Burkina Blast #6

Shall express my outrage soon! I received this on the 9th of January and was awaiting approval for posting.


Dear Friends and Family,

Hello from Burkina! And Happy New Year! I hope this email finds you well. I hope to see many of you very soon.

I am coming home from Burkina Faso tonight. It's been an incredible year and a half in this country....I am leaving having gained so so so much more than I ever gave. The decision was pretty shocking, as I can imagine this email may be for you. I resigned from Peace Corps late last week, after a long, drawn out begging-and-pleading session with the Peace Corps bureau here when they found a photo of me on a moped. Peace Corps volunteers internationally are not allowed to ride mopeds. It was the leading cause of death among Peace Corps volunteers before the rule was put into place. The black and white photo, attached to this email, is pretty incriminating. Had I not already been in some trouble from getting back late into Burkina from a Christmas trip in Ghana, perhaps they may have let it slide with a slap on the wrist. But such is life. And life goes on...with or without regrets.

Things in Burkina Faso have been heating up recently. A few days before Christmas, the military and the police disputed, and a night of heaving shooting left soldiers and officers dead. Since then, there have been shootings around the city and in smaller cities across the country. Peace Corps volunteers in Ouagadougou during the night of the shootings tell stories of running from armed men dressed in black wife-beaters and army fatigues, hiding behind car tires to avoid being shot, and getting police escorts to the airport to fly home for Christmas. I was in Ghana, lying on the beach without a care in the world when all of this started, and I can't tell you how weird it has been in the past few days to be back in Burkina again under such tense conditions. I underestimated the fragility of the country. But it is almost palpable now. Peace Corps volunteers have been ordered to stay out of Ouagadougou until things calm down.

Life was much calmer in my village when I went back to pack up my things. It's easy to feel so unaffected from the rest of the world in a village like mine. The news of problems in Ouagadougou had reached them, but so had news that Nancy Pelosi was the new Speaker of the House in the United States, and they mentioned both pieces of news to me with almost the same "we heard about the goings-on of the people who live beyond Tenado's borders". As if there was the village, and then all that existed beyond it.

It will probably haunt me for a while, the faces of my villagers when I told them that I was leaving. They were so confused. I know I have let them down. Joseph, my Burkinabe boss/father was pretty distraught. He took our work so seriously, and believed so much in what we were trying to get done. I know he will be alright on his own, but I hope and pray that another volunteer will be as lucky as I was to work with him. Joseph's wife, Engenie, and I were both pretty emotional when the Peace Corps 4x4 came to pick me up. She was like a mother to me, and I told her that. Their children didn't understand, some of the youngest just repeating, "Bye Bye. Bye Bye". On my way out of the village, I passed a few of the young girls who participated in my summer business camp. They had left school to bike over to my house to say goodbye. Their faces too were riddled in confusion at how abrupt and unnatural this parting was. I am pretty sure I will be searching for a while to find some way to make this all up to them.

So it is with a remorseful sigh that I'm sending this email off with some of the last pictures I took in my village. Thank you all so much for all of your support and encouragement along the way. This has been an amazing time in my life, one I will look back on with such pleasure and awe. If you were ever considering joining the Peace Corps, I would say "Do it!" in a heartbeat.

I'll be in Hingham by tomorrow night, and will be coming to invade your lives in the near future.

Via moped.

Love always, Elizabeth