Executive Bathrooms, Money Woes, and some Beautiful Rainforesty Gardens!

When I got up at 6:50am on Sunday June 1st, I felt pretty beat up. I also realized in a panic that 40 minutes was not enough time to do all the computer things I needed to do. I rushed, rushed, rushed and was able to at least pay my tuition bill and find an address for the US Embassy in Accra. I had a bunch of emails I wanted to send, but those would have to wait. When I got home I quickly did the dishes I had left sitting in the sink for several days. I figured that was pretty important as coming back from Ghana to 10 day old dishes was not going to be a good plan. Leanna and Lorinda came and picked me up and drove me to the airport.

I got to the airport at about 7:45am and it wasn’t even open yet! So I had to wait… I saw a woman I thought I recognized with a friend she was clearly seeing off at the airport. She turned and started to talk to me, and I was immediately able to place her as Embassy staff. In fact, she drove me home from the first Bunco Night I ever went to! She introduced me to her friend who was going back to Accra. She worked for the Embassy there and was just up for a visit. We ended up chatting the whole time in the airport as we waited to board the plane. She was a very nice woman and had led a very fascinating life!

When they called us to come and board the plane I was starting to feel skeptical of my choice to fly an African airline… However, as the bus bringing us from the terminal to the jet rolled to a stop, most of my fears subsided as the plane looked newer than most of the domestic planes I have flown on in the US. Indeed, when I boarded I saw that the plane was practically brand new. That was the first good sign. Next, I was in the bulkhead row. Score. And I had the row myself. Excellent. The not so great thing was I was starving. No time at home meant I all I could do was grab a power bar and hope for the best. I wasn’t expecting anything on the plane, but to my surprise they did provide us with a lovely morning meal. Again, I was impressed. The flight was a little over an hour and it went by very quickly.

Before I knew it we had touched down in Accra and I was walking with my new friend through the airport. When she found out I didn’t have any local currency and that I didn’t know where I was going exactly, all I had was the name “Baptist guest house” and that it was in Osu, she offered to ask her driver if he knew where it was and if not she would be able to bring me back to her house with her and then I could go from there. I was more than happy to take her up on that offer. Side note, as I was filling out my landing card for customs these two guys started asking for me help because they didn’t know how to fill it out. It was no problem, but I was in a bit of a hurry. As is the norm, they wanted to keep talking to me and in overhearing their conversations I knew they worked for Marina Market in Ouagadougou. I think they were on a business trip to see about opening them up in Ghana. I entertained myself by thinking maybe they will give me some free groceries the next time I go shopping, but then I realized that was a ridiculous idea! Second side note is that I didn’t go to the bank in Ouaga before going to Accra. I had 20,000CFA on me that was it. I figured I would take money out of an ATM. However, I had the same problem as in Mali. No one took Mastercard and my Bank of Africa account would be more accurately named Bank of Burkina Faso, as there were none in Mali or Ghana! So I changed what money I had and hoped that would last until I could transfer money between accounts and get myself set again…

Leaving the airport we headed to this nice lady, Kate’s, house. The first thing that struck me was that we were traveling on what seemed like a normal highway and that the airport had dual departure and arrival levels like in the states! Accra is much more developed than Ouagadougou. However, I would learn later that developed does not always mean better…

Kate helped me find an address to a Baptist guest house in Osu. However, before I headed off in a taxi we walked over to the Embassy and she took me on a tour. It was so cool! The compound is much larger than the one in Burkina, and it is practically brand new. There is a Marines house that houses the high security people. I got to see the main areas and then she brought me in to see her office. Well she works as a secretary for the Ambassador so we are walking around and she is opening the door to the storage room, the office kitchen, and then wham! The Ambassador’s office. I am not kidding you. It was so cool. There was a picture of her dancing with President Bush during his visit to Ghana in 2007. There were full size flags on either side of the desk. It just felt super cool to get to see that. Then, as if that wasn’t enough she showed me that the ambassador has her own private full bathroom because she has to be able to get ready for any range of things on short notice. As we left, it definitely felt like one of the unreal moments, like “Did that really just happen…?”

Anyway, I took a taxi to the guesthouse. There was no one at the reception and I didn’t recognize any of the names that keys had been left for. I started to talk to the several people I saw sitting around and about. I explained my situation, all too aware that I was likely not in the right location! They were all there for the WHO Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage (HWTS) Conference as well, so they were inclined to want to help me which was great. The internet wasn’t working so I couldn’t even go and try to find out more information. My lucky break came when one of the ladies there mentioned she worked up in Tamale. I asked her if she knew Mary Kay from Pure Home Water. She did and offered to call her for me. I was saved! Mary Kay came and got me and brought me to the “Mid-Baptist Guesthouse”, slightly different name, but very different location. I was relieved to finally be hooked up with the group I was looking for. Susan Murcott, the MIT professor who had helped me sign up to come, was already at the guesthouse and I was quite happy to finally be there myself! I said hi, but since she was working hard on a presentation and I was about to collapse from exhaustion I retired to my room. I unpacked my bags and tried to sleep.

There were two problems with this plan. 1. I was hungry. By now it was 3pm. Airplane breakfast, no lunch = not a happy Sara. We were planning to go to dinner at 6:30, so I was hoping to just wait it out. Well, I realized if I had any aspirations of sleeping I would have to shamelessly go and ask if there was any food in the house I could eat and then pay for later. I was able to find a small yogurt. Something is better than nothing! I also made myself some Propel water thinking the vitamins couldn’t hurt either. 2. The curtains in the room had the thickness of bed sheets and the room was not dark at all. To remedy this I pulled out my AirFrance eye cover thing and hoped for the best. Still a bit restless and probably inspired by my quasi state of consciousness due to lack of sleep, I sat up and wrote out a business plan for the photo taking venture I dreamed up last summer. Only this time it seems like it might actually work and the details of how it would function were crystal clear. It was bizarre to say the least. However, not wanting to lose this clarity during my nap, I took out my notebook and wrote it all down! Once I was satisfied that I had developed a plan that would make me rich, muahahaha, I went to sleep. When my phone alarm went off at 6:15 I couldn’t really believe I had to get up again. But I pulled off my eye mask and got dressed. I was hungry and that need trumped the sleep need. The weirdest thing happened though. My left eye wouldn’t focus. It took a while for my right eye to be able to focus objects at difference distances, but it was 3 hours before my left eye was back to normal. Needless to say during that time I was convinced that I was losing my vision in my left eye; sure that my lack of sleep, lack of food and water was taking its toll by taking my left eye. This is how my brain works. The smallest disturbance of my otherwise normal health and I jump to the most dramatic scenario. It isn’t on purpose; it is just my natural response… I was just so thankful when little by little it was improving. It is fine now.

For dinner Susan and I joined Mark Kay and her family for a dinner at Frankie’s. It reminded me of a 50’s diner, but without purposely trying to be a 50’s diner. I ended up sharing various Lebanese dishes with Susan and Mark Kay. It was frustrating because I was so hungry and they forgot to bring my plate out. Judging by the size of the other plates I was a bit skeptical and worried I would still go home hungry. However, miraculously, there was enough food for all of us. When we got back to the guesthouse about 9:00 I went straight to bed. I slept for 10 hours and it was glorious! Final sidenote, the guesthouse had wireless internet which was awesome, but it wasn’t working! This was not good since I really needed to set up a transfer of money between accounts. But there was nothing I could do about it and I was just praying it would be up and going in the morning.

Monday morning I got up and had a nice breakfast with Susan. She really likes breakfast. I had toast and jam which was fine for me… We got in a taxi to go to the conference center. Mary Kay told us it was like 5 minutes away. After 40 minutes in the taxi we finally found it! This guy had no idea what he was doing. Thankfully here you pay a flat fee you decide on beforehand. The fact that the guy had to drive around forever cost him money, not us. We were late getting there, but it all turned out alright. They were still just starting. Oh, Africa! The morning of the conference was interesting. They had an opening addresses and the panel of important people who are there for the first hour and don’t see another minute of the conference. They had a ribbon cutting ceremony to open the poster exhibition which was cool. There were in total 5 sets of 5 presentations scheduled over the next two days. Here is a collage of several pictures I took...

The first set of presentations was given before lunch on the first day. Lunch was okay. I felt a bit like a loner the whole time I was at this conference and that feeling was exacerbated at meal times. I ended up sitting with two Vietnamese guys… and a Ghanaian. When I sat down they were all eating in silence. I had two options I could join there silence or I could say something. As I was sitting down I knew my window of about 20 seconds to naturally start a conversation was coming to a close. So, took a deep breathe and went for it. I said hi and introduced myself. What followed was not a stellar conversation, but one infinitely more desirable than sitting in silence.

The afternoon was even better than the morning. We had another set of presentations and then were given time to explore the poster exhibition. I really enjoyed talking to people about their projects. Several projects I want to mention include a very nice one by Samaritan’s Purse. I am continually impressed by this organization. There were also great presentations on a new design for a ceramic filter, a siphon filter, and a really neat model for educating women and empowering them to treat their water using community groups that are already in place.

That night I met two MIT students who had just arrived. They were really nice and welcoming to me. Since they just got into Accra, they wanted to stay in for dinner. Susan and I on the other hand were in search of a Chinese restaurant. We saw a sign for one on the main road nearby. So we decided to venture out. We had to ask about 6 people before we were able to track it down and it was much closer than we originally thought, but took us forever to get to because we had gone such a round about way getting there. Anyway, we got there and told the guard we are looking for Chinese food. He pointed us up the stairs on the right side of the building. We went up and were greeted by very impressively carved heavy wooden doors. Upon entering, getting a table and looking through the menu we come to realize we are in at the Heritage Indian Restaurant, not the Noble Chinese Restaurant. Turns out it is a two story restaurant complex with Chinese downstairs and Indian upstairs. I guess the guard was friend of the Indian Restaurant people since we told him Chinese and still pointed us upstairs! The mix up was really no problem though. We had a nice meal of Indian food and it was great to discuss with Susan much of the impressions and questions that were floating around in my head after the first day of the conference. I have to admit, I am working on getting used to the Indian spices. Wow. The food is spicy!

At home that night the internet was still not working… I was getting pretty anxious to let my parents know I was safe and really needed to fix my bank stuff as I was running out of money. It was a very stressful time actually. I went to bed and finished reading Utopia. Check another one off the list. It wasn’t a scintillating book, but it was interesting and now I can place and compare any reference to a Utopian society with the original context.

Tuesday before going to the conference I went with the two students, Kate and Derek, to an internet café to go online. I was so happy they suggested that! I won’t have access to my money until Friday, but at least I will have it eventually which makes me feel like I can ask to borrow some. While the first day was new and exciting the second day of the conference was really quite exhausting. My brain was going a mile a minute. I had met all of these really prominent people in the field of Point of Use Water Treatments, learned a ton of new information from 20-plus presentations and observed from a non-invested point of view the dissensions and weaknesses within the field. Wow.

In my own work, I came across the problem of the percent reduction measure as not being descriptive enough. However, the WHO indicates that is the best measure. I was pleasantly surprised when this topic was brought up by others. It gave me confidence to question the norm. Here I had observed the same thing they had. However, I thought that since the WHO said something else, I must be wrong. That I learned is that is not the case. I can and should challenge the norms. I really wanted to talk to the main guy who brought up this point at lunch. The problem was, I was having trouble introducing myself and joining his conversation while waiting in the buffet line. It was rather awkward, and I ended up feeling a bit like I had butted in.

I went and sat down on my own feeling like it was a lost cause, but he ended up sitting at my table. I was able to better introduce myself and explain my situation and why I was interested in the prior conversation. I talked to him at lunch about “scaling up” versus “scaling out”. I feel they are using the wrong term to describe what they are trying to achieve. I would better understand later that afternoon that within the context of household water treatment scaling up is scaling out. However, I think this term masks the end goal of wanting people to have piped water which in my mind constitutes scaling up. I also noticed the guy sitting directly to my left had the same last name as the company that produces the Lifestraw and other fancy textiles. Turns out he was the CEO. Funny. To my right was a rather unassuming looking woman who turned out to actually be the chair of the afternoon’s presentation session and who works for the US government in the Earth and Ocean department in some capacity. After talking to the measures guy for a few minutes most of the rest of my lunch conversation was with this very nice woman.

In the afternoon it was tough to stay interested. I had kind of hit information overload. But I did my best to stay engaged. I was so happy when they had a coffee break… It was actually quite divine, in fact, because I was able to meet a Peace Corps volunteer who was there with her father. We had a great time talking about the conference and our observations. We were both coming from similar mind frames on a lot of the development issues and were able discuss some very interesting points.

After the last presentations there was supposedly a cocktail hour. Kate, Derek and I stuck around for like 10 minutes of that and then took a taxi home. We stayed in for dinner eating whatever hodge-podge of food we could put together. I also met the other MIT student named Vanessa who had just arrived. She seemed really nice. That night the internet was finally working in the guest house. It was wonderful to get to talk to my Mom. We talked for quite a while which was totally what I needed. I was able to vent my frustrations, shed my feeling of exhaustion, share my concerns about my money issues, and figured out what to about Wednesday. Why was Wednesday a problem? Wednesday was not the same symposium style program as the other two days, but more a meeting of the network. From the start, I was under the impression that these would be closed meetings so I made other plans for Wednesday; namely to go to the Botanical Gardens and hour and half from Accra in Aburi. So what was I to do? Should I now go to the meetings because I could, and resent not going to the gardens? Or do I go to the gardens and potentially feel guilty about not going to meetings! And I didn’t have enough money left. Do you see the problem here? I decided I would ask Kate to borrow enough money to get me through until Friday and ask Susan to pay the Guesthouse fees. I would pay them both back when I cam up to Tamale on Monday. I planned go to the conference center in the morning and get a feel for things. I would be ready to head to Aburi and make a decision at that point. I went to sleep that night in such better spirits after reconnecting with my family. I also started reading Freakonomics. Awesome book.

Wednesday morning I got up early and went running with Kate and Derek. Kate is training for a marathon so when I heard that, I offered to go run with her in the morning. While it was only 3 miles and pretty slow paced, I really enjoyed myself. Just to get out and run was great. After breakfast we went to conference center. The three of them stayed, but I poked my head into the room and decided to peace out. I had contemplated staying for like 30 minutes or so, but I saw that the meeting was going to suck me in a not let go. So I didn’t go in. From the conference center I walked to the tro-tro station. A tro-tro is the Ghanaian term for a taxi bus. I thought I knew where I was going, and I did get there eventually, but I ended up taking a very long way around. It wasn’t all a loss though… I got to see a lot more of Accra than I would have otherwise. I also noticed that by myself in the market I do not attract as much attention as when I am with a friend. This is interesting. I bet they figure if you are comfortable enough to be there alone, you aren’t likely going to be taken in for a scam.

When I was finally at the tro-tro station, I had to ask about 5 people to find the right one headed to Aburi. I wasn’t sure how much it would cost, but it was only 1 Cedi for the 1.5 hour ride. I sat in the very back next to the window. I am very adamant about sitting by a window. If I am going to be crammed into a vehicle like a sardine, I want my window. FYI, the Ghanaian currency is the Cedi. It is roughly equivalent, maybe slightly less than the dollar. They just went through a redenomination of the Cedi last year and so the people still quote you the old prices. Essentially 1 new Cedi is 10,000 old Cedis. So when some tells you something costs 2000. What they really mean is 0.20 Cedis, or 20 pesos as they call the change!? It was weird and I am happy to not have to live in that economy. In fact, I have enjoyed Accra, but am so thankful God put me in Burkina Faso. I am much happier there than in Ghana. In a side note, there were two adorable twin sisters who sat in front of me in the tro-tro. They were eyeing my camera and when I asked them if they wanted me to take their picture they were really excited. Since it was just he two of them, afterwards I showed them the picture. They love that! I also bought a FanChoco while we were waiting in the station for the vehicle to fill up with passengers. There are no scheduled leavings. They simply fill up and go. And FYI, a FanChoco is frozen chocolate milk like a FanYogo, but even more delicious. I had been wanting to try one ever since I went to Bianca’s village and the other Peace Corps Volunteer bought one. Mission accomplished!

I was able to sleep on the way there which was odd, but I didn’t fight it. The mountains were beautiful! You could look out and see the valley that stretched to the sea. You couldn’t see the ocean, but you knew it was there. The Botanical Gardens were great! They really felt more like a rainforest in some areas, which was really cool. I took tons of pictures! Also, when I am traveling on my own, I tend to talk to the local people more, especially the kids which is totally cool. When I was there I found out about a sweet mountain biking company. You can pay for a by hour trip or you can do a one way distance trip where they pick you up at the end and drive you back. I really want to do this next time. Oh and at this place, there were these amazingly energetic cute girls who went wild over my camera and actually asked me to take their picture. I happily obliged and got two of probably my favorite pictures from Africa ;)

I ended up waiting for a long time to get a ride back into Accra. While I was waiting I bought some awesome fresh pineapple. It was great, but the experience was bittersweet because I had terrible mouth sores from the stress of this trip. I took the tro-tro from Aburi only as far as the ring road and got a taxi to the STC bus station to buy my ticket for Cape Coast. I was pressed for time, but it didn’t look far on the map. Oh, but there was traffic like you wouldn’t believe. I had 40 minutes to get there, buy my ticket, get back to the guesthouse, shower and be at the Accra Toastmaster’s Club meeting. The first not good thing was I misunderstood the price the taxi guy told me and had to renegotiate while in route which was less than ideal. Then we literally waited 10 minutes stopped at the major traffic circle waiting for our turn to go. At the bus station, the lady was super rude about my paying with a 50 Cedi note. It was literally all I had. And if any business could change it, they could! Anyway, I got another taxi back to Osu. This driver was much nicer, but it frankly amazes how little they know about the city…I got home to shower at the time I was supposed to be at Toastmasters. I showered super fast, got dressed and got into yet another taxi. Frankly my taxi expenses were the most stressing on my budget. Surprise surprise, the taxi driver didn’t know where he was going. We drove for quite a while and had to ask 3 people before we found it. When we did finally find the “Ghana International Press Center” The driver didn’t have change, but luckily Regina, my contact at the Accra Toastmaster’s Club was able to help me out. It turned out not to be a big deal that I was late. They had me answer a table topic question and also evaluate Regina’s educational session. It was good. It was certainly different than our meetings; much more informal. I like Club 2iE ;)

Regina took me home after the meeting which was much appreciated. I had more bread and eggs for dinner which seems to have become the staple. After dinner I talked with my mom online and bought a ticket to see Caroline this summer! Yeah ;) Wednesday night I had to move into Susan’s room because the Guesthouse managers said more people were coming. This was a hassle, but Susan was so nice about it and it helped me go to bed at a decent hour. In the morning I found that they were wrong and I could have stayed in my room. My Goodness!

Thursday morning, I had a terrible time waking up. Wednesday was a busy day and I guess it took more out of me than I had realized, that and I still hadn’t made up my 16 hour sleep deficit. In the morning we left to go on a field trip to the Ceramica Tamakloe factory where they make the ceramic pot filters. This is one part of the trip I was really looking forward to. After having expressed interest in establishing a factory in Ouagadougou, seeing an operation in action was very important to me.

When the van Mary Kay had arranged pulled up at our guesthouse Susan indicated Derek and I should sit in the back. We moved to the back, but another guy moved so I sat in the next available seat. I talked to the guy sitting next to me who seemed very nice. Just random development work stuff, ect. Anyway, we get to the factory and Susan pulls me aside and tells me on the way back she has to sit next to the guy I was sitting next to. Apparently he is in charge of some major funding. She needs to be able to talk to him about future collaborations and the opportunities were limited. She was obviously a bit ticked I had sat next to him, but I had no idea. She could have asked me to move, or told me ahead of time. I felt bad at first, but I had done nothing wrong and the rebuke was a bit out of line. Paraphrasing and reapplying the words of Anne Shirley, “Lucky for her I have an imagination and can imagine how horrible it must have felt to need to talk to someone and have that opportunity taken away.” So I let it roll off and went on with my life… I just think it is funny because I was talking to this guy and had no idea he was some big wig of sorts. I may have even been critical of the kind of development work he supports. Good for me, right. You have to say the tough things, and he was clearly enjoying our conversation, so I figure it was fine…

The factory was cool, but somewhat intimidating to think we have to come up with something like that in Ouaga. I had borrowed Susan Strand’s video camera and was able to get some great video footage of the factory. This will be very helpful in showing the ceramist in Ouagadougou, just what the filter making operation entails. It requires a lot of space!

Since I had to sit in the back on the trip back from the filter factory I felt a little car sick. Luckily not too bad and since I was not engaged in any conversation I was able to check out after a while and doze off a bit. After dropping Derek off at the guest house Susan, Mary Kay and I all had lunch at Papaye. Papaye is like a weird African fast food type place. They have take out downstairs, but upstairs it is order in, but still fast… I ordered a hamburger which hit the spot. While the food was good, I have to say the most interesting part of the meal was when I went to the bathroom to wash my hands before eating. There was someone in the bathroom so I had to wait. No big deal here. But the young woman who came out of the bathroom didn’t just walk past me. She started talking to me, asking me if I was student there. It was just plain weird. When she finally stopped talking for a second I indicated I really didn’t know what she wanted and then she proceeded to tell me worked for Plan International Ghana as a scriptwriter. Apparently they were going to be shooting a skt and she thought I would be great to act in it. I can’t lie, I was pretty flattered. I figured nothing would actually come of said encounter, but I did give her my email address and phone number. I honestly think it was because I walked into the restaurant with some sweet stunner shades on which, let’s be honest, do lend themselves to a Hollywood personality… even if it is somewhat of an inaccurate portrayal.

After lunch we went back to the guest house. The Pure Home Water people had to have a business meeting so I hung out with Kate and Vanessa. In fact, we walked over to a really neat artisan boutique that my taxi driver the night before had pointed out and highly recommended. I bought a sweet bookmark for like a dollar. I have decided I think I will start collecting bookmarks. One, they are useful. Two, they are inexpensive. Three, they can bring back great memories of exciting travel every time you open a book! Anyway, the rest of the afternoon I squandered online. When it was finally getting to be about dinner time, I offered to go out in search of some bread. Funny thing is there are bread ladies on what seems to be every corner until you actually want to find one! I ended up walking almost all the way back to Papaye. I wasn’t upset though, it was nice to stretch my legs, and the store I had stopped in right after lunch was still open. I decided to go ahead and buy the imitation Kente cloth that had the colors Susan was looking for (Purple and Green). Kente cloth is a type of hand woven fabric native to Ghana with very distinctive patterns. The real stuff is majorly expensive, but you can buy imitation, i.e. printed fabric with the Kente patterns, for the price of any other type of fabrics. The only time I would be back in the area was on Sunday and the lady already told me nothing was open on Sundays in Accra, which is really true!

Before dinner I asked Susan if she could cover my guesthouse expenses and I would pay her back in Tamale. It is really humbling asking for money…She was so nice about it though. I know it must have felt like a bit of gamble to her, but when I asked the guesthouse manager if I could just pay for all the nights on Sunday when I get back from Cape Coast he wasn’t to keen on that idea. I don’t blame him. I know I would have paid him, but there are certainly innumerable people would have just not come back! After a dinner of soup and bread and eggs, random I know, I spent more time on my computer and then started talking to Ryan and my Mom. We opted to pause the conversation for a little while and I worked out and then chatted with the girls about the project they were going to start in Tamale. After getting done with those two things I was able to talk to my Mom online for quite a while. What a difference that makes… Before I went to bed I made a new to do list and outlined this post. The only thing I didn’t do was get directions from the airport to the Pure Home Water house in Tamale; I would later regret that oversight! So there you have it; Ghana Part 1.

Toastmaster's Gala

Just a few pictures to give you a taste of what a formal in Ouagadougou looks like!

The Impossible Task - TM Speech Level 4

Can I admit something to you?

The truth is, I don’t know how I am going to do it…

The task seems impossible, insurmountable, the idea is incomprehensible!

How can you explain Burkina Faso to someone who has never been here?

I have started to think about this question more and more lately. Sadly my time in West Africa is running out. I see the time like sand slipping through the hour glass and wish I stop it, slow it down, turn it over!

But I can’t and before I know it I will be faced with the challenge of making my friends and family try and understand what my life has been like over the past year.

People will ask, “Sara, how was Africa?”
“Sara, tell me about Burkina Faso!”
“Sara, what was life like in Ouagadougou?”

But, where do I even start?

I spent some time reflecting on these potential questions and my experiences in West Africa and I came up with list of things that stick out in my mind as really defining the culture here and that I would like to share with friends and family when I return to the US…

To begin with, I have never seen so many people using two wheeled modes of transportation in my life! Yes, I am talking about all the motos!

It took me a good month before the sight of a river of motos zooming past seemed normal to me. There are so many bikes there are two different stop lights one which directs bike traffic and the other to direct vehicle traffic!

My idea of what was possible to carry on a bike or moto, or even in a car or truck was dramatically challenged as I saw trucks with so much stuff tied on top it seemed they were defying the laws of physics. Bikers carrying so many yellow jerry cans from the back you can’t even see who is riding the bike!

Another thing I love is the fabrics.

I have never seen such colors and outfits before. Ruffles and feathers and zigzag hem lines. Woah.

I even like it when the panyas are mixed and matched. I have learned Africans can totally pull it off. On me on the other hand, it would look ridiculous!

Susan and I took many trips to the markets fabric hunting and it never ceased to amaze all the crazy patterns I would find. Fabrics with roller skates or lampshades printed on them in colors that can lift even the saddest of moods.

But my eyes are not the only senses that are engaged. No, the sounds of Africa are undeniably unique.

The music. The music has such energy and I think it that reflects the energy of the people.

I get an amazing sensation when I ride my bike past a kiosk that is blasting out African music. I can hear the drums and the balaphone going and I simply have to smile and think to myself happily, I am in Africa!

The ease with which people start to dance here is also impressive. It seems like there is a sixth sense that people have that tunes into the music and movement just flows naturally.

But in the quiet, when there is no music… the sound of the language is what is entrancing. It rolls off of the tongue. A sing song, up and down, loud and soft quality to what I hear. Sometimes it is staccato, sometimes smooth, but it is always mysterious and going at what seems to me to be a lightning speed!

Now I knew West Africa was a dry place, but the dust is something you have to experience to really understand.

I was struck by the reddish color. And since the dust is red so is everything else! The dust settles everywhere.

It is also much finer than anything I could have imagined. So fine in fact, sometimes when I blow nose the two reddish/brown dots left on the tissue is evidence to the fact that there is probably a nice layer of African dust now coating the inside of my lungs…

Speaking of my nose, the smells of Ouagadougou will knock you out. I mean they can hit you like a brick wall from out of no where!

I have come to appreciate that there are several types of smells; there are rancid smells, urine smells, the smell of garbage, a body odor smell, dried fish smells, and don’t forget the smell of exhaust or the unpleasant odor of burning plastic which somehow wafts through your house unannounced.

While the olfactory quality of the city leave something to be desired, the cuisine is enchanting!

I didn’t like mangos before I came to Burkina Faso. I think it was because I had never actually had a good mango before. Now I LOVE mangos. Love in capital letters L.O.V.E. mangos. Now I understand why everybody looks forward to mango season.

And don’t forget strawberry season, which happened to coincide with my Birthday in February… And papayas and bananas, and pineapples. You get the picture.

I also really like the rice with red sauce, rice with vegetable sauce and rice with peanut sauce the peanut sauce is my favorite and the fact that I can peanuts as a snack anytime I want from pretty much any street corner is awesome.

In November and December, I couldn’t believe people when they said that was the cold season… But now I understand. The heat is exhausting. I have perspired more here than I ever thought possible. I finish playing tennis and I look like I have taken a shower! The strength and intensity of the heat makes you feel like the sun has come unhinged and is on a trajectory path headed straight towards you and in a moment you will simply spontaneously combust! I may be being a bit dramatic, but… it’s true!

On a totally different subject, market vendors crack me up too… Figuring out how to bargain was a huge step for me. But I guess it paid off because when I traveled back to the US I was able to talk down the price of a new SIM card for my phone.

You see the skills I am learning here, they will be totally useful down the road ;)

I have learned how to handle sitting in a hot crowed bus for hours on end which will make the vacation trips with my family seem like a breeze.

I have learned how to carry my own toilet paper with me at all times.

I have learned how to politely refuse the constant stream of people trying to sell me something at every stop light.

However, adaptations aside, what I will bring back with me from Burkina Faso is a sense of inspiration.

The smiles I see are genuine. When it seems like there should be nothing to be happy about, I hear children laughing, playing. In the midst of poverty people find joy and that is inspiring. Joy should not be conditional on circumstance and I think that is one thing American’s would do well to learn from the Burkinabe or at least those whom I have had the good fortune of meeting.

Burkina Faso has challenged me.
Burkina Faso has changed me.

Burkina Faso has carved out its own special place my heart and infused my mind with countless precious my memories

For me Bukina Faso has lived up to its name as the land of the upright people in the friendliness and sense of welcome that are extended to visitors.

I have been privileged to be able to call Ouagadougou home, even if only for a short time and I sincerely hope I can to do justice to this place when the time comes to describe, to those whom I love, what Burkina Faso has meant to me.

Jesus Drives a Black Mercedes, One Paper, Two Posters and the Toastmaster's Gala

So the good news is that Thursday I threw off the shackles that had been holding me back and began to enjoy life again :)

In the morning, I slept in and didn’t go into work until the afternoon. I had a ton of errands to run and couldn’t really focus with all this stuff hanging around in my mind. So I struck off intending to apply for my Ghana visa and buy my plane ticket. Those were the two big ones. However, my knee was still an issue. I wasn’t up to biking quite yet, so I was planning to walk and get a taxi. Everything was gravy except for the fact I forgot my passport and had to walk back for it before getting my taxi. The upside was the backtracking allowed me to pick up some bandages for my knee.

I was able to get a taxi and find the Ghanaian Embassy without a problem. It took me all of 15 minutes to apply for a visa. Probably the fastest documentation process I have experienced in Africa! Funny enough, as I was leaving the gate worker gave me his contact information on a torn and scribbled piece of paper (In fact this is a very common thing here… but my question is do they actually think I am going to call?!)

From the Ghana Embassy I went to the SatGuru travel agency. They had been so good planning my trip back to the US in April I wanted to go back. I was well rewarded. It was so easy. I didn’t know how to book tickets and pay for AirBurkina or domestic Ghana flights and they were able to do it all, all at once… and I was able to pay with a check. In general I was pretty psyched.

I left the agency planning to go home. However, the taxi situation was bleak. There were not many taxis going past on this particular road. So I decided to walk towards the market looking for one as I went. Well, I made it all the way there and decided instead of going straight home to go get some groceries. I bought a bunch of fruit and vegetables. This little market trip was just what I needed. After my knee injury and having to stay in all the time, I forget how amazing the Burkinabe people are. I am always so much happier after I interact with the locals. They just make me see life in such a relaxed carefree sort of way. The women are also extremely friendly; case in point, one lady I bought lettuce from felt the need to introduce me to her husband! Before I left the market I bought two croissants with the plan of making chicken salad sandwich croissants for lunch. Chicken salad is good on french bread, but it is even better on a croissant ;)

From there I was close to the US Embassy, about a 20 minute walk from home. I kept walking waiting for a taxi to pass and one never did! I made it all the way to Charles de Gaulle, the big main street. I waited at a corner for 10 minutes and not a single taxi passed. At this point it is well past noon. I have been walking around in the sun for an hour. I was sweaty and tired from carrying all my groceries. Things starting seemingly really grim, I thought I was going to be walking the rest of the way back which was rather inconvenient at this point. So I said a prayer for some sort of help to come and just as I was headed toward a tree for some shade, a car drives past and the driver yells something to me and pulls over. I was stunned. It was almost instantaneous after my prayer for help.

I walked over and talked to the guy in the black Mercedes Benz that had just pulled over for me. I told him where I needed to go, it wasn’t right on his way but he said it would be no problem. I did a mental evaluation of my situation and the potential dangers, and then got in the car. Before you say you would have never done that please see that my options were pretty limited, AND this guy was driving a very nice black Mercedes, not that dangerous people don’t drive nice cars… but it was a bit reassuring. I also figured I could do the tuck and roll maneuver if necessary. Turns out the guy worked for Onatel, the phone company, and had been to the US several times so we switched between French and English. He could have owned the company for all I know! He also told me used to play football for the Burkina national football league. So anyway, totally bizarre, but really cool ;) He drove me back and I had him drop at the entrance to the university and to walk the rest of the way… see I am cautious!

The most amazing thing is that as I was getting out of the car I was so thankful for the ride I said something along the lines of “Thank you again, so much… You really saved me!” To which he replied, “God is good.” I am not kidding you. I leave you to assess the situation for yourself, but I am convinced that Jesus drives a black Mercedes Benz. Seconds after I prayed for help in my moment of need this car comes and gives me a ride. God is good.

When I got home I was still a bit in shock from my heaven orchestrated rescue, but I went over and invited Susan for lunch. We made chicken salad on croissants, just as I had planned…yum! In the afternoon, I went to work. I am not sure what I did exactly… I did leave early though. I had a tennis lesson at 4:00pm and it was first one since my fall. I couldn’t wait any longer. I rode my bike there without a problem. That I figured was the first test ;) I told my tennis teacher my situation and we decided if it was a problem we would stop. Thankfully it was fine and I had a great time letting some of my pent up aggression loose on the tennis ball. I was glad to be back in the game

Although I rode my bike to tennis I asked Ben for a ride to WIRED since I didn’t want to push it, and I like to ride back fast at night and wouldn’t be able to do that in this case. It was no problem and Leanna was able to drive me home. One of the senior guys from the youth group gave the talk. He did a really nice job preaching the gospel. Literally, the gospel of salvation, back to the basics of a story we will never fully understand. After the talk, which went a little overtime, we had ice cream and cake in celebration of the Food Distribution achievements. After Youth group I worked earnestly on writing my speech for Toastmasters. The title of the speech was “The Impossible Task” and was about how to describe Burkina Faso to someone who has never been there before. Since I knew I would be face with such a task in the near future I figured coming up with some organized thoughts might be a good idea. I am posting the speech script to give you a preview… If you ask nicely, maybe I will perform it for you live when I return. I also probably watched some Hannah Montana, but I can’t be sure. Sorry! In any case, I went to sleep in a much better state of mind on Thursday than on Wednesday.

Friday I went into the office at the normal time and got right to work! After running my errands on Thursday my brain was free to focus on the tasks at hand. I wrote a ton of emails and just generally got things back in order. I worked all morning and through the break until 1:30. At 1:30 I hightailed it out of my office to get back to the Ghanaian Embassy to pick up my passport. I didn’t have time for lunch so I cross my fingers Leanna would offer me some since I was headed over there afterwards.

Wouldn’t you know, between 12-3 it is really hard to find a taxi… I had almost walked up to the traffic light before one passed me. I flagged him down and he was able to give me ride even though it wasn’t right on the way to his other destinations. Thankfully my passport was ready, and 15,000CFA later I was set to go to Ghana. From the Ghanaian Embassy I took another taxi to Leanna’s house. Surprise, though, she wasn’t there! She got there 20 minutes later, but it wasn’t a problem because I had my book with me and was able to read a little bit which kept mind off of the heat. Ben arrived as well because we were supposed to figure out the awards to give out at the end of year WIRED Banquet scheduled for the next Friday. We came up with some pretty good and goofy awards. For example, “International Woman of Mystery Award, Renaissance Woman Award, Most Likely to the Next Disney Heart Throb, The Person People Most Want to Impress, The Person Least Likely to Own a Donkey Cart…” The list goes on, but you get the gist.

Once we hashed out those details we trekked over to the leather shop and put in an order for some end of the year gifts of the WIRED Llama leaders, bracelets for the Famine 2008, and I ordered custom bookmarks to give to my bible study girls ;) The stuff was pricier than I thought it would be, but I think it was still worth it. Leanna drove me back quickly to get to my French lesson in time. But it turns out my teacher wasn’t able to make it. Oh well, it was still good to be back. Susan and I went to Pam’s house for dinner. It was a fun evening. We had been planning it forever, so it was nice when it actually happened! It was Mexican style food with pina coladas which were not quite right on… there was something wrong with the proportions, but it was still good. After dinner we settled in and watched 4 Weddings and Funeral. I know this is a really popular older movie, but I really didn’t like it. I thought it was rather tasteless and a bit pathetic and not realistic at all. Pam gave us a ride home and I worked on polishing and cutting my speech down to fit in the time allotment.

Saturday I got up and went to Toastmasters. My speech went off great. I think the Burkinabe liked hearing impressions of their country from a foreigner. The meeting was pretty standard, nothing out of the ordinary… After the meeting I made a quick lunch before Leanna came by to get me. Leanna, Ben and I headed out to Nongtaba Village the place we wanted to have the WIRED end of year retreat. It was great. I never knew such a cool place existed in Ouaga before! It is like a sweet summer camp. A huge pool, cabanas, air conditioned rooms, a play ground and dig this… a mini zoo with monkeys! The monkeys are tied to the trees with rope which can’t be very humane, but it is cool to see a monkey up close like that ;) We were able to negotiate a nice price and I think we are going to do it! The nice thing is everything is catered in and all we do is show up and run our program… P.S. the owner was definitely European and drove a Porsche in Burkina Faso. Those two things just don’t go together. I was also the translator for our group which was pretty cool. In the afternoon I decided to bake something. However, having very few ingredients I chose to make the “Eggless, Milkless, Butterless Cake”… without any of those ingredients you have to wonder what exactly IS in it; well, there were raisins, flour, sugar and spices. It was very much a spice cake. I didn’t have high expectations for it, but it was surprisingly good and ended up lasting me all week.

That night Ben, Leanna and Reid came over for a movie. FYI Reid is new to Ouagadougou and is Ben’s new housemate since Will moved out. Which by the way, Will is engaged! His girlfriend said yes, and so I guess he is now his fiancé. He proposed at the Eiffel Tower while they were in Paris. Nice. Anyway, Saturday night we just watched a movie. The movie of the evening was supplied by Benjamin and it was called “Run, Fat Boy, Run!” It was really quite excellent. British and Funny. If you like that sort of humor. I think it has a nice overall feel to it.

Sunday I slept in. No church this week. That’s not true I listened to a sermon. I also worked out and felt really good actually. The big surprise was that Sunday morning it was raining lions and elephants! I had never seem such a down pour before. Part of the reason I got up when I did was to see the rain and because it was so loud on my roof there was not use in trying to sleep. Now I understand why there are floods in Africa. It all kind of makes sense now. There is no flood infrastructure because for 8 months you don’t see a drop of rain and then, deluge! So what are you to do? You have to prepare, obviously… but to what degree is necessary. The rain was intense.

I was supposed to go to lunch with Susan and a friend of hers out at a restaurant by the Lombila Dam. I was pretty excited to finally the dam where all my water had been coming from. However, with the rains the road there were washed out and the place it outdoors so we had to change plans. Instead we went to an Indian restaurant. It was really pretty good. The only thing about Indian food is that it comes in rather small portions which is good for your waist and bad for your wallet. The two best parts of the outing were meeting the friend’s daughter who was in 3rd grade and just charming and the fact that their 4x4 got stuck in the mud in front of Susan’s house. We tried using bricks and cardboard under the tires to get better traction, but in the end the guy had to rock the car forward and backwards until it made huge ruts and was finally able to grab the more solid ground.

In the afternoon, since things were still a bit drizzly I figured I wouldn’t have tennis lessons. However, I decided to go anyway just to work out. Even though I had to use the elliptical, it was a good choice to go. I left refreshed and rescheduled a tennis lesson for Monday. I went home and showered. I didn’t really want to go out again, but Leanna was having dinner at her house. I debated and debated. I got home and showered and then convinced myself that if I went I would leave early and get to pick up the four things on my store list I needed to buy. A run to the store was something I had been meaning to do, I figured I could rationalize going to Leanna’s by also going to store.

Leanna made great baked potato soup. It was so creamy and bad for you, but oh so yummy! I stayed through dinner but peaced out when they were going to start watching LOST. I was afraid the places I needed to go would be closed, but no… all the little boutiques and kiosks were open. I really had to get some toilet paper. I was literally out out and had gone through all my stashed tissue and paper napkins, so this was kind of an imperative item to procure. When I got home, I went into the office and talked to my family online. It was a great conversation, but again a late night.

Monday morning, I went into work again dreading having to write my paper. So I was not super motivated. I did some work, but mid-morning Konate came by and talked about making up a poster for the upcoming Journee des Entreprise, or “Business Days” which is kind of like a job fair without such an emphasis on hiring, but more just getting exposure for the businesses and letting the students know what is out there. Anyway, our group (GVEA) was having a booth and so I needed to make a poster. I spent most of my day working on that. It went quite well. Monday night I worked really hard to finish reading “White Man’s Burden”… a task I was successful in completing. That book took me quite a long time to get through, but it was truly amazing. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking about international development. At 11:00pm I was back in my office. Why so late? Well, the IWA sustainability toolbox effort I helping coordinate was having an online chat that night among the available members. We had just finished a big push to assign people to smaller teams with specific tasks and we wanted to keep things moving forward. It was an interesting group chat. I had to facilitate it and figure out how to get everything to work with Skype. I was a bit nervous it wouldn’t work, but it did! The online chat is less efficient than a conference call, but an okay alternative when not everyone has those capabilities.

Tuesday morning I started off with a make up tennis lesson. That was fun, but in the morning I was not quite as ready to go as when I play in the afternoon. Regardless, it made me alert and productive on Tuesday. I finished up my poster and planned for a meeting with Nicolas. We needed to follow up on the visit to the ceramics workshop. I made an outline of topics to cover so the meeting wouldn’t go too long. FYI by this time my knee is back in business. I am still cautious because I don’t want to accidentally rip off the scab, but it looks good and I can do everything I used to do! The meeting with Nicolas went well and afterwards I raced back to school for my French lesson. I was on fire with my French that day. I don’t get it, some days I am really rocking it and others not so much. Anyway, Tuesday night I stayed in the office pretty late working on emails to follow up to the meeting with Nicolas. I also created the design we are using for the T-shirts we are going to give out at the end of the year retreat. The theme of the retreat is salt and light. Leanna and I came up with an awesome graphic on Saturday. I simply digitalized them in photoshop. What I did at home that night has been lost to the black hole of my memory. It must not have been that important! I am, however, fairly certain that I spent some time planning for bible study.

Wednesday I worked a “continuous day” as they call it. I started early in the morning and worked through the break. That way I didn’t have to come back after bible study. In the morning I worked with Konate to have my poster printed. It was super easy, and I am really impressed they have a legitimate plotter at 2iE. I also worked on writing the first parts of my paper. I was able to hammer out the introduction and part of the methods section.

I was thankfully prepared for bible study this week, the lesson always goes better when I prepare ahead of time... We talked about Oracle Psalms. I think it went quite well. Rosie’s family from England was there visiting and so they sat in and participated in the study which was a nice change of pace. For snack I busted out the box of cookies I brought back from Paris with me along with some dried mango pieces. The cookies were a HUGE hit. They were the very skinny butter cookies dipped in chocolate…mmmm good. With the weekend approaching I realized I would have to kick my paper writing into high gear. The pressure was finally on. I ended up staying up super late working on this thing. I had written up my Introduction and Methods, but couldn’t do my results yet because I hadn’t really sat down and sifted through everything. So I finally took the time and endured the brain strain of analysis. This in and of itself was a huge task. I gave myself a reward break after a couple of hours and watched Grey’s Anatomy. It was a two hour special and man was it good! I finished with that show and was so happy :) I got to a place I could stop at like 4:00am, late I know... I did sleep until 8:00am, so that was still four hours of sleep. Not ideal, but not horrible.

The reason I had to get up that early was that I had to help out that the GVEA stand at the Business Fair. They had been setting up for this fair ALL WEEK! They were not just little tables. Oh no, they were whole rooms! Each exhibitor had an individual room with electricity to it and a roof over it. I was blown away. Some businesses brought in whole furniture sets and really set up there display very nicely. Anyway, I got to explain my project to a couple of people. Not too many, but it was good I was there. Mariam, a PhD student at 2iE who has helped me a ton, was also there so it was nice to have a chance to talk to her. After working at the table in the morning I now understand why the booths have roofs. It was SO hot! Oh, yes at 9:00am I had a French lesson. I knew I would be busy on Friday and so I arranged for him to come Thursday morning. It worked out quite well. I was able to take a short nap in the break time, but it was cut short by my tennis lesson at 4:00pm. Much better than last time. I tell you, those morning slots are just not good for me! I went home and feverishly worked on my paper for thirty minutes until I had to leave for the ISO Celebration of the Arts. I was still working on the results section… The Celebration of the Arts took the place of youth group and while I had this paper pressing down on me I knew I needed to go to the show. More importantly I wanted to go to the show to support the kids I knew. When I got home I finished up my results section. Then I got right to work on the Discussion portion of my paper at about 1am. I was working well, but I was pretty tired. I finished the discussion, or so I thought…

I went to bed at 5:00am and the sight of the sun coming up as I was going to bed was not comforting at all. I wanted to finish up my paper by Friday to email to the MIT professor and Professor Soboyejo. It was a self-imposed deadline, but I still wanted to keep it. I wanted to be done with things before I went to the conference.

Friday I had no qualms about sleeping until 10am. There were terrible rains in the morning which wiped out the Business Days. I got up and worked at home for the morning. I went into the office in the afternoon and realized that I should have made changes to my poster and had a copy printed to bring to the conference with me in case I could exhibit it. So I gave myself until 5:30 to get it done, thinking I would still have time to print it. Well, thanks to the Business Days, nothing was working as usual. I tried to get Konate to help me, but things just got more complicated and he ended printing another copy of the original which didn’t help me. So Africa wins again. I was still holding out hope of printing it on Saturday, but I couldn’t stick around any longer because I had the youth group banquet to get ready for. I got back to my house at 6:20 and was dressed, ready to go at 6:30. I was even able to track Susan down and borrow her tank top since my white one was still damp from when I hand washed it. Line drying clothes is fine except when it is humid outside and the rain in the morning was not helping my cause.

The banquet was amazing. Leanna did such a nice job presenting the awards and making people feel special. The banquet was held at the Palmier Hotel. It was a great venue. Clean, chic, and good food is a winning combination by my standards. They served spaghetti carbonara which is quickly becoming one of my favorite dishes. Ben and I had to rearrange the tables a bit, but we were successful in setting up the room very nicely. All the kids dressed up and it was so cute to see them in their pretty dresses and dress shirts.

After the banquet, Leanna drove me home and I got back to work on the paper which had become a thorn in my side. I was inspired to write the conclusion and the abstract. I was able to do it in pretty good timing as well. I was about to call it a night when I decided to tackle the last thing on my list and that was to check over the microbiology specifics in my paper. I have never been trained in microbiology and was thrust into this work with little preparation or assistance. I read a great MIT thesis that spelled everything out for me. The problem was, however, I realized I had made a huge error. My results were all based on Total Coliform (TC) levels since there was no E.Coli (EC) in the raw water. Well, this means that yes I can talk about the efficiency of the filters in terms of TC removal, but can not extend my results to proposed health impacts because EC is the required parameter. So once I discovered this, it literally felt like the roof had collapsed on my head. However, after a nice mango, strawberry, and pineapple smoothie I was able to regroup my thoughts and make the needed changes. They weren’t as dramatic as I had first imagined and I now feel much more confident in what I can say about my experiment. I finished up with a draft that was just about ready to go. I also readjusted my poster accordingly, so I guess it was a good thing it wasn’t printed. This took me again until 4am to complete. Do you see a pattern here?

I got up at 8:40am to go to my 9:00am tennis lesson. I got to the rec center, having sacrificed my sleep, only to find my tennis teacher couldn’t play because he had received a vaccine shot in his leg and couldn’t move easily since his leg was sore. So instead he got this punk guy to play with me. I don’t like this guy very much, period, and the way he was putting forth little to no effort in playing with me was really frustrating. Luckily we ended early and I just left. I didn’t have him sign off my card because that did not constitute a lesson in my book. Oh, I should note, on my way to the rec center I passed Konate who stopped and told me to come and print my poster right then. I kindly told him I was busy and would be back in an hour… He is so exasperating! Given that encounter, I did go straight back to my office after the non-lesson. Turns out, the printer guy was not coming in on Saturday, and I was out of luck with my poster. But you know what? I was okay with that because at least I now have a poster that is ready to go for then next conference that comes up. Instead of going home I stayed in my office and went through my paper one last time. I made some changes and then sent out the copies to Professor Soboyejo and the MIT professor. I also was able to write some other important emails and in general wrap up everything that I had been struggling to do this week.

I left my office and went home feeling like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders! I cleaned up the mess of dishes and other junk that had been collecting on my table since Wednesday. I put on some music and danced around. I also started to pick out the clothes I would need to wash for Ghana. I had made plans to go to lunch with Susan and Mary Ellen, but Mary Ellen had tennis at 12:30pm so I figured the earliest I would hear from them was about 2pm. Well, I realized my phone was on silent from the night before and I had missed all sorts of calls and texts from them. They were meeting at 1:00 at Paradisio’s for lunch. Well, it was 1:30 when I got this information. So I grabbed all my clothes shoved them in my backpack. I was planning to stop by Leanna’s, put my clothes in the wash, then head over to at least say hi. Mary Ellen would be leaving while I was in Ghana so this was my last chance to say good bye, good luck and just socialize one last time. I got on my bike and realized immediately something wasn’t right. My back tire was flat. Oye! Not what I needed. I felt like my life was beginning to resemble a sitcom script. I thought maybe I can just have the bike guys pump it up and I can have it fixed later since I was in a hurry. However, as I pulled up to the bike place, I got off my bike, looked behind me and I saw a thumbtack stuck in my tire. My aspirations for the afternoon deflated about as quickly as my flat tire.

The tire patching took a record 10 minutes. That was fast indeed. I was able to rearrange my plans and went straight to restaurant and sat and chatted for about an hour. We had great conversations, reflections, and the insights were wonderful! After lunch, I went to Leanna’s. She didn’t care I was much later than my earlier text had indicated… that was before I found my flat tire. I must admit it makes for a great story. Anyway, I had no problem doing my laundry. I wasn’t going to dry my things there, but realized I couldn’t take them home soaked and so I did hang them up for a bit and just bummed around Leanna’s house for a while. She had two students over because she was helping them on a math project. They had to design a shopping mall and these girls were having some trouble with figuring out how to get all the areas to fit together. It was so nice of Leanna to have them come to her house to work on it. I did finally go home and hung up my laundry outside to finish drying. As I was rehanging the clothes I figured out I put too much detergent in the washer because the clothes were a little sticky… Just so you know, if you don’t already, it is a bad idea to add more detergent because you think your clothes are dirtier and you have more of them.

After making sure my laundry was on its way to being ready to pack that night I got ready for the Toastmasters Gala! I wore my class day outfit from last year in honor of the Princeton Reunions I was missing. That was about killing me… But, oh the Gala was wonderful :) I couldn’t believe it. It was a huge gathering. Several hundred people and everyone was dressed up. Even the employees of the Sofitel had matching gowns and blended in with the crowd. The food was good and the place was decorated with balloons and just all around it was a high class affair like I had never seen in Ouaga before. But it figures… I paid about $35 US for the ticket to go; however, it was well worth it my mind. It was not just any Gala though. Since it was a Toastmaster’s Gala they worked in all the elements of a real meeting. Susan lead the Table Topics improvisational activity. Her theme was the 2008 Olympics and she did it mostly in French asking only 2 questions in English. She did a great job. She had asked me before if she could call on me for one of the English questions and I enthusiastically agreed. She didn’t tell me the question beforehand because it is supposed to be improve. Anyway, I was to imagine I was on the women’s US volleyball team won gold at the last Olympics and explain how winning a gold medal changed my life. It was a prefect question for me and I really enjoyed answering it. I also have to admit I derived a good deal of confidence from the fact that very few of the people <15% would know what I was saying.

It was really cool because they love the way English sounds and for me to get up and speak English was like “Woah!” to them, so I felt good. I took some nice pictures of the evening. I was also very happy because a very nice girl from our club named Mintu sat next to me. It was nice to get to talk to her outside of the regular Toastmaster meetings. We are just getting to be friends, and I will miss her. I wish it hadn’t taken so long! The reality of my leaving is setting in and I don’t like it.

We got home from the Gala at about 1am. I wished I could have crashed into my bed and fallen sound asleep for the next 24 hours, but I couldn’t. I had to pack to go to Ghana! It went very smoothly and I was asleep by 2:30am which was good because I had to get back up 6:50am to go to office for some last minute online tasks I had to complete in case I was without internet in Ghana. Morning came way, way too quickly but I was headed to Ghana so somehow found the energy to get up even after only getting 4 hours of sleep for the past four nights. My horrible sleep patterns were not a good thing and I could tell they were taking a toll on my body and mind. I just kept on imagining finally getting to the guesthouse in Accra and sleeping, sleeping, sleeping.

I will end this post here. Thanks for being patient with me. Stay tuned for my Ghana adventures!

A Little Drive Through Ouaga

So since I normally just put my pictures in a slideshow you don't get any explanation of what you are looking at. I wanted to do something different with this post and have decided to take you on a short drive in Ouaga. I will be your guide....

Let's get going!

To start with you will see many bicycles, both pedal bikes and motor bikes. They look really old and probably are really old ;) Bicycles always ride on the right of the vehicle traffic, or at least they are supposed to...

It is also impossible to go out without seeing a donkey cart. The donkey carts usually carry garbage, but in other cases they can be rented to transport other things as well. There is a running joke with my friends and I about the donkey cart boys and the fact that Donkey Cart was a very popular video game at one point in time :)

Alas, there are gas stations in Burkina Faso. You can see it in the background of this scene. They have working pumps, but are few and far between and the gasoline is very expensive. However, usually motos just buy gas from someone in the market that pours the fuel into your tank using a funnel and the gas is poured from glass bottles. Far cry from safe or healthy.

AND you have the ditch diggers. There are open sewers in Ouaga and people have to dig them... People also have to shovel them out sometimes which is pretty foul.

Sadly there are moto accidents all the time. Not a week goes by that I don't see a crowd of people off to the side of the road. Notice the people bending over the man sitting on the ground hidden by the moto in front. The bikes are usually left on the road until the authorities arrive.

Where do mangos come from? Why the man with the gaint mango wagon of course! People who these carts carry all sorts of goods with them. I have seen whole carts loaded with bananas, bicycles, construction materials, ect. The are pulled by man power.

I don't really buy fruit from the sketchy guys with the gaint carts of fruit. I prefer the kind sweet ladies who have a semi permenant locations from which they sell their fruit. The mobile vendors who aren't there is the morning to be held accountable for their fruit waulity are no friend of mine. I would also like to point out the women use the same cloth for clothes as so for table coverings.

Need a pair of shoes. How about the ones hanging in your face? This shoe vendor is quite representative of retail shops in Ouagadougou. They aren't really shops at all, but more like stands at a state fair. The have everything out for display and they like to hang things. Hanging mechandise from tree branches is a favorite pastime of vendors here.

These bags contain flour, tapioca, sugar, peanuts, and sugared peanuts. If you need any of those things feel free to stop at one of the many tables like the ones you see here.

And finally to end this little adventure I leave you at the La Shopette. Yes, that blessed establishment that supplies my weekly alimentary needs. They don't have everything and their prices flucuate like a yo-yo, but it is small, friendly and locally run. They also have dried mangos. Enough said. I'm going to stop in and grab some rice, eggs, milk, and juice. Need anything?

Anyway, hope to see YOU around Ouaga the next time I'm out and about...

WIRED feeds 5000...

Food Distribution Day!

$9786.44, Minor Knee Issues, and a Ceramics Studio

I have been putting off writing this until I felt a little higher spirited, but since that doesn’t seem to be happening I guess I will have to just forge ahead. I have been in a bit of a down mood since Saturday when I fell and cut my knee. If there is one thing that can really, I mean really throw me for a loop, it is some sort of physical ailment which I brought upon myself. I haven’t been able to run, play tennis, or ride my bike and it is killing me. I just don’t know what to do with myself and the days keep on slipping by. I have a million things I should be doing, but I can’t bring myself to want to do anything! It is a horrible feeling. Sorry to have to burden you with this, but I can’t be Little Miss Sunshine all the time you know… Anyway, Sara is in a slump and hoping she will snap out of it ASAP, because, honey, life ain’t waitin’ for ya!

Alright, enough of the introduction which turned strangely into a self pep talk… I left off last week on Tuesday. I have to admit I am having a terrible time remembering back that far. While it was only 7 days ago, it feels like months ago. Being in the depths of despair makes you forget life was pretty darn amazing just a few days ago. So, anyway, I’ll give it my best shot. Wednesday morning I got really up early and went swimming. I had made up my mind the night before to do this, but funny enough, my room was over air conditioned that night and in the morning I almost didn’t get up to go because it was too cold. But then I realized when I stepped outside it would still be hot, so I rolled out of bed, determinedly struggled to find motivation! It was a great idea; expect that the pool guy cleans until 8:30 and I didn’t know that. When I got in the pool at 7:15 he wasn’t super happy. However, I didn’t really care. I swam anyway and it was great! After I showered and got to the office, I spent some time proofreading my last post and posting it. I was just chillin’ in my office trying to do something when all the sudden someone knocks on my door. As I tell them to come in, I am sure it is going to be another awkward interaction in my broken French with a co-worker. However, I was pleasantly surprised when my co-worker stepped aside after getting my attention and introduced me to an American visitor to 2iE. Turns out he was U.S. State Department Regional Environmental Officer for West and Central Africa. Awesome. He is normally stationed in Ghana and was in Ouagadougou on a tour of the region. It was great to get to show him some of what I was working on and be able to talk to him about 2iE, ect. It is good to make contacts like that. When I am at Stanford and need a site where I can do my fieldwork I will hopefully have a whole list of names of people to contact :) Building that network…

Anyway, his visit didn’t last long and I was able to prepare my lesson for bible study. Unlike last week I hadn’t planned ahead and therefore spent the hour before getting myself ready to go! I had, however, thought far enough ahead to happily accept the extra cookies from the movie night to bring as the snack. I also stopped along the way to pick up some treats called “FanYoGo” it is basically yogurt that is frozen. Literally. Not frozen yogurt that tastes like ice cream. This is much more crystal-y; it is seriously yogurt in a small plastic bag that is frozen. I knew the shopette had them, but it was out of the way and I figured the little kiosk by SIM would have them too. Wrong! I had backtrack quite a bit to find them, but it was worth it. It was very very hot that day and the cool treat was much appreciated. In bible study we looked at Penitential Pslams, namely Psalm 51 where David is repenting. The lesson was really good. When everyone had left I rode my bike over to the pharmacy to finally fill my prescription for malaria meds. I got the prescription a week ago and kept on saying I would go. Well, Wednesday was D-day in that I had to take my next pill then, so I would HAVE to go get them! Anyway, it was no problem. The pharmacy had what I was looking for. Thankfully I have health insurance. An 8 week supply cost me 4310CFA or about $9. However, this was only 10% of the total price! Without the health insurance from my job I would have been paying $90… Ouch. Regardless, from the pharmacy I biked to Leanna’s to drop off a card for a girl who was leaving Ouaga the next day. She was having a going away party that night, but I didn’t think I would be able to make it. Leanna wasn’t home so I had to hide the card in the bushes. No problem, I would just send her a text message to let her know where to look. I rushed back to 2iE to get back in time for my French lesson. But wait, gasp, I checked my phone and Leanna’s message hadn’t sent! Yikes! After getting super mad at my phone I finally realized it was my fault because I ran out of credit AND to make matters worse I left my wallet at my house and my teacher was coming in 5 minutes. Never a dull moment. So I ran home grabbed my wallet walked out the gate and flagged down the first guy I saw to buy some credit. Gotta love Africa. I charged my phone, sent my message, and just about finished sending an important email just as my teacher arrived. Score. My lesson was great fun. Really, I was energized and ready to start talking. Yahoo. Yeah, yeah normally French is on Tuesday but because of the movie night and the meeting beforehand I moved it a day later.

Following my lesson I finished up some stuff at my office and went home. I watched the newest Grey’s Anatomy and debated going to the going away party. Since the other plan for the night was ironing my clothes, I decided to go. Ben came and picked me up. It was a nice gathering. I ended up being there later than expected and Leanna got there way late and I didn’t even really get a chance to say more than Hi to her, but it was good that I went. When I got home at like 10:30 I was still a bit mad at my Mom for not being around earlier in the day to talk, but instead of staying mad I realized maybe I should be putting in some more effort and so I trekked to my office, crossing my fingers my family would be home. AND they were! Yeah! I had a great talk with Ryan and then a really great talk with my Mom. I didn’t leave my office until 1am. It was a bit eerie walking back, but I made it and the conversation was well worth it. That night I slept amazingly and on Thursday I stayed home and did my work there in the morning.

It was great. I read a bunch of technical briefs on setting up a filter factory and then typed up a list of questions for the upcoming visit Nicolas and I would be making to the ceramics workshop. At lunchtime Ben came over and we had lunch in the cafeteria. It is always nice to have a friend join me to share a bit of 2iE campus life. During lunch and afterwards we hashed out plans for the end of year youth group retreat. All I can say is it is going to be awesome! In the afternoon, my friend Moulaye stopped by to invite me to a Cameroonian Cultural Night. It sounded like fun and I considered going, but had to email him and tell him no because it was same time and day as the Edge Service and I hadn’t gone to the Edge in a while with being gone for traveling and stuff…Also, Bianca was coming in to town and I wanted to hang out with her. So I made up my mind. At 4:00 I went for my tennis lesson. Again, I was on Fi-re ;) I got back in time to shower and have a nice dinner before leaving to get to youth group. I wasn’t teaching this week so I had the good fortune of simply showing up. Leanna did have me run the opening game which went just so-so. The girl who normally does it is so good at it, it was hard to live up to the precedent she set. That night we found out that the youth has raised $9786.44 for the 30 hour famine food distribution. They had set their goal at $5000 and that was a faith goal, pretty sure it would be impossible to reach. But nothing is impossible with God and he made that very clear. Let me also tell you there are about 45 kids in the youth group. You do the math. That is impressive work! I came back that night and read some of the two books I am currently digging into. The first is White Man’s Burden which is super critical of foreign aid agencies and really interesting. However, one can only take so much of that so I started the book “The Life of Pi” to read at the same time. Seems to be going well…

Friday. Oh Friday. I can’t remember Friday morning. It is probably inconsequential as I feel much of which I do these days is… At any rate, I was going to take Friday as a rest day from working out, but with the food distribution on Saturday I figured I would take that as my day off instead. So in the early afternoon I hit the gym. Hard. I ran 4 miles at an 8:30 mile pace which is pretty good. All week I was just rolling… I forgot my workout CD which was a bummer, but I prayed instead mainly for my brother who would be having his regional track meet that evening. It was an exhilarating run to say the least. In the afternoon, I went to the library and got some books I would need for my meeting with Pam on Monday. She is doing a “cable” (some embassy lingo) on water in Burkina Faso and wanted to talk to me about it. Since I know some, but not a ton I went and got some reports to base my contribution on. Friday was French lesson day again. Again, a positive attitude makes all the difference. I had friends coming over that night for a movie and not much to worry about so I just had a fun time arguing with my French teacher about any and everything…

In the evening I made myself dinner and watched a little Hannah Montana before my friends came over. When they did get here we made popcorn and Ben and Bianca chose Independence Day to watch. We made it all of 10 minutes into that movie and decided to change plans. Instead we watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers! Leanna and I bought it at the ISO Yard Sale and it was just the right upbeat and ridiculous movie for our group that night. I did have to borrow Susan’s transformer though because it was a VHS and Leanna brought her video player but it was only 110V. I bring this up because the transformer plays a critical role in Saturday evening’s fated fall. Oh, this totally does not fit into this paragraph, but one thing I really look forward to in America is finding toilet seats that match the size of the bowl. The seats here are frequently too big or too small or so crooked you wonder why they bother! but I digress… The movie was great fun indeed. Everyone left about 9:30 and instead of going to bed I looked over some of the books I picked up for Pam and then at 10:30 decided to watch The Pursuit of Happiness. I had wanted to watch that from the start so I decided that there was no time like the present and that if I wanted to watch it that is what I should do! So by golly I spent the next 2 hours of my life entranced by Will Smith’s unending dedication to making something of himself. I can’t say I shed any tears, by at one point my eyes did well up in emotion. So there… Again, I should have gone to bed but instead I read more of my books which seemed more appealing to me than sleep at that moment. I would regret that decision, however, in the morning when my alarm went off at 6:30 beckoning me to get my lazy butt up and over to the Harrison’s to leave for the grain distribution.

Saturday was an incredible day. About 30 kids showed up to help distribute the corn that had been purchased with all the money they raised. We were a caravan of white vehicles that made its way to Sector 30. Sector 30 is a very poor area of Ouagadougou. It is also where CAMA has a compound and has the facilities for a grain distribution. That morning they were dedicating a new Women’s Center and so we had to first sit through that whole ceremony. Blah, blah, blah… They are literally always the same thing. They thank every president, director and vice president in attendance. People come in late and the French to tribal language translation makes the thing last twice as long. Can you tell I’m not a big fan of these events? I mean really, these people need to get over themselves. Oh, but before the ceremony Rachel Harrison and I joined in an African dance. It was crazy cool. There were about a hundred African women all standing about in a circle and Rachel and I were in the middle with two other women who were showing us how to shake our behinds and stomp our feet the way we were supposed to. Bianca tried to take some video footage of me, but it didn’t come out because of the sun. Talk about disappointing. I would have loved to have shown you. I will include, though, a clip I took of the Africans dancing. It was choice. p.s. I borrowed Susan’s camcorder for this event. My plan is to make a short movie about it later!

Well, the ceremony came to an abrupt end and that meant it was time to start passing out the corn. There were 5 rooms where the grain was stored. The corn came in 100kg stacks of which we had purchased 200! Each person who received a ticket from the CAMA organization was entitled to two buckets full of corn. In total, 600 tickets were given out! The estimate is that 5000 people will be impacted by the food we distributed. That, my friend, is a lot… Anyway, it was bit chaotic as are most things in life, especially when something is being given out free. I walked around and took pictures and took video. I have posted 92 of them to my Picasa account and have them displayed above… I did also help with the corn which was cool. But there were enough people there and the kids wanted to do the work. It was really their thing. At the end, things got a bit harried. A few of the ticket collectors weren’t ripping the tickets and a few ladies came in a back door, and so the integrity of the system was compromised. The grain was gone, but there were still people there demanding food. Normally, they would have left, but because people showed up without a ticket and got food others thought the should be able to get the same. In the end, one of the workers started whipping a rope around to get the people to stop rushing that door to the last room where they were keeping 5 sacks. That was pretty traumatizing to some of the youth group kids. I don’t know what my problem is, but it didn’t really phase me. I should probably spend some time thinking through my reaction to everything. In the end you can certainly call the outreach a success and I was glad to have been able to help.

However, and you know that there was going to be a however… I still have problems with the free handouts thing. I mean really. $9786.44 could pay for schooling for hundreds of kids or even build a school for crying out loud. I just don’t know that giving people things like that isn’t more detrimental in the long run. Give a fish, or teach to fish. So I struggle with this. I can’t stand the thought of doing an outreach like that and then going back to my nice house and eventually my nice life in the US feeling all good inside about myself because I gave people two buckets of corn. Um, what happens when that runs out and we aren’t there to refill their buckets? Isn’t that making the poor people more dependent. But then again, they are hungry and is not feeding them an okay response? NO. So herein lies the problem. I feel like there is no way to win in these situations. But that doesn’t mean stop trying. I am often brought back to a quote from the movie Everafter. Not a movie you would think is super quotable, but it is. Anyway, the prince says that he used to think if he cared about anything he would have to care about everything and then he would go stark raving mad. But he realized he could start by caring about something and go on from there. I feel a bit like I haven’t quite moved to the point where the caring about something makes a noticeable impact. I care about water, that is my thing. I know that is my thing, but I can’t help but feeling puny and insignificant when I see all that needs to be done. I just want to do SOMETHING! But the problem I don’t know what that something is. My plan of action for the moment is listening; listening to the still small voice that directs my steps and dispels the mystery of tomorrow. Listening and waiting patiently so that I am humbled and ready when, like Esther, I am called to play my part in history. Whatever that part may be.

After spreading Christian love by giving out corn all morning, I uploaded the pictures onto my computer, ate lunch, and showered to get all the corn dust off of me and trust me there was SO much dust it made it look like it was snowing in rooms which is a ridiculous imagine in Africa during hot season, I know. I then promptly fell asleep for 3 hours making up for what I had missed the night before :) I slept like a baby. When I finally stirred I went to my office and had a great skype two-way webcam chat with my parents. I also got to talk to Jordan which was great. It had been a while since we connected. The results from his track meet were just as he had hoped for. Even better really. He won the pole vaulting competition with a personal record of 12ft. This means he will be competing at the Illinois State Track Meet. I am so proud of him! He also took 3rd in the two mile. His two best friends also made it down state so the triple threat still lives ;)

I got off the phone with them because Leanna was coming to get me to go to the Edge Service. At home I changed, packed my overnight bag, and got Susan’s stuff together to return to her. I didn’t have a ton of time, but I wanted to get it back to her as I promised I would. Anyway, I headed over and thankfully she was around. We chatted for a few minutes and I saw Leanna’s car pull up. At this, I said goodbye and ran back to my place. I hate to admit it, but what was going through my head at that moment was how cute my skirt must look billowing in the wind… (It is undeniably a really cute skirt.) However, as I was pridefully thinking way to highly of my appearance WHAM! My foot slid on a patch of wet ground from where the gardener had watered that afternoon and I was down. Not only down, but I had fallen against the cement rain trough filled with rocks. Not good. Frankly, I was more worried about the fact that my keys had flown from my hand and about the thought that my skirt was probably wrecked to really notice the gash on my left knee. Leanna got out of the car and helped find my keys. My skirt was miraculously without blemish. That is what I get I guess… However, the reality of my knee was setting in. I went in my house and washed up. I cleaned it out as best as I could and bandaged it up. It was a pretty deep cut, but I was like “oh its fine”. Here’s a tip, if it doesn’t stay together on its own 1. get stitches, or 2. at least track down a butterfly bandaid. I did neither and have paid dearly since. Saturday night I was still delusional that it was fine. I had pizza with Bianca and Leanna and we watched some of The Office after Edge. By the way, the Edge Service talk was really great. It was the final talk on grace and the speaker talked about the downward spiral of sin and the upward spiral of grace and obedience. I got a lot out of it. Anyway, we had a fun girls night and in the morning we got up and went over to Lorinda’s for a great Sunday Brunch of blueberry pancakes and hashbrowns.

Sunday morning, my knee was exuding some clear yellowish fluid which I thought was part of the normal healing process. Again, hint, yellow may mean proceed with caution when you driving, but what it means in the world of first aid is go get help. Lorinda looked at it too and we all decided it would heal fine on its own. After we finished eating and washing dishes, I played guitar and we all worshipped together which was amazing. It is for moments like those that I wanted to learn to play. From Lorinda’s we drove Bianca to the bus station and then Leanna dropped me off at home. I worked on stuff for my meeting with Pam the next morning and made beef stroganoff I was planning to have for dinner. Then I went and called my family for the second time this weekend because my knee thing was pretty ridiculous. I was so mad at myself for being so stupid! If I had just remembered the wet spot was there. I actually noted it in my mind when I first crossed my yard to get to Susan’s. But I was being vain and I feel like this injury was God whacking me over the head. Thanks, I get it now. No more thinking I’m hot stuff because as soon as that thought crossed my mind, WHAM!

Sunday night I watched Phantom of the Opera. I borrowed the DVD from Leanna. It was a movie I have wanted to see for a long time, but never had the chance. Well, my pity party for myself afforded me just the opportunity. So I watched this very intense musical consuming two batches of popcorn, one that I tried unsuccessfully to season with propel water flavoring. It was worth a shot. What if you could make berry flavored popcorn? I had to try, right? Anyway, the movie finished and I decided my knee was not doing well. In fact, it was very yellow now and continued to produce yellow fluid. I will spare you the details. I decided to take a shower and scrub it is clean. That was probably the best thing I had done up to that point in wound management. The polysporin was good, but quite useless in the face of the crazy bacteria and pathogens you find in Africa. I read for a long time on Sunday night and got up dreading what I would find in regards to my knee on Monday morning.

Monday I would have probably laid in bed feeling sorry for myself all morning, but I had a meeting with Pam so I pulled myself together, bandaged up my knee and went to work. The meeting with Pam was great. I found some information that I think will be very helpful for her. It was fun to be the go to water person :) Something I would like to continue to gain a reputation for… I went home for lunch around 1:00, but before that I did some online research and figured out the yellow slough on my wound was not good. When I went home I carefully and mercilessly scrubbed it off. The pain was bearable only because I imagined it was helping to make this horrible mistake go away.

I ate my lunch, read and then slept until 4:45. I’m not kidding. I don’t know what was wrong with me besides the fact I had a profusely running wound on my knee and was about as low spirited as they get. I didn’t want to see anybody or talk to anybody. Whenever I did see someone they would ask me why I was limping and I didn’t want to have to explain to them the problem. In addition, my relationship with the French language has moved from a love-hate to a dislike-hate relationship. The only reason why I got up at 4:45 was because my house guy came in to clean. GRrrr… It was fine though, I went to the nurses station to have her help me out. She looked at it, rubbed some Betadine on it, not very gently at that. I believe as I was walking out I was comparing her to the spawn of satan… I may be being a little dramatic here, but fine.

Monday night I did bring myself to work on my experiment report paper a bit, but then succumbed to continuing my wallowing by watching more Hannah Montana. The marathon was only interrupted by Susan coming over to partake of the left over ice cream I had been saving for a night she was free. After the ice cream I pulled myself away from the TV and made myself do something constructive. I decided to draw something. But what? Oh that infamous question which stumps even the best of the best artists. I let my mind wander and settled on drawing the candle and candlestick holder which I displayed on my table. It was a good choice. I also read for a long time. I am proud of those few good things which came out of Monday. In fact, in retrospect it was quite a good day. All I can remember though is my infernal injury and the anguish it was causing me. FYI I depend on my bike and my ability to walk for everything. I have no car and therefore if I can’t easily walk then riding my bike is out of the question and I am stranded, not to mention I have a long list of errands I need to run including food shopping, buying my ticket to Ghana, getting visa pictures, getting my visa, I also had to miss two tennis lessons and haven’t really worked out since Friday. Are you tracking with me?

Tuesday, again I had a meeting scheduled in the morning. This is really the trick for me. I have to something to get up for. Living alone doesn’t help the whole up and at ‘em in the morning thing. Then again, living with a random housemate doesn’t seem to help either. I miss Cassy and Ruby and colonial breakfast! I was supposed to go with Nicolas to the ceramic workshop at 10:00. We wanted to start a dialogue about manufacturing the filters in Ouagadougou. However, I got a call from Nicolas saying the guy wasn’t available and that they needed to change the visit time to 3:00. I didn’t see this as a problem. I had my French lesson scheduled for 5:00 but two hours should have been plenty of time. Should have been is the operative phrase here. Anyway, that left my morning totally free. But honestly, I was pretty worthless. My knee looked about the same as it had on Sunday which in my book was not a good sign. But the nurse seemed to think it was fine. I emailed the missionary doctor I knew here and was hoping to get a response and go see him before going to the ceramics workshop. That didn’t happen. Instead I ended up reading all morning. Not all was lost. I was reading the development book which I still consider researching my topic.

When 3:00 finally rolled around I went out and waited for Nicolas to come pick me up in one of his NGO vehicles. Nice. The ceramics workshop we visited was great. I mean really great. They are perfect for the filter project. They have the space, the equipment, and most importantly knowledge of clays and a knack for business. I was super pumped. The only problem was my knee was still hurting and as the clock turned to 5:15 I knew I had missed my French teacher, or more accurately he had come and waited and I didn’t show up. I even left my phone in the car by accident so I couldn’t send him a message. I felt really bad, but he always understands.

I got back to my office in a bit of a tizzy not knowing what to do. I was mad at myself for not going to the doctor sooner and finally tracked down his number, but it is so expensive to call people on my phone. I decided to go see the nurse one more time. She wasn’t there… perfect. So I bit the bullet and called the doctor. His daughter is in my bible study and I know the family from various connections. He told me to come over to his house and he will have a look at it for me. Great! Except I am worried that walking and riding my bike will make it worse and as I mentioned before I have no car, so I ask you, how would you proceed to get to the doctor’s house which is at least a mile away if not more? As I was about to start crying at my dismal situation, I ran into my boss at which point I proceeded to explain without hesitation that I had hurt my knee and needed to go to the doctor’s house but had no way to get there. My boss had his driver take me. Hallelujah!

The doctor took one look and told me it was infected and I needed antibiotics. He wrote a prescription and told me to clean it twice a day with Betadine. Well, I called Leanna who agreed to pick me up and drive me home. The 2iE driver could only bring me there… In the mean time I walked 200m from the doctor’s house to his clinic where I bought the antibiotics. I hadn’t had time though to run back to my house before leaving my office so I didn’t have enough money to pay my consultation bill which was 10000CFA ($25) and they don’t take insurance… What is the point of insurance if it doesn’t pay for your medical bills?! I am going to have to learn more about this twisted world of health care and taxes if I don’t want to be taken for a ride at each turn in the road.

Anyway, I did thankfully have enough money with me to buy the medication so I could start it that night. The doctor did give me permission to walk normally and ride my bike if I could. It wasn’t going to make it worse, which is what I needed to know. I considered walking home but a dust storm picked up and I decided instead to wait for Leanna as planned. I really appreciated her coming to get me. There were about a million and one things she needed to do and driving me around was not on that list. But she was so nice about it. She drove me home and I went in to my office and chatted with my Mom. Going to the doctor was the best choice I could have made. I’m just mad it took me so long to get to that point. Africa makes you do funny things. I didn’t talk with my Mom very long and instead went home did some Abs of Steel toning, made crepes for dinner and watched Grey’s Anatomy. I took the first antibiotics pill with dinner and wouldn’t you know within an hour the yellow was disappearing and it skin was closing up. Talk about a turn around! Anyway, the rest of the night I read my book the Life of Pi. I actually finished it ;) It was really good. I highly highly recommend it and would love to discuss with someone who has read it! I fell happily asleep confident I had the worst of my knee problems behind me. As a note, I would like to add that left over beef stroganoff makes an excellent filling for crepes. Seriously.

Today, Wednesday, I got up and made oatmeal for breakfast. I must be the world’s worst oatmeal maker because every time I make it turns out slimy yet crunchy on the inside. Not super appealing in the morning to say the least. I stopped by the nurse on the way to office since I hadn’t bought Betadine yet and she had some. The big gash closed up overnight. Yay! I spent the morning reading a new paper on the ceramic filters published by a professor at UVA as well as getting the food distribution pictures online. I decided to shelve the experiment write up until I felt divinely inspired. If I try and do something like that and don’t feel like it, I end up wasting my time. So I am being patient with myself. I think after the knee heals and my Ghana plans are taken care of I will be able to focus. I had a late lunch and planned for bible study. I bandaged my knee and mounted my bike. My knee is doing better, but it is not great. In an ideal world I probably should not ride my bike yet. However, I had no other option so I did it. With each pedaling motion I could imagine the cut on my knee reopening. Gross, I know. I stopped to get my visa picture taken, but it was going to be complicated so I peaced out. I also made a minor detour to buy some juice to go with Angela’s banana bread we had for our snack. This week’s bible study topic was Thanksgiving Psalms, specifically Psalm 118. Read it. You’ll like it. You’ll also recognize several of the verses from popular worship songs. After study I stopped by the bank to check my balance. It was much less than I thought it should be so I have to check with what is going on with my paychecks… Then I went to the pharmacy to get my Betadine and rode my bike through the university campus until I found the guys with the blue fabric hanging from a wooden frame who take the ID photos. It is an admittedly shady system. I paid this guy 1500CFA he took my picture, and I am supposed to come back to the same corner tomorrow morning to get my pictures. I am sure he will be there as I have used this system before, but it still just cracks me up!

I got back in time for my French lesson. Phew, if I blew him off two days in a row that would have been terrible. My knee had suffered from all my bike riding so I was a bit preoccupied but I did my best and was glad to have had the lesson. And I was able to distract him with enough random conversation that we didn’t get to the part of the lesson where he reads a paragraph and I have to write what he says. After French I was going to walk to the American Language Center (ALC) to watch Susan’s students have a mock presidential debate, but time was short so I rode my bike instead. It wasn’t the best thing I could have done, but I survived. I should interject that the tailor who makes clothes for Susan and I has a terrible habit of showing up at the most inconvenient time, namely as I walking out the door on my somewhere and leaving late… So it was classic that he came as I was leaving for the ALC. I took the bag of clothes from him and excused myself as politely as possible. Anyway, I made it to the debate on time which was important to me. I want to be a punctual person. The debate was interesting. The participants are non-native English speakers so they struggled a bit, but it was a great experience for them to have. A bunch of Toastmaster Members showed up which was very encouraging. Susan and I walked back which was much appreciated. I made myself a hodge-podge dinner, watched some Hannah Montana and then brought myself to write this post. It has been a long night, and this is certainly a long post. Thanks for sticking with me. I knew it would be hard to readjust to life after my visit to the states, and boy was I right… I want enjoy my last month in Africa and I am sure I will, I have just hit a bump in the road which my drama queen nature has turned into a total road closure. I’ll see about opening things back up tomorrow. Until then, I bid you Adieu!