A day in the life

So I thought I might give y’all an idea of what a typical day is like for me here in Bobo. I have been here a little over two weeks now, and have settled into a pretty regular routine. I wake up every morning at 6:30 and get ready, and then I eat a delicious breakfast of hot tea and fresh bread. (Yum!) Marthe is usually getting Jedi ready for school at this point, so I eat alone and do my devotions. We leave the house a little before 7:30, and drop Jedi off at school. (I think it’s like pre-school, because she’s only 4. But she has a cute little uniform and everything!) Then Marthe and I drive on to the ACCEDES office for work.

The staff at ACCEDES work from 7:30 am until 12:30 pm. They take a lunch break from 12:30 until 3:00. Then they come back and work until 5:30 pm, and go home for the night. Every Monday and Friday morning, the staff meets for devotions, which is always led by one of the staff members (I’m on the schedule to lead it twice this summer.)

So I work at the ACCEDES office every day. I have already had some interviews for my research, and ideally I’ll be doing those about 3 days a week, and then expanding and analyzing my field notes at the office the other two days. I have also been helping out the rest of the staff with some of the other projects ACCEDES has. For example, I helped out with HIV/AIDS testing at the ACCEDES clinic this past week, and yesterday I translated some budget stuff from English into French for the ACCEDES bookkeeper.

At 12:30, Marthe and I go home for lunch. We make lunch, usually leftovers from the night before, and watch TV - including Mexican soap operas that have been dubbed into French. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but now I’m kind of hooked! The acting is horrendous, and the plots are so cheesy (I guess that‘s a universal characteristic of soap operas), but they’re extremely entertaining. “Sabor a Ti” and “Rosalinda” are probably my faves at this point. ;)

Even though works ends for the day at 5:30 pm, Marthe and I don’t usually leave the office until closer to 6. (I get the feeling that Marthe has more responsibilities than some of the other staff members, because we’re usually some of the last to leave.) We’ll go to the local open-air marketplace at Place de la Femme, and buy groceries. Then we’ll drive to Marthe’s aunt’s house in another section of the city to pick up Jedida. We’ll usually sit and visit with Marthe’s aunt for a few minutes, and then leave. At this point, it’s usually about 6:30.

(I should point out that all of this is done by motorcycle. Marthe, along with probably the vast majority of the people in Bobo, owns a moto and does all of her traveling that way. I love it - life is much more fun and exciting on the back of a moto!)

Every night on our way home, we stop at this corner on the outskirts of Sarfalao (our neighborhood) where a woman sells corn, mangoes, and bananas. Marthe buys us corn on the cob that‘s been grilled over a charcoal fire until it‘s black - YUM!!!!! I used to love this kind of corn in Haiti, and it is such a treat to eat it every night. We get home and make dinner and watch TV. We usually just hang out for the rest of the night, and then go to bed and repeat everything the next day!

The food here is really good, by the way. I can be kind of a picky eater, and I hated Haitian food for my entire first year in Haiti. So I was a little worried that I wouldn’t like Burkinabe food. But I love it! My favorite dish is sticky rice with peanut sauce. It’s reeeeeeally good. Probably the most common dish, though, is this stuff called “le tao.” I’ve helped Marthe make it, and it’s basically white corn flour mixed with water and then hardened. You take the flour and mix it with water to make a really thick paste. Then you pour the paste into a pot over a charcoal fire. You heat up the paste, and keeping adding more flour and more water, so it just keeps getting thicker and thicker. You have to constantly stir it really hard or else it will get lumpy or will burn. It’s really hard, hot work, let me tell you! Once it’s really thick, you ladle it into big bowls and let it harden for a few hours. The end result is this jiggly, sticky white stuff that looks kind of gross but tastes REALLY GOOD! You eat it with a sauce usually made with fish and cabbage. We usually eat either rice or tao with fish sauce for lunch and dinner every single day. So it’s a good thing I like it!

We also have salad every day for lunch and dinner. This is such a treat! It’s usually lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, and avocado, with an oil and vinegar salad dressing. We buy all the vegetables in the market, wash them really well at home, and make a huge platter of salad that usually lasts us about 2 days. I feel so healthy eating vast quantities of salad at every meal. J

Finally, I eat bread at every single meal. The bread in Burkina is AMAZING. There really are no words. It is hands down better than any American bread I’ve ever had. It is made in long, thin baguettes, like French bread, except it’s not as crusty and hard as French bread often is. It’s always really soft and light and soooo good! And it’s really cheap, too - I figured that one baguette is about 20 cents US. I probably eat more than one baguette by myself every day…..it’s insane.

I thank God all the time for Coca Cola. Marthe teases me about my obsession with Coke and tells me it’s because I’m American. She prefers orange Fanta, but it’s Coke all the way for me! It’s really easy to get over here, so I drink it every day and it’s nice having a little taste of home. A major blessing of living in Bobo is that all of the water here is clean and okay to drink! I don’t really understand how, because it‘s not like this in Ouaga, but I think there’s a big fresh water spring or something that the whole city uses. It’s great though - I don’t ever have to worry about drinking the water people offer me when I visit their homes, and I don’t have to filter or boil my water at home. The water has a really great taste too.

Well……I think that’s all for now. Basically I am settling in and starting to really enjoy life here, which is a huge blessing. I’ll have more to report in a few days!