The Travelling Salesman

I have a huge crush on a travelling salesman. He's been on my bus three times and he flirts with me and gives me freebees. This is not in itself outstanding as i like to flirt and tend to have multiple crushes at any given time. What is outstanding is that there is a traveling salesman on my bus at all. Let me explain...



The first time i saw him was on the STAF bus on the way to Ouahigouya last July. I have taken A LOT of buses in my 21 months of service and I was confused when a man got up and stood in the center aisle of the moving bus and began addressing everyone. My first thought was - wtf? i hope its not a proselytizing christian! I gave him a disinterested cold shoulder when he started passing out candy to get peoples attention. Great! A proselytizing christian with shitty candy! This 3 hour bus ride is going to be fantastic!

He began his speech and to my surprise it wasnt about Jesus and eternal damnation at all! He was talking about health of all things. Now this was a surprise! Culturally speaking, in Burkina people do not really talk about their health. When you're sick it's because someone cursed you. Babies grow in the stomach. Meningitis comes from eating green mangos. The menstrual cycle and pregnancy have nothing to do with each other. There is very serious ignorance in this country when it comes to the human body and its quirks and functions. And here was a man talking about health!

I was very confused and listened in to what he had to say. He was talking about menstrual cramps! Infertility! Malaria! He was telling men that it was okay to have sex with their pregnant wives and that it wasnt good to look for another woman in the mean time! What what what??? Yes! Finally there was someone talking publicly and without embarrassment about health and the humna body! I quickly discovered what was going on because the guy started hocking weird "chinese" medicine to cure any number of ailments. Fatigue, heat rash, malaria, muscle pain etc. First of all - the Burkinabe are used to getting things from China - cheaply made shirts, plates, jewelry, everything! They call it "la chinoiserie" and they think that the chinese have lots of secrets and answers so random chinese medicine being sold on a bus was a hot item. The guy started selling tons of the chinese tea stuff. They couldn't get enough of it! Try to get them to take quinine for malaria or wash their hands and its a waste of time but mystery chinese medicine?? It sold like hot cakes. Geez. The guy was so charming and funny that even I was thinking - hey, maybe this stuff would be good! Geez.

Well, it didn't stop there. The chinese tea was only item numbe one. Next, he had these weird patches that you apply to the skin. Large white tape rectangles that stick right on the skin. I read the directions - its like a trans-dermal analgesic something or other. Wow I thought mystery mentrual cramp tea was popular! The people on the bus were pointing out places on their bodies that have been suffering from pain for years! The travelling salesman assured them that the patch would soothe their stiff necks, feet, hands, backs etc. I got off the bus three hours later and half the passengers are covered from head to toe in white sticky patches. The driver even had one across the top of his head. Pasted on feet. Slapped onto forearms. It was hysterical!

I think two things here. I think first off - I am so glad that someone is actually talking about the menstrual cycle and malaria and diarhhea and not claiming these health issues as curses but as actual diseases with logical and avoidable causes. Awesome! The second thing that occurs to me is that buying mystical chinese tea from a travelling salesman on a bus isnt all that different than a visit to the witch doctor for a traditional tea brew to ward off curses. So, there is a small gain - a window of communication was opened albeit by the hand of magical chinese tonic. I still have a huge crush on the travelling salesman - he really is so charnimg. Argh! Freaking salesmen!

Cursing Nuns

Note: This blog post contains the F-word so if you dont want to see the f-word continue elsewhere

Have I mentioned my lovely and enthusiastic group of nuns that I teach english to? Of course I have. English class is going well and they are almost fluent . . . well not fluent so much as . . . well, lovely and enthusaistic. One day we were playing the game 20 questions to practice vocabulary etc. The object chosen by the Nun in question was "fork." Well, this was all fine and good until the end when the nuns started to practice the word "fork" and hit a little too close to the word "fuck." Well, we can't just have Nuns going around saying "fuck" and i certainly can't be responsible for this transgression. So, to make a point of it - i told the nuns to be careful.
"Sisters! Be very careful. When you are pronouncing the word "fork" it sounds very like another word in english that is very bad."
Of course this small tidbit peaked their curiosity and bade me explain further; afterall ignorance never helped anyone and i found it more than amusing to explain the word "fuck" to a group of nuns. I'm sick. I know.
"Well, the word means to have sex but in a not very nice way. And it is the strongest word in the english language. I do not know of a stronger word and if i were to say this word in front of my mother she would smack me for saying it" (totally not true but it gets the point made).
"Ooooh . . . no this is not good." Good. The nuns have understaood the gravity of such a pronunciation mistake. "Say the word for us again so we will be sure not to confuse the two."
So i repeat, "Fuck."
And . . . God forgive me . . . all the Nuns repeat in unison and with boistrous clarity "FUCK!"
Noooooo!!!!!! All the Nuns just said fuck!!!!!!
"No no!! My sisters do not repeat this word! God will strike me down." Now we are all laughing and some of them keep saying "fuck" just to watch the shame play across my face. Eventually we have the two words separated out and they can say "fork" without dropping the "r".

That's one wild bunch of Nuns.

General Update

Hello People! I'll see you all in 6 months! Yay!!



Yes, I may be counting down the months BUT things are going well in Burkina. I'm just ready to be part of my own culture again and more than anything a tangible part of y'all's lives again. With only six months left to go I've thrown myself into my village trying to get everything out of it that I can. I just spent 5 un-interrupted weeks there and I'll probably only leave village once a month for the rest of my service.



One reason that i'll be leaving less is because I have started a new project. There is a group of 7 nuns that live in my village and run several operations. They are all Burkinabe excpet one who is

Ivoirian (Ivory Coast). There they are in the picture up above! Two of them work at a private catholic elementary school. Two are nurses. One runs a pharmacy. One runs a girls technical school (the girls learn how to sew, knit, crochet, and dye fabrics). The last one (the one seated at the far right), Sister Anastasie, teaches french at the high school with me. She was telling me one day that the Nuns all love English and would like to learn so i offered to teach them. We have class on thursdays and saturdays for one hour. I ADORE them!! They are super cute and laugh a lot and give me things (yogurt, lemon juice, pagne). So, i like to stay on the weekends in village now because i don't want to lose an hour with the Sisters. Also, we are planning to do some other projects together on malnutrition.

Other than the Sisters, much is the same for me. School started the 5th of January and goes til the 21st of March. EEK!! L'enseignement vas me tuer. C'est sur. So my life is lesson planning and grading tests. And dreaming about being back in America. AMERICA!!

I'll be back in Ouaga probably around the 28th. That weekend is FESPACO which is a huge african film festival that Burkina hosts every two years. Should be interesting.

Eloise is (i'm pretty sure) pregnant again. Well, last week she started acting all crazy and these two boy cats kept hanging out at my house making all kinds of racket and keeping me up at night. One even followed Eloise inside my house through her "kitty door" in the window. Not cool. I've had enough of this kitty kat courtship business and Eloise will be getting spayed here shortly (slash maybe an abortion depending on how you look at things). Kittens! I am tired of kittens!

Let's see . . . can't really think of anything else. My life is cool but not a lot happens. Ok, c'est tout. A bientot!

Obamania

January 20th.

There was no way I was gonna miss the inauguration. I, like so many Americans, am suffering from chronic Obamania. I wanted to hear the world change, hear his speech. However, you have to have a pretty fancy radio to pick up BBC in my village. No prob Bob, my neighbor David inherited a satellite radio from the volunteer i replaced and lent it to me for the special event. On the 19th I checked to make sure the batteries were good and the radio was in good working condition. I was trying to be (however uncharacteristically) prepared. The radio itself has a 20 ft or so cord that connects its to the antenna. I tried to find a good spot that got reception and was out of the way of Salmad the one year old's curious hands. Again, are y'all proud? I was planning ahead!! Not one of my best skills. All was working and looking good.

The 20th arrived and I was kinda anxious because the broadcast started at 5pm out time but I was giving a test at school that ended at 5 so i was gonna have to haul ass back home in order not to miss anything. I leave the school a few minutes before five. Im basically skipping with joy as I arrive home. Two of my neighbors were there and Bienvenue. I go inside and bring the radio out and set it up in the exact configuration that was working the day before. And SILENCE. What???? SILENCE!!!???? NO!!!!!! The speech! The Speech!!! History is being made!! Come on!

I'm cursing in english at this point. Quickly i grab my bike and book it over to a colleagues house. "Yelkouni! Does your radio get BBC??!"
"Bon soir Rebecca! But why are you not listening to the broadcast?"
"Radio's not working. Does your radio get BBC?"
"Oh, BBC? No but if you . . . hey! where are you going?!"
And I'm off back to my house - certainly i can get that thing to work. I get home and start yelling for Bienvenue "Bienvenue get over here and grab ahold of this radio while i run around the yard looking for reception!" So I start trying different spots in the courtyard wandering around the yard (ok running around) trying to get some seception and basically dragging Bienvenue who is attached to me with that twenty foot cord between the radio and the antenna. I send him up on the roof. Silence. I am definately cursing. But wait!! Aha!!! I finally get a signal with the antenna perched up on my courtyard wayy by the gate. Quick Bienvenue bring me a chair! Bring me a table!! Quick!

And there is Barak's deep comforting voice talking about the economy, the war, foreign aid, etc and I can't help but feel like I am in a movie. Im sitting in a chair made out of skinny tree switches and translating this great man's speech into french. Close up it's me and the radio. The camera pans out. There's a twenty something dusty white woman sitting in an even more dusty and barren courtyard speaking to a 15 yr old African kid, another twenty something african woman doing laundry with her hands deep in a plastic bucket, and an elderly woman with carmel colored paper like skin. The camera pans out further. The courtayrd is surrounded by a bunch of huts. Women are walking with babies on the backs and 40 pounds of god knows what balanced on their heads. There are some scrubby trees and a dusty breeze. Its the middle-of-nowhere deep in the middle-of-nowhere in west africa. And the soundtrack is this man's speech and all the hope and promise that he is bringing. He's talking about his roots in a Kenyan village not too unlike the one in which I am in translating his words. It's very peace corps and even i cant be too cynical not to feel that the moment is unique and special.

Test Questions

In 6th grade at the end of the unit on plants, we talked about the importance of plants and why we should protect them. The kids at Lycee Departemental de Tougouri are HORRIBLE students. In part because they dont see the benefit or value of education . . . because they are majorly unsupervised at home . . . because they dont speak french . . . myriad reasons.

ANYWAY, hardly any student studies at all. Just to give you an idea of the absurdity i submit to every time i sit down to grade papers here is one question i asked and some of the funnier responses. The question is taken from a test I wrote on the above subject - the importance and protection of plants in burkina. Obviously not a difficult subject - mostly common sense etc. So here you go:

Question (roughly translated):
Give a strategy on how to fight against deforestation and cutting down too many trees.

Answers:
You must avoid a lot of trees.

To fight against abusive tree cutting we must have a better knowledge in our lives

Imprisonment

It allows animals to live

Bush fires

Wood allows us to light fires

When men cut trunks the tree our country must to be the desert

Dry wood to cut for selling

One can create life

Cut wood with a machete

When people cut the trees the rain doesn't rain anymore and when the rain rains the seeds grow the animals eat

When people cut the trees the rain doesn't rain anymore when the rain doesn't rain anymore the people will die at the also the animals

Vertebrates and Invertebrates


Oh my!! God bless those children. Hmmm... I don't think they understood. Vertebrates and Invertebrates???? What does that have to do with deforrestation?? BUSH FIRES??? Umm . . . kinda the opposite?? Geez - on the one hand its stuff like this that makes me want to stay because its so freakin funny and on the other hand its stuff like this that makes me want to go home. But for now I'm laughing and I hope you are too.

Spectator Sports

I've never really been one for spectator sports. There's too many rules to follow and i don't like crowds. Considering my level of boredom in Burkina I have put aside my prejudices and have become a watcher of spectator sports. Well . . . kind of. One sport. And really, I can only stand to watch some of it.

The sport i am talking about is none other than "cat and mouse" or . . . lizard . . . or bat . . . or other unwelcome creature in my house. Lke the proverbial car wreck, when eloise brings in her kill, no matter how disturbing, i just can't not watch. She maims the little meal just enough to impair its ability to run away easily - takes a foot or bites its head etc. Then she plays with it swatting it and jumping on it while i jump around the house crying out "Oh!" "Oh my God oh my God!" "Eloise!!" "Just eat it!! Oh!!" When its been still for awhile and unresponsive to her whacks she lays down near it pretending to be bored hoping it will make a run for it which it invariably does. "Oh Eloise!! There it goes! get it get it!!" After about 40 minutes of all this she finally eats it and goes out for another one. Im half disgusted and half entertained. One can only stare at the wall for so many hours a day.

Genies and Sorcerers

"They sold their blood??" I can't believe it.

She explains: "Yeah, at the clinic in my village they were pulling more blood than necessary for HIV/AIDS tests and selling the extra blood to the fetisheur!" 

Sarah, a fellow PCV, works at the local clinic in her village. As all Burkinabe are first animists and then Muslims or Christians, visits to the fetisheur (or witch doctor) are frequent. I was aware of the not-so-under under current of animism among burkinabe but the particulars and superstitions were not clear to me. Stories like Sarah's above are shocking but not unheard of. SO, like i always do when then nuances of Burkinabe ways and means evade me, I asked Konate.

"Konate, tell me, what exactly are genies and sorcerers?"

She's not surprised I'm asking of course and jumps into a brief break down.

"There are two kinds of genies. Genies that work for good and genies that work for bad. The people, they believe when something good or bad happens to them its because of the genies." Seems simple enough and not unlike American ghosts.

"Do you believe in Genies?"

"Me? Hiya! Things happen. You dont know." She is a math and science teacher and is avoiding just flat-out saying YES because she wants to be 'western' or 'rational.' Often, when babies die or the rains dont come or you fail a test etc. Burkinabe just say . . . that's a bad genie! One week Salmad was being weird and fussy and not his usually giggly self and Mariam kept saying "What is with my baby? Theres got to be some kind of genie in the courtyard." Of course she is half joking but she really does believe in that genie half. There is a really really smart kid in my 5eme class. His name in Dramane and his test scores are always way above everyone elses in every subject. Bienvenue, who is in his class, says,"Hiya! When you look at Dramane . . . in his eyes . . . he's got to be a genie." Of course, Dramane just studies which is a foreign concept to the vast majority of students. But genies are only part of the story.

"What about sorcerers Konate? What do sorcerers do?"

"There are good and bad sorcerers too. They curse people." She seems more confident about this aspect of animism.

"Would you ever go to a sorcerer?"

"Me? Whyee! If someone put a curse on me I would definately go get a counter curse. You've got to protect yourself. People are mean, they'll curse you. They get jealous. The bad sorcerers, they are just bad mean people. Thats how you know them. You know a good sorcerer because their family and friends prosper and they are very nice." Apparently, sorcerers dont advertise, its all speculation.

"Do you know of anyone that you've suspected to be a sorcerer?"

She gives this some thought . . . real thought.

"No . . . well . . . hmm . . . n-n-nooo . . . No, I dont know anyone ive suspected of sorcery. C'est du mal" It's not a good thing. Intriguing

I tell her the story at the beginning of the post about the clinic taking extra blood to sell to fetisheurs. She's outraged. "People" she says "Ah! They can be bad!" Then she tells me that some people get rich by selling people they know to fetisheurs who kill them for their blood. What??? For their blood??

"Yeah, you see africans with cars . . . where did they get that money??"

Geez! Obviously this doesnt happen toooo often but i believe her that it does indeed exist here.

We talk about how people hide behind sorcery and genies to explain illnesses and poverty because its easier than the alternatives: western medicine, admitting that the environment of the country isnt intended to support life (theres no water here! you cant grow anything!). Of course all this was done in french and i might have misinterpreted some things but i think not. 

Hah. Africa. No matter how long a person lives here, a person not born here, they can never really understand this place. Every month Im more and more aware of how much there is that i can just never understand. I can be culturally appropriate - know the people in that sense, their practices, daily lives, etc. but something will always be amiss. A lifetime wouldnt be enough.