New Year's Resolution

The month of December has always passed rapidly for me. It is a month that is filled with frenzied shopping trips to buy holiday gifts, preparations for the long haul to visit family, and of course, as a Wisconsinite, it is filled with snow. As I am now living in a country dominated by Muslims in the middle of Africa, the only quality that this December has maintained has been its ability to pass with lightning speed.

It is hard to believe it was almost a month ago, on December 1st, when I was affectated to my new, permanent site in the Sahel desert, in the small village of Saoga. Forget about snow, my new village home furnishes only sand, and shopping trips no longer mean walks through the mall or streets lit by Christmas lights, but walks through various animal stalls of the marché. I am still deliberating with myself over whether or not I am ready for a camel...

They say that time flies when you are having fun, and while time has definitely flown, I would be lying if I said it was because of fun. A new village has brought a whole new set of adjustments...adjustments that I have had to face without the moral support of 30 other American volunteers like myself going through the same ones. As I watched the Peace Corps van drive away several weeks ago, it felt as if I was watching my lifeline to America disappear into the horizon along with it.

Adjustment number one has been trying to overcome the language barrier. I spent hours studying and practicing Fulfulde during training, so upon arrival, I greeted everyone with a big smile and a "Jam nyalli!"...only to discover that my village speaks only Sonrai. My counterpart, the head nurse at the CSPS also does not speak Sonrai, and so I have had to rely on various community members to teach me how to get by in village. Slowly but surely, it is coming along..."keyna, keyna" as the Sonrai people say.

Adjustment number two has been trying to figure out where it is I "fit" in village. This adjustment is a little trickier, and one that cannot be overcome by just sitting through some informal lessons with the village elders. Sometimes I cannot help but take a step back and imagine myself from the outside looking in, and a little ditty from kindergarten class starts to play in my head: "one of these things is not like the other..."

My only concrete understanding about my role in Saoga is that I work in the health sector, in cooperation with the CSPS, encouraging villageois to use its services. This sounds nice on paper, but I have become a little lost in putting it into practice. The Peace Corps overall health program is intentionally vague because it is designed to be self-tailored based on village needs, meaning that I have no boss, no one to answer to, no set plans, no daily schedule. As someone who thrives on planning and swore by my daily planner throughout college, this has been an amazingly large challenge for me.

I spent my first couple of days going through the preliminary stage of wandering around and greeting everyone in Saoga (it is only 2,000 people...did not take long), then quickly got fed up with the lack of direction and decided to create my own program. I sat down and made up a three month calendar for my étude du milieu, to be completed before in-service training in March. After sharing it with my counterpart, who was shocked at the idea of making a week by week plan, I got to work putting things into action.

On second thought, action might be a bit of an overstatement. "Action" really means just more wandering through village, sitting with groups of people and talking, trying to analyze what the main community problems are, and what resources exist to combat them.

Saoga's problems, unfortunately, have not been difficult to find. Most children run around barefoot, amid animal waste and garbage. I see other children off in the fields herding animals, or collecting water, and then walk past the school buildings where, in my opinion, they should be, and see classrooms half full, and where the sixth and highest level has only seven students. Sickness is everywhere, in the form of both malnourished children and adults, respiratory infections from the "cold" (it is technically winter here, but the temperature still does not dip below 85 during the day...I still laugh out loud when I see people in winter coats and scarves), the hacking coughs that come from these infections, or the more serious illnesses like tuberculosis, which is also present in my village.

Searching for problems, I have not had to go too far, but my search for resources available to solve these problems has been much less fruitful.

Everyone I talk to says that they just need money. They need money to pay for the health services at the CSPS, they need money to buy food to feed their families, they need money to buy animals, they need money to fix their huts when they are washed away during the rainy season (because nobody told them that perhaps you should not build your house on sand). Then they say, "But that is why they sent an American here, right? You will bring us money, you will fix the problems."

It seems as though the people of Saoga are as confused about my role as I am. People who do not think that I am here as "Moneybags USA" think that I am a doctor. I cannot fault them, as my time not spent wandering through village is largely spent at the CSPS, helping my counterpart with various tasks there, but I definitely do not see myself as qualified to cure many of the ailments they present me with, and the phrase "No, I am not a doctor, I am here for capacity building in the health sector" does not translate into Sonrai. I occasionally hear random knocks on my door with someone showing me their leg that has "stopped working", or handing me their sick infants, or (and this is my favorite, as I am a very squeamish person) showing me gaping wounds that are clearly infected...all asking me to fix the problems.

I fear that their expectations have been set pretty high...I am here to "fix" these problems. No pressure.

I am overwhelmed, to say the least...struggling with misconceptions about my own role, language barriers that cause any sort of intellectual thought to become lost in translation, and lack of direction telling me where to go from here.

On top of all of this, in a moment of cruel irony, as I was searching for the BBC on my shortwave, the song "I'll be Home for Christmas" made its way through the static...bringing the biggest wave of homesickness I have felt since I got here.

I must confess that after this little Bing Crosby induced pity-party, I started to think about what December usually means for me, and what my life would be like if I was still in America, and even, I am a little ashamed to admit, started to wonder if maybe life in Burkina Faso is not for me. I desperately want to help, but I question my ability to do so. How I am I supposed to single-handedly "fix" all of these problems?

One of the most liberating moments of clarity came when I realized that I am not supposed to single-handedly "fix" all of these problems. Yes, I am here to help, Yes, I will do everything I can to help, but Nooooo, I cannot fix everything and most definitely cannot and should not do it alone.

It may have taken the entire month of December, but somehow I have managed to gain back the perspective that brought me to Burkina in the first place. It is impossible to "fix" all of Burkina's, or even all of Saoga's problems, but there is a genuine opportunity there to help and to fill in where I am able to, and there is no way I can walk away from it.

December may not have had its typical holiday cheer, but it tested me in a way that I have not been tested before, and helped me to know that I can stand up to them. I know that this will not be the last time I am tested here. As this December closes out, taking 2006 with it, I am left wondering what new tests 2007 in Burkina Faso will bring for me.

No matter what happens, what tests I may face, my "thoughts on Africa" will continue to come from "an eternal optimist." I still truly believe that there is a positive difference to be made, and that I can hopefully help to make it.

My new year's resolution will be to simply remember this. Happy New Year.