A Reunion, a Foot Bath & Lots of Hippos

“YOU OWE ME WESLEY!!” I yelled into the phone over the typically expected noises that emanate from a Burkinabe bush taxi, you know the ones by now; the screaming babies, the screaming goats, the screaming music, the screaming shriek of the bus' interior frame about to collapse from the abusive roads, the man screaming into his phone next to you who thinks this is the perfect time to have a friendly conversation with his brother twice-removed on his father's uncle's side. Yeah, I was on my THIRD of these deluxe bush taxis on my way to see one of my best friends, Wes, in his village of Lanfiera (in the Northwest of Burkina) for the weekend. After FIVE of these and about 14 hours later, I made it to his village, in one piece but in desperate need of some R&R, which Wes marvelously provided with a foot-soak bucket bath and a lukewarm beer.

Lanfiera is a smaller village than mine (Bagassi) and is predominantly Muslim. Wes had told me numerous times about the friendly neighborhood Mosque that had its microphones directly pointing towards his house but I never understood until I was woken up at 4am every morning with the screamo-styled chanting into these said microphones and then the free-for-all kids' karaoke time that came afterwards. That day, we worked at the Bisongo where Wes volunteers (pre-school) and spent the day doing a review of the shapes, colors and numbers they learnt that week. I taught them how to play “Red Light, Green Light” and they loved it. The Bisongo has about 15 kids from the ages of 2-5 and is funded by the community itself (even though apparently not many people know that it exists!). The volunteers that Wes replaced had built, painted, furnished and stocked the Bisongo the year before and Wes' job for his service is to help with teaching methods and techniques at the administration level and help teach the pre-school teachers hands-on classroom management.

After the day of work, I got the grand tour of Lanfiera and went on an epic adventure to the river! After biking about 2km, we got to the river gardens which was growing a variety of plants and fruit trees and grass. We parked the bikes and walked about another ½ Km to the actual water (its dry season so the water had receded drastically) where we asked a local man to take us out on his canoe, he refused saying that he was done fishing for the day (putting nets out) so we kept walking. Finally I saw another man coming in so I made my way over while Wes and his site-mate (another volunteer who lives there) walked to the other bank to find hippo prints. This man didn't speak a lick of French so I have no idea how, but completely in Dioula, I managed to get the guy to take us out on his dugout canoe to go see the supposed hippos that were in the river (super proud moment y'all!).

The water was giving off an air of humid heat and the sun was setting like it always does here, in a huge ball of fiery orange. Adema had us sit in his canoe and he pushed us out with a large bamboo stick/tree until we got to where the hippos were supposed to be. We heard them before we saw them...the noise brought goosebumps to my skin and shivers down my back:

“MAARRGHHHHH” went the hippo, “GAAHH!!” went we.

After hearing the deep, vibrating, angry sounding roar of the giant bull hippos, Adema still continued paddling towards them until we could get a clear view:

“GAAAH!” we yelled again, “Akine Adema, Akine!!!”

(In Dioula, 'its good, its good', meaning for him to stop).

I gave him the thumbs up and told him that it was beautiful, he gave me a quizzical look, clucked disapprovingly from his lips (very typical Burkinabe thing) and shook his head and said what I thought was:

“No good, hippos no good, hippos eat people!”

I almost tipped the canoe. **

After we got our fill of hippo watching and got back onto safe ground, we thanked Adema profusely and went to find our bikes (at this point it was almost completely dark and we hadn't thought to bring a light) and I thought my adventures for the day were done. I was wrong. I guess I have a sort of attraction for bats because I can never seem to get away from the furry little things. I was just walking between Wes and his site-mate, chatting away excitedly about what a beautiful and raw experience we just had and BAM!! out of nowhere, an obviously disoriented bat smacked me square in the back! I had no idea what it was until I looked back and saw the poor thing flying away all wobbly and confused. Guess Burkina was giving me a reminder to never let myself think I'm safe from the flying rats!

After I recovered, we continued to a great little shack place that had fresh fish from the river and we picked through 3 whole fishes (heads and all) topped with cucumbers, onions and tomatoes (most protein I've had in a while!).

So, to sum it all up, everything is still going great here in Burkina and in even better news, I didn't become hippo poop this weekend!

Let the adventures continue!

**Don't worry, what he actually meant was that hippos just maul people, not eat them.

What Peace Corps Volunteers really do...

Adama, our Hippo Hunter

Those specks are Hippos!

Fresh catch of the day 

Wes' Preschoolers

First Encounter with a Real-life Green Monster

A few weeks ago, I was sitting at my host family's house in my village playing cards with one of my brothers when out of nowhere, my little sisters starts screaming in fear and running toward the house. We all looked around panicking, had a scorpion stung her? Did a rabid dog bite her? We had no idea what had sent my 6 year old sister fleeing to hide in the house. My brother saw it before I did.

Looking past the top of my head, he calmly got up and said “Zazie, you should go inside.” Confused and slightly terrified at what I might find behind me, I slowly turned my head and immediately I knocked the chair down with how quickly I stood up.

A dark green monster made of leaves was running full force towards us in huge strides, waving an enormous branch in his hand, with an obviously clear intent to smack whatever and whomever would get in its way, with 6 younger boys chasing after it yelling incomprehensibly and waving around branches of their own.

My brain literally had no idea what I was seeing and I did the only sensible thing I could think of at the time and I sat back down. My brother just looked at me exasperatedly and stepped in front of me. The leafy green monster finally stopped running maybe 2 feet in front of where we were, me in my chair not knowing what else to do and my brother, being the protector that he is, standing bravely in front of me. The leafy monster did not speak a word, he peeked over my brother's shoulder at me, looked back at my brother, shook his entire leafy body so hard that leaves were flying out of everywhere off his body, raised his branch to my brother's face (my brother did not flinch at all), looked at me again and stomped off.

As soon as the green monster saw some other innocent villagers walking on the road next to our house, he immediately started running towards them and shaking his branch the whole way there. These people ran screaming into the nearest house.

Meanwhile, as I sat there trying to comprehend what the heck had just happened, my brother calmly sat back down and picked up his cards we had knocked off the yellow water bidon we had been playing on, and started laughing. “The mask was scared of you! Did you see it stop in its tracks? Heehee...mask was not smacking anyone in our house today!” He was clutching at his sides.

I still had not found the words so I just stared at him for a few seconds and finally shouted, “What the hell is THE MASK?!”.

A little history lesson:

The Bwa, or Bwaba, (the ethnic group in my village, they speak Bwamu) believe that the world was created by a God, Dobweni, who abandoned man and left the earth when he was wounded by a woman pounding millet with her pestle. To act as his representative among man and as an intermediary between man and the forces of nature, Dobweni sent his son, Do.

Do represents the bush and its life-giving force, for the Bwa still depend on the bush for game and gathered food. He shows himself as the source of plant life and the power that gives fruit to man's work in the fields. Do is concerned with all ceremonies that insure the renewal of life.

One representation of Do is with masks, bieni, made exclusively of wild plants (stalks, grass, and leaves), because they must not resemble the creations of man.

The most typical leaf mask is a mask that appears at the beginning of the performance season to sweep all impurities from the community. Leaf masks representing the initial and universal form of Dwo serve to integrate the individual into human society and to link the community of man with the natural world.

Leaf masks are born in the bush, early in the morning, when young initiates of the congregation gather vines and the leaves of the karite tree, a symbol of fertility. The mask assistants (these are the young boys that were accompanying my lovely green monster), who do not perform, wrap the body of the performer in vines from head to toe. The performer may no longer speak because speech is a human skill.

The major contexts in which leaf masks appear are initiations and village purification or renewal ceremonies called loponu.The performer becomes Do, and performs in rites that represent the dependence of man on the forces of nature for life.

* My family also mentioned that this green monster went around the village smacking anyone who crossed their paths with his branch as part of this purification, hence why my little sister and the others ran terrified into the house.

This is the traditional leaf masks that you see, the one I saw was the exact same but missing the white feathers on his head.

This information and these pictures were taken from the University of Iowa Museum of Art's website from a thorough study done by CHRISTOPHER D. ROY: http://africa.uima.uiowa.edu/topic-essays/show/39?start=8

Classroom

     Having 200 students (98 in one and 102 in the other) has, so far, been a thrilling ride made up of equal parts of downright terror and incomprehensible hilarity. The first time I walked into my classroom, I felt a desire to A) run away B) throw up a little C) cry. The sheer number of students is so immense that it literally takes your breathe away and its no wonder that so many students fail or redouble classes...as a teacher you literally have ZERO time to give individual attention to all the students, you can pick a good chunk of kids from each class to spend more time with but its difficult to deal with the thought that some kids you just simply have to let fail. Its not right and its certainly not fair but teachers are far and few in between in most villages which results in bigger (huuuger) classroom sizes.

     Like any other classroom in the world, some students try really hard and others don't. Here are some of my favorite responses from a “get-to-know-the-students-better” questionnaire I gave my students the first week of class, some of them just grammatically hilarious and others terrifying:

How old are you?

I am fine, how are you?

What is your favorite subject?

My favorite is Ms. Zazie.

(Sawyer is too difficult for them to pronounce...and yes, I was tempted to give this kid points for sucking up)

What is your favorite animal?

My favorite animal is to eat the dog. (Kind of an error....Welcome to BF)

How many brothers and sisters do you have?

I have six fathers...one is donkey. (Uumm...)

What did you buy at the market?

I buy the childrens and a water. (Uummm again...)

What is the purpose and importance of the verb “To do”?

The “to do” verb is important because it is interesting.

     There are many times where my students will push my buttons but half of the time I can't help but cracking up at their attempts to speak broken English...the things they say sometimes, I swear...my stern demeanor is completely undermined all the time. I found that most students are so terrified of their teachers because lets face it, teachers here have a LOT on their plates with the number of students so classroom management is something they have no patience to work torwards with the students. Its either shut up, sit down, get out of the class, go home, you get -5 points, etc. Positive reenforcement is not really a thing here. I have had very little major classroom management problems and I solely attribute this to being scared of being mean and not being liked by my kids so I have come up with a few strategies to reward the well-behaved students rather than only punishing the few stragglers and I have found that the class time we have together has become pretty enjoyable and oftentimes fun! I allow the students some freedoms that they otherwise do not have in other classes...like cracking a harmless joke once in a while.

Some other interactions:

Me : How do you say 'pen' in the plural?

Student #46: Pennes

Me : Almost but nooooo...someone else?

Student #12: Penis?

Me : Uh...what?

Student #33: Madam, he said 'penis'...thats how you say it!

Me: Uh, no, no thats not correct. The correct answer is 'Pens'. You just add 's' to the end to make it plural. Okay, someone come write up on the board a sentence with the word 'pen' in the plural.

Students #87: comes to the board, writes – The penis is red.

Me: Whaaaat? No no no. Why is there 'is', its ---- ah nevermind. Do you guys even know what that means?

Class: No Ms. Zazie.

Me: Oh.....okay, well its not a word in English. Mooooooooving on.

Class: So its not 'penis' its 'pens', got it.

Me: *sigh

     I also allot a 15 minute ask-Ms.Zazie-how-to-say-anything-in-English break at the end of the week for the students to ask things that we may not cover in class but that they've heard in movies or songs, or simply things they want to learn to say. I have found that designating a topic for these sessions has been the best strategy to avoid the super awkward and inappropriate and sometimes vulgar (thank you Lil Wayne) questions. The first time I did this, the kids went crazy with the questions on American rap music (and keep in mind these are all asked in French and sometimes broken English):

     Ms. Zazie, what does “gun” mean? How do you get tattoos like Lil Wayne? Whats the word for “blood”? How do you say “Je veux t'embrasser?” (translation – how do you say “I want to kiss you?”) What is a “whore”? ......

     The list goes on and on. After I got massacred by questions I DID NOT want to answer, I decided that I would have to give the students boundaries for what they can and cannot ask me. The easiest way to do this was to give them a topic each time, innocent as possible. Like: sports, animals, family, life in America versus Burkina, countries, etc. This has helped minimize the damage!

     For a first time teacher, being thrown into such large class sizes has forced me to think on my feet and multitask like never before. Even with only 6 months of experience so far, I tell myself that if I can handle 100 students at once, piled on each other 4 to a desk and stepping over each other to get to the back at times, then I can handle anything Burkina Faso has to throw at me. Bring it on!

Holidays, Herds, Hakuna Matata

Hey there!

I know its been a while but things have been a little hectic the past few weeks. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year celebration! Kids in village here don't exactly get presents (small children love to go through trash to find the cans and wrappers and other knick-knacks to construct their dirt-castles and will go crazy for a tire to launch and chase down the road...for hours) so I decided to get my host family some small gifts and make the day fun for the kids. I planned out a scavenger hunt for my 3 host siblings (Koya 6, Moctar 17, Hamza 20) around the neighborhood to lead them to find their gifts and early on Christmas morning I sent the kids on their adventure. They had a blast running around (with Koya always running a solid 20 feet behind, trying to get her legs going fast enough to catch up to the boys all the while yelling “waaaaaaaiiiittttttt for meeeeeeee!!”) and went nuts for the water guns, remote controlled car and Barbie doll they found at the end of the hunt. 

My host parents were also very happy about the 25kg bag of rice I bought for the family (they feed me everynight and never accept for me to help them pay for food so this bag will feed them for months!). Of course I couldn't leave Captain out (my puppy) so I bought her some dried fish heads and she had a great time. Christmas lunch consisted of salad (its lettuce season, I am lucky enough to have it in my village, not all volunteers get lettuce!), pasta, rice, some sort of meat (you just don't want to ask) and watermelon, delicious!

A few days later I headed to Ouaga to meet some other volunteers to celebrate New Years Eve. We went to a dance club typical of Burkina with mirrors on every inch of the walls so that the dancers can watch themselves dancing (sometimes it gets really awkward and Burkinabe will dance with themselves in front of a mirror with nobody else around..they just love it!). The next morning (about 2 hours of sleep later) we got on public transport to the village of Pama, about 30km from the border of Benin. It took us about 8-9 hours of travel, half in a horrifyingly speedy charter bus and the other half in a deteriorated bush taxi where the seats in front of us fell onto our shins and forced 2 terrified Burkinabe girls into our laps.

We stayed in a “hostel” (in the Safari coordinator's house) and got picked up by the Safari truck at 5am. As we headed into the park we saw some lion tracks but never did end up finding them...but being charged by a herd of pissed-off elephants made up for that! We saw:

A ton of Elephants (veerrryyy up-close)

Hippos

Crocodiles

A bunch of different Antelope

1 Baboon

Warthogs (the group before us got to see a lion chasing one of these Pumbas down!)

Really cool, electric blue birds

I wish I could write more about what other things have been going on but I am currently battling for the limited internet access with the rest of the volunteers trying to contact family for the holidays. We had a great time bringing in the New Year & I hope everyone back home had safe holidays. :)

The elephants checking us out before they decided to charge!

The group in our Safari truck with the hunter (just in case something wants to hunt us)

Hippos!

Some of the animals at the park