elcome back to the world of burkina faso!! so i just got back from site visit. it was a pretty awesome experience. it started in ouaga where i was in heaven eating nothing but pizza and ice cream and milkshakes and hamburgers and french fries and creme brulee and chimichangas and chili cheese fries and i was sssooooo happy for my three days of food heaven. we also hung out at the american embassy and met a couple of other americans who werent peace corps which was first for me. i played pool and watched american tv on a big screen tv and ate more good american food and milkshakes. we also went to a wine bar which was the nicest place ive seen in burkina. it had air conditioning and big cushiony leather couches and big flat screen tvs and expensive bottles of wine and cheese platters. i think for a while we all forgot we were in africa. oh ya and we also had a counterparts workshop where i met the person im going to be working with at site and hes actually my director and hes the best english speaker of all of the counterparts. after that they tore me kicking and screaming from ouaga up to my site. its pretty north and the landscape is pretty dry and sparse and lacking in any kind of folliage or color which is why i was shocked to show up to a lake at my village! its like an oasis it has greenery and big trees and a ton of baobobs and its really beautiful there, theres even this big rock mountain-esque thing in the distance which pretty to look at. its like living in a park where you would go to have a picnic except its in my backyard right below the sahel desert and i wasnt expecting that at all it makes me very happy :)
another thing that makes me happy: my house is stocked! i expected an empty or sparsely furnished house but its seriously stocked with everything i will need it even has a spice cabinet filled with spices and theres vinager and soy sauce and onions in a bowl hanging above the double burner propane stove and im seriously going to have to learn how to cook! there are also three or four storage trunks and theyre all filled with stuff the previous volunteer left including everything from cooking things to a ton of teaching supplies and everyday things i will need theres even two solar panels and two shortwave radios and a tape player and tapes and a power adaptor and a cot for sleeping outside and a frying pan and a desk for working and three matresses for the bed so i almost feels like one real matress, she even put up a calendar of kittens and opened it up to august and wrote "welcome to bourzanga" in the last week. do you get the picture? im completely set up and ready to go im sooo excited about living in my awesome house!
the house is in the courtyard of a family im going to be living with there are three girls and two boys i think and i think one lives next door for some reason. my parents are awesome and the dad gave me the african name which is a tradition here and my name is awa. i love my name :)
anyway, after the site i went to the bus station and threw up for the first time since i was about ten, then took a VERY bumpy ride up to djibo and watched family guy on a volunteers laptop. the next morning we biked 25 km north through the sahel desert to get to a village with no transport. we were supposed to bike 30km but the wind was pounding the entire time in the wrong direction so that down hill felt like uphill and uphill felt like dieing might be easier and the thought of ever moving again made me want to cry and mac got sick and started halucinating (seriously) so we stopped at a volunteers village who lived a little closer to "take a break for a couple hours" but mac was still sick and i still wanted to destroy my bycicle and all people who suggest ever biking anywhere ever so we ended up staying the night. he lives in a teeny village in a mud and straw hut it was pretty cool checking out the life and site of a real peace corps volunteer. it rained right before the ride back the next day which cools everything down and gets rid of the wind. it was sssooooo much easier with no wind and because we pretty much went separatly so i could go my own slow speed. i have to tell you, when it comes to seeing africa, biking alone is the way to go. i passed baobob trees growing out of lakes with communal birds nesting in the branches, and straw huts and mud huts and people riding camels and big rock mountain-esque formations and women carrying things on their heads through the bush and beautiful bright almost neon blue birds with super long tails it was awesome. the ride back was just awesome, almost made the hell getting there worth it.
anyway when we got back me and another volunteer took a bush taxi back to ouahigouya which was interesting. i had to hold my bags on my lap the whole time which made my whole body hurt except for one time when we all got out of the car to walk across a river that had taken over the road because of the rains. so now im back in ouahigouya and its kinda sad for the vacation to be over but it had to happen and at least the site visit went well and i have something to look foreward to in my village. my time is almost up and im starving so im going to go get bagettes and dip them in the nutella and honey i bought in ouaga :)