gathered around radios

First and foremost, yayyyy for obama!!!!! The entire country of burkina faso is ecstatic about the new president of the U.S. Everywhere I go, people yell "OBAMA!" at me. We were really lucky because the very nice and understanding people at the peace corps bureau allowed us to stay in Ouahigouya for election night so that we could all be together for it. We kind of had to stay up all night to get the news, but a lot of people took naps and then woke up at around 5AM to the news that Obama had won, and we got to listen to his speech. We all cheered when he said something about "for those of you gathered around radios in far corners of the world..." cause that's exactly what we were doing. One of the other PCTs had his short wave radio out all night and we were trying to get BBC on it, but it wasn't really working. Then luckily, the tv at the training center was working, and we watched the burkina faso news station, which kind of reminded me of wayne's world because it seemed like a couple guys giving the news out of their basement. but it was ok...we understood and then we got to watch the speech dubbed over in french. anyway, yay!

Right now, i'm in Ouagadougou for the weekend with all the other health PCTs touring the peace corps bureau and the U.S. embassy, and staying at the peace corps transit house. the transit house is pretty nice, it has electricity, and the thing that surprised me the most...warm showers!! I was caught off guard by the shower, because i guess i haven't showered in warm water for almost a month now, so it felt strange at first. Anyway, it's kind of like a hostel just for peace corps volunteers; there are book shelves with lots of books to choose from, couches, and about 20 beds. the beds are kind of more like mattresses strewn about the floor/outside, cause it's much cooler to sleep outside. they even give you a towel to use while you're here! it's definitely a comfortable place, and nice to know that it exists and that during my service it'll be a nice treat to come and stay here occasionally.

Last weekend was also a traveling weekend. We went in our language groups (mine has 4 people in it) to current PCVs sites to see how they live/what they do. The peace corps calls this a "demystification visit" which describes it pretty well. My group actually visited the oldest volunteer in all of west africa, who is 65 years old (i think). Her name is Mary Kay,she was a great hostess, and it was really good to get a practical picture of what a volunteer lives like and actually does at their post.

We got to do baby weighings at her CSPS (the village health center), we saw her do a sensibilization on hand washing at the elementary school in her village, and we got to meet with her CSPS staff. She's also lucky enough to live only 2K away from the next volunteer, so we got to meet another PCV, Garrett, who does secondary education. We attended a talk that he was giving to his students on preventing unplanned pregnancies. It was really cool to see and i think it got us all excited for getting to our sites and getting started. Also, Mary Kay obviously has experience being a mom and cooking, and her 5 kids in the U.S. often send her american type foods, so she made us delicious meals which were amazing.

I would say one of the hardest parts of the demystification visit was the public transportation to get there. It's pretty rough, but do-able. First, we took a bus to get from Ouahigouya to Ouaga, which wasn't bad at all, but they just sell as many tickets as possible, so the bus was more than jam packed. It also doesn't hesitate to stop for whoever flags it down on the road, because the more people they pack in there, the more money they make, so we stopped pretty often to let in more and more people. The isles were stuffed with people just standing for the entire 3 hour bus ride to Ouaga. This was the most comfortable part of the trip. Next, we took a taxi to another station, and then we took a bush taxi to Mary Kay's village. The bush taxi was even more overcrowded than the bus, and much more hot and gross. It's about the size of a mini-van, and there were 27 people on it. That's not including the people that rode for the entire time on TOP of the bush taxi. People also don't hesitate to bring their chickens and goats and sheep on the bush taxis, or put them on top of it as well. It's pretty great. Mary Kay's village is only about 113K south of Ouaga, which is about 50 miles, but it took us 5 hours in the bush taxi to get there. This is partly due to the 600 breakdowns which our bush taxi suffered along the way, partly due to the terrible roads, and partly due to the fact that every single time you slow down or stop, people rush up to the windows to sell you stuff. This part's kind of nice though cause you can buy bread and peanuts and whatnot, so when you inevitably get hungry (or at least i do) during the trip, you always have food options. Most people had to travel with their bikes which makes things harder, but we didn't have to use ours at Mary Kay's, but i'm sure sometime soon i'll have to travel with mine, and it'll be glorious. Anyway, i guess we just got our first small taste of public transportation in burkina. Not too terrible, but i didn't love it.

In other news, i've finally figured out my entire family tree. My dad has 2 wives, one of which has 7 kids, and the other of which has 5, so there are 12 kids total in my family. Then there are 6 cousins that also live with us, along with 2 grandmas, 3 aunts, and some other women who i'm not really sure how they're connected. Anyway, it's a lot of people, but it's fun.

I'll leave off here for now with a funny story, that unfortunately didn't happen to me, but i thought i'd share anyway:

During the first week that we were in our homestays, one of my fellow PCTs who lives in my village got home one night, and her dad came to her with a big covered bowl filled with millet. With her limited language abilities, she tried to figure out what why he was giving her this bowl of millet, and what he wanted her to do with it. They motioned, she understood that he said something about "faire sa toillette" and so she thought she understood that he wanted her to sprinkle this millet around her latrine. So she sprinkled the ENTIRE bowl of millet around her latrine. Later, when the family was getting ready to prepare dinner, her host sister took the top off of the bowl only to discover that the bowl was empty. There was several women around and all were laughing wondering what the crazy white girl had done with the the millet. Turns out that the millet was to be used to make a special drink called Zoom Koom, and she had put it all around her toilet. Yeahh...so we later learned in french class that the term "faire sa toilette" means "go get ready" so really, her dad was trying to tell her that after she got ready, they would share this special drink together. Woops.