Things I Know Now That I Wish I Knew Then

Hello darlingfaces,

Next month (June 11th, to be exact) marks the one-year anniversary of my arrival here in Burkina Faso. And, perhaps more substantially, in a few short days I'll actually be able to say that I've successfully completed an entire school year's worth of teaching. I know: where's Alice Cooper when you need him, right? I can't wait for summer vacation! It is going to be such a welcome respite from my daily grind of lesson planning, lecturing, and computer repairing my face off. I'm particularly excited about the 3.5-week trip to the United States I'll be taking at the end of June. It already holds the title of Best Vacation I've Ever Had, and it hasn't even happened yet! My mind is constantly concocting delirious fantasies about the United States, which just get more and more exacerbated the longer I spend in hot, dusty, insect-rich, resource-poor Burkina. I feel as though I look upon the US with the same awestruck fascination as my Burkinabé friends now. I mean, come on: air conditioning? Clean, fast, and reliable transportation ALL THE TIME? Robotic tables with lasers that scan some alien code on your food in order to tell you the price? Wait a minute, products over there have a SET PRICE? You mean you don't haggle for twenty minutes over an avocado? You just pay what this little stub of sticky paper with printed numbers on it tells you to pay?! Okay, now, let me get this straight: you Americans give this Tyra Banks lady millions of dollars to walk around in fat suits and scream and roll around on the floor on camera and in front of an audience?

It's demented how excited I am about going to the US. Most of my plans involve eating—devouring, really—many and varied types of awful, terrible, but great-tasting food that I couldn't ever dream of finding here in Burkina. Like, I've actually asked myself if a root beer float topped with Sno-Caps and monterey jack cheese and wrapped in a P'zone would taste delicious or not. I don't even really know what a P'zone is, but I plan to shove several in my mouth during my time in the States. If I don't come back to Burkina with at least fifteen extra pounds on me, the trip will be deemed a severe failure.

Anyhoo, I'm not going to be chillaxing the ENTIRE break, of course. In fact, my summer is shaping up to be just as busy as the school year. I've been asked by Peace Corps to serve as a PCVFP (Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitator-Programmer) for the upcoming PST (Pre-Service Training) in June, July, and August. You see, a whole new group of PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) is coming to Burkina at the beginning of June to go through a three-month training process that will prepare them for their service. Remember my situation last year, with the staging event in Philadelphia followed by living with a host family in Burkina and the daily diarrhea woes and the culture shock I endured over everyone screaming the Mooré-equivalent of, "Hey, Whitey!" at me wherever I went? Yeah, well, this group is going to be going through the exact same thing, and a few of my fellow PCVs and I will be there to help them along the long and storied journey that is PST.

In the weeks leading up to my big Peace Corps departure last year, I scoured just about every blog kept by a PCV I could find, including those who had served as far back as 2002. I was determined to get as much insight as I could into this strange, mystifying, and daunting experience I was about to hurl myself into. The blogs helped immensely, giving me an intimate perspective on the PC experience with a personal twist.

So, in the event that a would-be Burkina PCV is reading this here blog, I'd like to take a few moments to offer some bits of information I wish I had up in the old cabesa before I headed off to Burkina last year, for my sanity and patience's sakes. Keep in mind, of course, that everyone's Peace Corps experience is different and entirely what they themselves make of it, and no blog is going to help you mould your existence here. These are just a few small things that I, personally, wish I was more prepared for. (I know, I ended with a preposition—it's hot and past my bedtime and I'm not Thomas Hardy.)

1. Burkinabé do NOT know how to form lines. The dynamics and politics of lines do not exist in or are not recognized by their society. Time and again on this blog, I have waxed rhapsodic about my interactions with Burkinabé. I simply do adore the people here, and often get a warm and fuzzy feeling over the friendships I have made in country. That being said, I utterly loathe Burkinabé in any situation that calls for a line to be formed, whether that be boarding a bus or queueing up to pay a bill at the electric company. I don't know what goes on in the social upbringing of the average Burkinabé, but the section on respecting the construct of the line—which Americans tend to follow stringently—appears to be wholly absent. As a result, an unaccustomed foreigner in Burkina will likely be shocked and appalled when they find themselves in unnecessary human clusterfucks that could easily be remedied if everybody just agreed to form a line and wait their turn. How do you like these apples: whenever I travel between Bobo and Ouagadougou, I go with a very nice, clean, and reputable bus company that gives each of its passengers a printed ticket, complete with an assigned seat number. Totally legit, totally reliable. And yet, what happens when they call everyone aboard? A stampede that reaches such absurd heights of absolute pandemonium that it rivals Pamplona. People—dudes, chicks, old folks, and children alike—are elbowing each other in the ribs, pushing and shoving, and yelling at each other to back the eff off! UM, HELLO? Everyone has an ASSIGNED SEAT. WHERE, EXACTLY, IS THE FIRE? It is an absolutely jaw-dropping sight to behold, especially if you take how nice and civil Burkinabé are in every other social situation into account. If you're not used to this, it is infuriating at first—I mean, I've been here almost a year and it still irks me. My advice in dealing with this phenomenon is to be active and aggressive rather than passive and permissive—beat 'em at their own game, I say! I started off very hippie-ish and love thy neighbor about the whole thing in the beginning, but I eventually got so pissed off that I just started joining in the carnage—mob mentality, I guess. Nowadays, I jump right into that mass of humanity, elbows out and with the reflexes of a linebacker. THUNDERDOME. I expend so much energy ramming myself through the crowd that I don't have much left to waste on getting angry about the Burkinabé's utterly preposterous manners in this realm of human interaction, so it's a win-win.

2. A reliable algorithm for calculating the actual length of meetings in Burkina Faso: multiply how many minutes/hours the people in charge claim the meeting will go for by ten, and add two hours. Example: If the principal of your school calls for a 30-minute meeting to discuss the cleaning schedule of the computer lab, expect to actually be there for seven hours -> ((30*10)/60)+2=7. Okay, a little exaggeration here, but, fo' real doe: meetings in Burkina take FOR-EV-ER. One of the reasons for this is that Burkinabé don't follow the superficial and capitalistic dictum that "Time is money," which reigns supreme in America. This is a collectivist society, and, as such, there is a genuine concern for the comfort and well-being of others and their relatives. So, a good chunk of the "meeting" is actually spent on rigorously discussing the welfare of all the parties involved, as well as the welfare of their immediate and extended family and their material possessions (goats, cows, pigs, etc.)

Another, more justifiably irritating reason behind the excessive meeting lengths is that Burkinabé love to belabor even the finest and minutest point—especially the men. I think it has something to do with the machismo element of society here, because it appears as though each man is always trying to make the last, resounding point in a meeting, only to be a foiled by another dude who chimes in to regurgitate something that isn't even a subtle variation on what the guy who was just speaking sputtered out mere seconds ago. It simply never ends.

My advice: once you've got the gist of a meeting and said all that you've needed/wanted to say, feel free to tune out, unless you enjoy tumbling into an unfathomably redundant, ego-infused death spiral.

3. Children of a certain age will be resolutely terrified of you if you are white and/or wear a bike helmet. The age range for such children seems to be between 3 and 5 years old. Kids who are younger are simply too young to know what's going on (i.e., to sense that you, as a person of a paler persuasion, are something "different"), while older kids have had enough life experiences and scraped knees to toughen them up. The fear in these children usually manifests itself in the form of piercing shrieks, running, hiding behind things/people, and many tears. Wearing a bike helmet seems to bump up the Richter scale of horror considerably. At first, this can be disheartening: you just wanted to say, "Hi" to the little tyke! My advice, though, is to not take it personally and, in fact, to have fun with this and take advantage of it. You can only take so many kids taunting you with shouts of, "Tubabu!" or "Le blanc!" before you start getting a little resentful. Payback time! I'm not saying you should run around with animal blood smeared across your face deliberately scaring children, but if you're biking down your street and see a little kid start to cry upon catching your eye, smile widely, get off your bike, and walk over to them to shake their hand. This will undeniably send them into hysterics of fear, fleeing for the nearest tree or rock or grandmother to hide behind. Chances are, if their friends and family are around (which they usually are), they will all get a huge kick out of this. It seems that the more a kid cries here, the more his parents laugh. Burkinabé are interesting that way. (I've seen Burkinabé crack up over television news footage of rioters beating the shit out of each other, if that gives any insight into their sense of humor). Incidentally, this is also a good technique for deterring kids from banging on your door after sunset for no apparent reason other than to keep you from getting some reading done or preparing dinner.

So, yeah, these are just a few miscellaneous things that struck me as stuff I never would have thought about nor was I prepared for before arriving in Burkina. If any of this made you uneasy, that was not my intention. Despite the minor hitches out here, there are mountains of goodness and wonder. Burkina is a fantastic place that boasts some seriously glorious people. I'm still loving it all after a year.

And if anyone reading this is indeed in the upcoming SE/GEE PST group, let me wish you an early welcome to Burkina and Peace Corps. See you soon!