Waiting at the Well

I am now at my site in near Tougan. The first few days have been rough as I learn to transition and become familiar with this place I will call home for the next 2 years. It is everything and nothing that I expected it would be.

The well is a gathering place of sorts for the village. The other day I went to collect a bucket for the day. The women are very kind and helped me pull the bucket full up from the deep well. I then attempted to carry it back to my house while everyone laughed. I am still learning to master the skill and strength it takes to survive daily chores in Africa. Soon a little girl came along and took it from me, showing me up by effortlessly walking without spilling a drop.

I wish i could post a picture of the ladies at the well. Seeing them always makes me imagine a biblical scene, as though Jesus might walk up at any moment and chat about living water and thirsting no more. The women of all ages sit and chat and help each other pull the rope; the ground around is scattered with yellow and green gallon jugs and big metals basins full or waiting to be filled. Their brilliant clothing creates an oasis of color in the dusty ochre landscape. Their scarves and layers of skirts blow in the tiny bit of breeze that moves as the sun sets and brings some relief to the heat or 'le challeur" as everyone calls it. When one is lacking in conversation, one can simply wave a hand near the face and breathe, "Oh, le challeur!" Voila, instant bond over ones common suffering from the heat.

News from Burkina

I have now been in Burkina Faso exactly three months. It is hard to express what has taken place in that span of time. Since arriving in the heat and dust and chaotic colorful beauty that is Burkina, time seems to sprints then crawls. In three months I have seen both the village life and the city life of Burkina, explored several volunteers sites and joined in the daily life of two Burkinabe families. I have been speaking three languages, planted and germinated 70 or so trees cultivated crops I was previously unfamiliar with, hoed fields alongside my host family and gained 12 new best friends of fellow agriculture volunteers. I have watched the landscape change, trees blossom, millet and sorgum grow to far above my head. Mango season has passed (sadly) and after it came summer squash and funny little local green eggplants, then cucumbers appeared in the market, and tomatoes were like a treasure- anyone who found them was obligated to tell the others where to find the "tomato lady" amongst the maze of market stalls, past the bar of local millet beer, on the other side of the men selling chinese electronics, beside a woman selling piles of onions and peanuts). Now as the rains have increased to once a week or so, you can even find watermelons sold on the sides of the dusty highway out of Ouaga and not far from my current family's home in Karpala, a district of Ouaga, I can buy green apples from Ghana and little yellow melons which tastes like when a honeydew met a cucumber.

In many ways my life here has been simplified; I focus on growing a little nursery of trees (papaya, baobab, wild grape), planning what I will eat for lunch and how to create a meal from just onions and tomato paste with some sort of carb, or peanut butter with bread and sliced mangoes, practicing my French with my host father, attempting Moore with my host mother- which usually would mean pointing to dinner being made over the fire and repeating words for millet and various wild leaves- and each night hoping I have used the correct Moore greeting. In other ways, life here seems exhaustingly difficult. Tasks that would be simple in the states become incredibly puzzling- how to hand-wash your wardrobe, pee in a squatty-potty without baptizing your feet, navigate a village by trees and cow paths, locate toilet paper in a town where only no one uses it (add to that trying to explain toilet paper to the vender who has never heard of it and keeps trying to sell me a notebook), and how to get change after you buy a Fanta. Just coaxing life out of the tired African soil at times seems a daunting task for the next two years. Just turning the soil in a little plot of land before the rains softened the soil is a million times harder than hoeing a row in our raised bed of rich soil in Vermont. Or try understanding a session all in French about the long list of coups that have overturned Burkina's government or which types of fertilizers are best for sorghum and yams.

But more than the difficulties of training, or the simple joys of cucumbers after so many plates of rice and leaf sauce, I wish I could describe to you the moments of beauty here- the expansive skies and the giant billowing clouds, the brilliance of the moonlight and the drama of a coming storm. I missed this. And there is something familiar about the smell of dirt as it begins to rain or the sounds of cows and roosters to wake you up. From the moment I stepped off the plane three months ago, the vague sense that I have been here before has only grown deeper as I connect with memories from Tanzania and create new memories in Burkina. And in a week or so I will be moving into my home away from home, my first little house of my own and I went all the way to Burkina to find it. It certainly is incredible to let the reality sink in that I will be living and working here for two years. And this feels like my first real steps into my life beyond graduation . . . it just happens to be in Africa.

My site is going to be a little town with no electricity, limited cell service, and no running water. But I have been placed with a very motivated women's agriculture association with which I hope to share my new-found knowledge of local environmental solutions and improvements to traditional farming. More than anything, I am excited to begin the process of getting to know my community and finding my niche in a little Burkinabe village. Wish me luck as I swear in as an official volunteer in ten days! And I hope I can be a little more faithful in updating my blog once I make it to my site.
Ala k'an ben! (May God keep you!)

Seeking the Profound

"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." -Buddha

Sometimes life feels big, like a clear spring sky. Other times it seems to shrink into the space of a dim bedroom. Often before a momentous change in life, there comes a stillness. The edges of fear rim my mind in the quiet. There is a nagging sense that I am missing something important that is occurring just at this moment. I feel the desire to read and speak of things which have meaning and importance. Yet tonight as I read to fill time before bed, my mind only tumbles past words and moves on.

As often happens when I return home after a trip, with my second Seattle visit ended, I now find myself wondering how home can remain so entirely unchanged. The quiet of my room and the spring night suddenly seem deafening in their stillness.

During the past year, I realize I have developed a nostalgia for times in college when every dorm-room conversation, every new class held existential truths. Sometimes in my post-college world, I remember college as a time when I daily wrestled with questions about morality, global problems, social values, and personal integrity. Late-night conversations seemed to gain gravity and hold such emotional sincerity. Sometimes I wonder how it was that in college life felt deeper. Was everything I was encountering truly profound or did it only seem that way? I am searching for a greater sense of continuity with my four years of higher education. I ask myself, how does one hold on to the lessons and experiences of college and yet develop and move beyond them to a fuller, wiser perspective? How does one keep the momentum of questioning and reasoning and dreaming that is started in college? How does one continue to interact with the world of the profound while living in the mundane?

How do I learn to find new questions and new truths for the next season of my life? How do I continue to seek the deeper truths behind the reality I encounter?

Preparation and Pre-service Jitters

Folders brim with paperwork calling to be written and submitted. French radio blares at me, taunting me with the language I thought I knew (and desperately need to know soon). A pile of book titles call to me So You Want to Join the Peace Corps: What to Know Before You Go, The Bold Experiment: JFK's Peace Corps, Come As You Are: The Peace Corps Story. A blank screen stares at me filled with goals to be submitted, my aspirations, my professional goals, my strategies. My mind is murky. My answers seem vague, idealistic, pat. Suddenly this does seem like a vast experiment- a gallivant into the unknown so I may feel challenged, adventurous, and independent. What are my real motives?

Stopped before I even begin, I set my essay aside and open the memoir I picked up of a Peace Corps volunteer in Côte d'Ivoire, the country south of Burkina Faso. I am immediately pulled in by the tentative observer's voice and the beauty she describes. As I read my heartbeat quickens; I can immediately smell the dirt and feel the rush of the African rain as I read. I am transported to memories of two years ago in Tanzania. I am aware of how distanced I was from real life and real culture in my study abroad program. The author's voice becomes what could be my own, as I am shocked and a bit concerned about the prospects of witnessing a live birth, eating bushrat soup,and teaching AIDS prevention with props. Yet the people in her village emerge vividly from her pages and capture my heart. Will I make friendships such as these? Will be able to understand village politics and relationships the way she does? Will I watch as an undernourished child is neglected by his mother, given up as a lost cause? Will I witness death and life play out before my eyes? Perhaps I will find more than I even bargained for, more than I expect, and certainly more than my small scope of goals and expectations encompass.

I return to the page of my aspiration statement, a bit awed and inspired anew of the scope of the project to which I have committed.

The Assignment

Today I officially accepted my invitation to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in the West African country of Burkina Faso. I will depart for training this coming May.I will attend three months of training in Ougagougou, the capital city. In training I will learn cross-cultural skills, improve my French and learn a local trade language, as well as receive technical training in agriculture and health maintenance. My job title will be an agricultural and environmental adviser. In this position, I will be expected to partner with local community leaders and/or development organizations to facilitate the adoption of more effective and sustainable agricultural practices.

In the past week or so I have experienced a range of emotions about this next step, including fear, excitement, doubt, and exhilaration. In accepting this assignment to live and work in a rural African community, I will be truly living a dream that began years ago. (I can still remember Mr Lahue handing me a Peace Corps application after one of our geography classes.) Finally the theories and concepts I have studied in the past four years will be translated into hands-on, grassroots development work. My term of service will test my ability to adapt and stretch, change and grow in a new and foreign setting.

Now I have less than four months to better prepare myself by reading as much as I can on sub-Saharan agriculture, West African history and Burkinabé culture as well as work on improving my very rusty French. I hope to maintain this blog as a journal of my experiences during my 27 month assignment. And so begins the adventure!

Dear Seattle,

Dear Seattle,
I have fallen in love with your West-coast Christmastime beauty. I love your funny iconic Space-age tower, built to impress the communists of America's superior modern style.
I love your coffee shops on every corner. I love how serious you are about your coffee (and how you call a normal cup of joe a "drip"). I love how your cappuccinos come with heart-shaped foam.
I love your art museum that exhibits Picasso and gives me a new appreciation for the master of cubism.
I love your neighborhoods of cool people who don't want to be called cool. And your edgy neighborhoods that display bronze statues of Lenin and trolls under freeway bridges.
I love your fish market in which I could buy handmade jewelry, dried flowers, sushi, and a copy of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse all in one place.
I love your mountains that emerge from the fog and surround the city, wrapping all that civilization in a kind of wildness with their white-capped ridges.
I love your pine forests, dark and dense and fresh-scented.
And yes, I even love your rain that gives everything a glossy shine.

This year I spent my first Christmas away from home and away from Vermont. This year I brought Christmas to my best friend, alone in the rainy city of Seattle. And I found Christmas spirit in the lights of downtown and the bustle of holiday shoppers. I found Christmas joy in the dance of the sugarplum fairies turned snowball fight in an unorthodox performance of the Nutcracker. I found the taste of Christmas in mom's peppermint candycane cookies. I found that what makes Christmas Christmas-y is being with someone well-loved, no matter where you are.

Dear Seattle, thank you for bringing me Christmas.