I mean't to post this before we left for a week vacation in Mali but I forgot. The disease I meantion below was thought to be typhoid but it turned out to be Klebsiella sp. which is a similar disease that I am now rid of hooray!
November 21, 2009
We have been back in Ouagadougou for a few days now, rushing to finish the children’s books we are making for our libraries. Fortunately, I had finished the bulk of my book work before our return because I have been spending most of my time in doctor’s offices and passed out in bed. No, all that knocking on wood did not keep the parasites away. My last days in the village were spent hating life and especially hating the hole in the ground that was my toilet. Two days before we returned to Ouaga, I woke up with a fever and a stomachache that kept me in bed not eating up until a few days ago. After various tests, the doctor concluded that I have amoebas, a bacterial infection in my intestines and possibly something worse that I won’t mention because it sounds really bad but I probably don’t have it anyway so why worry you and I find out about that today. Anyway I am on the mend, just really tired and really really medicated. I am using this time in Ouaga to lay in bed with my computer and movies.
My last days in Bereba were not all puking and death, I also celebrated my 21st birthday and I must say it was a very eventful day. I spent the night before in Lizzie and Louise’s village half an hour down the road where we spent most of our time at the one bar with electricity. We had just finished our beers and I was the perfect amount of tipsy for the day before my 21st birthday. Then the police chief decided to buy us another round of beers. I should mention that a beer in Burkina Faso is always 30oz, none of those little pansy beers we drink in the US. Basically I hated myself the next day riding the rickety little bus down the dirt road back to Bereba. But my deadly hangover was appeased a few miles down the road, when we saw an elephant in the forest between the two villages! Wild elephants! It was the best birthday present ever. The rest of my birthday was eventful but I’m too tired to write details. Here are the facts. Market day, birthday crown, little man dancing on his hands, burkinabé circus, yummy spicy chicken dinner, kangaroo rat. Imagine what you may. That night, we all piled in our program van and went to the nearest town where we had class every week to see the most famous singer in Burkina Faso who was singing at the only restaurant in the town where we ate every week also. Yes the most famous singer in the country lip-sinked to his songs amongst a crowd of drunk Burkinabe men at a dirty little restaurant in a remote town. Such is Burkina Faso, you have to love it.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
Bobo Dioulasso for the weekend
This has been my first internet access since I got to the villages so forgive my infrequent blogging and the typing errors I am bound to make on this french keyboard. Bereba has been amazing so far. Once again it is an experience that I have a hard time articualating as of yet but when I get back to Ouaga I will have more time to write.
Right now I can hear the Moezzin sp? screaming the friday call to prayer from a nearby mosque which is a sound that no longer phases me. I really love this country so much. I have now studied its history, its cultures, economy and languages. I know its problems and the pain the Burkinabe feel because of them. But the seemingly hopelessness of their problems now pains me as well. Living in Bereba has thought me my own insignificance in the face of these problems but it has also shown me the impact that anyone can make through solidarity and understanding. By pumping my own water, by learning their language, songs and dances, by helping with the cotton harvest I can at least come away knowing more with the intention to return engraved in me. The issues are so deep seeded. Cotton, land, credit, education and the list goes on. Aid money rarely makes it as far as a village like Bereba and there is corruption even on the local level.
I will be back in Ouagadougou in a little over a week. I cant wait to have time to write about the incredible experience I have been living in the village.
Baraka!
Merry
Right now I can hear the Moezzin sp? screaming the friday call to prayer from a nearby mosque which is a sound that no longer phases me. I really love this country so much. I have now studied its history, its cultures, economy and languages. I know its problems and the pain the Burkinabe feel because of them. But the seemingly hopelessness of their problems now pains me as well. Living in Bereba has thought me my own insignificance in the face of these problems but it has also shown me the impact that anyone can make through solidarity and understanding. By pumping my own water, by learning their language, songs and dances, by helping with the cotton harvest I can at least come away knowing more with the intention to return engraved in me. The issues are so deep seeded. Cotton, land, credit, education and the list goes on. Aid money rarely makes it as far as a village like Bereba and there is corruption even on the local level.
I will be back in Ouagadougou in a little over a week. I cant wait to have time to write about the incredible experience I have been living in the village.
Baraka!
Merry
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