Always greener

The second to last day during our trip to Burkina Faso we encountered our first group of Burkina Peace Corps volunteers. Most of them were, like us, over a year into their service, and most of them, like us, seemed to be a little antsy to be back in a country where transportation is on time and stores exist where you purchase the exact thing that you were wanting to purchase.

They, though, couldn’t understand why we could want to spend our Christmas vacation in Burkina Faso. We, after having spent a week in the country, loved it and couldn’t understand why, if you lived in a country where there was Mexican food and gas stations with coffee machines inside you would ever not want to live there. They couldn’t understand why, if you were posted in a village where you had electricity on a relatively regular basis, you would ever leave.

Things are supposed to always look better when those things are unattainable. And once you have them, you tend to not appreciate them as much. For them, it was motorcycle taxis. For us, it was cities laid out on a grid system.

Throughout the trip, we kept a list of all the things that Benin did better than Burkina Faso. It was short, but I’m sure that if a Burkina volunteer traveled to Benin and did the same thing, his or her list would be much longer. I could ask when do we learn to be happy with what we have available to us instead of wanting what we can’t have? But even after 18 months living without certain things, I still dream of the day that I’ll have them again.

If Madame wants some oranges...

One of my students was at my house today when I casually asked him where I could find some oranges tonight. He answered he knew a place and took off on my bicycle.

He returned ten minutes later empty handed. Then he remembered that one of their neighbors had an orange tree in their yard. He ran to their house.

He returned fifteen minutes later again empty handed. He then remembered his dad was in Savalou, a city south of our village not big enough to have hamburgers, but big enough to usually have fruit. He ran back to his house to have his mom call his dad to tell him to bring me some oranges.

When I first moved here, I basically had to relearn how to do everything. One thing that I’ve found to be pretty true here is the ability to find people who are willing to help you do something no matter the feasibility.

Which is how, at 19:33 this evening, I found myself with a bag of enough oranges for the next three days.