Cary's sheer brilliance shines through

My dear friend Cary wrote this as an email to our group and I found it so hilariously accurate that I thought I'd share it with everyone. Those of you with entirely too many years invested at a university will especially appreciate this. Hope this answers some of your questions about life in the BF:

I've been through a lot of school in the US-22 years of it, as a matter of fact, but that didn't teach me much of anything that's useful here in Burkina. Here's Intro to Burkina 101. I believe that I'm passed and I get to enroll in Intermediate Burkina 201.

Intestinal Parasites 105: Getting to know your body and when to identify something has moved in and is throwing a party in your intestines. Tips and techniques to identify and treat giardi, blasto, e. coli, amoebas, etc. Laboratory (1 credit): Learn how to prepare your own stool sample.

Basic Hygiene 111: This all-inclusive course begins with a crash course in how to squat and hover over a hole to crap and pee. A special emphasis is put on actually hitting the hole, even though this does not seem very important to the Burkinabe you are living with. The second part of the course focuses on basic bathing techniques with a bucket of 6-8 liters of water (less than 2 gallons, guys....think about that. You use that much brushing your teeth) and a plastic cup. Covers how to deal with being buck naked and showering under the clear blue sky and fending off bugs while you are very vulnerable and in the middle of your bathing. Tutorials on boiling your water to bathe in the cold season. The third part of the course is the transition to eating with your hands. The fourth is importance of not actually touching the children here, unless you WANT ringworm. The last part is a comprehensive survey of diseases you will see in your village, including gout (the old ladies who look like they've swallowed a football), nail fungus, and a variety of open, staph infected sores.

Appreciation 100: This is individually tailored for each volunteer and in an independent-study format. Each volunteer is given time to reflect and think of all the things they took for granted in the United States. Each volunteer will keep a journal where they record dreams of the US (salad bars, ice, family, friends, a real bed) and write letters to everyone in the US to apologize for not being more appreciative of them before they came to Burkina. Will be followed up by App 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, and 900.

Burkinabe Culture 101: We like to call this course 'integration'. We're going to throw you into a French speaking culture in temperatures soaring close to 120 degrees, strip you of all privacy, make you sit through classes 8 hours a day, and feed you bizarre foods (you reserve the right to refuse the fried termites, the hunks of meat with the hair still attached, or the chicken feet-we feed those to the kids). Yes, we know you don't speak French. Isn't it fun?

Burkinabe Culture 102: After you integrate into your host family the first three months and learn passable French, we send you into BC 102. Here, you go to an even smaller village, 60-70 miles away from the next closest volunteer, where no one ACTUALLY speaks French. In this tour de force, your job is to become an active member of a Burkinabe community, even though no one is in the village during the summer (they're all in the fields). Yes, okay, we are sadists and this is for our enjoyment more than anything else. Your grade in the class is based on how mentally stable you are after 3 months. Anything short of trying to net invisible butterflies that have stolen all your clothes gets you an A.

Transportation 210: This core curriculum class is an intricate study of how we get from point A to point B here in Burkina Faso. You will be evaluated by the general ability to not blow up and lash out at your chauffeur for thinking that one liter (quart) of gas will get you 50 miles, or to lash out at fellow passengers, even when their baby pees on you. Or their goat that's trussed up bawling the whole trip under your seat.

Teaching in the Burkinabe School System 213: Previously, this class was named "Making Order of Dysfunction" but the Ministry of Education here asked that we change the name of the course. Here, we give you 100+ students in a classroom, an outdated textbook, and a box of chalk. You will independently learn how to teach the elegant sexual and asexual reproductive strategies of algae, the digestive system of a cow, and plate tectonics to hormone-ridden 12-22 year old students all mixed together in the same classroom. For additional practice, see Herding Cats 303: Advanced Classroom Discipline Techniques and Walking on Water 305: Everyday Miracles.

Pharmacology 206: Practical Pill Popping This elegantly designed course makes pill taking an integral part of your daily life. We feed you a nutritionally empty diet and you get to find fun and creative ways to determine which deficiencies you are developing. Seminars in "Why is my hair falling out?" "Do you really need calcium?" "I don't need vegetables in my diet", "More vitamin D than you can shake a stick at", and "Millet: the wonder food". The second part of the course covers all the others: psychosis-inducing anti-malarials, allergy meds, and advanced training in antibiotics (see Intestinal Parasites).

Geography 104: Getting Around Your Market Your market is an endless, confusing maze that sucks you up and spits you out in an unfamiliar neighborhood clear across the village, but it is necessary to deal with if you want to survive in village. Basic instruction in foods (what are the suspicious brown balls and the shriveled plant matter), in clothing (how to buy the good fabric and possible pitfalls in buying secondhand clothes), medications (how to dive through a table full of pills and find the amoxicillin you need), and local novelties (yes, some people want to buy a dried lizard and some cow tails). The important role of commissioning someone to buy stuff for you so they can get the real price and not the white person price is stressed.

Whew! Been a while, huh? Sorry. When I was in Ouaga last, I just couldn't bring myself to do anything. Seriously. This Spring Break was badly needed. But now I feel recharged after an unbelievably lazy stint in Ouaga and a tour of the East side of the country. And can you believe I've been here for a year already?! I'm not one to get all reflective and articulate, if you're looking for that, check out my friends' sites. They're much better writers than me. Umm... yeah. Moving on.

So while in the east, I got to experience a real African "safari", Burkina-style. So basically, we drove around in the Burkina wasteland... err... I mean, Burnkina "wilderness" in a truck with a grizzled old dude carrying an even more grizzled old shotgun and a guide who called himself "The Panther". Yes, The Panther. I don't make this stuff up. We saw hippoes, elephants, regular antelopes, horse antelopes (think deer crossed with the East German swimmers of yore), monkeys, baboons and warthogs, but unfortunately, no lions as we'd hoped. The baboons were everywhere! We had to close our doors to our rooms to keep them out! During the tour around the animal park, we got to see the river that forms the border between Burkina and Benin. I've never seen a crueler joke on the part of nature. Picture it: A lazy river (much like the Red Cedar for you Spartans out there). One bank of the river is lush and green with palm trees and other jungly type plants that seem like a scene from Jurassic Park. The other bank of the river is dry, drier than should be possible next to a river, and whose only foliage seemed to be in a constant losing battle against the sun. Quiz time: Which bank was the Burkina side of the border. Yeah, we sure got the short-end of the stick on that one. Damn you Benin and your flaunting foliage!!

And, finally, I'd like to request a moment of silence for the Spartans, our fallen heroes in the battle of the bracket. Your blood ran green and white and true. Next year, we shall have revenge... And for the ladies: KICK SOME BLUE DEVIL ASS!!!!