I’m Alive! Time for all the updates!

I’m going to take this day by day, and despite my best efforts, it’s a long one, so you might want to take a few days to digest it all.

September 7th, 2008

Departure time! Ahhh!

Last night my parents made me a little going away bbq, which was really nice. Got to see most of my family there, which was great because we hadn’t had the chance to do so all summer (or we did and I couldn’t go because of work). Regardless, I took the chance to finally be on the giving end of the drink making (Grandmaman Rodrigue is always making us drinks, so I was looking forward to finally making her one!). Even though I did not expect anything, they came full of cards and pleasant wishes to send me off the next day. I even got a harmonica from Pat and Trish, which is supposed to ‘keep me busy on all my spare time’ hihi. I’ll try to learn something by xmas to show the family.

Plan was to leave at 12 noon, but as I weighed my final luggage just at that point, it was 42 kilos! Ayayay! I was planning for it to be overweight and only have 2 bags, but they won’t take anything over 32 kilos, so I rushed to shove half of the load into a third bag. Within 10 minutes it was good to go, and off we went to Toronto. On the way I desperately tried to finish the last chapters of Harry Potter (the last book) as I had just realized days earlier that I had not yet finished the entire book! How could I forget that! By the time we got to the airport, I still had the last chapter to go, but got the just of who lived and who died.

Drop off at the airport was brisk, which in retrospect was better I think. I got a little choked up saying bye to the folks and the brother. My mom started crying, which made me shed some tears.

Flight to Montreal to meet up with a group of 6 engineering students who I will be traveling with to Burkina (Simon, Alexandre, William, Kristell, Stephanie, Karine). They are going to be living in another city building a rice processing plant in 3.5 months. When I got to the airport, it wasn’t too hard to find one of them, Simon who was waiting for me and introduced me to the rest of the bunch. We also met up with a family who will be living near the engineers (in Bobo); Sevrine, Francois and their two sons, Raphael (2.5yrs) and Lucas (4.5yrs).

Flight was pretty decent. I managed to get the 3 middle seats to myself, which made for a nice stretching space. And although I didn’t manage to sleep the whole 8 hours, it was good to rest my eyes since the re-runs of friends with terrible un-audible sound would have made for a very long flight!

Sept 8th
Arrival at Cassablanca, Morocco, where we had a 12 hour lay over. The airline was nice and provided us with hotel rooms and meals. We had a swim (most of them in their underwear since we only had our carry ons with us…luckily I figured a bathing suit in my carry was a good idea).

Since we had a long stop over, we wanted to take advantage of it and decided to try to get into town. From the hotel, taxis gave ‘tours’ where they’d bring you to 3 ‘hot spots’ with 30min stops at each. So Alexandre, one of the engineers negotiated with the taxi drivers (since we needed 2) and bargained us 2 taxis for $115 US for 3 hours as long as there was 1 beautiful girl in each of the taxis (which is what Alex used as a bargaining chip to decrease the price). The tour took us to the Moroccan market, the world’s second largest mosque and the beach. It was very enjoyable. The ride was a little scary though, the roads are chaos and there were no seat belts. All I could think about was my mom who would have had a heart attack riding in that kind of traffic. Each intersection is like a yield point, but yielding there means everyone goes at once and tries to maneuver between the cars and not get hit!

Late departure from Morocco and arrival in Ouagadougou at 2:30am. That night was such a rush, everything was happening so fast. People all around us were trying to help (for money of course) and hung around us like hawks. The guy who pushed my bags onto a trolley and started helping me ended up getting a Toonie since that’s all I had. As I was pulling out with my luggage, the guy decided he wanted to check mine and continued to ask if we could meet some time since Im staying in Ouaga (I had to tell him where I was going because he was wearing a military uniform, I figured it was like customs or whatnot, you can’t go around being mysterious trying to avoid giving out details, or they could not let you pass into the country! Little did I know…) I just kept saying ‘ok, so we’re done here’ lol.

At that point, we were all separated into 3 vehicles going to 3 different places. 3 of us were staying at Angele’s house, the regional Canadian coordinator, while others went to stay at another cooperants house and still others at a hotel. The ride home is when the whole thing hit me. I had been avoiding thinking about it because then Id start to get nervous and realize that I was here for an entire year alone! But the ride home was like ‘wow, I am actually doing this’. It was 3am by this time and the streets were empty and very scary looking. And although Burkina is a very safe country, the surroundings looked dangerous and sketchy.

Arriving at Angele’s, I was given the room which is detached from the house. Angele’s got a nice place. It is equipped with 2 full bedrooms with separate bathrooms for each as well as her own quarters. So she houses a lot of volunteers on their way in and out of the country.

I went to bed right away but had so many thoughts through my head, I wanted to write them down in my journal (which I was going to give a try…the writing thing). As I sat down on my bed though, I saw a lizard jump up the wall! AHHH. Frick! There was a lizard in my room! Well that totally screwed me up. Stupid Galloway mice has permanently scared my brain and caused me to freak out with every small moving object or thing. Not knowing what to do, I went to the other room inside the house, where William and Kristell were staying (bf/gf) and asked him what I should do. He was kind of lost and failed to comfort me by saying that they couldn’t hurt me. I think I totally caught him off guard haha. So that night, I put the fan on (to muffle the sound of moving footsteps), put earplugs in, put a hoodie on (with the hood tight against my head) and tucked myself into the covers really good. It wasn’t until 8am that I managed to fall asleep though, and I slept less than 4 hours before deciding to get up and go into the house to wait for the others to wake up.

Sept 9th
Today in the afternoon, we were all getting picked up by 2 drivers and brought into town to buy cell phones. We also met Charlotte and Melanie who are 2 University of Ottawa students here for a 3 month placement.

Buying cell phones, Simon (our driver) brought us to his sisters cell phone hut (although whether or not it’s his real sister is questionable, its hard to judge the boundaries of relatives here as everyone is brothers and sisters). It was quite the process to buy them, I think it took 1 hour for us to all get one, during which time walking vendors tried to convince us to buy their goods. Luckily, they were more so bugging the guys to buy things haha, which was good for us girls.

Whoever said that Burkina Faso was hot but NOT humid, was a LIAR! I woke today and it is 30*C according to a thermometer sitting on the desk in the cool house, but it is definitely hotter than that outside! Morning rains does cool down the air, but by the afternoon, all that moisture raises and makes the place humid as heck! The cook (yes, there is a cook, and a guard)…assures me that it is ‘cold’ today and that 2 days ago it was 39*! If it gets any hotter than this, I’m going to die! Luckily the fact that my shower does not have hot water is an inviting feature.

Sept 10th
I finally managed to sleep last night, but I feel more tired than I have felt since I left home. I think my body finally realized what it was missing. Today I got a cell phone number! Woot. So here it is. I don’t know how successful, if at all successful anyone will be in calling or texting me since I have tried texting people back home and abroad and it has failed. If you manage to get through though, it doesn’t cost me any minutes! Which is awesome because otherwise it’s 50c per minute to make local calls, so you can imagine the long distance charges! Yikes! My number is…

226-71-26-02-68
So if you are calling from Canada, you’d dial:
011+ my number. (226 is the country code)

Although my appetite has decreased slightly, I’m actually surprised on how well I’ve been able to eat. As previously explained, Angele (and most people here who have a bit of money) have a cook and/or maid to clean and do laundry etc. Abdula, who is Angele’s cook makes Canadian and oriental dishes more so then African, which has definitely helped in the transition. Each meal at Angele’s includes 3 courses, an appetizer, entrée, and fruits for desert. I think the 3-course thing is just something Abdula does. I think he just really likes cooking, so that gives him the opportunity to make more than one food item for each meal. Other than that, appetizers are usually cucumbers and tomatoes, or eggplant, or salad or soup and entrees are usually some meat (I’ve had chicken, beef, sheep, rabbit) and potatoes and carrots. Needless to say, he’s a really good cook and so I’ve been eating well.

Today as well as tomorrow, we are having orientation sessions. Stuff like info about the organization, a session with the local doctor to talk about health, etc. For dinner tonight, we went to a restaurant, which was very expensive. $20 for a fixed menu, which meant we had the choice between 2 salads and either chicken or fish. I ate most of the tuna on the salad but not so much the leafs because restaurants usually wash their veggies with tap water, which means there is a high likelihood that it has bacteria or something else unpleasant that I really don’t want to digest. I had chicken, but again my appetite wasn’t really there, so I ate the fries (which were good) and a bit of the chicken. The chickens here are really tiny and there isn’t a lot of meat on the bone, and the meat that does exist is like chewing gum. It’s so tough! They definitely don’t keep their chickens in a cage. But definitely not worth $20! And that’s for a foreigner, imagine what a fortune that is for a local! Most of the population here lives on less than $1-2/day.

Angele says you never really know what you’re eating. She was mentioning this as she was telling us what would happen to her cat if it ran away. I guess eating cats and dogs isn’t just an Asian thing.

Sept 11th
Last day together with all the other volunteers before they leave to their respective areas *tear. It’s been so great hanging out with them and I’m already starting to think of when I’ll be able to go visit them.

Today we went to visit the Canadian embassy and chatted with a regional coordinator of foreign aid into the country. After that, half of us went home and the other half to do some running around town.

Dinner that night was at Angele’s where all the UNITERRA workers as well as volunteers got together and met. Although it was good to meet the other volunteers, I was starting to feel really sad that everyone would leave me in the morning.

To make matters worse, I left my camera outside overnight (keep in mind it is the rainy season, and yes…if you are wondering, it did rain that night). I couldn’t find it in the morning and I was afraid I had left it outside after taking a picture. I asked Abdula the next day and he had brought it in and was drying out the case. I don’t know how long it was left outside but thank god for the hard case, I’m sure it kept a lot more water out then would have a material one. And unlike my luck with electronics, it actually works! Thank god! Budgeting for the purchase of another camera would have sucked royally.

Sept 12th
Last night my mind wandered to the fact that everyone was leaving which made me feel sick to my stomach. Luckily, somehow, I was able to block the thought from my mind within 10 minutes. I woke that morning and just after having finished breakfast, got a call from Benoit (one of the volunteers who lives in Ouaga and is here with his wife, Anne) inviting me over for steak for lunch. I kind of felt bad leaving Abdula because he was making a carrot cake for lunch and I’m sure he had prepared something, but I didn’t want to pass up any opportunities to get to know the other Ouaga volunteers better since these are the people I will likely be hanging out with during my stay here.

Although he lives just 4 roads down, he came and picked me up on his moto since I have no sense of direction here and there are no street names anywhere. Benoit and Anne have been here for 3 months already and are here for another year still. Not even 1 month into their stay, Benoit got into an accident on his moto and was flown to France to have his elbow stitched up. I guess they don’t deal with big wounds here, or anywhere in West Africa for that matter? Hmm. Well it’s good to know that we are near the airport if ever I need to leave the country for medical purposes *knock on wood.

Sept 13th
It’s Williams birthday today, so I sent the gang a txt, to wish him a happy bday and to see how they were making out in Bama (the city near Bobo, where they are constructing their rice processing building).

That morning, Angele needed to go to the market (to the import store) to pick up a few things, so I asked to tag along so I can see what it’s all about. It is busy busy busy, those streets! Everyone wants to help you park (bc they get something out of it, you have to give them money), and people were fast to swarm us as soon as we stepped out of the car to try to sell us things. Angele made like a Torontonian and bee-lined it to the store which I hurried behind her to keep up. I picked up 2 boxes of cookies and a jar of jam (for when I move out, so I have something to snack on and sustain myself) and it cost me $7.50. Stuff here, especially food prices have increased significantly in the last couple years. I’m on a Canadian budget so I’m finding it expensive to buy stuff, but imagine once again these food prices when you’re making $50/month (in a good job…ie. a cook or guard gets that). That kind of money doesn’t go very far when food costs as much as is does in the western world.

The Marina Market, is a very popular chain of imported goods stores. As we waited in line to check out, I got a phone call and the person on the other line kept asking if ‘this was Tiana Rodrigue’. I could barely hear, but after 5 min of confirmation, I realized it was my parents! :D
I was so happy to hear from them finally as we had been trying to reach each other for days unsuccessfully. It was 6am there (we’re 4 hours ahead) and by some luck, the call finally went through. My mom was going to work though, and because I was in the market, I couldn’t hear anything beyond the sounds of cars and crowds. I asked them to call me back when she got home from work since I’d be back at Angele’s and would be able to hear a lot better. Plus I hadn’t talked to them in a week so I was looking forward to chatting for a bit.

Next we went to a photo place so that Angele could get some passport pics taken. As I waited for her, this young girl (my age) started talking to me and asked if we could be friends. And so we exchanged numbers, and I heard from her a few days later (she called to make sure I hadn’t forgotten about her and to make sure I still wanted to hang out later in the week). Her forwardness took me by surprise, but hopefully it works out for the better, it would be good to hang out with some locals.

After the market, we dropped off our stuff at Angele’s house and drove to the office. I wanted to get on the internet to check my emails and such. I managed to talk to my dad on msn, which was nice as well as a few other people.

That night, I was looking forward to my parents calling. At 3:30 Canadian time, I called to see if they were calling back and ended up calling 2 more times later that night to find out why it wasn’t working. I can call home and it goes through but they could not for some reason reach me. I was getting really frustrating because each 30sec call I was making home was costing me $1 and I ran out of minutes fast. Angele wanted to watch a movie, so we put on 10,000 BC and luckily it eventually took my mind off the unsuccessful phone call.

As I went to bed, I got a msg, which I quickly grabbed the phone thinking my parents may have finally managed to get through, but it was a msg from the engineers, which made me happy none the less. They said they had a great welcoming in Bama and that they looked forward to me coming to visit.

Sept 14th
Sunday, relax and laundry day. Luckily Angele has a washing machine (she is really living it up here!). So we washed and hung clothes, read, swam (she’s got a small pool too haha) and played cards with Anne and Benoit who came for a swim. I have been getting more and more nervous about my living situation. The organization pays for us to stay somewhere for 2 weeks when we arrive, which means that I am on my own by next week. The school and the partner organization I’ll be working with is about 30min away from the city and I’m told in the middle of nowhere, oh great! This was making me more worried, the unforgiving culture shock would hit me within the next few months and I would be depressed and alone 30 min from anyone I knew or anything to do). I was at this point considering getting a place in town if I can find someone to live with (hopefully another volunteer or foreigner, which are hard to come by) and commuting to work everyday either by moto (I bought the former volunteer’s moped off her) and by making a deal with a taxi driver to come and pick me up and drop me off twice a day to work (on time, which would be hard to negotiate, we are on African time here).

That night, a bunch of the volunteers got together and went out for a drink at the Marquis down the street. One of the volunteers, Marie-Helene just got a place to herself with an empty unfurnished room which I was questioning the chances of renting. Her boyfriend is moving in though next month, so I don’t know how much they’d want a third person there. She would consider it though, which was good enough for me. At this point, I was considering sending off emails to all of the main organizations who have foreign volunteers in Ouaga to see if they had someone who was looking for another person to live with, but most other organizations provide and pay for the housing, so again, an obstacle.

I left the Marquis with Benoit and Anne who were walking in my direction and 5 minutes after having got back, they came knocking at my door and offered that I live with them. They had always said ‘worse comes to worse’ I could live with them, but wanted to tell me that it didn’t have to be worse case scenario, that I could stay there. Sooo much weight had been lifted from my shoulders at that moment. Although I said I didn’t want to impose, bc at the marquis, they had talked about how they were happy to finally have the house to themselves and not have people always coming and going. They assured me that it’s different because I’d have my own key and they wouldn’t have to worry about feeding me or being there when people arrived/left/etc.

That night, I got a phone call at 12:30am, it was my parents!!! Finally they were able to reach me and we talked for a while. They caught me at the perfect time because I was in a good mood and my visit to the partner organization the next day (and to see the house they had found for me) was less looming through my head.

It’s not finalized that I am living with them, but I’m really hoping too, but told them to think about it more and let me know for sure if they want someone there. If so, this would be amazing! Id live just streets down from Angele, and accessible to all the things downtown as well as the UNITERRA office. But most importantly living with 2 people who are really nice, which would surely save me from the eminent depression curve. Not to mention they are here the rest of the year and have a cat that likes to chase lizards, which would mean a lizard free room! (No, they have not vacated my room, they are still crawling around in there while I’m there. Luckily it hasn’t prevented me from getting sleep as I have put many measures in place to prevent my fears from overcoming my mind including a loud fan, ear plugs, pulling my bed into the center of the room to avoid close proximity to any walls they might be climbing on and shaking my bed every 30seconds when I’m awake to scare them from getting any closer).

Sept 15th
Today, I was going to meet up with the partner organization and be accompanied by Simon (our driver) and Fatimata (the sector specialist of HIV/AIDS…which is the sector under which I am working, even though I’m working in education). Our initial plan of leaving at 10am, changed at 11am as I received a phone call telling me that they rescheduled for 3pm that afternoon. So I just hung around the house that day.

Practiced the harmonica! I copied down a tab for a song when I was at the office while I had the internet to see if I could manage to learn something, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it should be my first song attempt. Hey Jude by the Beatles, and I must say, I’ve tried it out and it sounds pretty good (except for a few parts, but I’m blaming that on the harmonica which doesn’t seem to let me play the lower keys). Oh well, maybe with a little oiling, it’ll be good to go. I’ll have that song played for you by Christmas Pat, don’t you worry!

That afternoon, we traveled about 25 minutes out of town to visit the partner organization. Everyone there seemed really nice and cool, so my year should function nicely. There we met Fatimata’s brother (biologically, who knows) who was jockingly saying that we should have babies in order to ‘expand the family’. Fatie shook her head saying that although she supports expanding the family, she does not do so half hazardly. The drive was shorter then I expected which meant that I would have to travel less to work (if I decided to live in town). They couldn’t reach the owner of the house they wanted to show me as a possibility, so we planned to come back the following day to check it out.

By the time we got back from the office, the temperature had dropped to 21*C, a bit chilly but I was comfortable in my tank and skirt. I spent the rest of the day in the office on the web and waited for Angele to finish. Got home, ate Vietnamese rolls (mmm) and watched Across the Universe.

Sept 16th
Once again, we departed to the office of AEAD. We had planned to be there at 10am, but as time flows here, we did a bunch of running around (Simon and I) beforehand and didn’t get to the office until 1.5hrs later. Our search for an adapter finally ended at an electronics store, where we bought 10 adapters (as Angele wanted some on hand to give to upcoming volunteers). I was surprised to see 2 white guys behind the counter of the sales desk. As we sat, we got an order for the plugs and the guy gave us a deal (each plug went from 250FCAs to 200FCAs), and we didn’t even ask for a deal. A vendor, offering a decrease in price at a fixed-price store, without us even asking, unheard of! The guy helping us was young, so who knows, maybe he wants me to come back and continues my business there, although I don’t know how many tools or electronics I’ll be needing in the next year.

As we drove around, I saw some guy trying to sell a Britney Spears poster of her early career (she looked about 16 in the pic) and Simon listens to an English radio station which plays American songs, so I heard Rihanna and the song ‘I kissed a girl’ which made me think of home J.

Getting to the office in Pecy, we picked up Souleymane, one of AEAD’s cooperatives and drove to the school (which was a solid 5min drive, a lot further then I thought). So walking from the office to the school, where I’ll mostly be working would take me at least 20-30minutes walking, and I’m not sure I want to do that in the scorching heat.

Just across the street, we checked out the house they had found for me. It was fairly nice, clean at least, and freshly painted. The only downfall was that it was empty. It’s a 3 room house, one of which I would have to turn into a kitchen/living room and by ‘turn into’ I mean I’d have to buy a fridge, stove, table, etc. anything that I’d want to have in my kitchen. Each room has 4 white walls and a ceiling, and that’s about it. So Benoit and Anne’s house was feeling much more welcoming already. Not to mention the amount that I’d have to pay to buy furniture, I could totally use to pay for a taxi to and from work everyday.

After a visit to the school, we dropped by Souleymane’s place, where Nathalie used to live just down the street. We sat for 10min with him in his living room and watched French news. People here take quite an interest in Baraque Obama, it’ll be interesting to see how the results are taken on this end of the world.

Later that night, we ate and watched ‘The Kingdom’ before hitting the sack.

Okay, sorry for the length of this one, I don’t presume I’ll be detailing my life in as much detail in upcoming posts, I just wanted to do so here mostly for the sake of my family, to see what I’ve been up to.

Stay tuned for much more random (and hopefully shorter) updates…