One of those "I'm out here" moments

So as all my dedicated readers know I have recently returned to my village after two weeks of training with the peace corps for work on our secondary projects at site. Our second week of training we were joined by our professional counterparts from village which are normally another teacher at the high school we work at and together we learn about possible secondary projects and then have to opportunity to brainstorm an idea that seems suitable for our site in particular and then draft how to go about doing it. In our meeting we drafted a plan to create a school run garden to improve the diet of the students and work against food insecurity in the village, but that wasn't my "I'm out here" moment.  That happened about a week after returning to site. Its 6:00 pm so the sun has set and me and my professional counterpart are at my community counterparts bar sitting around an unstable little table built from roof tin and sitting in handmade reclining chairs built from sticks and string and we're sitting there drinking a lukewarm beer and explaining our plans to involve the village in our project in two different languages by the light of a single solar bulb. Halfway through this conversation I couldn't help but think "Ryan, how the hell did you get here?" I'm in a small rural village in Burkina Faso where everyone now knows me, people stop on the road to shake my hand, students swing by the house to greet me or ask if they can bring me water, and I'm out in the pitch black conducting meetings on how to improve the quality of life in the village. It takes time for these kinds of moments to sink in,  but it's moments like these that remind me that this is probably the most bizarre job that I will ever have the opportunity of working.
Go Hawks
Written 12/20/14

Getting my tradition on

So finally managed to watch the majority of a traditional celebration out in village.  The reason it has been difficult hasn't been because I haven't been allowed to watch these glimpses into the traditional pulse of African life, its because most of my friends in village always forget that this is all stuff that I have never seen before.  Oh wait...you have never watched a village chief dressed as an animist mascot dancing around a sacrificial altar whilst people capture evil spirits? Weird...oh wait you wanted to see that?? Ya that was yesterday.  That exchange has probably happened five or six times until finally I managed to make friends with the chief himself and he invited me to come watch the ceremony so now nobody was allowed to forget to take me because it would be slightly obvious if the only white person for about 50 km wasn't at the ceremony.  So I finally get to go and got myself a front row seat too.  There was a circular stone altar with a pillar coming out of the middle upon which was place some sort of dark object covered in feathers, your guess is as good as mine.  There were also men dressed in traditional garb slowly shuffling around in circles around this altar. They performed some sort of dance, occasionally shrieked, and were referred to as "baagas" which I haven't exactly figured out.  I know baaga is the local word for malady, if there is an accent over the first a.  But baaga without an accent is a dog. So I decided to pretend they were some sort of spirit.  At times during the dance men would come out of the crowd and grab a baaga and slowly drag him to the altar while he shook his head and resisted and at other times they would all shriek and the chief would get up and join them.  He was dressed in some sort of vulture/bird costume and they would all dance while somebody else would get a bowl filled with dolo (local alcohol) and climb up unto the altar and anoint the things that were unidentifiable on the altar by slowly pouring the dolo out.  This whole time everyone is extremely stoked that I am there and where even more excited that I was filming the event.  They would ask for pictures with the chief and double check over and over again that I was getting this all on camera.  They seem to have all forgotten that they have forgotten to bring me to one of these events about five times and their forgetfulness has been replaced by an eagerness to share this celebration with me.  They did slip up at the end and forgot to take me to the sacrifice, because of course, who hasn't seen a sacrifice?  But I got the gist explained to me.  The take a rooster and slit its throat and throw it to the ground where it starts flapping around and generally creating a hullabaloo.  If said rooster falls onto his back this is a good sign, and all shall be good for the next three years until the next celebration. If however he dies instantly upon hitting the ground, or he falls on his front/side, then this is bad and something bad will happen before the end of three years.  Most of the younger population regard this as little more than an activity that shows pride in culture, but the older or more traditional villagers take these ceremonies as a very serious business and I am told that after the first chicken fell on his side all of the old people where very discouraged and immediately left the celebration. I believe that they are currently trying to figure out a plan to get another village to do a sacrifice for them in order to counter the the bad omens of our poorly omened sacrifice.  So I will let know how our omen loophole works out.  Until the next time my faithful followers, stay curious.