Burkina By Bobby

Spiky hair. Look at all that spiky hair. Holy God, there is so much spiky hair.

This is the internal dialogue I have with myself as I entered a nightclub on Chicago’s North Side this past December. All the girls were made up and wearing black pants; the guys were nearly as made up and wore colorfully muted dress shirts. Surely this was omnipresent before I left? What with all the talk of the modern man, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and so on. If anything, the novelty of the metrosexual was waning, wasn’t it? … Or did it transcend the novel to become normal?

Either way, I hope I am not mistaken for a metro-phobe – far from it.

Before leaving for Burkina Faso to join the Peace Corps I had shopped at their stores: Express and Banana Republic - I even owned square towed, ankle length boots with zippers. Zippers! Hell, I even had a metrosexual over to my house. His name was Mark. Is that something a metro-phobe would do? So I am no bigot, I mean... I have metrosexual friends.

Flaming metrosexual friends with leather wrist accessories.

Sure, I might have had the occasional dinner of pizza bagels and dry Apple Jacks with a Keystone Light, but that was the exception to the rule. I’m no dilettante to the art of knowing how to appreciate the finer things. So, why was I so taken aback by this posh scene and the legions of spiky haired young men? My first impulse was to blame the uniformity of it all. Sometimes an outsider unfamiliar with the dressing habits and cultural insularity of these people, might miss the nuance and perceive uniformity where it doesn’t exist.

But, I couldn’t be an outsider. These peop … Oh- My-God. Look at me using phrases like “these people”; perhaps spending two years away from my young, urban and professional friends has made me an outsider and what’s worse, insensitive to their culture. “THESE PEOPLE” are exactly that: People. Choosing a Metro-American lifestyle makes them no better or worse than you or I - If it is even a choice in the first place?

If you are asking yourself, “Bobby, Why are you writing about this and is it going anywhere?”

Or you’re concerned that this is one of those ‘Gee… things are different in America and isn’t that strange because I’m American and it shouldn’t be strange, but it is strange, and gosh - isn’t that funny?’ blogs.

Fear not, astute reader.

You see, that world I visited in December is the world to which I am returning. My friends and their friends are those urbane and well dressed bankers, analysts/ or whatever other (two years past entry level) position one holds after college. While I am proud of the work I have done and I think it is important, I have worn flipflops to work for the last two years and my appearance reflects a different social scene than most young 20 somethings.

In Short, I look like a disheveled Meg Ryan with a beard.

Fitting in is not the most important thing. I have an appreciation in being unique and apart from the rest of the crowd. However, I imagine that this appreciation is seriously tested when you show up to a job interview and are greeted with the plastered on smile and questioning eyes of a recruiter who is wondering why this bike messenger didn’t leave the package at reception.

All returned Peace Corps Volunteers make this readjustment, although with varying degrees of success. This ‘readjustment process’ is a popular topic of conversation among volunteers. We discuss what we hope to do, what will be tough to get used to and somewhere in that conversation we pay homage to the two legendary volunteers who left Burkina Faso a year before we arrived. Even though we never met them we know and applaud their story of “readjusting” to life in the United States.

Upon their return to the States these volunteers’ families or friends wrote to Elle magazine and told about ‘their arduous service of helping alleviate abject poverty in Burkina Faso.’ To paraphrase the article “These brave women went out each day in the hot African sun armed with little more than their wits and greasy sunscreen.” We find out later that this led to clogged pores, split ends and some sun damage. The girls were then assisted in the readjustment process, and then the article essentially becomes a makeover story that we have all grown so accustomed to.

It is this point in our conversations, after recounting the awe-inspiring lore of these volunteers, that the guys will lament the fact that this sort of thing couldn’t happen to them. It’s a pretty bold move for a guy to write into a magazine like Elle or Cosmopolitan and request a makeover and most of us decide we lack the nerve. We resign to the fact that we will not grace Oprha’s make-over chair or the pages of the magazines that the female volunteers leave strewn about our transit house.

But this must be the narrow view! Surely, those guys with waxed chests and hair full of wax pomade are evidence for the existence of similar publications for men … They must be getting this advice from somewhere. While they might be misconstruing some of the things that they are reading, magazines from Esquire, GQ, Men’s Health, to magazines like Playboy, FHM, and Maxim all offer advice directed at a gentleman’s upkeep.

It would be nice to get into one of these magazines - To write a short article on what it is like to readjust to the fast paced, highly stylized United States of America after living in its antithesis for two years. Also, it would be nice to get a new suit and a haircut before I step into that interview. But even if I don’t grace the pages of Esquire magazine or go down in the annals of Peace Corps Burkina history, this transition is going to take place.

If it is similar at all to the transition I made when I came to Burkina Faso, it will be similar in the sense that I will hold onto some beliefs and ways of doing things and I’ll let others go in exchange for a new approach. I have been trying for a long time to enumerate exactly what it is that I picked up or let go in Burkina. Each individual ‘way of doing’ something seems trivial by itself, but accumulated over time they form a pattern. Amenities become less important I become lower maintenance and more grateful for what I have; becoming more adventurous, trying things for the sake of assimilation, accepting and trying to understand the things I can’t change, appreciating different methods of reasoning, while having conviction in my own methods.

When you amerce yourself into a new culture, little by little, the ‘way you do things’, begins to influence the ‘way you see things’ and I suppose this is tantamount to changing as a person. I always cringe when I hear someone say, “such and such experience was life changing and made me a completely new and different person.” I do not believe that someone can be separate from their past. No amount of time in West Africa could undo the lessons learned from my parents and 13 years in the public schools of Peoria, just as living a faster paced life in Chicago will not replace or overshadow growing up from ages 21 to 24 in Burkina Faso. In the end, making sense of how all these experiences and ideas work together is what it means to readjust.

It will be interesting to see what I pick up and what I leave behind, when I transition back to living in the States. I imagine that I will have stopped blogging about Africa by the time I realize what has actually changed. So, feel free to write an editor of one of those fashionable male magazines and maybe we can read my story in Esquire detailing what it feels like to have spiky hair and how strange it is to readjust to my former life in the States because it is so different from West Africa and … gosh - isn’t that funny?

During my Freshman year of college the Fighting Illini went to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. I went to this game and I learned a lot about life: Beer can be sold in 70 oz bottles, you can usually judge a guy’s creepiness by the amount of bead necklaces he has, and that losing in the least important BCS game is about the best the Illini will ever do.

In adition to these life lessons, I learned a little bit about the southern/Louisianan culture. Two nights during our trip we stayed with the grandmother of my friend Adam. She was a very nice and hospitable women who, in the spirit of Mardi Gras, baked us a cake. This cake was special because the baby Jesus was baked inside. I think the origin of this tradition is French and it worked its way into New Orleans/Mardi Gras culture via that lineage.

In any event, whoever gets the baby Jesus, wins! I am still a little unclear on happens when you win, but be sure that you do win. I don’t know how I feel about baking hard ceramic things into cakes, breads or other pastries- and the baking of the Christ child is another thing all together. Leave it to the French.

I bring this up because lately I have been wondering how pervasive the French influence of baking things into cakes and breads has been on her former colonies. In Burkina Faso, for example, they occasionally bake rocks and pebbles into their bread. This is somewhat disconcerting because one doesn’t expect there to be a rock baked into the baguette when he puts it into his mouth and begins to grind with his molars.

I have recently done exactly this, thus breaking one or my molars. I am only thankful that it wasn’t a ceramic Jesus.

I wish that I could say that this is the first time that I have ever eaten rocks in Burkina Faso, but unfortunately I have done a very similar thing only one year earlier, though that time it was a plate of rice. Finally my lifelong careless attitude of eating food without checking for rocks has caught up with me and landed me in the dentists office.

Which brings me to the title of this entry - I don’t want to propagate negative stereotypes of West Africa, but if you have the pre-conception that West African dental care might be less than stellar, this entry will do little to dissuade you. Let me preface - my account is probably prone to exaggeration as a fair amount of time has passed between my first traumatic visit to the dentist and writing this blog, but I proceed.

It was exactly like the Dentist’s office in the Little Shop of Horrors… No,no- in all seriousness, the actual dentist office, reminded me of a place I might go in the states. The chair was a bit aged and looked like it might have come from the 1980’s but this is only speculation as I am not abreast on the past or current fashions of dental equipment. It wasn’t the appearance of the office that was alarming, but the dentist’s assistant. The first thing that I noticed when he came to get me from the waiting room, was his dingy white apron splattered with a considerable amount of blood, seeing as he was a dental assistant and not a surgeon’s assistant.

I didn’t think too much about it, because this dentist was arranged by Peace Corps, and surely they will not have chosen an incapable person. I entered the room and sat down in the chair. After making small talk and my explaining my situation to the Burkinabé dentist, she went to work. She opened my mouth, looked around and began to ask me questions. This was the first time that I had ever done the awkward open mouth talking in French and I think that it might have compounded my problems. Eventually we were reduced to: “Does this hurt?” and “Aghhh”.

In the course of her questions she discovered that I cracked an old filling and some of the tooth on one of my molars. This would require drilling and then a new filling. I have done this before, and do not have an unusually low threshold for pain, so I had no reason to be concerned. She then tells me that she is going to shoot me with a local anesthetic. She prepares her needle and pricks my gum. She then pulls it out and said she didn’t do it correctly and makes several more goes at it before she injects the local anesthetic. That was a little unusual and painful, but in five minutes or so, it will set in and you wont be able to feel anything. “The worst part is over,” I thought to myself.

I thought wrong. Instead of waiting, she dove right in, picks, drills, dental gadgetry we probably outlawed at the end of the 19^th century. This would proceed in ten second spurts.

Drill, Drill, Drill

“Arghhh”

“Dose that hurt?’

“OUA HAA”

(three seconds elapse)

Drill, Drill, Drill

And so continued for 30 of the more trying minutes of my life.

The anesthesia eventually kicked in and it wasn’t so intolerable. After she finished she gave me a sucking candy. I wiped the tears away from my eyes and thanked her. When the anesthesia wore off I could feel that I had recently been to the dentist. I think it was during this period of feeling sorry for myself, I swore I would never eat rocks or visit the dentist in Burkina Faso again. Sadly, I failed at both.

Happily, my last dental visit in Burkina Faso has been scheduled for the August 30^th.

It is official. I will be finished with my Peace Corps service in one month. I should be finished with all the paper work and ready to leave Burkina Faso, by the last week in September. While I will be leaving Burkina Faso in late September I will not be returning immediately to the United States of America.

I, along with four other friends, are going to take advantage of the fact that we all currently speak French and are accustomed to living on a couple dollars a day and see some of the other countries in West Africa.

Current plans are subject to change depending on election schedules and political events. But as it stands we are going to travel to the following countries:

Mali: We may head up to into the Sahara, see a friend who is working for an NGO, make our way to Timbuktu down to Bamako and into Guinea

Guinea: Working our way through the green hilly inland of guinea we will then travel to either Liberia or Sierra Leone. This depends more on time than security as both countries are currently politically stable.

Liberia: This is the Biggest question mark on the trip

Sierra Leone: We will either enter from Guinea or come up along the coast from Monrovia (Liberia) This is the biggest attraction for all of us. From Here we will continue along the coast through Guinea and then onto Guinea Bissau

Guinea Bissau: This is supposed to be one of the most beautiful countries in West Africa and it is politically stable though the Economist reports that it might be well on its way to becoming Africa’s first Narco state!!!

Senegal: This is supposed to be one of the most developed countries in West Africa, so hopefully we will be able to recharge after crossing all these countries by land on bush taxis

The Gambia: This is a sliver of a country within Senegal, but again is supposed to be one of the most beautiful countries in West Africa and is one of the most highly anticipated countries on our list. After passing through The Gambia we will be back in Senegal

Morocco: I will fly to Morocco from Senegal and then continue onto New York and Chicago after spending a bit of time checking out Casablanca, Fez and maybe Marrakech

So there you have it. I plan to be home by Thanksgiving so this is all pretty ambitious for 9 weeks of travel. It is pretty likely that plans will change slightly and we will cut some things out in order to see West Africa without it having it be a race against time.

I will write more on this later, and I hope to post some short blogs as we travel. Check out a map or some information on some of the countries and let me know if there is anything that I should be sure not to miss. Most of our planning is coming through our Peace Corps networking and West African guide books, but it is always good to hear from other sources.

The following is an email I received from my good friend Kevin Sweeny, only days before I returned to Burkina Faso:

I arrived in the capital on Tuesday afternoon, I woke up Wednesday morning and needed to visit the market downtown to pick up a few things. Once downtown I noticed that it was much busier than normal and a lot harder for me to find a cab.
Back at the infirmary, which is inside the Peace Corps office building, I noticed a sign on the door from the US embassy stating,

"THERE IS CURRENTLY AN ARMED CONFLICT BETWEEN POLICE AND MILITARY DOWNTOWN. GUNSHOTS HAVE BEEN HEARD THROUGHOUT THE CITY. ONE MILITARY OFFICER HAS BEEN KILLED. THE US GOVERNMENT STRONGLY ADVICES AMERICAN CITIZENS TO AVOID DOWNTOWN OUAGADOUGOU AND SURROUNDING AREAS."

Hmmm....that explained why it was tough to get a cab. But there are often warnings of this sort in Ouagadougou (the capital), usually over-cautious, so I didn't really give it all the attention it deserved. Burkina Faso has been a very stable and peaceful country since 1987 (at least relative to the rest of West Africa) and the culture looks down on direct confrontation, so I just assumed that things would be fine if given a little time.

I returned to the infirmary, and my friendly Peace Corps nurse told me that me test results showed I had Giardiasis, which was easily treatable. She gave me medicine and told me that I could leave the infirmary and stay at the Peace Corps house, just down the road. I asked about the situation downtown and was told that things had quieted down a bit and seemed like there was nothing to worry about.

I got back to my room, packed up my bags to head over to the PC house, but then discovered a copy of A Christmas Story sitting by the TV. Deciding not to break a long-standing holiday tradition, I popped it in and sat down to enjoy one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time. Once the movie was over, I grabbed my bag and started to walk out of the now empty PC office.

It was around 6:00 at night, and the office folks had all headed home, except for our country director. As I was walking out I heard her run out of her office and ask who was there.

"Kevin," I replied.

"Are you going back to the house?" She asked.

"Yep."

"OK, tell whoever is there not to leave tonight. Stay around this area. Apparently the fighting has started up again. I just got off the phone with Malcolm (a volunteer), he's stuck at a bus station downtown where there is fighting going on all around him. We're trying to figure out how to get him out of there, but in the meantime we can't have anyone leaving the area."

"Wow. OK."

I walked the short distance from the PC office to the PC house and told the 10 or so other volunteers that were staying there. Minutes later Malcolm walked through the door, really shaken up, "That was the scariest shit I've ever been through!" The bus from his village dropped him off downtown and as he was leaving the station, he heard a bunch of gunfire and had to run back into the station. After a couple of minutes, things calmed down, and he was able to catch a cab. While driving back to the house, a military officer pointed an assault rifle at the cab and demanded that they stop. The officer then went to the passenger sitting next to Malcolm, placed the barrel of the assault rifle against that passenger's head, and demanded to see his ID. The passenger fumbled a bit, the officer got angrier by the second. The passenger finally found his ID, showed it to the officer, who then told the cab to turn around because they couldn't stay on that road. Malcolm, understandably upset by the situation, got out of the taxi at a safe place and called someone from the Peace Corps staff to pick him up.

It was now about 7:00 at night and a group of us were getting hungry. I asked Malcolm if he thought is was safe for us to head to a restaurant just down the road to grab some food and a couple beers. He said yeah because most of the bad stuff was going on downtown, about a 15-minute drive away. So four of us, Malcolm, Giorgio, Jake, and I, headed down to the Desert Rose for dinner.

So there we were happily drinking our beer and eating our meat on a stick, when the waiter comes to us and tells us to hurry up. They were closing the restaurant early because of the events. Jake and Giorgio still had most of their beer left and insisted on staying until they finished it. Malcolm and I insisted that this was a bad idea and I provided an analogy about when a rainstorm is about to arrive in Burkina.

A lot of volunteers here have had the experience of one of our local friends telling us to go inside because it's going to rain or because an insane dust storm was about to descend and us not heeding the advice because it didn't seem like the weather was going to change. "It's just a little wind" or "it's only sprinkling a little" are our typical responses. Usually, though, the locals are right and torrential rains or insane dust storms ensue and we get soaked or blinded by the dust.
I mentioned that our not leaving when everyone else was seemed very similar to this. Everyone had a couple of laughs at this comparison but continued eating and drinking outside. I haven't mentioned that, other than in the best restaurants in the city, Burkinabe restaurant seating consists of plastic chairs and tables and is outside. At any rate, my comparison, when locals leave, you should follow, would prove to be accurate.I sat there thinking to myself over and over again, go home, leave, get out of here. My gut instinct has proven to be remarkable over the past 28 years, this time was no exception, I should have listened to it. I looked around and noticed shops closing, traffic dying down, restaurant staff quickly folding table cloths, gathering tables and chairs. "OK seriously, let's get going boys," was the last thing I said before seeing a woman who was sitting on the street grab her baby and sprint away from the road.

I stood up, ready to announce that I was leaving and I'd see them back at the house. A second later, traffic stopped and we heard the sound of a motor-bike (the transportation of choice in Burkina) honking its horn incessantly. I was facing the major thoroughfare, Charles de Gaulle, and saw the silhouette of two men on a moto with assault rifles their hands driving on the wrong side of the road laying on the horn. I watched them until I saw they were slowing down to turn at our corner.

As soon as they turned at our corner, I dove behind a table. I heard shots go off and yelling "EVERYONE INSIDE, EVERYONE INSIDE!" At this point I army crawled from under the table to hide between a row of motorcycles in front of the restaurant, where I could make a run for it as long as these guys dressed in camo didn't see me.

They saw me.

One of them went the opposite direction, toward the restaurant, the other walked quickly toward me, gun drawn. "What are you doing?" he yelled at me.

"Nothing, nothing," I said back.

"Get up!"

I slowly stood up. So this jerk with a big gun, dressed in camo, yells at me to get up and, "Allez chez vous," which is French for, "Go to your house." Interestingly he used the "vous" form of "your" instead of "toi", where "vous" is the more respectful and formal form. I reflected for a moment on how this was nice of him and then calmly, but quickly, got the hell out of there.

As I was jogging away I looked behind me and saw Malcolm being shoved in his back by an AK-47 into the restaurant along with the Frenchies and what I thought was Giorgio and Jake. I turned again and kept jogging to the house, when the sound of assault riffle fire turned my jog into the best sprint I could manage while carrying the giardia parasite in my gut.
As I was sprinting back to the house I was able to engage in a cultural learning experience, yet another to add to the now millions I've amassed. Apparently, a white guy running from gunfire in Africa is hilarious to everyone not white. As I was sprinting away from then men in camo, firing kalashnikov assault rifles, I couldn't help but to overhear groups of Burkinabe laughing hysterically and pointing out that the nasarra, aka white guy, was running away from gunfire. What was even more interesting to me, culturally speaking, was this guy sprinting away from the gunfire, who was right next to me, having a hard time keeping up because he too was laughing at me.

Once back at the house I saw the PC country director discussing the situation with some security guards. She asked me where I was and I told her a quick version of the story you've just read. One of the security guys then says that he was going to get them, to which the director replied, "Be careful out there. Don't put yourself in trouble!" in a very leading-lady sort of way, as he was leaving our courtyard.

I went inside to splash some water on my face and to check my boxers (everything was OK). As I was walking back out to the courtyard I heard Giorgio's voice, which brought a little bit of reassurance as I had no idea what had happened to him, or the others, after the gunshots were fired. He told me that he took off in a sprint once he saw the guys with guns but hadn't seen Malcolm or Jake. Luckily it was only a few minutes before the other two got back to the house and recounted the story of what happened to them. They didn't run. When the guys with the guns rolled up they did what one of them was yelling, which was "EVERYONE INSIDE!" and they went inside the restaurant. One of the French tourists wasn't moving fast enough and so the armed man kicked him in the back and knocked him to the floor. Once inside, people were telling Jake and Malcolm "this way, this way," and showed them to a back door that led into the alley. They went out the back door and ran home the same way I did.

They told me that while they were running, people were laughing at them too.

We continued to hear gunfire in the streets, which seemed to come from all around, for the rest of the night. The gunfire continued to get worse and worse. It sounded like there were major battles going on, with thirty seconds of automatic gunfire followed by another twenty seconds automatic gunfire coming from another direction. We began distinguishing the types of gunfire we heard. Some of it was clearly automatic, some of it wasn't, some of it was incredibly loud, more than hand held weapon, and then we began to hear what sounded like mortars and explosions.

I went up on the roof of the house to see what was going on and saw explosions and fires in the distance. Then the power cut off. The fighting seemed to get worse for a while, but then began to die down. And then, after a short while, the power came back on again. It seemed like everything was calm, with only sporadic individual shots going off, and so I went off to catch some sleep.

The next morning I was more than a little curious to find out about what had caused this eruption. I walked down to the office and hopped on the internet. I was able to find out that the police and the military don't really get along, and haven't for a long, long time. The military thinks of the police as their "little brothers" and don't feel the need to abide by trivial "laws" such as stopping at traffic lights, not shooting people, and in this case, and the reason for all of the violence – not giving up good seats to a concert they had free tickets too.

I'm not kidding, this is the reason I can now say that I sort of know what a war zone sounds like. A couple days before all this happened there was a concert here in Ouaga. Some non-uniformed soldiers wanted to get into the concert for free. OK, not a problem. But then they wanted the best seats, which was crossing the line for the police. It turned into a big argument and sadly the police shot and killed one of the soldiers, three other soldiers were wounded.

The ridiculousness that followed was the military retaliating for one of their own being killed. On top of scaring the shit out of everyone in the city, the military also burned down a police station and shot up another. The cherry on top of this garbage sundae is that some idiot soldiers then went to the city jail and released 600 prisoners. Cute.

As I'm writing this all is calm in the city now, and I should be able to get back to my peaceful little village tomorrow. Don't be too worried by this exceptional event. I still feel that Burkina is an incredibly safe place to live and I'm fairly certain that this was, and will be, a one and only type of thing while I'm here.

I know that the tone of this was a bit light. But to be honest I've never been more scared in my life. It was a moment, while horrible to experience, that makes me really appreciate the good things I am blessed with. That being said, I'll be thinking about all of you this Christmas. Please know that even though I don't get a chance to talk or write to you as much as I'd like, you are definitely a part of me here.
…

This email was edited in small parts but is essentially untouched and is a good indication of the situation that I was coming home to. Things, as he said, did start to calm down. Though there were several days when it could have gone either way. While the free tickets were the apparent spark to this fighting, it was not the sole reason. It was merely a spark tossed upon a gunpowder barrel of pent up hostility and instability. Things are safe now, but it would be naïve to think a similar scenario is impossible of happening again.

The word, Anachronism, is one of the most fruitful words one can employ when describing life in Burkina Faso. The gleaming 2006 Toyota Four Runner anachronistically whizzed past throngs of subsistence farmers cultivating by hand. The anachronous presence of donkey carts in the parking lot of the modern medical facility was a strange sight to behold; Something out of time – a person, thing, idea or custom that seems to belong to another time in history. After living in Burkina Faso for a while, you see enough people who have never had the good fortune of proper dental care talking on cell phones to wonder whether; ‘Anachronism’ is not the perfect word to depict a society leaping forward several generations of technology yet standing still in many other ways.

Having grown up with this technology and the advertising that accompanies it, I sometimes view certain situations through the lens of a television commercial. In trying to relate the next story I will use this paradigm. I think that this approach will relate well most of the readers because as Americans we are surrounded by advertising – but I realize that some of the pop culture references might be lost on some people like…my dad. So, I apologize for obscure references in advance - though you should take comfort that they are inconsequential to the story.

To start… imagine this:
“ Alright, Alright – Put your body in motion” chants the singer as a some vaguely techno beats accompany a scene of some young twenty-somethings hopping into their new Volkswagon Jetta. The car rotates as if on a turntable and then heads off to the club or whatever trendy locale it is that fun, independent, intelligent and marginally unique Jetta Drivers go to. This add campaign makes driving a Volkswagon, cool. This is branding, it works and there powerful albeit ephemeral appeal that makes Me want to compute on a Mac and drive a Jetta.

I would now like to offer an ad campaign for Peugeot Trucks. Because I am unfamiliar with the particular model I will narrow it down to models that came out in the late 1980’s and had the misfortune of getting beaten up enough to finally land in the second poorest country in Africa:

From the opening second music is playing – something of the fun upbeat punk/pop variety. Start with a wide shot with the dilapidated truck sitting in the dusty gravel parking lot in the center of the frame. The car rotates first 45 degrees clockwise and then 405 degrees counter clockwise all in harmony to the beat of “Sum 41”.

As the song moves into the hook, you see “the crew” enter the frame, in a jaunty fashion, as if we are an excited group of friends getting ready to go on kayaking trip or something like that. Entering from the left we see the driver, wearing oversized obnoxious Oakley sunglasses and a Kangol hat. Also, entering from the left are a heavyset African mother dressed in traditional and ornate clothes and shaggy Peace Corps volunteer jeans, button down dress shirt and a backwards ball cap. Entering from the right we see the high commissioner dressed in a western style business suit with slight regal touches and a military security guard wearing a red beret, green fatigues, and strapped with an AK 47. Winks and nods are shot from one passenger to the other and the camera moves effortlessly to show the fun that this group of movers and shakers is going to have on there two hour joy ride over unpaved and ungovernable dirt.

The camera moves to the front of the car showing the broken headlights, cracked windshield and crumpled hood. The camera zooms closer, past the windshield and shows the expressions on the passengers faces - The smiling albeit toothless driver, the complacent and slightly drowsy high commissioner in the front seat checking his cell phone. In the back left the festively plum wife looks out the window. In the back right the stern military man looks straight ahead. Awkwardly squeezed in the middle is the white bearded guy. He has a slightly apprehensive expression on his face as he looks down the barrel of an AK 47 that is pointed in his direction as it rests insecurely between the security guards thighs.

(The music ends on a high note)
And off we go.

Trail of Dust in the air.

As the dust dissipates, words emerge: Peugeot: The Only Choice
…

This is how I started writing this entry several moths ago. Since then I have hit a bit of a writers block. The cause of this impasse was my inability to reconcile humorous creative prose with real life morbidity. Of course, this is not such an inherently difficult or new problem to solve. It is this combination of creative and comedic story telling combined with tragic events that is at the heart of many of my favorite dark comedies. So it is not that I am incapable of emulating this type of story telling, it is just that whenever I tried to recreate the tone – it felt false. The scenario in question is as follows and it seems too serious to be played for laughs:

After the “off we go” and “the trail of dust in the air”, we drive for nearly two straight hours. All the while, we listen to French Pop songs from the 1960’s. An hour and a half into it I see 50 plus vultures congregating around something. As we pass by the town’s center at 30mph, I am hit with a series of revelations. These revelations are lightning quick: That something is a man, we should do something, we are not stopping, nobody is doing anything about it, I’m in the car with community leaders, the fact we are doing nothing is not an accident, in some way they have chosen for this scenario to play out as it does, oh my god a man was shot and left for the vultures. When I say lightning quick, I mean all pieces of the puzzle were put together in under one second.

The remaining 30 minutes of the car ride were strange: me, sitting squeezed between a the AK 47 and the well fed wife trying unsuccessfully to tune out the laughter and discussion about how that bandit got what he deserved, while I keep repeating in my head, “Ashen black heal, and a blue jumpsuit, covered by vultures, Ashy black heal, blue jumpsuit covered by vultures, ashy heal, his ashy heal, indifference, laughter, we continue, his ashy heal. The image though seen for only several moments as we passed going 30mph is seared into my memory.

It is a morbid and tragic scene. I don’t know any of the specifics of the case and I don’t mean to suggest that anyone in the car was involved directly or indirectly. All I mean to say is that two radically different worlds exist over here. There is the developing world of new cell phones, internet, cars, new schools, better medicine etc., and then there is the world where, although 99% unnecessary, I am exercising a bit of self censorship on account of how things can work in the judicial system. A world where it can be acceptable to execute a man and leave his corps in the town square as a warning for others without so much as a trial. This world and the myriad of organization, structural, judicial shortcomings that produce it are more reminiscent of the wild west than the 21st Century. In Burkina Faso the modern day conveniences clash uncompromisingly with the context in which we Americans use them. What seems like an anachronism to me is all too often the reality here.

I don’t know that there is any grand take away point from all this. Perhaps it is overblown and quixotic to think that there is some universal idea or principle to be learned. I think it is most likely the case, that it is simply a hard slog to be truly developed. But if I were to indulge myself I would say that as we look outward on the roughly 70 percent of the world that is developing it is a mistake to underestimate the markers that are hard to gage. No matter how much foreign direct investment; or how large the GNP, true development is predicated upon certain institutions and systems or governance that can not be obtained with economic development alone.

Before coming back to Burkina Faso in early January I had a fair amount of family and friends ask me whether or not I was ready or even wanted to return. My standard line at the time was, “Sure, I am actually excited to get back – I only have nine more months left.”

Oh, how misplaced this excitement was.

While I am trying to reign in the melodramatics, I feel comfortable saying that it was the worst homecoming I’ve ever experienced and it was the toughest January to date. I understand that I am still relatively young and I am sure there will be Januaries to rival this one…but man… it was tough.

Now, it is April, more than two months have passed and I can look back at January with a smirk. The things that conspired to put me in a funk have passed and I can now look at the absurdity of choosing to come home to such a rotten situation.

To begin- it is necessary to understand how The United States of America are, and more specifically, the Great State of Illinois is- the most amazing and wonderful place to be. I will take time to elaborate on this point when I come home in October, but America is home and there is no place like it.

In addition to having family and life long friends that are unconditionally there for you…It is clean - The streets, people, buildings… everything is remarkably clean. It is structured, there is order, there are fixed prices, people are generally safe and secure, and people are also free to do as the please. Almost as important, the food is amazing. There is an endless amount of choices with each ethnic option represented within a 15 minute delivery radius. There are Burritos as big as your Head and innovations such as Irish Nachos, this is truly God’s county. In three weeks time, I easily put on 15 pounds – I was inspired.

So, now there is the contrast of this glorious situation with that of the circumstances that awaited me shortly after I got off the plane. The place is dirty, the uniquely pungent odor is everywhere. After being greeted by friends we haggled with an irritating taxi man for five minutes before we agreed on an acceptable price. While in the car I learned a very close friend was being forced to leave the country for violating a policy while she was entertaining friends from America. I also learned that only a couple days earlier that the main bus company between Ouagadougou and Fada (my home) had been held up at gunpoint at 9am in the morning and a passenger was fatally shot.

Upon arriving at the house I learned how the country had been going through tumultuous times. Policeman fighting the military, prison doors near where we live in Ouaga were ripped off the hinges and 600 prisoners escaped. I heard stories about volunteers watched tracer fire from the roof top. Even more disconcerting was one volunteers story of negotiating a chaotic scene that was essentially described as a fire fight. And then, I learned that the girl I was dating was no longer dating me.

(Enter the blues guitar solo- here)

All of this was completely reversed from the calm, happy and contented situation that I left in mid December. It was as though I had come home to a poor replica of the place that I left.

That was, in essence, the end of the Homecoming.

But rest assured that it wasn’t all gloom and doom. In fact, it started looking up as soon as I reached my home town of Fada. As I walked home long faced and unhappy, I opened my gate to find closest friend Michel welcoming me back to Burkina Faso. I couldn’t help but smile and when he told me I had gotten fat and truly resembled an American – I was truly on the road to realizing that is wasn’t all that bad. Michel had been through all the same things that I had been, the political problems were happening in his country, I have yet to negotiate a problem as serious as Polio, and he has lost friends to worse places than the United States.

So now, I can look back and smile at being the caricature of the down and out. Three months on, things have normalized, political problems have settled, security has been restored and friends are doing well in America. It's tough to wrap this entry in a way that doesn't smack of the clichéd wisdom of a Hallmark Card. But it is true: the tough times passed - and things got better.

(Enter conflict resolution music from, Full House - here)

I had never really expected it to work. I had told my parents of my plan, bought my costume, made my appointments at the salon and barber but in the back of my head I was sure she would see through my minimal disguise. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense to fully think out how you are going to welcome a loved one to a strange and foreign land after not seeing them for a year. Speaking from personal experience, I advise against playing a practical joke where you change your appearance to resemble a third rate rapper who persistently asks his sister if she needs a taxi.

I had been looking forward to my sister’s visit for months. I had made plans and talked with my local friends and colleagues about how excited I was to see my sister after nearly a year. Spending nearly twelve months apart from my family had been the longest I had ever gone without seeing them. The importance of family is paramount in Burkinabe culture so my friends were empathetic to my plight and just as excited to meet my sister. I talked ad-nauseam about her pending arrival and all the things that we were going to do while she was in country. I made plans, rethought plans and reflected on how she might deal with some of the strange things that have become commonplace to me. It had been almost a year’s time since we last saw each other in person and I wondered if there would be much of a change.

Somewhere along the way I had gotten the notion that it might be funny to see if I could go incognito and make myself unrecognizable. As I pitched the idea to family and friends it seemed to catch hold as a generally funny and relatively harmless thing to do. I took my parents chuckles as an implicit endorsement and proceeded to put the pieces in place. Upon acquiring a giant read jumpsuit, translucent red sunglasses, pencil thin beard, cornrows, red bandana, and imitation Air Force One tennis shoes, I had transformed myself into something that would make Ali G envious. Sadly enough, I didn’t think much further than the completion of the outfit and when I arrived at the airport I was unsure at how I would welcome my sister. Instead of the natural enthusiastic embrace that is usually reserved for such events like … the reunions of families at airports, I chose a radically different approach.

The natural enthusiastic reunion is the normal and kind way to show someone how excited you are to see them, I could hardly contain myself but instead I chose to emulate a creepy taxi cab driver who repeatedly asked the new foreigner if she needed a ride and waited until she became frustrated to reveal that I was actually her brother. I suppose it struck me while I was waiting in the shadows at the arrivals gate; there is no a nicer way to say “I love you” than “you need a taxi or what.”

The lack of forethought shown upon her arrival was the first of several incidents to show how forgetful I had become of what it is like to be in Burkina Faso fresh from the States. The mixture of emotions was a bit overwhelming for my sister and she began to tear up as she wondered why her brother would play such a joke, when she was simply excited to be reunited. Hearing those words deflated whatever ill-conceived reasoning I had used to convince myself that playing the practical joke (as I had played it) would be funny. Fortunately, my sister is an incredibly understanding person; while she did not find the joke to be amusing, she understood how one could, possibly come to thinking it would be a funny thing to do. She did not hold a grudge for too long and within minutes we were hugging and carrying on in the manner that most reunited families carry on at the airport and we were happy to see each other again.

The rest of the trip had its shares of ups and downs: a 13 hour cramped bus ride followed by seeing a family of giraffes in the bush; sickness and tension to be followed by an amazing
day of climbing and magnificent views.

Since my sister’s visit, a wave of Americans has come to visit their sons, daughters, sisters and brothers in the Peace Corps. I have compared stories with other volunteer’s and even tagged along with a visiting family. These conversations and experiences have fomented a strongly held opinion that one can see and travel through Africa cheaply and one can vacation in Africa, but trying to vacation cheaply in Africa is more work than vacation. Especially if you hold on to the antiquated belief that vacations are supposed to be relaxing.
My sister and I finished the trip by spending the last two days in Ouagadougou. We shed the rustic African experience for a top notch hotel in the center of the city for around 90 dollars a night. We walked around Ouaga, but generally took time to enjoy a comfortable bed, hot shower and air conditioning. We sat and talked at ease– the location was irrelevant, spending time with my sister was a better vacation than traveling to all the exotic places in West Africa. I can’t wait to vacation again this December.

Today my father’s greatest fear came to fruition; I dug a ditch in Africa. Truth be told it wasn’t a ditch per se; it was actually a latrine, which makes it all the worse. The reason my father fears digging ditches in Africa is not because of some inexplicable phobia of shovels, rather he feared that his son’s education in economics and finance would not be put to good use in the Peace Corps’ Small Enterprise Development program.

Two Christmases ago I was deliberating between to possible options for the future: A financial analyst position with Johnson & Johnson or the aforementioned SED program with the Peace Corps. After making the decision to join the Peace Corps my dad continued the struggle for another month. While watching the news he would note that J & J’s stock had risen two points; he would make off hand comments at dinner about how another Rotarian said Johnson and Johnson was one of the best companies to work for; and best of all, “Santa Clause” gave me medical supplies from my good friends at Johnson and Johnson. After another month passed he faced the facts and realized that I was going to move to Burkina Faso. This realization spurred a new strategy to ensure that my degree was put to good use. Each time we spoke about my impending service he would reassure me that is was perfectly acceptable to quit the Peace Corps if “they had me digging ditches”. This phrasing had always struck me as funny because in all the literature I had received from Peace Corps, the last thing I imagined myself to be doing with the small enterprise development program was, digging ditches. But there I was, eight feet deep in the ground shoveling dirt and the ancient remains from a latrine that had not been used for 15 years. I guess that father does know best.

I was in an eight foot deep hole because of the complex process of hiring people to do work in Burkina Faso. Two men came to my house and said that they could dig a three meter hole for 20 dollars which was cheaper than any other offer I had received. Unfortunately, I took them up on their offer and received what I paid for- a poorly dug latrine at roughly 2 and half meters. They did not finish the job in the day and a half that they said it would take. The rains continued to come and the walls continued to fall making the hole shallower. The younger of the two men would routinely come by my house to reassure me that the latrine digger would come tomorrow.

One Saturday I was so fed up that I told him that he and I would finish the work together. He looked skeptical and slightly perplexed, his facial expressions grew more quizzical as I jumped into the hole and began to dig for three hours straight. We finished the morning with a handshake covered in mud made from sweat and dirt. He then told me something that gave me an inflated sense of national pride. “Never... never would I have looked at you on the street and think that that white person would be able to work like that. There is no way a Frenchman would work in a latrine with me.” Perhaps it is my deep seeded cultural chauvinism that delights in being considered superior to the French or the simpleton like way I am taken in by a heartfelt compliment, but I left that day thinking -

“Gee, we American’s sure are grand, heck - I’ll role up my sleeves and work as hard as anyone to get a job done. We will even work along side a lowly African ditch digger without giving it a second though because we are so humble.” What was worse than my unwarranted bombastic self-conception was the belief that working alongside Arsene had forged some type of mutual respect or even trust.


My Dad should be able to take solace in the fact that this is the first time that I have, in fact, dug a ditch and I have already been here for 13 months. What is more important is that this latrine building should be considered more of home renovation rather than actual work, though it is sometimes tough to clearly delineate the two as work and home are constantly intertwined. This proximity between work and home are closer than they have ever been before as I have moved to what could best be described as my association’s giant shed.

One day I will move back to America and take for granted the wonderful amenities such as running water, washers, dryers, microwaves, ovens, refrigerators, internet and air conditioning but as for now I live in a mud brick house with a tin roof and cement floors. It is pretty Spartan and I miss the amenities. I’ve found that no amenity can compare to a toilet and living without even a latrine is a downright nuisance. This brings me full circle to the glowing pride and trust that I established with the young ditch digger on that fateful Saturday morning. Later in the week we decided on the next step for the construction of the latrine and I needed to buy 80 dollars worth of bricks. He told me he could get the bricks that afternoon as it was a relatively small errand. I handed him the eighty dollars over a month ago and have yet to see the bricks or the money. The complexity of all the events that transpired between my giving him the money and our current juncture would require a blog entry of its own, but here is the abridged version.

Suffice it to say that my patience and trust while overabundant at first have been whittled away with each successive encounter. Three days after I first asked about the money or bricks he assured me he would bring the money tomorrow. As each "tomorrow" passed without money I decided it would be best to have a talk with a more senior community member. Arsene informed me and the senior community member that the money would come by the next Wednesday. That Wednesday passed without money. Another sit down - he told us he had been lying, he spent the 80 dollars, but he can bring the 80 dollars worth of bricks, but that cannot happen until tomorrow. The saddest point of it all is that he had a chance to make a genuine profit and provide for his wife and child – instead he took eighty dollars, got drunk with his friends and hasn’t slept at his house for over a month.

No amount of charity or development can make someone responsible. I have learned this lesson well- another week has passed, I have no bricks but occasionally he will pass to tell me... “tomorrow”.

Masked men have been running through my city chanting, beating drums and evoking their natural right to beat anyone with a three foot long stick. Some masks are crudely made out of cardboard while others are more ornate. There are 12 separate groups of masked marauders and each group consists of nearly 100 men. These groups make the community cower in fear which is principally due to the aforementioned beatings; though there is some talk that they possess unnatural spirits which one is wise to avoid. Somehow the combination of spirits and beatings bring rain though I can’t say that I understand it - but then again, I didn’t major in meteorology.

I described these people as masked men but the term ‘men’ is a very liberal interpretation. In truth, the majority of this group is made children and young adults. If I were to estimate the percentage breakdown, I would say: 20% ages 3-9; 40% ages 10 -17; 30% ages 17 -24; 10% ages 25 and up. For imagery’s sake I invite you to picture 100 masked teenagers running through the neighborhood at 9pm chanting and yelling and waiting to beat someone to the point of drawing blood – should s/he be unfortunate enough to be caught outside their house.

It should also be stated that this is an ancient tradition that has the full support of the community.

What is described above is the Ciconsi, a right of passage into manhood that is considerably more extreme than a bar mitzvah. Each seven, nine, or eleven years (depending of the community) males wishing to become men take to the sacred wilderness for nearly three months. During these three months they sleep in the elements, learn the histories and traditions of the tribe and are ritualistically circumcised. During these three months communication is cut to anyone not inside their group. The participants including, children as young as three years old, leave their families and loved ones for three months. Participants postpone work, school, family and anything else that conflicts with this passage to manhood. During the end of this time they return at night for the running, chanting and beatings. At the end of the three months the members of the Circonsi returned to town during the day and lead a procession to mango tree and shaded area enclosed by a straw fence. The newly made men were all veiled as they entered the enclosed circle. It was at this time that the ceremony began, mothers and wives flooded into the enclosed area and attempted to find their loved one by finding the right covered person to unveil.

It was an exciting and truly joyous event for the participating family’s as they were now reunited with children they had not seen for three months. The participants truly vary in age from the very young to the very old, though I was struck at how many children there were. More to the point, the ceremony left me shocked at the number of mothers who willing let there three year old go into the wilderness for three months to be placed in the care of a relatively small number of responsible adults. Understandably, cultural norms are different and perhaps it is not entirely fair to judge traditions from an outside perspective, but I cannot help making the comparison.

While I was at the ceremony I tried to picture a soccer mom sending her little seven year old to live in the woods for three months to brave the elements and isolation with only several guys over twenty-five. This just could not happen in America. I recall mothers crying as they put their 12 year old on a bus for a two week summer camp. Mothers cry as their 18 year old leaves for a college two hours away, even though the child is assured to visit regularly and is equipped with a cell phone and internet, which make constant communication easy.

The idea of leaving a kid in the wilderness is extreme in any case and a bit more dangerous in Africa on account of the things that live in the wilderness. But maybe there is some method to their madness. Instead of keeping the youngsters extra close while they are young, they send them out into the wilderness. Instead of fighting the transition from dependence to maturity young adults are content and respect their parents in a way that went out of style in the 60’s. Instead of moving thousands of miles away to a poor country in a less than stable region of West Africa against their parents wishes, young adults choose to live with and help support their family; and instead of disregarding the elderly they are held in the highest esteem. I do not want to finish this entry with any big comparison or insight into which value structure is better or more important- because such a broad question can never be answered with meaningful results, so instead I will end with my approach toward child rearing that I may one day employ: I will neither send my kid into the African Bush to fend for himself nor coddle them in. Maybe if I can instill this notion of moderation they’ll stay away from inner-city schools and the third world of West-Africa.*







*The last sentence is a subtle joke referencing the paths my sister and I took in spite/or because of great parenting

"Get out of the van."
(A string out expletives)
"Get out of the van."
(Another string of expletives.)
Now despondently, "Why don't you get out of the van?"

I turn to man sitting half next to me and half on my lap, and I attempt small talk:

"Sir, Are you comfortable? No, you say? Well, I could have guessed you would have said as much and this shouldn't come as a great surprise but I share your sentiment. Why do you think we find ourselves to be so uncomfortable?"
"Because life in Africa...It's hard"
Now, That is an interesting comment, I don't know that it answers my question - but it is not really that important, because the question was rhetorical. Would you like to hear a list of reasons why I think we are uncomfortable? Again this question is rhetorical. You see - I believe our discomfort has something to do with the inefficiency and incompetency of the people running this transport. I think that it has something to do with the fact that we are sitting 25 people to a van designed to sit 12. I think it could be linked to the fact that carbon monoxide is leaking through the floor board. Perhaps our discomfort has something to do with all the broken windows and the red dirt road, whose dust has turned all of us orange.
"Yes"

"Certainly there are the crying babies and the oppressive heat, but I know perfectly well that you cannot control everything, and I don't want to complain. But now that you and I have been sitting here for the last twenty minutes, unmoved from our original seats, sitting 25 deep with you, still half sitting on my lap while the drivers unload luggage from the luggage rack - I can feel myself slipping into a foul mood and I don't know that I can help but complain."
"I see"

Of all the frustrating moments that we have experienced together over the past hour and a half together, I must say that I am most infuriated by the passengers inability to change their discomfort; now, right this moment. Look! - Just out there, there is shade, people selling cold drinks, space, sweet, spacious space as far as the eye can see. All we need to do is remind people that they are uncomfortable and inform them it is more comfortable sitting under shade drinking cold drinks rather than sitting in a cramped metal van in this hot, hot van. Which brings me to a genuine question of which I seek a genuine answer: Why have we all sat in this parked van for the last twenty minutes?

"Because, In Africa, It is like that."

(String of expletives)
"What? ... What exactly do you mean?"
"In Africa, It is like that."
"Respectfully sir, I disagree. Africa being woefully underdeveloped, lacking resources, having a harsh climate, being put upon: poverty, AIDS, colonialism so on and so on; you can read me a list of all the problems that are espoused by the world bank.- But all of these reasons have absolutely nothing to do with your inability to get out of this hot cramped van. Case and point, there are Africans NOT inside this hot cramped van. There are, in fact, Africans standing less then twenty feet away underneath that shade, being perfectly African. All we have to do is help our selves ... why don't we just help our selves?

"Because, In Africa...It is like this"
The driver enters the van; Starts the van; Drives the Van 500 yards; Stops the van; Passengers leave.

At this point there is no more conversation to be had. I have loved my time in Burkina, I have had many good experiences, but at this point I have nothing but a blank stare of fury and disbelief. It is numbness, a numbness that allows you to stare down a ten year old begger until he leaves.

I am still too close to this event to meaningfully dissect all the thoughts that were running through my head immediately after the event. I hope to do so in subsequent blogs, but let me start be saying I am extremely critical of anyone who is content at explaining away inefficiency as the way it is in Africa. Protocol and Tradition are a product of the decisions that people make and they change as decisions change. Let us be held accountable for our decisions, Let us have higher expectations for ourselves. If the man sitting next to me is correct and "Life, its hard in Africa" and "In Africa, it is like that" Let us see the connection between the two. Lets change the way we do things and maybe Life in Africa will be less tough.