My morning run

So now that I have achieved better health I’ve started running. My house is very close to the edge of town and I’ve found a perfect route through the crop fields. It’s very relaxing (except for the hum of a power plant nearby) and the early morning smells are heavenly.

Here is a recap in pictures of my run this morning. I probably won’t run with my camera again though. Awkward! Not only is holding it difficult, but I already get a lot of attention from my neighbors when I run as is. Adding a shiny camera into the mix wasn’t helpful at all. Also I’m not comfortable with taking pictures of people yet, as you may have noticed. So here are some plant pictures with a few animals thrown in for fun!

The start of my route

Everyone is starting to wake up

I almost feel like I'm in "Nature" at this point

Surprisingly not poo!

Just a shy turtle

Fields on both sides

Pumpkin berries - don't know what they are yet, but they remind me of little green pumpkins

There are not a lot of trees, but the ones that exist branch nicely and are fun to look at.

Pod plant

Green beans! They're available in the marché now, very exciting.

Pink flower that resembles the okra flower which is yellow.

Bike tire killers. Before I could come to the cyber today I had to repair two holes in my bike tire caused by these.

Crooked tree

Similar to the corn here, but slightly different. Posted because I like the tassles.

Local "blue" grass with pretty purple seeds

There aren't a lot of flowers so these guys really stand out

I can be happy anywhere tiny blue flowers exist.

The trees have really rough bark

Back to civilization

Thistles?

Visitors

I talked about some of my visitors in a previous post, but after last night I decided a longer discussion (with pictures) was in order.

Not only have I had a plethora of creepy crawly visitors, but seeing as my house is somewhat centrally located it looks like I may end up with quite a few PCVs (peace corps volunteers) visiting. In the past week I’ve had four PCVs stay over. I really don’t mind, but I’ve decided that I need to make the situation more livable for me and my guests. Having to work around people sleeping on my floor will probably get annoying very soon. So to inhibit any developing frustrations I’ve decided to charge 1,000 cfa per night. This way I can save up and purchase another lit pico (cot) for my living room. Everyone wins: my guests get a bed, I get a couch and people are off the floor. The hotels in the area range from 5,000 – 10,000 cfa, making mon chez moi a great deal. Additionally I have no idea what to expect in terms of an electric bill so it might help defray that cost.

Now for more entertaining visitors (see pictures below). With the exception of the scorpion, all were observed in one evening. The scorpion was my first live scorpion ever! Another volunteer, Christina, had spent the night and in the morning we found it trapped in the silver basin. What luck! At least we didn’t have to catch it and thank goodness Christina was there to help me kill it. I don’t think I’m afraid of scorpions, but they look too much like spiders for my taste! They squish readily though, so I don’t think I’ll have any trouble killing them in the future. My courtyard is covered in rocks, making excellent hiding places for scorpions and the like. A future home improvement task will be to remove all the rocks. Anyone want to come visit? :)

I had something much better than a scorpion fly into my house last night: a praying mantis! The praying mantis has to be the coolest insect on the planet! It was so calm and relaxed and it almost seemed as though he was watching me (benignly). It swayed back and forth slowly, kind of like chameleons, and I found the movement to be very relaxing. It also cleaned its face/eyeballs in a manner reminiscent of a cat cleaning its whiskers. This guy was so cool I considered changing my blog title to “Fainting Praying Mantis”, except I don’t think they’re that fragile. One other thing I observed: praying mantis are fantastic small insect killers. It set up shop beneath my outdoor light and started munching away.

As for all the other insects, there’s too many to get grossed out. I’ve started thinking of them as snowflakes since each one is unique and intricate. The beetles are really colorful and there are some bugs I can’t even classify.

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my first scorpion

toad

red beetle thinking about dying...

... because he fell over a few minutes later. Weird!

black beetle

copper beetle

one of about a million crickets

my super creepy latrine spider - we have an arrangement now: I open my latrine door, he scurries away and I pretend he doesn't exist (except he forgot to scurry away and let me take a picture!)

much bigger than a grasshoper - locust?

pretty moth

boring moth

moth/dragonfly hybrid?

best insect ever!

washing eyeballs

wish I could climb like this...

eating tiny insects

Settling in

In addition to guests and visitors, I’ve also bee working on arranging my living situation so that it’s more livable. My house is extremely nice by most standards here. Many of my fellow volunteers (and the majority of Burkinabe for that matter!) don’t have the luxury of electricity, fans and the potential for running water. That I have so much is leading to feelings of guilt. Hard to believe, but I’ve already had to call an electrician and a plumber! Definitely not what I thought my Peace Corps experience would be like.

So, to start organizing my house I had to visit a carpenter since there are no IKEAs here. I gave him a list and schematics of all the shelves and tables I wanted built. The price for everything was a quarter of my yearly stipend! I ended up getting one really big bookcase, a table for my kitchen and a latrine cover for a grand total of 60,000 cfa (about $120 dollars).

Burkina Faso is not like the US with tree farms and a sustainable lumber industry. We’re located south of the Sahara Desert and northern Burkina Faso is in the Sahel. Trees are scarce and deforestation is a big problem here due to a need for cooking fuel. Gas is relatively expensive and as a result most Burkinabe still use wood fires to cook! When I arrived here in June the first smell I noticed stepping off the plane was wood smoke and now I understand why.

Water is also regarded as a valuable commodity, very similar to the American southwest actually. Without running water I need to have water brought to me. There’s a pump in my neighborhood where people fill old cooking oil jugs, big metal cans on wheels and anything else that can hold water. I’ve sucked it up and hired a girl to bring me water twice a week and to help out with my laundry. I still don’t have the proper technique down and it takes me twice as long to do it! It feels weird having someone else do my laundry though.

I also put up curtains. It’s amazing how curtains can make an empty room feel like home. I found mine in the marché and they have roses(?) and bonsai trees. What a great combination!

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new bookcase - the books aren't on it because the varnish is still drying

kitchen table

very exciting latrine cover

my new water container (thanks Emily!)

curtains

curtain pattern

Classes & Teaching Schedule

I now have my teaching schedule! This upcoming year I will be teaching cinquième (roughly 7th or 8th grade) math, seconde and première (high school level) physics/chemistry. It will be 15 hours of teaching instruction each week. All my classes are in the morning, on a couple days they even start at 7am! Good thing I'm a morning person. I'll be finished by noon, just beating the hottest part of the day. It's really nice to know what I'll be teaching. I can now start working on learning the curriculum and lesson planning. Classes will start either October 1st or 2nd depending on the lunar sighting for the end of Ramadan, Eid ul-Fitr.

My new house!

Ok here’s an exciting post of my new house for the next two years. Actually it’s really my first house ever and much nicer than some of my past apartments! I just moved in Sunday, but have been a bit sick so as of yet I've been sleeping and trying to do small things around the house. So far I’ve been able to sleep (thanks to my super comfy cot), make food and do laundry. What else do I need? Curtains, bookshelves, and little tables. Oh and my plumbing isn’t hooked up, but that’s alright. I have a garbage can that some neighborhood girls are filling with water for me.

I have a nice courtyard with a solid bolting door that the neighborhood kids can’t get into. Instead they’ve decided that banging on the door and yelling “Breejeeet” is the best method for getting me to open it. I can honestly say it isn’t and I’m pretty sure they’re going to get bored.

As for visitors, I’ve met many of my neighbors that live close by. They’re very nice and I’m looking forward to getting to know them better.

I’ve had quite a number of “other” visitors as well. This morning I woke up to a mewling kitten who had gotten trapped in my courtyard, last night there was a frog hopping around my "garbage can water holder" and does anyone know how many species of small insects exist on this planet? I think most of them are hanging out around my lights at night! No snakes yet (drat), but I do have a huge latrine spider. Thank goodness my latrine is brand new, no cockroaches! The hole is also very deep at I’d say 20 – 30 feet. I can’t believe how much I’m thinking about bathrooms since moving here!

the front and only door
yes this is my laudry in my courtyard

the plants below look like squash, but the fruit is a cross between honeydew and cantaloupe

living room

living room

hallway and my water containers

kitchen, kind of like being back in lab...

bedroom

bathroom

outdoor shower (left) and latrine (right), my courtyard door is on the far right