Its not that we want to experience the culture: there is no culture. We want to experience a culture. Somehow this is hard to communicate: maybe they aren’t used to it. I don’t want to learn the traditional dances, or about the festival of masks. This is the stuff we use at home as filler. We accentuate it in visiting other places because the differences when we go to visit Alberta or California aren’t significant enough that they are interesting on their own otherwise. So we supplement whatever day-to-day, down-to-earth culture, with the museums and the festivals and the guided tours. Don’t get me wrong: I love that stuff, its interesting, and tells neat stories. But when there is more available, when the living culture is more than enough, more than huge, then that is what I have to go for.
Culture is how people live day-to-day. You don’t get that from museums or festivals or parks. It is the small, meaningless things, like the walk into town for groceries, or the chatting with strangers, or the laughter among friends. You get that from interactions with people. You get that from ongoing, sustained, continuing, simple interactions. This kind of culture isn’t easy. I don’t know how to speak the first languages. I can’t understand the politics. I’m not familiar with the foods. I don’t follow the religion. It’s work. It’s impossible. But I’m up to trying: I don’t want to feel cheated of that opportunity to put in the effort.
I hate that I’ve gotten attached to that idea: it would have been much easier if I hadn’t, if I had stuck with the initial broad project, if this place hadn’t stolen our hearts. Heart and Soul. That’s what Emily said. That we’d put it into whatever project. If it isn’t this one, she’s going to have to re-convince me, which won’t be nearly as easy as it was the first time.
I can completely justify this in what I’m seeing is a neat, logical way. I could begin with the easy one, we are paying for it. However, that isn’t really a fair justification, as we are here for more than that, we are asking for more than that. But there’s justification beyond that. We’re compromising, we’re making things work, we’re bending over backwards to be allowed to contribute. We continually ask what we can do, we are flexible, but we want it to be real. We understand that tourism is different, and that this is what they are seemingly more used to. Maybe that isn’t a fair statement either. But still, it shouldn’t be this hard. We’ve now had to apologize for being difficult, but append that with the statement that though we were sorry, we weren’t going to stop being difficult if we still hold any hope.
Beyond the logical, we just want to. I’ve already said it, Heart and Soul. Not normally one for a home, I’ve gotten attached to settling it, to a routine, so dramatically different from any previous one. I’ve gotten attached to seeing familiar faces, to wondering who will come up the road, to expecting ‘good morning’s from friends, to constant teasing, to awkward attempts at complicated conversations with second languages.
It’s a good thing its on paper: we may have to burn it.
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Emily says I should give this context, and she’s right as usual, so here it comes.
Since early on in planning internships, Emily and I have been planning to do different projects while in Burkina Faso. She was to be working with NGO’s, on capacity building programs with them. I was to be working in education (the plan of exactly what changed 6 or 7 times before I left) in speaking with different stakeholders in the education system about the challenges they were seeing, and what might be done to lessen these.
About a month before Emily and I left home, because of some confusion in wording of conversations, we emailed Daniel to clarify that he knew we expected to be together, that though Emily and I were doing separate projects, we needed to come home to the same house each evening. We clarified that this was an expectation that we ourselves held, that our parents held, and that RC wanted (good ol’ RC, always stepping in where we need them to) for safety concerns. The response was slightly confusing: we were told that of course we would be together, but also that we would be fine if we were apart, that it had been done before by individuals our age and that they had managed fine and that we need not worry about being separated. So, though it seemed like a slight backtrack, we assumed that it could be taken care of. No worries.
As we arrived in Ouaga, we were presented with two separate schedules that had been drawn up for us: Emily was to spend a lot of time in Leo (where most of the NGO’s were based), and I most of the time in Boura (the center of the school district). They said that they had heard the week before that we were actually supposed to be together, and that they were still unsure how to make this work out. Easy enough, we decided to start together on most of my schedule and compact Emily’s a bit to do together later in the summer. It was reiterated several times that the schedule was not written in stone, and would be as flexible as we needed it to be.
So, its now week 3, and Emily and I have been visiting schools in Boura and generally settling in. (see previous postings if you aren’t convinced that we love it here).
Ah, I’d better explain why we love it here. We are able to be fairly independent, we are doing interesting work, and we are getting to talk with a lot of people. All of this was non-existant in both Leo and Ouaga. Ouaga is a giant city, having the benefits of some ‘from home’ ammeneties, but mostly the problems of urban centers. We were isolated, cut off, and generally stuck on our own, unable to be independent or meet with people, unable to settle in: we would always be ‘new’ in Ouaga, because we would invariably always see people to whom we were new. This means that both we are unable to feel at home and non-new ourselves, and, as importantly, that we are unable to get beyond very basic, surface conversations with anyone. Leo presents challenges of another kind. Where we stay in Leo is far from town, and we have to rely on someone to drive us to and from anyplace we want to go. As well, Pascaline (our translator) grew up there, and so has family and friends to visit, which is good for her, but necessarily leaves us even more isolated. We’ve become quite attached to the independence we’ve been able to assume in Boura, and to the relationships forged because of this, and aren’t anxious to give it up.
Not wanting to leave Boura is one reason we are trying to modify our schedule, though there are others. Emily’s project, as explained here, has turned into more of a ‘sightseeing’ expedition: go see what these NGO’s are doing, and be amazed by what they accomplish. Which means that we ourselves are accomplishing nothing, except being foreigners (in French, they use the same word for this and ‘stranger’, which more aptly describes our predicament) coming in to inspect, supervise, and gawk. We don’t want to encourage any sense of us being there to ‘check up’ on them and their work: we are not managers, we have no expertise, and we can’t understand an organization from a few translated meetings. We don’t see what BoH can possibly gain from this (we both see a lot to lose, in perpetuating stereotypes), and are mystified as to why they would have us do this.
Thirdly, from what we have seen in the schools and the very real challenges they face (mostly in students not going to school or not going very far in school), and ongoing projects within BoH to assist with these challenges, we see real opportunity to put in some of the grunt work needed to expand on these to increase their contributions to the community. On encouragement from one of the people here, and from Daniel in Canada, we’ve dreamt up (and apparently become quite attached to) a project which would help children who aren’t going to school to further their learning and to show them opportunities available to them in their community. Emily and I drew up a plan that would have us finish the work with the schools before they are out for the summer in July, and do the report on them as planned, and use shortened versions of Emily’s NGO visits to understand resources available in the community to individuals. From there, we would devote all of July to expanding on a club for children, in running programming and testing how its impact can be furthered. Both wary of short-term projects, the idea of this would be as a test-run, or proof that such a concept can (or cannot) work with positive impact in the community, with the idea that BoH would then take on the resulting group as a permanent project.
We are quite thrilled with this project and it’s potential. We would get to stay in Boura, build significant relationships with a group of youth and build leadership (how RC) and self-confidence ideas in them. We would be starting a project which would have long-term impact, long-term duration, and a lot of support from the Canadian head (which is where (unfortunately) all funding comes from at this time) (they’re working on changing that). It’s enormous.
And it’s recognized as such. Except that so far, people in charge of us (our schedule) aren’t seeing on the same page as us. They are trying to take Emily and I’s two very different schedules and cram everything into one common schedule. Life doesn’t work that way, or at least it doesn’t work well that way. We had two separate things: now we are being asked to do two things at once. We could do it, but not well. Never mind that one of the projects is ineffective on its own, it would cramp the other enough that both end up being ineffective. It is hard to be enthusiastic about. On top of that, it seems that, they are quite attached to the idea of us visiting as much of the country as possible, in as short amount of time as possible. They’ve got us travelling all over the place (a very expensive prospect, and not an effective use of time), spending a few days in Bobo-Diasolou doing tourist-y stuff, a few days visiting a small village in the north, and a lot of visits to Ouagadougou, where we are apparently supposed to visit the American Recreation Center (it has a pool and movies) and feel ‘at home’. Its so hard to explain that we aren’t here to feel ‘at home’, but that we are quite content to feel ‘at home in Boura.’
So, we have a final chance to convince BoH on either Thursday or Friday: wish us luck, wish us tears if that will help convince them, wish us good health until then, and wish us … I have no idea. Just make it happen, I’m not sure if we’re ready for alternatives.
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
Saturday, 9 June 2007
June 8th
So, updates on everything. The past few days have been busy. On Friday, we had an amazing meeting with parents at the school BoH is running here. There are 100 students at the school, and, on notice of two days, we had over 60 parents turn out to talk with us about the challenges they have with school and education, and the solutions they see as most likely. We were astounted: two days notice, very high attendance (we anticipated about 10 or 15 parents), and amazing ideas. We’ve been incredibly impressed at the value placed on education here by so many people. It is unquestionably recognized as important (and after a solid debate on the subject, Emily and I have agreed that education is, for these people, not at all a luxury but a necessity). Also impressive is that school is not valued so much for hard skills, in learning to read and write and do some math, but rather that they see it as the way their children will learn to think critically, to challenge ideas, and learn to learn. I guess I’ve never been the parent of a 7-year-old, but I can’t help but wonder how many parents at home have that clarity of vision about the purpose of education. (Maybe I’m not giving enough credit, and that could just be because I wasn’t conscious enough at age 7 to understand why I was learning stuff at school, and to understand what I was actually learning at that time). Still, its an attitude that should certainly be encouraged.
The market here in Boura is every 6 days, so last week it was Saturday, and this week it is Friday. Clever that people can keep that straight.
Yesterday we were ‘taught’ some African dancing. Before they would teach us we had to share Canadian dance, so we (please remember that Kristina can’t dance) pulled off a terrible attempt at Irish dancing, with spinning and step-type feet movements. We tried to explain that people in
We’ve continued with the school interviews, having completed BoH’s school earlier this week, and today finished with Boura Public. We’ve got some interesting ideas, from people we’ve talked with, and are trying to see if we can make something work to apply some of what we are learning during our time here. Have to see how that works out, but we’re both pretty excited about that possibility, and also that it would mean spending more time in Boura, which truly seems like the best place for us, and the best use of our time. We were both nervous about the amount of time we were initially to spend travelling, hoping from place to place, and see this possibility as an interesting alternative.
We’ve decided we’re coming back some day. And we sing. And we feed babies (?). And we talk. Lots of talking. And, we baked, attempting to make banana bread, except it ended up as mango banana bread, and it was good.
I’m starting to feel distinctly less white (I’ve never felt white, except that people stare), in that either people are getting used to us and not staring so much, or that we are just getting better at ignoring the staring. We’ve had some interesting conversations about us and what we are actually able to do here, both amongst ourselves and with local people, and come to the conclusion that we aren’t useless, which is nice. Still having a hard time understanding realities here, and that is compounded by the fact that people here don’t seem to understand them either. We have little idea how many school aged children are actually in school, with estimates ranging from 20 to 70 percent. We have no idea how excluded from education girls are (and yes, I hate saying that, but I’m learning), if it is getting better or worse, and if it is primarily because of money or culture. Its tricky, much of the information presented seems to be from a long time ago, and current realities are not really known, making it hard to say if current initiatives are helping at all (if they should be continued) or if different approaches are needed… its tricky. I know that at home problems are frequently studied to death, but here a study could be very helpful to getting something done.
Well that sums up a lot, but doesn’t cover even the surface still. I need to get better at this, but it’s a start.
June 4th
So, I’ve been rather negligent in my blog posting, but HI HI HI!!!
Internet here is iffy, as in hard to access and of dubious reliability, so that is difficult. So, Boura is still good. Its absolutely beautiful, and because of location and people around us, we are able to get out and talk to people here a lot more: we’ll wander over to the orphanage or the school, or walking into town isn’t too far either, which is spectacular, and means we get to talk with people here a lot more. It was important, and we really needed that.
We’ve been slowly going at our project, talked with some teachers today, and it was really frustrating. Hard to communicate the information we are looking for, hard to confirm understandings when it has to be double-translated (to get to us in the first place, and then whatever we say translated back). French is good, and very important and useful, Emily is struggling with following that a lot, and I’m struggling with how much I can help her with that or not. Its sometimes hard for me to try and keep her having a good idea of what is going on, while still struggling to follow stuff on my own. Its coming though. Yes, but with the school project, we’re having a hard time communicating the sort of information we want, things that will help us make the school stronger. Also hard to ask any kind of tough questions (even positive tough questions, like what is going well) because culturally we have no concept of what is going on. Hard being out of the loop on the Burkina school system, and also of school systems in general, and ALSO on the culture. We are very concerned about the image we inevitably project as white foreign people in Africa, that we are either here to check up on stuff (as in, we are here to report on what is going wrong, why Africa is ‘messed up’), or to point out all the ways we are better, and impose American culture here (the last thing anyplace needs).
So that’s what we’re stuck on right now. Hopefully we’ll get around it somehow, work something out, but for now its frustrating and difficult.
Lets quote Emily for a second. “Life sucks, but its beautiful, and I’m a smoker.” (the last one isn’t true). That gives no idea of the wonderful and difficult conversations we’ve had, but I wanted to include it anyways.
Well, just to keep you up to speed, we went to church again yesterday, and it was much less dramatic than last time, which I appreciated. We’ve had a lot of fun singing with people and wading in the ‘barrage’ (the water held in by the dam here) and playing with kids and gardening and visiting people’s houses and wandering. Its good, and we both love it. Got my first sunburn on Saturday (not bad at all, just minor), and my first bug bite two minutes ago. We’ve ridden motorcycles and sat on donkeys and chased goats, and are generally wonderful. Trying to think up some Canadian songs or stories to share here, having a hard time finding Irish-type songs that aren’t about drinking or church-type songs that aren’t slow and somber. (so any suggestions would be appreciated).
So, overall message is healthy, mostly happy, and loving life.
Its now Sunday, June 03, 2007
Boura is still wonderful. We were commenting today how much it looks like home: the red soil, the water of the barrage (a dam that holds in a lake, and is used to irrigate rice fields here, as well as other crops), the green green green everywheres, the wind, and the decent temperatures the past two days (as in, down to 26 at night, which is pleasant).
We had been told about goats before we came, but not about donkeys. Donkeys are everywhere. AND (this is important)… Who needs a watch when you have a donkey? Yes, its true (kind of, at least). Story has it that donkeys will brey (or whatever the word for donkey noises is) every hour, on the hour. (Donkey noises need another story, namely that it sounds like the rustiest and squeakiest gate you’ve ever heard being pulled open and shut repeatedly… almost a terrible noise, except that we find it hilarious). And its almost true: we’ve been listening, and every time we hear them, we check the time. Our donkey isn’t so accurate, but it will reliably be either 10 minutes to the hour, or 10 minutes after, which is kind of impressive.
We have yet to get a single mosquito bite: we were promised some a few nights ago, and did put on bug spray, but there were none around, and we haven’t put on any since. We are insisting that we be taken some place with mosquitos soon, as we are starting to a) think everyone is lying about the existance of them, and b) worry that there being no mosquitos can’t be good news considering a food chain relies pretty heavily on them.
The past few days in Boura have been spent doing random things around the BoH area here. We’ve fed and washed babies at the orphanage, helped with planting in the garden a bit, wandered on my own and gawked at the beautifulness of it, played in the ‘sprinkler’ that results when the water pump is turned on to water the garden, and just generally chatted with folks, which is really fun. Friday we sat in on a grade one class at the school run by BoH here, which was interesting. I had forgot how we must have learned to read, it was neat to see that again. That afternoon we talked with Pascaline and Jonas and Joshua (who work for BoH and have been our main contact people so far) trying to further work out what they are actually looking for in terms of our project work here. Though its taken some time, we think we’ve got it mostly worked out: we’ve got two main projects. The first is to look at schools in the province, and figure out if BoH can do anything (beyond what it already is) to help with schooling here. Right now, they are sponsoring some students to go to school, are running a private school (with very minimal fees, as compared to public school fees), and are also supporting schools in helping provide lunches for kids and with school supplies. The second is a little less clear, and involves working with NGO’s, and seems to be so that BoH can understand what they are doing and how they might work together. It seems like interesting work, and we’re both looking forward to it a lot!
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Welcome to Boura!
Day two here, and Emily and I have both fallen in love with it; it is exactly what we needed to find after Ouaga and Leo.
Boura is green and alive and friendly. We are officially successes in the eyes of John Valk, having now tasted the local beer (and not the local water). We’ve seen eggplants and bananas and rice (and the neatest irrigation system for the rice).
Haha, I clearly didn’t get all that far with writing that day.
Tuesday May 29, 2007
So that is a story. Sunday, we went to church with Tatania. It was an Evangelical service, celebrating the Pentacost. Now, I am sorely lacking in my knowledge of all religions, so I explained what I could of the French to Emily, and she explained back to me what she could of the service. It ended up being a good trade, mostly. Overall though, much explaining couldn’t be done, as we couldn’t talk a whole lot. I had mixed feelings about the morning. The singing and spirit in the building was incredible and wonderful, though I had a difficult time with some of the more intensely religious aspects. Still, a very interesting experience, and we hope to continue attending religious (community) gatherings as we move around. We both agree that is important and valuable.
As the service ended, before we could even get up to move out, a lady began speaking to us. She introduced herself as Dorothy, a missionary from
(The rest of Sunday included a walk around where we were staying and taking pictures of children, Emily having a potentially ‘catastrophic’ episode because of the simple act of kneeling to play with some children, which we believe she escaped, with great poise, creativity, and just plain luck, and the end result of gaining some towels, but I’ll let here tell that story if she chooses J, and some good chats about everything).
On Monday, we drove down from Ouaga to Leo, on a beautifully paved road, in a car with air conditioning, in the company of Dorothy and Pascal. It was an uneventful trip, pleasant and relaxing, and gave us the opportunity to ask some ‘foreign people trying to be okay in Burkina’ questions, which was good, and had proved difficult on some other occasions where we attempted. Driving is a bit of an experience. With cars sharing the road with massive trucks (which sometimes break down), motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, and animals, the horn is involved frequently enough in driving that it is something I could actually envision wearing out in cars here. Seriously, its used more driving on a straight highway than one would have to use the turn signals and breaks together when driving in downtown
I should also mention, anything can be carried on a bike. Children strapped across the back, loads of wood and lumber, metal pipes balanced and sticking out perpendicular to the bike so it becomes a 3 meter wide load… incredible, and, as Emily keeps saying, “Beaucoup de talent!”
So that was driving. We then went to Dorothy’s house, which is a story all on its own, but which I won’t tell here. Three guesses why? (Correct answer is that I don’t know how to tell it).
Dorothy then took us up to where we are staying (a funeral altered plans somewhat), a little ways outside of Leo proper. We are at what we understand is usually a trades school, though they are currently on vacation. It is clearly a well-off area. Biggest difference between here and Ouaga is the greenery. Ouaga was very dry and dusty, with but a few green garden areas. Here, we have trees all over the place, gardens and flowers, and actual grass growing in some places. Its quite spectacular. We were outside playing with some children, ages maybe 4 to 6, for much of the afternoon here, tossing Frisbees, and digging. At one point, I convinced them that they needed to give us a tour, and Em and I wandered around the yard, pointed at trees and plants, and asked what they were. So, now (and Linden will be pleased to know), we have been introduced to a mango tree (with mangoes on it, they hang down from the trees on stems about 30 cm long, and look almost like they were added to the tree like Christmas decorations), and ‘calités’ (sp?), which are shea fruits (apparently, one can eat the fruit, and the nuts are used for oil, which is used to make shea butter) (apologies if shea isn’t the right spelling, someone will correct it). At first I was convinced they were baby mangoes, but no. A whole bunch of other stuff too, we had them point out ‘les poules’ (chickens) and ‘le coq’ (the rooster, which, importantly, crows regularly).
Ah, and a question. We keep seeing goats, except some of them are apparently sheep, so I guess I need to look closer; I should probably see the difference easily, but am not yet (when the fact that we were calling some of them the wrong thing was announced).
We were also impressed by ‘les ânes’ (donkeys), though that diminished significantly overnight as they made horrible screaming noises and woke us up.
That’s another story. Slept for the first time without air conditioning, and still survived. We have power here from 6 to 10pm, which is when it gets dark, and ends at a good time to go to bed. Still, may aim for bed at 9pm, giving us an hour when we can have the fan going while we fall asleep, which might help a bit. We aren’t convinced the temperatures are as high here as Ouaga, where it went up well past 40 Celsius one day (40 degrees was what it was at 4pm), but it is much more humid.
We are now with Pascaline (not to be confused with Pascal), who we believe will be with us for the rest of our stay. She is translating for us, which is only okay for the French, but will be excellent to have for when we need to communicate in Sissali (the main language in Boura). I’m really looking forward to going to Boura and starting work. Today was spent stopping in to visit with the different NGOs and schools we will come visit again properly in here later on in the summer, and is getting me thinking about what we’ll be doing. We are still hoping for some clarification or confirmation of what BoH is looking for from us, not entirely sure if we’ll get that though.
Gah, its hot.
Other news? We’ve seen still very few mosquitos, and have yet to sleep under nets or put on bug spray. We were saying yesterday it would be funny (and more than a little terrifying) if we didn’t see any while we were here, but so far we haven’t, which is curious. Its still hot, though we are aware that we are getting better at the heat, slowly. We will get to cook for ourselves in Boura, which should be interesting. Mangoes are the greatest thing ever. I carried a butter knife (with serated edges) in my hand luggage on the way here, though they nearly took away my carabeener from my camera case. (I know, that’s a while ago, life happens). If I’m helping Emily with French (which she is picking up increadibly fast; also, she is the only person I know who actually study a dictionary, and is also learning from reading it!), she is returning the favor by teaching me music from the collection on her computer. Tomorrow marks the one week mark, hard to imagine. Hard to imagine the 9 to come.
That’s enough news for now.
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