new name of "African ninja." That's exactly what he reminded me of. THEN, he put his fingers to his lips (to tell us to be vewy qwiet) and he pointed straight ahead of us to where a whole line of elephants was walking by about 50 yds away. It was breathtaking! We were in awe. I started counting, one big, one baby, a teenager, another baby, another big, another medium...and then the first one turned towards where we were standing and her ears waved out really big. Then the other big one did too. Then they all turned and started coming our way! We gasped and when I turned to our guide to see what we were supposed to do he was gone! He had taken off running with the other guy with the stick! So me and the other girl and her mom high-tailed it out of there. My heart was in my throat. I kept thinking to myself, "as long as we don't feel the ground shaking, the elephants probably aren't running after us, so we should be ok." But of course images of us getting trampled by a whole herd of elephants were running through my mind. I thought "what will I do if they catch up to us? climb a tree? oh, why didn't I brush up on 'what to do if being chased by elephants' before I came?!!" It was exhilarating! We finally caught up to our guides, who were crouched down by the side of the river, and they said maybe we can go back to camp and wait for them there. Yeah, thanks African ninja! So we went back and got a beer and looked through the excellent pictures they took of the elephants. In total there were 13! Just walking in the wild! After 2 beers our African ninja came over to us and pointed at where 2 more were walking right by the camp. Soooo cool. I'll post the pics after I get them uploaded.