signed: Bored in Burkina

Yes, I'm officially BORED again! Just like last year, the village is completely empty on a daily basis, and since school is out, there is no work for me to do. Everyone in the village is out planting cotton, peanuts, corn, or millet. And the process is not one that I am eager to try out myself, just for the sake of cultural sharing. I'd rather save my strength, now that I am 27 and old! I don't know the right farming words in English anymore, ....well I don't know if I ever did have a large farming vocabulary... but I will try to explain how they till (-is that the word?) the land. Usually little children, as young as what seems 7 yrs old, tend the cows in the fields that drag heavy metal equipment across the field to rip up the earth to get to the soil. In America, I suppose this is what we do with tractors, but again, growing up in Jersey, even though it IS the Garden State, I have no idea how one farms. In Burkina, it is a serious manual labor process. So the kids direct the cows all day long, and once the earth is ready for planting, they (men, women and children) walk row by row, planting seeds. They use a tool called a "dabba" to dig at the earth by hand. The dabba is a wooden bar with a metal axe-type head stuck in the end of it... I guess, that is what we call a hoe, right? Anyway, that is the gist of what is going on in village everywhere in this country right now. Tilling and planting.

I was in Ouaga for the last two weeks, and that was a pretty fun time. The group I went through training with (we're down to 11 PCVs) had mid-service medical exams, and that was almost comic. Sparing all the intimate details, our medical staff requested "samples" daily, amongst other tests. On our last day of these exams, we were sitting around at the US Embassy watching a movie, and one by one our phones rang. First person gets up, it's the nurse, informing him he has giardia. Second phone rings, she gets up, comes back informing us she has blastocytes (still don't know what this is). and so on... this continued until just about all of us (I think we were 7 people sitting there) received calls telling us that some bacteria or parasite is coexisting in our bodies. Not that this phases us anymore, because we all know a little Cipro cures all, but it was pretty funny watching each one of us get up, one by one, to answer the diagnosis phone call, and not a single one of us was "clean." Lucky for me, I had had a bout with bacterial enteritis just before medical exams started, so I was already on the Cipro program anyway. By the way, bacterial enteritis... not fun.

Oh, also in Ouaga, I got to meet two of my fellow PCVs' parents: Tyler's and Josh's! That was really fun, and it made me super jealous, since I have yet to have any visitors.. woe is me... *sigh*.... *sniffle*.... BUT, Tyler's parents were in when we were all in town for the medical stuff, so they took us out to dinner to an amazing place in Ouaga. We didn't even know this sort of place existed in Ouaga, so all the PCV's were blown away. It was what you might imagine it is like when a dirt-covered kid walks into a pristine country club. You know they should not touch anything and probably just wait outside so as not to mess anything up. That's how I felt anyway. And even though Tyler's parents like to brag about Tyler's electricity and pool, they were very nice people. :) It was funny talking to both Tyler's and Josh's parents because they both commented on how meeting us is like meeting characters from a book, since they are religious blog followers. I guess I never thought of it that way, but it's kind of funny.

To answer my one Commentator's question: yes, everyone here is very into following the World Cup. And I have also been pretty into the games. Until recently, the African teams fared pretty well but I don't even want to talk about the USA team! In village, since there is no electricity, people manage to set up color or black and white TVs in common areas, hooked up to car batteries, as everyone crowds around to watch. Sometimes you can get reception, sometimes not. But everyone is pretty into it, just the same. It's fun seeing peoples' reactions not only to the games, but to the way they show fans' reactions on TV from around the world.

I'm going to go make a to-do list now, to try and keep myself busy. Even if the to-do list is bogus, at least I will FEEL like I am doing something.