Another day(s) in the life(s)

Fabulous.

I was in the middle of complaining, in a rather jocular fashion, about
the lack of internet in Kongoussi since Friday. There were all sorts
of clever phrases like in the good ‘ol days of when my missives were
less philosophical and more in the vein of ‘hey look at this crazy
Burkina thing’. I was actually kinda happy with how the creative
juices were flowing, when the inevitable happened and the power got
nixed.

Sure, it came back on 3 minutes later, but the damage was done and
MsWord failed to recover my nascent and reasonably witty document. So
now I am faced with a choice: Do I attempt to recapture its rapidly
fading greatness? Or do I simply move on to whatever the actual point
of my writing was, and which really had nothing to do with internet
failures other than to provide examples of life’s pleasant little
idiosyncrasies.

Let me at least share this much with you. In Peace Corps Burkina
existence, we have a phrase we use whenever something seemingly minor
yet rather exceptional happens, particularly because said something
noticeably increases the quality of a volunteer’s life. Examples I can
give are: a nearby food store gets in an estranged shipment of Reese’s
Peanut Butter Cups; you discover a new and highly legitimate yogurt
shop; you stumble upon bolts of printed fabric featuring toasters or
(I kid you not) smiling rolladexes with feet. During such eureka
moments, we mildly disturbed volunteers come together and, with wild
gesticulating and poorly-controlled voice modulation, describe how
some miracle or other “CHANGED MY LIFE!”

Which brings us back to the Internet, and the arrival of several
web-ready computers at the local post office in Kongoussi. This
miracle CHANGED MY LIFE, making it possible not only to Gchat with
people on good days, but also avoid biking up a really big hill to the
local radio station and the only other three LAN computers in a 100
kilometer radius.

Unfortunately, it happens to be Monday, August 23rd, which is
apparently a regional holiday marked by a 5-day absence of web
connectivity at the Post. A pleasant and sweaty trip up the
aforementioned radio hill only leads you to discover that they, too,
are estranged from the giant connection of tubes and trucks that form
the inter-web. So you work your magic with the lady in charge and
convince her you should be able to stay and start typing a document
for free, that when (if) the internet comes back you will happily
plunk down your 700cfa.

Having secured word processing capabilities, you then diligently
attempt to explain to everyone back home how you were part of a group
of 800 people who planted 25,000 trees over 70 acres of land in the
far north of Burkina AND got quoted in a national paper. Sadly you
fail in this endeavour, and instead get hung up on how the spotty
Internet that CHANGED MY LIFE currently won’t allow you to explain
anything to anyone more than 2 meters from this screen.

And still you write…

(August 25th) – Hi again. Some guys came to look at the Internet at
the Post, mais ils n’ont pas trouvé le mal (direct translation: they
didn’t find the bad). I biked up the radio hill, already knowing I
would find nothing of any particular use in terms of connectivity.
Sure enough, the webmaster was asleep on a bench while her computers
hummed quietly away, impotent to access bbc.co.uk, fao.org, and the
ever popular cuteoverload.com.

So here we are in a photocopy shop that has two computers available
for typing and whatnot. I must really love you guys, that I bike all
over the place evading rain and eating rice for breakfast, just so we
can communicate at some future date when I finally get in front of the
Internet for a few hours and find all I need to do is copy and paste.
It’s the most well prepared I’ve been in months!

But in the spirit of keeping you abreast of work-related things, let
me expound upon a couple possibly nifty things that are going on, and
avoid thinking too much about how I am kind of done with Burkina Faso
in general and about 90% sure I will be coming home in Jan 2011.

Thing 1: Thanks to some advocacy on my part and on the part of our
community health director, a women’s dance troupe from my village -
who to my knowledge has never performed outside of village – will be
dancing at the Peace Corps swearing-in ceremony at the US Embassy in
Ouagadougou. They will be dancing outside a building constructed
almost entirely from imported materials, in front of an audience
consisting of ministers and muck-a-mucks of all sorts, lots of
Americans and (drumroll…..) the first lady of Burkina Faso! I really
don’t know how to feel about this, other than really excited and
scared out of my mind. We did indeed get the blessing of the
neighbourhood elders to go rock out, but ‘tis still a tall order.
Imagine taking a decent and earnest high-school production of ‘Annie
Get Your Gun’ and throwing’em into Carnegie Hall with an Obama or two.
Awesome, but a bit nerve-racking…. especially if you’re responsible
for getting them to Carnegie.

Thing 2: I need to go look at trees! I like trees! The president of
the Village Development Committee, village of Tubloungo, caught me on
the road last night and asked that I come take a look at a small tree
nursery put together by a villager who attended a nursery workshop I
organized. If I understand correctly, they really just want someone to
follow-up (DUH!) and let them know if everything looks like it’s in
good order. Hooray for people attending workshops and then doing work!
(August 28th – There weren’t that many trees, but we encouraged him to
plant what he had grown before the rainy season ended.)

Thing 3: (August 28th – It appears I thought there was a relevant
work related ‘Thing 3′ I should share with you. Unfortunately I am dog
tired, having been out dancing after the swear-in ceremony noted under
‘Thing 1′. As a follow-up the women’s dance troupe did well, by the
by, and I had a brief moment of standing in front of the first lady of
Burkina Faso, smiling like a good little volunteer.)

Thing 4: (Also August 28th) – I am hoping to go to a meeting about
trees tomorrow morning, and then do watch over a theater rehearsal
with kids from my mildly chaotic summer camp. However I may need to
help new volunteers get all their stuff in order as they move into
houses all over the country. Oi.

Thing 5: I am attaching an article I wrote for the Peace Corps BF
newsletter, about how my service has changed over time. Enjoy.

Much love, and someone please make me pancakes and eggs-
Aaron