And the heat is on ....

It's still hot here. We are starting to see some rain but it hasn't been enough to cool off yet. The farmers are starting to get their fields ready now. We heard rumor that it might be a short rainy season, which is really bad for the people here.

We are so tired right now. We have turned into some retirees going to bed at 8:30 at night. But who ever heard of a rooster crowing at 3:30 in the morning. I think that the only reason it does it is cause the mosque just down the road took over the job of getting us up at the crack of dawn. If those two don't work then our host family washing pots and pans at 5:30 will make sure that we're up.

Then it off to class for 9 hours then some homework. Maybe a little relaxing to end the day before heading back to our host family for a dinner of sauce with mystery meat and little pieces of bone to chew on. Becky has tried for two weeks now to explain that she is vegetarian, so far it has been mildly successful. Having to watch me eat a chicken liver one time made Becky a little sick, but it wasn't too bad.

We are trying to get our laundry done on Sundays now because it's the only day that we have off. Laundry is not like back home where you just throw it in a washer and come back when it is done. We have to first let it soak in Omo for 10 minutes, then we start to scrub on our clothes using another bar of soap. Then we rinse in another bucket and start with the scrubbing again. Then repeat once more and let hang dry. It takes hours to get it done. Our host family said that we should try to wash during the week but we never have time. Becky is also allergic to the Omo.

One of our fellow trainees has fallen ill with malaria. It's a bitch when the government misdoses you on antimalarials. Apparently we were supposed to have gotten our dose a week early to have full coverage. The only thing that the PCMO could come up with was that he was infected within the first two days of being here. Otherwise our stage is holding together OK. Just a few stress induced meltdowns, Becky included. French fucking sucks. No wonder they never won a war. We did do our first lesson in French and that was brutal.

This week we get to find out where we are going to be spending the next two years. Then the week after we get to visit our site. We had interviews with the director of education to describe what we would like in a site. I told him that I want beach front and if that's not possible a swimming pool. He said that he would see what he could do. That means we're probably going to end up in the Sahel. Çe la vive.

Two weeks down

Hi everyone!

Well I think that we are finally settling into a route here in B.F. We wake up every morning at 5 a.m. Let me tell you, that call to pray is never late :) It is pretty to listen for the first minute or so and then we both roll over for an additional 30 minutes of sleep, or until the girls get to loud from preforming their morning chores. We both grab a quick bucket bath cause it never gets cool here. Also the Burkinabé believe that there is a genie that sleeps with you that is scared away when you take a shower in the morning. If you don't take a shower it will haunt you throughout the day and cause other people trouble cause we each have our own genie. Then we get breakfast, which usually consists of café with sugar and milk, we share half of a baguette with either eggs or an avocado spread. Around 7 a.m., we pack up our stuff and bike 15 minutes into town—uphill all the way :( We then endure classes from 8 a.m. until 12:30. Lunch break is an hour and a half, only if the classes do not run over. We then reassemble at 2 and continue to sweat our butts off in class until 5:15. We usually hangout with the other trainees until 6 p.m. We then get to go on the fun 15 minute bike ride home that is downhill all the way home—score. Once we arrive at our African—suburban home, we have to shower right away. We are covered head to toe by sweat and red dirt! We usually dine with our host dad, Jean, and talk with each other until 8. We finally get to say that we are tired and can bring all of our bedding including the mattress outside for sleeping.

So that is our day in a nutshell. Sometimes we like to spice things up and add in a trip to the cyber café or we will get to talk with other members in our host families. One night last week, I was rather bored and a little irritated that kids would not talk to us, so I bribed them with a game. Apparently the Burkinabé love games, so I broke out our game of CLR. Well it was nothing less than successful. The kids love us now, and they are starting to talk to us! On Tuesday, we learned that the children here find animated films to be quite fascinating. So me being my lovely self bribe them again with Over the Hedge played on our iPod. They all loved it, even though they couldn't understand it in English. Every night since I had played that movie they have asked to see another one. Last night, Tim and I set up the laptop in the living room and played Night at the Museum for them in French. The kids and Celestine loved the movie. I was a little worried about the magical content especially with them being Animists, but they really enjoyed the movie.
On a much brighter note, mine and Tim's stomaches are starting to settle down :) This makes all of us very very happy. I have developed a new found love for jus de wetta. This is the most amazing juice ever. It tastes like orange juice mixed with pineappley awesomeness.

We are missing all of you like crazy! I hope to hear from some of you soon. We are checking our emails every Saturday and mail gets delivered here about once a week. We love everyone's questions on the blog. Keep them coming and we'll keep on answering :)

Love

Becky and Tim

Pla-la-la-lala-la

Yep you have guessed it; Tim and I are suffering through the adjustment period. We now get to eat pepto with our meals that maybe stay in us for a couple of hours before we see it out the other end :) We are learning the fine art of using a pit latrine :)

It has been hot here. Really hot like 104-5 with it dropping to 95 at night. Not the best sleeping weather but we are getting to sleep outside that is helping some. It has rained here the last couple of days, and when it rains it comes in buckets and buckets. Last night it finally cooled off enough that we could stand to be in the same bed.

Our host family is very nice. The father is a teacher at the high school and the mother is a teacher at the elementary school. They are working with us to get our french up to speed and that is difficult at times! The kids finally stopped being scared of us after Becky broke out CLR to play with them. They spoil us with their cooking. We get to suggest what to have each night for dinner and each morning we have coffee with bread and butter. We even get salad which is very expensive here.

Washing our laundry for the first time was an experience. Our father brought us a large basin and a bucket, put some water in them added a little detergent in the basin and walked off. Becky followed the example from 7 brides for 7 brothers. Thank god for old movies! When our mother got home she brought us a bar of soap and showed us how we were really supposed to wash our laundry. She made it look so easy.

Becky is obsessed with catching one of the 5 million geckos that are running around here. They are everywhere that she can't reach and it isn't proper to catch the geckos. There aren't any snakes here, but there are vultures and I think that they are starting to follow the trainees. A sign of things to come????

There is an awesome golf course in Ouaga. The fairways are suppose to be well kept and the rough isn't to deep. You have great roll cause the ground can get a little hard during the dry season. Granted you are carry the fairway with you in the form of an Astroturf mat. Sounds fun to me.

You can contact us either through email or post. The information is on our contact link. Email is definitely faster but we don't have constant access. Real letters are like Christmas. We have a phone now that has free incoming calls. Call the moms for the info.

Made It

We finally made it to Burkina Faso. Things have been going ok so far. The language is being difficult and Becky and I tested into the same group, novice. Our host family is going to be a couple one of who is a professor of French at the local high school. Hopefully that will help us catch up. Please send us M&Ms. We love you all very much.

Getting There.. sorta

We are finally there. Africa that is. After nearly 18 hours on planes today we had a little trouble at our last stop and are stuck in Niger. But we are in a great hotel that has wireless and an awesome buffet with Air France footing the bill. I just had the best mango that I have ever eaten and the sauce that is apparently a staple is great with just a little kick to it. We have about an hour flight left to Burkina Faso, but thought that everyone would like to know that we are fine even though we're not in Ouagadougou just yet.

Signing off,

Tim and Becky

Packing and Philly

Well I can honestly say that Tim and I did start packing earlier than some. We began our packing expedition on Sunday morning. Can I just say I really dislike packing! We decided to take everything out of the packaging prior to packing it in the suitcases for space saving reasons. By the time we had everything out of its original packaging and into properly labeled Ziploc bags, we had one 30 gallon trash bag and one 25 gallon Rubbermaid tub full of trash/packaging AND we had gone through an entire box of gallon sized Ziploc bags.
We had an interesting time playing the shuffle game with our luggage. Our goal was to pack everything into two pieces of luggage. Well that did not go over so well :) By the time we got most of the toiletries packed into my blue suitcase, it weighed nearly 50 lbs! We then proceeded to pack some books and some of the clothing into Tim's big backpack traveler luggage. Well that one was interesting too! We had the bag entirely filled and it weighed approximately 45 lbs and took up more than 57 ins of the total 107 ins that each of us was allowed to take. So after packing two bags and still having more stuff to pack we called Chris and had him bring his own smaller traveler luggage. Now at this time Tim has roughly 50 ins left for an additional bag and 35 lbs. I have roughly 52 ins and 30 lbs left for my allowance on packing.
Once Chris' bag arrived, Tim and I continued to pack. After filling that bag, we still had more stuff left over to pack! Well to be honest, by this time, I'm feeling a little down. We were only going to take two bags, then three, and now FOUR! Geeze I was starting to think that we had over packed. Oh well, Tim and I added our final choice piece of luggage, a sturdy black duffel bag. We finally had everything packed: YAY!!! Well we measured and weighed each piece of luggage and tried to figure out who was taking each piece. Disaster! The two traveling luggage bags from L.L. Bean were costing us too much space and weight. So Tim and I proceeded to unpack things that we were not going to us right away. We also started taping pockets down on these bags to get them within the linear constraints. After much finagling, we were ultimately able to pack everything down so that Tim's two L.L. Bean travelers backpacks were within the limits and my two bags didn not exceed weight.
This was one very long process. I have not been this stressed out about something since college. Oh we also had fun picking out what would be in our carryons besides our important papers. Packing actually took us two whole days.
Getting to Philadelphia was not too terrible. We did experience a flight delay of a little more than an hour after we had boarded our Chicago to Philadelphia plane. Our meeting was long, but full of useful information (some of which has caused us to repack our carryons and luggage). Later after the meeting was over at approximately 7:45 we went to dinner with five other volunteers. We had a great time and enjoyed some more ice cream!
Well I think that's all for now. Plenty in my opinion since my hand is starting to hurt a little :)

Love you all
Becky and Tim

Six Days Left and Counting

We now have six days left prior to starting our grand new adventure. Wow! I'm not sure where to begin. Tim and I have just returned from visiting his family up North. We had a blast. He even let me buy a new skirt (who would have ever thought that I would be excited about buying a skirt)! Tim got a couple of games of golf in this past week too. He and I teamed up one afternoon against his dad and Erik. Well I'm not one to brag, but we did beat them like they were red headed stepkids ;) I think the final score was 86 to 99 (OUCH)! --Tim says "Boom...Boom...FIREPOWER!" We have been struggling to convert our movies over to iPod form. How many freaking audio tracks does one DVD need; just so you know Mr. & Mrs. Smith has six.



Well to highlight our going aways parties in one word--AWESOME! The party up in Dixon was a lot of fun. There were a lot of people who showed up. Mary Coleman even stopped by and talk with us. She gave us a lot of valuable knowledge about Leslie and Ryan's PC time. Grandpa really loved those baked beans and he let everyone know it twice or even three times. The party down in Monmouth was well...hmm... a lot of chaos. I believe Em said it best, she's never been to a party like that before. She even ask my mom to invite her to more family parties. Oh my, I wonder what she would think if it wasn't such a tame party for the Turnquists at least. I'm not sure what the best part of the night was: Randy and Caleb's ATV mudding adventure or some of the interesting conversations people had.



We still have a lot of stuff to do prior to Sunday. We are going to have to organize all of our stuff into piles and run through the list of items (thanks Ryan & Leslie). We will of course have that last minute shopping trip to Peoria to get those final items. I still need to defer my loans. We both still need to do a little work on Rosetta Stone. --A word to anyone thinking of getting this program, DON'T. Becky's thoughts: worthless unless you don't mind not knowing exactly what you are saying. Tim's thoughts: It would be better to spend the money on "Language " For Dummies and a game of charades so that you have at least some practice at what you are going to be doing in BF.

Tim's things left to do go golfing, copy DVDs, go golfing, eat at the Packinghouse, go golfing, go out with Randy and Jannie, go golfing with Randy, win back the money from Jim and Randy from golfing by golfing more. Possibly spend some time with Becky and Desi golfing. :) Yep I need to golf more.

Until next time

Becky and Tim