Host Family

While I was working at the training the other week, I visited my host family from when I was in training. It was great to see how much they'd improved their house (new living room set) after my mom got her bac last year. They also had a new puppy who spent about half of the time taking a nap on my lap while we ate dinner. Little Farris was just as crazy as usual, running around trying to be the boss of everyone. Although he did remember my name, which was kind of cool because he's only three now, and was two when I lived with them. My host dad also told me about all of the volleyball activities he's been doing with kids in the community. He does a lot of stuff to try to boost primary students' self esteem, especially girls'. He even goes to visit families of students who are having a hard time or who are doing well. I feel so lucky to have had such a wonderful host family, and wish both of my parents luck as they pursue their university diplomas (who-hoo!).

Having been in Burkina for over a year now, I feel like I'm finally starting to know what's going on. Even traveling through Europe in countries where you may or may not speak the language, it's easier to know what's happening because the cultures are (generally speaking) more akin to American culture than they are here.

One of the hardest things about living here has been learning to "read between the lines". Although I titled this blog entry "lying" culture, I didn't mean to imply that Burkinabes are dishonest. It is more culturally acceptable, and even expected in some situations, to lie about certain things. You might even have an entire conversation without directly saying what you're trying to communicate, but in the end you both know exaclty how the other person feels.

Similarly, people will never directly ask for anything. The other day I was sitting in my friend's courtyard in village. He wanted to ask me for a favor, but instead of asking me directly, "hey would you mind...?", he went on and on about how nice it would be if someone would talk to our mutual friend to help them work out their problem. Finally I asked "would you like me to intervene", "yes" he said. "Why didn't you just say that in the first place?", "Oh but I did, and plus we are always taught that it's rude to just ask for things outright. I really was being direct." This is typical. When I first swore in as a volunteer there were so many things like this happening that I didn't even realize. Now, if I think that someone's trying to ask or tell me something I usually just end up asking them straight out.

In other news, my whole stage is in the capital right now doing mid-service medical exams. Nothing like pooping in a red plastic cup three times in the same week. But in the words of a fellow volunteer, "I'm EXCITED! I get to find out if there's anything wrong with me!!" (Believe me the exclamation points don't lie, he really was that excited to go to the doctor). After that there's about a month until school starts up again, and then I'll be teaching about 20 hours a week and doing some projects (hopefully) at my school.

Happy birthday Petra (it's not really until Wednesday), and don't work too hard trying to finish that phd :)