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Randarkman posted:I mean if you're actually in a country that's really hot with intense sun (especially one nearer the equator where you've got proportionally more UV light) actually wearing a brimmed hat when outside isn't such a bad idea, especially if you've got light skin. Don't necessarily know if fedoras are all that suited though(some sort of wicker hat would probably be good). People give you all this advice about what to wear in the heat but in reality what you wear is a mix of whatever 'outdoor' clothing you brought with you and whatever scraps you found at "Dead Toubab" stores, which sell the all the old western clothes donated to the country. I found the advice people gave about black/long sleeve/headwrap ect was kind of meaningless because it's really only effective when it's getting really hot outside and at that point you just don't do anything in the sun anyways. The real reason you wear long sleeve shirts is because the sun feels like needles on your skin when it's pushing to 115*F. During the 'hot season', when temps would reach 110*-120* daily (hottest I ever saw on a thermometer was 125F/51C), your day looks like this: Wake up at 4am-5am, eat breakfast, go out and do whatever field work you can until around 9-9:30am. At this point the sun is cresting the treeline and all the men retreat to someone's house and sit in the shade napping/drinking tea/reading/visiting until around 4pm when the sun gets low and you can go hammer out another 2-3 hours of work before it gets dark. Meanwhile the women are up before sunrise and work all day long regardless of the heat because they're the real champions. Big Edit: The_Continental posted:Given the communal nature of a lot of towns, crime was pretty low. There are of course assholes everywhere. A guy I know was on a bus and the road was blocked by bandits. They fired some shots in the air and the had everyone get off the bus, lay down, and they robbed people. The police arrived and did nothing to de-escalate the situation, and a shoot-out ensued. I wanted to expand on this a little bit because this was also my perspective on crime until I returned to Mali to live there as a freelance journalist for a year after my service ended, then it completely changed. Crime is certainly low in the rural parts of West Africa, but the big cities are a completely different story. While crime wasn't rampant per se, it was a part of every day life and you had to take active measures to avoid it. I would say it was much less safe than pretty much any developed-world city. Here are a few crime stories. Most of us drove motorcycles to get around and we called 11 p.m. "the witching hour" which meant you either went home or committed to leaving your moto where it was for the night, because the hijackings started around midnight. The common MO for hijackers was to have 2 people on a moto, one with a gun or a bludgeoning weapon and one driving. They would drive up alongside the target moto and force them over if they had a gun. If they had a bludgeon they would usually just cream the person from behind and then the passenger/bludgeoner would recover the (now crashed) moto and drive off with it. 1) During my service we were at a bar on a major avenue in Bamako and witnessed a motorcycle hijacking right in front of us as we stood out front smoking cigarettes. This time they had a gun and had driven up next to a guy on a moto and were pointing the gun at him. The victim wasn't loving around and slowed down just enough so that he could ditch the moto, then just lept straight up, landing on his feet at a full sprint to stay upright. The moto kept going with no driver before falling over a few yards later and skidding out. The guy didn't stick around, he just ran the other direction to get away from the hijackers. Meanwhile 10 yards from us these two guys, one with what looks like a cowboy-era six shooter, pick the moto up and drive off. 2) I had a French acquaintance who was quite cocky about driving his moto at night, despite everyone repeatedly advising him not to. Well one night he was riding home at late and he was the victim of a hijacking. Thankfully his assailants were the 'bludgeoning' type and he was able to push them off him while they tried to force him over. He was able to take shelter with some guys manning a shop on a street corner, where he waited for about an hour to cool down and for the coast to clear before heading home. But the hijackers were just watching from a dark alley nearby, and this time they weren't loving around. As soon as he got back on his moto they came up behind him again and just clobbered him on the back of the head. He was pretty seriously hurt with a minor concussion from the blow and a knee injury from the crash that left him in a brace & crutches for about 2 months. He garnered little sympathy from the expat community, basically everyone just said "We told you so". 3) It was around 3-4 a.m. and I was heading home from a show in a Taxi, which I was sharing with a Malian woman. Her dropoff was first. When we get to her neighborhood she asked the driver to turn off the main drag into it. It was was most of us would consider a slum. After a few blocks the driver was visibly uncomfortable and pulled over and said he wasn't going any further and told the woman to get out. She seemed to understand and left without a fuss. We made a u-turn and as we were driving out of the area 2 guys on a moto began riding alongside the driver'a window asking where he was going. At one point the moto-driver reached out and placed a hand on the taxi's window-sill. The taxi driver very suddenly popped his door open and kicked it outwards as hard as he could, hitting the moto and causing it to careen off the road and crash in a ditch. He slammed the gas and sped away. I asked what the hell that was about and his response was pretty simple: "I am a Taxi driver. Nobody asks me where I am going. I ask where YOU are going. Those men were going to rob us." I took his phone number down and he became my main driver from then on out. Plus plenty of 'non-story' incidents. My house was broken into a few times. Muggings of westerners were fairly common if you wandered away from the front of a bar/club at night. Volunteers especially had a false sense of security when in the 'big cities' because their sites were so safe. It wasn't until I lived in the city myself that I began to understand how pervasive crime actually was. Fart Car '97 fucked around with this message at 15:34 on May 22, 2020 |
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May 22, 2020 14:50
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Fart Car '97 posted:The typical horrible western white sex tourist is very much alive and well in The Gambia I'm catchin' up with the thread, but I watched this first-hand. Very startling. You'd see some q-tip dumpy older lady walked down the beach with a strapping local, whilst on a white stallion. The locals called'em bosslady behind their backs. Heebie Jeebie material for sure.
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May 22, 2020 19:03
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Cannon_Fodder posted:I'm catchin' up with the thread, but I watched this first-hand. OP mentioned that what you describe is pretty common in Ghana/Senegal/ ect, but that's just sex tourism not unlike going to the Amsterdam. There's nothing really illegal going on there, and they aren't really hot spots for child sex tourism. The Gambia on the other hand is notorious for being a destination for Europeans to engage in child sex tourism. Child sex & slavery is more common in Senegal/Mali/Ghana/Sierra Leone/Liberia than most countries for sure, but it's usually occurring between nationals. They aren't destinations for it in the same way The Gambia is. The Gambia has just the right mix of development, economy, access, and a corrupt government that allows the worst poo poo imaginable to thrive.
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May 22, 2020 19:17
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Fart Car '97 posted:OP mentioned that what you describe is pretty common in Ghana/Senegal/ ect, but that's just sex tourism not unlike going to the Amsterdam. There's nothing really illegal going on there, and they aren't really hot spots for child sex tourism. When I said "first-hand", I meant, they walked past me and I witnessed it. Also, very creepy scenes at local resort bars. EDIT: Gambia
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May 22, 2020 20:59
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I’m a type 1 diabetic and I’ve often wondered if it’s possible to do something like this with that sort of dietary and medication requirements. Cannon_Fodder posted:I'm catchin' up with the thread, but I watched this first-hand. It’s how Stella gets her groove back.
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May 22, 2020 21:21
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Cannon_Fodder posted:When I said "first-hand", I meant, they walked past me and I witnessed it. Sorry, I guess I'm confused because it sounds like what you're saying you witnessed 'first hand' is the very common, out-in-the-open transaction where older white women travel to West Africa to sleep with young well built black men while acting as their sugar momma. I don't really care about that, everyone involved is a consenting adult. If you saw the other end, where older white men are travelling to Gambia to sleep with kids, then I'm sorry you had to see that 
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May 22, 2020 21:32
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Someone I know was lured by an online boyfriend scam. Usually they ask for airfare to visit, but the person I know had studied arabic so she flew to Mauritania to meet him. She enjoyed her trip but said the village was weird… They broke up eventually, but their online relationship went on for a while. Now I know that human slavery is still a big business in Mauritania, and it seems like no one in his family worked, despite their comfortable lifestyle. So they were either landlords or slave traders x____x Does anyone else have stories about boyfriend scams?
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May 22, 2020 23:55
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peanut posted:Someone I know was lured by an online boyfriend scam. Usually they ask for airfare to visit, but the person I know had studied arabic so she flew to Mauritania to meet him. She enjoyed her trip but said the village was weird… That sounds like less than a scam and more like a regular online relationship. Or did she call him out on it so hard he just went along with it. The ultimate reverse hustle.
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May 23, 2020 00:14
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Fart Car '97 posted:People give you all this advice about what to wear in the heat but in reality what you wear is a mix of whatever 'outdoor' clothing you brought with you and whatever scraps you found at "Dead Toubab" stores, which sell the all the old western clothes donated to the country. Just to clarify this a bit, "Toubab" is a word typically used for white foreigners, but can refer to any foreigner. "Nassara" was also common in Burkina Faso, or "Obruni" in Ghana. They aren't really meant to cause offense. A note on fashion: I got so tired of wearing the horrible "travel", and "outdoors" poo poo that I brought with me. Chacos was running a deal on their big clunky vibram sandals for Peace Corps Volunteers. They are nice sandals, but every Toubab in The Sahel is wearing them, and they are extremely unfashionable in my opinion. I bought a pair of knockoff Sperrys and wore those everywhere even though they were hot as gently caress. I had a change of "going out" clothes that I kept in a locker in the capital if we were going to nice restaurants. It was a really nice feeling to put on some decent clothes and go out to eat after a few months at site.
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May 23, 2020 02:44
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Fart Car '97 posted:Sorry, I guess I'm confused because it sounds like what you're saying you witnessed 'first hand' is the very common, out-in-the-open transaction where older white women travel to West Africa to sleep with young well built black men while acting as their sugar momma. I don't really care about that, everyone involved is a consenting adult. If you saw the other end, where older white men are travelling to Gambia to sleep with kids, then I'm sorry you had to see that To be succinct, yes.
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May 23, 2020 05:56
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The_Continental posted:
Are villagers in Burkina Faso particularly into pro wrestling? Is it just from merch ending up there or do some people actually watch WWE shows?
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May 23, 2020 06:01
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Grenrow posted:Are villagers in Burkina Faso particularly into pro wrestling? Is it just from merch ending up there or do some people actually watch WWE shows? Yeah kids and young men really love pro wrestling. They get bootleg DVDs of all the matches and watch them. Most villages have a "video club" which is basically a theater inside a mud brick building with a TV and dvd player. Lots of Van Damme, Stallone, Schwarznegger, and WWE. There was also lots of WWE apparel floating around. One of the most common questions I got asked was "is wrestling real?". Of course I responded by tearing my shirt off and shouting "YOU BET IT IS BROTHER!"
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May 23, 2020 06:35
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Did they have their own DIY movie posters? 
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May 23, 2020 10:09
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I had an enriching and delightful time reading this thread at 2am. Thank you.
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May 23, 2020 10:53
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The_Continental posted:Just to clarify this a bit, "Toubab" is a word typically used for white foreigners, but can refer to any foreigner. "Nassara" was also common in Burkina Faso, or "Obruni" in Ghana. They aren't really meant to cause offense. This could be bullshit but it's what I was told: Toubob or two-Bob was the nickname for whites because that's the price paid to the locals for selling an African into the slave trade. 2 Bobs (shillings) This, of course, is probably nonsense, but  language gets weird out there.I heard it from a Peace Corp volunteer who spoke woloof. I'm willing to bet it's more urban legend than anything.
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May 23, 2020 15:26
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Awesome thread, learned a lot! Please keep posting! 
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May 23, 2020 17:21
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Why are all your pictures so orangy and deserty when Ghana is so lush and green according to Google Maps? https://www.google.com/maps/@8.0281067,1.4331754,1606355m/data=!3m1!1e3 Or are they all in Burkina Faso?
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May 24, 2020 00:02
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Ive got some photos from Ghana ill post later. If you google maps Dori, Burkina Faso youll see the line of green where desertification is happening.
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May 24, 2020 05:50
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The_Continental posted:Ive got some photos from Ghana ill post later. If you google maps Dori, Burkina Faso youll see the line of green where desertification is happening. Too bad Thomas Sankara was ousted as he was huge on planting trees.
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May 24, 2020 06:08
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Thanks for the thread OP, it has been really illuminating. I think I've got a decent idea of the answer, but I am interested in basically how you managed to decide what to do every day? It sounds like you were basically almost entirely on your own in terms of Peace Corps people, but were you given "orders" so to speak? Did you have to come up with the whole computer club idea yourself? Were you given a plan to get it going? If a volunteer were to basically accomplish absolutely nothing during their time, how quickly would they be kicked out?
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May 24, 2020 18:14
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Did you run a budget or something? Expense reports, etc?
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May 24, 2020 18:20
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As promised here as some photos from Ghana. I have a lot less than I thought, but I really took less pictures the further I got in to my service. After about a year in, stuff that seemed novel upon arrival just became my every day, so I felt less inclined to snap photos. I also had some moral qualms about "being on safari", which I really wasn't. I visited Ghana twice during my service, from Dori to Accra was a 20-25 hour bus ride depending on a number of factors. This is Busua Beach. I know that the nearest large town, Takoradi has become more or a hub and I'm curious how much Busua has changed. It was very set away and quiet when we visited, with a small surfing culture and a few guest hostels and one larger hotel along the beach. My pants are way too big for me:  Peter's Place. About $15USD per night for 3 beds, mosquito nets, and some electric fans. Right on the beach. I asked the man who owned the place where I could buy shea butter. I wanted to bring some back for my friend who makes her own skincare products. He said not to worry and he would bring some back for me. The man showed up later that evening with a 15LB log of shea butter, wrapped in a rubbish bag. I was gracious but I couldn't accept it as it would have made a big oily mess (shea butter melts in heat). He seemed disappointed.  Bus to Ghana  International border. Everyone gets off and goes through a customs building. This can take a while.  Bus stop rules!  Here I am, drunk and very skinny, integrating with the locals. I don't know why we were BEHIND the bar, exactly. 
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May 25, 2020 01:05
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SHISHKABOB posted:Thanks for the thread OP, it has been really illuminating. This was one of the largest challenges of service. There were four sectors operating in Burkina Faso while I was there: Secondary Ed, Economic Development, Heathcare, and Girls Education. Secondary Ed was partnered with a Secondary (high) School and taught a class. These people had teaching degrees as a prerequisite and were assigned a classroom. As such, they had a fairly set schedule. Economic Development was usually partnered with a small business association, and Healthcare volunteers were assigned a local health office, staffed by local nurses. Girls Education didn't really have these assignments and was the most nebulous assignment by far. There was typically a primary school that could be partnered with, but it was really up to the volunteer how much or how little they wanted to engage with them. For the first few months following my arrival at site, much of my time was spent just figuring out how to do regular stuff. How to set up my kitchen, where to buy food, how to procure water, keep things tidy, charge my phone, do laundry, etc. Between all of this, and near constant visits from new neighbors, I was usually pretty exhausted by evening. This is part of the reason why a lot of volunteers don't really get projects up and running until their second year, and why some opt to extend their service for a 3rd year. So, in short, there weren't any "orders" just programmatic goals. It is up to the individual volunteer to determine how to approach those goals. We had a APCD (assistant peace corps director) that engaged with our sector specifically. She was meant to be a resource if things weren't progressing, and we were required to write quarterly reports about progress at site. I don't think anyone ever got "kicked out" for not getting enough done, though. Its not really a job you get fired from unless you break specific rules and get caught. As for the computer club, I was approached by the regional director for primary education. He told me "I'm gettting 15 computers from the Ministry of Education, what should I do with them?". I told him I'd set one of them up in his office for personal use and then set up a computer lab with the rest of the machines to start the computer club. "Girls Clubs" were part of the established programming for my sector, so I basically just re-tooled it to be technology focused. Poohs Packin fucked around with this message at 01:43 on May 25, 2020 |
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May 25, 2020 01:33
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Burt Sexual posted:Did you run a budget or something? Expense reports, etc? I kept a personal budget but I wasn't very good at sticking to it. I have a taste for beer and I would sometimes hit the end of the month with no money. It wasn't really a big deal because I had an American bank account sitting out there I could access at any time, plus always had rice and beans stored up. The money we received monthly for living expenses was meant to be used at our own discretion, and not for programmatic costs. If I had to come in to the capital for a meeting or seminar I would write out an expense report for the number of days (we received a per diem on these days). Some volunteers would quickly enter the 1 million CFA club. These were volunteers who were typically in incredibly rural sites that didn't have any real commercial activity (bars, restaurants, etc.) These volunteers couldn't really spend money if they tried. A typical monthly allowance for volunteers was around 235,000CFA. If you're just eating dinner with your neighbors every night, not traveling, and don't drink, you can spend next to nothing on your living expenses.
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May 25, 2020 02:04
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   This was a seminar I was a part of, outlining the Positive Deviance approach. The outfit was typical "functionnaire" attire, and appropriate for a professional office setting. PD is a unique approach to development goals that focuses on expanding already existing behaviors to solve problems. Its been used in the American Healthcare system to help reduce staph infections, and in rural parts of SE Asia to address infant nutrition. It's an incredibly flexible approach that removes some of the stigma surrounding foreign actors in development work.
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May 25, 2020 02:14
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q: How comfy are those square patterned clothes I see people wearing. drat things look like pajamas
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May 25, 2020 02:28
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Very cool thread, stories, and pictures OP. You are a better person than I am but also an inspiration 
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May 25, 2020 16:28
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Arrhythmia posted:q: How comfy are those square patterned clothes I see people wearing. drat things look like pajamas Pretty comfortable. I still prefer jeans and a t-shirt though. Some of the fabric has a sort of waxed coating on it that gives it a fashionable sheen but makes it sort of stiff and structured. It doesn't breathe well and finding a good tailor can be difficult so you end up with more billowy cuts.
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May 26, 2020 07:39
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gently caress SNEEP posted:Very cool thread, stories, and pictures OP. You are a better person than I am but also an inspiration I appreciate the gratitude but I'm really no better than anyone else. I didn't really go to W. Africa to help others, but having the opportunity was a big bonus.
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May 26, 2020 07:40
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I love your story so far, but is it possible to elaborate more about the role of the women? The work they perform, their restrictions, what would happen if a foreigner was to have sexual contact with them etc. If you want a "5" from me, you need to work for it.
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May 26, 2020 13:03
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Kidsolo posted:I love your story so far, but is it possible to elaborate more about the role of the women? The work they perform, their restrictions, what would happen if a foreigner was to have sexual contact with them etc. The roles women play in Burkina Faso are as varied as they are in the US or other "developed" countries. You'll see women in leadership roles with international NGOs, in government, etc. However, there is an issue of gender disparity the higher you move up the income ladder. This has a lot to do with access, agency, education, and language. As a white male foreigner, I don't really want to tell tales out of school. So, I'll stick to what I saw first hand at site and in my host village. Polygamy is very much alive in West Africa. My host father had 3 wives and I don't know how many children. Women's duties were typically childcare, fetching water, cleaning, preparing meals, laundry, gardening, and selling items at market. Men typically worked in the fields, and made larger financial decisions. In terms of "restrictions", I rarely met anyone who subscribed to the idea of "womens work". It was fairly widely held that girls and women could do anything. There were simply larger social barriers to some girls. Lack of access to education was a large one, and even this doesn't necessarily come from a belief that girls shouldn't go to school. The sentiment held among many fathers was that if they had 5 boys and 5 girls, and could only send 6 kids to school based on their income, they would send the boys first because they would have more opportunity as they grew older. The girls could simply marry and have a good life. And just like that the cycle continues. You did have some people, usually Peuhl, or Tourag, who lived a truly nomadic lifestyle. Typically their kids would not be in school and stricter rules would be in place. In these extremely rural societies women are essentially property. I didn't really engage with these populations on a professional basis because it just didn't seem like my place to try to convince some nomadic herder that his daughters should be in school when he didn't see the value in it. As far as foreigners having sex with women in West Africa its really just on a case by case basis. I knew plenty of volunteers that dated or slept with host country nationals. There wasn't really a stigma around it, and these women had usually attended international school, spoke some english, had been to France, etc. In other words the volunteers usually had some common ground as opposed to someone who had never been outside of their village.
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May 27, 2020 01:21
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The_Continental posted:You did have some people, usually Peuhl, or Tourag, who lived a truly nomadic lifestyle. Typically their kids would not be in school and stricter rules would be in place. In these extremely rural societies women are essentially property. I didn't really engage with these populations on a professional basis because it just didn't seem like my place to try to convince some nomadic herder that his daughters should be in school when he didn't see the value in it. Thanks for your reply. I was hoping for more insight into tribal culture, as [url] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...nds-please.html[/url] puts an opposite spin on your experience.
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May 27, 2020 10:45
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Yeah thats an interesting practice for sure but not something I ever experienced personally. The Sahel is a really vast region with heaps of different peoples and languages.
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May 27, 2020 11:39
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Really enjoying this thread! What forum is it in? Only asking because it wasn’t stickied anymore earlier today and I had no idea where to find it
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May 27, 2020 11:40
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Its right here in GBS, Keith.
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May 27, 2020 12:02
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You mentioned polygamy, I take it that is only multiple wives and not multiple husbands. Are there many men who will remain unmarried but would prefer to be married?
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May 27, 2020 12:26
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I dont think I ever encountered that as an issue. While polygamy is practiced its mostly prevalent in more rural areas. Generally, more educated city dwellers practice monogamy. In other words, its not so broadly practiced that a place could "run out of women". Its also not uncommon for people to marry folks from neighboring countries such as Mali and Niger. Girls were also married off as young as 13. So there's that.
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May 27, 2020 12:56
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Can you explain positive deviance a bit more? I'm not sure what you mean. Is this some sort of 'it's accepted that white people are non standard and do non standard things so let's use that to get non standard poo poo done that would otherwise be impossible'? Can you give us some examples?
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May 27, 2020 13:52
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Outrail posted:Can you explain positive deviance a bit more? I'm not sure what you mean. Is this some sort of 'it's accepted that white people are non standard and do non standard things so let's use that to get non standard poo poo done that would otherwise be impossible'? Can you give us some examples? PD is very far from that. Its about using community meetings, surveys, and fact finding to discover solutions already being practiced by your client (host community in this case). In this sense its not "white people" showing up with solutions but rather communities being given the agency to find their own. It also does away with experts and can be implemented by anyone familiar with the approach, though communication and research skills help. Lets say that youve got a high incidence of dysentary, leading to high infant mortality rate. One could distribute pedialyte and solve the issue. But, eventually the community would run out. Its an outside solution. So, we start doing community fact finding and we find mothers with infants who DONT (solutions and outcomes based) suffer dysentary tend to wash their hands with hot soapy water before breastfeeding. This is now a sustainable solution coming from within the community requiring next to no external resources. The goal is then to educate breastfeeding mothers and help them spread info in a way they deem effective. Its a brief summary but thats the gist.
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May 27, 2020 14:44
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Gotcha, nice
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May 27, 2020 14:58
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