Monsieur Dabilgou-typing on his phone in the Sahara!

Name:

I have a slew of nicknames here that my Peace Corps colleagues use, but none of them are fun without the attached story-and I didn't see you explain names anywhere in your other interviews. I guess we'll go with what my students call me, Monsieur Dabilgou. There's a story attached to that one too, of course. Naturally, you already have my full name by dint of our method of communication.

Hometown:

Very near the prime meridian and even nearer N 13 degrees latitude. Which in all honesty may be an answer as likely to draw recognition from your readers as the name of the country. I'd never heard of it before getting my Peace Corps invitation anyway. I live in northeastern Burkina Faso, on the leading edge of the ever-southward-encroaching Sahel, the transitional zone between the coastal tropics and the Sahara. I live in a village of around 2000 according to census data, though the actual number is likely a bit lower, and I'm one of no more than 20 who *doesn't* grow his or her own food. (Sorry for the ascii-type emphasis, this phone doesn't do italics.) The others are government workers from other parts of the country: teachers like me, the village nurse, the vet, stuff like that. We also make up the majority of the adult French-speaking population (all the kids in school HAVE to speak French, that's what classes are taught in...don't get me started), though there are certainly a handful of locals who speak it as well. The most common language here is Mooré, which is pretty much limited to Burkina, but you can hear several other languages, including Fulfulde and Dioula, which are much more widespread in West Africa.

What is the best thing about your job?

According to the cliche, my answer should have something to do with how amazing the people here are. And yeah, there are some cool people. And there are some jerks. People are people. I strongly suspect that whenever you hear someone gush about how wonderful (or conversely, rant about how terrible) the people in a given country are, you're talking to someone who hasn't spent a lot of time there. A lot of what we, coming from our culture, interpret as being welcoming and friendly is really just people doing what's expected of them. Here's an example in the other direction: I had to train myself not to say the French version of "Bless you" every time someone sneezes. To me, it's just something you say without thinking, but here it always elicits startled reactions. Because it's not a part of "common" courtesy here. They see it as me going far out of my way to be friendly. Which MUST be a case of culture clash - going far out of my way to be friendly is not something I'm known for.

Having said all that, I will now be unabashedly hypocritical; one of my favorite parts of the job IS the people - but I'm referring to the other volunteers I work with. You couldn't ask to meet a classier group of folks. I'm continually amazed at what they manage to accomplish while fighting against daunting, sometimes overwhelming obstacles. These are not the patchoulli-soaked pot-smoking unwashed hippies of stereotype. These people kick ass and take names. I don't know what flaw in the application process ended up putting me among these crazy cool cats, but I'm not complaining.

Something else I really enjoy: as a teacher, kids are expected to greet me by crossing their arms across their chests and accomplishing something that is more of a curtsy than a bow. It's fun to see kids push their way in front of each other to greet me like this...though several times it's almost caused me to crash my bike as they pushed a little too far forward, creating an immediate need to swerve off the dirt path that I'm usually on when this happens.

When I say the words, "screen door" what memory comes to mind?

The first thing I think of is the gut-throbbing hum of the attic fan in the house my family lived in until I was 12. Both our front door and our kitchen door had screen doors, but for some reason it's the front door that first comes to mind. And we never used that door. We went through the kitchen door that opened onto the carport. If the front door was open (its screen door, of course, still closed), it either meant we were having company, or that it was very hot and we were pulling out all the stops to get some airflow. Hence the attic fan.
And now thinking more I realize that that's the last time I lived in a house with screen doors. Because a house with central A/C doesn't need them. How sad.

What do you miss about the U.S. besides your family and friends?

I miss the food options. I may be eating healthier than I ever have before, but God what I would give some days to have a grocery store with cheese less than 150 miles away. On the plus side, since this is a former French colony, on those occasions when I do get to the capital, the available food is wonderful (including cheese - my fave is camembert). But in Americaland, you'd never live that far from a Walmart. And if you did, you'd have a car. And a refrigerator.

A close second is running water. Living without electricity isn't so bad, but having to pump water into a carboy and bike it to your house, that nonsense is for the birds. Not that I have to do it very often - one job perk I didn't mention above is that I can ask students to do that sort of thing for me, and they pretty much have to say yes. I had one kid do it for me routinely - until I started paying him because I felt bad about the free labor. When he was doing it because it was a culturally appropriate way of showing respect, he came by like clockwork every 2 days. As soon as it was a paying job, he became completely unreliable. I don't pay him anymore. This year he's in an exam-level class, so even though he's more reliable again sometimes he's just too busy and I have to do it myself. At least it's taught me to conserve water-I can bathe in 4L!

What is a book that you didn't expect to like and why did you like it?

This question is hard to answer, because while I am a voracious reader, I'm not a particularly disciplined one - if a book looks like it will be uninteresting or difficult, I probably just won't read it. I'll go back and reread Lord of the Rings for the umpteenth time instead.

Got one. Though it gives a completely misleading view of my reading habits. I loved Dickens's David Copperfield I was expecting not to like it after reading Great Expectations in high school, but when I was reading his work without the interference of a well-meaning teacher, I found his descriptive power stunning. All the same, at any given point you're more likely to see me with a Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy in my hand than anything of value. But not Grisham. I don't care where he comes from, I have my pride. (JHoo seemingly non sequiter inside joke note: LOL.)

Do you have a website or blog you'd like to plug?:

My phone can't handle much, so my only regular stops are facebook, gmail, and BBC news. I was a huge fan of Metafilter before coming here.

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My mind is boggled when I think about the realities that D faces every day living and teaching in Africa. I've been watching The Ladies #1 Detective Agency on Netflix and I was pleased to see that it was the only media I've ever in encountered about Africa that didn't make it look backwards and scary in a Heart of Darkness-y way. I've been keeping tabs on D's updates throughout his journey and I've been very impressed by his mad cycling skills and his willingness to just jump on in.

Once I went on a mission trip to Mexico. The, "what kind of a mission" and "what religion" parts of this equation aren't important. We drove to Saltillo, Coahuila in two big vans filled with clothes, flour, corn meal, Mardi Gras beads and on the verrrry verrrrry bottom....medicine. We stayed in a monastery and took turns cleaning the bathrooms. I was scandalized that I had to put my used toilet paper in a trash bin instead of flushing. I had to pay money for toilet paper at the border. I complained about the food, because I was a picky eater. I felt dusty. I slept poorly. It was hot. The bus broke down more than it ran. Water was in short supply so we drank Fanta. I was a spoiled American college student in the middle of real poverty.

Every morning we drove to a different little town way out in the desert. Our bus driver tolerated our camp song singing and navigated through miles of nothingness with no streets until we magically appeared at a small cluster of homes and a church. We distributed food and I chatted in the halting, present tense Spanish that only a public education can provide, with the people. We gave beads to the kids, listened to sermons in Spanish, played soccer with orphans and then got back into the bus.

Near the end of the trip something took hold in my brain. Another girl on the bus, more vacuous then even I was, was babbling about how sorry she felt for all of these people. She talked about all of the comforts of home that we demand that they don't even have a frame of reference about. "They NEED us," she said earnestly. The back of the bus was self-congratulatory but I couldn't join in...I felt confused. (Probably I was being blind-sided by my first truly intelligent thought. It's a short list with long gaps of time between revelations. An example? At age 32 I realized that I don't like the BLUES because it is SAD. Duh.)

People in other countries need us. They need our help. Sometimes they need our food, medicine and Mardi Gras beads but they don't need our pity and they don't need a bunch of entitled college students getting off the bus like it's a day at the People Zoo. The American ideals of square footage, corn syrup and electronics aren't necessities. If that floats your boat, that's ok with me, I'm writing in my blog on my laptop in my sixty degree house...but let's not pretend that it needs to be like that for everyone.

This is a long way of saying that I think that D has shown an enviable ability to balance education and absorption in a very foreign land.

Homework assignment:

Think about what you need, material goods and technology-wise, to be truly happy every day.