Rehabilitation Project At My Village Health Clinic

Greetings from Burkina! Life here is going well as I am closing in on my final months

of Peace Corps service. I cannot believe that my two years will be over in December!

.Time has flown by and I am finally at the point of contemplating my final in village

project. My village health clinic and my head nurse have been so great to me over

the last two years that I wanted to fulfill one last funding wish before I leave. Since

arriving at my site in December 2010 my head nurse and clinic staff have been

talking about needing new mattresses for our hospitalization beds and a new

outdoor hangar for holding educational sessions, demonstrations and nutritional

consultations with young mothers. After working together for two years and seeing

the inadequacy of the hangar and the unsanitary condition of the mattresses I

approached my head nurse to plan out and budget one final project – to rehabilitate

the clinic that has taught me so much over the last two years.

The overall project will consist of purchasing 15 new plastic coated mattresses, a

new plastic coated birthing table and enlarging our existing hangar. I have added

pictures below to show the current state of the materials and I hope it is obvious

how necessary it is that the clinic replaces these deteriorating items. There are

not enough mattresses to cover all of the beds and the existing mattresses are in

such worn condition that patients often do not wish to use them. Replacing the

mattresses would not only improve the quality of care at the clinic but it would

improve the overall sanitation of the facilities. The current mats are incredibly

unhygienic with all of the exposed foam and the number of bodily fluids passed by

extremely sick, elderly or young patients. In addition they are impossible to wash,

making sanitation standards impossible to enforce at the clinic. New mattresses

would give our patients a more comfortable place to recover and increase the level

of hygiene and sanitation at the clinic.

Baby sick with serious malaria at the clinic. The mattress is so destroyed that the parents had to place him on fabric from home so that he could comfortably sleep. You can see the tear on the right hand side where the foam is busting out of the plastic covering and all of the small cracks throughout the mattress. 

Unfit mattresses in the hospitalization ward at the clinic. Both have rips and foam exposed. There are also several beds without mattresses at all, forcing patients to sleep on the ground.  

The birthing table in the maternity building is in the same condition as the

mattresses and desperately needs to be replaced. The exposed foam is extremely

unhygienic as it can retain all of the fluids present during birth and transmit

infections from woman to woman. There are very few comforts available for

a woman giving birth in village, but a clean and comfortable birthing table is

something that can be provided. This new table will help to ensure the health and

safety of the roughly 500 women who give birth at our maternity each year.

Current birthing table at the maternity.

Old birthing table at the maternity.

Finally, the enlargement of the hangar is necessary to improve working conditions

and ensure that more community members benefit from important educational

session on topics like nutrition, hand washing and malaria. The current structure

cannot accommodate all of the community members who attend our weekly

nutritional consultations and educational sessions. Most women are left standing

outside of the hangar, out of earshot and in the sun. Enlarging the hangar will allow

us to better serve our growing population while providing an improved working

space for the clinic staff.

The outdoor hangar during an educational session on malnutrition.  You can see that the hangar is so crowded that most women are forced to stand at the edges our outside the hangar. This was a relatively small gathering compared to our weekly nutritional consultations, so you can imagine the insufficiency of the hangar compared to the size of our audience. 

The empty hangar - too small to hold the approximately 100 women who have every Friday for nutritional consultations. 

I know so many of you have already supported me in more ways than one, but this

project is not only for me but for the over 6000 inhabitants of my village. I left home

almost two years ago to experience health care from the village perspective in this

little know West African country. This clinic has taught me more about international

health than I can ever repay, but this project is a great starting point. If you are able,

please donate to my rehabilitation project so that together we can improve the

health and quality of life for my friends and neighbors here in Burkina. To donate

you can click on the link below or you can search for my project (# 686-228) on the

Peace Corps website. All donations are tax deductible.

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-228

My hope is that I can raise the necessary $2,475.56 by the end of August so that

we will be able to start work in village in September. I have a limited time frame

to complete this project as it must be completed by the time I finish my service in

December. This project will benefit my village for years to come, so please donate

anything you can! Again, I cannot thank everyone enough for your continued

thoughts and support. I would not have made it through these last two years

without my amazing network of family and friends back in the States. Thank you

from the bottom of my heart and I can’t wait to send out pictures of the final product

post rehabilitation!!

Merci Beaucoup!!

Anna

PS: If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me via email

(awcallaghan@gmail.com) or Facebook

Stomp Out Malaria

April was malaria month with World Malaria Day falling on April 25^th. In preparation for this day and in honor of malaria month I planned several activities to help interrupt the transmission of the disease within my village. Many of you probably do not know a lot about malaria, as it is thankfully a disease of the past in the US, so let me start by explaining a bit about the disease and its many consequences.

Malaria is caused by a parasite, called Plasmodium, which infects the bloodstream and liver of its human hosts. This parasite is passed from person to person by the female anopheles mosquito. There are several different species of Plasmodium, but Plasmodium falciparum is most prevalent in Burkina and in Africa in general.

Most people believe that you catch malaria from the bite of a mosquito. This is correct, however it is not the mosquito that causes the disease; it simply passes the parasite from an infected person to a non-infected person. Malaria is a human disease that can survive within the gut of a mosquito allowing it to be transmitted from one person’s blood stream to another through the subcutaneous bite of a mosquito. This is called vector transmission, with the mosquito playing the role of the vector. The upside of vector transmission is that if you eliminate the vector you eliminate the disease. This seems simple, but malaria still plagues most of the developing world, infecting over 200 million people per year worldwide and killing about 650,000.

Eliminating the vector, the anopheles mosquito, is more difficult than it sounds. It would take wide scale pesticide use, as was done back in the 1940-1960 in the US. Because of its negative environmental effects, this type of widespread spraying will never be allowed again, even in countries outside the US. However, it is believed that this pesticide use is the reason why the US has been able to progress and develop as it has and why we are not plagued by vector borne disease like the rest of the world. Since vector removal is not an option for Burkina, we must instead focus on interrupting the transmission of malaria and eliminating the disease from the human population (so the vector no longer has anything to transmit).

There are several methods available to interrupt the transmission of the disease, even in a resource poor country. The major form of prevention available in Burkina is the use of treated bed nets. In the past this was a cost prohibitive solution, as a mosquito net could run someone between $8-10, not feasible for a population living dollar to dollar. However, now there is fairly widespread bed net coverage due to several distribution campaigns led by international organizations such as the WHO and UNICEF. This is just the tip of the solution. Even though distributing bed nets alleviates the cost burden on the Burkina population it only provides the necessary materials, not the training/education necessary on why and how to correctly use them.  So, even though many people have the necessary bed nets to protect themselves, they do not use them, or use them correctly (for example, some use them as blankets). To help with this problem one of our village midwives and I decided to go door-to-door to verify whether people in our village were actually using their nets. We have currently only completed about ten households, or about 100 people, but the project is proving a success even in its infancy. The project combines data collection on bed net usage within our village, demonstrations on correct usage and educational sessions on how the disease is transmitted and different strategies for prevention. In addition, I am taking photos of those villagers who already have their nets hung correctly and posting them at the health clinic. This was an idea that I came up with last year, however this is the first chance I’ve had to implement it. These photos will hopefully act as inspiration as well as instruction to all the patients passing in and out of the clinic.

In addition to bed net usage, there are several other possible prevention methods that can be easily applied in village. One example is Neem cream – an anti-mosquito cream/lotion that is made with the leaves of the Neem tree, which is prevalent throughout Burkina. Mosquito repellent and pesticide is often too expensive for villagers to buy, so Neem cream is a great low cost alternative. It is made by first boiling the Neem leaves to extract their natural mosquito repellent. Then you combine the Neem water with Shea butter and soap until it becomes a thick pomade that can be applied to the skin like a lotion each night. Neem cream is a great option because it is cost effective (in total it costs a little over a dollar to make a batch). In addition, the materials and resources can all be found in village. It is both a malaria prevention method and is good for the skin. I have done Neem cream demonstrations with many different groups within my village, but most recently I taught a group of female community educators how to make it. My hope is that they will go out and teach their friends and neighbors how to make it and promote its use as a malaria prevention method. In addition, there is a great opportunity for women/villagers to generate income making Neem cream and selling it in our village market.

This is just an introduction to malaria prevention in Burkina Faso and my projects to reduce malaria in village. I will have more stories to come, as the fight against malaria in my village is a year round effort. I anticipate that through these projects we can reduce the rate of malaria transmission this rainy season. My hope is that the educational sessions we have already done and the educational stories (story boards that depict prevention methods and lessons about malaria) that I have hung at the clinic will help to reduce the number of malaria cases at least within the most vulnerable groups – pregnant women and children under 5.

Malaria is not often fatal, but it is most dangerous for these vulnerable groups. In addition to death, malaria can cause pregnant women to miscarry and can cause several complications or defects during the pregnancy. There are two different severities of malaria infections – simple and grave. Simple malaria has minor symptoms and can be dealt with quickly through the use of oral drugs. Grave malaria is more complicated, with severe symptoms such as convulsions, high fever and brown urine and must be treated with intravenous medication. Right after the rainy season when malaria infection is at its highest, there can be upwards of 50 malaria cases at the clinic each day. If each person requires hospitalization and intravenous fluids, the overcrowding can be enormous.

For Burkina Faso, malaria prevention is the number one health priority. We have more malaria cases than HIV, but the emphasis is still put on HIV prevention above malaria. This is because most Burkinabe accept malaria as a normal part of life. Changing this mindset is one of the most important steps we can take toward malaria eradication. It’s a slow process, but as the education and literacy rates go up, the transmission rates will drop. As people become aware and better understand how to protect themselves the malaria rates in Burkina Faso will diminish as well. 

Football (soccer) - The Bane of My Existence

I have never liked soccer - I quit playing as a child and as an adult I find
it painful to watch on TV. The only time I have ever enjoyed watching a
game is when my younger sister is tearing up the field or the
occasional World Cup match. However, as soon as I accepted my
invitation to serve in Burkina I realized soccer would be a consistent part of my life.
It became a daily part of my life this past Christmas when my sister
graciously donated a soccer ball to the kids in my family. I thought I
knew what I was getting into...but boy was I wrong! I instead have
inflicted a daily migraine on myself that is the soccer ball. I
decided when my family brought the ball that I would be responsible
for its survival. The last time I gave my village family a ball (I
brought back a small ball from Ireland) to do with as they wanted, it
ended up not just deflated but completely ripped apart in less than 24
hours. So, I made the decision that I would keep the ball and the kids could
check it in and out like a library book. I thought that this was the
best way to keep the peace and ensure that the ball made it past New
Years. Every day since, sometimes starting at 6:30am, I have children
banging on my door asking for the ball. Recently they have discovered
that if they stand under my bedroom window and scream my name, it will
wake me up as the window sits right over the head of my bed. Needless
to say the ball has turned me into a grouch. They seem to have learned
that they will not get the ball until I come back from work in the
early afternoon, but there are still mornings I wake up cursing that soccer
ball.

When I do give the ball out in the afternoon, it usually goes to a
young boy. I constantly go on my tirade about sharing the ball,
playing nicely together and including the young children and girls.
However, even though I have given my speech about a hundred times, no
one seems to understand. Every time I give the ball
out, it somehow ends up going to a gang of older boys in the
neighborhood. When this happens I have every young kid in my family
coming up to me and repeatedly asking for the ball. At first this
annoyed me - obviously I didn't have the ball, I gave
it to the other kids - and then I realized that they weren't asking me
for the ball but asking me to get the ball for them. So every once in
a while I kept the ball back from the older kids and held a supervised game
in the evening with only the girls and little kids. The first time
this happened it went great. Everyone but the boys were happy, because
they think the ball is their given right. They sat on the
edges of the game and kept trying to weasel their way in. This ball
has amped up my "Grouch" factor. I yell at the boys for jumping in my
baby game, I scream at the gang of older boys for taking the ball away
from my kids, I scold the little kids for throwing rocks at the other kids when
they get frustrated (yes, they stone their opponents and get indignant
when I make them stop) and I become totally frustrated when I've been asked for the ball
20 times in one hour. Being the soccer police is driving me nuts.
Ensuring that everyone gets a chance with the ball and that no one is
taking advantage of having the soccer ball is a full time job. I am sure I have made
enemies and friends as I play god with the ball, but I cannot see
any other way to handle this situation. There are times when I am denying the ball to
make a point and I feel awful because I am denying these kids their
one real toy, but I also have to maintain some semblance of control in
order to keep my sanity and the ball in one piece. The ball already is
ruined (in the first two weeks) because the kids pulled the plastic
nub out of the pump hole, but I am trying to keep it going for as long
as possible before retiring it and asking my family to send another. 

And at that point we will have come full circle and it will start all over again.
 But sometimes when everything is going right, the look
of joy on my little shoeless children when they get to kick the ball
is pretty good ... I guess soccer isn't so bad after all.

Top Chef Burkina

As most of you may know I love to cook. In this way I take after my father. Although I have not yet attained his level of expertise, I am constantly trying new recipes - even in Africa. Besides the fact that I find cooking a stress reliever, I cook for myself while here for my own health and sanity (I am not positive if it’s safe to eat food cooked by others and it keeps me from going crazy always eating food I am not interested in). With the help of the Peace Corps Cookbook, foodnetwork.com and williamsonoma.com I am continually trying to find new and delicious foods that I can cook in my anti-kitchen, with little or no ingredients and no refrigeration. As some of you may have seen on Facebook, I have already mastered homemade bagels in a PC Dutch Oven (a large pot with three upturned empty tin cans sitting on a bed of sand = convection oven). They are a delicious taste of normality, especially when I smear them with my no-refrigeration fake cream cheese…doesn’t that sound good? After 13 months in West Africa it is actually the best thing ever! I make salad and pasta dishes and even sometimes a curry, but I rarely venture into the meat realm. My life here has been almost completely vegetarian and sometimes even vegan, mainly because I don’t trust village meat and I am not sure how I would cook it. This dilemma arose on the first weekend in November (2011) during my second Tabaski celebration in Burkina. On Tabaski everyone slaughters a sheep to commemorate Abraham almost killing his son for God, so needless to say there is a lot of meat around. My family, very generously, gave me a chunk of “ram”, which I had to quickly learn how to cook. With an unidentifiable cut of meat and only a gas burner to cook with I had to figure out what I was going to do with my ram. With a little help from my dad I was able to braise my sheep into an edible concoction, even minus a few ingredients. It was hard to believe that I had made something fairly sophisticated on my little stove top, but it just goes to show that good food doesn’t require a lot of fancy ingredients and good cooking only requires time, patience and a willingness to eat anything (all of which are skills I learned in the Peace Corps). Still, I can’t wait till I get back to the states to cook again! But until then, keep your eye out for more Top Chef Burkina posts!

Mouse Trap, Baby Weighing and Cement - 12 Hours in the Life of PCV Lene Yoda Anna

It all started at about 11pm on October 6^th. I was attempting to fall asleep, which wasn’t really working, when I hear a loud snap. I couldn’t tell exactly what had caused the noise, but I got a little freaked – you know, weird noises when you’re living alone in the middle of nowhere…not great. So I am lying in bed trying not to freak out when all of a sudden I hear a short tinny banging sound. It starts and stops for a few minutes and I finally figure out what it is  - My Mouse! I have had a mouse wreaking havoc on my house for the last few months, but I finally got mouse traps sent from the US and put one out to catch the little bugger the other night. Of course the first attempt didn’t work and the mouse got all of the peanut butter off of the trap without getting caught. I was so frustrated that I just left the trap on the floor without anything on it – I was sure I was never going to get rid of this mouse. So I realized that the snap I heard last night was the mouse caught in the trap and the banging was the mouse trying anything to get out of the trap. I figured if I let it writhe a bit that it would finally get tired and stop. But the banging just kept getting closer and closer to my bed, so that when I shone my headlamp out into my room I could see it bouncing towards me. It was caught with a front quarter of its body stuck in the trap keeping it mobile but slow. It was at this point that I realized I needed to deal with this situation or I would never be able to sleep. By the time I built up the courage to walk past its bouncing form in my narrow doorway I contrived a plan to catch it. I am not very good with creepy, crawly animals but I built up my courage, grabbed my broom and dustbin and attempted to sweep it up and into a bag. Of course it got a little too close to me and I dropped the dustpan, turning the mouse right side up so it could scamper away. I chased it and finally caught the end of the trap. Mustering all of my courage I picked up the trap, with the mouse dangling from it, and quickly dropped it in a bag. I hung the bag up for the night so that the mouse couldn’t get out, but it still was a little creepy when the bag would occasionally rustle in the dark. After my ordeal my adrenaline was pumping and it took me a while to get back to sleep. 

When my alarm finally went off I felt like I had hardly slept. I had to be up early because I was planning an event at the CSPS (clinic) that was to take place during our biweekly baby weighing and I needed to be there early enough to prep before all of the women arrived. My project for the day was to do a demonstration to show the proper use of a mosquito net and alternative ways to hang it. My plan was to make poles (wood cemented into large cans) that could hold up the mosquito net allowing people to hang it wherever they wanted, inside or outside. The objective was to demonstrate that there should be no excuse as to why they cannot use their mosquito nets such as:  we have no way to attach it to our bed or we can’t hang it outside as it is too hot to sleep inside. So my plan was to make these poles, demonstrate how to hang the net, how to correctly use it and then turn the demonstration into a discussion on other malaria prevention methods. 

 I got to the CSPS early and sought out the Major to find the last minute materials I needed, but he was busy trying to get a pregnant woman evacuated to the district hospital for a C-section. I waited around for an hour before finally seeing the wood the major had had cut for me. As it turned out the wood was too thick and heavy to be held in the cans I had collected.  With only the packed sand I had put in the cans they would fall over taking the net with them. In addition the wood was too long and the four pieces were not of equal length. After we found someone to cut them down for me the major sent our chauffeur to get cement so we could better ground the poles into the cans. Throughout all of this troubleshooting I was running back and forth to help with baby weighing. As of 8:45 the village midwife had not arrived to start weighing babies and the women were getting antsy and starting to leave. The major became very concerned, because if the women didn’t stay to get their baby’s weighed then they wouldn’t stay to get their kids vaccinated either, which always takes place together. Because we are short handed at the clinic right now (we are down two out of four nurses) no one had time to go and start the weighing so they sent me…to do it alone! There I was surrounded by angry, frustrated women with their tired and cranky babies.  They were yelling at me in Bissa, laughing at how I pronounced their names and upset by how long it was taking me to fill in all the paperwork!  I felt overwhelmed and frustrated. Eventually the village midwife showed up and helped me diffuse the tension, but by that time I had to leave to go help the chauffeur cement the poles. While letting them dry I went back to baby weighing as there were still many women waiting for their turn. We finally finished around noon after weighing 92 babies in all. A successful morning I would say even though I didn’t get to do my demonstration. Oh well, it will just have to wait for another day – probably tomorrow. By the time I got back to the clinic everyone was still running around trying to deal with patients, so I took on the responsibility of registering the malnourished children we identified during weighing. We had two severely malnourished kids and two moderately malnourished who all walked away with packs of Plumpy Nut. I tried to give them the speech to make sure that the packs were not wasted and actually went to rehabilitating the malnourished children – we’ll see what happens when they return next month. So, after a long morning I finally headed out, leaving my poles at the clinic to dry. A quick trip to the market and then finally home to eat and nap, thus ending my 12+ hours of chaos. Hopefully tomorrow will be less hectic!

The Electricity Saga

So, when I accepted my assignment to come to Burkina Faso as a community health volunteer I knew that the amenities would be slim. I had prepared myself to live in the most basic circumstances for the next two years of my life – most likely without running water, electricity or internet. However, when I got my site assignment my plans changed.  I found I was going to one of the few villages wired for electricity. What luck! What chance! Actually, I requested it if at all possible (knowing myself too well) but I didn’t actually think Peace Corps would listen! So here I was, moving to a village with electricity and bound and determined to get it set up as soon as possible. Before the former volunteer left in early December I asked her to put our house on the list to be “hooked up”. I thought I was being so proactive. There would definitely be electricity in the house before I moved in on December 17^th. I had already been in the country long enough to be a little skeptical about a time frame for anything to happen, but I hadn’t been here long enough to know to NEVER hold my breath. So I got to site and through the emotional torrent that is your first few days I soon realized that there was in fact no electricity in the house (not hard to catch once I got out of bed long enough to finally notice I needed my headlamp). But there was hope. The power lines were already strung all around the village and there was an electrical pole already directly across the dirt road from my house. So to me it appeared that things were already halfway done and I would just need to edge toward the end product – electricity in MY home. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I know I can live without electricity; my first two months in training assured me of that. I was one of the select 6 of my training group of 31 to be placed with a village homestay family. So practically from the word “GO” I got to experience village life, and you know what, I survived it. So I figured that if I could live two months like that, then I could live the next two years the same way. However, when electricity is an option and it is literally staring you in the face from across the road, all I can say is that you want it, bad! So the next 10 months became my electricity saga, my attempt to try and get my American demands to turn into Burkinabe actions. Not an easy task.

As my family can attest, I am a girl who knows how to get what she wants. I can be persuasive, argumentative, persistent as hell and probably downright annoying – but I usually achieve my ends. I know this makes me sound like some kind of manipulative psychopath, but for the most part this trait has been used to get an unfair grade changed or stay on someone’s good side, nothing crazy! But this should also explain why I approached my electricity dilemma with such confidence. I was certain that I would get what I wanted and fast. Oh Anna, you are not in Kansas anymore. 

As a good volunteer I employed the help of my counterpart, my Major, or the head nurse at my clinic. Even though I was confident, I knew that two heads are better than one and that I would probably need help with the translation (god knows they didn’t teach us electrical installation vocabulary during French class in high school). So I walked into the mayor’s office with my Major shortly after arriving at site and asked when the electricity would be available in my house. It started off as a conversation with one guy, that then included another, and then another until one of them bluntly told my Major that it was just not possible. You can imagine my shock. Not possible? What do you mean not possible? One thing that you do not tell an American is that something is not possible. Everything is possible, the real question is how much will it cost? Again, my American brain was still too in control. My mystery mayor’s office guy told me that the reason they couldn’t connect my house to the electrical grid was that the pole was too far away from my house. I almost laughed out loud, because my house is about 15 yards from the aforementioned pole. In addition, because of the “road” (dirt path to be more precise) in between my house and the existing pole another pole would have to be put in so that the wires would be high enough for a car to pass under. Ok, so I see a ray of hope – all we need is another pole and then we are back in business. So my Major, smart man that he is, asks how much it would be for me to pay to put in the extra pole. Again my mayor’s office guy says that it is not possible. What is with this guy and this phrase? Does he not know how much he is pissing me off? So I ask why is it not possible? I have to wait until they (the state, electrical company, the powers that be…I don’t really know) come and do the grid extension and put in more poles. When will this happen? Within the next two month. So now I am optimistic. I have a time frame and my “not possible” turned into a “wait a while”, so I was determined to be patient. Good thing I didn’t start holding my breath!

Low and behold, a few months later the poles were still not installed. Every time I went into the Mayor’s office to ask about the ETA on the pole extension I would get a vague brush off – in a few months, in a matter of weeks, soon. After 4 months at site I decided to try another tactic. My boss, the head of the Peace Corps health program and a very powerful woman in Burkina in her own right (she’s a doctor and married to the 4^th most powerful man in Burkina), was coming to conduct her initial site visit, which she does with every new health volunteer during their first few months at site. My plan was to use her influence to push the process along. I knew that they may not listen to me but they would probably respond to her. And Oh did they respond to her. Almost every public official seemed scared of her and ready to do anything she asked, including my Major. She put the responsibility on his shoulders to get my electricity situation figured out and he took that seriously. As soon as she left he started working on my behalf to get this done. 

By the time I got back from my first round of training and my family vacation in Ireland ( June 2011) my Major had discussed the electricity matter with my family and got a plan in the works. The plan was that the village would finally let us pay to put in our own pole on our side of the road. Since the pole would service our whole family compound we split the cost of installation 50/50, me paying half and the family taking care of the other half. I paid my family for my share and let them deal with the details of getting it done. For the next few months I was in and out of site, mainly going to Ouaga to plan the Peace Corps 50^th Anniversary Fair. Each time I came back a new small step was accomplished. First the hole for the pole was dug, then the pole arrived, then the small cement block house for the electrical counter was built, then the pole was up and finally the wires were strung and the counter installed. By the time all of this happened it was early September. The last step would have been to install all of the internal fixtures in my house, but unfortunately my measly monthly salary did not allow me the funds to accomplish that last step before I had to leave for the bike tour and the fair. When I finally got back to site it was early October, almost 10 months after I had started this process, and I was determined to get everything installed and hooked up ASAP – I had waited long enough for my electricity! So within days of getting back to site I bought all of the necessary materials, had the Major contact the electrician and got the installation scheduled. The “electrician” came on Sunday morning, October 2^nd at 9:30am and was done by 1:30pm. When that first light flickered on and my surge protector lit up it was one of the most exciting moments I’ve had in village since arriving. It has been a little hard to tear myself away from my electricity during this first week but the novelty will wear off soon. Life will go back to normal but with the added convenience of a light at night, a fan during hot season and an outlet to charge my electronics (which keep me sane). I know, I am no longer a true “roughing it” volunteer, but I still think I get some credit for moving to West Africa. Enjoy those amenities people! They are a privilege and you really do miss them when they are gone! But for now, I am so glad to have electricity back in my life!

Catch-Up

Ok, so let’s play catch up. I am not sure if everyone is on the same page with my life here in Burkina so I will begin with the background information so that you can understand where and how I am living!

I am currently a resident of Burkina Faso, West Africa. Many of you probably had never heard this name before I left a year ago, and many may still not know anything about the country. So, let me enlighten you. Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in Francophone, sub-Saharan, West Africa. To give you a better idea without a map, Burkina is north of Ghana, Togo, Benin and Cote d’Ivoire, southeast of Mali and southwest of Niger. It is a relatively unknown country because it is peaceful, impoverished and has virtually nothing that the outside world would want (diamonds, gold, oil, etc.). Unfortunately in the US people tend to only know those African countries who make the news – those in conflict, those with natural resources and those with wealth (also unfortunately, in Africa those seem to go hand in hand). However what Burkina lacks in resources it makes up for in other ways. It is one of the most stable countries on the continent (exception, last spring) and it has one of the most accepting populations of different religions and ethnicities. Burkina has natural resources, including mangoes and cotton (Burkina is actually the largest cotton producer in West Africa), however they have not quite figured out how to make these exports profitable for the country. So in the mean time the democratically elected government is still reliant on foreign aid from Europe and the US. 

Most of the country is arid with the exception of the southwest, which is more tropical like its neighboring coastal countries. Burkina can be very hot and dry, but the northern Sahel region is the most affected where water can be scarce and temperatures during our hot season can go well over 120°F. Burkina is known for its road system, made possible by our centrally located capital. Unlike coastal countries whose major cities/capital is often on the water, Ouagadougou (Burkina’s Capital city) is located in the center of the county. Meaning – all roads lead to Ouaga. This principle has created a fairly extensive road network across the entire country, linking almost all inhabited regions with our major city. Thus Burkina’s location and widespread road system makes it a highly trafficked country for goods and people going from the coast inland and vice versa. 

Burkina is dominated mainly by the Mossi ethnicity(60% of the population), however there are several other ethnicities regionally spaced throughout the country.

Now back to me. I live in the Bissa region and with people of the Bissa ethnicity (and guess what, they speak Bissa!). I cannot put the exact name of my village here for security reasons, but I am 45km west of Tenkodogo, the capitol of the Centre-East region. This puts my village 160km southeast of Ouaga. It is a large village, with a central population of 6,000 and an overall population of 12,000. My village is the seat of the commune, meaning that we have all of the administrative offices including the mayor that service the surrounding villages within our village center. My village has been afforded several luxuries that are uncommon in village life because of powerful former residents. For example, electricity has been strung to my village even though we are 5k inland from the national road and there are many villages with better access to the power lines that have none. We have a large market every three days which is attended by practically everyone in the commune. For my work I am partnered with the village health clinic (or CSPS). My CSPS is fairly nice, set back on a walled in property across from the market. The CSPS grounds house the clinic, the maternity, the pharmacy, and houses for the staff. We currently have three nurses at the clinic, including the Major (or head nurse), and a nurse-midwife and village midwife at the maternity. Although my CSPS is fairly well staffed (as far as village clinics go), 4 registered nurses for 12,000 people is not a lot – leaving the staff overworked and tired. I help out in any way I can, often filling out paperwork and keeping records as well as helping with daily maternity services such as baby weighing and community vaccination campaigns. With the start of the New Year I will hopefully have a few projects of my own off the ground, which I will update you on later. 

 Unlike the other CSPS staff, I do not live on the CSPS grounds. Instead, I live with a family in a neighborhood about 1km from the center of the village and the CSPS. Families here live in compounds, with immediate family houses clustered around a central communal courtyard. I live at the edge of a family compound containing about 30 people. My house is exactly the same as the others in the compound, a two room cement block house with a tin roof, except that my house is for only me, whereas all the other houses are for families. Sometime one two room house will be for a single family but with multiple wives, making it even tighter than usual! The good thing is that most of life here is spent outside (too hot in what becomes a cement oven!), so overcrowding indoors is really only an issues during the rainy season. My two room house is very comfortable – one room is my bedroom and the other is a kitchen/living room. I have a small private courtyard with a door that locks, which makes doing chores like my laundry much more bearable as I can toil in peace. I just got electricity in my house, although I lived without it for my first year in country (the story of my electricity saga to come). When my house is finally clean I will post pictures (for now there are old ones posted on my Facebook). Although you may not think it is much to look at, I spruced it up as best as I could and it has now become home. 

I think that is it on the details front. Let me know if you have any questions and hopefully things will continue to get pieced together as my posts continue. Until then, welcome to my life in Burkina Faso!