Wend na ko d nindaare (catch you later!)

Oh right; I am back to typing on a French keyboard.
And wow… how did Macbooks get so sexy? That’s disturbing.
Current position: RECLINING on a couch under a blanket.
Geographically, I am in Paris. I am in my friend’s appartment,
somewhere close to a graveyard, a boulangerie, and some cute traffic
lights. I just finished trudging along a misty December street near
the Eglise de Pentin metro stop (because that means something to you…)
carrying about 50 pounds of miscellaneous and potentially unuseable
things, including boxers that have survived the two years in Burkina
and a healthy amount of XXXXXXXL Burkinabe traditional-wear that I’d
received in my waning days in Sabce.
My rolly-bag had unfortunately semi-failed me sometime last December,
when the handle decided to get stuck in the ‘up’ position during a bus
ride. I did eventually coax said handle back down, but only by
skillful application of an extremely questionable hammer and three
tools found on a leatherman. The end result is that the apparatus
isn’t actually fixed, just hibernating in the ‘down’ setting, instead.
Faced with the situation of having to physically carry a 22kg bag in
one hand (along with a duffel in the other, plus a backpack, plus a
messenger bag), I called upon my ‘make do with what’s there’ attitude
and tied some sort of strap-thingy around the rolly-bags handle.
…..
Hey, you know what? This isn’t all that important. I like description
and stuff, but the point of this oddessy isn’t how I deal with luggage
adversity. Rather I just wanted to point out the following – that the
great whimsy of the universe saw fit to send me an angel, in the form
of a woman from Benin (i.e. one of Burkina’s neighbors). She simply
came up behind me and offered to carry stuff. Thus, not two hours
after I officially left West Africa, West Africa is still trying to be
nice to me.

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….

Happy Independance Day, Burkina Faso

Hello dear readers! Bonne Fete d’Independence du Burkina Faso, et bon
cinquantennaire! (spelling?) That’s right, Burkina Faso (or ‘Haut
Volta’ up until a couple decades ago) just turned 50. Kind of funny
considering Sabce has probably been around since approximately 1200
AD. International politics makes for a very special sense of time.
In somewhat related state news, the incumbant president Blaise
CAMPAORE has been reelected with about 80% of the popular vote. He has
been president since 1987, and arguably had significant power starting
a few years prior. Everyone’s big question is: will Blaise attempt to
change the consitution, allowing yet another run as president in the
2015 race? Stay tuned . . . (and yes, I have more to say on the
subject, but politics and being an informative PCV is a tricky thing.
Ask me in person.)

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

Fwd: The story of my first souvenir from Africa

Dear all-

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

Can’t Not Count: 40 days in country, 15 days in village

Greetings, and for those of you who sent all the dang haze/dust that is now covering my otherwise lovely starlit night sky, please come collect it. I need my waning days of nil-light pollution to be appreciated as best as possible. No more rains to knock it all earthward.

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

I am slightly speechless (!)

Dear all-

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.