Okay, just so we're clear, these are well-known superstitions in Burkina. Each is one hundred percent real.

So let's say you're a Burkinabe dude and you're gearing up for a roadtrip to the see the Hippo Lake near Banfora. You'll probably want to take your favorite jar of honey with you, maybe your pet duck, and hey why not bring your trusty mortar and pestle as well? Superstition dictates that if you indeed transport these items, you must spread honey on all four car wheels, wound the duck first, and put at least five francs in the mortar/pestle. If not, you'll have a highway accident. Make sure if you see a snake crossing the road in front of you, you change to a new route. Snakes are Africa's version of black cats, I guess. It's also important that if you accidentally hit a dog while driving, you don't look back or else you'll soon commit vehicular manslaughter. Just keep driving, but remember to stop after you've hit the dog and rinse the tires with urine (yes, urine) in order to salvage what little good luck you may have left.

By the way, if you're a woman, you're considered a bringer of life, so make sure you don't accidentally kill a dog or any other animal. When you're pregnant, be careful not to munch on the meat of any pregnant animal. Other foods to avoid: eating rat meat during pregnancy will result in your child eventually turning to a life of crime. Rats, after all, are like little household thieves. When holding your baby, it's especially good luck to let it urinate on your lap. When you're rearing this child, make sure you don't hit him with a shoe, a broom, or a spatula. If you do, the poor kid will become an idiot (shoe), lazy (broom), or impotent (spatula).

When choosing a wife, don't pick one with flat feet. If you do, you'll die. Note to self: find way to casually inspect Tana's soles tonight. Also, never bite your wife or husband, or else your marriage will be unlucky. It's widely believed that if a husband moves stones in the household foyer or intentionally breaks a jar of water, his wife is entitled to a divorce. It's doubly unlucky to throw a jar of hot water on the ground. The evil spirits will punish you for disrespecting any hot liquid in this way. It's a good idea to intersperse cloves of garlic randomly around your house: a garlic a day keeps the spirits at bay.

There are plenty of weird superstitions relating to animals. If you whistle after sundown, the snakes will come eat you. If you're on your way to a job interview (or any important endeavor) in Burkina and you see a hedgehog, bad news, my friend. It's not going to be pretty and you'll no doubt fail miserably, so just try not to notice hedgehogs on your way to your next inevitable next job interview. If you lose a tooth and toss it on your roof, you'll receive a rooster the very next day. I suppose the African tooth fairy is more of a rooster fairy.

In the Jula tradition, each family must have a totem animal that they must not eat. In Jula, the word totem is coincidentally pronounced Tana. So, much to our benefit, my host family's "Tana" is the dog. We haven't eaten dog yet, but mark my words- given the opportunity, I intend to sample some luscious Labradoodle or some mouth-watering Shetland Sheep Dog before I set foot again in America. I've already tried roasted caterpillar, a veritable delicacy in our neck of the woods. It crumbled like dirt in my mouth, suffocating my tongue in its bitter smokiness. An acquired taste, I suppose. I feigned a smile, flashed the obligatory thumbs up, then ran to my food suitcase (my only true safe haven in desperate times) to resuscitate my taste buds with some Skittles and gummy snacks.

We saw a man selling this gem at the NAK festival in Koudougou: pants with Barack’s gold-encrusted signature on one leg. I wonder how they got him to sign them? Perhaps, some crafty pants salesman snuck into the Oval Office and added these pants to Barack’s pile of Congressional bills. On the other pant leg, you can see his Presidential face and upturned hand along with the most inspiring words ever spoken by any American president.

OK, so playing tennis was even more hilarious than I expected. My host sister (not pictured, who is 18) and I showed up at this rec center where there was a pool and one tennis court and a lot of spectators. She told the staff that I wanted to play tennis, but then I told her that I don’t actually know how to play and that I thought we’d just hit around some balls. I need to work on my sports vocabulary in French. I narrowly escaped playing a match in front of everyone when an overzealous challenger arrived at the scene and selected an opponent of his same size and physique. But I wasn’t off the hook yet. My sister refused to play at all because, she said, she doesn’t know how. So it was decided that her friend and I would practice serving back and forth. Every other time I hit the ball it went onto the court where the competitive man couldn’t decide what language to shout in. Oh, foreigners. I just tried to make a series of apologetic faces whenever I interrupted their play. Despite being the most embarrassing thing I have done in this country, it was actually pretty fun. I just kept reassuring both girls that I’m really much better at basketball and baseball, although I hope they don’t make me prove it. Afterward we made a deal that next time we will swim in the pool instead or else my host sister has to play tennis with me.

Hi Everyone! Here's what's new with us in Burkina...

Today I am going to play tennis with my host family. Haha. This week we will meet our counterparts who will act as professional advisors to us in the next two years in our village. It will be really cool to finally get some concrete details about our village and start thinking about how we will be able to collaborate with our counterparts. On Friday, I will pick up some more exciting outfits from the tailor. No shrimp this time, but I'm excited just the same. Saturday Dec. 11 is one of the independence days of Burkina Faso, so that should be fun, but I'm not sure if our host family is planning anything yet. Then on Dec. 16 we will have our "swearing-in" ceremony where we will become official Peace Corps volunteers. We will spend some time with the US Ambassador to Burkina, take an oath, and several trainees (including me) will give short speeches in local languages. Then our move to village begins! Because we're going so far south, our move will take about 2 days, but we'll be traveling with some friends.

We need your help! We will be moving to our own house in two weeks, and we would like to make some delicious meals once we are there, especially for Christmas. We are looking for recipes for the following dishes and sauces, so please post them as a comment if you know them! Also, feel free to add any other recipes that you think would benefit us, but keep in mind that we have no refrigeration, a very small Dutch oven (think large pot on a stove), and limited access to meats and cheese. Still, we'd like to try to create the following things:

Grandma’s rolls
Dad’s fried chicken strips
Leslie’s deviled eggs
Sherry’s fried green tomatoes
Papa Chester’s French toast (ok I know it’s a secret recipe so you can send it to me by email and I promise not to print, forward, or otherwise publish it in any way)
Eric's homemade mozzarella sticks, if they turned out ok when you made them
Pickles
Potato soup
Pickle relish
Basil pesto
Italian dressing
Cole Slaw
Potato salad
Croutons
Carson’s chili and/or sesame chicken sauce

Thanks to anyone who can help us out! You will get full credit if we prepare something you suggest and our friends and neighbors like it!

Keep in touch! We like hearing from you as much as you like hearing from us! (Or perhaps more...)

PS-Happy birthday Britni, and happy almost birthday Jamie!

After I indulged in one too many American dishes over here, my body decided to take its revenge on Thanksgiving. I’ll spare the interesting details, but let’s just say anything that I’ve been storing up in my entrails for the past week has been successfully expelled one way or another today.

Family, don’t start feeling bad for me, because it turns out that when you’re in Burkina and all you really want is your mom to set up a little table for you with bland food and juice, your host family will come by your room one by one to provide you with tea, bread, rice, bananas, and of course to ask you if you’re feeling better yet, if you’ve taken any medicine, and why you haven’t eaten all of your food, because when you’re sick, they say, you really should eat well. And they all tell you that they hope you feel better soon and that everything will turn out ok. As I type this, I’m eating the biggest banana I’ve ever seen and my host sister is outside washing all of the dishes I’ve dirtied today. She is even heating up water for my bucket bath tonight.

So Chad is representing the two of us at the “Fangsgiving” celebration, and I am getting ready to curl up with a bowl of instant mashed potatoes and watch “The Other Boleyn Girl.” This has been a surprisingly good sick day.

And now for what I am thankful for at the moment:

• My family
• My host family
• Technology (computer, cell phone, and electricity which I will have for 3 more weeks)
• Care packages
• Photos, especially of babies
• The awesome group of people that we ended up coming to Africa with and the training staff who put up with my endless questions about the culture and language here.
• All of the snacks that I packed
• Thoughtful notes and updates that I have received from friends and family (including blog comments)
• Everyone who stopped by, called, or fed me while I was sick today

Back in the day when Virginia law was less persnickety about playing with fire, we always used to pass these little roadside firecracker stands and eagerly await the Fourth of July. Here in Burkina Faso today, we’re gearing up for our own Fourth of July. It has nothing to do with independence and everything to do with sheep.

So as cars and motos whiz down the only paved road in Koudougou, instead of firecracker stands lining the sidewalks, you’ll see shepherds selling off their flocks. In the middle of town, these dozens of shepherds and baker’s dozens of sheep look so out of place. In order to differentiate sheep ownership, the shepherds had apparently scribbled markings on the animals’ backs with multicolored highlighters. When I saw all these neon sheep, rather than questioning reality as I knew it, it was more convenient to believe that sheep have always been neon. The whole situation was that special brand of absurdity that, after living here a few weeks, I now take for granted.

And just so you picture it right, West African sheep don’t look like the woolly puffballs you count to fall asleep. Forget about the Baa-Ram-Ewe sheep from the movie “Babe,” and just picture your run-of-the-mill goat. Yep, goats and sheep here are nearly identical. If you asked me to do some kind of “Pepsi/Coke Challenge” for identifying any given goat/sheep without looking at the label, I would probably fail.

So how do I know all these sheep were actually sheep, you ask? Sir or Madame, I didn’t land in Africa yesterday. And for your information - when you interrupted to ask that question, I was just about to explain this sheep-centric holiday anyway. Also, I don’t appreciate your tone.

First off, it’s celebrated on November 16th, and it’s actually a Muslim holiday called Tabaski. At least, we think it will be on November 16 this year – the official date of the celebration is determined by the unanimous agreement of several tribal leaders’ interpretations of the moon. Kind of like how the longevity of winter is interpreted on Groundhog’s Day.

Anyway, Tabaski celebrates that incident in the Quran when Abraham almost nearly sacrificed his son and then sacrificed a sheep instead. So in the morning each household sacrifices its own sheep (hence, the marked up curbside flocks). After feasting on muttonchops, each family then shares cuts of their meat with neighbors and strangers. Kind of like our post-Thanksgiving tradition in the States of pawning off ziplockfuls of turkey on unsuspecting coworkers.

Tabaski in Burkina bears a final unsolicited and unfair comparison, this time to Halloween. On Tabaski, children paint their feet and go out to greet people. Tradition dictates that when a child wishes you well, you must award them candy. Fortunately, Tana and I won’t have to spend the day avoiding the little ones. Our pockets will be stuffed with Jolly Ranchers and Pop Rocks that we brought across the sea.

Chad thinks that Lassie was a German Shepherd.  He has clearly been away from the States for too long.

I have come to appreciate the feeling of a freshly swept tile floor.

Thanks to my other mother and father, we just got package one today.  That took over three weeks to get here, so it looks like sending mozzarella sticks is not going to work.  We’ll probably just have to travel to Italy or something.

Plans are underway for our big Thanksgiving dinner with all of our classmates.  I am on the stuffing committee and Chad is on the “things you can buy so you don’t have to cook” committee. We are both very excited as well to make handprint turkeys as decorations for our makeshift dining hall.  This is also when we plan to do the big unveiling of our matching authentic Burkinabe garb.  We know you can’t wait to see it, but hang in there.

In Jula, Tana means totem, or something that your family can’t use/eat.  We learned that our host family’s tana is the dog, so they don’t plan to eat our courtyard dog.  That’s good news for us because it means we can stop thinking of ways to politely refuse dog meat when they serve it to us.

Thanks to Mom for sending two cute pictures : )  I have been showing them off to everyone.  In Jula, there is no word for niece so now everyone will think I have a baby, haha.

Also, card games can get weird here. All the suits go by different names in French.

• Clubs are peanuts. 
• Hearts are tomatoes. 
• Diamonds are boxes. 
• Spades are “pricklies.” 

The official literature we read to acquaint us with West African culture informs us that in Burkina Faso, kitchen utensils are never used for taking a shower or to attack others. Important to know, I suppose.

Happy almost birthday to Makenna!

Here is a video of one activity we did during a weekend-long field trip to the village of Meguet. It’s time-tested method for extracting black-eyed peas from their pod thingies. While in Meguet, I visited a gold mine, climbed on a mesa, trudged around in the fields, visited an alligator-laden reservoir, and talked to local kids about pro wrestler John Cena. Through these adventures, my eyes were wide and my intestines were a war zone.



After riding in a cloistered bush taxi for four painstaking hours, hitching a ride on a bottle truck was a welcome chance to stretch our legs. Even though these truckers were doing us a huge favor, we still spent the obligatory five minutes haggling for a lower rate. It's common practice here to quibble over nickels and dimes.

We’ve long since returned to Koudougou, our new home sweet home. It’s as comfortable as a warm slipper. I am obsessed with fried plantains and laughing cow cheese is my second most valuable commodity.

Remember how children like to chant “nassara” at us? The other day my group happened to bike through a schoolyard. Children were everywhere. It was eerie how the chanting surrounded us and the echoes grew louder and louder. It had the same feel of a zombie movie, except they were just happy little kiddies who all wanted to be our friends. So maybe a zombie movie about carebears.

These are jam-packed times. We find out our official site placements on Monday. We have only one month of training. I just took a placement exam for language. My French still sucks, but I think I think have enough skill to translate the lyrics of vague pop songs about love. I might start a notebook full of words to Backstreet Boys and N’Sync songs. For my studies… not because I listen to them every day. For my studies.

Yeah.

Want to know why everyone loves the Burkinabe?  It’s because in every situation they will wish you well.  Whether it’s have a good day, have a good trip, have a good class, or even good digestion, they wish you the very best.  A complete stranger in a restaurant will tell you, “Vous êtes invités.” This doesn’t actually mean you should sit down and help yourself, but if you were really hungry, a Burkinabe would give you their last spoonful of benga (a delicious heap of rice and beans).

Our host family is particularly warm and inviting.  We have three host grandmothers (wives one, two, and three) and over twenty assorted cousins and siblings.  We share the courtyard with the gravesite of our host family patriarch.  We have so far tiptoed around the topic, but I'm sure we'll soon learn more about him.  In the evenings some of the women do household chores while others crochet and grade the children's homework.  Sometimes I help with English lessons in exchange for help with my Jula.  The kids laugh at me a lot, but I just keep telling myself it’s because they like me.  Visitors come and go unannounced but spend the obligatory few minutes upon their arrival asking how is the family, how is your work, how are the children, how is your health, how have you been sleeping etc.  Another reason why the Burkinabe are the nicest people. 

Yesterday we witnessed the behind-the-scenes magic of our nightly dinners, which usually just appear before us. Apparently, every day around 2pm our host sister Ramata walks down the street to her aunt Lala’s house where they cook together until dinnertime.  Last night, we went with her to “help.”  In other words, we watched the ending of Inglourious Basterds in French while they made spaghetti sauce tomate in the courtyard.  By the end of the movie I had worked up the courage to go outside with the women and talk to them.  We drank some delicious homemade bissap (hibiscus tea) and laughed at a little kid trying to eat chalk.  Then Lala told me that she had picked out a nice and very trendy fabric for us and the tailor would be by shortly to take our measurements.  It was a little awkward but we’re very excited about the matching outfits that we are having made.  I promise I will post pictures when they’re done.  Believe me, you can’t wait to see the motif she picked out.

Most of the animals that we have around us here are the same as in the States, but the way they interact with the people is quite different.  Adolescent chickens hop about our house but they stay out of the bedrooms.  A puppy lives in the corner of the patio and helps us finish what we can't eat after dinner.  The other night when we were sitting in the moonlight, a pudgy rat scampered across the courtyard and fumbled all over our host brother as it tried to climb the wall behind him. It ran away and everyone laughed while our host brother looked bewildered and violated.  Then, of course, they made him get right back to his studies.  And finally, to anyone who thinks that praying mantises are cool, I just want to let you know that you are wrong.  They are relentless and inconsiderate when you’re slicing onions by headlamp after sunset.

You'd think we were parade floats, the way people look at us when we're biking. It doesn't help that the US government makes us wear bicycle helmets in a country where nobody wears them. Even when I lock up my bike, there's no need to lock up the helmet. Who would want to steal it? It also doesn't help that we are equipped with super-flashy, state-of-the-art mountain bikes. Okay, actually that helps a lot.

We Peace Corps trainees migrate in herds and are often greeted by little children singing and chanting "Nassara," sometimes accompanied by hysterical dancing. Although I feel I was born to be a celebrity and see this as a substitute for my failed career as a rapper, Tana sees her own fame as unearned. As for Burkinabe citizens older than seven, we've enjoyed how respectfully everyone treats us.



Most days are equivalent to the hottest days of summer in Richmond. Sometimes, even SPF 50 doesn't even cut it and it's unfortunate that shorts are not as chic as long pants in this country. Yesterday we laid in a bed, exhausted, with the fan blasting (thank Allah we have electricity) and a squirt bottle. We took turns spraying ourselves with water, kind of like they did when they were transporting the whale in "Free Willy." This isn't to overstate the heat. It's not all that bad. Some days we eat so much greasy food that we think we might be sweating palm oil.

By the way, congrats to Rick and Tiffany Maxwell. When I get back to the States, I will publically embarrass you with the fourteen-page wedding toast I’ve been preparing since freshman year of high school.

Another thing: we have tons of videos to upload of interesting things, but the bandwidth at these cybercafes makes it impossible to get them to the interwebs. While I have been taking beaucoup videos, someone *cough cough* hasn't taken ANY pictures with her camera to show you.

• Ignore the cravings and they’ll go away faster
• Do my best to create a dish that resembles what I’m craving
• Lay down, close my eyes, and pretend I’m at the drive-through in Mechanicsville

In Burkina Faso if you go with your friends to eat lunch at a half-sheltered hut restaurant, you may find that the waiter seats you at a table next door in a motorcycle mechanic's shop. Relax and take in the delicate ambience of the dining experience as the mechanic loudly revs a motorcycle engine. You'll find that the engine exhaust complements the tanginess of the meat sauce on your couscous.

If you decide to turn in early and catch some Z's, you may find yourself clutching your bedsheets, eyes wide open, listening to the weirdest sound you've ever heard. It's coming from your neighbor's yard just over the wall. You'll wonder whether the animal making the sound is giving birth, being waterboarded, or slowly dying in a pool of its own blood. The piercing sound will penetrate your earplugs and continue non-stop for an hour. You'll find out the next day in class that this sound is actually a donkey crying. Who knows why a donkey would cry. Maybe somebody forgot his birthday. Also, you'll hear roosters crowing randomly at 3AM.

When you sit down to eat dinner in the courtyard with your host family, you'll find a meal called "to," (pronounced "toe") which is a white, starchy tofu-like substance. You're supposed to tear off pieces and make holes with your fingers to scoop up the meat sauce, but your host family holds back laughter as you fumble with your food. Kind of like using chopsticks for the first time. Don't be surprised if the power goes out and you can't eat. Then you may have the bright idea to bring out your fancy AA-powered lantern. When you do, a swarm of stinkbugs and beetles will invade your food as they fly towards the light.

Then when the power comes back on, you will join your family in watching a Burkinabe soap opera called "Celibatorium," which roughly translates to "People who are single - orium." Now it's your turn to hold back laughter at a production that could easily be featured in Mystery Science Theater 3000 for its shoddy production and acting. The plot centers around a sketchy white aid-worker running away during his dinner date with a Burkinabe woman. When you find yourself watching "Woody the Woodpecker," you'll find that the most important things in life transcend culture. Everytime you hear Woody the Woodpecker's signature laugh, you'll feel like you're home.

Sure, I could have entered the workforce full-time and tried to be an adult. But why do that when I could go to Africa and be a kid again? I'm not a kid in every sense of the word, since I don't need training wheels or potty training. But besides my biking and bathrooming skills, I'm pretty helpless. Not only do I have to re-learn to speak (French and probably a local dialect), I have to re-learn how to do laundry, eat, bathe, and the list keeps growing.

In my last life as an American named Chad, I never bothered at high school dances to learn how to dance. That has come back to bite me in the butt in my new life as a nassara (foreigner) whose name is usually pronounced Chah.

I'm just glad I'm not the only goofy dancer in the lot. On our first night in Koudougou a local band played beautiful rhythmic music while all of us nerdy Peace Corps trainees flailed around awkwardly. We also went to an urban dance club one night and flooded the floor when the DJ queued up that Shakira Olympics song and that Romanian "Numa Numa" song. We were kind of like circus clowns, but the locals danced beside us like we were family. The club was in an open courtyard and a stinkbug flew into my eye.

There are other things I failed to learn in the States that have come back to haunt me. Once upon a time on a schoolbus in Virginia, I remember some cool kids trying to teach me a multi-step handshake involving fingersnaps. They repeatedly demonstrated, but after my failed attempts they always shook their heads in disappointment. This was a technique I was too uncool to master. Well, as it turns out, in Burkina Faso, grown men do this elaborate handshake thing too. All the time. And on this continent as well, I'm a pitiful disappointment. It's not really something I can practice on my own, though, so I don't anticipate any improvement in the handshake department.

We've started packing, and after stuffing in all of the rations we purchased at Walmart, we have very little room left.  All of Tana's clothes had to go in her carry-on.  Oh well, we all have to make sacrifices sometimes for junk food.

Tana is most excited about the opportunity to speak French every day with real people.
Chad is most excited about the experiences he will have.

Much love from right here at home,
Tana (and Chad)