Barka Wusgo

(note: Barka Wusgo is Moore for Thank you very much)

This post is long overdue, but seeing as I am a firm believer in the adage "better late than never" I would still like to get these thoughts out before late turns into never. All of you likely know this by now: I am back! I decided to leave Burkina last summer, and I got back to the good ol' USA last September. My delay in blogging can thus no longer be blamed on the uncertainty of African cyber-postes. So what caused this hiatus if not for a faulty connection? Did I run out of things to write about as soon as I set foot back on American soil? Did I, gasp, unintentionally leave my writing inspiration in a small village of mud-huts, mosques, and tea?

I sincerely hope it is not the last, but somehow my departure from Africa gave me an aversion to blogging. Each time I sit down in front of my computer, ready to log into blogger to "officially" announce my return, I am unable to do it. I think somehow that this announcement makes it too real. It means that I really am back. But I am not sure I am ready to let go of my time in Burkina. Even now, nine months later, it is difficult to get these thoughts out because it feels as though by releasing them, I am releasing Burkina.

So, you might ask, if I'm so unwilling to release it, then why did I leave? What happened to 27 months? I wonder this myself from time to time. I could go on for pages if I were to explain all of the reasons I left. Bureaucracy, inefficiency, futility, humidity...I am only kidding about the last one. It takes much more than humidity to make me waver in my convictions, and surprisingly enough, I actually miss the heat. I longingly remember the intense warmth and brilliance of the relentless African sun, and remember the liberating feeling of not worrying about carrying an umbrella for 10 months straight because the rains only come two months out of the year. I digress. No, it was not humidity; my leaving was a result of factors far more significant than the heat.

Although I have been back for months, I still remember vividly the immediate effects of reverse culture shock. I remember how nice and surprising it was not to hear the constant buzzing of flies, or the whine of a malaria-carrying mosquito in my ear. I remember being overwhelmed by the immaculateness and sterility of all environments, the bursts of flavor in the food, and wondering why people were in such a rush to get where they were going. I remember French sneaking out as I tried to ease back into American conversation, and holding myself back from greeting everyone in sight, as was customary in my village. I also remember the stacks of complicated paperwork associated with a persistent medical condition, a souvenir from Burkina, and thinking that I had filled more papers in one day in the US as the entire year in Burkina. As wonderful as it felt to be back, I desperately missed the simplicity and easygoing nature of life in Burkina.

During my waking hours, as I shivered in air-conditioning, and struggled to come up with words in English, and stories of my time in Africa that would not shock or disgust my family, I missed Burkina and I missed my friends. During my sleeping hours, I went back. Every night my dreams would take me back to my little Sahelian mud-hut, on top of my sand dune, and my neighbor would greet me in Sonrai with a big beaming smile, and all of her adorable, yet filthy, little children would gather in my courtyard and rattle off excitedly in Sonrai. I never learned enough Sonrai to carry on a normal conversation, but we were still able to communicate in a rudimentary way; I always knew that she was pleased to see me, and vice versa. I would travel back to Gorom Gorom, and sit at Banguia with my friends, drinking Biere de Brakina out of a huge glass bottle, and, miraculously, even when it wasn't cold, it always tasted so good. I would sit and drink tea under the shade of a huge tree, playing cards, or just causer-ing (chatting), and when we ran out of things to say, just enjoying the silence that somehow never felt awkward.

Of course all of my Burkina memories are idyllic, because like Joni Mitchell wisely said, "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Yes, it obviously takes removal from a situation in order to miss it, but more importantly for me, it took removal to begin to understand it. The poverty that I became so accustomed to is appalling to think about now that I am no longer there. I got used to hearing about and seeing people and children that I knew die from malaria, and meeting child after child after child who could not and would never learn to read, and watching food prepared with the dirtiest fingernails I have ever seen, and then watching people eat it (who am I kidding, I ate it, too). I began to see all of these activities as normal and inevitable. It would still register as sad or frustrating, but the urgency that I used to study these problems with was gone, replaced by a different feeling that I cannot pinpoint. At some points it seemed that this feeling was habituation. At other points, it felt like hopelessness. Overall, however, I think the feeling was a new and disarming sense of understanding.

Living in Burkina gave me a new understanding of the problems faced by developing countries. Not the deep understanding that comes from growing up with and spending a lifetime facing them, and not the understanding of how to fix these problems, but an understanding nonetheless. The urgency that I experienced came from my misconception that there is a quick fix to these problems, and that as soon as I arrived on the continent, I could solve them. I naively and arrogantly thought that because I knew how to cure malaria, how to combat malnutrition, and how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, I had all of the solutions to their problems. I soon realized, as one might expect, that the problems and their solutions are far more complicated than I was able to wrap my mind around from across an ocean. Along with the realization of the complexity and interconnectedness of these problems came the realization that I had absolutely no idea what to do about them.

My shift in thinking went something like this: I knew that malaria was a problem that could be prevented by mosquito nets and could be treated by inexpensive medication. But I did not anticipate that people might not want to sleep under a mosquito net, even a free one, or that malaria does sometimes seem to go away without a strong dose of medication and people might be willing to chance it rather than spend 500 cfa on it. I knew that condoms could prevent HIV. But I did not anticipate that there might be cultural aversions to condoms, or that women could not decide whether or not they wanted to use a condom. I knew that malnutrition could be the result of a lack of food. But I did not anticipate that there might be plenty of food, but not enough of the right kind, and a lack of emphasis of quality versus quantity, or that the order in which people eat, ie: men before children before women, has an influence on malnutrition. I also knew that poverty was at the root of all of these problems...But I did not anticipate the extent to which it ties into and is fed by every single previously mentioned problem. I urgently thought that solutions existed but were just not being implemented, but I found that it is just not that simple.

The understanding that Burkina gave me has stayed with me. Every book and article I read about developing countries, every report, every picture I see, I examine with this new lens. I no longer see things as black and white, with clear cut solutions that are just not being implemented; Burkina taught me that there are nuances to poverty and development that I cannot begin to understand without experiencing them, that there are no panaceas, and that it takes real time and investment to even begin to search for solutions, let alone find them.

I cannot explain how invaluable this lesson is. Leaving Burkina was a sad and difficult choice for me. Not because I did not get to "save my village" as one volunteer used to joke; I know now what a ridiculous concept that is. It was sad because I know that Burkina still had so much to teach me, so many more lessons in store for me. I, sadly, feel as though I got so much more out of this experience than I felt I was able to give.

I am now fully back in the swing of things in the US, living in New York, and seeking lessons of the institutional variety. I am pursuing a Master's Degree in Global Affairs at New York University, specifically studying development. These lessons are a bit more formalized than those I learned in Burkina. But both are still incredibly valuable to me. I seek further education because I know that I need more information, more skills, a sharpening of my analytical abilities, and much more. With these, I am hoping that I will someday be able to give back to Burkina (not to mention other countries like it) even just a small fraction of what it gave to me.

Although I feared that formalizing my return would in some way release Burkina, I now see that I can no more release Burkina than I can unlearn the lessons it taught me, or erase it from my memory. It can never be released, rather it is woven into my history, and through reflection, will continue to shape my outlook on life.

Burkina was both my teacher and my muse for a time. I am eternally grateful.