from Tofu with love

11/13/11 Today I finally received my first wedding proposal. Sheesh took them long enough. I get invited to a bar with my home stay parents. My HS mother’s brothers are there. When I go over to the table I greet everyone with the normal handshake salutation. The brother then grabs my face and begins kissing my cheeks 4 times (This is a normal greeting here, but mainly for people who know each other). He then tries to kiss me on the lips! This is when I pull away. Everybody at the table starts laughing. The brothers know very little English and their lack of sobriety doesn’t help. One of them tells me that they have a cousin in NY and when I go home I should visit him. The brother lives in Ouaga and he invites me to come spend the weekend with him in his bachelor pad. He then goes on to tell me that I should stay in Burkina and marry him. His marriage proposal is in broken, drunk franglish, but from what I understood he offered me 10 chickens for my hand in marriage. 10 chickens, are...

11/10/11 I’ve been in country for a solid month!!! There is NO turning back now. Today was a pretty eventful day. We get random assignments to complete throughout training that will prepare us for life as a PCV. Today’s assignment is preparing a meal. We split up into 3 groups (appetizer, entrée, and dessert). I of course joined the entrée group to make sure that something would be vegan.  Clarissa and me cooked a really good stir-fry. I would also like to add that we made rice over an open fire! Since all the burners were occupied we decided to build a fire and cook over it! According to Chopped, rice is supposed to be pretty difficult to get right, but we made over 20 servings of yummy rice au natural. I’m pretty proud of myself. After a bon mangé we received our site announcements. ::drum roll:: I will be spending the next two years in a place near Manga which is in the south of Burkina.Looks like I’ll be making a trip to Ghana!  Today elevated my excitement and ant...

11/7/11 I think I`m going to start a segment on my blog called “encounters with wild animals”. Today I had two encounters. The first was with a cow. These cows do not look like the fat white and black American cows. All the cows here look more similar to bulls. They have this weird hump on their back that either stores water or fat. (It may be used to increase surface area to keep the cow cool, but I’m not sure) I’ve seen many different colors: white, black, tan, brown, grey, etc. They usually are pretty chill like any other cow minding its own business. But today’s encounter was NOT a friendly one. I’m riding down the rode with some of the other stagiaires and this cow decides to pull a lion king and tries to stampede us(yes one cow can be a stampede, if it's the right cow). Imagine riding straight on a dirt road, you then look casually to your left to enjoy the scenery of Africa and you see a wild cow coming for you at full trot! The riders in the front including myself decide ...

11/6/2011 For the last few days I’ve been debating on whether or not to post this next topic on my blog because it’s very embarrassing. I figured that I want this blog to detail my true experience in Burkina so like it or not here goes. Everybody knows that when you go to a new country with different and exciting new foods there is chance that your body may not react well. When we first arrived in country we had diarrhea-parasite-amoeba-etc training. It was a matter of when you get sick, not if. A lot of the stagiaires accepted the fact that they might get sick during there stay. But I refused to accept this reality. I figured that if I keep filtering my water, soaking my raw fruits and veggies in bleach water or cook them, continue to not eat foods from random venders, and stay vegan I will be safe.  FAIL. I didn’t realize how much I would miss raw yummy vegetables. I don’t know if this is the reason for my ailment but I gave in and ate a salad at a restaurant. I know...