On to the next adventure....

INDIA!
For the continuing saga of post-Peace Corps life, check out my new blog at: http://chrissyhart.wordpress.com/

Mali: Le Pays Dogon (Dogon Country)

During my last month in Burkina, I made a clandestine 3-day trip to Mali with a few PC friends (I’d already used all of my vacation days). The opportunity to see Dogon Country - a unique 100k-long escarpment that runs parallel to Mali’s southern border with a sheer face scattered with centuries-old villages nestled amongst the cracks and crevices – was too good to pass up. So I swallowed my moral reservations, informed many friends so that my whereabouts were known and headed north. I’ve held off on publishing this post in the interest of being divested of my volunteer status before confessing but I don’t regret my transgression for a moment – the trip was more than worth it.

Voici, les photos du voyage:

The Long Goodbye

The things that hurt, instruct.

Benjamin Franklin

Dear Readers,

This is one of the last few blog entries I’ll publish…until I start my new blog to report on new adventures, that is.

I arrived in Ouagadougou yesterday after saying goodbye to my village for good. The last several weeks have consisted of uncertainties, changes, a plethora of emotional highs and lows and more goodbyes than I care to recount. As my last week in Burkina Faso begins, I’m emotionally drained and have begun to feel acutely the weight of two years of challenges and growth. I’m simultaneously sad to leave, knowing that this is not an experience one can ever revisit or recreate, and elated at the prospect of a solid month of relaxing at home and then moving on to explore new corners of the world and, well, get on with life.

After working the last week of volunteer training, I headed to village for four days in order to ready my house for my replacement and to say my goodbyes in the way I wanted – individually, taking the time to visit with friends and their families, take photos and make my exit quietly. Some friends – mostly civil servants – gave me a hard time for not throwing a party or making more of my departure, but that didn’t appeal to me, being beyond my means and the means of the average villager. Instead, my goodbyes consisted of conversation; rehashing funny moments – cultural faux pas and foibles, insect-induced screams, lingual confusion - from my first months in village, promises to stay in touch and to send photos and thanks…many, many thanks.

The hardest goodbyes were with my female friends – the unique, dynamic women whose daily struggles and accomplishments never cease to amaze me – and my babies; the children in neighboring courtyards and my counterpart’s family, whose constant, unwavering affection and utter inability to judge me the way I’m so often judged as a stranger here, has been one of the absolute sustaining elements of my Peace Corps service.

I’m just beginning to realize how challenging moving on from and processing this experience will be. I’m the last of my group to leave Burkina – a few of us are already home, many others are traveling and will be for some time, but I think none of us yet fully realizes the challenges that reintegration and life after Peace Corps will present. I think my time at home and then out in the world again (traveling in SE Asia), will allow me to reflect on these 27 months, on the big questions that I hoped to pursue in coming to Burkina, on my place in the world, and on how I’ve changed; what I’ve learned about myself and how it will impact the choices I make and the path that lies ahead.



I recently received an e-mail from a good friend who had just finished his PC service in Mongolia. He was writing about his post-service travels; relaxing on a Cambodian beach, beyond content with a hammock, a good iPod playlist and some copies of The Economist. He wrote that he was just beginning to reflect on his service and those “big questions” pertaining to development, the efficacy of Peace Corps, the impact volunteers make, and countless other elements of the experience. He said those answers are slow in coming. Right now, it’s hard to imagine having answers to those questions at all – being able to generalize or summarize anything about two years of a life transplanted…it’s hard even to imagine actually being back in the States in six days. That said, I know that I’m tougher, wiser, and, grace of getting knocked down and picking myself back up time and time again, better than I was 27 months ago.

As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Warlord says he played part in Burkina Faso coup

International Herald Tribune

The Associated Press Published: August 26, 2008

MONROVIA, Liberia: One of Liberia's most infamous warlords admittedTuesday that he had trained in Libya and helped topple the government of Burkina Faso before overthrowing Liberia's president.

Prince Johnson, a warlord who has reinvented himself and is now a senator in Liberia's U.S.-modeled Congress, had initially refused to appear before the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

His testimony Tuesday before the packed hall was another turning point in Liberia's struggle to make the actors of its brutal 14-year conflict face up to the horrors they inflicted.

Although he is now a senator, Johnson is viewed by many as a warlord-in-a-suit. He is best known for the gruesome torture of Liberia's President Samuel K. Doe, who died in 1990 in Johnson's custody.

Johnson led the assault, taking Doe hostage and then videotaped himself drinking Budweiser beer as he ordered his men to cut off the former president's ears. The videotape was copied and sold on street corners. Johnson's men celebrated by parading Doe's body in a wheelbarrow.

Today in Africa & Middle East

Zimbabwe lifts ban on humanitarian organizations

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U.S. military secretly sending foreign fighters to home nations

But since Liberia emerged from war in 2003 and he, along with other warlords, reinvented himself as a senator, Johnson has tried to distance himself from the president's death. On Tuesday he told the truth commission that although it was his forces that captured Doe, others are responsible for his death.

He argued that long before he led the Sept. 9, 1990 overthrow, an interim government had been formed in exile. Its goal was to overthrow Doe, who had become deeply unpopular by favoring members of his ethnic group and allowing government forces to brutally kill his rivals.

"They sat in exile and formed an interim government to replace the Doe government when Doe was still on the throne," Johnson said. "I was only the instrument that they used."

"We all were involved in this Samuel Doe matter," he added. "We all wanted a change."

To overthrow Doe, Johnson said he and the other Liberians-in-exile reached out to Blaise Compaore, the head of Burkina Faso's army and the trusted friend of Burkina Faso's President Thomas Sankara. Compaore helped Johnson and warlord Charles Taylor go to Libya for guerrilla training.

In his testimony, he does not say how or why he helped overthrow Sankara. But in his 2003 autobiography, Johnson explains that when Sankara learned of the planned coup, he refused to let his country be used to destabilize Liberia. So Taylor conspired with Compaore to assassinate the president, Johnson wrote.

The 1987 death of Sankara, who was widely considered one of Africa's hopes, was a blow for the region.

Earlier this year, Johnson adamantly refused to appear before the commission, saying he had already apologized to Doe's family. Doe's family has said that although they accept Johnson's apology, they would like him to show them where the former president's body is buried.

At the hearing, Johnson revealed that Doe was first buried on a beach, and was later exhumed and cremated. "Doe was cremated and thrown in the river," he said. "Let us not open wounds."

Although the country held transparent elections in 2005, Liberia is struggling to knit itself back together. With the exception of Charles Taylor who is now on trial at The Hague for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, none of the actors in Liberia's conflict is currently facing charges.

In an effort to heal the wounds of the past, Liberia's new government created the truth commission, where victims and perpetrators are invited to lay the past bare. Many have criticized the commission as toothless, pointing out that numerous well known warlords have refused to testify and even those that have come forward have been less than remorseful.

Resolution

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

Tom Stoppard

Hello, readers. I’m happy to have something definite to report! Due to the difficulties related in the previous entry and after a great deal of reflection, I have decided against continuing to pursue a third year working with an NGO here in Burkina. I will head back to the U.S. at the beginning of September. In many ways, the outcome is disappointing, but I am happy to have some exciting alternatives for the next year. I’ll be home for a month or so to reacquaint myself with la via américaine and hang out with my family before flying to India in mid-October to meet up with two Peace Corps friends, with whom I’ll travel until the holidays. We don’t have an itinerary beyond a few solid destinations and lots of potential ones. We’ll start in India and work our way east, traveling light and cheap and seeing as much as we can. I’m so excited at the prospect of seeing another region of the world and capitalizing on all the skills I’ve gained during my two years of Peace Corps service in Burkina Faso.

Having traveled a bit during my service (to Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Morocco), I appreciate the ways in which I’ve changed as a traveler. Aside from being considerably more flexible, comfortable with uncertainty and discomfort, and travel savvy in general, I’ve also learned to appreciate travel in a new way and to approach my destination and its culture in a responsible and respectful way, perhaps more so than the average traveler. There’s nothing like two years of intense integration in a foreign culture to impress upon you the importance of cultural knowledge and respect for the very fact of being a stranger in a foreign place.

My plans for 2009 are less concrete, a reality that I am remarkably more comfortable than I would have been two years ago. I’m seriously considering teaching English abroad before beginning graduate school in 2010 and have started exploring opportunities. In any event, I’ve achieved one of the main goals that I set out to in coming to Peace Corps: becoming more in-tune with where my skills and passions intersect and identifying a future course of study that will allow me to utilize and develop those skills while pursuing the things that I’m passionate about.

Despite the frustrations of the last few months and the fact of my third year extension falling through, I am so happy for this experience and the ways in which it has changed and shaped me. I’ve seen and learned so much and, while a lot of the ideas and notions I arrived with have been altered, the idealism that remains is that much more solid for having concrete experience as its foundation.

I’ve spent much of the “summer” in Ouahigouya, a city in Burkina’s north where I am currently, helping out with the 3-month training of our newest group of volunteers-to-be. The training continues until the end of August, so I’ll spend three of my six remaining weeks here and the rest of my time saying goodbye to friends and my village. Due to rainy season flooding that resulted in the complete degradation of the 20 kilometer road to my village, I was forced to move most of my thing out already. As a result, I’ll probably only spend a few days of my remaining weeks in village, especially since my colleagues have all left village to spend the summer holidays with their families in other villages and cities and my closest friends from village now live in Ouagadougou (the capital). As I commence my goodbyes, the weight and significance of my twenty-seven months in Burkina have really started to sink in.

“That’s the tragedy of life – as I always say,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Beginning things and having to end them.”

Virginia Woolf, “The Voyage Out”

Life is short, but the art is long, the opportunity fleeting, the experiment perilous, the judgment difficult.

Hippocrates

Up In The Air

The most we can achieve here is to know ourselves unreservedly in our earthly appearance.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Any schoolboy can do experiments in the physics laboratory to test various scientific hypotheses. But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.

Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

Greetings, gentle readers. I had decided that I wouldn’t blog again until I had some definitive news regarding the next year of my life. I don’t really. But that’s news enough, I suppose. The last two months have been busy and fulfilling, but the anxiety I’ve experienced as a result of the next year of my life hanging in limbo has constituted a creeping, underlying stress that has, at times, been a bit unbearable. Ambiguity is inconsistent to my worldview. I work hard to figure things out, to predict, to analyze, to observe and adjust accordingly.

When I applied to extend my Peace Corps service for a third year and was accepted, I thought to myself, “this is a choice I’ve made, this is definitive.” It wasn’t. Peace Corps Burkina requires host organizations with which third year volunteers partner to provide lodging for the volunteer. This can run anywhere from 500 – 1000 USD for the year, a significant amount for any non-profit, especially a local one. Beyond that, a legal agreement must be reached between PC and the organization delineating jurisdiction and responsibility in terms of the volunteer. This has to be approved by PC Washington’s consul before the volunteer can undertake a third year.

Things don’t happen quickly in Burkina. Despite the fact that Peace Corps is an American institution, it often rivals the inefficiency endemic to Burkina. It is a bureaucracy. At this point, I have a host organization interested in taking me on as a third year volunteer, though nothing is certain. Much remains to be done and agreed upon before things move forward. My site (village) will be replaced with a volunteer from the group currently in training at the end of August. I won’t have a home, I want to GO home…to America (third year volunteers take an obligatory month of home leave). If things progress, I will be in Burkina for another year. If they don’t, I’ll be home in early September, after traveling briefly with PC friends. I’ll enjoy some time at home, take the GRE, then take off again to travel until the holidays...probably through India with another PC friend. After the New Year, I may go teach English somewhere or find something to do Stateside. I hope to start a graduate program in International/Intercultural Communication in 2009 or 2010, depending on circumstances.

I’m enthusiastic for the possibilities that lie ahead. The not-knowing is difficult. I can deal with ambiguity to a point, but, as my high school choir director pointed out when I was a senior, I am a Type A. I like structure, assertion, decision, forward motion. While I’ve certainly grown in this regard during my Peace Corps service (structure? ha! logic? predictability? certainly not!), I will always crave direction, knowledge, control…and all the other qualities and elements of efficiency and productivity that make me so very American.

So this is where life stands. I don’t know where I’ll be in two or three months. But as soon as I do, so will you.

Thanks for reading,


Chrissy

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the law of beauty, even in times of the greatest distress.

Milan Kundera

…the gods do not limit men. Men limit men.

Tom Robbins, “Jitterbug Perfume

Girls' Camps

Come, my friends 'tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all western stars until I die. It may be the gulfs will wash us down. It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, and see the great Achilles whom we once knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts; made weak by time and fate, but strong in will; to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"

Greetings, dear readers! I have evolved from a frequent and enthusiastic blogger to an absentee one, which perhaps reflects how this ever-changing experience continues to...ever change. It becomes harder to focus a blog entry on just one subject or experience as I am busier than ever with work in village, preparing for the new training group that arrives in June, a visitor from home and, eventually, to go home for a month...and come back for another year! My third year details are not yet concrete and thus will constitute a blog to come.

Before I report on recent goings-on, however, an administrative note:

My address will change until I am settled in my new situation next fall, thus, mail should be sent to the Peace Corps office in Ouagadougou until further notice:

Chrissy Hart, PCV
Corps de la Paix Americain
01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso
West Africa

Also, since Google is LAME (ok, lame in regard to this particular gripe) and doesn't give loyal users more than a Gig of memory per photo page AND blog, I can no longer post pics on either my Picasa site or this blog. So, I have a new photo page and, upon returning to the BF for year three (yikes!), I will start a new blog, so that my entries will continue to be aesthetically AND intellectually stimulating.

Chrissy's Pics (Picasa Page # 2): http://picasaweb.google.com/chrissydhart

Now on to village news. This entry's topic is the recent smashing success of two girls' camps that occurred in my village, Diabo, and Diapangou, that of my PCV neighbor, Orelia (photos from the camp are posted on my new site, link above). With the aid of funding from PC Burkina's Gender And Development (GAD) program, members of the congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Church of East Aurora and many of Orelia's friends, we organized two three-day camps for female students (13-16 year-olds) in each village focusing on decision-making, confidence-building, thinking about the future, as well as a variety of health topics - female physiology, menstruation, reproduction, methods of birth control, STDs, etc.

We collaborated with our village high schools' administration and faculty, the staff of our local clinics and Action Sociale, a government ministry focused on social welfare, particularly issues pertaining to women and girls. We had a midwife, nurses, the director of my village clinic and the AS facilitators explaining menstruation, fertility, reproduction, birth control and STDs, while Orelia and I facilitated the "Life Skills" elements of the camps. We have a great Peace Corps-developed "Life Skills" manual with lots of culturally appropriate activities dealing with an array of issues facing school-age youth in the developing world. We used a few activities from the book to elaborate upon the importance of all the health information provided during the camps by providing strategies for positive behavior and responsible decision-making.

Overall, the camps surpassed our hopes and expectations. Ou collaborators were stellar - knowledgable, patient, and committed to providing as much information as possible - and the 50 schoolgirls who participated were more engaged than we had imagined possible. We had some really frank, productive dialogues which were enhanced by the presence of the Burkinabè women facilitators who were more capable of responding to questions and concerns regarding relationships and sexual behavior in Burkina.

The camps have been one of the most fulfilling projects of my service and a positive note on which to end my work in village. My service won't end until late July, but I'll be spending time up north for 6 of the 11 weeks of training for our soon-to-arrive newbies and well as travelling a bit with my first visitor from America! It's hard to believe that my time in village is up, I have no doubt that it will be incredibly sad to say goodbye. I am, however, ready and excited for the next phase of my West African adventure.

If it were customary to send little girls to school and to teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just and fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences. Indeed, maybe they would understand them better...for just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their understanding is sharper.

La Cité des Dames [The City of Women] (1404)

by Christine de Pisan

Absent Without Leave

I have been remiss. I've had lots of exciting things to write about - interesting travels, work in village, future plans - but as the pace of life only continues to increase here (with the odd reprieve of a sweltry, lazy village day), I find it hard to sit down and blog when I have the opportunity. Thus, a quick recap of the past few months and the invitation to check out my goings-on via photos (the medium that I have managed to spend some time making public!).

Highlights include:

- 8 Mars: International Women's Day which we celebrated in village with a host of activities including a parade, speeches, an exposé on the feminization of HIV/AIDS (the theme of this year's IWD), soccer games, a relay race, a bike race and a soirée with dancing.

- an Easter trip to Arly National Park, in a somewhat remote corner of Burkina's southeast. Our group biked around the park (on some VERY rough trails) and saw an array of creatures: elephants, buffalo, koba, bush deer, warthogs, baboons, hippos, some neat birds, etc.

- a late March trip to Burkina's southwestern region for the Semaine Nationale de la Culture (Nat'l Week of Culture) which consisted of some amazing dance and musical performances from groups all over the country, including several from the eastern region and villages near mine.

- in early April, our group's Close of Service conference, where we processed some of our Peace Corps experiences, talked about leaving BF and life after Peace Corps, discussed career exploration - resume writing and informational sessions with local development workers and foreign service officers, and, finally, had a pretty sweet party celebrating our two years and the atypical fact that almost of all of our group actually made it to COS (Burkina has one of the highest "early termination" rates of Peace Corps countries). Our group's official COS date is in late August, though many volunteers will leave in June or July.

I have photo albums documenting all of the aforementioned on my Picasa page so please check 'em out if you're so inclined:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hart.christine


I hope that my next entry will include some exciting and definite news about my plans post-August, but I don't want to report anything before my plans are concrete (so mysterious! ok, not really, I just don't want to be presumptuous). I'll say this: my eagerness to return to "la vie americaine" may have been premature.

…at my worst, I have been a cacophony, a mass of human noises that did not add up to the symphony of an integrated self. At my best, however, the world sang out to me, and through me, like ringing crystal.

Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Int'l Conference of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa

In 2007, 1.6 million African adults and children died of AIDS, 1.7 million African adults and children were newly infected with HIV, and a total of 22.5 million Africans were reported as living with HIV.

12 million African children have been orphaned by AIDS since 1981.

Source: UNAIDS

Hello! As a member of PC Burkina's HIV/AIDS Task Force, I had the opportunity to participate in the 11th Int'l Conference of the Society For Women and AIDS in Africa/Association des Femmes Africaines Face Au Sida from February 4th to the 7th. Below is an article I wrote on the conference for the Zakramba, PC Burkina's monthly volunteer newsletter. It was a great experience and an informative and generally encouraging look into development both at and beyond the grassroots level. The conference consisted of SWAA/AFAFSI delegations from countries across the continent and representatives from a host of int'l organizations and NGOs.

News from the A-Team:

11th International Conference of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa

by ATF member Chrissy Hart, GEE

February saw the descent of a particularly impressive and mobilized group of individuals upon Ouagadougou. The 11th International Conference of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa convened on February 4th and consisted of a variety of lectures and round table discussions on themes including: epidemiology, prevention and public health, clinical care, gender and HIV/AIDS, stigmatization and discrimination facing people living with HIV, economic and socio-cultural issues, as well as politics, ethnicity and human rights. Conference participants included an array of stakeholders: SWAA delegations from countries spanning the continent, health care professionals, NGO workers, government representatives, United Nations and World Health Organization officials, and us, Peace Corps Burkina’s AIDS Task Force. The conference was sponsored by UNAIDS, Unicef, and PAMAC (Programme d’Appui au Monde Associatif & Communitaire de Lutte Contre le VIH/SIDA) and the theme was “HIV/AIDS, Gender, and Human Rights: It is time to act.”

The Society for Woman and AIDS in Africa was born when several key African women leaders predicted that HIV/AIDS would most severely impact African women and children at the 1998 4th International AIDS Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. Today, SWAA consists of a network of 41 country offices and is the only pan-African HIV/AIDS organization working with and for women and their families based on locally determined needs and priorities. SWAA’s mission is to advocate on behalf of women, children and families in the fight against HIV/AIDS and to mobilize communities by strengthening capacity to prevent, control, and mitigate the impact of the epidemic. The international organization envisions a world free of HIV/AIDS where African women and children are empowered to claim equal rights, access to health care, education, and economic and socio-cultural opportunities.

Dr. Claude Millogo, PC Burkina’s Health APCD, is the President of SWAA Burkina and was one of the principal coordinators of this year’s international conference. The quality and professionalism of this year’s conference certainly made an impression on participants based on numerous comments made during the closing ceremonies, much to Dr. Claude’s credit. Members of the AIDS Task Force assisted in an organizational capacity and with translation for Anglophone participants and were able to attend a number of lectures and round table discussions.

Highlights of the conference included a lecture on various efforts toward universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment, a round table discussion on working with HIV+ youth and another on methods of prevention such as the female condom, microbicides, and male circumcision. Robbie Nelson (RPCV-Tanzania), a representative of The Female Health Company – the sole manufacturer of the female condom - presented on the development of the first and second generation female condoms and fielded a host of questions pertaining to marketing, use and accessibility. Another interesting presentation was put on by The Condom Project, a U.S.-based non-profit organization sponsored by the United Nations and Mtv. The presentation included a video documenting the successes and failures of promotion and training on use of the female condom among sex workers in Ethiopia. Perhaps most engaging was a presentation by a member of SWAA Ghana on the comprehensive educational campaign that they’ve undertaken to create awareness of and promote the female condom throughout the country. The scope and success of their efforts, from trainings of trainers to a multi-media advertising campaign, was truly impressive. Finally, another exciting aspect of the conference was a reception for participants hosted by Chantal Campaore, the first lady, at the Presidential palace. Attendees enjoyed cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, good music and even got down and danced with Madame La Presidente.

The conference was a unique and illuminating experience for members of the ATF. We helped out a little and had the opportunity to learn and experience a lot. It was encouraging and inspiring to be exposed to such a dynamic group of men and women focused on change and progress in Africa, engaged in candid and frank discussions about reality and how to move forward from the status quo. I wish that every volunteer had the opportunity to participate in something like the SWAA conference and observe a pan-African effort that, though it faces significant obstacles, is making a real impact.

The AIDS Task Force would like to thank Dr. Claude for the opportunity to help with and participate in the 11^th International SWAA Conference and to congratulate her for all of her efforts and contributions as SWAA president. Targeting the HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the most daunting undertakings one can imagine, but committed, mobilized individuals like Dr. Claude and the conference participants engender hope as progress continues.

Morocco

First things first. I’m posting two blogs at once so please check out the previous one about my trip home if you haven’t done so already. Also, I’ve changed my procrastinating ways and finally uploaded lots of current pictures on my new Picasa photo-sharing page (they‘re downloadable, for those who make an appearance), so see the sidebar/below for the link and check ‘em out.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Hart.Christine

As I mentioned in my previous blog, fellow volunteer Joel and I made a stopover au Maroc on our way back to the land of sand. We arrived in Casablanca and hopped a train (a train! one that came on time! seriously!) to Fès, one of Morocco’s imperial cities and the hub of Moroccan culture and art (the city was founded by Romans in the 8th century B.C.). After a scenic 5 hour train ride through the Moroccan countryside, we disembarked and took a cab to Fès El-Bali, the medina or old city. Most Moroccan cities have a medina which is the ancient (and typically still current) city-center, made up of a maze-like network of stone streets and alleyways, medeival in feeling but quite modern in function.

We stayed at a modest but centrally-located hotel that a friend had recommended, enjoying the incredible views of the medina from the rooftop terrace. Though it was much colder than we expected (they actually have cold in North Africa), we bundled up and spent two days drinking Moroccan coffee, sampling tagine and other local fare, and trekking through the medina, getting lost and more lost, but always able to recover our orientation thanks to Joel’s actual geographical sensibilities and my bizarre, slightly inconsistent directional sixth sense. We saw Fès’s famous tanneries, the origin of some of the world’s most reputed leather goods, toured a few carpet shops, admired many of the 350 mosques that lie inside the medina, drank delicious mint tea, and chatted up several friendly shop owners, all impressively good-humored and persistent. I did end up buying some gorgeous Fès needlework and a pretty Berber bracelet, but was able to restrain myself for the most part.

The trip was a great transition on our way back to Burkina and la vie africaine. It was neat to see a small slice of North Africa and appreciate some of the cultural variation (not always so obvious here), that makes Africa such a rich and interesting continent. Morocco certainly whet my appetite for my post-service Africa exploration, I can't wait to see more of the continent!

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?

The World would split open.

Muriel Rukeyser

Christmas Cookies and Culture Shock

Bonne Année 2008!

I’m back in Burkina after a whirlwind trip home that involved several cities, holidays, a wedding, and much-needed quality time with friends and family. America was great but it’s good to be back here with a new appreciation for the 7 months I have left in Burkina.

I left Burkina in mid-December with several other homeward bound volunteers. After a layover in Casablanca and a day of travel, we arrived at JFK. My initial reaction? First, amazement at the diversity of the people I saw - nationality, skin color (an array beyond black and white, that is), style of dress, etc. Second, the enormity of, well, everything; the buildings, the parking lots, the roads, the crowds of people, the selection of items at the airport shops…it was at once slightly overwhelming and wonderfully familiar to be plunked down in the land of consumerism and comfort.

I grabbed dinner with a volunteer I’d traveled with and a Peace Corps friend who came to meet us at the airport, enjoyed my first beer aux Etats-Unis, and embarked on my final flight to Buffalo, eager to see my parents and sleep in my own, miraculously cloud-like (ok, what I’d imagine a cloud would be like) bed.

Home was good - lots of parental TLC, updating my iPod, Mom’s cooking, catching up with high school friends, snow, Christmas at home, seeing family, going to church. It was all easier and more familiar than I thought it would be…until I went shopping the day after Christmas (imagine a foreboding musical interlude here). I was scheduled to continue my journey to Annapolis for a wedding three days after Christmas so, armed with gift cards and a serious shopping list of items to bring back to Burkina (a garlic press, trail mix, shampoo not of European origin, etc.), I set out for the chaotic monstrosity that is a suburban strip mall the day after Christmas. The Subaru seemed to drive itself to Target and Borders (old habits die hard, apparently) and I suddenly found myself standing in front of the biggest building I’d seen in a year and a half (ok, not really, but it seemed that way). Target. Everything under the sun…and more. My memory starts to fail me here. I recall a feeling like horizontal vertigo, if that makes any sense, and experiencing a sort of out-of-body, I’m-here-but-not-really-here daze as I wandered through the aisles, seeking kitchen utensils and nylons. The long and short of it - it was a confusing and somewhat frightening experience, though I did emerge with a garlic press, nylons, trail mix and even managed to continue on to Borders for my East Africa guidebook and issues of The Nation and The Economist (yes! print media! IN ENGLISH!). Needless to say, I didn’t attempt the grocery store. That clearly would have been a disaster.

The shopping episode was followed by fervent packing, a manicure and pedicure (manicure # 2 of my life, pedicure # 1 - enjoyable, to say the least, though I apologized profusely for the state of my feet), dinner with summer camp friends (hello, nostalgia!) followed by an actual camp reunion (hello, former campers who are now in COLLEGE!). The 28th, I was off to Annapolis to see one of my best friends get married. Whew.

The wedding was…awesome. Love, the union of two souls, good friends, good food, dancing, hitting the streets (bars) of Annapolis after the reception - who could ask for more? Despite the wedding chaos, I got to catch up with two of my oldest friends (the bride and bridesmaid), who are both frighteningly adult but comfortingly still very much the girls I started going to camp with in the 6th grade. I gave one of the readings during the service and managed (I think) to speak clearly and slowly and to avoid tripping on the way to or from the podium. Good stuff.

Next, I continued up to Manhattan (the Jersey Turnpike - so familiar in its monotony and occassional stench) to visit college friends and celebrate New Year’s Eve. I enjoyed the excellent hospitality of friends and even a surprise visit from a friend all the way from Chicago. It was so good to fall into old routines, to fill my friends in on some of my Burkina experiences, share photos, and catch up on all the new elements of their lives. Though I definitely felt some disconnect (lack of cultural context, having no clue about movies, new technologies - holy crap, the cell phones! etc.), it was so good to actually be in the presence of the people I’ve been missing for 18 months.

The thing that struck me most about being home, beyond the contrast in quotidian existence - the ease and convenience and richness of American life , was how much more significant the things that are changing in everyone’s lives seem to be. While conversations with high school and college friends revolved around gossip relating to our fellow alums, the news was engagements, marriages, babies, law school acceptances, new jobs, moves to new cities…in other words, the non-trivial, significant, meaningful stuff of life - the lives of twenty-four and twenty-five year olds…adults. And while my life currently exists outside that realm in so many ways, it won’t for long.

After five days in the Big Apple, which included lots of excellent meals (sushi! Mexican! pizza!), and movies, television, the Met, the New York-ness of New York, I headed out to Brooklyn to meet up with Joel, another volunteer, with whom I continued on the Morocco for three days before heading back to the BF (that’ll be another blog altogether). After a brief subway experience and a ride to the airport with a Peace Corps friend, we were off. Back to Africa.

Traveling makes one modest – you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Gustave Flaubert