This strange little place called..home?

Welcome once again to the inundative style of writing that is my blogging experience.  I have trouble holding any predetermined schedule because sometimes I have nothing to write, or something to write but I don't yet know how to write about it.  What am I to do? Drink 50 cups of coffee in a Balzacian-like quest for inspiration?  Sacrifice chickens and burn entrails? Or simply wait around until the moment feels write and then just purge myself of all creative energy in one fell swoop and surprise you with adequate reading material for a weeks worth of bathroom breaks.  Well whether or not you read my blogs while residing upon the can I cannot say, but I'm sure you all have noticed that I have opted for the later method of creative juicing.  This explanation is my half attempt of apology for how late my coup d'etat blog post is, and also why it would be safe to assume that this style of blog posting is probably going to endure for the remainder of my service.

As hinted at in the end of my last post as well as in this very blog title.  Today we discuss home, and the many implications stemming from that most comforting of words.  It took a military coup for me to realize it, but my village really has become my home.  While stuck in Leo in the south of Burkina, faced with the possibility of never returning to village I found myself missing the oddest things about my life in Kogho.  I of course missed my dog, I missed hanging out with my friends.  But more than that I missed the feeling of being in Kogho, of being part of this huge, crazy, sometimes dsyfunctional family.  I missed being invited to drink water from some strangers water satchet.  I missed students coming by simply to say hi.  I missed people biking by my fields and almost falling of their bikes when they realized I was some white dude farming.  I missed the conversations that followed these near accidents. 

"White dude, what are you doing?"

"I am farming?"

"Farming what?"

"Soy...it's like beans"

"...like beans....white dude! I like you!!"
*big grin* *bikes away*

I missed the smaller things about my smaller life in my courtyard.  I missed watering my plants, wondering when my tangerine tree will start fruiting. I missed mixing my compost pit and being serenaded by that earthy smell as I would sink the shovel into the pile.  I missed eating fresh beans off of the plant.  Sun dried peanuts. Daily cucumbers.  Those sudden rains storms that would sweep in pounding against your house for two hours, blotting out all else with its noise and intensity until just as suddenly.  Stops.

I guess what I am getting at is that it was amazing to see how much I couldn't wait to get back to site when I look back at my first week in Kogho and that panicked feeling that I got thinking about how unbelievably long two years was.  Back then I thought two years would never end.  Now that the end is in sight I can't believe how fast it all seemed to fly by.  In a way I'm glad I was forced to face the possibility of leaving Burkina, because I had forgotten that saying good bye is a very real part of serving here.  This scare alerted my to the difficult reality that I am going to have to face as my service begins to come to a close over here.  We have 8 months left, which I know sounds like a long time to some people.  But once you've gotten lost in a village, that's just the blink of an eye.

I write this post lounged out in my chair under my hangar waiting for the noon heat to pass so I can go out and inspect my fields, my harvest time is upon me so stay tuned for news on how that goes and how tasty home grown soy ends up being.  And to end this post as I end all of my classes.

Thank you for your attention.  Even if you think I am boring.  Until next time!

Living through history and a startling look forward

As some of you know and many of you do not we have been dealing with a military coup over here in Burkina Faso.  Prior to this experience I don't know what I could have told you about the reality of coups or political instability.  When you heard about coups in Africa you tended to lump those into the large general category of things far away and in Africa and even with the upswing in political manifestations seen lately around the world it was hard to really grasp what any of that meant.  Having now lived through one I can't say that I know what it means to be from a country that has dealt with a coup because at the end of the day I am not a Burkinabe.  But I do have an idea what it means to be an invested spectator.
This all started last year when "President" Blaise Compaore was ousted from the country due to the popular uprisings in Ouaga and he was replaced with a civilian run transitional government.  This is wildly oversimplifying the events of 2014, but it gives a general framework of what is to come.  The transitional goverment was tasked with running the country and preparing to hand over power following the country's first ever truly democratic elections scheduled for October 2015.  During the year I saw the effects of transitional authority at the village level as my fellow villagers and I watched government sponsored agriculture programs, including my village's newly partnered sesame association get shut down due to the transitional authorities lack of power to maintain these programs and they where therefore shelved and set aside for the new president.  What this meant in real terms was no fertilizer for villagers, but you don't hear about that in the news.
As the elections approached all volunteers were schedule to enter standfast for the two weeks surrounding the elections where we couldn't leave our villages.  Despite the mild violence in the capital the year previously the villages remained calm and most problems came from attempted travel or being in the capital.  I wasn't worried, in fact I was looking forward to an excuse to just sit in village for a month.  The harvest  was starting and it was my favorite time of year to be in village.  But it was not to be.  The general of the presidential special forces (RSP) orchestrated a military coup the 16th of September and everything started moving pretty quickly from there.  The presidential special forces are a highly trained very well equipped fighting force of 1300 men and they have been rather unpopular amongst the people for the past 30 years.  The basis of the coup was that the transitional government had blocked any members of Blaise Compaore's former party from running in the elections and they had released a statement declaring their plans to disband the RSP, the linchpin of Dindere's power.  For further details I would recommend a healthy googling, its an interesting history, just not interesting enough that I want to summarize everything for you here. 
We entered immiediete standfast the 16th, but the thought of evacuation never crossed my mind.  It had gotten pretty serious the year before and we never came close to evacuation so why this year?  Regardless I read through my volunteer emergency  action planned and made sure I knew what to expect even if I didn't think it would happen.  Then I got a text on the 19th telling me to prepare my house for possible evacuation.  This was startling.  I called a friend and we joked about it a little, then I got to the business of putting my whole life into boxes.  It was a weird day, you have to go through all of your belongings and decided what to keep, what can go, what can fit into your single backpack.  Growing up in the States you forget that there are parts of the world where the grand political situation can dictate large aspects of your life.  But having made the decision to come and serve in the developing world I was also agreeing to the reality that there would be a lot outside of my control, such as when I choose to leave the country.
Two days later my home was boxed up, shipping address left on the table, and I had made the noncommittal good byes to two of my closest friends saying that I hope that I come back, but the reality is that I don't know so this might be the last time you ever see or hear from me again.  I then hopped on a bus to go meet up with my Peace Corps vehicle that was taking my region to consolidate near the Ghana boarder.  Me and two other volunteers met up with our driver, Abraham, around 10:00 am and we didn't make it to our consolidation point until the next day at 14:00.  We had to bypass multiple roadblocks, we got stuck in the mud twice out in the bush, two of our volunteers were late to a pickup because they had to catch motos and then one had a minor accident, and the whole time we had to take creative back roads down south because we had to avoid Ouaga and the military presence there.  During this time as we are driving past armored personnel carriers and hearing more news from the capitals I started to get a sick feeling in my stomach as I thought "this is a lot more serious than I thought, we might be going home".  I don't want it to sound like I don't want to come home, I just really didn't want to come home right now.  I'm in the middle of my service.  All of my projects are right at a turning point that need me there.  And if we got evacuated I would never know what happened to my village, I couldn't send a message to whatever volunteer replaced me and ask how my friends are doing, it would be a clean break.
Over the next two weeks we would ride an informational roller coaster as news of the coup came in.  There is no coup blueprint so any and all developments were there own isolated piece of information and one day's worth of good news didn't mean that there was more good news to come, it just meant that today there was good news.  But tomorrow could easily be bad again.
As I write this we finally seem to have wrapped up the risk of evacuation and we are all scheduled to go back to our villages on Monday which has been a huge relief.  But one of the interesting realizations about this weird two weeks of stress is how much I have changed over my last year in this country.  I'm planning to devote a different blog post to this later because this one seems long enough already, but it has been an interesting forshadowing of what readjustment to American life will be like next year, but that time it will hopefully be on my terms.