The cell phone sounds its wake-up call at 7 a.m. as I rub my eyes and survey my dusty elephant-patterned mattress. I assess last night’s sweat factor and am thankful that tomorrow night I will get my turn in the fan rotation—it’s part of a deal that I have with my three project partners. I can hear one of the sisters in my host family singing boldly while she showers herself with a bucket, accompanied by the rhythm of someone sweeping the courtyard.
It’s another morning in Burkina Faso, West Africa and I emerge from my mosquito net to start another day.
***
Of course, it’s never just another day, as I’m living half a world away from home in the world’s fourth poorest country, navigating my way through unfamiliar social norms and mysterious culinary creations.
I applied to be a part of Queen’s Project on International Development
(QPID) for exactly that reason: I knew working and living somewhere entirely new for three months would give me more experiences than I would know what to do with.
I was in my final undergraduate year studying geography and wasn’t sure what to do with myself after walking off that stage in my hood and gown. Volunteering my skills in another country and learning some new ones along the way sounded like a great way to understand international development work first-hand and maybe get a hint or two about my future.
This sense of a reciprocal exchange between the co-operant and host community is exactly what QPID hopes to achieve with its summer projects in Burkina Faso, Bolivia, Guyana, Nunavut and Kingston.
***
As I climb into a battered green taxi to go to work—after managing to bargain only a slightly lower price than the day before—I realize how surprisingly normal my days have become. Things I thought I could never get used to—goats strapped to the tops of vans, chickens served in buckets, the dusty, red 40-plus degree heat, a serious scarcity of chocolate—have become the new norms.
***
Moving to Burkina in May was a crash course in adaptation. For the first seven weeks, the four of us were split into two project pairs. One pair called the capital of Ouagadougou home, and my project partner and I were 37 kilometres south in the village of Saponé.
While Ouaga offered some familiar conveniences such as electricity, taps with running water, large markets and relatively well-stocked gas station convenience stores, Saponé living was a little simpler. Living and working was challenging in the village as we learned the ins and outs of working with a local non-governmental organization. While my project partner tried to create a project for an agricultural education centre, I assisted with the evaluation of the 50 community schools that were created by our partner organization, Fondation pour la Developpement Communautaire (Foundation for Community Development). We tested the students, ranging in age from eight to 18, in reading, writing and math in both French and Mooré. It was my task to input each student’s scores into a database, using solar power and laptops borrowed from co-workers.
Eventually my project partner and I recognized there was a lack of resources for our projects in the village and we ed the other project pair who were in Ouagadougou working at a centre called ANERSER (Association Nationale pour l’Éducation et la Reinsertion Sociale des Enfants à Risque, an organization that works with at-risk youth). Their project focuses on planning activities and events for the younger boys during the day and teaching literacy and math during the evenings.
***
In the taxi to the office where I am completing what is left of my original project from Saponé—creating brochures and updating the organization’s website—I turn my head toward the window and take a deep breath of stale air.
Mopeds, or motos as the Burkinabé call them, are winding their way through traffic, boys are waving cell phone charge cards at me and women are making the trek to the market with impossibly large loads of mangoes on their heads.
***
I received my first marriage proposal of the day from the taxi driver who insisted I do away with my Canadian fiancé in favour of a Burkinabé like him. Little does he know that the ring on my finger, much like the fiancé, is entirely fictional. I wear it precisely for situations like this. I pleaded poor French skills when he asked for my phone number and tried to invite me to dinner at his house.
Things are a little easier when the only male co-operant on our team is around—he’s an expert at responding to offers to purchase one of his three wives.
During QPID’s pre-departure training week, we became officially certified in crisis resolution. Thankfully, before I left Canada, weekly team meetings, workshops, past project reports and Google searches on Burkinabé culture helped prepare me to never have to use those crisis resolution skills. Marriage proposals and overly insistent friendship attempts have largely become old hat for me.
After I was selected as a co-operant, successfully making it through QPID’s annual co-operant selection day and subsequent round of interviews, I worked with my team to try to prepare for the unknowable.
***
Tapping my fingers on a keyboard in Ouaga’s sweltering afternoon heat, I try to formulate a lunch plan.
The other three co-operants are no doubt relaxing in the family courtyard—as is customary for many people between the hours of noon and 3 p.m.—but I am on the outskirts of the city and unable to them as they eat some form of rice, couscous or the shockingly bland Burkinabé specialty, tôt. Tôt is a special blend of water and grain with a Jello-like texture. Nearly every day is a tôt day.
Eating is a lesson in local manners—although they understand our attachment to cutlery for eating, most Burkinabé prefer to eat with their hands in a surprisingly efficient manner. What they cannot tolerate, however, is eating something without offering to share it with anyone who might see you eating. “Vous êtes invitée” is usually a rhetorical offer, but necessary nonetheless. This is the source of my current lunch problem: how to buy juice and a baguette without having to offer it to everyone I share my office with?
I opt to find a piece of shade on the walk back and consume in peace. This proves to be difficult in the developing neighbourhood of Ouaga 2000 where construction workers are everywhere, building massive homes to house Burkina’s newly wealthy crowd who have bought land far away from the slums.
Burkina is a country of extroverts where community means everything. I live with the three other co-operants and 10 of the Bamago family. We live in a small fenced-in plot of land where family means uncles, nieces, sisters, mothers and brothers all sharing the same space and visitors are constantly coming in and out. With each person that comes through the gate, a greeting of bonjour or bonsoir and a ça va, coupled with a handshake are the bare minimum required. Often this turns into an assembly line of hellos, with each handshake just as genuinely firm as the last.
Finally, it’s 4:30 p.m. and the end of the work day approaches so I make my way over to ANERSER, where the other three are working. I leave a trail of “Nasara! Nasara!” calls in my path. Nasara (white person) was the first word we learned in Mooré, Burkina’s second official language, as everyone we tries to get our attention by pointing out the colour of our skin.
Living in Burkina has certainly offered lessons in self-awareness. No matter how tanned my skin is becoming under the African sun, I have never been so conscious of my whiteness and the assumptions that are inextricably attached to it. I politely offer “ney zaabre” (good evening) in response, to the delight of the ersby. Nasara has learned a little Mooré.
Tonight is calcule (math class), where I will the other three co-operants helping boys of varying age and skill strengthen their basic math skills. ANERSER offers a home for street kids and other youth at risk in Ouagadougou.
In class, their energy level is high as rainy season clouds loom outside. The storm catches on and the winds kick up and snatch our electricity away. The kids abandon subtraction and addition in favour of walking their four Canadian friends home in the rain. With lightning intermittently lighting our path, we dodge the orange lakes that have formed in the dirt roads as the kids hang off of our arms and shoulders.
We reach our blue gate and rounds of handshakes, bumps, snaps and claps are exchanged. We promise “à demain!” to the inexhaustible bunch of boys. I tuck in my mosquito net and sink into my mattress.
Another day in Burkina has ed, and I reflect on the day’s events and try hard to what life was like a few months earlier in Kingston. I strain to imagine my friends back in Canada watching movies, going dancing, driving cars and swimming in pools. It all seems a little unfamiliar.
After my 12 weeks here are over, the change will start all over again. Air conditioning, speaking English, walking alone and not being stared at wherever I go. What an experience indeed.
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].