Sunday, October 17, 2010

Be Careful Taking Midnight Trains going Anywhere, you may end up in Africa.

So my faithful blog readers trent is a stupid head. I had to go to Ouaga on monday (oct 4) and get some blood drawn for some tests. (All of which returned back super OK). I arrived in Ouaga and had to end up staying the night at the Transit house, which is kinda like a Peace Corps frat house. I enjoy my time there, there is internet and good people dropping by. The transit house is also like a digital trading post. People bring their hard drives and their computers in hopes someone has some movies or tv shows they can steal. Which someone always does. I have now seen two new episodes of Glee and Modern Family. Both of which made my whole month. Now I go to leave on tuesday and what is it that I forget to pack in my bag? My USB Key and my Internet key. Both of which are now tucked away in my box at the transit house.

So right now I am writing this blog update on notepad and will update this to my blog when I have access to the internet again. Which could be a few weeks. I apologize. I am basically going to type up one huge blog entry and put dates on it so you all know when and what was going on. I apologize again for being a stupid head. Now.

This week I spent Monday and Tuesday in Ouaga and had fun with some wonderful people. I returned on tuesday and on weds morning I had a wonderful surprise. There was Sally!!! Sally is the lady who speaks mostly Moore and washes my laundry. I was so excited to see her. I needed laundry done really badly. I mean.. really badly. My pants were filthy. The only things that I wash are my underwear because supposedly some of the Burkinabe find that offensive. I can do that though. Although since my wieght loss has happened, I really need to buy more. The elastic kinda just rides up on me when I am riding my bike in a couple of pairs. Really very uncomfortable. Sorry TMI. Now she is there and not only does she clean my clothes, but no she asks for my shoes and sandals as well and proceeds to clean them. Now she asked me for 500 CFA to do this task and I gave her 800CFA which really is not enough. That is basically like 1.50 for her to wash my garments. Granted I supply the soap and water, but she is a miracle worker. I swear my clothes have never been so clean. Although I do miss the smell of fabric softener. On a funny side note, a guy returned back from America and literally we took turns smelling his clothes because they smelled like fabric softener. lol.

Now I was not able to go to school on this day, so I decided to work on my wall that I was painting. I finished the country of Burkina on my wall and let me tell you people, I was impressed. I then went to wash the pencil marks off of my wall and was not so impressed. The other color that my wall was basically washed right off. So I ended up just smearing the pencil marks. Then the colors brown and yellow that I bought, were both old and unusable, so I had to thrown those out. So what is a boy to do? I only have blue paint, which would look terrible on my dark green country. SO I write my other 22 stagiares names on the wall in terrible paint writing and literally throw paint at the wall with a paint brush. I am happy with it. It is not nearly the classical beauty I was hoping for, but it will do.

Now today is Friday Oct. 8.
Today I woke up and went to school to work in my lab and saw there was a meeting. I was glad that I noticed this and went about my day of eating at a restaurant and reading (Currently: Kissing Babies at the Piggly Wiggly, if your from a small town, definitly on a too read list. Alot of fun) then I went to my meeting. My meeting it turns out was to welcome all the teachers back and to go over everything for the year. I was glad that I saw the post on bulletin board. They brought me up three times. About me teaching informatique, how I was going to fix the cyber (which was news to me), and about how I was going to be a starting an Arts Club (because I told the Proviseur that day I was thinking about maybe doing he, he made the decision for me). I pretty much understood 60 percent of the meeting. Now it didn't help that I got bored during the meeting and zoned out during parts of it, but "Ca va allez." Afterwards I got up to leave and there was an after meeting welcome meal where I got half a chicken and felt like the protien god above sent that chicken just for me. It was delicious and fun to talk with some of the professeurs. Although there are 46 of them, so I don't know them all. It doesn't help they mostly all have very african names that are somewhat difficult for me to pronounce.


All and all, everything is going extremely well. I have to wait until next week to recieve my bed that I had commissioned and I also gave some fabric to a Tailor to have some clothes made. Needless to say, I am very excited and have alot to look forward too.

Saturday October 9th
My fallen Compatriots...

I have to also report sadly that I have had two of my fellow Secondary Education stagiares Medically Seperate from the Peace Corps. This is sad news and it is hard to hear. These are people who I spent 2-3 months training with, working with, and learning with. It is sad for me to say that they have departed. They both would have made wonderful Peace COrps volunteers.

MONDAY OCTOBER 11TH
So today was just an average burkinabe day. I went to school at 10 and worked until noon. I went to lunch at the restaurant where I eat everyday. I had a high point where my coke glass fell off the table, but the good news is that I caught it with my lap and glass didn't break. But the Burkinabe had a good chuckle at my coke filled lap. Too make matters a little worse, I went to the water company to pay my bill which was only 1,500CFA. I was happy to pay such a low amount, until I got there to pay the bill and it was 8,000CFA. I look at my receipt and it is because apparently no one had payed the water bill since June, so I was paying for june-sept. I was not the happiest camper when I received this news, but took it with a grain of salt. Ca va allez!

I went to the Marche today and met some people from France and had a semi conversation with them. This is only because I passed them 4 times in the marche and have seen them around town about 3 times. So I introduced myself and they seemed rather nice, but not interested in anything more than a hello. Which is fine with me, I can say that I made an effort. I also realized that I could not find the tailor that I gave my clothe too. I am supposed to pick it up in the next week, so I am going to have the effort of trying to find this one tailor in the marche. Think of the Marche like a big flea market. That will help you understand why I am having problems finding him. I will find him eventually.

I did find someone today to buy meat from. Now I claimed that I would be buying meat in Burkina Faso and I would still be eating it. I am not scared of a little mess, I am literally going to be eating my words tonight. I mean, I bought meat and literally it was crawling with flies, it was red, and they had it seperated out in little piles. Not to mention there was a just a huge slab of watever you were buying sitting on the table. Now I am trying to be bien integre, but it was a little off color for me still. I bought the beef instead of the mutton and I am going to try to create tacos tonight I think. There is a recipe for tortillas in the book and I figure if I cook the meet in slices and use seasoning, what the hell. It could be delicious... or disastrous. Will update...

IT was delicious. Well mostly. Now I won't lie, I almost lost all hope and was going to give up, because as I am tearing the meat off of the bone, I am noticing a part on the meat that was blueish-green, that my neighbor assured me was ok, and also while I was breaking it apart what do I get, but a handful of blood from the cow. Now granted, I know cows have blood, but I was not expecting to get a nice big covering of it in my hand when I broke a little of the bone apart, but Ca la vie. Now I cooked the beef with onions and made homemade tortillas, that actually turned out to be about pita bread texture instead of tortillas, but all in all, I was very happy with the meal. The seasoning I think is what made the meal though. So basically, I realized that I can do not have to be a vegetarian chef in Burkina Faso, now Trent's Cooking with meat!

Sunday oct. 17

WHAT A WEEKEND!!! So Friday night I had some of my neighbors Mike and Emma P. come in to town to see me. I made tuna pasta with the last of my cheese sauce from Americaland. :( But it was well worth it to see thier faces light up in delight. We watched Eclipse on my labtop and went to sleep. The next day I had Kait and David come up and see me. Both of them have completed thier Peace Corps service and are working in Burkina. Kait is only working until November for site development with the Peace Corps and David is working at the Embassy in some important job. Something to think about. It was cool hanging out with volunteers and sharing stories with people who are done with service, a year into service, and me being the newbie. We at first thought we would go to the pool in Kaya, and then we looked at the pool and the water was green. Now I did not have a problem with this until someone brought up shisto and then I was out. lol. So we went and ate at my favorite restaurant, went to the marche, then hung out at a bar. I couldn't drink but it was fun passing stories around. That and Mike paid one of the shoe shining boys to wash his feet, which was hilarious. After this we came back my place and we cooked some pasta with tomato sauce, which was great. We watched movies, they drank wine, and we smoked some hookah. Minty fresh.

*hookah is flavored tobacco not drugs it doesn't contain the chemicals that smoke does and you don't get addicted to it. Don't worry I'm not becoming a smoker, just fun on occasion... aka every 4 months or so. Research on the internet if you are interested.

This morning everyone left, but not before lovely Kait gave me back my internet key. I was super stoked. That and I got to trade movies and music with people which is always fun. Its like a digital trading post.
Well I am tired and am going to enjoy some internet time. I hope this will please you all and I will post more later. BYE!!!

Loves and kisses.
Trent

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the update. I love reading your blog. So glad you had company. You crack me up. Although I dont think I'll eat your cooking or hire you paint a mural Ill still let you teach me computer. Love you, Grandma T

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  2. i agree 100% with grandma on this one

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