Coming to America

Hi, and I'm sorry it has been so long!  We've been busy opening up the Excellent English language and culture center.  We are happy to say that classes begin on August 10! 
 Also, I am preparing to visit the U.S.  I plan to be there August thru October, and while I'm there, I would love to speak and show pictures about what's going on in Burkina Faso.  If you can think of any opportunity where people would enjoy that, please let me know!  I already have one program scheduled for September at the library in Enon, Ohio. (I'm also bringing some traditional dress and artwork that you might want to take a look at!)
I will also be looking for some English materials to bring back to Burkina for Excellent English.  These would be things like picture and story books, easy readers, picture dictionaries or encyclopedias, short novels, cartoons or movies (especially with English subtitles), and grammar, writing, reading, vocabulary and spelling books.  If you have some that are still in good condition but you no longer need, I'd like to take a look at them.  Thanks in advance!
Hope to see some of you soon!

Karite

Karite is the little round fruit, green outside and sweet yellow inside, that hides a shiny brown nut used to make shea butter.  The riper the fruit, the sweeter and yellower the flesh inside.  I'm told that monkeys love karite and are very disliked by people who want a crop of the yummy fruit because monkeys can only tell which one is ripe by biting each and every one.

I thought the very ripe ones smelled a bit like saur kraut, but, of course, didn't taste like it.  It is possible to eat more than ten of these in one sitting!  Then what's left is a lot of brown seeds.  I think they make shea butter by drying, frying, and grinding the seeds.  Adama remembers a childhood game he played, in which each contestant chose his best seed (from all he had eaten!) and threw it at his opponent's seed in an attempt to crack the slippery round thing without getting his own seed cracked.   


When Adama went to buy some clothes recently, the shop keeper brought out a long traditional robe, called a boubou, that Muslim men wear when they go to pray.  He was like, "but that's Muslim." and the shopkeeper was like "You're not Muslim?"  He says, "No, I'm Christian."  The shopkeeper was so surprised.  Hardly a day goes by without someone being surprised that Adama isn't Muslim.  They say it's his beard that makes them think that way.  This is the month of Ramadan, when those who don't usually grow a beard, grow a beard; and those who don't usually wear a boubou, wear a boubou. 

Baby in Burkina 2

The baby is gaining lots of weight right now.  Women are quick to ask "Do you have enough milk?"  Yes; the credit might not be due any certain food, but the advice went that way.  The first miracle food was millet porridge; it is simple, good, and eaten in great quantity.  Then one day I found sesame seeds - about two kg of raw sesame seeds - washed and drying in the sun.  What were we going to do with all those sesame seeds?   Eat them, of course!  By the handful if we want to.  I've also enjoyed them on yogurt or fruit.

As far as prohibited items, I was told not to drink cold water, although that is a guideline I haven't followed.  Peanuts and beans make sense to avoid... but we were advised that mangoes also cause stomach aches for the baby, and that's when I got really sad.  We're right in mango season!  I still want to test that one, cause I'm not sure that it's true. 

People like to offer one thing for baby gifts: soap.  Soap is the thing; bars of soap in quantity.  On Sunday, women came after church to offer us ten bars of soap.  That afternoon, Adama's mother called to say that her coworker gave ten bars of soap.  Added to what the neighbors and the pastor's wife gave, we now have 41 bars of soap.  Well, babies do make a lot of laundry and baths! 

The weather is cooling down, which helps us sleep well in the morning (especially when the baby has been wide awake for the first half of the night.)  We had rain last night, and this is the first day I would say has been pleasantly cool.  Now we'll be dealing with mud rather than dust.  And Adama said that  now people will use less perfume - ha ha!  The rainy season is here!

Baby in Burkina

It's been awhile, but I have an excuse.  An excuse that cries, eats - a lot, - sleeps on his own schedule and makes a lot of laundry; you guessed it, a baby!  It's hard to believe that Phinehas John is already a month old.  As for new experiences, his arrival has given ample opportunity for those.  Learning how to care for a baby is itself full of ups and downs, as all parents know.  But for me it is very challenging learning to care for a baby in alien surroundings and among a people who do things differently - both physically and emotionally - than what I learned while watching my own mother as I grew up in the United States.  

Unlike many foreigners who give birth abroad, I have an insider's view of Burkinabe methods of child raising, and I'm proud of that.  I have the opportunity to learn this way because my husband is Burkinabe and because of how we live. Also, my husband's mother came from Bobo Dioulasso the very evening of Phinee's birth, and was here for 11 days, so I got to know how she does things.  
What a relief it was to rest and leave the housework and errands to my husband and mother-in-law. Most of those weeks was wonderful - hearing them converse in Dioula (I like the sound of that language); watching and learning some more from a real African cook, housewife, and mother; having someone besides just the three of us during the tough moments.

There were also the challenges, ones that sometimes made me think, "hey, I'm the mom here, shouldn't I know best?" 

It is a grace of God that I didn't loose my temper during those first weeks.  I was able to keep my cool because I realized that babies all over the world are raised in many different ways, and most of them do, in fact, survive.  During the years of my own cerebral development, I looked on as my mother dealt with one-track minds that wanted to instruct her.  The thing is, there are many vastly different commentaries that all claim to be the only way to do something.  And I saw my mother take the best of many of them, mixing them with her own style.  Now that was within one culture.  Go across the ocean to a culture reluctant to accept change and get the commentaries of experienced women there... you can only imagine. 

My mind track: "Did you really just blow in his ears?!?"  "Seriously, do I have to eat all this millet porridge."  (Actually, it's good, it was just like a whole pot full to be consumed at once.)  "Yikes!!! aren't you hurting him with that nice, African-style massage?" (photo: one of those first massages/bath times) "You put that much powder on, really?   I thought it was best used sparingly.  Well, okay, that one makes sense because it's so hot here." "Right, it's so hot here; so why wrap him up?"

I held the baby as was comfortable and worked best for nursing him (and yes, my mother held me that way!) but apparently it wasn't okay with some older women who were watching. 

The worst thing was probably the medicines.  The baby was prescribed some medicine after he was circumcised.  Okay, yes, it's painful...  but then he also got a stomach ache, and they wanted to give him more medicine.  I was scared about that, because I thought babies should avoid medicine if possible.  And giving him sleep medicine?  Let's not.  And for myself: was I taking too long to heal up?  No, but apparently I still should take like three different things for itching, and another one for bleeding.  Since it seems like Burkinabe children are traditionally raised to be tough and strong in other ways, I am surprised that medicines are given quickly. 

So while there were the moments I wanted to yell "babies are raised differently elsewhere!!" I couldn't because, well... because babies are raised differently elsewhere.  And it was my time to learn the difference just in case I found something good - or necessary in this climate.

Now that my mother-in-law is gone, I miss her help (and her delicious fish soup!)  The Bible is right; there is a time for everything.  I challenge myself to enjoy (or at least tolerate) each thing as it comes.  As life continues, especially with a baby, I realize that those things come and pass on very quickly. 

Niyeray

Tropical fruits can be very surprising...
Niyeray (phonetic spelling, again) comes in brown pods, but breaks open to an ecstatically yellow fruit:

This time of year I see little children walking to school with a long pod in their hand, picking out the fruit and sucking the chalky powder off the round brown seeds.  It's a tasteless fruit in my opinion, but it's a very nutritious snack.  With healthy snacks like this, it's no wonder Burkina Faso doesn't have an overweight population (except, I might add, for the people who like to eat Western food.) 

Tropical trees are surprising too. I stand in awe of the way they stand so strong and green without rain for seven months. 

...And then bear delicious mangoes! 
Yes, it is mango season again, a wonderful time of the year.  I've been very happily tasting many kinds of mango; the smooth yellow-fleshed, slightly sour papaya mango that comes in the extra-large size of three fists; the small (1-fist-sized) sweet, stringy, orange-fleshed one, and the one that's in between in size, color, sweetness, and texture.  Yum.

Normal Now?

 In this post, I want to share some things I haven't mentioned before.  Here are two pictures from those days in Bobo Dioulasso when we didn't have internet.  Above is a picture with my mother-in-law Mouonton and sister-in-law Aicha. 
French for mother-in-law is "belle-mere."  Belle, of course, means beautiful and I think that's a wonderful name to call a mother-in-law.  In fact, all in-laws are identified using "belle," so Aicha and Deborah (pictured to the left)  are my "belle-soeurs." 




Other things I want to share in this blog include some recipes and some general facts of life that are surprisingly different from what used to be normal to me.   

I'm starting to realize how much has become normal to me that I never knew while in America; maybe these are some things you've never known either. 

I'll just start with the everyday contrast I can encounter when I go out.  For example, a dentist's office (right) and the front door of someone's home (below right).  

The dentist office doesn't look too much different than a dentist office in America.  I guess it might "feel" different.  Adama had to go get two wisdom teeth pulled.  So they gave him some painkiller, but he knew everything that was happening in his mouth.  And, ummm.... he drove himself home.  I remember when my sister had her wisdom teeth taken out.  She was drugged to sleep the whole day.  Well, at least there's such a thing as painkiller to be found at one of many pharmacies. (Pharmacy business is booming here, too.)

So yes, I was contrasting the dentist with someone's front door; these people are chilling out on New Year's afternoon.  Besides the clothes, see if you can find a hint (the coke can) that it's New Year's day and time for visiting friends. 


Below is another photo from the many visits we made on New Year's day.  This was at the family home of our friend's girlfriend.  (By the way, they just had their engagement ceremony last Saturday.  I'll do a blog about engagement ceremonies later; since you don't have to sit in the heat for three or so hours to experience it, you certainly won't want to miss out on this very different kind of tradition!)

Since this blog is mentioning all sorts of random things, let's take a peek at some completely everyday things that you probably wouldn't guess...

DATES:  You write them in day first format: dd/mm/yy

PHONES:  I've never heard of a land-line here.  You use at least one cell phone, but probably two - or maybe three - because then you don't have to buy units as often.  Units can be bought at any of the little stores around the neighborhood.  Either the storekeeper can send units to your phone number, or you can buy a little slip of paper that bears a scratch-to-find security code.  Usually 100 CFA buys one minute of talking time.  But if you have more than one phone, you can make a free call to another person who uses Airtel by calling from your phone that has an Airtel SIM card.  And you can get bonus units from Telecel.  And - guess what? - you can get a promotional or fundraising text from Telmob every single day. 

DECIMAL POINT:  It's not a point.  It's a comma.  For example, my 1/2 liter water bottle is labeled 0,5 liter. 

LOCKS:  Turn the key twice to lock the door.  Which means you have to turn the key twice to unlock the door, as well. 

Okay, let's talk about some food. 

 I know I've mentioned tô before, but I've never showed a picture of the finished product (left.)  Okay, this is Adamannette version, because we prefer it soft.  Traditional cooks would probably turn up their noses, because they like to cook it hard, until they can scoop up dippers-full of the hot porridge and leave it to cool into stiff balls of tô. 
Our version cools until we can break off chunks.  It forms a skin on top that protects it for another meal.   Below is a photo of the soup and slimy sauce we eat it with. 

Yes, it's literally called slimy sauce (the brown one on the right.)  It's made with things you wouldn't find in the U.S. like dried fish, okra powder and sumbala. Pound those with salt and maggi, boil them with some green onions, and you've got your slimy sauce. I can hear my sister saying eeewww.  But once you develop the taste, it can be good, and it is the most traditional West African food you'll find - tô with slimy sauce.  

I didn't realize - until I asked if everyone eats tô with two sauces? - that we're eating rich to have soup along with the slimy sauce.  The soup (left) we make with onions, peppers, spices, tomato paste, and - the rich person's food - tilapia.  One fish is about $2.00, which can be a house wife's allowance for the whole day's grocery bill.

  Black-eyes beans are the beans around here.  They usually spend the last 20 minutes in the pot cooking with rice to soak up the rest of the water. Cooking with potasse is supposed to take care of the gaseous properties.  
Benga (that's beans in Moore) is eaten with an oil sauce - in fact, the average person might only afford a drizzle of peanut oil and some salt sprinkled on top.  We often make the sauce with oil, tomatoes, onions, peppers, parsley, sardines, garlic, and maggi (spice). 

Left is pictured some deep-fried treats made with millet flour.

Other common uses for millet include porridge (cooked with ginger) and couscous. 

Left is a picture of Aicha (my sister-in-law) making millet couscous to eat with yogurt.  That combination is called degae, and it can really fill you up. 

And I've already mentioned yogurt, but here's a picture.  We make it with milk powder, hot water, and some starter yogurt.  The yogurt that can be bought is very runny, but we can make it thicker if we have a successful batch such as this one. (right)

That's all for now.


Here we are, taking a walk in the park that's in the middle of Ouagadougou.  It's a cooler place than most because of all the trees and a reservoir close by.  Approaching the park, I can feel the cool air hit me; coupled with the wind from the motorcycle ride, it can almost feel cold! 

CEFISE

At Centre d'Education et de Formation Integree des Sourds et des Entendants (CEFISE), hearing and non-hearing students both have a worthwhile place.  Elsewhere in Burkina Faso, that place to feel worthy is not so easily found for deaf, mute, or otherwise handicapped persons.

 Madam Kafando (left), the General Director of CEFISE, talked at length about CEFISE after taking us on a tour around the compound.  She says that the first challenge with all of their students is to help each one realize that he or she is an amazing person that can learn and be appreciated.

Stories of the seclusion and discrimination that children (and adults) face in Burkina Faso are disheartening, but the testimony of CEFISE is encouraging to all who care.  The rest of this blog will be about what we learned during our visit at CEFISE.  You can also find more pictures on the center's website:  www.cefise.org

 The center's main courtyard.

Multipurpose classroom (left) used for teacher trainings and to teach sign language to parents, family members, and friends of deaf students.  Sensitizing the public to value and invest in handicapped persons remains a huge challenge, even (and especially) in their own families.  Part of the center's mission is to value the student's parents as well; parents often feel like a failure because of their handicapped child, and end up hiding or ignoring the child. 

Madam Kafando told us that, in trying to get funding from the government, officials display both ignorance and doubt about the worth of a school for any handicapped person.  She discovered that one government minister had a son who was deaf and mute.  Who knew?  He was eight years old, and had never been allowed outside the compound of his home.  They urged the official to send his son to CEFISE, but the father was too reluctant that anyone should know of his disgrace. 

Well-educated students - even those who, despite all odds, graduated from university - continue to be jobless because few businesses will hire a mentally or physically handicapped person.  Some students have ended up teaching a new generation at CEFISE, because no one else will hire them.  Sensitization of the general population is a major need. 

 We stepped into four primary school classrooms; in each one an enthusiastic chorus of young voices and hands greeted us "Bon Jour Tanti, Bon Jour Tonton".  They sang and signed songs for us.  One class sang in English (slightly discernible English).  CEFISE is implementing English classes at the primary-school level, a step ahead of most schools where English lessons begin in middle school. 

Every class is taught in both French and Sign Language.  I noticed that the sign language alphabet painted on the wall surrounding the school seemed to be ASL (American Sign Language).  Mrs. Kafando said yes, CEFISE uses ASL because the school's founder studied in Washington D.C. at Gallaudet University.  There are a few modifications to ASL to make it fit the culture.  For example, the sign for water is not made with the letter W because "water" is not a word in French or any of the local languages.  They have also come up with signs for items such as the calabash, which do not exist in ASL.  Last year, CEFISE printed a dictionary for all the schools in Burkina that teach sign language. 

25 years ago, CEFISE was the first school for deaf students in Burkina Faso.  Since then, branches of the school have been opened in cities across the country.  More deaf and handicapped students are able to go to school.

One of the most pressing needs on the long list of projects to accomplish is the need to open a college-level school for deaf students.  Right now, the few graduated students that have the courage to go on to college are faced with university lectures in a hostile environment.
However, the funding for CEFISE is already limited, especially since at least 80% of the students are from very poor families.  

And the center is not just a school.  CEFISE has a clinic (left) for testing and diagnosing hearing problems, one of only two or three such places in Burkina Faso. 

Some children are born deaf.  But in Burkina Faso, nearly everyone who gets meningitis will also suffer hearing loss for the rest of their lives.

A woman has just come for testing. (below)

They provide one-on-one tutoring sessions for students with particular troubles keeping up with the rest of the class, and for students with behavior issues.  (below)

 Students are also offered technical trainings so that they earn a living.  Older students who come to the center often take these trainings rather than academic schooling.   



There are trainings in horticulture, animal husbandry, cooking, carpentry, hairstyling, and sewing. 

In this photo (left) you can see adult students filling used water bags with dirt.  They will start seedlings in these "pots" and tend them until the plants (below) can be sold to help support CEFISE.  Eggs, clothing, and furniture are also sold to help the school. 





When a student has completed training, CEFISE tries to help them find a workplace. Again, even with their skills, this can be difficult. 







(below) One training is to learn the art of weaving on a traditional loom.





















At the end of our visit, we were sitting in Madam Kafando's office.  It was Mr. Kafando, her late husband, who founded CEFISE.  Since he passed away several years ago, she has been running the school, but important partnerships were lost.  Mr. Kafando had connections in America that financially supported the school; these connections could not be kept because of language barriers.  Madam Kafando has been searching unsuccessfully for a good place to learn English; for this reason, she was very excited to hear of our plans to open Excellent English.  (You can help us open Excellent English!  Visit excellentenglishburkina to find out what we hope to do in the very near future.) 



I suggested that when I come back to the US, I could bring some of the student's beautiful handiwork to sell here in America (where people might actually pay the price it's worth!)  Madam Kafando was very happy with that idea, and brought in a huge stack of scarves and table cloths for us to see.  Then she surprised us with a gift of these finely woven napkins and table runner (left) made on the traditional loom.

I'll finish this long blog with the testimony of one student from the school's yearly magazine.  Hermann was a frustrated student having trouble communicating at home while also learning sign language to be able to connect with other deaf students after his bout with meningitis.  He said "I could read through [Madam Kafando's] lips: she was the only person who knew how to listen to me... no one in the family listened to me attentively.  They never tried to understand me!"

The article finished by saying:
"The evidence that disability cannot hamper your success is that Hermann, having been attacked by deafness at the age 7, was able to obtain his A-level, enrolled in a higher school, and soon will obtain an engineering degree...
"But after that, he will have to engage in another fight for his professional integration in a society that hardly considers people with disability as normal persons that are endowed with talents to contribute to the development of the world.  Let's hope that his courage and fighting spirit still take precedence over social hypocrisy."

Windy Season and A Visit to ABBEF

Being the windy season, the wind often spends the morning tossing plastic bags up over the gate into the courtyard.  This morning, it's bringing the fumes of burning trash.  But I don't want to close the windows yet, because the breeze coming in is still somewhat cool.

 The fans are on, and the AC will come on in the afternoon.  The house roofs aren't insulated, so the cool air from the AC disappears quickly.  But it helps while it's on!  

Yesterday we had a power cut from mid-morning until 6 p.m.  No fans, no AC.  I could tell that tempers were rising with the heat.  The little girl next door was crying for more than an hour.  Then her parents started yelling at each other.  The storekeeper and his wife were unusually quiet, maybe because the goods in their freezers were melting.  

If I've ever wondered why people often talk like they are angry at each other, Adama says it's the sound of the local languages.  Maybe local languages such as Moore and Dioula sound harsh because of the intense heat. He said he never heard people talk that way in America. 

Days pass despite the heat, but I must say that the one day that passes very slowly is the day we visit ABBEF.  Last Thursday morning we left for the ABBEF at quarter after six, so we made the 30 minute ride in the cool of the day.  

This clinic is part of ABBEF (L'Association Burkinabè pour le Bien-Être Familial - Burkinabe Association for Family Welfare).   The person who brought us to our first visit at ABBEF - the pastor's wife - told us that some women hide to come here because their husbands don't want them to learn about family planning.  ABBEF offers pre- and post- natal exams and things like ecographies (ultra-sounds) that many clinics are unequipped to offer.  

Between high school and college, Adama volunteered with ABBEF as a leader of the youth.   He did things such as sensitize young people about STDs and create a theater about forced marriage.  He has some great photos from that theater in which he is acting as an old man with a white beard painted on his face.  

Now he's at the clinic with me, taking a few pictures of the waiting crowd so we can show you the waiting room of a Burkinabe clinic.  People don't come by appointment.  That's why we came early, so that we were only #14 in the lineup. 

Arriving before 6:45, we entered the open doors and waited until sometime after 8:00 for the nurses to arrive.  I don't know what time they were supposed to be there. 

I suppose they are trying to be as efficient as possible, but organization is really bad.  It seems to be that way everywhere; in the schools, in the banks, in the hospitals, on the roads...

The little blue book I'm holding (left) is my health record book, which I am to bring every time I come.  It seems like the only health records kept at the clinic are written in a big book that lists everyone who comes for an examination and a few facts about them - sort of like a guestbook.







We got to the examination room after 9:30.  This is the nurse (below), reaching for the clinic's stamp to stamp a prescription. 

 By the time we left at 10:00, there were over 30 people, some waiting for consultations and some waiting for exams.  I did not envy them sitting there in the waiting room and crowding the hallways, while the air grew warmer and warmer. 

Yam

 I didn't know how clueless I was about yams.  I thought they were just like sweet potatoes...

It turns out, they're usually way bigger.  

And they taste different.

This one was a medium size.

It can feed the two of us for at least three meals!

Boiled with salt (see below), it tasted half sweet potato, half manioc. 

Here's where it gets interesting: turning boiled yam into Ku Tô.

A previous blog post showed you the making of other types of tô.  That kind was made by stirring flour into boiling water.  

Ku (the name for yam in Djoula) is made into tô by pounding the boiled yam in a mortar. 

You can see how stretchy it became, like the same thing that happens when kneading bread dough.  Adama pounded the yam for 15 minutes, but the end product was still a bit chunky because our mortar isn't well-shaped from use.

Check out the video: Pounding Ku Tô

 

Here's the finished tô.  It tasted different than plain boiled yam, although the only difference was in the pounding.  The ku tô stuck to my fingers while we were eating it.  That time we ate it with some yummy peanut butter sauce. 

Excellent English

 The past week we've been busy making plans to open a center called Excellent English.  We're looking for people who would like to make an investment in education and the development of Burkina Faso by donating to help us get started!  Please take a look at our website to find out more about Excellent English: http://excellentenglishburkina.weebly.com/

These pictures were taken while I was teaching the English Club at the American Embassy.  When either Adama or I volunteer to help with an English club or discussion like this, we are afterward often approached by students asking us what they can do to learn more English.  This has been part of the inspiration to open Excellent English.  (See more: Why Excellent English in Burkina Faso?)  Please help however you can, even just by spreading the news!