Otherwise, my first few hours in Paris are loverly. I just spoke to my
friend on the phone, who is about to take some high school seniors to
a museum exhibit near the Eiffel Tower. It appears I can understand
most of her French, which is not necessarily the case with others -
for example, the jocular guy I sat next to on the plane. I think the
non-comprehension will more frequently be the case, which is upsetting
but understandable considering the gap between West African and
Parisian French-es.
Before leaving Peace Corps, I did receive an ‘Advanced Mid’ rating for
my French, and even an ‘Advanced Low’ rating for my Moore, based on
some international language testing thing or other. These accolades
are highly amusing, because basically what they says are:
1.) My Moore has improved a ton in two years
2.) My French improved a teeny bit in two years
3.) I can speak Moore almost as well as French
FYI – one of the last three statements is probably not true. Take a guess.

So here I be in Paris, an official, oxygen breathing, mildly warped
yet freshly minted (drumroll please… .. … … ..) RPCV!! Wooo!! There is
now a little Peace Corps pin attached to my messenger bag, proving to
all that I have successfully completed two years as a village
development ambassador – AKA Peace Corps community health volunteer.
With my new important status, I can be gainfully unemployed in a
variety of countries and cultures, incredibly tired, extremely
appreciative of blankets and eclairs, and listen to classical music
for hours while marvelling at the constant flurry of activity on
Facebook. I am a true globetrotter and diplomat! Love it!
For the good of all nations, I think I will make this my last missive
to you wonderful people back home. Although my ‘Peace Corps
experience’ is not over by a longshot – there is cultural readjustment
to go through, reflection on literally EVERYTHING that happened in
Sabce, questions about identity, personal growth… a whole gamut of
stuff – I would be remiss to continue mass emails on this more
personal side of RPCV life. I believe the original intent of creating
this mailing list was to keep 100+ people aware of my goings-on, and
especially to attempt to bridge a knowledge gap between the US and
Burkina Faso. Despite the fact that I get lots of fun responses, I
feel no compulsion to continue this list ad infinitum ; it’s nice when
things have their time and purpose, and feel as though they can be
successfully ‘concluded’ after a certain period.
Often I commandeered your capacity for reading in order to vent about
various personal/psychological happenings, and for that I owe you all
a huge thanks. Hopefully the latter genre of email was likewise mildly
interesting.
And lastly, I’d like to publicly express my gratitude to my friend
Saramoira, for setting up and maintaining the blog which has helped
spread the word about PC Burkina Faso life. Amazing.

Ok, dear readers. I’m going to eat bread and cheese. Possibly jam. Did
I mention I am under a blanket? This totally rocks!

Much Love, Many Thanks,
Aaron
RPCV, Community Health
Burkina Faso; 2008-2010

PS – my exit interviews went really well, and I was noted for my
skills in communication, integration, and general professionalism. The
staff in general had many nice things to say about me (personally,
professionally), which felt quite nice. And lastly, one of the groups
I worked with in village printed me out (in color) a ‘Certificate of
Collaboration’, signed by their president, the head nurse in Sabce,
and the PC Community Health program director. Sweet.

PPS – those of you who included address info on the Peace Corps grant
website will be getting some lovely postcards in late January ☺. For
anyone who donated and didn’t leave address info, do please get in
touch personally so I can send a little love.

PPPS – I will be writing a book based on my experiences here. Anyone
want to edit / have good publishing connections…? Seriously.

PPPPS – Photo is the last one taken in Burkina. A friend from Sabce
took a bus 6 hours up from where he was working to see me off.
Woah….

I have four (4) days left in country. It’s an incredibly strange
feeling, because on the one hand I’d love to just drop everything
cold-turkey, and get out of my Burkina life. There’s such an
interesting attachment to this place (good lord, what do I even mean
by ‘This Place’?), and such discrepancies in ways of life between
hither and yon, that the urge to simply say GOODBYE and I’M GONE is
very strong. But I’ve handed out my NJ phone number to at least 10
people (dear parents- I hope this doesn’t get annoying…). Others
have my e-mail. I’ve been ‘blessed’ by the chief and several village
elders. People always ask if I’m coming back. Hell, in the past couple
hours I’ve gotten 2 calls from the people in village, just to check if
I’m ok. I don’t even know what level of separation is possible, and
what makes sense for myself vs. those with whom I’ve lived and worked.
Hopefully I’m making too big a deal out of this, and it’ll be somewhat
like any other ‘era’ in one’s life – you establish a sense of place
somewhere in the physical world, you develop ties with people that are
not always maintained, and you just kinda hope there’s a good vibe
when you think back on time spent wherever you were. I have to wonder,
though, how much the whole weird Westerner – West African relationship
plays into my variable feelings on leaving. It’s maybe one thing to
move out of a place where you are mostly on a level with the people
and the things around you, i.e. y’all share a fairly common history
and set of expectations about the way things work, such that there’s
little/no sense of a hierarchy at work when you’re just sitting down
to talk with someone. (Sweet Christmas that was a convoluted
explanation…. yea, I still have some pondering to do here). Point
is, close to 100% of my energies have been focused in a fairly limited
area and on a fiarly limited cast of people, with the subtle
acknowledgement that it’s mostly at my discretion how long I stay
(i.e. the PC contract) and how well I keep in touch. Speaking of, I
need to call my host parents, those who gave me the name Harouna
SAWADOGO and were my first legit connection to Burkina. I went back to
see them once, but it was extremely brief and not what it needed to
be.

November 9th was my final night in village. ‘Twere spent having beers
and cokes with the infirmary staff and village health committee while
playing with…. GLOWSTICKS! That’s right, nothing says cross-cultural
exchange like discussing bendy neon bracelets in a local West African
language. Had I been really on my game, I would’ve brought out
speakers and put on some electronica – one must wonder how many raves
go on in Burkina Faso (answer: none).
We ate a rather impressive amount of sheet-metal-grilled sheep meat,
and decided that one of the nurses was more American than I was -
sporting a US-Burkina friendship shirt, jeans, and a Los Angelos hat
I’d given him as a gift, how could one say otherwise? I believe his
words were, “I am a pretty young boy!” I don’t know why this phrase
exists in peoples’ limited english vocabularies here, but that is only
one mystery among many.
I gave a small (now fairly normalized) speech in Moore about living in
village and being accepted as a “Sabce biiga” (child of Sabce), and
generally thanking the crew for the work we were able to do together.
I tried to get somewhat more heartfelt about what it’s like being both
a foreigner and a local at the same time, what it means to be
‘accepted’ by a community but never really be ‘of’ the community. .
but of course I only had the vocab to express a fourth of what I
might’ve liked. Hopefully my gesturing and staring at the stars
anytime the words failed gave a sense that I was at least attempting
to honor a connection we’d made.
Any rate it was a celebratory event thinger, and as much as I love
philosophizing, I just said my piece and we had a toast: ‘Sante!’

So here I am in Ouaga, wrapping up lots of paperwork and such, and
creating a last few goofy memories with other volunteers passing
through. (There’s also the ocassional convo that comes up which
basically asks: ‘what will it be like to hang out together in the
States?’ We’re told that other returned volunteers will be our friends
for life, what with the whole shared-experience thing, but we shall
see. I do already have plans for Valentine’s day, albeit
non-romantic). The major tasks of this weekend are: Description of
Service (summarize 2 years in 2 pages), Letter of Reccomendation (I
have to draft it… ugh), and grant reports (yay!).
Speaking of the latter, well, the original point of this e-mail was to
give you a small update on everything that’s gone on with the Peace
Corps Partnership Grant we did. Here’s the nitty-gritty:
- We raised 2,230,000CFA.
- One day after the money got to my account, I went to Ouaga with
three counterparts and we bought professional sound equipment for
under two million cfa.
- The surplus was used to add: a television for film showings, stands
for the speakers, surge protectors, and a couple cables that were
lacking from the stereo set.
- A two-month-long theater and health forum program has been set,
hitting 30 villages between early January and March. The overarching
theme will be Hygiene and Sanitation. The volunteer replacing me will
be attending most (possibly all?) of these performances, and submit a
report to Peace Corps in April.
- The stereo equipment has already been loaned out for community
events and for a health talk on HIV/AIDS done by a youth group in
Kongoussi.
- An added personal note: My friend Souleymane (a.k.a. ‘DJ Million’)
sat down with me on my last day in village to say his goodbyes. In
addition to saying that he didn’t have the words to say how he really
felt, and that if he could open his chest and show how happy his heart
was with our time together he would do it (holy sh*t… pardon the
language), we also talked about the HIV/AIDS forum he was the DJ for.
We went over the messages the youth group from Kongoussi passed along
(they were the usual checklist of necessary info), and I congratulated
him on knowing all the key points. Then I asked if he had any more
questions. “Nye! Sukre n be be” (yes, I have questions!) We discussed
medicine, testing, fidelity, monogamy, condoms . . .bouncing between
French and Moore and somehow making sense of what needed to get sensed
(I like destroying english!). At the end of our exchange, he was going
on about how as a DJ he could go around and tell people this
information and that the more accurate info he knew, the better he’d
be able to get the word out. It was kinda very cool. On a personal
level, it’s amazing how some people here really express when they’ve
been touched by my interactions with them. On a professional level,
the idea of having DJ Million (i.e. a young flashy dresser, smooth
talker, good singer… the guy can be straight up suave) as a partner
in community health is awesome. Defniitely has an ‘in’ with a certain
(target) audience.

Phew… I must be off to do other works. Thanks for letting me
word-vomit at you. I feel a bit better for the moment (like I
mentioned, mood is highly variable…), and the feeling better is
probably due to simply talking about the close-of-service process /
final dayz in country. Trust me, when I hit the ground in the States,
we can have some really awesome convos. You just have to promise not
to glaze over in the first twenty seconds, or I’ll feel like
everything I’ve gone through here is marginal (unfortunatly, this is
typically what happens for returned volunteers, so this is just a
heads up..

I am attaching awesome photos of our stereo equipment in use. Yay!
Also, a kitty picture because it turns out I will miss her kind of a
lot. I’m not used to this, I think.

Aaron’s schedule -
Dec 15 – fly to Paris
Dec 18 – London
Dec 29 – Amsterdam
Jan 4ish – Padua
Jan 15ish – Rome
Jan 18 – New HELLA AWESOME Jersey!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Jan 21 – quite possibly, DC)

I remain your humble servant.
Much love.
Aaron

What follows below is, well, I won’t even introduce it. Suffice to say
our sage traveler Jess – who has been living with me, mostly in
village, since Oct 22 – has produced another intriguing look at life
over here in Burkina, as discovered/discussed through the very
personal lens of contracting a life-threatening disease. Awesome! (NB-
She’s a-ok, and on her way home in 1 day….)
Nice to have someone to write these informative emails for me; I will
take this opportunity to publicly thank Ms. Lavash for her seminal
stay here in Burkina, and for the myriad and intensely important ways
she has helped start the re-integration process that awaits me
stateside.

As for Aaron, I head out of Burkina on the 15th of Dec, and touchdown
in Newark on Jan 18th. What’s in between remains to be seen, but
involves Europe, several friends, and a likely trip through the
Chunnel. I will endeavor to punch out a couple more e-mails before our
time is up, before brining this warped journey of idealism and
insanity to a partial close. There remain some details I’ve accrued
over the past two years that really deserve to be highlighted to you,
the esteemed reader.

read on!

I was able to pick up, hours upon stepping out of the plane, the most
memorable souvenir. Not just one thing really, but 1.5 trillion
things: locally known as palou. The number one public health souvenir
that a gal can get in Burkina Faso. Malaria. Yep, I decided to fully
embrace the African experience and do as the locals do. I got that
little blood-destroyer that could. And that can kill. But no need to
worry about me. Just read on, it’s a good story that has its origins
in the USA.

The travel doctor in Cambridge Massachusetts explicitly told me that
you need to have prophylaxis meds in your system before you arrive in
a malaria zone. I remember this clearly. Problem was…well, I forgot.
I was too excited to get to Africa to think about important details
like pesky little pink pills. I arrived on October 22 and was promptly
greeted in true Burkina style: with a gourd full of water, a
thoroughly amazing hug, and repeated bites from little insects. At
least one of those insects was carrying a parasitic load that was too
great to avoid sharing.

The cool thing (or one of the many cool things) about malaria is that
it’s a progressive sickness. It first starts by chilling in your liver
and having no external symptoms for about 2 weeks. Yeah, Africa was
awesome for 2 weeks! Then I started getting tired a lot. No biggie.
Soon thereafter fever. Headache. OK kinda weird. Let’s go to the
clinic and check it out. No problems…”she’s just not used to Africa
yet.” OK. Meanwhile, the parasite has moved to my bloodstream and
transfered to its trophozoid form. The one that takes over red blood
cells, reproduces in them, then explodes the cell and spreads the new
parasites into the blood stream. Over and over this happens over the
course of a week until my total parasite count reaches 1.5 trillion!
All in all a minor case really. It can get worse. Much worse. I
mentioned that it’s progressive: people can die from it. And here in
Burkina they do every year. But more on that later. Let me first
assuage your fears, oh dear reader!

I found out yesterday, due to a fancy lab test where my blood was
smeared across a microscope slide, that I was in fact “Palou positif.”
Now what? I think this is very treatible, right? Yep, no prob. Just
had to walk a block to the local drug store, any of which sport a huge
selection and quantity of malaria treatments. For about $10 I obtained
the 30 pills necessary to rid myself of any affliction in a mere 3
days. Breakfast and dinner just got more interactive! I’ll be well by
Monday! So simple!

But if it’s so simple, why is it such a deadly problem?? For infants
this is an easy answer. They’ve only got about 3 days left from when
they show symptoms. Adults have a couple of weeks on average, so
wherein lies the problem? My first guess was the cost. $10 may be no
problem for a nasaara, a white girl, like me, but for a
Burkinabe…that’s pretty darn substanital! But no! My friend Aaron
informed me about the truly impressive system going on over here. It
works something like this:

The government develops a list of essential medicines for the contry’s
most endemic illnesses – based on clinic data across the many
villages, finds the cheapest ways to obtain the necessary drugs and
buys them in exorborant bulk (often with the assistance of
non-profits, NGOs, and other aid organizations), and distributes this
all to the local level. International to national to regional to
local. Organized! Not the peacemeal and privatized mess that this
American girl is used to.

This system results in incredibly affordable and available medicines
right next to your donkey shed, anywhere in the country. The average
cost of malaria treatment when you’re not at a fancy Ouagadougou
clinic and pharmacy: ranging between $0.50-$1.25 a pop. Could this be
cost-prohibitive? Partially, but that’s not getting at the full story
here. Often, explanations make sense in terms of local culture, and
language is the perfect mirror of culture, so I’ll start there.
Evidence piece #1: Goodbyes in the local language, Moore (I know, I
know, you learned this all last email. It’s a different spin though,
so stick with me) Literal translation of possible goodbye options: May
God grant you good health. May God give you a healthy sleep. May God
be with you until later. May God give you long life…you get the
point. The language tells me that a lot is left up to providence in
Burkina, so proactiveness with regards to one’s health
is…uh…limited at best. Evidence piece #2: old habits die hard.
When a friend came down with malaria a few months ago, it was hard to
get him to go to the clinic. He first cited cost as a factor, but
later admitted that he planned to find 5 different kinds of leaves
perfect for making a sauce, one that would be effective if lathered
across his skin and if drank. “Bottoms up!” Traditional medicine is
alive and well; what worked for mom and grandma…why not, right?
Allopathic treatments seem to be a last resort, but with progressive
sicknesses like malaria, sometimes arrival at the local clinic is just
too late and the nurse is wont to say “le sang est fini,” or “this
blood is done.” Time for a transfusion at the hospital.
How widespread is the problem? Not sure the exact statistic, but you
know the old saying about statistics anyway… I’ll give a shot at
giving some scope to the problem. Heck, it gives me a great lead-in to
brag about my friend’s Peace Corps work! Here goes: In Sabce (his
village), the clinic is in charge of an area comprised of ~22,000
inhabitants. In 2008, about 9,000 people went to the clinic for some
type of malady. That’s about 41% of residents using the clinic per
year. Of those 9,000 consultations, more than half were malarial
diagnoses. That’s (roughly) more than 20% of people contracting
malaria in 2008. That’s one out of every five people. Think about
this. If one out of every five people that you knew got malaria every
year! By comparison, the WHO states that there were over 3.8 million
cases of malaria in Burkina that same year: 25% of the total
population. 2% of these people died, but 71% of these deaths were
children.
These figures were presented to me via Aaron. He works with malaria on
a tangential, yet direct manner. Tangential because he isn’t a doctor
or a nurse. Direct because, like me, he’s very social and likes
teaching people: he has taken up the cause of teaching people about
public health. Mosquito net education is part of his job: “no, don’t
use these as fishing nets!” As many of you fellow educators know,
messages are often simple and behavior change is the real kicker.
*Aside* no, I don’t want you all thinking that the locals are all out
fishing with mosquito nets. The nets are just too darn hot to sleep
under sometimes. But it’s happened.
So, dear reader, to you I apologize for the lack of new/fun stories
about my cultural foibles and faux pas across the village. Malaria
kind of kicked the energy out from under me this past week…just give
me until Monday and I’ll be pumping water and feeding millet stalks to
my cow with the best of the best. Until then, I hope that you’ve
learned something new from my strange, yet not-so-unpredictable
predicament!
Always an educator, always ready to share my experiences and stories
for the sake of learning-
Your Jess
Fun malaria facts (as ascertained via internet research)

Malaria is the ninth most significant cause of death and disability globally.
Each year, there are more than 250 million reported cases of malaria
It is reported to kill between one and three million people, the
majority of whom are young children
Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa.

And some fun stats and graphs about malaria in Burkina, via the WHO:

http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/country-profiles/profile_bfa_en.pdf

I think it was at about day T – 60 that ‘the count’ suddenly popped in my head. You can’t really avoid it; I wager it’s fairly normal to be struck by the fact that, in the not-to-distant-future, you will be warping across climates and cultures, and praying your old friendships are as solid and appreciated as you need them to be. Tack on the additional un-likelihood of returning to where you were – socially, linguistically, mentally – and you realize that another ‘epoch’ in the Life of Aaron (monty python needs to make this movie…) is coming to a close.
Of course time never stops, and all the things that’ve happened here will inform all the things that will happen in the future, and blahblahblah holistic universal comprehensive understanding stuff…. But for real, the past two years are un-recreatable. And while I said the same thing to myself at the end of a three-year stint spent living, working, and schmoozing in Cambridge MA, the comparison between a transformative international and a stabilizing domestic experience is, in the words of Mark Twain, ‘the difference between lightning and a lightning bug’.

I used a Mark Twain quote totally off the top of my head! That was freaking awesome, and clearly means I still have my crap together.

So as much as I maybe would like to make comparisons to previous life experiences in an attempt to gain perspective, I probably shouldn’t. In the end, there ain’t not much there to be compared to. Thus my remaining 40 days in the near-Sahel shall be taken one at a time, with ample time for percolating and all sorts of exciting self-discoveries to happen largely state-side (although the process certainly has started here).

In other news, I have a visitor named Jess/Zaliisa/Angel/Wendwaoga (we’ve worked hard to get her integrated into Sabce a.s.a.p, and part of that is getting enough names to satisfy the Muslims, the Christians, and the general Mossi population). Jess and I lived together in ‘Cambridge CAMBRIDGE Cambridge’ (imagine the monster-truck voice over) for a period of about a year, and she has made the eminently intelligent choice to take a month-long sojourn here in Burkina and make gratuitous use of having intimate access to a rural community in West Africa. (Many of you should follow suit.) I am attaching a rather fabulous missive she prepared for her friends and family back home, and which catches village life as seen through the eyes of a fresh traveler, especially as compared to my clearly jaded self.
One particularly lovely component of Jess’ work is a diagram of typical village dialogue. I believe I’ve touched on the idiosyncracies of language here, and the often-times ‘scripted’ conversation trees that I’ve come to love, revere, and roll my eyes at. Here now, grace a our friend Jess, you can join in on the linguistic/cultural fun, and have West-African village conversations in the comfort of your very own home. So grab some peanuts and enjoy a renewed look at Sabce village life. Also, pictures of doing laundry.

Cheers
Aa

Email from BF

So….. the grant is now completely funded, and I’m rather in awe of how quickly and amazingly things moved.
I’m pretty sure the grant was posted on September 9th… which makes 4766 dollars in LESS THAN 4 WEEKS.

Pardon my lack of professional writing/reporting, but HOLY CRAP!!
Y’all rock my socks.

I was just talking with my village counterparts yesterday (with whom I’m doing the grant), and we’re going to have a press release done via the PC Washington office. Sabce is going to be totally famous.

But seriously, this is kind of insane. I don’t think money is normally this friendly and hospitable.
Now what I need you to do, is sit back and think positive thoughts about me getting the equipment safely to site (ETA- late october or early november), and programming the first couple theater sorties (ETA- early december).

THANK YOU!

Aaron

PS – I have only had 1 ear of corn in the past week. Not sure what that’s about.

We are completely rockin’ out on the grant. Seriously, I am thrilled with how far we are along. In three weeks we have raised close to $3000… which, in all sincerety, means a ton to me.
Additionally, I just met (face to face!) the people who control the grant program in the Peace Corps DC office, who were traveling through Togo, Burkina, and Mali. They are actually rather excited about this project – its scope, its feasibility, its focus, and even the amount we are trying to raise. Their honest encouragement makes me feel hopeful / confident that we are on to something good. It’s not every grant proposal that catches the eye of the administrators…

All this being said, we still have work ahead of us! Please keep spreading the word, as you have very evidently already been doing (wow…. three words ending with ‘y’ all in a row).

Best
Aaron

This time of year is totally awesome because everyone is giving away food, including CORN. I currently have a dozen ears in my house, along with several pounds of local eggplant, three western-style eggplants, a small sack of okra, and many chili peppers. I was also given three tomatoes yesterday, which were an absolute treat. While the rainy season didn’t start off all that well (the first decent rains by me were in July, whereas people start itching to plant in early – mid June), September has been good to us and crops seem to be finishing in a good way (knock on wood, please, everyone).
Interestingly I didn’t have this explosive gifting of CORN and other local edibles last year, which leads me to believe either I’ve been in the right places at the right times this month, or maybe people like me more in 2010 than they did in 2009. Either way, I need y’all to come over here and help me eat. Thanks!

In other news, my kitty is pregnant! I’m once again an expecting father (not biologically, thank you). It’s really kind of cute how lazy kitties get when their pregnant, and the way my feline in particular chooses the compost pile as the coziest place to curl up for myriad naps. Hopefully she’ll contribute nourishing matter.

In other other news, the grant proposal is off to a very solid start. In less than a week after sending off my missive to y’all, we are up 700 dollars (there is no dollar sign on this french keyboard)! I am _extremely_ grateful to any and all who have contributed – I don’t actually get a real-time list of who has donated, but I will be informed once the grant is fully funded, and able to send out thank you’s. And please note than any contributers will receive a fancy artistic Burkina Faso postcard, made fresh in Burkina! Very pretty, and great for showing off to your friends and displaying your command of the place-name ‘Ouagadougou’!
I am still looking for people to help spread the word among their friends, colleagues, co-workers, religious groups, etc to help see this grant through to fruition. I am aiming (very optimistically) to have all the funding by mid October, which leaves me enough time to oversee the purchasing of the stereo equipment and the beginnings of the theater tour. Please get in touch with me as soon as possible if you can lend a hand – I already have a couple blurbs worked up explaining the project and its goals (although your own eloquence is just as good).

I will leave off with another installment of Aaron’s Schedule of Strangeness, in which I defy Peace Corps intentions by constantly being called out of village:

Sept 27 – 30 : Preparation for incoming volunteer training
Oct 7 – 9 : Possible trip to Niamey (Niger) to play ….. softball ….. (obviously)
Oct 15 : Visit by Peace Corps Regional Director of Africa to my village (woah)
Oct 16 – 23 : Training of new volunteers in the city of Koudougou
Oct 22 : Brief run to Ouaga to pick up old roomate from Cambridge (woohoo!)
Oct 23 – 30 : Possible continued training of volunteers, unless a miracle happens and other PCVs agree to help out with the training
Nov 5 – 6 : Trip to Ouaga for the largest international arts festival in Africa
Nov 22 – Dec 5 : More training of new volunteers
Dec 9 or 10 : Leave Sabce
Dec 15 : Leave Burkina Faso

…. with lots of CORN mixed in

Best
Aa

(Testimonial pictures and video to follow soon!)

***PART 1***
I am happy to report that my grant proposal for an educational theater tour has been accepted by the Washington DC Peace Corps office.

The goal of this grant is twofold:
1.) Conduct a series of interactive theater forums in 30 rural villages comprising the greater community of Sabce. This tour will be led by a nationally recognized theater troupe – based in Sabce – and encourage positive behavior changes related to health, education, women’s empowerment, and the environment.
2.) Supply the community of Sabce with the following stereo equipment, for use during community and municipal events, including the 30 village tour:
– Poweful high-end speakers with subwoofers (2)
– Hands-free (2) and hand-held (2) microphones
– Sound mixer with cassette and CD decks (1)
– 275watt Electric generator (1)
– Megaphones (2)

The theater troupe and greater Sabce community will contribute over $3000 of their time and materials for this project. The Peace Corps grant I have filed will support the activities materially, to the tune of $4667.66, which is where you/we come in:
Peace Corps grants are funded by individuals!

The grant briefing has been posted on the following site, and it is now up to us to contribute (tax-deductible) and spread the word until our goal of $4667.66 is reached.

Theater Equipment for Health Education

I am hoping to gather not only donations (anything from $1 on up!) but a couple of people who are willing to help drum up support from others in their social / work / religious / etc circles to get behind the cause. If you think you are game to get on board, please let me know and I will write up a motivational pitch for you to distribute.
Thank you a million times over.

Note – I will have exact brands/catalogue numbers for all equipment; the info is back at my village, and I’ll update you soon as I can.

***PART 2***
(The rest of the story. . . . )

There is a man in my village named Gregoire Ouedraogo, and he is truly a force.

I’ll be perfectly honest from the get-go – sometimes Gregoire kind of annoys me. He annoys me because he is so dedicated to his community that the moment we have finished one project, he is immediately proposing two more. I was just discussing with my parents (thanks for visiting!!!!) how I should be / am thrilled to have him as a working partner, even if it makes things a little strange socially. There are only so many times when I appreciate someone saying, “Ok Aaron, you should go rest because you’re tired”. That may be true, but not for the reasons you are thinking…

In Peace Corps, we are highly encouraged to seek out ‘motivated counterparts’ with which to work, meaning community members who are not only willing, but are actively seeking to go above and beyond in the name of development. After a solid year and half of working with Gregoire in various aspects, I can honestly say he exemplifies these qualities. He is the founder and president of a nationally-ranked theater troupe, president of the local Village Development Committee (Committe de Developement Villageois), and is a key player in organizing projects with Sabce’s sister city in France. He recently organized a morning of tree planting (over 500 neem trees) on one of our market days, spearheaded the plantation of about 6 acres of sesame – a good cash crop in Burkina – in order to help fund future community events, and (grand finale!) single-handedly rehearsed two theater skits with 24 rambunctious kids without any written script and using chalk-paste for make-up. The performance, as my parents can attest to, was incredible.

. . . . Did I mention this is the second batch of kids Gregoire has worked with?

THEREFORE- Based on my history of successful collaboration with Gregoire, his prominent place in the community, and our mutual love of / respect for educational theater, we are planning a 30-village educational theater tour using some brand new yet-to-be-acquired stereo equipment. In order to achieve these wonderful things, I have put together a grant proposal via Peace Corps Washington, which was accepted the very first go around (yay!).
Here’s how it works:
– Peace Corps Washington posts the grant here:

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-135

– People like you and I click on the link and contribute money in a tax-deductible and totally secure manner
– We spread the word so that lots and lots and lots of people arrive at that link and contribute money, until we have reached our goal of $4667.66.
– Washington writes me a check for that amount, and I very carefully and transparently show how it is used to buy stereo equipment
– The theater tour begins!!!!

Note that, when the theater tour begins, I might be out of the picture; My time in village is quickly waning. Therefore I will be working closely both with the mayor’s office of Sabce and with the volunteer who will be replacing me, to ensure that all the t’s are crossed and all the i’s are dotted during the 30-village tour. At this point in my service, I can very honestly say that I am totally comfortable doing this because I feel I have vetted all the principal parties involved. There is a lot of negative feedback concerning corruption and ‘bouffiing’ (French for ‘wasting/mis-using’) in Burkina and in West Africa in general. I wouldn’t consider attempting a nearly $5000 grant (jumps to $8000 with the community contribution) were I not sure about the people with whom I am working.
Can I guarantee that every cent will be used exactly as Gregoire and I have proposed it be used? No… and I suspect that many of you who’ve worked with grants know that wielding large amounts of money is a strange and difficult task. But I can vouge for the intentions and the motivation of the people who will be involved in this grant, and our commitment to making this theater tour a success.

In closing, I leave you with the following one liner you can pitch to friends, co-workers, school and religiuos groups, and all others who might lend a hand, in hopes that we can get this project off the ground ASAP.

“IN STEREO seeks to harness the educational power of theater, and provide crucial information regarding health and human rights to a largely illiterate population.”

Best-
Aaron Buchsbaum
PCV Burkina Faso, 2008 – 2010
Community Health

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