Segou

I went to Mali last weekend to meet with a friend/colleague from Vancouver who is working on a nutrition project in rural Mali. I was thrilled when she suggested we meet in Segou – I was ready to see a familiar, friendly, and female face!

Segou was lovely. It’s a small, sleepy town along the Niger River, with a few good restaurants and some beautiful crafts for sale. Nicole and I took advantage of all the shops in close proximity and bought pottery, baskets, and textiles. My bag was quite heavy on the return to Burkina! We visited a workshop where the artists make cotton cloth and paint it with a mixture of clay, mud, soap, or medicinal plants. The traditional designs are absolutely breathtaking. We watched the artists working and I bought one Bogolon cloth, and one Gala (made from the leaves of the indigo tree).

Nicole and I traded stories from the field and life in Mali/Burkina, enjoyed pizza and cold beer at a restaurant overlooking the river, and relished the hot shower, air conditioning, and comfortable bed in the hotel room. We also watched parts of the World Cup in real time. Nicole was in East Africa recently to teach a short course in nutrition and flew through Nairobi on the return. She beamed as she opened her bag and said that she had brought me a gift: Kenyan coffee! When I thanked her she laughed and said that she knew Pacific Northwesterner appreciation of good coffee.

The bus to and from Segou was a trip in and of itself: 12 hours on Friday, and 9 hours on the return. It was a classic African travel adventure: the bus broke down not 15 minutes outside of Bobo and we sat by the road for 1.5 hours and on the return, I bought a ticket only to discover the bus was full. I had to hurry via taxi to another bus company, which was also overbooked (with people sitting in the aisles) so I stood for the first few minutes until a man offered me his seat. I had to laugh; it was all too comical. Then, that bus hit another vehicle in Segou and, in the process, dislodged the front door, so we rode for 8 hours with the front door open. Fortunately, no one was injured in the incident and we returned to Bobo, if not quickly, safely. I had the company of Nelson Mandela’s 600-page autobiography and a nice French woman sitting next to me. I liked my seatmate immediately when she got our tickets reimbursed by the first bus company and then offered to watch my bag on pit stops along the road; she really won me over when, about 6 hours into the trip, she told me that I spoke French well.

On Monday I took the early (6:15 am) bus back to Orodara and had a very long day at the office upon my return. The field entire team refused to work that day (for the third time), so we suspended the field activities while we “reorganize” the survey. We started contacting people on our wait list and have begun training a new team already. It’s not easy, and it’s discouraging, but it’s an opportunity to learn from the previous experience and try to make the second attempt run more efficiently (easier said than done).

On a brighter note, while morale among the last survey team was low, the coordinating team’s sense of humor has anything but decreased. Apparently I have developed the habit of saying that I have a few questions by saying, “J’ai quelque des questions,” which is not pretty French. During a three hour-long meeting shortly after the survey team threatened to strike (for the second time), in an effort to lighten the mood, my senior collaborator wrapped up the meeting by saying that if we have questions to ask; only he phrased it, “As Shelby would say, ‘quelque des questions’,” and grinned at me while the other eight people burst out laughing. I asked, “What?!” and the doctor sitting next to me suppressed his laugh long enough to explain that it’s ‘quelque questions, not quelque des questions’.

I laughed with them and, feigning anger, demanded, “In the 9 months that I have been here, why has no one corrected me?” – which only made all of us laugh more. Since then, it’s become a source of many jokes among the staff, to the point where practically none of us can say a phrase starting with “quelque” without suppressing a laugh or, for the sake of a good laugh, inserting the “des” and letting everyone giggle. I find it highly amusing and have to wonder if the French woman on the Segou bus was just being charitable.

Mango season, again

With the hottest months of the year – March, April, May – comes mango season. During these three months sleeping at night is practically impossible, people’s tempers are shorter, and sitting still doesn’t stop one from sweating profusely. (The quantity of salt I consume regularly is half-amazing, half-sickening.) However, Orodara, located 80 km southwest of Bobo-Dioulasso, is the fruit basket of Burkina and is blessed with the sweetest oranges and mangoes selling for a dollar a bucket (20-some pieces of fruit a bucket) along the side of the road.

I’ve met one other foreigner in Orodara, an American Peace Corps volunteer who is finishing her second year of service. We’ve exchanged text messages since July and finally met in January, when I was in Orodara for meetings and she joined us for lunch. I liked her immediately. My collaborators seemed to enjoy learning, as much as we did, that we were from neighboring towns in California. She’s been kind and generous, sharing her knowledge of the area and customs, and validating that it’s okay to cry (especially when one’s colleagues are all Burkinabe males who respond to tears with, “You will not cry again!”) She introduced me to a friend of hers – a 50-year-old woman who made rice and peanut sauce lunch for us one day – and helped me furnish my house by taking me to the carpenter near her home.

Rainy season arrived in early May with a deluge of rain on a Friday night. On Saturday morning, the coordinating team left Orodara to travel to the village where the survey team was based. The road was washed out just 2 km from the village center, delaying our arrival for our weekly team meeting while we were on one side of the “river”, the team on the other. The rain stopped and we waited for the water to recede to a level safe enough to pass, about 30 minutes. Two hours later, there was not a trace of washout. Everything is becoming green again; the signs of life are refreshing. The sad, lone tree in front of my house has grown new leaves and is no longer so pathetic – it actually provides some shade for the guard so the garage isn’t the only respite from the sun.

Life here is pretty quiet (apart from my neighbors’ two small children, rooster, and puppy). I’m learning to appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it’s not here. I don’t have the internet installed at home, and the connection at the office is sporadic; it’s alternately frustrating and liberating. Occasionally, I feel lonely and wish to be able to contact family or friends via email or Skype; the lack of connection is especially difficult to accept at those times. I spend evenings and weekends reading and writing, and enjoying the solo time for these activities. It’s still too hot to contemplate any form of exercise other than launching myself into one of the pools in Bobo. My activity for the moment is walking into town and back, often carrying a bag of oranges or mangoes. I can ride home from the office on my bike in 5 minutes, so I come home for lunch around 1 in the afternoon and sometimes even take a nap before returning to work later in the afternoon. I’ve adapted to the local schedule and am think it may difficult to eventually re-adapt to quick lunch hours in the U.S.

My 32^nd birthday was a memorable one. The two medical officers for the project (one of whom is my neighbor) walked into the office that morning and wished me happy birthday and gave me the traditional Burkina festive greeting of four head bumps (akin to New Year’s). I baked Mexican chocolate cake (and even made frosting since I found powdered sugar in Bobo, and real butter in the best-stocked shop in Orodara) and brought it into the office to share with everyone, and invited the coordinating team to my house for spaghetti dinner that night.

One afternoon recently, the study physicians and I went to a party at the district health office, hosted in honor of the new physician in charge of the health district. It was a classic Burkina ceremony and party: speeches by important people recognizing all the important people in attendance (following protocol!), loud music, drinks, and grilled chicken. It was a nice time, and I recognized many people present. Even though solely work-related, I feel like I am finally getting to know more people here – in particular people like the nurses and physicians and administrative staff – and I appreciate their support of our project. I often see individuals zipping around town on their motos and they’ll always smile and wave when we see each other. They love to give me a bad time about riding my bike or walking around town – they call it “sport” and say, “Ah! You like to do sport!” even though I wouldn’t exactly consider it “sport” when I coast downhill on my bike en route to work or town.

The logistics coordinator/administrator walked into my office the other day and delivered an envelope addressed to “Mr. le Director, Projet ZINK, Orodara” which made me smile for the formality of the address and the assumption that “le director” was a man, as well as the all-caps zinc with a “k” and shortened version of our project name (which I quite like since, as far as I know, we’re the only zinc project in Orodara and I appreciate the conciseness of it). I turned the envelope over and saw that it was from the Kung Fu club of Orodara. (I didn’t know there was a Kung Fu club here, or that they knew of our existence.) Inside was a slip of paper with an invitation to their show and ceremony on Saturday. I asked the administrator to post the invitation in our common area and then I kept the envelope, simply because it makes me smile.