A couple days ago, Sibidi asked me if I wanted to go to a wedding this weekend. I had no idea who the bride and groom were, but he said that it was OK because at Burkinabe weddings, anyone who's invited can invite anyone else. So this morning, I went to the church service for the wedding. I'd guess that there were probably about 250 people there. Dave and I didn't stay for the whole thing though. The electricity was out in the church, so the fans weren't working... and as you can imagine, with that many people in a room, it can get HOT. It was about 35 degrees outside, so I'm guessing it was about 40 C inside. And we had been waiting there for ~45 min for the service to start because the bride and groom were running a bit late. Later, I found out that the service went on for another ~2 hours after we left, so I'm kind of glad that we left when we did. If I had known the couple getting married, I would have stayed. I hope they don't get offended though.

Here's a picture I took of the SIM Guesthouse. On the left is the SIM Office, and on the right is the guesthouse.

I've been fortunate to meet other short-termers here who are around my age. For the past three or four weekends, Dave, an American who just graduated from college, has been staying over at my place. He works at a place called the Village of Hope, a project designed for orphans and children who are in difficult situations. It's basically a little village (it's not really a village, they just call it one) that has a school, dorms, a health clinic, etc., which was started by a pastor of a church 4-5 years ago. It's a really great place and there's a big need for it. Since Dave works alone, it's understandable why he'd want to come into the city every weekend... and we get along really well. Another girl we hung out with a lot is Hannah, a young teacher from Australia. But last week, she left Ouagadougou to begin home-schooling the Ottosson's children in Fada N'gourma. She's incredibly nice and loves to cook and bake... which has been great for Dave and I :P

This is a picture of Dave, Sibidi, and I at a restaurant. Sibidi is 33 and he works in SIM office with me. We usually eat out a lot together, since he lives by himself right now and doesn't like to cook.

Culture

Now that I've been here for about 3 weeks, I feel like I'm starting to settle in. I used to feel self-conscious when walking down the streets or going into the market because everyone used looked at me because I was a foreigner, but now it doesn't bother me as much. But there's a few things about the culture that are still a bit difficult for me.

For the past 2 weeks, a young man has been coming on the weekends to ask for work. He's 20 and from Mali. On the first Saturday that I moved into my house, he knocked on my door and we started to talk. He told me that he came to Burkina to try to find a job as a guard, but he didn't succeed. He was asking for any work he could do around the house, but I had to tell him that I didn't need anyone because I had just moved in and already had someone to work for me. But I did offer to give him some food instead, and he accepted. Then, he started to talk about how sick he was and how he couldn't afford medicine. I told him that I wouldn't give him money because I didn't know what he was going to do with it. Eventually, he told me that all he needed was 500 CFA (about $1 CAD) for a medicine prescription, because he could get medicine almost for free at a Christian clinic. So I said "OK, I'll give you 500 CFA, but you have to return and show me the prescription". A couple days later, I found the prescription in my door. So I thought to myself that he might actually be legit. The next Sunday, he came again and asked me if I had received the prescription, and then he proceeded to show me the medication that he received from the clinic. He then asked for work again, but I had to tell him that I still didn't have any work for him to do around the house. Then he started to tell me how he was trying to go back to Mali to go back to his family, but that he needed money for the bus back. Again, I told him that I wouldn't give him the money b/c I didn't know what he was going to do with it, but I did offer him some more food and he accepted. The next day, as I was leaving to go to work at 7am, he showed up at my door with another guy. He said that his friend was leaving to go towards Mali that day, and if I could give him 5,000 CFA, it would pay for his transportation costs. At this point, I was getting really skeptical about his whole situation. After about 20 mins of talking, I eventually told him that I would give him 1,000 CFA for gas, and that if the other guy was really his friend, he would take him along. After that, he kept talking and trying to convince me to give him more, but I was starting to get frustrated because I felt like he was just trying to get as much money from me as he could (even though in reality it's really not that much). So after that, I told him that that was the only time I would give him money, and I wished him a good trip and that was it. I guess I'm still half-expecting him to show up at my door this weekend, but we'll see what happens. It's tough because you want to help, but you don't want to get "had" either (b/c that happens a lot here).

Another thing that bothers me is how when people see me (or other foreigners), they immediately see dollar signs. So if I need to get my bike repaired, it'll cost me more money to repair it. Or if I go to the market to buy vegetables, I don't come out with as much as someone else would for the same amount of money. It's not a big difference, and in the end I know I'm helping them out a little bit more so I don't mind as much, but it's just the principle of it all. So it's a bit annoying, but I know it's just a part of life here in Africa that I will have to get used to.

Djibo

I returned from Djibo last night and there's two things I'll mention in this post:

1) Djibo was a great experience because I got to meet Ken and Jocelyn Elliott, two Australians who came to BF in 1972 to create a hospital. Before I got there, Galen (the missionary who gave me a ride up to Djibo) told me that Ken and Jocelyn would be two of the most gracious and humble people that I could ever meet - and he was right. Throughout the 3 days I was there, both Ken and Jocelyn just wanted to serve us...they provided a great place for us to stay, Jocelyn cooked fantastic meals, and Ken would always try to entertain us if we were sitting in the living room... and in everything they did, they did it with a heart of servitude.

Ken is a surgeon, and he's the only doctor in the hospital. The hospital they started is pretty incredible - it's 300m by 250m (so it's a huge complex), they have 4 wards, plenty of beds, and it's also well-equiped (check out the "solar-powered" autoclave!). It's always busy there, and it's pretty incredible to see how much God has blessed them.





























2) Galen also took us (there were 2 american girls who work at an orphanage in a small city named Yacko + one other missionary in the group) to the animal market, where they basically just sell off goats and cows. Here's a before and "day-after" picture:















I just thought it was neat.

Djibo

For the last week, I've been doing a bit of work in the office. I found out that I'm going to be helping to do the admin work for all of the projects they have in Burkina Faso, not just the ones related to health. So various people have been taking me around the city to visit and learn more about the projects that SIM has established here.


I'm going up to Djibo from Monday to Wednesday. It's a small little village to the north of the city that I'm in. There's a medical surgeon who set up a clinic there. It's a pretty neat story and he was in the SIM video of BF that we watched during orientation, but I don't know all the details of the story yet... once I get back, I'll post something about it.

Week One

So, it's been exactly one week since I've arrived in Burkina Faso... although it feels like I've been here much longer. The first thing people are probably wondering is what the living conditions are like, what the culture is like, etc. And I know my mom must be dying to see pictures of the place that I'm living in and what I'm eating... so here's some photos I took:

Until this morning, I was living in the SIM guesthouse, which was really convenient because it was attached to the SIM Office, where I work. But now I'm living about 1-2 km away, in a more rustic neighbourhood (I forgot to take a picture of what it looks like outside my gate... my house definitely sticks out among the rest of them, and you'll see what I mean in my next post). Well, it's definitely a lot nicer than I expected.

I had to wash/dry all the dishes....

And finally... I have a dog. His name is Buddy. He's supposed to be a guard dog, but all he does is lie down and sleep in the corner of my living room... occasionally he'll get up to eat food. He's really really mellow.... all that i know is that he's a cross between a lab and something else..



In terms of fitting in and adjusting to the culture, it's been going well. It's been helpful having all the SIM people around, because they've been bringing me around everywhere and introducing me to a lot of people around the city. The SIM family is great here... they're really caring, and they've really helped me settle in. But now that I've moved in to my new house, I'm going to have to go to a lot of places by myself (until my roommate arrives in October)... and it's kind of awkward because everyone stares at me. I expected that, but it's just a really weird feeling when everyone looks at you as you bike down the street. Half the people say "bonjour/salut", so it's definitely a lot more welcoming than I expected. Almost everyone here speaks French, so I can communicate fairly well with them... I can understand things really well, but my spoken French is definitely a pretty rusty.

Anyways, that's a long post. Keep checking every week for updates...

Burkina Faso

OK, so I just posted some pics of my last few days in Macau and China. I'm going to write about those few days a bit later, when I have some more free time.

Sunday and Monday in Hong Kong

Saturday in Macau

whoah hong kong is so HUMID! when i got out of the plane, it just hit me like a wall. it felt like my skin immediately just soaked in all the moisture from the air... dang, and it was at night too. wonder what it'll be like tomorrow afternoon.

Well, while i'm in HK, i'm going to be staying with Auntie Cathy, a close family friend of Kat's. She's already been incredibly nice to me. She made sure i got to the place alright... made sure i knew where everything was in the apartment... she's letting me use one of her cell phones... and she even let me borrow some HK money so that i don't have to rush to the bank tmw morning.. she's so nice. I got her something from Lijiang... the locals sort of burn "paintings" onto wood... and they're actually really nice...so i got her one of those... and i gave her some green tea cake that we got yesterday whiel we were souvenir/gift shopping for tea.

so...When we got to Senzhen, we took a coach bus to a subway line that led us to HK (I came with Lawrence's family). We met Kat and Mike (Lau) at a subway station (Kowloon Tong) - she took a direct flight from kunming to HK... but she arrived at around the same time as us 'cause her plaen got delayed by 2 hours. we said our last goodbyes to lawrence's family there... and then kat and mike took me to auntie cathy's apartment. hmm... we went out for a snack at night.. and now it's really late.

tomorrow we're going to spend the day in Macau... mike says we don't need a visa to get there and back... he's been there before... but i'm kind of nervous about that. hope we odn't get stuck in macau :p

june 16, 2006

leaving for hong kong in 20 minutes. i hear it's incredibly and uncomfortably hot there.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Today was the last day of school. It was pretty sad to leave everyone; they all asked us if we could stay a few extra days or if we could teach one last class for them.

Yesterday, Lawrence told us a bit of background about some of the kids at the school. I was commenting about this one boy in grade 4 who was huge...looked like he should have been in grade 6. I can't remember exactly what he said, but he told me that this boy left school for a while... and when he came back (to this city?) his father didn't want him anymore. so now he's living in a sort of youth hostel with 6 other boys and he's being sponsored by either World Vision or a woman from Hong Kong. He told us about another girl in grade 5 who was sent to this city by her parents (i think her parents live in another province). but her parents don't support her at all... she rents an apartment on her own, and to make money for food, she has to go through "rubbish" (i'm guessing she goes through trash cans to look for plastic bottles... a lot of people to that). but the thing is, when you look at and play with these kids, you would have no idea that this is the kind of life they're living. And there's probably way more stories like that. There's a teacher at the school who has really helped us with a lot of things... and she told us that she left her baby and her husband in her hometown (somewhere in the Hubei province) to come to this school because she needed work... and i think her kid isn't even 2 yet.

I wish we could have found out all of this earlier... then we could have at least visited some of these kids at their homes... and maybe even helped them out with clothes or food. we've been trying to do what we can... like buying food for those who live on the streets..but it's definitely not enough. wish we had more time here... but maybe it's a good thing that we're leaving with these things on ou rhearts..

More Pics of the Stone Forest

- this kid was so cute. he always wanted to be ahead of us so that he could lead us in the "right" way... so he always had his map out and yeah, always at the front of the line. he was really funny...everything he said made me laugh.









- this is for all of you on the nicaragua team :) great memories...

June 13, 2006 (Stone Forest)

*at the convenience store downstairs...*
kat: Hey cool, it's banana and chocolate flavored...oh gross, the wrapper says it's made of frozen milk!
will: ummm... kat, do you know what ice cream IS?????

Pictures at the Stone Forest...


- there's an elephant in the background...














- We went with a family (father, son, and grandparents) that knew Lawrence. They were really nice, and the little 3-year old boy (enoch) was so cute. they had an extra 2 seats...so it worked out perfectly for us to go with them. i don't think we would have gone if we had to bus it like our last attempt...



blog is uploading pics really slow... so i'll try to post up more pics later.

June 12, 2006

Here's a picture of Lily wearing my flip flops and me wearing her sandals (i could only fit my first 3 toes into them).

Didn't really do much today. Went to school.. played games with the kids for a bit... lawrence wanted us to make a giant poster full of pictures of the kids, so we did that for a while...

i'm really going to miss how cheap the food is here. i mean, for every breakfast and lunch, we always get food that's 1 rmb (equivalent to about 15 cents?). so for breakfast, we'll get this fried dough wrap... or 10 dumplings... or a huge piece of bread filled with some paste. and then for lunch, sometimes we get these noodles off the street vendors that are kind of tasty. haven't ventured to try the street meat yet... still working up to that. oh ya, and at night, i played frisbee with lili and wei luk.. and then afterwards, i took lili to the convenience store nearby adn bought 2 ice creams and two popsicles for one dollar canadian.

oh ya, and we got pretty lucky. a family that lawrence knows is going to the stone forest tomorrow... they're taking a private van. they conveniently have two seats left, so kat and i are going to join them.

june 11, 2006 (Added pics)

Saturday
On saturday, we decided to go downtown to go see Green Lake (a famous park in Kunming) and to do a bit of shopping. Lili came along as our tour guide. Green Lake was OK. it's just a really big park with lots of little pond-type areas..there were lots of people walking around, but I guess after going to Lijiang and Dali, Green Lake wasn't too impressive. After that, the three of us walked through downtown Kunming, looked into a few shops, but we didn't really buy anything.


For lunch, we went to a restaurant called Dico's, which was sort of like a chinese KFC. We introduced Lili to eating french fries with ice cream...reminded me of funnel cakes at Wonderland...










At night, we decided to cook dinner for Lawrence's family since they've been so nice to us. So, we bought a bunch of pasta, ground beef, soup, etc at Walmart and brought it home. We made soup, spaghetti, and garlic bread for dinner. and then kat made a cheese cake for dessert... mm.. we made 2 huge packs of fettucine though, so there's a ton of leftovers.

Sunday
This morning, we went to another three-self movement church. the building itself was massive and really modern. There were three floors dedicated for the main service... they had TV's everywhere. on our floor, they had a huge projection screen at the front and 3-4 tv's as well... anyways, the what was cool was that as we were going up to the third floor, we bumped into the storekeeper of the bookstore (the one who invited us to sit with her until the rain passed... i think it was thursday night). So she invited us to sit with her.. and we did. during the service, the choir sang, the children sang, and then a guest speaker (an american who spoke mandarin) gave the sermon. OH, and after the service... it was crazy. after i came out of the washroom, i was walking towards the stairs.. and i saw the pastor that we met from Dali! and then when we went downstairs to the main entrance, we saw his wife and the private driver that took us to lijiang!! CRAZY!! that was so much fun... it was cool to see everyone again.

- after church, kat and i were supposed to go to the Stone Forest, which is 2 to 2.5 hours away from kunming. We had to take 3 different buses to get there... so, we got on the first one.. and then got off at the first stop to transfer to another bus. But, when we asked around if anyone knew where the "east station" was, they had no idea...so we got back on the bus, went to the next stop.. got off... and yeah, we just couldn't find it. anyways, we didn't even really want to go to the stone forest, because everyone kept saying that it was just "ok".. and that by the end, all the stones would look the same. so we just walked around the area a bit, then came home.

friday, june 9, 2006

thursday
- thursday was the first day i taught at the school. but we didn't teach for the whole day. we only helped out when there were english classes. So, we taught the grade 3's and the grade 5's, and we sat in a bunch of classes. it was pretty funny... because when we sat in with the preschoolers during their chinese lessons... i was actually learning it with them.













- there's a couple of distinct diferences between schools in north america and china... for example, this school starts at 7:50 am, and ends at 4:30 pm. super long days.. but to compensate, there's about 6 recesses during the day (varying from 5 mins to 20 mins), and a 2 hour lunch break. the recesses are really fun. during the 20 min one, i started dribbling a basketball around the court while some kids tried to steal it off of me... soon, about 30 of them started chasing me all over the basketball court.. it was fun. oh ya, and the kids here are super tough. this one kid (maybe 6 or 7 years old) fell 3 times in a row on the pavement while he was chasing after me... and he never cried.. he just got back up and kept running. as well, during some of the breaks, they have eye drills. a tape plays on the speakers, and in unison, all the students rub the same areas of the eyes (over the eyes, pinching the part b/w the eyes, under the eyes.... etc). they also have an exercise drill where they all line up outside and follow a tape.. and they do a 5 min "dance routine".. all in unison. it's actually really impressive. what else... oh ya, they all have kung fu lessons.. so all the kids know kung fu.
- in the middle of the afternoon, we got a call from a guy who is an E.M. here. he's the general manager of this organization.. and the reason why he called was because he's the uncle of a friend of kat's. he invited us for dinner, and we talke.d.. and it was pretty cool to hear his story. ummm.... and yeah i can elaborate more later. really tasty dinner though - i had fish and chips!
- after dinner, we went to the Canaan bookstore. the owner of the store was a C-------. she was super nice... kat met her the last time she went. we browsed around the store... and she invited us to stay with her in her store because it was pouring rain outside. so we talked for a long time with her.. yeah, just really nice. all the C---'s we've met hre have been so hospitable to us... kat and i both bought some pretty cool stuff from the shop.. and when we were leaving, she gave us these knitted bookmarks that look pretty neat.

friday
- today was fun. since it rained the whole day, all of the physical education classes were "cancelled"... and the students had to stay in their classes all day. so for those PE classes that were cancelled, we helped out. our first one was the preschoolers... lawrence just asked that we sing songs with them... we thought it would be easy, but the kids were so rowdy! we sang songs like "deep and wide", "london bridges", "row row row your boat", "twinkle twinkle", "head and shoulders", etc. we had to sing so loud... because if our voices didn't overpower theirs, they would all just start playingw ith each other. so.. by the end of it.. our voices were really scratchy. haha. but it was fun anyways. oh ya, and when they sang their chinese songs to us... i think i almost went deaf. they're just tiny little 4 year olds.. but when they all sing.. dang... it's crazy how loud they can get. they were piercing my ears!
- we also played 7-UP (i remembered it from our pca days!) with the grade 3's adn they loved it. we played it for the entire 40 mins..
- with the grade 5's, we did some conversation stuff with them... they showed us some of their kung fu moves, and at the end, we played sherades. during the conversations, they asked kat if she knew how to dance... she said yes, but all they had was the kungfu music they used for their kungfu presentation... soon, all of us were chanting "dance, dance, dance" (led by me, of course).. haha. err, i guess you just had to be there to find it funny :P.
- oh ya, and one other cool thing. whenever, the kids want to come into the teacher's staff room to talk to a teacher.. they have to salute.. and then when we nod or say ok, they say "b-uh-gao"... and then they come in

July 7, 2006 - Lijiang

Once we arrived in Lijiang, we met Ruth, a friend of Lawrence's family. She's actually a native of Lijiang - a Naxi (i think it's pronounced na-shi). She brought along Beibei, a 4 -year old girl that she was taking care of. Beibei was adopted by her parents in Wyoming, and she moved here about a year ago because her parents were offered a job at a nearby university. She was sooooooo cute. she talked and talked and talked... Ruth said that because she doesn't speak mandarin, it's hard for her to make friends.. so when she actually does meet people who can speak english, she talks non-stop! she kept giving me candies, offered to share her fruit-in-a-cup with me, kept giving me her carrots at lunch.. hhaa. it was pretty sad to see her go. ruth had to take her back to her home, but you could tell that she wanted to stay.

for dinner, we went to a local restaurant. i'm pretty used to them right now, but i think this was the first one for kat. it probably wasn't the best way to introduce her to the local foods... because there were tons of flies, lots of dried meat hanging from the ceiling, a gigantic skull of maybe a yak in the corner... i could see on her face that she was a LITTLE nervous. Ruth ordered the food for us, and it ended up being really really good.

at night, kat and i went to hear the Naxi orchestra. it was pretty neat. the songs are really old... about 1000 years old. i read in another book that they lost a big portion of their songs because the older generation of naxi music players passed away. initially, we were put in the wrong seats... i was in a spot where there were 2 people in front of me and a column on the left... and the people in front kept moving their heads, so it was a bit irritating. after the first song or two, we ended up moving to two empty seats in the front row of our section, which was way better. the songs were great. the only down point of the night was that the "MC" was telling all these jokesin mandarin that we didn't understand... at one point, his comments were taking so long that it looked like some of the older members of the orchestra were falling asleep. haha.

the next day, ruth took us to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Ruth was so nice to us during our whole trip . she took us everywhere and always made sure that we were okay... we were really lucky to have her with us in lijiang. Anyways, we took a 2 hour bus to the gorge. pretty uncomfortablle ride... but we met this old scottish couple there. it's always cool to meet and talk to foreigners. they were just taking a little vacation - the husband has been working in beijing for more than a year... and i don't think his wife works. the bus took us close to the entrance of the gorge.. and then stopped. we had to pay another 120 rmb to take a mini van to the middle of the gorge... but that also included our ride back to lijiang and our ticket to get into the gorge. at first, we thought we were getting ripped off..but when we calculated it, it turned out to be a decent price.

the gorge was so amazing. i'll just post some pics. words can't describe it. it was a tough hike down though. it took about an hour to get down. but when we were down there... dang.. it was amazing. when we got down there, i hiked around a bit more while kat and ruth rested at a "cafe". i wanted to get onto this huge boulder that was just downstream on the yangtze river. there was this huge red flag on it...and i wanted a picture with it. but when i got there, the ladder leading to the boulder was caged off with metal wire. i was so mad... 'cause i really wanted to get on.. and it was really tough getting to that spot (it was just really steep). so when i had to climb all the way back up.. without the picture.... i got angry (not really, but just a little) :P. heh. but then when i got back, ruth told me that an italian guy died there last year 'cause he slipped ont he rock. after hearing that, i guess i was kind of relieved that i didn't go. actually, now that i mentioned that... on our way down to the gorge, ruth told us that just that morning (or the day before, i can't remember) someone died. at some parts, it was a bit dangerous (e.g. there were tons of "watch out for falling rocks", "go at your own risk" signs). our hike up from the bottom of the gorge was actually pretty tough. i felt so bad for kat... but she fought through it! i was really amazed/in a way proud that she did it. and she didn't complain or anything on the way up.. she just sucked it up and kept going.

oh ya, and here.. we wrote our names on the wall of the cafe:

ummm so when we got back, took a shower... ate dinner.. then walked around the old city of lijiang. we actually lived in the old city.. which was pretty neat. it's a really cool place.. just check out the pics. really cool place to be at night.

wish we could have stayed a few more days... 'cause there's tons more to see and do there. buttt, that's okay. i'm glad we're back in kunming... and i'm going to start working at the school tmw.

june 4, 2006 (updated pics)

alight, at an internt cafe at dali riht now. it's been a really fun trip so far

- on saturday, we took the 12 o'clock bus to dali. cost about 120 rmb and took about 5 hrs. it was a really awesome bus ride because the scenery was amazing (there were mountains the whole way and everything was so green!. when we got here, lawrence told us to find a hcruhc (spelld backwards; i need to be careful w/ my words) in the ancient city of dali because he knew the rotsaP . we found the place, and we were taken to a seminary school... the people there were so nice. without even asking for our names, they told us to put all our stuff down in a room and they invited us for dinner. it was really good food too. we were supposed to stay in some rooms at this place, but it ended up that they only had one free room. so we checked in at a hotel just one minute down the street. it's actually a bit sketchy... lots of gigantic bugs... but it's only costing us 4-5 bucks to stay at this place. when we came back to the seminary, we attended a pihsroW service where ppl did different dances, songs, played violn, etc. it was really neat. in the middle of this service, one of the teachers asked us if we could sing a song. haha. so i picked up the guitar and kat and i sang "open the eyes". at night, we went to this bar... had smoe dessert... and just walked around the city..

- today was pretty amazing. we attended a sunday service in the morning. it was super long though - 3 hours. they had a choir who sang, danced.. it was cool. i couldn't understand anything though 'cause it was all in mandarin.. but it was a good experience nonetheless. after that, the wife of the rotsaP arranged a driver to brng us to Zhonghe Peak. it's this mountain that's 2100 m above sea level. the view was amazing!! ahhhhh. it was perfect weather... and it felt like we were so close to the clouds... yeah, and.. i don't even hav the words to describe it. it was just as cool as the three gorges. kat and i climbed this mini waterfalls, and it was soo much fun. we could have went higher, but we found this piece of poo on rocks... so we sort of stopped there. kat kept on saying "mike would be so proud of me!". haha. i forgot my wire that connects my camera to the pc, so i'll have to upload pics in a few days. we had dinner at a korean restaurant and then just walked arund again at night.

going to lijinag tmw morning..early.. at 7.