crazy week

Every week in Burkina Faso is interesting, educational and overall an experience, but this week especially has been very important in terms of understanding life here. Something crazy happened every day.

The first day I got back to Boura (Saturday) my host mom told me that her sister in law was almost raped the other night. Her husband (my host mom's brother) leaves several days a week to work in the fields in another village, and while he was gone a man came in with a knife. She somehow fought him off and grabbed the knife from him and cut him up a bunch. He came back a few nights later but her husband was home so the man took the bike which was outside and propped it up against the door to lock them inside in order to intimidate them. I asked what will happen if someone sees a man with his hands cut up (where she cut him) and my host mom said that they will beat him to death.

We also got into a fight about money with someone very close to us who has helped us out a lot since arriving here. He was very offended but our concerns were legitimate because he had failed to pay us back some money he owed us in the past so we were concerned that he would not pay us back about 50000 CFA (about 100 dollars) he owed us at the time. In the end it all worked out though.

One of my neighbors who was pregnant was also not feeling well this week. She ended up bleeding a lot so they had to take her to the hospital in Leo. Before that though a mid-wife in the village declared the baby dead, so when she got to Leo they immediately proceeded to take it out. In the end it was still alive but because it was only 5 months old they could not do anything about it. It died shortly after. If the family had enough money they could have brought it to Ouaga (the capital city) and maybe saved it but they couldn't. I saw the mom when she got back to Boura and she seemed sad but was very strong about it. I was very upset over the situation because they kept saying that everything turned out fine because the mom was OK, and no one was very concerned about the baby dying. My host dad asked me that night if I was OK because I seemed upset and I told him why I was but that I understood that they can't get upset everytime something like this happens because they would always be depressed, and he agreed.

Dustin also got stolen from this week. He had 100 000 CFA left, and when he was packing his bag to leave there was only 20 000 CFA left. His host family thinks it's a guy in the village who is a kleptomaniac but why would he leave 20 000 CFA? It doesn't make sense so we still suspect the others that he lives with but there is nothing we can do about it.

On the last night that the others were in Boura their host families killed roosters for them (a big deal) and they were delicious. Then Kristen's family threw a party and even hired a DJ (he had a tape deck). It was lots of fun and it was a nice way to say goodbye to them. I especially liked it because I got to eat two awesome meals (one at each host family) and go to a party!

I feel like that's most of what happened this week...it was very crazy and a lot to deal with at once, all the while dealing with the others leaving last night. I am very emotionally and physically tired right now but I'll be glad to get back to the village where I can recuperate and spend my last 22 days with my Burkina friends and family. I'm glad I did not leave with the others because I am just not ready to leave yet. I miss home but I'm very happy here and I feel like I still have tons to learn and experience. It will be scary being without the other three but I'm also glad that I am spending some time here alone because it will let me know what it's like and if I would be able to do it long-term if someday that is required for a job I may have.

ELEPHANT!

The group went on a safari and to the Sahara desert this week. We saw ridiculous things including baboons. Also, I got attacked by red ants. Fun times. We tracked elephants all day (I called them by saying elephant in a scary voice like my host mom does to scare her baby into going to bed) and thought we missed them but then on the way out of the park we found a male. He didn't like us though so after watching him face us off for a few minutes the driver said we had to leave and as we drove away he charged after us.

In the Sahara we got to ride camels! I named mine Salbert and he was the best camel ever. I wanted to keep him. He was the biggest of them all and he was foaming at the mouth (yes, that is why I picked him).

Good times are continuing but the rest of the team is leaving in a week. I will be alone for the remaining 3 and a half so that will be difficult for sure but I'm not ready to leave yet. Looking forward to getting home (mainly so I can eat something other than spaghetti, couscous or rice with the same tomato sauce every meal again) but I still have lots to learn here.

quick update

I am feeling a lot better since getting out of the hospital. Pretty much feeling like I usually do in Canada now, so I'm thinking that is a good sign. We are still in Leo for a few more days and then Back to Boura. I'm looking forward to being back in the village. I miss my host family a lot and like working at the orphanage there better because the kids are older and therefore more interesting. I also miss Philbert a lot because he is the best kid ever.

Overall though I feel more at home in the village. Here in Leo my host family waits on me hand and foot and I'm pretty sure they have two servants. In Boura I actually do a lot of stuff on my own like get my shower water or do my laundrey. I feel like I am more a part of the family and everything that is going on in Boura rather than just a guest. Leo is pretty great anyway though and I am glad that we got to experience more of the city for a bit (it is the capital of the province). Plus having electricity for awhile has been a good break.

I am now half-way done! Loving it but also really looking forward to getting back to Canada where we are so priviledged and things are so much easier.

welcome to the orphanage

I'm not sure if I have all of the kids here, but lots of them anyway.

Baby pile + Kristen! So I will admit that this was partially staged. there were a lot of babies already sitting on/around her, I just picked up the rest and put them there too.


When the kids need to shit, they sit on these things. They know they aren't allowed to get off so they push themselves around on them. It's pretty funny.

This is my son, Philbert. As you will see in a later photo he has a full set of teeth (apparently he did last year when Meaghan and Miles were here too), but that's not why I love him so much. He is the coolest kid and is so smart. We taught him how to pound fists and he taught every other kid how to do it too. He also helps Raheim learn how to walk by holding his hand and walking around with him and picking him up when he falls. He is always helping out the caregivers and other kids. He knows that he's my favorite now, so he comes and cuddles with me all the time and gives me hugs.

Arnault, king of the babies. Arnault gives this look a lot, but he's not unhappy.

The twins, Fosia and Faishal

Raheim. He knows how to walk, he just hates it.

Bakisa, Kristen's fave. We call her baby baby because she is the only real baby there. She likes to sit like a frog and all you need to do to make her smile is say "Bakisa!" And she will start crawling towards you with a huge 4-tooth grin (two front top, two front bottom).

Phili being the cool kid that he is.

This is Shenda and Arnault. He loves to be held upside down.

Arnault again. The kids often lose their pants because the pants are too big for them.

L to R: Awale, Phili, Mamoudou. That last one is the bully of the group.

when it rains, it pours

there is no sound because the mic in my camera is broken but imagine deafening thunder (it actually shook my bed one night while I was sleeping) and rain that you have to yell over in order for anyone to hear you. At the end, Dustin expresses his love for African rain (it gets a lot colder after it rains, so actually we do love it). This was taken at the orphanage.

building a kitchen for the school

A couple weeks ago we (Shenda and I) helped make some bricks for the school's new kitchen (and by I mean helped I mean we made like 5 bricks each and I took tons of pictures). They dig a big pit to loosen up some dirt, poor water in, and stomp around in it to make some mud. Then, the wheelborrow it over and put it into a rectangle wooden mold (you have to keep the mold wet with water so it doesn't stick though). When you lift the mold up, you have a wet brick! After a few days of leaving it to cook in the sun, you dig another pit and make more mud to use as mortar. Put them all together and you have yourself a handy dandy new house/kitchen/bathroom/chicken coop...whatever you want walls for, that's how you make 'em.

malaria fail

As many of you know I got malaria and have been in the hospital for the last couple days. When I got here I could barely walk and all I wanted to do was lay down in a dark and quiet room and sleep. Moving my head just a centimeter caused one of the worst pains I have ever felt.

Before that I had been shitting out water/soup and having a lot of nausea for almost a week. My headache started a couple days in but I didn't think anything about it because I thought it was just from the sun. Now it seems likely that it was a sign of dehydration from the diarrhea (I have been drinking 2 or 3 liters of water a day since getting here). I was also having cramps and vertigo. I knew that I was going to Leo in a few days though (the capital of the province) so I decided to wait and see the doctor there (none in the village, just a nurse that doesn't even know what the medications she prescribes actually are).

I saw a doctor the day I got to Leo. He thought I had typhoid fever but did not do any tests and prescribed me some very general antibiotics, some anti-diarrhea drink mix and anti-parasite medicine. I took this but then that night was when my headaches got really bad. So, I went back first thing the next day and saw a different doctor. I liked him better and he tested me for malaria, which came back negative (it was a false negative). He wanted to test me for infections and parasites but the machines needed to do that were out of order in Leo, so he said I had to go to Ouagadougou (the capital of Burkina) for more treatment. So, that's what I did. The next day I hopped on the bus with some people I know that work for BHM (Bridges of Hope Ministries, the organization I am with here). My head was killing me at this point and I could barely keep myself sitting up.

When we got to Ouaga Zachee and I (he does some work for BHM and takes care of us when there are problems) went straight to the medical center and I saw the doctor. He decided that my state was so severe that I had to be kept under observation (aka hospitalized) for a couple days. Neither of us had really expected this so we were a bit shocked. They did some tests and found out I had malaria, yeast infection (all we eat here is carbs) and an infection (that I still don't know the name of exactly, but I'm guessing salmonella or typhoid).

The room is really nice though. I have a big full bathroom (having a real toilet is the best thing in the world when you have diarrhea), air conditioning, screened-in windows, a double bed, a TV (that I haven't even watched yet) and best of all: free wifi. Having internet access has made this experience so much easier because I was able to talk to my dad, my friends, and catch up on a lot of the big news back home. Thanks facebook, you may not be so evil after all...maybe. Every time the doctors walk in here I'm on the computer. Sometimes I'll be talking to someone on Skype and I think some of them think I'm crazy and that I'm talking to myself because not many of them know a lot about computers.

Anyway I'm feeling a lot better now and other than my arm killing me from the IV I'm doing alright. I may be leaving tonight but apparently malaria treatment normally takes 5 days and I've only had 3 days worth, so I have to decide whether to leave and take the pill treatment which is less effective or stay and take the IV. On the one hand, I would love to get this IV out of my arm (just the thought of it being there makes me nauseated because of my fear of needles) and I would like to go enjoy Africa rather then waste away on this computer. However on the other hand I want to make sure that I am all better before I leave. I was having a lot of diarrhea yesterday and so they gave me Imodium to stop it. Consequently, I don't know if my diarrhea is actually gone today or if it's just because the Imodium hasn't worn off yet. I don't want to leave tonight only to find that tomorrow I'm back on the shitter. So I'm not sure what I'll do yet.

Seriously though, I feel awful for the people who die from malaria. From what I experienced, it must be a horribly long and painful death. That's the problem - malaria isn't that big of a deal if you can get treatment for it. I was pretty serious but after one day in the clinic I felt a million times better. The problem is that having this kind of care is costing me 25 000 FCFA (about 65 CAD) a day. To me, that is not that expensive because first of all it will likely be covered by my medical insurance but also because that's cheaper than what I would pay for a hotel room with the same amenities back home.

Obviously though most of the people here couldn't afford that. Sending them mosquito nets is not enough. I have taken my Malarone (anti-malaria pill) religiously, worn bug repellant and long sleeves at night, and I make sure that my bug net is thoroughly tucked in every night (but not just because of mosquitos...there are a lot of weird insects in Africa). Even with all of these precautions, I still got malaria. What these people really need is access to adequate healthcare. In the village's medical clinic, all they have is a nurse who quite frankly does not know when and what to prescribe to her patients. In order to do any tests or see a real doctor, you have to go to Leo. There however, the machines are sometimes broken and can't be fixed immediately. Also, I got my false negative there h0wever I cannot really comment on that since I don't know much about medicine and therefore can't judge if that was the lab's fault or something else. In any case I had to come to the capital in order to get proper treatment, and even then it was much too costly for the average Burkinabe. Adequate healthcare seems to be out of reach for them.

Education seems to be another key things that is needed here. There was a woman in the office in Leo who had an ankle swollen to twice the size of her other ankle. She should have kept it elevated, but she did not know to. In Boura they have weekly meetings with mothers and their malnourished babies. They weigh the kids, give them some UNICEF malnourishment food, and talk to the women about topics that can help them take better care of their children. One week, we talked about hygiene and diarrhea. When asked what caused diarrhea, one of the women answered that when a mother dies during childbirth and is subsequently burried, every kid in the village will get diarrhea. My host mom buys meet every market day (once every 6 days), cooks it, then keeps serving it until it's all eaten - even if it lasts for days. Of course, there is no electricity in Boura so it just sits on the shelf in a casserole pot. When I told her that you can get sick from doing that, she was shocked.

None of these people are to blame for their ignorance; no one told them before. Yet that's the problem, and it seems nearly impossible to fix. It's not just a matter of educating them on how they can get sick. They also need to have the resources to be able to act on this new knowledge. You can't ask my host family to stop eating meat just because they don't have electricity. Washing your hands will help get rid of germs that can cause diarrhea, but you need the soap and clean water to do that with. Furthermore, there are years of cultural habits that you cannot simply go in and say are wrong and replace them with new, Western ways. It's a slow process of education, adaptation, learning and mutual understanding. Some development is needed in order for them to have their basic needs met; adequate clean and nutritious food, clean water, access to education and access to healthcare.

That's what I thought before anyway. Now I'm considering other ones, including electricity. Maybe it's not so bad, especially since electricity usually means solar panels here. There is certainly no shortage of sun. Electricity would help a number of issues like providing medical care, proper storage of food, or even education. I had a talk to my host dad about the media one night and it's pros and cons. I told him about all the negative messages and mass advertising that we have to deal with in Canada, and we discussed the ways in which having a television in their home would help them learn many things that they are not exposed to in the village. Electricity was not something that I had thought of as necessary in achieving a lot of the things I hope developing countries will soon have before I got here, but after being here I realize that it is.

The problem is that solar panels are about 100 000 or 120 000 FCFA (over 250 CAD), far out of reach of most families here. Even my host family who is considered middle class cannot afford that (although I expect my host dad will save up and one day will get one). Plus, every three to five years or so the batteries need to be replaced, which cost about 30 000 FCFA (75 CAD). Plus the light bulbs, TV, fridge...the list goes on. It's not so simple.

Nothing is simple about development. I felt that way before I got here, but now that I can see and live it I feel like it's even more uncertain than before. This is exactly why I came here though; to see what it's really like so that I can base my opinions on real-life experience rather than just what I've read and learned in class. I don't think that I will be leaving here with any definite answers though, and I certainly didn't expect to, but it's just overwhelming and difficult to understand how I can legitimately help.