holy crap...i am in africa

although i am finally starting to get accustomed to my new burkinabé home, it seems that each day brings yet another moment that sends a jolting message to my brain of "holy crap...i am in africa."

for the first couple of days, these moments were characterized by visual stimulation: the kids running barefoot through the streets, the women walking down the side of the road with babies strapped to their backs carrying absolutely enormous loads on their heads, the moto-vélos and bikes zipping through the streets, or the bush taxis jammed packed with people even hanging out the windows and the roof overloaded with what i am sure is much more than the recommended capacity. although there are still moments where i have to give myself a minute to process certain visuals, for the most part, these images are now a part of my daily life.

the next adjustment period of "holy crap" moments dealt with auditory stimulation. in the bigger cities, everyone rattles off phrases in french, greeting everyone they see (or perhaps just greeting us because we are the "nasarah!"- white people- and we stick out just a little bit here). as soon as i began to feel comfortable speaking french, it was off to a small village where i got over more initial shocking moments and became accustomed to hearing moore all day, and even began to feel comfortable with the daily greetings and customary phrases. again, i sometimes need some time to process the language, but its shock value has begun to wear off and hearing peope in my village speaking to me in moore, and even hearing moore coming from my own mouth is no longer a "holy crap" moment.

it seems as though i have stepped into a nice sort of comfort zone, both in burkina faso in general, and in my village. i can now bike through the bigger towns comfortably, waving and greeting as i go, and in my village as i walk past the millet fields, the women at the water pumps, and the rows of housing structures, people wave and shout out greetings to "aminata!" (my village name).

while i am sure that visual and auditory moments will never completely cease to shock me back to the reality that i am really in africa, the latest moments that have given me a serious reality check have been the ones that make me realize why i came to africa in the first place, and what i want my role here to be.

one of these specific moments i am thinking of happened yesterday in my village. the three other volunteers in Rikou and i are in the process of conducting an "étude de milieu", which consists of mapping the community, determining the "calandrier journalier", and creating and filling out a needs-assessment matrix. making the needs assessment matrix is also a three step process - first we brainstorm with the village to discover what they consider to be problems in their community, then we fill out a chart that asks village members to compare each problem, then using this information, we can determine what the village considers to be the main problem by evaluating the chart with them. this is the task that snapped me back to the reality that this is not just an african vacation, but that we actually do have work to do here.

as we prepared to begin the panel discussion, we were all sort of chatting with each other. i recognized almost all of the people we were sitting with - one was the host father of another volunteer, another was a man that i talk with regularly on the way to the CSPS, and the rest were people who i randomly converse with and greet on a daily basis. it did not feel as if we were there to be conducting some sort of important task, it felt just like another community gathering.

then the brainstorming process began. using the african version of a power-point slide show - big sheets of brown paper taped to the wall and fat permanent markers - we listed problems that the community members called out to us.

"nous n'avons pas de l'eau dans la saison séche." "nos enfants n'ont pas assez de nourriture." "le SIDA." "la paludisme." "les femmes n'ont pas les opportunités pour gagner de l'argent." "la pauvreté en général."
(translation: we do not have water during the dry season. our children do not have enough to eat. AIDS. malaria. women do not have opportunities to make money. poverty in general.)

the list continued.

as i wrote down everything they were saying, i had to swallow the lump that was rising in my throat. i have started to think of rikou not as an african village, but as my small village home...although i see these problems every day, most noticably in the children with the swollen bellies from kwashiorkor, it is so different to actually hear it coming from people's mouths, from people who i know and respect.

the village unanimously determined that malnutrition is the biggest problem facing the village. everyone seemed pleased with the activity, and thanked us over and over again for showing them how to conduct it. they said that these kinds of forums really help in starting discourse to address village problems. the needs assessment matrix was a success...

but now what?

we plan to use the information we have gatherered thus far to do a sensibilization in village addressing the problem of malnutrition. i am glad that we are able to do something concrete, and something that the village seems really excited about, but it still seems so surreal to me that i am supposed to have some kind of authority, or some kind of expertise to help people...people who i actually look up to, and people who have taught me more in the past several weeks than i learned in some of my undergrad classes.

this is why the needs assessment matrix was a "holy crap" moment for me. it forced me to remember that i am not just hanging out with my village in burkina faso. i am actually in africa, a region that i studied because big problems exist here, and i need to begin to understand them if i want to ever do anything about them.

although these moments are shocking, and this one in particular was unsettling for me, i hope to have many more of them. they help me to remember what i am doing here in the first place...and they will keep me on my toes so that i can be as effective as i hope to be.