from Tofu with love

2/9/2012 Its crazy how much I miss my “old life”, whatever that was. I keep telling myself how I miss my old simple life. Its funny that I say simple because life here is really simple in some ways but the simplicities make things feel a lot more complicated. Life in America seemed simple because of all of the technologies but the simpler we try to make things, the more complex they get. I guess life anywhere can be easier and harder in different ways. It reminds me of this quote from the gods must be crazy. “Only 600 miles to the south, there's a vast city. And here you find civilized man. Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment; instead, he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery, and he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But somehow he didn't know where to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier, the more complicated he made it. So now his children are sentenced ...

1/24/2012 Last night I was in my latrine relieving myself. It was completely dark in my little outhouse besides my head lamp. I’m squatting there staring at the floor when I hear a rustle coming from the latrine hole. I look down and shine my light at the hole and a bat flies up at my nether regions! Aaahh How did a bad get into my latrine?! It sucks because it lives there now and I have no way of getting it out. Another volunteer told me that you’re not a true Burkina volunteer until a bat flies at your crotch from a latrine hole, so I guess I’m official now. 

1/18/2012 Most of the women in Burkina Faso breastfeed their children (which is great). But at what age do you think we should start weaning our children off of the teat? A lot of the time the women will stop breastfeeding when they have another kid and that child needs the milk. Today I saw this older child breastfeeding. I’m really bad at guessing the ages of children but this kid could walk and talk. When she was done with one breast she tucked in back into her mom’s shirt and pulls out the other one. It was actually pretty funny to watch because the mother was having a full blown conversation with the women around her while this was happening. I don't think that that child needs breast milk anymore. As I stated before, I live in a mostly Muslim village so I rarely drink any type of alcoholic beverage at site. My Major (head nurse at local clinic) is Muslim as well and I thought that he didn’t drink. He invited me out for dinner with his friends one evening and usually wh...