This would never happen in California...

Weather in Burkina Faso

We arrived in Burkina Faso at the beginning of rainy season.  For the first two months here, the temperature on non-rainy days was almost always in the 90-100 degree Fahrenheit range with ranging humidity. I grew up in Northern California, so I know hot summers. But, it's a dry hot. And I could escape after 2 hours of soccer practice to the comfort of an air conditioned car and house. Nothing could prepare me for the amount of sweat I would produce on my first week in West Africa, alone. It's not that it's hot and I'm not used to humidity. There is absolutely no hiding from the heat. After about a week of being here I just stopped noticing my constant sweating. In the US, after sweating, we have this immediate desire to clean ourselves before we can meet people or be professional. I had to get over that real fast because if I practiced that here, I'd just never leave the shower room. I'm in a constant state of sweat. Electricity is incredibly expensive, so I'm very fortunate that my host dad brought a fan into my room my first night. Sometimes, it makes a world of a difference to help me sleep through the heat in my 90-degree room. Sometimes, it just blows warm air.

I have never appreciated rain as much as I appreciate it here. It cools the temperature at least 10 degrees and sometimes the new cool temperature lasts for the rest of the day. I'll never forget the first day it rained here in Léo. After a session, it was time for language class and I saw the group of language instructors walk over. Half of them were wearing layered coats with fur-trimmed hoods. It was probably 75 degrees, at the lowest. I was happy to stop sweating. They put on their jackets because they were cold.

There was a storm Friday morning morning. After it ended and I biked through the mud to teach my final lesson of model school, I passed a group of moms, with babies strapped to their backs, on their bikes heading to the market. I like to pretend these are the running stroller moms of Burkina Faso. Voilà groups of moms chatting while going somewhere; some things are just universal. Anyway, Friday morning, all of the babies had beanies on their heads and extra blankets around them. It was probably 75 degrees. This will never get old, it's too funny to me!

This is how women strap their babies to their back! I'm convinced this is why I rarely hear babies cry in Burkina...they have constant contact with their mothers and/or sisters!

Last week we had a series of days where it rained at least every single day or night. We had a few days in a row of 75-80 degree weather. It was beautiful. On one of the days, it was a little bit cooler than usual when the rain started again. I had just come home from a long day of sessions and a sweaty bike ride. My host dad told my mom to make sure she heated the water for my bucket bath and closed the back door because it was letting too much cold air in. I jumped up immediately and insisted that the back door was completely fine the way it was. The house could finally cool off! Every time it rains, I explain to my host family that this is the temperature in San Diego year-round. Well, that's cold to them. We always laugh it off. I'm happy when it's room temperature here and they're cold.

However, yesterday I actually got A CHILL during a rainstorm and put on a SWEATSHIRT after my nightly bucket bath. It was only 73 degrees. 10 weeks must be the mark for me to adjust to constant heat. Still can't believe I put a sweatshirt on. No, I'm not sick. ;)

Free Range Animals

A bunch of piglets live near the middle school and freely roam all over the grass between the buildings

Sheep cross the road. No herder in sight!

Burkina Faso hosts what is the definition of free range: sheep, goats, pigs, donkeys, chickens, you name it. They roam freely about the town in search of greens to graze or grub to devour in trash piles. And when I say free range, I mean free range. At the Peace Corps center, we'll be having a session under the hangar and then a chicken will casually walk through the legs of chairs in search of food goods. Sheep, goats, chickens and chicks and roosters will freely walk into my host family's courtyard in search of my family's donkey's lunch or the beautiful flowering bushes. My host mom gets pissed and shoos them away with a loud "ssss." I tried the "sss" once and it didn't work so well. I tried it again with an arm thrust pointing to the exit and they immediately left. So much pride. Another cultural gesture down.

A herding path outside of a hotel in my regional capital, Yako

Probably the funniest free range encounter was an evening last week. I don't know why these things always happen when I'm leaving the latrine to walk back to the house. But, I walk out in the pitch black darkness to find two, yes TWO, donkeys staring at me. WHAT the heck is going on! Where did you come from!?! I only had the mini light from my phone to see my path, so seeing those giant figures was definitely startling. My brother was outside and saw them at the same time and immediately started chasing the unwelcome donkey with rocks from his slingshot. What had been a typically calm evening became a spectacle within seconds. I've been here for 2 months, but I don't know when I'll get used to the stark contrasts of moments like that!

My host family's donkey after Saturday's rainstorm. Soaked!

Another animal encounter was a lot more casual between me and my host brother. We were sitting on the couches last night watching the news when we heard a thud near the bikes. It sounded like something fell or got bumped. My brother looked over the arm of his chair and dismissively said, "eh, mice." He said it in English before French, which I appreciated, but then he went straight back to watching the news. I went straight to my room. People freak out when there are snakes in or out of the house. But mice? Forget about it. "Harmless." Psh, no thank you! I plan to get a cat as soon as I get to my site.

Snakes in Burkina Faso

Mom and Auntie, you might not want to read this, but I promise it's a funny story! 

If there's one animal that Burkinabé are unanimously terrified of, it's the snake. Truthfully, I've never been very scared of snakes. However, I'm scared of snakes here just because I don't know how to identify them, though the majority are poisonous. For the most part, though, snakes universally behave the same. Leave them alone and they'll leave you alone. It is not common to see snakes, but when they're seen, they're dead. People here are so terrified that they will never let snakes live to go reproduce more of the terrors.

Well, I experienced this firsthand, at my house, in my room. I had just awoken from a nap. Before I got up, I saw the floor move. Now, this isn't the first time I've seen the floor move in my room. There's been a mouse, countless lizards, the furriest caterpillar ever, a terrifying spider and a giant dung beetle. Why was the dung beetle not outside with the donkey? Great question. Anyway, I look to the floor, and to my horror, I see a snake slither from one wall to under the four legs of my stand-up fan. He pokes his head out. Thank goodness he's small. I've never been particularly scared of snakes.  In my experience in California, it's either a harmless striped garder snake in the yard or a terrifying rattlesnake on the trail. However, being small doesn't make the snake less harmful. The baby rattlesnakes of California are potentially more harmful because they don't yet know how to release their fangs, so they inject all of their venom on the first bite. I have no idea if that's the case with the vipers, black mambas, cobras or boomslangs here in Burkina Faso.

The snake is only about a yard from my bed, so, I slowly slip one foot into my flip flop, then the same with the other and tiptoe out of my cement floored room to find a family member. The snake doesn't move at all, even with the loud suction noise characteristic to the opening of my door. I tell my host mom, "There's a snake in my room." She looks at me like I'm using the wrong French word for snake, "Un serpent?" I calmly reply, "Oui, un serpent." She still doesn't believe me and asks, "you saw it?" "Yes, I saw it," I play along. "Un serpent?" she asks again. "Yes, it's in my room, I'll show you!" This time, she decides to play along and follows me to my room.

I don't know the French vocabulary for the parts of a stand-up fan. I don't even know the technical names for the parts in English! So, I use the universal language of gestures to show that the snake is underneath the fan's legs. Well, of course the snake is completely hidden, so she doesn't believe me and asks again, "are you sure you truly saw a snake?" To which I reply, "Yes, I saw a snake!" I throw my hand broom on top of the fan's legs and the snake pokes his head out. I immediately I point to his head, but it's too late, he hides back under the fan once he realizes there's no threat. My host mom decides to go get something longer for us to use to prod the fan. She still doesn't believe me.

She comes back with a tree branch as tall as me. I'm laughing in my head because I have no idea where it came from, though I really need to stop asking that question. Things just appear here in West Africa. My host mom refuses to come in the room, just in case, and prods the base of the fan with the branch. Off slithers the snake with a simultaneous yelp and jump from my host mom. She jumps back as I point to the table he slithers under. "What are you doing? Get out of your room!" She pulls me to the hallway and shuts the door and makes me wait with some random small girl that is at the house for unknown reasons. There was no point to close the door because there's a 3-inch gap between the bottom of the door and the floor, so the snake could come find us if he wanted to. In fact, that's probably the way he'd gotten inside my room in the first place. As we stand in silence, I hear my host mom across the street yelling for reinforcements. I laugh out loud and the girl looks up at me with a straight face and evil eye with the look of, "this is not a laughing matter."

My host mom comes back with her 5+ foot branch of safety and the first strapping young man she could find. Thank goodness my room wasn't in a messy disorderly chaos for this little rendez-vous. I stay in the hallway with the girl while my host mom speaks a mix of rapid French and local language to explain that the snake should be under the table, but possibly elsewhere. He can't find it. He asks her, "are you sure you saw a snake?" I laugh out loud again. He proceeds to move around anything that's touching the floor. After about thirty seconds I hear a yelp from him and my host mom as the snake makes his appearance. I'm ready to hear the sound of the tree branch chopping his head off on my cement floor. But to my amazement, he picks up the snake, takes it outside and kills it there. How kind of you to not kill the snake in my room!

The killing of the snake is its own spectacle. The man has the branch holding the snake in one hand and a branch in another hand to kill it. Well, he whacks the heck out of it, while my mom yells rapid local lang at him. It stops moving, but he continues to hit it. Once he stops, my host mom asks, "are you sure he's dead? Hit him again! Make sure he's dead!" The man just hands her the branch and she starts whacking the heck out of the lifeless snake in the dirt. In the chaos of it all, the donkey keeps staring at me because I'm holding leaves that had fallen off of my host mom's giant branch of safety. I give him the leaves while my host mom finishes her time with the snake. Then it's about a 3-minute spectacle of where to discard the snakes body. There's probably some animist (traditional beliefs) superstition about leaving a dead snake in your courtyard because she makes him finally toss the snake over the fence.

After the ordeal is over, my host mom is still in distress. She takes me to the side of the house to show me that I'm well protected: my window is sealed with metal mosquito netting and there are no cracks. We walk to the back door and look at some of the entry places. The truth is, I'm not really concerned about how he got in the house. They leave their front door open every hour of the day, except for when they're sleeping. He could've been in the house for days. My host mom explains that she's never seen a snake since living here in Léo, which I think has been at least 5 years, if not more. She comes to check on me about ten minutes later and asks if I'll be forever worried because she's very scared of snakes. "No, I'm not worried. Snakes don't scare me." She gives me a quizzical look, but is comforted that I'm not terrified to be in the house. I'm just comforted by how much she worries about me. What a great host family to be with! I'm definitely going to miss them when I leave for my site! But, I now know that if I ever come across a snake, the whole town will come running to help!

The Morning Commute

The steps of my 1.00-mile morning commute

1. Exit my courtyard

My host brother insists on walking my bike outside the courtyard every morning.

 2. Turn right outside my door. 3. Turn left onto the main dirt road.

The courtyard with the yellow gates is next door to my courtyard and where my host dad grew up.

 4. Dodge the ditches and turn right toward the bank.

The main dirt road that connects to my street (can you imagine the river road in the ditch on the left?)

 5. Ride toward the bank and turn right onto the paved road.

I drive by the entrance to the bank atm every morning and say "bonjour" to the security doorman.

 6. Head toward Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

Turning left would take me to the market.

 7. Turn right at the roundabout. 

No traffic lanes, good luck getting around the roundabout!

 8. Ride uphill.

Typical paved road in Burkina Faso.

 8. Keep riding.

Vendors sell liters of gasoline to the motorists. It's cheaper than going to the gas station but of questionable quality.

 8. Slow for donkeys.

There's always that one "ass" backing up traffic. (Sorry, the pun was too tempting.)

 9. Turn left into the Peace Corps Training Center!

On the left you can see the boutiques next to the training center where we can top-up our phones with airtel time and//or buy items such as mangoes, soap, candy, etc.

My Host Family's Home

My Room

Le balai

I'm usually only in my bedroom for sleeping because it gets pretty hot in there during the day. Electricity is very expensive here and my host dad was nice enough to give me a fan, so I try to only use it when I'm sleeping. It makes a HUGE difference in my quality of sleep. It also works as fantastic white noise during loud thunderstorms. The floor is concrete throughout the house, so I always wear flip flops. My door is about 2 inches off of the ground, so it is not rare for me to see bugs in my room once in a while. I sleep under a mosquito net, so I don't worry about them then. It's the surprise 6-inch black beetle on my curtains that makes me jump and go grab my host brother for assistance. He's a 14-year-old boy. Bugs don't bother him. Anyway, I had my first sweeping experience after about 10 days in the house and now I understand why it's good to sweep every couple days here. A lot of dirt gets tracked in, in addition to bugs that die from eating my bug spray (I sprayed my room and then left for the day, as recommended by Peace Corps). The sweeping device here is the "balai" (buh-lay) which is only about one foot long. Talk about a good exercise for your back!

Shower

My host family does not have running water, so I take bucket baths twice daily: immediately upon awaking and again before dining. Whenever it's around the time for me to shower, I'll hear a thud of a bucket outside my door saying, "hint hint, take your shower." I grab my shower items from in my room, grab the bucket full of water outside my door and take a few steps to the other side of the hallway to the shower area. To take a bucket bath, I use my 12 oz. plastic cup to scoop up water and pretend it's a transient showerhead. It seriously saves so much water. Want to lower your water bills? Consider switching to bucket baths. Or turn off the shower when you're washing your hair, shaving, etc.

Latrine

Sorry if you wanted me to leave a little mystery, but I warned you that I would keep it real on this blog. Here's my toilet for the next 8 weeks. Some restaurants have toilets, but most places don't have running water and thus provide a hole in the ground. Usually the surrounding walls are only about 4 ft high and the area is home to flies having a party. I'm EXTREMELY fortunate that my host parents keep their latrine clean. I don't know what they do, but there are less flies in this outside latrine area than most gas station restrooms. I'll be sure to learn their ways so I can keep mine this nice at my future site.

Burkina Faso shower area

Burkina Faso Latrine

Courtyard

Chez Moi - My host mom came out the door just as I took the picture!

Voila my host family's stunning courtyard. Doesn't scream Africa? I know. Flowers mean bugs, especially mosquitos, so  seeing flowers is rare. Want a pretty yard? You're going to have to find another way in malaria-infested West Africa. So, am I safe here? Yes, of course. Peace Corps wouldn't allow a trainee to stay someone that isn't safe. I take malarial prophylaxis everyday and though mosquitos are definitely present, they don't seem to be too much of an issue here in Leo. As for my host family, I have no idea if they also take malarial pills. They're definitely wealthy by Burkina standards, but I don't know what their healthcare is like. 

My host parents' nursery

My host dad is a retired electrician, but I think he still makes a living by growing/selling/planting baby trees. Within my first few days living there I asked him if he sells the plants and he said no. Maybe he misunderstood my question, thanks a lot language barrier, but I don't really know.

On particularly hot days, it's probably about a 15-20 degree Fahrenheit difference under the large tree (below) than outside and probably a larger difference compared to the house. It gets so hot in my room that sometimes my liquid makeup sounds like water when I shake the container (P.S. at this point, most of us girls have stopped wearing make-up, it's wonderful). This is also the tree under which I do my laundry ever Sunday morning. If it's too hot inside during a soccer match, sometimes I'll go sit under the tree and right letters, journal and/or do homework. I call moments like these "Peace Corps moments." There are certain expectations that a lot of us have coming into Peace Corps, and sitting under a mango tree writing a letter is definitely a #peacecorpsmoment.

My brother (right) and his friend staying cool under the tree.

Donkey (left), latrine (center), cactus (right)

My host family has a donkey, but I have never seen him in use. They don't have a farm, so I don't know why they have a donkey. Maybe he was a gift. I need to figure this out. He stands there tied to a tree all day, every day. My room is right next to the back door of the house, which has a direct route to the latrine. So, I pass him every day on my way from my room to the latrine. If he's feeling especially sassy, he'll follow me toward the latrine (square walled area in middle of picture) so that my exit is blocked when I am finished. If he's in a particularly bad mood, he'll back himself up so that his rear end is facing my escape. This immediately becomes a game of dodge the donkey kick. So far, I'm winning, but I'm well aware that one of these days he'll throw some kicks when I least expect them. If I feel like pushing my luck outside of the dodging games, I pet him on the nose. After about the third stroke he decides it's time to snap at my hand, so I stop. We have a love-hate relationship. At least it's mutual. ;)

Family Space with TV

The chair on the far left is where I eat all of my meals.

I played recreational and competitive soccer from ages 5-15, but I never got into watching professional soccer on tv. I've watched so many soccer matches in the past 3 weeks that I now accidentally call it football during conversation. It seems as my French fluency increases, my conversational English decreases. I've just come to terms with speaking Franglais at this point. All of our classes are instructed by locals following Peace Corps procedures from Washington DC. So, even though I'll be in a cultural, technical or safety course, half of the material is delivered in French. I wake up thinking in French. Just wait until I learn third and fourth languages here. My head might explode.

Well, that was quite the tangent. The whole point about me talking about football was that I watch it every night with my host father and brother. It doesn't matter which continent is playing, I have seen majority of the matches. I come home from the training center, take a bucket bath, then bring my homework out to watch the game and socialize. Okay, let's be real, the socializing consists of me and my host brother making "ooo" noises at the tv whenever there's a collision or goal or whatever. My host family always has "my chair" ready for me and facing the tv. Since it's the best seat in the house for watching the tv, the cushion of the chair has completely lost its integrity. The wooden bar is pushing through my tailbone as we speak. But, if I move anywhere else, they will insist that I move back. The only time they don't say anything is when I make a note of how many insects are bothering me. As you can see in the photo, the tv is pretty close to the front doors of the house, which are always open. At this point, I'm used to casually flicking off small flying African beetles that land on me.

GO AFRICA. But seriously, the entire continent is united in supporting any African team to win. It's pretty amazing. My host brother woke up at 1:30am with his dad to watch the Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) game one night. Cote d'Ivoire is next to Burkina Faso and so is Ghana, so those games are more exciting for my host brother since he knows a fair amount about the countries from school. Unfortunately I haven't seen either of the USA matches because they always start at 10pm here and I'm passed out asleep by then. The morning after the USA v Ghana match I was expecting the usual morning update from my host dad about who won the match because he always gives me the update each morning. He said nothing. I assumed USA won, and sure enough we had! I'm currently watching the Brasil v Cameroon match. I really want Cameroon to win because one of our Peace Corps physicians was born in Cameroon and he is hands down the funniest professional I have ever met. Also, he hands out chocolate during all of his lectures. I'll talk more about him another time.