Mid Service Conference`

At our mid-service conference now.  (Can you believe I’ve been here over one year now?!)  It’s definitely been a great morale booster and I love hearing about the cool things other volunteers are doing at site and getting ideas for my own projects. I’m excited about getting some great stuff done at site and am starting to see that I really can have an impact here. It’s also great having people to relate to and who understand the experience. The connections you can make when you all experience something so intense together are amazing and I didn’t really feel it until today.

One year in is a good point to look back and reflect. I’m happy with some projects I’ve done. We’ve definitely had a tough year here and I did the best I could in a difficult situation. But there’s still so much more I can do. I’m not done here yet. Although it’s challenging to extents I never imagined, I wouldn’t want it any other way. Despite the many times we sit and complain about site, the weird cultural things, how frustrating development work can be, being called “nasara” and constantly asked for money, and a million other things, we didn’t join the Peace Corps to do something easy. We wanted to challenge ourselves and to grow. I’ve been learning to appreciate the bad along with the good and I’ve developed a patience for it. I don’t want my service to be perfect. It wouldn’t be any fun that way. I want the difficulties, the frustrations, and the things that go wrong and I wouldn’t change them because of what I’ve learned from them. At the risk of sounding super cliché, the bad things made the good better. Those things all together make my service what it is. Frustrating, challenging, sometimes demoralizing, but all in some really weird way, empowering and fulfilling. And I hear the second year just gets better…

Thank you all for your thoughts, love, and support. Thank you for verbalizing that – whether it was a letter, package, phone call, e-mail, comment on my blog, or Facebook message. It really does keep me going and gives me just the encouragement I need. Lots of love!

So what exactly do you do as a PCV…

So a long time overdue – but I will try my best to update you as much as possible! Lots going on here, so I’ll break it up into three blog posts. I usually get questions about what projects I’m doing and what life in like in village, so I’ll start with those. The last post is just fun stories I would only experience as a PCV.

So what exactly do you do as a Peace Corps Volunteer…

It good to finally be feeling busy with work! I’ve gotten to do a lot of cool things and I’m excited for some other projects in the works. April and May were really busy because I was trying to finish things up before rainy season. During rainy season, everyone goes out into the fields to cultivate, so people are really busy, meaning projects are more difficult. I’ve done most of my work on nutrition and hygiene, but I’m hoping to get more into family planning, HIV/AIDS, and maternal health in my second year. (Can you believe it, I’ve been in country for over a year now!!!)

Nutrition:

My big project was the FARN or hearth model. It’s a rehabilitation program for moderately malnourished kids. We weighed babies in two villages in March to identify malnourished kids to participate. Every morning for 12 days, we met to make an enriched bouille (porridge) and talk about health. We started off talking about nutrition and then moved on to other topics like family planning and hygiene. My counterpart for this project is absolutely amazing!!! She is the volunteer in maternity and lives in one of our satellite villages. She’s so positive and really motivated and excited about working on nutrition. We had 6 women participate in the program. The cool thing about the program is that it is really all about empowering the mothers. The bouille is made from ingredients found locally and the women all contribute resources to buy the ingredients, so they know they have the ability to properly nourish their kids with the resources they have. The moms were all fantastic and I had a lot of fun hanging out with them every morning. Most of the babies were afraid of me, but by the end of the 12 days, they got used to me and would even sometimes let me hold them. Assetou is my favorite, mostly because she was the only one totally comfortable with me holding her and would play with me. The others were more hesitant. All of the babies gained weight after the 12 days, which is awesome. But definitely have ideas to change it next time around. Most of the babies didn’t gain weight during the month after (although it is hard because June is a tough month because people run out of their food stock from last year’s harvest and they haven’t harvested yet for this year), so I want to focus more on the nutrition education and what the moms can do at home. But not bad for the first. Definitely learned a lot and have lots of ideas for next time. That’s why Peace Corps is two years, not just one.

Hygiene

In my last post, I mentioned a latrine training I went to with two counterparts from my village. (So I sometimes forget what words aren’ t part of general American vocabulary. A latrine is the hole in the ground that is your bathroom. You dig a deep hole, put a cement square over it that has a small hole, and build a house around it.) The training focused on hygiene and then how to actually build latrines. I brought the only female Burkinabe to the latrine training. Construction is generally a male job and it can definitely be intimidating to be the only female Burkinabe, but my counterpart stepped up and did a really awesome job. The first female mason of my village now! Her name is Sibi and she’s so much fun to work with. Really positive and enthusiastic.

It was definitely a slow and frustrating process getting the latrines started. When you only have the funding for two latrines, its really hard to pick just two places out of so many options! And the politics of it all – getting it approved by all the important people. We finally decided on one mosque and one church (I’ve had trouble figuring out percentages of religious affilation in village. I’ve heard that my village is 50/50, Muslim/Catholic or Protestant. But I’m not so sure that’s accurate. But I also work in a health center that serves 16 villages. There are some villages that are predominately Muslim and some that are more split.) Anyways, we built in two different villages. After the building of the latrine, we talked at the Friday afternoon prayer (mosque) and Sunday morning service (church) about hygiene and the importance of latrine use. It would sure be a waste to build a latrine if we never explained why it was important to use it (thus encourage people to actual use it). We’re hoping to do more latrines after rainy season.

During the hygiene talk at the church, the women’s choir at the church asked me to come back teach them how to make soap to sell and promote hygiene. So I went back the next week to plan and then two weeks later to make the soap. The women decided to start with liquid soap because the start-up costs are less. The eventual goal is to use the profits to invest in hard soap making. The ingredients are much more expensive. Soap making is a great activity in Burkina Faso because it is a way to generate income and promote good hygiene practices at the same time. And while making soap, it’s a great opportunity to explain how soap works. I actually didn’t know this before (and excuse the very basic explanation, I was never very interested in chemistry), but soap works because a chemical reaction suspends oil and dirt and then you wash that off with running water. While running water isn’t an issue in the States, it’s important to explain this process while talking about soap because there is no running water here. But you can substitute pouring water, but lots of people often just dunk their hands in a bowl to wash the soap off, which doesn’t work then. And I’ll admit – I used to do that too. I thought soap killed stuff. But it suspends the bad stuff to be washed away. Learn something new every day.

Health Education:

I’ve also been trying to do as much basic health education as possible. In March and April, I went to two different literacy centers to talk about health. In one, we talked about pre-natal consultations – why they’re important and the appropriate schedule for them. At another literacy center, we talked about nutrition, hygiene, and malaria. But I think my favorite thing I’ve done so far is the health classes at the middle school/high school. I talked to the equivalent of the 7^th, 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th grade classes (although the corresponding ages tend to be older) about hygiene. It was a lot of fun to work with students again – teenagers are always teenagers, no matter where they are. For the oldest class, I taught them the health terms in English as well. Next school year, I am hoping to work a lot more with the school. The director is awesome and really supportive.

Upcoming projects:

Moringa garden at the CSPS: Morigna is a tree with really nutritious leaves – tons of vitamins, iron, and other good stuff. We are planting morigna at the CSPS and hopefully selling the leaves in powder form (to add to sauces or bouille/pourridge) and using the profit to subsidize bi-monthly or monthly enriched bouille demonstrations at the CSPS after baby weighings.

Training at the CREN: The CREN is a center for the rehabilitation of severely malnourished children. While moderate malnutrition is addressed on the community level, severe malnutrition needs to be treated at the district level – it requires more intense medical supervision. I am working with a neighboring volunteer on this project. Because nutrition is something we’ve spent a lot of time on in our respective villages, we want to work at the district level as well to ensure that our efforts in village are complemented by support in the district. We’ve planned a training that covers the identification and treatment of malnutrition; nutrition education and enriched bouille preparation; community outreach and mobilization; and financing and administration of programs at the CREN. We’re aiming right now to do this the last two weeks of August.

What’s it like living in a village?

Okay, so I’m kinda late answering the question, mostly because it’s a really hard thing to describe. After one year, things have become quite normal for me. Like going to the pump or attaching a pagne (basically a large piece of cloth that you wear as a wrap skirt). But as I write this, I am on my way to visit my Mom in Italy and I just had quite an overwhelming experience at the Paris airport. So seeing all that again puts village life in perspective again.

My village is everything you’d imagine Peace Corps to be – no running water, no electricity, and a hole in the ground for a toilet. But those are the easy adjustments. It’s in the bush, but really laid back. I bike everywhere and it’s beautiful (mostly just during rainy season).

The upsides of village life:

· Awesome family! I live with an infinitely fantastic family! They’re so welcoming, supportive, and just lots of fun. They take really good care of me. Sometimes I feel bad because they always have to help me – get the bats out of my house, explain things, decipher my French and Bissa. But then I think about the laughs they get from having the crazy nasara live with them. I was burning my trash one night and it was already dark. I had already lit it and was waiting for it to burn down. My family was hanging out outside and could see me. Near the fire, I saw a bug that to me looked like a baby scorpion or something. And I hear those bites are really painful. So naturally, it freaked me out. It started to crawl towards me, and obviously I started to run. Meanwhile, my family is just looking over at me, seeing my run in circles around my burning trash. I’m sure I looked totally ridiculous, but makes life more fun, right?

· Always someone around to help you. Whether I need help finding something in the marche, bargaining for a good price, or fixing a stove that lights on fire when I cook, someone will also help me when I ask. Although this doesn’t always work with finding places if I’m lost – I’m not sure what it is, but they’re not really good at giving directions here.

· Slower pace of life. Taking time to get to know people. Caring about how people’s family, work, and life are going. Always being greeted with a smile.

The hardest parts of village life are the cultural adjustments and not understanding things. Just being in a place where there are days where nothing seems to make any sense at all. It’s a tough thing to describe, but I’ve learned to live in a state of somewhat confusion all the time. No running water, no electricity, those things are easy. It’s living in a completely different cultural context that is difficult. Things that make sense or are obvious back home aren’t here and the things that do here, aren’t the same back home.

A lot of what Peace Corps is about is integrating into your village (to gain respect and trust to serve as a foundation of your work). So I do spend a good bit of time getting to know people in my community – hanging out with my family, going to the market. Marche days are big social events. There’s a marche in my village and a grand marche 3 km away. My marche is pretty small, but plenty of benga (beans and rice), which I am known for eating all the time. My grande marche used to be really overwhelming. It’s much bigger and people from all around come, so not everyone knows me as well (at least when I first got here). I was constantly called at and people would constantly greet me. But now I love going and it feels so much more comfortable. I usually go just to say hi to people and talk to my friends. Those sorts of relationships and taking time to do those sorts of things are really important to the life of a PCV in Burkina Faso, which is a refreshing change of pace.

Only As a PCV…

I celebrated my birthday in village. The actual day of my birthday was exhausting because we did a vaccination campaign (meaning we went door to door to give polio vaccines to kids). April, by the way, is hot season although it’s basically always hot. And in the late afternoon, I had to go with my counterpart to visit families to talk to them about our malnutrition program. But the next day, a neighboring volunteer came over and we (and by we I actually mean my brothers because that’s why I have brothers) killed one of my chickens (see story below), and cooked a delicious meal – curried rice and jerk chicken (all Takiyah’s doing. I just got the charcoal going). It was delicious!

So my chickens… my oldest brother (Drissa) is really into animal raising. (Animal husbandry I think is the real word in English, elevage in French). He has goats, cows, pintards (guinea fowl, it’s probably the stupidest bird besides turkeys. They get stuck in my latrine and can’t figure out how to get out), turkeys, and chickens. He really wanted to me buy a chicken so it could take care of the pintard eggs so that I could have my own eggs to eat. I still don’t really get why the pintard takes the chicken eggs, but whatever. Anyways, I was in a larger city and decided to by the chickens there since they were cheaper. And then took them on a 3 hour bush taxi ride and a 13 km bike ride. I named them Lucy and Ethel after I Love Lucy. My bag with cans of tuna fell on Lucy during the bush taxi ride, but she seemed to recover. Ethel did not like the bike ride. Wish I took a picture. Anyways, I got home and gave them to my brother (because I don’t really know what I’m doing with them). The next day, he informs me they’re not chickens but roosters. Meaning they won’t take the eggs. Oh well. Guess I should rethink the names, but we ate Lucy for my birthday. The other was a gift to the volunteer in a neighboring village, so Ethel biked 33 km with me to the other village.

I’ve been starting running a lot more in village, which definitely gets a fun reaction from my community. In the evenings, if I run about the time school gets out, the primary school kids will run with my for a little bit. There’s actual two girls who do surprising well keeping up. It’s kinda fun always having encouragement, although most people just laugh (loving of course, but still laughing) when they see me running. Although I think altogether most people are just confused as to why I would want to tire myself out for fun – life is already exhausting here, going to the pump, handwashing landry, and cultivating in the fields. But I consider this a huge success – my 23-year-old sister has started running! When I first started, my brothers would occasionally run with me, along with the family dog. But one evening, my sister and her friend decided they should start running too. My sister went to school in the capital city for a little bit, so she’s not so “villageois” anymore and at her school, she did sports as part of school, so it’s not the first time she’s run. But I still think it’s really cool for girls to see a young woman from their village run, not just the crazy nasara.

Some other new and exciting news….

I got a radio/cassette player. So if you don’t want to write a letter, you can record on a cassette tape and I can listen to your voice!! Or you can record random conversations or everyday happenings to make me feel like I’m at home with you!

I also got a kitten. Really adorable. He’s quite a baby and spoiled. He’s constantly at my feet and cries when I leave. When I sleep inside, he likes to sleep by my feet. When I sleep outside, I don’t let him in my tent (a – my family would think I’m totally weird if they don’t think I’m weird already and b – I don’t want him peeing in there). So he decides to find other people to cuddle with. That doesn’t go over well with Burkinabe. I got him because of a terrible mice problem – eating through my wood counter and my clothes and pooping on all my dishes.

A nurse at the health clinic is looking for an American pen pal. So let me know if you are interested! It would be really cool if someone who did something in health wanted to write with him, I think he’d like that, but it’s really just about learning about America and learning English. You can e-mail letters to me and I can e-mail you his letters. Or snail mail if you prefer the excitement.

Miss you all so much and think about you everyday!

March 6, 2011

Just a quick post to let you all know what I've been up to. I'm in Ouaga for the weekend because I had a meeting at the office and then for Fespaco, the big film festival. So apparently it's a big deal, it only happens every two years, so it's my only chance to be here. Figured I should go. I feel asleep during the two films I saw. In my defense, I took the 5 am bush taxi, so I was really tired and French subtitles are hard to read, especially when they don't change the font color to the scene - white font doesn't work on clouds. It was nice to relax for a weekend though. I definitely needed it.

Village has been exciting the past week. Saturday was a random bike race, which was really fun to watch. It kinda felt like a block party - everyone hanging out. This coming up Tuesday is International Women's Day, so there's a huge celebration for that. The regional celebration is actually in my village, which is a huge deal. There's going to be a parade and another bike race (I'm participating in this one). The women have been practicing all week (and of course everyone goes out to watch, so that's been fun too).

Still working on the malnutrition program and hygiene and latrines. Talked to the school director about doing health classes, so should be starting that soon. Also started planning a training with my neighboring volunteer for the CREN, the center for the rehabilitation of severely malnourished kids. The CREN is at the district level, which is one above the community. All severe cases are suppose to go to the CREN, rather than be treated at the community level because they require more medical attention. I'm really excited about this project, but because we're applying for funding, it doesn't look like this will happen until July. But we're really excited about this project.

On other note - I've been doing some informal English classes with some of the students and the nurses. I have a few friends in village who really want to learn English and have requested that I find them a pen pal back in the US. Let me know if you are interested. you can either snail mail letters to me or e-mail them, have the same access to both, only kinda sometimes. :)

Okay, sorry so short. Will have internet next maybe at the end of March, definitely mid-April. Miss you all so much and would love to hear from you!!!!

Wousso Dora Yita Kare...

...Happy New Year's, in Bissa. Literally translated, it means, "May God give you a next year."

Again, sorry it’s been so long… So much has happened since I last wrote, where to begin…

The holidays in my village were so much fun!! I spent Christmas and New Years in village, which was awesome. My village is about half Muslim, half Christian, with a few people who practice traditional religions. The family I live with is Muslim, so I got to celebrate the past two Muslim holidays with them. One of the coolest things about Burkina Faso is the religious tolerance (within the religions practiced here, not out of the ones already accepted). But religion is more of a unifying factor here than dividing one, despite people practicing different religions. People live and work together no problem. In villages like mine, people celebrate both holidays.

For Christmas, I went to the midnight church service. It was a lot of fun, although I didn’t understand a single thing that was going on because it was all in Bissa. There’s was one kinda awkward moment. Okay, so it’s complicated but I accidently sat with the choir. I thought of that before I walked in, but I saw a bunch of women all wearing the same pagne (piece of cloth), so I figured they were the choir (and they were). I came with two friends, so wanted to sit with them. The whole service, you’re sitting down, standing up, sitting down, standing up. So we stood up to start singing again, and I noticed everyone around me knew the same dance. And no one else is the room was standing up except for our section. Apparently there’s like 3 different choirs. I must have looked like a deer in headlights, I didn’t know what to do, I sat down, stood up, sat down, and then quickly slid over to a different bench. How awkward. Later in the service, the pastor made some comment, all in fun of course, like “Let’s see if she knows this dance.” I’m really glad I went, it was a lot of fun. I spent the rest of Christmas day helping the mid-wife of the CSPS cook. I brought mashed potatoes with me, but I’m pretty sure everyone just thought they were weird.

New Year’s was also a lot of fun. My dad threw a huge party. I “helped” cook (meaning chopped some vegetables and then mostly watched), but it was fun to hang out with all the women. I really felt like part of the family. So here, when they cut vegetables, they sit down and don’t use a cutting board, they cut holding the vegetable in their hand. I can’t do it, I’m going to cut myself. I tried to explain that we generally cook standing up, on a counter, and use a cutting board. It’s because we use stoves, but here with a fire, you breath in too much smoke if you stand, so you have to sit.

And then, just when I was sad that all the parties were over for the next few months, weddings started. The week after New Year’s I went to my first wedding. It was really cool, although I still don’t totally get all of it. The wedding is at the husband’s house and the husband’s family pays for all the food for the party (usually rice with peanut sauce). The first wedding, the bride was from my village. I went with all the women to bring her over to her new husband’s house. As you approach the house, you sing. It was a lot of fun. Then the women and girls dance. So they make it look so easy, but it’s really hard. I danced for a bit, but mostly got laughed at (all in fun of course). It’s a lot harder when it’s not something you’ve been doing since you were 10. Oh well. It definitely provided my community with a topic of conversation for the next three days. The next marche day, people kept asking me about the wedding. The next week, there was another, but this time, the groom was from my village. I went over to help the women cook for a little bit. This time, when they brought the girl over, it was a bunch of the young men bringing the bride and some of her friends over. They all came in on their motos and tried to do tricks in the field as they dropped the girls off. It was quite the show.

Speaking of weddings, my host brother just got married this week. It’s actually his second wife. It’s interesting because I left for a week for a training on Sunday, and on Thursday, he got married. I asked why no one told me before I left, and my dad said it was because it wasn’t sure. They don’t really do long engagemenst here. I was bummed out I missed it, but my dad said we’ll “fete” (party) again when I get home.

So let’s talk more about what I’m actually doing here….

Right now, the big issues I’ll be working on are hygiene, nutrition, and getting people to give birth at the CSPS, not at home. I’ve started planning a hearth model (rehabilitation program for moderately malnourished kids) with a really motivated community counterpart. Her name is Madame Gouba ne Boro Kadidia. She’s a volunteer at the maternity in the CSPS and lives in one of the satellite villages. She used to do a lot on nutrition, but stopped because the women didn’t want to cotizer money to pay for bouille (enriched pourridge) demonstrations. She came with me to counterpart workshop during our in-service training. We did some stuff on nutrition and it was really cool to see her in her element talking about it and see her getting excited about doing them at site. When we got back, she decided totally on her own to start doing bouille demonstrations again. I’ve been really busy recently with various trainings, but now that that’s all calmed down, we’re starting to plan to do the hearth program soon. It’s an intensive 12-day program where you gather mothers together every day to make bouille and talk about nutrition and other health topics. It takes a lot of planning – mobilizing the community and gathering support, figuring out families to participate, planning logistics, and getting everything ready.

I went to a latrine building formation this past week. Latrines are a huge need in the community, as cited by the community health agents. Most families don’t have a latrine, so they just take care of business wherever. Which is not hygienic at all. The 4th and 5th most common illness at the CSPS are hygiene-related. I brought two community members to the training with me. We’re excited to go back to site and start building latrines. I want to incorporate latrine building into a larger marche-based project, like education on basic hygiene during marches (since it’s a great venue to reach a lot of people) and putting in hand-washing stations. I brought two counterparts, the vice-president of the CoGES and the community health agent for my village. The second is a female. She was the only female Burkinabe there, which I know must have been hard for her, but she did awesome. She really stepped up and took an active role in the construction part (which is normally a male role) and I was really proud of her.

I’ve been in country for almost 8 months and at my site for about 5 ½ now. It’s crazy, I know I have a year and a half left, but I feel like there’s so much to do and not enough time to do it.

So one Peace Corps stereotype I hate is that of PCVS as kids just hanging out in crazy parts of the world, escaping reality for a few years before settling down. And sometimes that’s somewhat true – I do live in the bush in Burkina Faso. I have a job so different (and so much more exciting) that many jobs in the States. It is exciting and somewhat exotic living here. But it’s anything but an escape from reality. Just walk into the CSPS. Just talk to the families and hear about the challenges life here brings them. Look at babies at the marche. The reality here is often times much harsher than the reality in the US. Sometimes, I can enjoy the adventure of it all - being in the middle of nowhere, in a country I never would have thought of before. But for people that live here, life is nothing but reality.

I knew being here would be hard, but it’s hard in ways I didn’t expect. Most people think it’s the no running water, no electricity, no iced coffees that would be hard. Which, as much as I hate to admit, some days, it can be. But it’s much harder being so far away from and unable to communicate instantly all the time with my family and friends. It’s trying to live in a completely different culture and express yourself and be yourself in a different language. And I didn’t expect it, but the work part of it is really hard too. Especially as a first generation volunteer, I’m often starting from nothing when I start projects. Just figuring out where to begin is hard. But, as I remind myself almost every day, I wouldn’t have done Peace Corps if I wanted to do something easy. The challenges are frustrating, but also exhilarating.

Okay, so that’s all for now. Hopefully I can get pictures up soon too. Hope you are doing well and miss you all so much! Would love to hear what you’re up to!! Letters or e-mails, both are super exciting!

Ca fait deux jours...

So there’s this saying here, “Ca fait deux jours.” It literally translated means, “It’s been two days,” but people use it to mean “It’s been a while.” I was so confused when people first started saying it to me. I was thinking, “No, actually it’s been 5 days since I last saw you.” Two days isn’t really a long time anyways. In Bissa, you say “Dom piya.” So sorry it’s been so long since I’ve been able to update my blog!!!

A lot has happened since I last wrote. It’s weird how normal life is starting to feel in village. It doesn’t even phase me anymore that I’m taking bucket showers or don’t have electricity. The family I live with is totally awesome and I’m so lucky I have them helping me out all the time.

Recently, I’ve kept myself busy with vaccination campaigns. To make sure that as many children as possible get their vaccines, the Ministry of Health organizes vaccination campaigns and they are administrated by each CSPS. In November, there was a campaign for polio. In December, there was a campaign for meningitis. The campaigns are exhausting because you go to the satellite villages, sometimes door-to-door, all day. But it’s a great opportunity to meet people in my satellite villages. Also, it’s been a great way to build relationships with the community health agents. The community health agents (representatives from each village who connect the CSPS to the community and mobilize the community) help out with the campaigns. They’re a really awesome and motivated group of people and I definitely see myself working with them a lot during my two years. I did a needs assessment activity with them to help me figure out what exactly the community wants me to do here. Some things that came up were sensibilisations (health education activities on topics like malaria, family planning, maternal health) and helping women with small enterprise development. I’ve also been doing an informal questionnaire. Anytime I can, I ask people, “Why is it difficult to have good health here?” The most frequent answers are mosquitoes, lack of means, and lack of nutritious food.


I’m starting to plan for projects and really excited to jump in after in-service training. I’m hoping to do a lot around nutrition because it’s something my community really recognizes as a health issue. I definitely foresee a lot of challenges and obstacles, but that can also be very motivating and exciting.

I have a name in Bissa. It’s Banse Tolow. Banse is the name of the family I live with. My name literally translated means “the name of the woman,” but as my brother explained it, it means the name of the woman with us. Before, I used to hear “nasara” all the time. Now, at the marche, biking back from the CSPS, or even visiting satellite villages for vaccination campaigns, I hear “Banse Tolow.” Although it can be overwhelming at times and frustrating that I’ll never be able to just quietly slip by at the market, it is comforting being somewhere where everyone knows you name. It’s hard to explain, but hearing people call me “Tolow,” and not “nasara,” makes me really feel like I’ve been adopted into my community.

Oh my goodness, so there’s so much more I want to write, but I don’t have enough time right now. Will get another chance to write in the middle of January. So sorry! Miss you all and thank you for all your thoughts, e-mails, and letters. Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!! Enjoy the holidays and Happy New Year!! (My New Year’s resolution is to get better at this blogging thing…)