Food Distribution Day!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
$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!
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!
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Virtual Tour of 2iE
So I thought I posted this a while back, but it turns out I didn't. This is a photo tour of 2iE, where I work :) I am trying to get them to put up the pictures on their website; however, turns out no one really knows who runs what around here making it difficult to get something like an online tour of the campus up and running. One can always hope...
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Nanny Diaries, Singing Nuns, and an Amazing Brownie Farewell Message!
Last Thursday, after I had just made my graduate school decision, I felt great. Also, Thursday was “Labor Day” for Burkina so I had no work! I stayed home for most of the day. I did go into my office and use the internet, but mainly I stayed home. I also made a quick run out to pick up the book club book from one of Susan’s friends. Susan had taken off for Bobo for the weekend, but reminded me that the next book club meeting was that Sunday and I could try and track down a copy of the book if I wanted. I did and made it my mission to read all 309 pages of the Nanny Diaries before Sunday. Leanna left Thursday morning to go to Bobo and onto Mali for the long weekend so I was out both of my good friends. It was okay though. I needed the low key time to get back into the swing of things. I have to say, that the day off what exactly what I needed!
Since Leanna wasn’t around, Ben and I ran Wired. It went fine. I taught the Jr. High and Ben taught the Sr. High. The music was supposed to be taken care of, but I found out only a few minutes beforehand that that wasn’t the case. I brought my guitar and ended up playing! Sheesh! I was glad it came off okay. I hadn’t played my guitar in over a month and was a bit worried… After Wired Ben and I headed over to the Peace Corps hostel and hung out with Bianca. She was going to go back to her village on Friday, but we convinced her to stay around until Saturday… and promised her an awesome dinner Friday night. By the time we were done catching up and hanging out it was about 10:30pm and so Ben rode back with me to 2iE because it was too late to go alone and apparently there had been a few incidents in April and I didn’t want to take any chances.
Friday, I all of the sudden felt inspired to work. It was glorious. I think it had to do with the fact that Thursday was a day off. In the morning, I started typing up and analyzing the results from my experiments. I wanted to send the preliminary results off to the MIT grad student who wanted to use some of the information as soon as possible. I got pretty far but not far enough to send it before lunch. I had like no time for lunch or even to prepare for bible study. I have to be better at stopping when I need to. The problem was it was one of the first times I really felt inspired to work and I didn’t want to lose it…
However, the reason to stop was pretty good. I was hosting a Pool Party for my Jr. High Girls bible study. Since Prom was Wednesday and that would have proven a problem for some girls, we moved bible study to Friday afternoon and brought it to the pool! What is not to love. It was great. We played Marco Polo and a game called “Categories”. I brought sugared peanuts for a snack. The girls love them :) The fellowship was great, the lesson was only mediocre. I was suffering as a leader because I hadn’t taken the time to prepare. Not a good thing. Anyway, the pool side bible study will go down in history as a great success.
Afterwards, I went home showered and changed for work. Normally would have been pretty averse to going back to work especially because Bianca and Ben were coming over in the afternoon to cook dinner and hang out in my air conditioned house ;) However, I had a goal in mind and I worked really hard to finish the report. I stayed long enough at home to let Ben in and then headed back to my office. I was done with the report by 5:30, but my email wouldn’t attach the files! I spent 40 minutes trying to get it to work, but no luck. I left my office at 6:15 done with the report, but not having sent it… Dinner was amazing. Ben had made an awesome red wine pasta sauce so we had spaghetti and cheesy garlic bread. There were four of us: Bianca, Ben, Will and Me. After dinner we did all the dishes and I made up some bread pudding. I had wanted to try and make bread pudding for like for some time, so I was so happy to have a crack at it. I even bought real milk with the intention of making it. After mixing up the ingredients and putting it in the oven the four of us headed over to my office. Firstly, because I had to send that email! and Secondly, I thought it would be fun to show my friends where I worked. Thankfully the email worked and I was able to take my computer back with me happy as a clam. We got back and I found the oven was turned off! Not good, what about my bread pudding?! I must have turned off the gas we walked out of the kitchen. It is kind of an automatic reaction for me. Thankfully, we were able to relight the oven and the dessert finished cooking. While it was finishing up we started the entertainment for the night which happened to be Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail. The movie was great. I love the part when he picks out the right cup and can pick it out because it looks like a carpenter’s cup. Awesome. Oh and it had been a really long time since I last saw the movie and I don’t know if I have ever seen it in its entirety, but regardless, I was totally surprised by the Hitler scene. Talk about crazy, coming face to face with Hilter and having him autograph your Dad’s sacred book on the Holy Grail. Ridiculous! Oh, and before we put on Indiana Jones I made them watch an episode of Hannah Montana just for kicks. It got mixed to negative reviews, but that doesn’t bother me. I enjoy it and that is all that matters…
The bread pudding turned out okay. I liked it, but I know it wasn’t the best thing ever. I like that it tastes like French toast... I had enough of it left over that it lasted me all week as a dessert and some breakfasts. While the boys left, Bianca stayed over and slept on my couch. She was getting up really early to catch her bus back to village so I said goodbye at night and she got up and left in the morning. (Kind of like what I did in Boston…) Before I went to bed, I snuck to the front door and left a bag of M&Ms for Bianca to take with her on the bus. I got a text message from her later saying she got them ;) It is fun to do little things like that. I wish I had more time to do random acts of kindness.
The weekend was amazing. I did very little and loved it. I slept until noon on Saturday. You think I am exaggerating but I am not. When I did finally get up I spent most of the afternoon time reading the Nanny Diaries. I finished it! I also went in and talked to my family online briefly and then spent an hour scrubbing filters and setting them up to saturate for 24 hours. I worked out in the evening and watched the last episode of Grey’s Anatomy I had on my computer. I knew I was going to be getting the next two episodes in the series on Monday and it had been so long since I saw the last one I wanted to refresh my memory. I have to say though; it is amazing how short the day seems when you get up after half of it is over. Oh, my housemate left on Saturday to go to Niger for 6 days. She is very nice, but I enjoyed having the house back by myself.
Sunday started out much like Saturday. However, this time I only slept only until 11am. The other thing I should note is that when I woke up on Sunday my eyes looked just a little funny. A little like they did after my trip to Bobo and Banfora… hum…
I got myself a breakfast together and sat in my PJs and watched four, count them, four episodes of Hannah Montana. I have decided to watch them in sequential order. My brother gave me seasons one and two and I plan to be fully caught up before I get home in June. I also worked out, cleaned my kitchen and room, and was showered, done and ready to go to the book club meeting at 3pm. Susan and I walked over to Joann’s house. Oh, it was so much fun! I would have liked to discuss the book more, but we watched the movie so that makes up for it. And there were incredible snacks! Cookies, popcorn, and chips and dip. It was like being back in America!
When I got home, I stopped by the lab only to find my plan for saturating the filters didn’t work because the drain plugs I rigged up were slightly less than water-tight. Oh well, I would just have to saturate them on Monday when the downstairs lab was open. I listened to a sermon from HTB and then planned for both my bible study on Wednesday and Wired lesson on Thursday. It felt really good to have them both done! Sunday night I broke out my drawing pad and colored pencils and sat and drew for a while. It was unbelievably relaxing, and the picture I drew of the mango actually looks pretty good if you ask me. I want to keep up with this sort of thing and one of goals for the summer is to try painting; like really painting, oil painting. My Great Grandmother Fischer painted and was very good at it. I am thinking since I kind of look like her and have been told I have some of her other qualities that maybe, just maybe, the painting one was passed on too… One can always hope. And I have to say after going to Giverny, seeing Monet’s Gardens and all his paintings and the new affinity I have developed for impressionism I am so ready to pick up a brush!
Monday, the start of the work week, was surprisingly pleasant. Several things happened that made it that way… first, I was able to put my filters in the proper sinks this time. I also got word from Susan Murcott regarding the WHO Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage Network annual conference that would take place in Accra, Ghana at the beginning of June. I found out I would be able to register with her group and am now really excited about being able to go! It is such a motivator to get my work done… Plus when I get back from the conference, I will have about two weeks left in Burkina. Crazy! The only negative is my eyes still felt funny. I did some deep thinking to try and figure out what the problem could be, and I came up with several factors: 1. my malaria medication 2. the chemicals in the pool I swam in on Friday 3. the sun. So I stopped taking my doxycycline and will see what happens.
In the break time I went over to the rec center. It was first time I had been back…bizarre I know, but I was enjoying working out at home and there is nothing wrong with that. I wanted to run but there was some lady there on the treadmill. I used to enjoy ranting about how much I hate it when people walk instead of running on treadmills, but Annie pointed out that when it is 105 degrees outside they have a right to use the treadmill to. Fine. Thanks a lot Annie, ruining my pitty parade… So instead of running I had to use the elliptical machine. No big deal, worse things have happened to me.
For dinner I enjoyed the leftovers from Friday’s dinner along with a small glass of red wine. The pasta was great, but even if the wine is just to compliment the meal I don’t think I should have it when I am alone because without other people around I started to feel very melancholy. This is probably something I should pay attention too. After dinner, I watched Grey’s Anatomy. It was glorious! It had been six long months since a news Grey’s Anatomy came out, thank you writer’s strike… Anyway, I love being able to get into their drama instead of my own! I had two new episodes on my computer and told myself I would only watch one Monday night and then the next one on Tuesday night. Well you can imagine that didn’t happen. I watched both episodes and went to bed blissfully happy reveling in the twisted and wildly entertaining lives of the resident doctors at Seattle Grace Hospital.
Tuesday was equally as pleasant as Monday and, in fact, even more satisfying. I worked in the morning and started flow rate tests again. I was able to contact the people at JStor about our registration and started reading a great book called White Man’s Burden; Very provocative and critical of development work. I Love It. Anyway, I worked all morning and then went to ISO to meet Leanna for lunch. We walked over to Paradisios and both ordered full pizzas for ourselves ;) I got one with salami on it which ended up being very much like pepperoni. I have nothing, nothing to complain about in regards to the food or the company. Since Leanna left the day after I got back and was gone all weekend we hadn’t had a chance to catch up so lunch was much appreciated. I went back to work in the afternoon and kept busy with making Ghana plans. I also had my normal French lesson at 5:00pm. It went well. My French is super duper rusty and it is hard to motivate myself to get back into it…
In the evening after work I went home and had originally planned to be domestic on Tuesday night, making pita bread and doing other things generally associated with domestic upkeep. However, I remembered I wanted to get the article revisions done and out of the way and had been putting them off. At lunch with Leanna, I mentioned that was one of the things I wanted to do while in Africa was get this paper published. Well, I knew to do that I needed to get moving on it so I buckled down and was up pretty late but was able to get the paper very close to being ready to submit. It was actually really good that I did this because, surprisingly enough, Wednesday midday I received an email from my professor inquiring as to the paper’s status and thankfully I didn’t have to backpedal and come up with some excuse for not having it done! I was also able to put into writing some next steps for the IWA toolbox I am working on. Debborah, another woman on the project, and I are kind of the driving forces behind this thing and work had stalled out so we were emailing back and forth to figure out how to jump start things again. We came up with breaking the large group into smaller teams with one team leader each to work on the various aspects of the website.
Wednesday morning was just another day at the office. I spent a lot of time trying to email Tuesday night’s work to my professor, but Gmail was acting up. Just as I was sending it, though, I got an email from her asking if I had made any progress; great minds must think alike! I kept up with the flow rate measurements and finished up the first half of my day in time to hit the gym before bible study and lunch. This time, lucky for me, I was able to use the treadmill. It is so hit or miss over there! I ran for 30 minutes easy. It had been a while since I last ran and I didn’t want to over do it and be hurt the next few days. On my way back from the workout I stopped and had some pages photocopied for my bible study lesson as well as the Wired lesson on Thursday. It was surprisingly difficult to get the guy to give me the number of copies that I wanted. In the end it worked out and I even picked up a blank CD-R which I planned to use to make a mixed music CD that I can bring to the gym considering I am again without music. Such is life…Oh, and my experiment of stopping the doxycycline worked. My eye condition improved so instead I have started on Mefloquine again. Man will I be happy to get off these wretched medications ASAP.
After showering and grabbing a quick bite to eat I was off to Anna and Rosie’s for bible study. This time I brought the peanut M&M’s for the snack. I got them in Paris for the girls, but wanted to wait for the perfect time to give them to them. It was the perfect time and the girls were so excited :) The week’s lesson was on Trust Psalms looking mainly at Psalms 139. Awesome one by the way. One of the main points I wanted to take away was that each one of the them is special and unique and God really loves them! He knows the number of hairs on your head, he perceives your thoughts, he knows when you are coming and going… They got it a little, but they kept focusing on the portion talking about being made aware of your sins. This is also important so I was in no way disappointed. After study was over I stopped by the little shop called Prix Bas to buy some food stuff. I also stopped and picked up a bunch of fresh vegetables which made a few wonderful salads over the next few days. I am trying to each more fruits and vegetables. I got back to work by 5pm, just in time to get the call I was expecting from Professor Soboyejo. It was very helpful to reconnect. I was able to talk to him about the experiments and Ghana plans. I think these next few weeks will be very productive which is a great feeling. I have a real plan and vision and am ready to move.
Wednesday evening I spent a lot of time at my computer. I typed up a summary of my conversation with Professor Soboyejo and the action items that were to result so I wouldn’t forget them! I also typed up the April Africa Update which is why this blog post is so late… I only have a couple of hours a week to devote to this stuff and I had reached the limit. Once the update was written I spent a good chunk of time reading. In addition to White Man’s Burden which is a pretty deep book, I started at the same time a book called Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. It is a novel about an opera singer and a terrorist hostage situation. Very enthralling and well written.
Thursday I continued with flow rate measurements and received not such good news that the place I was hoping to stay in Ghana was booked! grrr… I had lunch with my friend Moulaye who I hadn’t seen in like forever. He originally wanted us to go out to dinner and after already having made that mistake once, I insisted we have lunch at the cafeteria if anything at all. Afterwards, we grabbed some coca-colas and he showed me some of the movies and music he has on his computer. At 4pm, I had my first tennis lesson since I returned from the states. It went great. Before I left, Emile, my first teacher, had hurt his finger and was out for a while and I had to have another tennis guy. But Emile was back and it was very nice to play with him agin. I was also doing pretty well if I don’t say so myself. At the end he was like, “Wow, what happened? You didn’t play this well before you left…” I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder and the tennis player more coordinated ;) In the evening I taught the Jr. High at Wired again. Leanna helped and that was greatly appreciated. We did this thing were I cut up papers into puzzles and hid the pieces all around. In teams they had to find the pieces and then assemble the puzzles. It went great! Except that it took them much much longer than I had anticipated and had to really cut the reading and questions short. But, oh well!
Oh, Friday. I love Fridays. Really, truly I do. The prospect of the weekend on the horizon just makes everything more pleasant. In the morning I finally had some incentive to get into work because I was going to have a skype call with Adrian who is the toolbox point person at IWA. The call was productive, but not all that enjoyable because the connection wasn’t great and I had to try and piece together what he was saying. I am sure it was the same thing for him as well. I did another flow rate measure in the morning and kept myself busy with some articles and cleaning up my office which was very much needed. Friday I had originally planned to go swimming at the rec center for my workout, but my arms were killing me from the tennis lesson the day before. So instead, I took the day off. I love that I can do that!
So, randomly enough, I go back to my office in the afternoon and the female guard at the reception follows me to my office and closes the door behind us both. I am like, huh? But them she starts talking to me about if I know anything about how she can become a guard for the U.S. Embassy. phew… My goodness, I thought she was going to ask for a visa or money or something. Information on the embassy, that I can handle. Anyway, she has been a guard at 2iE for 2 years and would like to work instead for the U.S. Embassy. The embassy employs many many Burkinabe as guards for the actual compound itself as well as all the employee’s homes. They are on a 45 minutes rotation so they don’t fall asleep. Try that one on for size… I told her I would ask and try and find out what she has to do to apply. After that I read my book Bel Canto until my Mom called. We were supposed to talk from 6-6:25pm my time, before I was picked up by my friend Pam to go to dinner. At 5:55pm I got an email from my Mom saying she was still at school and had to finish programming the electronic baby dolls her child development students use. That was super disappointing! But life goes on…
At 6:25 Pam picked me up along with her daughter and friend who were coming to dinner to, then we swung by and picked up Emily who was leaving Burkina the next day. We wanted to take her out to eat on her last night in Ouaga. We decided to go to a place called L’eau Vive, or Living Water. There is one I went to Bobo and loved it. The restaurant is run by nuns and the food is pretty good. But better than the food is the mango juice. It is really thick and yummy. I ordered an omelet and mashed potatoes and for some reason they brought it out before everyone else’s meal. I was a bit frustrated and they seriously didn’t bring out the other food until I was done! Anyway, the juice was amazing and then to top things off at 9:45pm every night the nuns sing Ave Maria. It was beautiful. I thought it would be sister act style with the robes and all the swaying, but there were no black robes and the nuns spread themselves out amongst the tables. They all stood and faced a statue of Mary that was on top of a pile of rocks that water flowed down. Hence, living water… whatever, singing nuns definitely equal a highlight of my week. Friday night I had a terrible time going to sleep. I just wasn’t tired at all! It was actually pretty frustrating because I knew I had to get up early the next day and I wanted to sleep, but couldn’t! When I did finally get some sleep it was shallow and not refreshing at all. Ugh!
Saturday morning was very busy. At this point, I had like no clean clothes left at all. I had had to hand wash the essentials earlier in the week! So I got up and packed all my clothes into my big backpacking pack to bring them to Leanna to wash. I got on my bike and struck off trying to quickly master the balancing act that riding my bike with this massive backpack required. I stopped at the bank ATM since I had no money and still made it to Leanna’s by 8:00am. I put in the first load of wash and then Leanna, myself, and another woman Martina all headed over to the ISO yard sale. It had been open for 10 minutes by the time we got here, but it was already a full house. It was fun to look around and see what everyone was selling. There wasn’t much I needed and, leaving in June, the last thing I need to do is accumulate more junk. I did, however, buy a DVD, The Pursuit of Happiness. It was one I wanted to see and I knew the guy selling it so I only had to pay a little over a dollar for it. Well worth it. Anyway, we were back to Leanna’s by 9:05, I jumped on my bike and rode home really fast. I had 25 minutes to get home change and get to Toastmasters. I walked in to Toastmasters at 9:31. They had just started. It wasn’t that bad. The meeting went well. I evaluated a speech for the first time ever and it as really fun. It also helped that the guy did a really good job. I also found out the Gala is May 31st and not the 30th which is what I had originally thought. The youth group end of year banquet is the 30th and I didn’t want to have to choose between the two. However, now I don’t have to. I can do both! Especially since I plan to leave for Ghana on June 1st. Everything is falling into place :)
I got back from Toastmasters and promptly started my video workout. I finished and was showered and dressed when Leanna came to pick me up at 1:30pm. We had lunch with Ben at her house, I put in the last load of laundry and then we worked on decorating the cake for the CMA cookout the next day. Leanna was going to draw an airplane and put pictures of the people leaving in the windows. It was a great idea, but I must admit I was quite skeptical. However, I am happy to report the cake turned out great! Very professional looking indeed. While Leanna finished up the big cake I used the leftover icing to decorate the tray of brownies she made for our dessert. We were having a special dinner in Will’s honor. Will has been in Burkina about 9 months working with the group called SIM. He and Ben were housemates. Anyway, he was leaving Burkina on Tuesday evening and we were having a farewell dinner for him. The message I put on the brownies was, “Will, miss you!” Get it? Get it, Will (We’ll) miss you… I crack myself up. In addition to the clever message, I drew a Canada leaf and an Eiffel Tower with interlocking rings because he is going to Paris with his girlfriend on the way back and is planning to propose to her! Congrats Will!
Enough about the brownies. Ben planned the dinner. He made chicken, rice and stir-fry vegetables. He marinated the chicken at Leanna’s, but then we moved the operations over to my place with Air Conditioning. We made up the vegetables and cooked the meat at my place. My housemate who had gotten back from Niger joined us for dinner which was nice. After dinner, Rosie and Anna, Naomi, and Naimi came over and the eight of us played Speed Uno. It was a blast! Ben clearly dominated, but Leanna played really well as well, she just always got stuck having to pass her hand with one card left because someone would play a zero. But hey, that is part of the game… After a full cycle of rounds we stopped the game and unveiled the blessed brownies. Everyone enjoyed my pun of a farewell massage and we served the brownies with ice cream, a rare treat in Burkina. But I have to say the ice cream really made the dessert. Separately the brownies and ice cream are good, but together they knock your socks off. After dessert the girls left and Ben and Will hung out a little longer. They peaced out about 11:30pm and I stayed up and did the dishes. I figured as much as I didn’t want to do them that night, I would want to do them less the next day and the food on them would be dried up and they would be much harder to clean. So I bit the bullet and did all the dishes. I had music going, though, so I didn’t really mind.
Sunday I got up early and went to church. Mark your calendars. I haven’t been to an organized church in Burkina for some time now. I preferred to simply listen to a sermon at home and play my guitar for worship. In fact, I still prefer that, however, I do realize it is important to participate in a more corporate church service, so I went. I was regretting that decision after getting up at 7:30 though… I went to the CMA Patte d’Oie church with Leanna, Lorinda and Martina. Anyway, church was fine. The music was grating on my ears and the sermon was confusing, but I did sketch a pretty picture on my scrap paper store list so not all was lost. After church we headed to Marina Market to do some grocery shopping. This is the tradition and I was so happy to get to pick up some of the things I needed without having to ride my bike downtown. Since the CMA was having a cookout in the afternoon Lorinda had ordered a bunch of sausages and bread last week to pick up that Sunday. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t have her order. So we ended up having to drive to the other Marina downtown too, and they didn’t have any either. They were quite a pickle with 30 people coming over in less than 2 hours and nothing to barbeque! I still haven’t found out what solution they came up with. They dropped me off on their way to search other meat shops for the goods.
It was 11:00am when I got home. I went straight to my office to talk to my family. I told them I could talk starting at 7am their time. Well, they weren’t online. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I was an hour early. For some reason I only added 4 hours onto 7am instead of 5. Anyway, when 12 rolled around the power went off! Can you believe it? I sat and read and waited for 30 minutes and thankfully the power went back on. However, when the power goes out someone has to reset the server and since it was Sunday there was no one around to do this. Quel Dommage! Also at noon a huge dust storm came though. I was crazy. Trees were shaking like crazy in the wind and you see the dust clouds blowing all over. In any case, I couldn’t gamble on somebody coming in later so I went home had a great salad for lunch. I then packed up my stuff for the afternoon and headed over to Les Petites Delices, my resident internet connection place if something is wrong at 2iE. I didn’t really want to talk there, but it was Mother’s Day and I had to connect. Anyway, it worked out and I got to talk to my family which was nice. It was a bit strained though since we hadn’t talked in a while. I don’t want that to happen again…
After spending the afternoon online I headed over to the rec center at 4pm for my tennis lesson. It was, again, fantastic. I went home and had Saturday’s leftovers for dinner, yum :) and then filled out the PiAf 6 month report. Even though it is a month late, I figured better late than never! My reward for finishing the report was to watch an episode of Hannah Montana. Then I worked on the finalizations of my article for resubmission to the Natural Hazards Review Journal. When I had finished those, I made some popcorn and sat on my couch and finished reading Bel Canto. Talk about a loaded last 7 pages. I didn’t think I could handle it; it was super intense and you don’t know how to react as a reader. I went to bed after that, but not before spending ample time looking over my finances. I like to make sure things are in order every once in a while.
Monday I slept in until 9:15. I was feeling a bit under the weather, but there was a lot waiting for me at work. I worked all morning on IWA stuff as well as submitting my ASCE paper again. I am so happy to have that monkey off my back again for another 3 months until it is reviewed and I have to change it again… However, I have to admit I feel this version is way improved over the other one. I replied to a bunch of emails and finished in time to get a very late lunch. I didn’t take a long break, but instead had to be back by 3:30 for a meeting with Professor Maiga. I had some stuff prepared which was good. We went over my preliminary results and agreed on what I would do as far as reports go. Then we had a nice conference call with Professor Soboyejo. It was tricky to get the call to connect, but it was well worth the hassle. There are so many opportunities for collaboration and really neat projects and ideas coming down the pike. I am so happy to be helping facilitate and contributing to work that is making a difference.
After all that I played online for a little while and then headed home. I grabbed my swimsuit and rode over to the rec center. Bad idea. Actually, it was a great idea, just everyone had the same one! There were so many people in the pool, I couldn’t do my laps. I had also forgotten my goggles and headlamp to ride back with so I only swam for a little while and then called it a night. When I got home I felt inspired to make some corn bread… random I know, but I didn’t fight my inspiration and made some corn bread. I also made up some spaghetti sauce. It turned out way better than last time. Once I satisfied my cooking impulse I sat down and wrote the better part of this post. However, I was still not feeling great. I had battled a headache in the afternoon and it was still there so I turned in early for the night. I did, however, have a stroke of genius before I went to bed and froze my pasta sauce in little one serving amounts using saran wrap and all my Tupperware containers. That way I can grab a one serving disk of pasta sauce and defrost it without the hassle of managing that big block of frozen stuff you get when you freeze things normally…
Tuesday I didn’t set my alarm. My headache was pretty bad as I went to bed and it freaked me out so I wanted to give my body a chance to fight whatever the problem might have been. It seemed to work. I was in bed by 11pm and got up at 9:15am feeling pretty darn good. I worked at home in the morning and went to the gym around 11:30. I had to wait for a guy to finish using the treadmill. That didn’t really bother me. What did bother me was the fact that I had made a sweet workout mix CD and when I turned it on the guy complained it was too loud…Well, buddy, the treadmill kind of makes a lot of noise so for me to hear the music I have to turn it up load! So he would turn it down and I would use the remote I stashed in the cup holder and turn it back up again. Ah-ha! Take that… I mean seriously. It was even a pretty killer CD. Whatever, he finally left and I turned it up even more. My run was amazing. I could tell my legs were ready to go! I ran 4 miles at about an 8:30 mile pace closing in a sub 8. It was sweet. After showering and getting dressed again I stopped by my office and then rode over to the Burg’s house. Nancy had called at 10:15am and invited me to lunch. Of course I agreed! It was great to have a family meal :) I was also able to get them the map, guidebook and british pounds I had gotten them on my trip to England. They are visiting England on their way back to the states, and I stayed and talked to them about things to do and transportation essentials.
After lunch I hung around and used their internet. It was 3:15pm and I had a meeting with Nicolas at Helvetas at 4pm and it didn’t make sense to go back and forth. The Nicolas meeting went great. We are going to go visit a potter’s workshop next Tuesday! I finally figured out if I want something to happen I have to initiate it and make the effort. Waiting for others to do something you can do yourself is not advisable. You waste so much time and frankly life it too short. Take it by the horns! I also got an email from my Mom saying my Grandad went into the hospital with some cardiac issues. So please keep him in your prayers.
On the way back from the meeting I stopped and picked up vegetables to make mango salsa and guacamole for the Mexican dinner and movie night Susan I were hosting that night. The chip dips turned out really well. The mango salsa recipe can be found here:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Avocado-Tomato-and-Mango-Salsa/Detail.aspx
I would highly recommend it. Very summery feeling and the mangos here are to die for! I slightly burned the ground beef when I was seasoning it, but no one noticed and I didn’t say anything…Oh, and my housemate left for good. She was really nice. She worked all the time so there wasn’t much time to get to know her, but I much prefer that to the last arrangement, if you know what I mean. The Mexican food was a hit with the Burkinabe women who came. We watched Rent the movie. Very good movie. Sad, but it deals with tough topics that can’t be ignored. Anyway, I came home and did my dishes, wrote some emails and finished this post. That is all. Good night my friend.
Since Leanna wasn’t around, Ben and I ran Wired. It went fine. I taught the Jr. High and Ben taught the Sr. High. The music was supposed to be taken care of, but I found out only a few minutes beforehand that that wasn’t the case. I brought my guitar and ended up playing! Sheesh! I was glad it came off okay. I hadn’t played my guitar in over a month and was a bit worried… After Wired Ben and I headed over to the Peace Corps hostel and hung out with Bianca. She was going to go back to her village on Friday, but we convinced her to stay around until Saturday… and promised her an awesome dinner Friday night. By the time we were done catching up and hanging out it was about 10:30pm and so Ben rode back with me to 2iE because it was too late to go alone and apparently there had been a few incidents in April and I didn’t want to take any chances.
Friday, I all of the sudden felt inspired to work. It was glorious. I think it had to do with the fact that Thursday was a day off. In the morning, I started typing up and analyzing the results from my experiments. I wanted to send the preliminary results off to the MIT grad student who wanted to use some of the information as soon as possible. I got pretty far but not far enough to send it before lunch. I had like no time for lunch or even to prepare for bible study. I have to be better at stopping when I need to. The problem was it was one of the first times I really felt inspired to work and I didn’t want to lose it…
However, the reason to stop was pretty good. I was hosting a Pool Party for my Jr. High Girls bible study. Since Prom was Wednesday and that would have proven a problem for some girls, we moved bible study to Friday afternoon and brought it to the pool! What is not to love. It was great. We played Marco Polo and a game called “Categories”. I brought sugared peanuts for a snack. The girls love them :) The fellowship was great, the lesson was only mediocre. I was suffering as a leader because I hadn’t taken the time to prepare. Not a good thing. Anyway, the pool side bible study will go down in history as a great success.
Afterwards, I went home showered and changed for work. Normally would have been pretty averse to going back to work especially because Bianca and Ben were coming over in the afternoon to cook dinner and hang out in my air conditioned house ;) However, I had a goal in mind and I worked really hard to finish the report. I stayed long enough at home to let Ben in and then headed back to my office. I was done with the report by 5:30, but my email wouldn’t attach the files! I spent 40 minutes trying to get it to work, but no luck. I left my office at 6:15 done with the report, but not having sent it… Dinner was amazing. Ben had made an awesome red wine pasta sauce so we had spaghetti and cheesy garlic bread. There were four of us: Bianca, Ben, Will and Me. After dinner we did all the dishes and I made up some bread pudding. I had wanted to try and make bread pudding for like for some time, so I was so happy to have a crack at it. I even bought real milk with the intention of making it. After mixing up the ingredients and putting it in the oven the four of us headed over to my office. Firstly, because I had to send that email! and Secondly, I thought it would be fun to show my friends where I worked. Thankfully the email worked and I was able to take my computer back with me happy as a clam. We got back and I found the oven was turned off! Not good, what about my bread pudding?! I must have turned off the gas we walked out of the kitchen. It is kind of an automatic reaction for me. Thankfully, we were able to relight the oven and the dessert finished cooking. While it was finishing up we started the entertainment for the night which happened to be Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail. The movie was great. I love the part when he picks out the right cup and can pick it out because it looks like a carpenter’s cup. Awesome. Oh and it had been a really long time since I last saw the movie and I don’t know if I have ever seen it in its entirety, but regardless, I was totally surprised by the Hitler scene. Talk about crazy, coming face to face with Hilter and having him autograph your Dad’s sacred book on the Holy Grail. Ridiculous! Oh, and before we put on Indiana Jones I made them watch an episode of Hannah Montana just for kicks. It got mixed to negative reviews, but that doesn’t bother me. I enjoy it and that is all that matters…
The bread pudding turned out okay. I liked it, but I know it wasn’t the best thing ever. I like that it tastes like French toast... I had enough of it left over that it lasted me all week as a dessert and some breakfasts. While the boys left, Bianca stayed over and slept on my couch. She was getting up really early to catch her bus back to village so I said goodbye at night and she got up and left in the morning. (Kind of like what I did in Boston…) Before I went to bed, I snuck to the front door and left a bag of M&Ms for Bianca to take with her on the bus. I got a text message from her later saying she got them ;) It is fun to do little things like that. I wish I had more time to do random acts of kindness.
The weekend was amazing. I did very little and loved it. I slept until noon on Saturday. You think I am exaggerating but I am not. When I did finally get up I spent most of the afternoon time reading the Nanny Diaries. I finished it! I also went in and talked to my family online briefly and then spent an hour scrubbing filters and setting them up to saturate for 24 hours. I worked out in the evening and watched the last episode of Grey’s Anatomy I had on my computer. I knew I was going to be getting the next two episodes in the series on Monday and it had been so long since I saw the last one I wanted to refresh my memory. I have to say though; it is amazing how short the day seems when you get up after half of it is over. Oh, my housemate left on Saturday to go to Niger for 6 days. She is very nice, but I enjoyed having the house back by myself.
Sunday started out much like Saturday. However, this time I only slept only until 11am. The other thing I should note is that when I woke up on Sunday my eyes looked just a little funny. A little like they did after my trip to Bobo and Banfora… hum…
I got myself a breakfast together and sat in my PJs and watched four, count them, four episodes of Hannah Montana. I have decided to watch them in sequential order. My brother gave me seasons one and two and I plan to be fully caught up before I get home in June. I also worked out, cleaned my kitchen and room, and was showered, done and ready to go to the book club meeting at 3pm. Susan and I walked over to Joann’s house. Oh, it was so much fun! I would have liked to discuss the book more, but we watched the movie so that makes up for it. And there were incredible snacks! Cookies, popcorn, and chips and dip. It was like being back in America!
When I got home, I stopped by the lab only to find my plan for saturating the filters didn’t work because the drain plugs I rigged up were slightly less than water-tight. Oh well, I would just have to saturate them on Monday when the downstairs lab was open. I listened to a sermon from HTB and then planned for both my bible study on Wednesday and Wired lesson on Thursday. It felt really good to have them both done! Sunday night I broke out my drawing pad and colored pencils and sat and drew for a while. It was unbelievably relaxing, and the picture I drew of the mango actually looks pretty good if you ask me. I want to keep up with this sort of thing and one of goals for the summer is to try painting; like really painting, oil painting. My Great Grandmother Fischer painted and was very good at it. I am thinking since I kind of look like her and have been told I have some of her other qualities that maybe, just maybe, the painting one was passed on too… One can always hope. And I have to say after going to Giverny, seeing Monet’s Gardens and all his paintings and the new affinity I have developed for impressionism I am so ready to pick up a brush!
Monday, the start of the work week, was surprisingly pleasant. Several things happened that made it that way… first, I was able to put my filters in the proper sinks this time. I also got word from Susan Murcott regarding the WHO Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage Network annual conference that would take place in Accra, Ghana at the beginning of June. I found out I would be able to register with her group and am now really excited about being able to go! It is such a motivator to get my work done… Plus when I get back from the conference, I will have about two weeks left in Burkina. Crazy! The only negative is my eyes still felt funny. I did some deep thinking to try and figure out what the problem could be, and I came up with several factors: 1. my malaria medication 2. the chemicals in the pool I swam in on Friday 3. the sun. So I stopped taking my doxycycline and will see what happens.
In the break time I went over to the rec center. It was first time I had been back…bizarre I know, but I was enjoying working out at home and there is nothing wrong with that. I wanted to run but there was some lady there on the treadmill. I used to enjoy ranting about how much I hate it when people walk instead of running on treadmills, but Annie pointed out that when it is 105 degrees outside they have a right to use the treadmill to. Fine. Thanks a lot Annie, ruining my pitty parade… So instead of running I had to use the elliptical machine. No big deal, worse things have happened to me.
For dinner I enjoyed the leftovers from Friday’s dinner along with a small glass of red wine. The pasta was great, but even if the wine is just to compliment the meal I don’t think I should have it when I am alone because without other people around I started to feel very melancholy. This is probably something I should pay attention too. After dinner, I watched Grey’s Anatomy. It was glorious! It had been six long months since a news Grey’s Anatomy came out, thank you writer’s strike… Anyway, I love being able to get into their drama instead of my own! I had two new episodes on my computer and told myself I would only watch one Monday night and then the next one on Tuesday night. Well you can imagine that didn’t happen. I watched both episodes and went to bed blissfully happy reveling in the twisted and wildly entertaining lives of the resident doctors at Seattle Grace Hospital.
Tuesday was equally as pleasant as Monday and, in fact, even more satisfying. I worked in the morning and started flow rate tests again. I was able to contact the people at JStor about our registration and started reading a great book called White Man’s Burden; Very provocative and critical of development work. I Love It. Anyway, I worked all morning and then went to ISO to meet Leanna for lunch. We walked over to Paradisios and both ordered full pizzas for ourselves ;) I got one with salami on it which ended up being very much like pepperoni. I have nothing, nothing to complain about in regards to the food or the company. Since Leanna left the day after I got back and was gone all weekend we hadn’t had a chance to catch up so lunch was much appreciated. I went back to work in the afternoon and kept busy with making Ghana plans. I also had my normal French lesson at 5:00pm. It went well. My French is super duper rusty and it is hard to motivate myself to get back into it…
In the evening after work I went home and had originally planned to be domestic on Tuesday night, making pita bread and doing other things generally associated with domestic upkeep. However, I remembered I wanted to get the article revisions done and out of the way and had been putting them off. At lunch with Leanna, I mentioned that was one of the things I wanted to do while in Africa was get this paper published. Well, I knew to do that I needed to get moving on it so I buckled down and was up pretty late but was able to get the paper very close to being ready to submit. It was actually really good that I did this because, surprisingly enough, Wednesday midday I received an email from my professor inquiring as to the paper’s status and thankfully I didn’t have to backpedal and come up with some excuse for not having it done! I was also able to put into writing some next steps for the IWA toolbox I am working on. Debborah, another woman on the project, and I are kind of the driving forces behind this thing and work had stalled out so we were emailing back and forth to figure out how to jump start things again. We came up with breaking the large group into smaller teams with one team leader each to work on the various aspects of the website.
Wednesday morning was just another day at the office. I spent a lot of time trying to email Tuesday night’s work to my professor, but Gmail was acting up. Just as I was sending it, though, I got an email from her asking if I had made any progress; great minds must think alike! I kept up with the flow rate measurements and finished up the first half of my day in time to hit the gym before bible study and lunch. This time, lucky for me, I was able to use the treadmill. It is so hit or miss over there! I ran for 30 minutes easy. It had been a while since I last ran and I didn’t want to over do it and be hurt the next few days. On my way back from the workout I stopped and had some pages photocopied for my bible study lesson as well as the Wired lesson on Thursday. It was surprisingly difficult to get the guy to give me the number of copies that I wanted. In the end it worked out and I even picked up a blank CD-R which I planned to use to make a mixed music CD that I can bring to the gym considering I am again without music. Such is life…Oh, and my experiment of stopping the doxycycline worked. My eye condition improved so instead I have started on Mefloquine again. Man will I be happy to get off these wretched medications ASAP.
After showering and grabbing a quick bite to eat I was off to Anna and Rosie’s for bible study. This time I brought the peanut M&M’s for the snack. I got them in Paris for the girls, but wanted to wait for the perfect time to give them to them. It was the perfect time and the girls were so excited :) The week’s lesson was on Trust Psalms looking mainly at Psalms 139. Awesome one by the way. One of the main points I wanted to take away was that each one of the them is special and unique and God really loves them! He knows the number of hairs on your head, he perceives your thoughts, he knows when you are coming and going… They got it a little, but they kept focusing on the portion talking about being made aware of your sins. This is also important so I was in no way disappointed. After study was over I stopped by the little shop called Prix Bas to buy some food stuff. I also stopped and picked up a bunch of fresh vegetables which made a few wonderful salads over the next few days. I am trying to each more fruits and vegetables. I got back to work by 5pm, just in time to get the call I was expecting from Professor Soboyejo. It was very helpful to reconnect. I was able to talk to him about the experiments and Ghana plans. I think these next few weeks will be very productive which is a great feeling. I have a real plan and vision and am ready to move.
Wednesday evening I spent a lot of time at my computer. I typed up a summary of my conversation with Professor Soboyejo and the action items that were to result so I wouldn’t forget them! I also typed up the April Africa Update which is why this blog post is so late… I only have a couple of hours a week to devote to this stuff and I had reached the limit. Once the update was written I spent a good chunk of time reading. In addition to White Man’s Burden which is a pretty deep book, I started at the same time a book called Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. It is a novel about an opera singer and a terrorist hostage situation. Very enthralling and well written.
Thursday I continued with flow rate measurements and received not such good news that the place I was hoping to stay in Ghana was booked! grrr… I had lunch with my friend Moulaye who I hadn’t seen in like forever. He originally wanted us to go out to dinner and after already having made that mistake once, I insisted we have lunch at the cafeteria if anything at all. Afterwards, we grabbed some coca-colas and he showed me some of the movies and music he has on his computer. At 4pm, I had my first tennis lesson since I returned from the states. It went great. Before I left, Emile, my first teacher, had hurt his finger and was out for a while and I had to have another tennis guy. But Emile was back and it was very nice to play with him agin. I was also doing pretty well if I don’t say so myself. At the end he was like, “Wow, what happened? You didn’t play this well before you left…” I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder and the tennis player more coordinated ;) In the evening I taught the Jr. High at Wired again. Leanna helped and that was greatly appreciated. We did this thing were I cut up papers into puzzles and hid the pieces all around. In teams they had to find the pieces and then assemble the puzzles. It went great! Except that it took them much much longer than I had anticipated and had to really cut the reading and questions short. But, oh well!
Oh, Friday. I love Fridays. Really, truly I do. The prospect of the weekend on the horizon just makes everything more pleasant. In the morning I finally had some incentive to get into work because I was going to have a skype call with Adrian who is the toolbox point person at IWA. The call was productive, but not all that enjoyable because the connection wasn’t great and I had to try and piece together what he was saying. I am sure it was the same thing for him as well. I did another flow rate measure in the morning and kept myself busy with some articles and cleaning up my office which was very much needed. Friday I had originally planned to go swimming at the rec center for my workout, but my arms were killing me from the tennis lesson the day before. So instead, I took the day off. I love that I can do that!
So, randomly enough, I go back to my office in the afternoon and the female guard at the reception follows me to my office and closes the door behind us both. I am like, huh? But them she starts talking to me about if I know anything about how she can become a guard for the U.S. Embassy. phew… My goodness, I thought she was going to ask for a visa or money or something. Information on the embassy, that I can handle. Anyway, she has been a guard at 2iE for 2 years and would like to work instead for the U.S. Embassy. The embassy employs many many Burkinabe as guards for the actual compound itself as well as all the employee’s homes. They are on a 45 minutes rotation so they don’t fall asleep. Try that one on for size… I told her I would ask and try and find out what she has to do to apply. After that I read my book Bel Canto until my Mom called. We were supposed to talk from 6-6:25pm my time, before I was picked up by my friend Pam to go to dinner. At 5:55pm I got an email from my Mom saying she was still at school and had to finish programming the electronic baby dolls her child development students use. That was super disappointing! But life goes on…
At 6:25 Pam picked me up along with her daughter and friend who were coming to dinner to, then we swung by and picked up Emily who was leaving Burkina the next day. We wanted to take her out to eat on her last night in Ouaga. We decided to go to a place called L’eau Vive, or Living Water. There is one I went to Bobo and loved it. The restaurant is run by nuns and the food is pretty good. But better than the food is the mango juice. It is really thick and yummy. I ordered an omelet and mashed potatoes and for some reason they brought it out before everyone else’s meal. I was a bit frustrated and they seriously didn’t bring out the other food until I was done! Anyway, the juice was amazing and then to top things off at 9:45pm every night the nuns sing Ave Maria. It was beautiful. I thought it would be sister act style with the robes and all the swaying, but there were no black robes and the nuns spread themselves out amongst the tables. They all stood and faced a statue of Mary that was on top of a pile of rocks that water flowed down. Hence, living water… whatever, singing nuns definitely equal a highlight of my week. Friday night I had a terrible time going to sleep. I just wasn’t tired at all! It was actually pretty frustrating because I knew I had to get up early the next day and I wanted to sleep, but couldn’t! When I did finally get some sleep it was shallow and not refreshing at all. Ugh!
Saturday morning was very busy. At this point, I had like no clean clothes left at all. I had had to hand wash the essentials earlier in the week! So I got up and packed all my clothes into my big backpacking pack to bring them to Leanna to wash. I got on my bike and struck off trying to quickly master the balancing act that riding my bike with this massive backpack required. I stopped at the bank ATM since I had no money and still made it to Leanna’s by 8:00am. I put in the first load of wash and then Leanna, myself, and another woman Martina all headed over to the ISO yard sale. It had been open for 10 minutes by the time we got here, but it was already a full house. It was fun to look around and see what everyone was selling. There wasn’t much I needed and, leaving in June, the last thing I need to do is accumulate more junk. I did, however, buy a DVD, The Pursuit of Happiness. It was one I wanted to see and I knew the guy selling it so I only had to pay a little over a dollar for it. Well worth it. Anyway, we were back to Leanna’s by 9:05, I jumped on my bike and rode home really fast. I had 25 minutes to get home change and get to Toastmasters. I walked in to Toastmasters at 9:31. They had just started. It wasn’t that bad. The meeting went well. I evaluated a speech for the first time ever and it as really fun. It also helped that the guy did a really good job. I also found out the Gala is May 31st and not the 30th which is what I had originally thought. The youth group end of year banquet is the 30th and I didn’t want to have to choose between the two. However, now I don’t have to. I can do both! Especially since I plan to leave for Ghana on June 1st. Everything is falling into place :)
I got back from Toastmasters and promptly started my video workout. I finished and was showered and dressed when Leanna came to pick me up at 1:30pm. We had lunch with Ben at her house, I put in the last load of laundry and then we worked on decorating the cake for the CMA cookout the next day. Leanna was going to draw an airplane and put pictures of the people leaving in the windows. It was a great idea, but I must admit I was quite skeptical. However, I am happy to report the cake turned out great! Very professional looking indeed. While Leanna finished up the big cake I used the leftover icing to decorate the tray of brownies she made for our dessert. We were having a special dinner in Will’s honor. Will has been in Burkina about 9 months working with the group called SIM. He and Ben were housemates. Anyway, he was leaving Burkina on Tuesday evening and we were having a farewell dinner for him. The message I put on the brownies was, “Will, miss you!” Get it? Get it, Will (We’ll) miss you… I crack myself up. In addition to the clever message, I drew a Canada leaf and an Eiffel Tower with interlocking rings because he is going to Paris with his girlfriend on the way back and is planning to propose to her! Congrats Will!
Enough about the brownies. Ben planned the dinner. He made chicken, rice and stir-fry vegetables. He marinated the chicken at Leanna’s, but then we moved the operations over to my place with Air Conditioning. We made up the vegetables and cooked the meat at my place. My housemate who had gotten back from Niger joined us for dinner which was nice. After dinner, Rosie and Anna, Naomi, and Naimi came over and the eight of us played Speed Uno. It was a blast! Ben clearly dominated, but Leanna played really well as well, she just always got stuck having to pass her hand with one card left because someone would play a zero. But hey, that is part of the game… After a full cycle of rounds we stopped the game and unveiled the blessed brownies. Everyone enjoyed my pun of a farewell massage and we served the brownies with ice cream, a rare treat in Burkina. But I have to say the ice cream really made the dessert. Separately the brownies and ice cream are good, but together they knock your socks off. After dessert the girls left and Ben and Will hung out a little longer. They peaced out about 11:30pm and I stayed up and did the dishes. I figured as much as I didn’t want to do them that night, I would want to do them less the next day and the food on them would be dried up and they would be much harder to clean. So I bit the bullet and did all the dishes. I had music going, though, so I didn’t really mind.
Sunday I got up early and went to church. Mark your calendars. I haven’t been to an organized church in Burkina for some time now. I preferred to simply listen to a sermon at home and play my guitar for worship. In fact, I still prefer that, however, I do realize it is important to participate in a more corporate church service, so I went. I was regretting that decision after getting up at 7:30 though… I went to the CMA Patte d’Oie church with Leanna, Lorinda and Martina. Anyway, church was fine. The music was grating on my ears and the sermon was confusing, but I did sketch a pretty picture on my scrap paper store list so not all was lost. After church we headed to Marina Market to do some grocery shopping. This is the tradition and I was so happy to get to pick up some of the things I needed without having to ride my bike downtown. Since the CMA was having a cookout in the afternoon Lorinda had ordered a bunch of sausages and bread last week to pick up that Sunday. Surprise, surprise, they didn’t have her order. So we ended up having to drive to the other Marina downtown too, and they didn’t have any either. They were quite a pickle with 30 people coming over in less than 2 hours and nothing to barbeque! I still haven’t found out what solution they came up with. They dropped me off on their way to search other meat shops for the goods.
It was 11:00am when I got home. I went straight to my office to talk to my family. I told them I could talk starting at 7am their time. Well, they weren’t online. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I was an hour early. For some reason I only added 4 hours onto 7am instead of 5. Anyway, when 12 rolled around the power went off! Can you believe it? I sat and read and waited for 30 minutes and thankfully the power went back on. However, when the power goes out someone has to reset the server and since it was Sunday there was no one around to do this. Quel Dommage! Also at noon a huge dust storm came though. I was crazy. Trees were shaking like crazy in the wind and you see the dust clouds blowing all over. In any case, I couldn’t gamble on somebody coming in later so I went home had a great salad for lunch. I then packed up my stuff for the afternoon and headed over to Les Petites Delices, my resident internet connection place if something is wrong at 2iE. I didn’t really want to talk there, but it was Mother’s Day and I had to connect. Anyway, it worked out and I got to talk to my family which was nice. It was a bit strained though since we hadn’t talked in a while. I don’t want that to happen again…
After spending the afternoon online I headed over to the rec center at 4pm for my tennis lesson. It was, again, fantastic. I went home and had Saturday’s leftovers for dinner, yum :) and then filled out the PiAf 6 month report. Even though it is a month late, I figured better late than never! My reward for finishing the report was to watch an episode of Hannah Montana. Then I worked on the finalizations of my article for resubmission to the Natural Hazards Review Journal. When I had finished those, I made some popcorn and sat on my couch and finished reading Bel Canto. Talk about a loaded last 7 pages. I didn’t think I could handle it; it was super intense and you don’t know how to react as a reader. I went to bed after that, but not before spending ample time looking over my finances. I like to make sure things are in order every once in a while.
Monday I slept in until 9:15. I was feeling a bit under the weather, but there was a lot waiting for me at work. I worked all morning on IWA stuff as well as submitting my ASCE paper again. I am so happy to have that monkey off my back again for another 3 months until it is reviewed and I have to change it again… However, I have to admit I feel this version is way improved over the other one. I replied to a bunch of emails and finished in time to get a very late lunch. I didn’t take a long break, but instead had to be back by 3:30 for a meeting with Professor Maiga. I had some stuff prepared which was good. We went over my preliminary results and agreed on what I would do as far as reports go. Then we had a nice conference call with Professor Soboyejo. It was tricky to get the call to connect, but it was well worth the hassle. There are so many opportunities for collaboration and really neat projects and ideas coming down the pike. I am so happy to be helping facilitate and contributing to work that is making a difference.
After all that I played online for a little while and then headed home. I grabbed my swimsuit and rode over to the rec center. Bad idea. Actually, it was a great idea, just everyone had the same one! There were so many people in the pool, I couldn’t do my laps. I had also forgotten my goggles and headlamp to ride back with so I only swam for a little while and then called it a night. When I got home I felt inspired to make some corn bread… random I know, but I didn’t fight my inspiration and made some corn bread. I also made up some spaghetti sauce. It turned out way better than last time. Once I satisfied my cooking impulse I sat down and wrote the better part of this post. However, I was still not feeling great. I had battled a headache in the afternoon and it was still there so I turned in early for the night. I did, however, have a stroke of genius before I went to bed and froze my pasta sauce in little one serving amounts using saran wrap and all my Tupperware containers. That way I can grab a one serving disk of pasta sauce and defrost it without the hassle of managing that big block of frozen stuff you get when you freeze things normally…
Tuesday I didn’t set my alarm. My headache was pretty bad as I went to bed and it freaked me out so I wanted to give my body a chance to fight whatever the problem might have been. It seemed to work. I was in bed by 11pm and got up at 9:15am feeling pretty darn good. I worked at home in the morning and went to the gym around 11:30. I had to wait for a guy to finish using the treadmill. That didn’t really bother me. What did bother me was the fact that I had made a sweet workout mix CD and when I turned it on the guy complained it was too loud…Well, buddy, the treadmill kind of makes a lot of noise so for me to hear the music I have to turn it up load! So he would turn it down and I would use the remote I stashed in the cup holder and turn it back up again. Ah-ha! Take that… I mean seriously. It was even a pretty killer CD. Whatever, he finally left and I turned it up even more. My run was amazing. I could tell my legs were ready to go! I ran 4 miles at about an 8:30 mile pace closing in a sub 8. It was sweet. After showering and getting dressed again I stopped by my office and then rode over to the Burg’s house. Nancy had called at 10:15am and invited me to lunch. Of course I agreed! It was great to have a family meal :) I was also able to get them the map, guidebook and british pounds I had gotten them on my trip to England. They are visiting England on their way back to the states, and I stayed and talked to them about things to do and transportation essentials.
After lunch I hung around and used their internet. It was 3:15pm and I had a meeting with Nicolas at Helvetas at 4pm and it didn’t make sense to go back and forth. The Nicolas meeting went great. We are going to go visit a potter’s workshop next Tuesday! I finally figured out if I want something to happen I have to initiate it and make the effort. Waiting for others to do something you can do yourself is not advisable. You waste so much time and frankly life it too short. Take it by the horns! I also got an email from my Mom saying my Grandad went into the hospital with some cardiac issues. So please keep him in your prayers.
On the way back from the meeting I stopped and picked up vegetables to make mango salsa and guacamole for the Mexican dinner and movie night Susan I were hosting that night. The chip dips turned out really well. The mango salsa recipe can be found here:
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Avocado-Tomato-and-Mango-Salsa/Detail.aspx
I would highly recommend it. Very summery feeling and the mangos here are to die for! I slightly burned the ground beef when I was seasoning it, but no one noticed and I didn’t say anything…Oh, and my housemate left for good. She was really nice. She worked all the time so there wasn’t much time to get to know her, but I much prefer that to the last arrangement, if you know what I mean. The Mexican food was a hit with the Burkinabe women who came. We watched Rent the movie. Very good movie. Sad, but it deals with tough topics that can’t be ignored. Anyway, I came home and did my dishes, wrote some emails and finished this post. That is all. Good night my friend.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Next Fall ;)
I usually don’t write a post just for a single day, but this is a special case. Wednesday, I woke up and went into work. I was surprisingly refreshed, but did my best to avoid seeing people as I was not in a social mood. I spent the morning editing my pictures and stopped by Susan’s to say hi on my way home for lunch. I took a nap after lunch and was thankfully able to pull myself out of bed again at 3:40-ish. I made a store list, prepped a little for Wired on Thursday and then I went into my office. It was at that point that I got the email I had been waiting for.
The verdict is in, and I am officially going to Stanford in the fall. I was not chosen for the Weidenfeld Scholarship. There were no tears, just a rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath and a rather unpleasant sinking feeling in my stomach. I would be lying to say I’m not disappointed. I kind of feel it was cruel joke for God to bring to Oxford, let me fall in love with the place all over again, and then say… nope, just kidding. The funny thing is I felt like everything had gone so well. Like I said I wouldn’t have done anything differently, so I can’t say I am upset with myself in any capacity. I tried my best. I obviously wasn’t what they were looking for and that is okay. I still feel like I am destined for Oxford at some point in time, but I guess the timing just wasn’t quite right yet.
Anyway, the truth is I couldn’t be happier to go to Stanford. It seems that is where I'm supposed to be, and now I can view the Oxford trip as simply wonderful and unexpected blessing. So following the reception of the scholarship outcome, I was able to finalize everything else. I am going to room at Stanford with my friend Sarah Moore. I thanked the professor I met at Oxford and delivered the news I would not be at Oxford in the fall. I also emailed the Stanford people with the positive message that I would be there in the fall and was surprised by a lovely response from one woman saying she was sorry for me that I didn’t get the scholarship, but also delighted, even though it might sound awful, not to have to wait a year to have me at Stanford. That was the kind of response I needed. What a journey this graduate school stuff has been?! Both physically traveling all over the place, and emotionally going from the depths of despair (gotta love Anne Shirley) to the pinnacles of happiness. I am happy to be set for the fall and happier to be going to Stanford. I am ready to be in one place for a while and I can’t think of any place that would have suited me better. Besides, I left it all up to God and I don’t think he makes the wrong choices.
“I know the plans I have for you, " declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but is the Lord’s purpose which prevails.” Proverbs 19:21
“Commit to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will succeed.” Proverbs 16:3
Anyway, at 6:00pm I called it a night. I went and grabbed my bike and headed for the shoppette. I was able to find everything on my shopping list and went home to make dinner. I made a great pasta dinner with a spinach and cream cheese sauce. It was great. The recipe is definitely a keeper. You can find it online here at RecipeZaar.com. RecipeZaar is my favorite online recipe site. Try it, you’ll like it.
Susan and I toasted my plans for Stanford and enjoyed a great meal. She brought over some salad that went great with the pasta. After dinner, I borrowed Susan’s hard drive, made some popcorn, and watched the movie Juno. Well done is all I can say… I haven’t really taken the time to analyze it for the deeper meanings, but it is quite enjoyable to watch. I can see why it got such great reviews and won all those awards!
That is all. You can expect the next update in a week or so. Hopefully, this has given you enough to read for a while. It took me long enough to write, that is for sure! Sorry it is coming all at once. That is what happens... p.s. here's a shout out to Raj, who helped me cultivate my love for English culture!
Enjoy the all pictures as well!
Respectfully yours,
Sara
a.k.a. the wearied traveler...
The verdict is in, and I am officially going to Stanford in the fall. I was not chosen for the Weidenfeld Scholarship. There were no tears, just a rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath and a rather unpleasant sinking feeling in my stomach. I would be lying to say I’m not disappointed. I kind of feel it was cruel joke for God to bring to Oxford, let me fall in love with the place all over again, and then say… nope, just kidding. The funny thing is I felt like everything had gone so well. Like I said I wouldn’t have done anything differently, so I can’t say I am upset with myself in any capacity. I tried my best. I obviously wasn’t what they were looking for and that is okay. I still feel like I am destined for Oxford at some point in time, but I guess the timing just wasn’t quite right yet.
Anyway, the truth is I couldn’t be happier to go to Stanford. It seems that is where I'm supposed to be, and now I can view the Oxford trip as simply wonderful and unexpected blessing. So following the reception of the scholarship outcome, I was able to finalize everything else. I am going to room at Stanford with my friend Sarah Moore. I thanked the professor I met at Oxford and delivered the news I would not be at Oxford in the fall. I also emailed the Stanford people with the positive message that I would be there in the fall and was surprised by a lovely response from one woman saying she was sorry for me that I didn’t get the scholarship, but also delighted, even though it might sound awful, not to have to wait a year to have me at Stanford. That was the kind of response I needed. What a journey this graduate school stuff has been?! Both physically traveling all over the place, and emotionally going from the depths of despair (gotta love Anne Shirley) to the pinnacles of happiness. I am happy to be set for the fall and happier to be going to Stanford. I am ready to be in one place for a while and I can’t think of any place that would have suited me better. Besides, I left it all up to God and I don’t think he makes the wrong choices.
“I know the plans I have for you, " declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but is the Lord’s purpose which prevails.” Proverbs 19:21
“Commit to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will succeed.” Proverbs 16:3
Anyway, at 6:00pm I called it a night. I went and grabbed my bike and headed for the shoppette. I was able to find everything on my shopping list and went home to make dinner. I made a great pasta dinner with a spinach and cream cheese sauce. It was great. The recipe is definitely a keeper. You can find it online here at RecipeZaar.com. RecipeZaar is my favorite online recipe site. Try it, you’ll like it.
Susan and I toasted my plans for Stanford and enjoyed a great meal. She brought over some salad that went great with the pasta. After dinner, I borrowed Susan’s hard drive, made some popcorn, and watched the movie Juno. Well done is all I can say… I haven’t really taken the time to analyze it for the deeper meanings, but it is quite enjoyable to watch. I can see why it got such great reviews and won all those awards!
That is all. You can expect the next update in a week or so. Hopefully, this has given you enough to read for a while. It took me long enough to write, that is for sure! Sorry it is coming all at once. That is what happens... p.s. here's a shout out to Raj, who helped me cultivate my love for English culture!
Enjoy the all pictures as well!
Respectfully yours,
Sara
a.k.a. the wearied traveler...
Weidenfeld, Oxford, and a side order of bread... What?!
My time in Oxford was, in a word, magical. I don’t know how one can walk the streets of those hallowed halls and not feel a tingle in their fingers and toes. It is beautiful. I wasn’t sure I made the right decision applying to Christ Church College, but in fact I did. Walking the grounds I know I would be happy there. I am actually on the bus on the way to the airport! (It is 4:22am) They have outlet plugins on the bus, which is amazing :) Boy am I a far way from Africa. It is kinda of crazy to go from of the absolute poorest places in the world to one of the richest!
So my flight from Burkina to London was uneventful. Leanna picked me up at 5:30pm and dropped me off at the airport. I was there and just waited around for two hours. When I first arrived I decided to check out the VIP Salon which was conspicuously located in one corner of the single room waiting area. I didn’t know who it was for and figured, hey, maybe there is no one checking and I can just do whatever I want. Well, that wasn’t quite the case. You are supposed to have a business class ticket, something I did not have. However, I learned that I could pay 5000CFA to use the room and you just two drinks and some snacks. I debated it, and if I truly was in a place to call myself VIP I probably would have plunked down the cash and enjoyed the comfortable chairs and table bowls of peanuts. But, since I am on a budget and need to not be frivolous at this point in time, I opted to sit in the layman’s area. It is nice to know though that you can buy your way in the VIP area…
I tried to sleep as best as I could. There was the infernal layover in Niamey as before… I really hate that. It just feels like we are sitting there for no reason. I know, I know they are refueling, adding luggage, adding passengers, ect. but it is still annoying. I ended up watching the National Treasure sequel which was interesting, but in hindsight I probably should have simply slept.
I arrived in Paris and the hour and a half I had to make my connection proved to be just enough time. At Charles de Gaulle you have to go through customs in and out just to change planes it is really a terrible system. Anyway, I made my connection and the flight from Paris to London was a whopping forty-five minutes which doesn’t give one anytime really to use your electronic devices, not that I have one anymore since I lost my ipod… sad. I slept the whole time I was on the connection. Once my bum hit the seat bottom and I put my earplugs in and covered my eyes, I didn’t wake back up until I could look out my window and longingly look at London from my window seat on the right side of the plane, strategically picked so I could have a sweet view during the descent. At Heathrow I got through customs, picked up my bag, and was at the bus loading point in less than forty minutes. That should be a new record. I got the 8:30 bus to Oxford and met two other Weidenfeld Scholars taking the same bus. Both of them were very nice; one American and the other from Jordan. We talked quite a bit during the hour plus journey.
When we pulled into Oxford, it was a beautiful sunny Friday morning. It was a rarity I am told. I was afraid my memories and fond feelings of awe and splendor would fade the second time I saw the University. However, that was not the case. I was equally as enchanted this second time around. The first order of business before going to the business school that would serve as the base camp for the weekend, I popped into the post office and mailed all the Paris postcards I had been saving. I also had to mail several packages for Rosie and Anna, two English girls living in Burkina who help me with bible study :) Can I just mention I actually enjoy the English postal system, some people may disagree, but I think it is quite organized and logically run. AND, my grandparents received their postcard 3 days after I posted it. That is impressive! From the post office I caught the 35A bus to Templeton College/Said Business School/Egrove Park. I met one of the program representatives, got my name tag, folder of information and my room key. I found my room and boy was I glad to ditch my bags! At this point I haven’t really slept yet, but there also isn’t much time for such an expendable activity. In my room by 11:00am I had about 2 hours before lunch. I should have napped. But I couldn’t. I had all sorts of stuff to figure out with the extra day I had to spend and finalize arrangements to visit with professors. I was lucky enough to get in touch with my Mom online. I just had to talk through everything so I could make a clear decision about what to do! Not having heard from the family I had stayed with before, I booked a room at a hostel for Monday night. I wouldn’t end up using the room and am yet to know if I lost only the seven dollar deposit or if I had to pay the whole price of the room.
Lunch was incredible. I would soon learn all the food was going to be stellar quality! The assortment of cheeses as really quite impressive… Anyway, I really enjoyed lunch, but couldn’t linger all that long after the meal because I needed to get to the science area to meet with one of the professors. I donned my running gear and headed to the bus stop. I saw the bus go past on my way to the stop and consequently had to wait another 15 minutes for the next bus, ugh! I figured I was going to be super late for my meeting and was getting pretty anxious. Turns out, the bus was really speedy, once it came, and the walk to the building from the stop wasn’t too terrible. I got there at like 2:33pm. I walk in and tell the receptionist I was waiting for so and so and she said he wasn’t in yet and wouldn’t be in for another half hour or so. It was 45 minutes before he came. I was luckily able to rest my eyes while reclining on padded window seat. The only discomforting thing about the whole situation was there was a warning sign that the panels behind the bench contained asbestos. That bit of information was a bit disconcerting! Anyway, the professor finally arrived and I had a very nice meeting with him. It lasted longer than I had predicted, but it wasn’t a problem. From the Science Area I ventured to run back to Templeton. It was a lovely run. Very relaxing… My favorite part was the discovery that the main bridge you have to cross is called Folly Bridge. If that isn’t a fated name, I don’t know what is…
The run back took me less time than expected, but longer than I had allocated since I got distracted by the shops along High Street. Back at the room, which was really really nice by the way; internet, a nice work area, private bathroom, cable and a plush bed, I took a shower and then took a nice little nap. It was only like 30 minutes, but it felt like hours had passed. I love it when that happens!
That night was the formal dinner. At first it was a bit awkward as everyone was trying to get to know one another. We had to repeat ourselves about a million times answering the questions, where are you from, what do you want to study, ect. At the dinner, there were several speakers. It was great to observe their different styles. After being in toastmasters, I am always interested in seeing how people speak in front of groups. The dinner lasted until 11pm and I was really tired. I had met a ton of new people, hadn’t really slept on Thursday night at all and knew I had a written test in the morning. So I went to bed.
Saturday’s breakfast was great. The only not so great thing was the written test that was looming over the morning. At 9:00am, we all assembled in a room and had one hour to write an essay response to the prompt “What are the virtues and vices of democracy? Answer in relationship to your country of origin.” Well, great. I am not a political scientist nor do I pretend to be. But I answered the question as best as I could. I put together a pretty coherent essay with three virtues and three vices which come as a result of the virtues being twisted by the imperfections of the system. I had given it my best effort and that was all I could be asked to do. I was grateful I didn’t freak out, and was able to sort through my thoughts and plan something I was proud of creating.
The interviews started right after the exam. My interview, however, wasn’t scheduled until Sunday at 1:45pm, the last possible interview time. I could have let that upset me, but I didn’t. Instead, I took a nap after the exam on Saturday. I woke up to go to lunch. As I mentioned the food was something I didn’t want to miss out on. And actually Lord Weidenfled sat down at our table near the end of time and so I got to say hi and ask my Lolita question. Score. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I needed to get the 2:03 bus. I politely slipped away and then headed into Oxford to attend part of an apologetics conference my friend Vince was helping out with at his church. His church is right across from Christ Church College where I would be if I got the scholarship. I sat in for the last 10 minutes of a planned talk and then got to be there for all of the very interesting Question and Answer session. I got to meet a bunch of really nice people at the church! It seems like it would be a nice fit for me… Anyway, after that I wanted to go get some Ben’s cookies so Vince and I headed over to the covered market and partook of the best cookies you will ever find! From there we walked to Christ Church College, because I wanted to have another look around. We tried calling our other friend Christian, but he didn’t pick up his phone. Then, as fate would have it, we literally ran into him as he was leaving the gardens with his friends. So he said goodbye to his friends and joined Vince and I in the master’s gardens. The amazing thing about Oxford is that it looks very old, which is it, and somewhat foreboding, which it is… But behind these stone walls there are all these hidden secret gardens! They are so pretty. I think it also helped that the weekend I was in Oxford, there was wonderful weather. So the three of us just kind of sat around in the gardens and caught up on how life was going. I got to ask a bunch of questions about Oxford which was very helpful. Vince and Christian both went to Princeton which is how I know them :)
We parted ways about 6:00pm. I had to get back for the second dinner, this time informal… Lovely. It didn’t last nearly as long which was great! The only downside was there was no assigned seating so it felt a bit like junior high in the lunchroom on the first day of school. Not pleasant, let me remind you. After dinner they had tea and coffee and chocolates. Yum! I got to bed much earlier and was nice and refreshed on Sunday morning.
Sunday I had a great breakfast and tried to keep myself busy and not thinking about the interview. I read for a while in the morning. Still trying to finish up Lolita. I went for a run at 11:00am. It was great. I brought my not-ipod mp3 player and was able to listen to a very timely sermon and inspiring music as I ran along the Thames. I think I may broken the mp3 player though… it doesn’t respond when I press the buttons. I wonder if some sweat got inside and messed up the controls. Again, I would just like to point out I feel like I am cursed when it comes to music, and by that I mean cursed in using portable music players! After my run I showered up and ironed my black jacket. I got dressed for my interview and headed downstairs. I had to wait a good 30 minutes, but that was okay. I was expecting it.
I walked into the interview room and was surprisingly at ease. I was able to answer their questions to the best of my ability. I had prepared as best as I could. I was not totally at a loss except for the stupid weaknesses question. People were coming out of the interviews traumatized, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I gave it my best shot and would probably do the same thing again if I had the chance. The interview didn’t last as long as I had expected which was somewhat troubling. I was getting all sorts of smiles and what felt like positive responses. I left feeling pretty good about things…
I sat down for lunch, by this time it was well past 2:15pm and I was starved. I couldn’t eat much right before my interview as I didn’t feel like I was hungry and didn’t want to mess anything up. Lunch was great, and afterwards I packed up my stuff in ten minutes and walked to the bus stop so I could go on the walking tour of Oxford. I wanted to stay in my room at Templeton another night, but they said that wasn’t possible. Instead, I would crash at Vince’s place on the extra couch they have in the basement. I didn’t want to come back and get my stuff so I would have to have my bags with me for the tour, but I didn’t really care. I was planning to stash them at the church since I was going to go to the 6:00pm service there anyway.
Well, turns out that the church was locked. My plan was foiled and instead I had to lug my luggage through Oxford as we learned all about how old the colleges were, how so and so went to this college and how many books are in the library, ect. It was tiring and I was glad when it was over. I was also quite dehydrated. During the church service I felt a bit light headed. Luckily they had drinks and donuts for sale in the foyer after the service so I paid my 1 pound and felt much better after refueling a little bit. After the service a group of people went out a place called All Bar One. It was really cool. Most of the people only ordered drinks, but I hadn’t had dinner and was again, need I point out, starved! I ordered a wrap which was a great choice :) We stayed until about 10:30pm and then called it a night. Back at Vince’s place, I cancelled my hostel reservation planning to stay in Oxford for Monday and not deal with the hassle of getting into London for a less than 24 hour stay. I was also thinking the Oxford was looking pretty promising and was banking on being able to head into London on the weekends next year… Anyway, I slept like a rock and morning came all too soon!
Monday morning I walked to the science park and met with the professor at Oxford who knows the professor I will be working with at Stanford. He helps run the Water Science, Policy and Management Program. It was great to connect up and learn more about the program. After the brief meeting I stopped at a gift shop and bought a magnet and a bookmark; a wise use of 1.80 pounds if you ask me. From there I walked the 20 minutes back to Vince’s place and headed out for a run. My legs were done for before I even started! It wasn’t a long route, but it took me forever because I was running so slowly. But how could I stop? And the surroundings were so beautiful I couldn’t help but enjoy myself even though I was in a non-negligible amount of pain.
Once back, I showered quickly and walked into the center of Oxford and met up with Christian for lunch. This time the journey took about ten minutes longer because I couldn’t walk as fast due to the fact I was exhausted! I would also like to point out that the weather all day was really schizophrenic. It would rain then be super sunny. Cloudy and the sunny, then rain. Anyway, Christian is in St John’s College and it was great to have a meal at a real college in Oxford.
After lunch I ran some errands picking up random things people had requested I bring back for them. I got a 1GB flash drive, a map of Southern England, a London guidebook, some red tissue paper, and some pens to give to my coworkers as gifts. Turns out they were fountain pens… yikes. But what can I do, so I am going to give them to them anyway, even though they may be entirely useless. At least they look pretty! I also took some photos and found a couple of neat pieces of clothing and a necklace at a great second hand shop I had been eyeing since I first drove past it on the initial bus ride from Heathrow to Oxford… From there I walked to the ice cream place on St. Aldate’s. Wow. That is all I can say. The ice cream was phenomenal. And, was able to taste the flavor before I bought it. Score.
I ate my ice cream on the way to attending the first Weidenfeld Speaker’s Series event. The title was something like “Are Revolutions Contagious?”. It was very fascinating. It lasted like 2 hours, plus another 1 hour of question and answer. I took a ton of notes, not because it was especially interesting. It was good, but not enthralling… I took notes because if I didn’t I would have been fast asleep and that was not something I wished to have happen. I didn’t know too much about Central and Eastern European history so I was lost in some of it, but still enjoyed what I learned and it made we want to go Google a ton of different topics which I think is a good thing.
After the talk there was nice little reception. I ate a bunch of cookies, again quite hungry. From there I went to dinner with a couple of the other candidates. I didn’t want to spend a ton of money so I ordered the soup, that and as I mentioned I had just eaten a bunch of cookies. However, when I ordered the soup and bread, the server thought I meant a side order of bread and brought me more bread than I wanted. The bread was as much as the soup and had to end playing 7pounds for my dinner of soup and bread… That is like 14 dollars. I was ticked off. If I had wanted to spend 7 pounds I would have ordered a pizza or something legitimate. Not good. Anyway, I left the dinner earlier than everybody else because I had to walk back to Vince’s place. It was 10:20pm when I left the restaurant and 10:45pm when I finally made it back. I had said I would be back by 10pm so I felt kind of bad, but it wasn’t a big deal. Next time, one, I will not order the soup, two, I will just go home. I learn new things everyday. I just thought it would be nice to hang out with the Weidenfeld people some more. It was nice, but I think I had hit my limit and the bread fiasco did not help the situation.
Back at Vince’s I packed up my stuff, yet again, and made plans for the morning. I got to sleep all of 3.5 hours from midnight to 3:30am, when I had to get up and walk to the bus stop to get bus to get to Heathrow for a 7:40 flight. I got there in no time, but spent 40 minutes in line at the Air France counter. It was ridiculous. And I would like to point at this point my body officially hates me. I haven’t had regular meals for two days and the food I have been eating hasn’t been all that great for me… I was a bit queasy. I finally checked my bags in and got through security. I tried to track down something for breakfast, but was only mildly successful. I didn’t have a long wait at the gate which was nice, and the flight from London to Paris is a brisk 45 minutes. However, my plane touched down in Paris at 10:10 local time, leaving me 50 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. I have the Paris airport. I think I have mentioned that before, but let me reiterate. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go in and out of customs as I had on the way over. After a good twenty minute walk from one terminal to the next, and a short delay at security, I made it to my gate as the plane was boarding. Thankfully, it wasn’t the last call like my time through Paris. But still. Once, just once, I would like to feel like I have things under control as I am flying through Paris.
The godsend of the whole trip was that I was able to sleep on both of my flights. I was done for. I did wake up for the meal and after the meal watched I Am Legend before falling asleep again. The plane made a stopover in Niamey, Niger. I hate just having to sit and wait on planes like that. But alas, there wasn’t much I could do about it was there. So I dosed in and out of consciousness. I was so happy to be parked in Ouagadougou. After the landing we taxied for what seemed like forever. I was not doing well and really needed to get some fresh air off of the plane. I had a similar feeling getting off of the bus that morning. My poor body had been through a lot of flights in the last month and wasn’t too happy about it… I went through customs without a hitch this time. Last time I had filled out my landing card in pencil and had to redo it. I wanted to yell at them that if they wanted it in pen they needed to indicate it somewhere on the card. BUT it is Africa. It wouldn’t have made a stinking difference.
Leanna picked me up from the airport and we went back to her house. I had offered to help her decorate the cakes for prom and was happy to spend some time with her. She Skyped with her sister and I emailed my parents and took a shower before we got down to business on the cake. The theme for the dance was Fire and Ice so we made flames and icicles growing from opposite corners of the cake. It turned out very well. Afterwards we invited Ben over to share a smaller leftover cake that I had decorated to look like an Easter egg. Go figure. Leanna drove me home and I wanted to sleep so badly. However, I had to greet the new lady who was staying at my house. Things just keep getting more and more complicated, eh? Anyway, to my relief she is very kind and I was able to talk to her for just a few minutes before politely excusing myself for the evening.
So that is it. My travels have officially come to a halt. It is a bit of a let down and I wonder how I will readjust to life in Africa. I feel it will be as hard as I first imagined it would be. With only two months left I feel like it will be struggle to concentrate, but I am going to pray it all works out. Somehow it usually does…
So my flight from Burkina to London was uneventful. Leanna picked me up at 5:30pm and dropped me off at the airport. I was there and just waited around for two hours. When I first arrived I decided to check out the VIP Salon which was conspicuously located in one corner of the single room waiting area. I didn’t know who it was for and figured, hey, maybe there is no one checking and I can just do whatever I want. Well, that wasn’t quite the case. You are supposed to have a business class ticket, something I did not have. However, I learned that I could pay 5000CFA to use the room and you just two drinks and some snacks. I debated it, and if I truly was in a place to call myself VIP I probably would have plunked down the cash and enjoyed the comfortable chairs and table bowls of peanuts. But, since I am on a budget and need to not be frivolous at this point in time, I opted to sit in the layman’s area. It is nice to know though that you can buy your way in the VIP area…
I tried to sleep as best as I could. There was the infernal layover in Niamey as before… I really hate that. It just feels like we are sitting there for no reason. I know, I know they are refueling, adding luggage, adding passengers, ect. but it is still annoying. I ended up watching the National Treasure sequel which was interesting, but in hindsight I probably should have simply slept.
I arrived in Paris and the hour and a half I had to make my connection proved to be just enough time. At Charles de Gaulle you have to go through customs in and out just to change planes it is really a terrible system. Anyway, I made my connection and the flight from Paris to London was a whopping forty-five minutes which doesn’t give one anytime really to use your electronic devices, not that I have one anymore since I lost my ipod… sad. I slept the whole time I was on the connection. Once my bum hit the seat bottom and I put my earplugs in and covered my eyes, I didn’t wake back up until I could look out my window and longingly look at London from my window seat on the right side of the plane, strategically picked so I could have a sweet view during the descent. At Heathrow I got through customs, picked up my bag, and was at the bus loading point in less than forty minutes. That should be a new record. I got the 8:30 bus to Oxford and met two other Weidenfeld Scholars taking the same bus. Both of them were very nice; one American and the other from Jordan. We talked quite a bit during the hour plus journey.
When we pulled into Oxford, it was a beautiful sunny Friday morning. It was a rarity I am told. I was afraid my memories and fond feelings of awe and splendor would fade the second time I saw the University. However, that was not the case. I was equally as enchanted this second time around. The first order of business before going to the business school that would serve as the base camp for the weekend, I popped into the post office and mailed all the Paris postcards I had been saving. I also had to mail several packages for Rosie and Anna, two English girls living in Burkina who help me with bible study :) Can I just mention I actually enjoy the English postal system, some people may disagree, but I think it is quite organized and logically run. AND, my grandparents received their postcard 3 days after I posted it. That is impressive! From the post office I caught the 35A bus to Templeton College/Said Business School/Egrove Park. I met one of the program representatives, got my name tag, folder of information and my room key. I found my room and boy was I glad to ditch my bags! At this point I haven’t really slept yet, but there also isn’t much time for such an expendable activity. In my room by 11:00am I had about 2 hours before lunch. I should have napped. But I couldn’t. I had all sorts of stuff to figure out with the extra day I had to spend and finalize arrangements to visit with professors. I was lucky enough to get in touch with my Mom online. I just had to talk through everything so I could make a clear decision about what to do! Not having heard from the family I had stayed with before, I booked a room at a hostel for Monday night. I wouldn’t end up using the room and am yet to know if I lost only the seven dollar deposit or if I had to pay the whole price of the room.
Lunch was incredible. I would soon learn all the food was going to be stellar quality! The assortment of cheeses as really quite impressive… Anyway, I really enjoyed lunch, but couldn’t linger all that long after the meal because I needed to get to the science area to meet with one of the professors. I donned my running gear and headed to the bus stop. I saw the bus go past on my way to the stop and consequently had to wait another 15 minutes for the next bus, ugh! I figured I was going to be super late for my meeting and was getting pretty anxious. Turns out, the bus was really speedy, once it came, and the walk to the building from the stop wasn’t too terrible. I got there at like 2:33pm. I walk in and tell the receptionist I was waiting for so and so and she said he wasn’t in yet and wouldn’t be in for another half hour or so. It was 45 minutes before he came. I was luckily able to rest my eyes while reclining on padded window seat. The only discomforting thing about the whole situation was there was a warning sign that the panels behind the bench contained asbestos. That bit of information was a bit disconcerting! Anyway, the professor finally arrived and I had a very nice meeting with him. It lasted longer than I had predicted, but it wasn’t a problem. From the Science Area I ventured to run back to Templeton. It was a lovely run. Very relaxing… My favorite part was the discovery that the main bridge you have to cross is called Folly Bridge. If that isn’t a fated name, I don’t know what is…
The run back took me less time than expected, but longer than I had allocated since I got distracted by the shops along High Street. Back at the room, which was really really nice by the way; internet, a nice work area, private bathroom, cable and a plush bed, I took a shower and then took a nice little nap. It was only like 30 minutes, but it felt like hours had passed. I love it when that happens!
That night was the formal dinner. At first it was a bit awkward as everyone was trying to get to know one another. We had to repeat ourselves about a million times answering the questions, where are you from, what do you want to study, ect. At the dinner, there were several speakers. It was great to observe their different styles. After being in toastmasters, I am always interested in seeing how people speak in front of groups. The dinner lasted until 11pm and I was really tired. I had met a ton of new people, hadn’t really slept on Thursday night at all and knew I had a written test in the morning. So I went to bed.
Saturday’s breakfast was great. The only not so great thing was the written test that was looming over the morning. At 9:00am, we all assembled in a room and had one hour to write an essay response to the prompt “What are the virtues and vices of democracy? Answer in relationship to your country of origin.” Well, great. I am not a political scientist nor do I pretend to be. But I answered the question as best as I could. I put together a pretty coherent essay with three virtues and three vices which come as a result of the virtues being twisted by the imperfections of the system. I had given it my best effort and that was all I could be asked to do. I was grateful I didn’t freak out, and was able to sort through my thoughts and plan something I was proud of creating.
The interviews started right after the exam. My interview, however, wasn’t scheduled until Sunday at 1:45pm, the last possible interview time. I could have let that upset me, but I didn’t. Instead, I took a nap after the exam on Saturday. I woke up to go to lunch. As I mentioned the food was something I didn’t want to miss out on. And actually Lord Weidenfled sat down at our table near the end of time and so I got to say hi and ask my Lolita question. Score. I wish I could have stayed longer, but I needed to get the 2:03 bus. I politely slipped away and then headed into Oxford to attend part of an apologetics conference my friend Vince was helping out with at his church. His church is right across from Christ Church College where I would be if I got the scholarship. I sat in for the last 10 minutes of a planned talk and then got to be there for all of the very interesting Question and Answer session. I got to meet a bunch of really nice people at the church! It seems like it would be a nice fit for me… Anyway, after that I wanted to go get some Ben’s cookies so Vince and I headed over to the covered market and partook of the best cookies you will ever find! From there we walked to Christ Church College, because I wanted to have another look around. We tried calling our other friend Christian, but he didn’t pick up his phone. Then, as fate would have it, we literally ran into him as he was leaving the gardens with his friends. So he said goodbye to his friends and joined Vince and I in the master’s gardens. The amazing thing about Oxford is that it looks very old, which is it, and somewhat foreboding, which it is… But behind these stone walls there are all these hidden secret gardens! They are so pretty. I think it also helped that the weekend I was in Oxford, there was wonderful weather. So the three of us just kind of sat around in the gardens and caught up on how life was going. I got to ask a bunch of questions about Oxford which was very helpful. Vince and Christian both went to Princeton which is how I know them :)
We parted ways about 6:00pm. I had to get back for the second dinner, this time informal… Lovely. It didn’t last nearly as long which was great! The only downside was there was no assigned seating so it felt a bit like junior high in the lunchroom on the first day of school. Not pleasant, let me remind you. After dinner they had tea and coffee and chocolates. Yum! I got to bed much earlier and was nice and refreshed on Sunday morning.
Sunday I had a great breakfast and tried to keep myself busy and not thinking about the interview. I read for a while in the morning. Still trying to finish up Lolita. I went for a run at 11:00am. It was great. I brought my not-ipod mp3 player and was able to listen to a very timely sermon and inspiring music as I ran along the Thames. I think I may broken the mp3 player though… it doesn’t respond when I press the buttons. I wonder if some sweat got inside and messed up the controls. Again, I would just like to point out I feel like I am cursed when it comes to music, and by that I mean cursed in using portable music players! After my run I showered up and ironed my black jacket. I got dressed for my interview and headed downstairs. I had to wait a good 30 minutes, but that was okay. I was expecting it.
I walked into the interview room and was surprisingly at ease. I was able to answer their questions to the best of my ability. I had prepared as best as I could. I was not totally at a loss except for the stupid weaknesses question. People were coming out of the interviews traumatized, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I gave it my best shot and would probably do the same thing again if I had the chance. The interview didn’t last as long as I had expected which was somewhat troubling. I was getting all sorts of smiles and what felt like positive responses. I left feeling pretty good about things…
I sat down for lunch, by this time it was well past 2:15pm and I was starved. I couldn’t eat much right before my interview as I didn’t feel like I was hungry and didn’t want to mess anything up. Lunch was great, and afterwards I packed up my stuff in ten minutes and walked to the bus stop so I could go on the walking tour of Oxford. I wanted to stay in my room at Templeton another night, but they said that wasn’t possible. Instead, I would crash at Vince’s place on the extra couch they have in the basement. I didn’t want to come back and get my stuff so I would have to have my bags with me for the tour, but I didn’t really care. I was planning to stash them at the church since I was going to go to the 6:00pm service there anyway.
Well, turns out that the church was locked. My plan was foiled and instead I had to lug my luggage through Oxford as we learned all about how old the colleges were, how so and so went to this college and how many books are in the library, ect. It was tiring and I was glad when it was over. I was also quite dehydrated. During the church service I felt a bit light headed. Luckily they had drinks and donuts for sale in the foyer after the service so I paid my 1 pound and felt much better after refueling a little bit. After the service a group of people went out a place called All Bar One. It was really cool. Most of the people only ordered drinks, but I hadn’t had dinner and was again, need I point out, starved! I ordered a wrap which was a great choice :) We stayed until about 10:30pm and then called it a night. Back at Vince’s place, I cancelled my hostel reservation planning to stay in Oxford for Monday and not deal with the hassle of getting into London for a less than 24 hour stay. I was also thinking the Oxford was looking pretty promising and was banking on being able to head into London on the weekends next year… Anyway, I slept like a rock and morning came all too soon!
Monday morning I walked to the science park and met with the professor at Oxford who knows the professor I will be working with at Stanford. He helps run the Water Science, Policy and Management Program. It was great to connect up and learn more about the program. After the brief meeting I stopped at a gift shop and bought a magnet and a bookmark; a wise use of 1.80 pounds if you ask me. From there I walked the 20 minutes back to Vince’s place and headed out for a run. My legs were done for before I even started! It wasn’t a long route, but it took me forever because I was running so slowly. But how could I stop? And the surroundings were so beautiful I couldn’t help but enjoy myself even though I was in a non-negligible amount of pain.
Once back, I showered quickly and walked into the center of Oxford and met up with Christian for lunch. This time the journey took about ten minutes longer because I couldn’t walk as fast due to the fact I was exhausted! I would also like to point out that the weather all day was really schizophrenic. It would rain then be super sunny. Cloudy and the sunny, then rain. Anyway, Christian is in St John’s College and it was great to have a meal at a real college in Oxford.
After lunch I ran some errands picking up random things people had requested I bring back for them. I got a 1GB flash drive, a map of Southern England, a London guidebook, some red tissue paper, and some pens to give to my coworkers as gifts. Turns out they were fountain pens… yikes. But what can I do, so I am going to give them to them anyway, even though they may be entirely useless. At least they look pretty! I also took some photos and found a couple of neat pieces of clothing and a necklace at a great second hand shop I had been eyeing since I first drove past it on the initial bus ride from Heathrow to Oxford… From there I walked to the ice cream place on St. Aldate’s. Wow. That is all I can say. The ice cream was phenomenal. And, was able to taste the flavor before I bought it. Score.
I ate my ice cream on the way to attending the first Weidenfeld Speaker’s Series event. The title was something like “Are Revolutions Contagious?”. It was very fascinating. It lasted like 2 hours, plus another 1 hour of question and answer. I took a ton of notes, not because it was especially interesting. It was good, but not enthralling… I took notes because if I didn’t I would have been fast asleep and that was not something I wished to have happen. I didn’t know too much about Central and Eastern European history so I was lost in some of it, but still enjoyed what I learned and it made we want to go Google a ton of different topics which I think is a good thing.
After the talk there was nice little reception. I ate a bunch of cookies, again quite hungry. From there I went to dinner with a couple of the other candidates. I didn’t want to spend a ton of money so I ordered the soup, that and as I mentioned I had just eaten a bunch of cookies. However, when I ordered the soup and bread, the server thought I meant a side order of bread and brought me more bread than I wanted. The bread was as much as the soup and had to end playing 7pounds for my dinner of soup and bread… That is like 14 dollars. I was ticked off. If I had wanted to spend 7 pounds I would have ordered a pizza or something legitimate. Not good. Anyway, I left the dinner earlier than everybody else because I had to walk back to Vince’s place. It was 10:20pm when I left the restaurant and 10:45pm when I finally made it back. I had said I would be back by 10pm so I felt kind of bad, but it wasn’t a big deal. Next time, one, I will not order the soup, two, I will just go home. I learn new things everyday. I just thought it would be nice to hang out with the Weidenfeld people some more. It was nice, but I think I had hit my limit and the bread fiasco did not help the situation.
Back at Vince’s I packed up my stuff, yet again, and made plans for the morning. I got to sleep all of 3.5 hours from midnight to 3:30am, when I had to get up and walk to the bus stop to get bus to get to Heathrow for a 7:40 flight. I got there in no time, but spent 40 minutes in line at the Air France counter. It was ridiculous. And I would like to point at this point my body officially hates me. I haven’t had regular meals for two days and the food I have been eating hasn’t been all that great for me… I was a bit queasy. I finally checked my bags in and got through security. I tried to track down something for breakfast, but was only mildly successful. I didn’t have a long wait at the gate which was nice, and the flight from London to Paris is a brisk 45 minutes. However, my plane touched down in Paris at 10:10 local time, leaving me 50 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. I have the Paris airport. I think I have mentioned that before, but let me reiterate. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go in and out of customs as I had on the way over. After a good twenty minute walk from one terminal to the next, and a short delay at security, I made it to my gate as the plane was boarding. Thankfully, it wasn’t the last call like my time through Paris. But still. Once, just once, I would like to feel like I have things under control as I am flying through Paris.
The godsend of the whole trip was that I was able to sleep on both of my flights. I was done for. I did wake up for the meal and after the meal watched I Am Legend before falling asleep again. The plane made a stopover in Niamey, Niger. I hate just having to sit and wait on planes like that. But alas, there wasn’t much I could do about it was there. So I dosed in and out of consciousness. I was so happy to be parked in Ouagadougou. After the landing we taxied for what seemed like forever. I was not doing well and really needed to get some fresh air off of the plane. I had a similar feeling getting off of the bus that morning. My poor body had been through a lot of flights in the last month and wasn’t too happy about it… I went through customs without a hitch this time. Last time I had filled out my landing card in pencil and had to redo it. I wanted to yell at them that if they wanted it in pen they needed to indicate it somewhere on the card. BUT it is Africa. It wouldn’t have made a stinking difference.
Leanna picked me up from the airport and we went back to her house. I had offered to help her decorate the cakes for prom and was happy to spend some time with her. She Skyped with her sister and I emailed my parents and took a shower before we got down to business on the cake. The theme for the dance was Fire and Ice so we made flames and icicles growing from opposite corners of the cake. It turned out very well. Afterwards we invited Ben over to share a smaller leftover cake that I had decorated to look like an Easter egg. Go figure. Leanna drove me home and I wanted to sleep so badly. However, I had to greet the new lady who was staying at my house. Things just keep getting more and more complicated, eh? Anyway, to my relief she is very kind and I was able to talk to her for just a few minutes before politely excusing myself for the evening.
So that is it. My travels have officially come to a halt. It is a bit of a let down and I wonder how I will readjust to life in Africa. I feel it will be as hard as I first imagined it would be. With only two months left I feel like it will be struggle to concentrate, but I am going to pray it all works out. Somehow it usually does…
Brief stop at home in Burkina...
So I don’t remember all that much about the 3 days I spent back in Africa before heading out for England. I know on Tuesday I went work and did as much as I could do. I greeted all my co-workers and stopped in to see Professor Maiga. I know that doesn’t account for the several hours I spent sitting my office, but frankly I don’t know what I did to pass that time… Oh well. I was a bit worn out and leaving on Thursday there wasn’t much I could dive into and get back out of before then. Tuesday evening Ben and Leanna came over. Ben brought pizza and Leanna brought salad. It was nice to catch up a little and Leanna helped me pick out clothes for the interview and stuff. We also had a nice girl talk about all the stuff that has been going on over the past two weeks!
Wednesday I went to work at 7:00am. Go Sara! I wrote a bunch of emails, but then ended up heading to ISO to meet Leanna at 10:30 to help her figure out Prom details. Prom would be Wednesday April 30th, the day after I was scheduled to get back. I offered to take the pictures and was planning on it until the last minute another girl said she wanted to do it. I was okay just having a chill evening at home. Anyway, we figured out a great design for the picture background and also planned out an idea for how to decorate the cake.
From there, instead of going home I went to Leanna’s and did a load of laundry and chilled out. I also planned for bible study which was at 3:00pm that afternoon. It was nice to see Rosie and Anna again and to lead bible study! Geez, it had been a good two weeks and I hated to feel like I had abandoned the girls… The study went well. Oh and fyi, it is really hot in Burkina right now. I missed a good chunk of the heat by being in the US for the most part of April, but man oh man. It is a new level of hot. Wednesday night I worked out and then tried to get my life in some semblance of order.
Thursday I got up and started packing. I went to work and had like a million emails to send. Luckily, I got through them all and even ordered the bus ticket I needed to get from the airport to Oxford. I had lunch at the cafeteria because I had very little food at my place and like to no time to eat. I went out and picked up a few trinkets to give as presents to Vince and Christian if I ended up seeing them. That afternoon I worked out and then after I showered I saw I had missed a call from Nicolas. Apparently, the people from Ghana had arrived. At this point, I had 40 minutes before Leanna was picking me up to go to the airport. I told him to come by my office in 10 minutes. I shoved everything in my bag to finish packing and went to my office. They took longer than 10 minutes and I had only 20 minutes to talk to them when they finally arrived. It was great though. Making the connection with the two people who work with the ceramic filters in Ghana was very helpful. They were able to see the experiment set-up I have and were able to give me new faucets and brushes to clean them with. The meeting was brief, but I was happy they came, even though it added some stress for me.
I made it back to my house just as Leanna was about to call me and find out where I was. We loaded my bags into her car and we were on our way to the airport!
Wednesday I went to work at 7:00am. Go Sara! I wrote a bunch of emails, but then ended up heading to ISO to meet Leanna at 10:30 to help her figure out Prom details. Prom would be Wednesday April 30th, the day after I was scheduled to get back. I offered to take the pictures and was planning on it until the last minute another girl said she wanted to do it. I was okay just having a chill evening at home. Anyway, we figured out a great design for the picture background and also planned out an idea for how to decorate the cake.
From there, instead of going home I went to Leanna’s and did a load of laundry and chilled out. I also planned for bible study which was at 3:00pm that afternoon. It was nice to see Rosie and Anna again and to lead bible study! Geez, it had been a good two weeks and I hated to feel like I had abandoned the girls… The study went well. Oh and fyi, it is really hot in Burkina right now. I missed a good chunk of the heat by being in the US for the most part of April, but man oh man. It is a new level of hot. Wednesday night I worked out and then tried to get my life in some semblance of order.
Thursday I got up and started packing. I went to work and had like a million emails to send. Luckily, I got through them all and even ordered the bus ticket I needed to get from the airport to Oxford. I had lunch at the cafeteria because I had very little food at my place and like to no time to eat. I went out and picked up a few trinkets to give as presents to Vince and Christian if I ended up seeing them. That afternoon I worked out and then after I showered I saw I had missed a call from Nicolas. Apparently, the people from Ghana had arrived. At this point, I had 40 minutes before Leanna was picking me up to go to the airport. I told him to come by my office in 10 minutes. I shoved everything in my bag to finish packing and went to my office. They took longer than 10 minutes and I had only 20 minutes to talk to them when they finally arrived. It was great though. Making the connection with the two people who work with the ceramic filters in Ghana was very helpful. They were able to see the experiment set-up I have and were able to give me new faucets and brushes to clean them with. The meeting was brief, but I was happy they came, even though it added some stress for me.
I made it back to my house just as Leanna was about to call me and find out where I was. We loaded my bags into her car and we were on our way to the airport!
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