So far so good.

I apologize for the jumble of this blog post, but I figured something is better than nothing.

The past two weeks have been filled with many new experiences and challenges I would have never encountered were I still in the United States.  One of the biggest challenges at this point has been the heat.  Coming from Arizona I thought I would be somewhat used to this weather, but I was wrong.  In the past two weeks I have sweated more than I have ever before and there is no escaping it.  At night it cools down a little bit outside, but the houses are made of concrete and this takes much longer to cool down.  I am eagerly awaiting the start of the rainy season and the beginning  of the cool months, which seem like they will never come. 

Another major challenge I have faced so far is language.  French is the national language of Burkina and people typically speak French and a local dialect or just a local dialect.  Being immersed in the language has really forced me to do my best to pick it up and I have never been so motivated to learn something new before.  Right now, my communication consists of a lot the words I do have in my vocabulary and a lot of gestures.  Over the past two weeks I have become so much better at charades. 

The third challenge for me is becoming a morning person.  Everyone in this country is up and going about their day by five am.  For those of you who do not know, I hate interacting with people in the morning.  As soon as I wake up I am expected to go greet my entire family and ask how everyone slept and see if they need any help.  I do not want to be doing this when I wake up, especially because I probably didn’t sleep through the night because of the 4am call to prayer at the Mosque and the donkey yelling out back.   Morning  have been tough so far.  Luckily, my family never asks me to help them with anything so I have a little bit of time to sit by myself before leaving for the Peace Corps center.

Family

For the next three months I will be living with a host family and learning about the culture of Burkina.  My family here is amazing.  If it were not for them I think I would be slightly more insane by this point.  My family consists of five children and two parents.  My father works as a tailor and my mom sells produce from the house.  Between these two I am able to find everything that I will need during the next two months.  Four of my host siblings live at home and one is away at school.  Edith is 18 and is my best Burkinabe friend.  Edith has so much patience for my French struggles and helps me whenever I need it.  Its really nice having someone around my own age to talk with.  My other host siblings are 12, 7, and 4 months.  Amongst these three I always have some sort of entertainment.  I also tend to be the source of entertainment for my family.  The baby is not really fond of me at this point and my family finds it funny to put him in my lap.  I’m hoping that overtime he is going to become more comfortable with me.

Food

The food in Burkina is not as good as I would have hoped.  Every meal consists of some sort of carb: rice, bread, couscous, or toh.  This is then followed with a sauce that usually has some sort of fish in it.  Burkina is a landlocked country.  I still struggle to understand where all of the fish is coming from.  It is in everything and the fish taste is often overdone.  I don’t expect this taste to ever grow on me.

Daily life

For the next three months my life is very scheduled.  I have training six days a week from 8-5.  During this time we talk about hat our roles will be as Peace Corps volunteers and how to go about doing our jobs correctly.  We also have between 2 and 4 hours of language class every day.  Because of this I do feel like I have already made a lot of progress with my communication skills.

Burkina Faso has been great so far.  I am very lucky to live with a family that has electricity.  It gets dark here around 7 and having access to lights makes everything a lot easier.  I have adjusted pretty well to the shower and bathroom situation.  I would still prefer to sit on a toilet than squat over a hole, but it hasn’t been as bad as I was expecting.  I am glad that I brought along some toilet paper when I was packing (Thanks Aunt Eileen!). I am also adjusting to having eyes on me all the time.  Burkina is not a very common tourist destination so the sight of a Nassarra, or foreigner, is very startling to the people.  Everyone is eager to greet us and children chase down us down shouting out nassarra as we ride by.  For the next two years I will constantly be living in a glass bubble and I am going to have to adjust to a privacy level of zero.

Burkina Faso is a great place so far and I am eager to share my life and stories with you.  I must warn those of you following along that I can make no guarantees about how often I will update blog.  I have tried this blog thing before and failed, but I will make an attempt to keep it semi updated so you can all know I am still healthy and alive (So far I have yet to have any health issues and hopefully this will continue to be the case).