Happy Birthday

I heard on the radio that Bob Dylan turned 66 today. I can't say how important I think he is, so listen sometime to a song titled "Song to Woody." It's off of his first album, and is an ode to one of his greatest influences, Woody Guthrie. It's annealed with themes that later made him famous, and, as when reading Hemingway, you get the sense that its writing is continuously apical, even when trudging through our ills.

p.s. My favorite song is called "Girl of the North Country." Check it out sometime as well if you have the time.

ado and adieu

Clay LaPoint, PCT
S/c Corps de la Paix
01 B.P. 6031
Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso

Hey everyone, this will be my address (or at least the place I receive mail) during the three months of training that precedes my work. Remember that mail takes a bit of time both ways, so don't be worried if your mailbox is short a letter the week after you send one; it will take 3 to 4 weeks each way. I'll make another blog before I leave explaining the best way to send letters and packages, but as far as I know DHL is the best way to send essential documents. Also, don't send any money or valuable items, as those have a tendency to get stolen. That's the wonderful thing about letters - they will be priceless to me but worthless to someone else. On the first page, please number each letter so that I'll know if I miss one. That way you won't think I'm insensitive for failing to ask about your broken car or hated job. Also regarding communication, I just talked with someone already in Burkina who told me that, during training, I'll have access to the internet at 3 or 4 internet cafes around the city, excluding Sundays. And after my first three months of training, there will be internet cafes in my region that I'll be able to visit 3 or 4 times a month. I really can't wait to hear from you all through email, letter, or the occasional phone call. It will make everything less irremeable.

My general timeframe:
June 3rd - 5th will be spent in Philadelphia, meeting with other volunteers.
June 6th - August or September will be spent in Ouahigouya (I have no idea how to pronounce it) where I'll do pre-service training.
And from fall of this year to September of 2009, I'll be working in my region. What will I be doing, you ask?

My work:
Volunteers report twice as many boys in their classrooms as girls in Burkina Faso. Talented female students are often dissuaded from areas of interest, and the growing number of school-age children puts a heavy strain on the tenuous educational system. I'll be working with communities to increase attendance rates, improve the quality of teaching, and increase the number of teachers. I'll be able to tell you more about this once I actually leave the state of Texas, but I'm excited about the job, and it's one of the reasons I decided all the way back in January to wait a few extra months. Also, I've been told there are plenty of secondary projects I can get involved with, including: HIV/AIDS prevention, malaria education, small business projects (including starting savings/credit groups), and many more.

Living:
I'll obviously send pictures of my maisonette (thanks Santa, Mom, and Dad for the camera), but I expect to live in, "a modest house constructed from mud bricks or cement blocks with a tin or thatched roof" (taken from one of my assignment pamphlets). I'll send lots of info once I have some. With food I'm once again short on information. I've read that Burkina Faso produces some of the best mangoes and papayas in the world. I'll update once I'm there.

Okay, that's all that I can think of for right now. I'll write again before I leave with specific thank you's, info that I left out, and a general farewell, but for now I'd just like to say how much I appreciate what all of you have done for me. I love most of you that are reading this (I say most because I assume someone out there will "surf" over to this site and have no idea who I am, and vice-versa, and that's just weird), and I wish you all the best.

p.s. April passed by too fast this year, and with it went National Poetry Month. Here is a collection of a dozen poems from NPR. If you think you might like poetry but have never felt it to be overly inviting, take a look at a few of them. The first one by Carl Dennis is Rockwellian in its syntax but gently provoking in semantics. Also, the one about Atlantis can't be missed. And if you still feel poetry is too cold to be read as often as fiction, or biographies, or the newspaper, please Google search Billy Collins, or click here for a link to one of his audio interviews. Happy reading.

The Middle of Nowhere

Ever wondered what it's like to be there? I don't mean some Dostoyevskian alienation or Tibetan solitude, I mean, for all intents and purposes, the middle of nowhere. ThisAmericanLife has a wonderful program on an island in the middle of the Pacific that is impossible to find on a map, but which has turned up in the most unexpected places. Here it is. It is a story of desperate reality, short-sighted international politics, money-laundering, adventure, and much, much more. Let me know what you think. But be warned: I think the host is awesome, yet his voice is a bit annoying at times. Also, the follow up piece to this, about a woman on hold for months, has this woman that seems kind of.....elitist. Still though, it's another great piece. If you're bored or reading or doing dishes and you want to listen to something, this is a great program. Happy listening!

Beer

Wow I guess I'm not the only one getting excited about the cerveza. Here is a cool link from the nytimes featuring, among other things, the overcoming of the "frat party" reputation, and the disappointing beer selections at otherwise fine restaurants.

Spring

Less of a tocsin and more like right before, when the sun scrapes itself toward our locked houses and abandoned interstates, spring is here. I didn't really know it was until I noticed, pulling into the cul-de-sac this weekend, that everything green was being trimmed, prodded, pulled, and planted (often at the same time) by an army of neighbors almost forgotten to memory. Spring is here, let us rejoice! their actions said, and the moment was complete, my sleepy head shaken from its months-old comfortable spot, and in search of a new resting place.

The mountain laurel is gorgeous this year, as is this vine that has taken to our fence. I have no

idea what it is and don't remember seeing it before, but I guess it doesn't need a name for now. Ronald is getting big and adventurous. He fights with anything that moves, and uses shoulders and faces (ours) to springboard from the floor to the couch to the kitchen with no concern for our scratched ears and legs; the new LaPoint is a tattoo artist. To anyone wondering if this blog has anything to do with Africa or the Peace Corps, I say not really. I'm still leaving on June 4th for Philadelphia and June 6th for Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. I filled out my last visa applications today and will send them in tomorrow. Besides that, there's nothing more I can tell you. Burkina is a relatively, if not completely, unknown corner of the world. Googling it can probably tell you more than I can, I haven't been outside of Texas for over a year. What's that, enough with the Peace Corps talk you say? You want to see a picture of Ron? Alright alright, here he is coming out of the canoe in the backyard to look around. I went hiking last Saturday morning at Enchanted Rock, which is awesome if you've been wanting to hike. The drive is about two hours but worth it. Actually the drive itself is just as enjoyable. I saw bison, a camel, cyclists, and endless vineyards and wineries on the way to Fredericksburg. I've been getting really into beer lately, not in the sense that I pass out regularly on my parents' couch with a blanket of empty bottles over me, but in the way that it is a lot of fun tasting different beers from different places. I had a love at first taste moment with Grant at the Flying Saucer, a bar in San Antonio. It was a Maredsous 10, and I looked for it for the last month only to find out that hardly anyone can get it here in America right now. The Maredsous 6 and 8 are fully stocked everywhere I go, but the narrow space in the beer aisle where the 10 should be resting has plagued me to no end. Well that's not true, but pretty close. Anyway, my mom told me yesterday that there was something in her trunk that she couldn't carry into the house. I went out there to get it (I'm really glad that for once I didn't complain that I had to carry something, that would have been horrible), and it was an entire case of Maredsous 10! It really doesn't get any better Mom, thanks a lot. I'm thinking about trying to get a trip organized to go to a brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, if anyone has any interest in taking a roadtrip on the cheap. We could make the drive from Austin to Colorado Springs in one day, and then head up from there. Now that I think about it, I actually do have something related to Africa to share. Africa can be very expensive to get to; it makes a flight to Europe look like a southwest airlines hop from Dallas to Austin. But it doesn't have to be this way. Here's a great article from the New York Times regarding money-saving flights to Africa (in case you ever want to come visit). Also, malaria is a real concern for the people in West Africa. It destabilizes families, villages, and the entire economic system. Thankfully, a French drug company has announced that it will sell its malaria pills at no profit to Africa. Here is an article about that (in English). And one more link, this one less about Africa and more about general perspective. Try it out here, it's actually really interesting and only takes a second. Well that's all for me. I finished Arthur Miller's memoir last week at the YMCA, and it ended with a beautiful paragraph. If you've read to this point in my blog, it'll only take another twenty seconds to read this, time very well spent. It's so wonderful, especially considering it is the last paragraph of a man drifting away in his thoughts while looking back on his life.

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And so the coyotes are out there earnestly trying to arrange their lives to make more coyotes possible, not knowing that it is my forest, of course. And I am in this room from which I can sometimes look out at dusk and see them warily moving through the barren winter trees, and I am, I suppose, doing what they are doing, making myself possible and those who come after me. At such moments I do not know whose land this is that I own, or whose bed I sleep in. In the darkness out there they see my light and pause, muzzles lifted, wondering who I am and what I am doing here in this cabin under my light. I am a mystery to them until they tire of it and move on, but the truth, the first truth probably, is that we are all connected, watching one another. Even the trees.

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Hmm, looks like I ended up on winter after all (some habits aren't easily broken).

Shivers and Somnolence

Brrr it's cold today. I'm not accusing my parents of skimping insulation when the house was being built, but my room is especially chilly. One of us doesn't seem to mind though...

Ronald was happily snoozing away when I woke up. I've been giving him little bites of my tuna sandwiches lately, bread and all. He loves it. We also went on our first trip into the great outdoors yesterday. Alright, so maybe it was the backyard, but he explored like it was a jungle all the same. I kept thinking he was going for the fence the whole time, but he stayed within reach. What's that? Another picture of Ronald? Okay sure...

This crazy weather is doing a number on my allergies, which I was talking about with Robin the other day. Do you think allergy symptoms and sufferers have greatly increased since the Imperial Age? I'm willing to place my bets on yes. Another place I'm willing to place my bets is on the success of IKEA in Round Rock. That place isn't a store, it's a themepark complete with 50 cent hotdogs and 75 cent coffees (which makes it better than Six Flags, which doesn't sell a Coke for under 12.50). My mom, Katie, and I went yesterday. The great part about it is that you know you're going there just to get cheap but good looking "starting out" stuff. Because of this mindset, it escapes the accused simony of a place like Pottery Barn, where you go to get new, expensive emulations of vintage furniture. Not that I personally say that about Pottery Barn; if I were ever to buy expensive things other than comic books and video games it could very well be at Pottery Barn. Okay that's all I have to say today; this blog was mainly an excuse to post pictures of Ron. Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

113 days to Africa and counting (every day),
Clay

et une decision

First off, anytime I write in French (or any other language) I won't be writing accents. A) I have no idea how to do it on anything else than microsoft word, and B) I'm lazy - I offer any linguaphile reading this my humblest apologies. Now on to Africa. When we think of the continent, we probably think of safaris, wild animals, Swahili, and beautiful surroundings. On that note, I had the chance to choose Kenya as my new destination following the Guinea mishap. My other choice was Burkina Faso, an extremely poor and landlocked country sitting on the Sahel, a place where the night rarely brings temperatures below 90 degrees. It's important to put this in its proper context: my mind still echoes thoughts of Guinea, the beautiful coastal country filled with rainforests and waterfalls. Of course I would choose Kenya, right? Nope, I picked Burkina Faso for a few different reasons.

1) French is spoken in Burkina, as well as over 50 local languages (English is one of the languages spoken in Kenya).

2) My job description in Burkina, Girls Empowerment and Education, is a much better fit than the one offered in Kenya. The program is a relatively new one in Burkina, and I feel I'll have a better chance of doing the most good.

3) In the long run, the job is what matters most. After talking with Robin and Erin (someone I've never met but was assigned to Guinea with me), I understood this. How many days a week am I going to go on safari and take pictures of wild animals? Maybe one or two at best. How many days a week will I be going to work? Five or more. A good job is what matters most.

Every day I'm getting more and more excited about Burkina. Should I have given up on the Peace Corps and followed some other plan (like getting to grad school a little earlier)? Not really, Peace Corps is my plan, something I've wanted to do for years. I guess I could just make travel a priority throughout my life and forgo the PC, but I don't want to travel. I want to be a part of a place and expand and define my meaning of the word "home".

At any rate, I'll be around until June 4th. My sister just got a job today in San Antonio (congratulations!), and it'll be awesome helping her move in and bothering her with lots of phonecalls while she's in a professional environment. We're all sad to see Maggie leave at such a young age, but it really is too good of a job to finish middle school for. Just kidding, of course Katie's the one leaving.

If you want to find any information about Burkina Faso, just type its name into Google and you'll find all kinds of pictures and websites. Something I can tell you here is that Burkina ranks 174 out of 177 countries in the latest HDI (an index measuring life expectancy, standard of living, education, etc). Sadly, the average age expectancy is around 47 years. Sobering.

Good luck to everyone during the spring semester; I wish you the best.