On Christmas Eve, Michel, Nick, Tarek, Jon, and Luis prepared our Christmas dinner: two charred pigs. I was surprised after it was cooked to watch the pig give birth to herb-covered potatoes and couscous that they had put into its stomach to cook. It doesn't get much more gourmet than that. This was a vacation jam-packed with fine dining, including the only breaded fried chicken available in this country.


Fada residents Joey and Scott pose with the Christmas piñata, made from a blown up condom and hours of paper machéing.


For our meal the new volunteers of the East, Clarissa and Nick, shared the Christmas couch with us. They live close to Niger.


Scott took Nate, Jon, Tarek, and I to the legendary sand reader of Fada. Mediums in the US usually read tarot cards and tea leaves, but here it's the sands that communicate with clairvoyants. Clients are instructed to close their eyes, draw a small circle in the sand with their fingers, and ask the sands the question silently with their hearts. After the circle is made, the chain-smoking sand reader makes mysterious marks, dots, and lines. Then the client asks the question verbally, so that the reader can interpret what he has just deciphered and try to put these abstractions into words. What was revealed about our futures did not disappoint us.

Volunteers have been visiting this fortune teller for a while, and stories have circulated about how the readings have changed the courses of volunteers' love and professional lives. After much contemplation, I gathered up all my courage to ask a couple doom and gloom themed questions. My first question was "what problems await me in the future?" The sands hesitated a while then gave a foreboding response: one day my mother will become nervous about something. When that day comes, she will ask a request of me. I must obey her wishes, or else...

My second question was "how and when will Tana and I die?" After I silently asked this with my heart, the psychic tried to read the sands, but he seemed to look frustrated. When I asked him my question verbally, he pointed at a bold line in the sand that was obstructing his ability to interpret it. The sands had refused to reveal the answer to this question.

My third question was "what kind of work will Tana and I do when we return to the States." The sands responded that I shouldn't follow in the livelihood footsteps of my father and grandfather, that our work would be successful if we worked together, and (quite randomly) that our firstborn will be male. The sands tell no lies.


Later, about fifteen volunteers participated in a "white elephant" gift exchange. It's a vicious game of treachery and dream crushing in which wrapped presents are circulated and stolen by those who you once considered your friends. Some of the commodities of our game included a squirt gun and a bag of Sour Patch Kids, a scarf and hat promoting nationalism, quality leather wallets, a set of cutlery that looks like medieval torture implements, some Hello Kitty bouncing balls, and Blitzen the Christmas Chicken (pictured above). I won a backpack and Tana won a foot-shaped bath mat that will complement the colors of our indoor shower room nicely.


Above: Cindy and the piñata in the foreground. Celenia, Luis, and John in the background.

To the Right: A group of impeccably dressed Burkinabe kids smashing up Luis and Doug's master creation Christmas piñata. They were blindfolded and dizzied up then they took swings while Luis and Celenia sang a traditional Mexican song. One little girl used an intimidating amount of force when it was her turn.

The youth of Fada performed a variety show for Noel. All of us volunteers went up on stage for one act and led the whole room in singing "Deck the Halls" in English, singing "Fadadada" instead of "Falalalala." When the emcee put us on the spot to translate the meaning, Doug grabbed the mic and walked them through it line by line in French, even somehow translating the line: "Troll the ancient yuletide carol."


In the tree: Antoinette, Tarek, Pat, John, and Scott. Standing: Tana, Chad, Luis, Jon, Josh, and Nate. Crouched: Clarissa, Michel, Celenia, and some guy.

STEP 3: Perfumigation

Now that the bats have taken to the skies, you toss a few sticks of incense into the fires to make the residual odor more bearable. This step may seem like a splash of cologne after bathing in the sewer, but at least it motivates the clean-up crew. Now that it's somewhat less of an olfactory nightmare, it's time to go back indoors and pull out all the furniture, which will remain unguarded in the schoolyard for days to come. Local thieves have no apparent need for tiny desks.


STEP 4: Fill in the cracks




You buy three bags of cement. The school director commissions a mason who he continually addresses as "the old man" to patch up the holes. This is apparently the same guy who built the school thirty years ago. The mason mixes cement, sand, and water in the middle of each classroom, then he mounts the stacked tables with his trowel in hand to slop up and smooth on the wet concrete. The village carpenter Thomas gives him screens and wooden frames he made to block the aeration holes in the ceiling. "Hey, the old man!" The director says. "Don't forget this room!"


STEP 5: Give it a fresh coat

The afternoon school bell hasn't technically chimed yet, so there are hordes of students still loitering on the premises. Time to capitalize on their boredom by getting some brooms, sponges, towels, and buckets. You pour bleach and anti-bacterial soap into buckets, ready the materials, and use the Huckleberry Finn picket-fence-painting method to motivate them to action. Suddenly, everyone from kindergarten through fifth grade is in full force cleaning mode, competing to have the sparkliest room of them all. Now to mix quicklime powder and water in a cauldron, resulting in a bubbly chemical reaction that drops the jaws of the kids. This makes whitewash, the cheapest kind of faux paint, which looks like the real deal after multiple coats. In all five classrooms, gloved students with paint brushes and sponges restore the walls once again to their original pristine state, forever washing off the foul stench of the bald mice.





CELEBRATION: It's done! And just in time for winter holiday break. Call the village's favorite mustachioed minstrels to the school to play traditional xylophone and drums while the children dance. High fives all around.