Only in West Africa - Part I

While living in Burkina Faso, I got myself into several situations that could really only happen in West Africa. Though strange, awful, and sometimes painful at the time, I look back on these moments with a fondness only hardship can foster.

My first unique West African moment occurred when I was moving into my home at my permanent site in Burkina. I was greeted by my village on a rainy day in September as I excitedly unloaded my bags from the car, readying myself for service. After the celebrations took place, I entered my new digs and began setting up my sleeping area, only to realize the bag that held my bug net was missing.

The one thing reinforced over and over again by the medical team, and something volunteers learned the hard way over and over, was that we always wanted to sleep under a bed net. Not just because of mosquitos and malaria, but also because there are several nasty creepy crawlers that are simply better to avoid with a little bit of netting.

I was lucky enough to arrange a bug net drop off by one of the other volunteers who still needed to be taken to his site (and to these volunteers I will be forever thankful). I wrangled with the locally purchased net that night to set it up properly around my sleeping area (a thin mattress pad on the ground). As I was doing this, a couple realities of living in Burkina came together in a painful moment.

First off, it was farming season, which meant there was a ton of pollen in the air, and my allergies were insane. My eyes itched like hell, and I found myself rubbing them every ten minutes or so for relief. Secondly, the bug nets distributed in Burkina are heavily treated with long lasting insecticides so the nets don’t just protect a person from pests at night, but simultaneously reduce the insect population as well. After handling this bug net for ten minutes, and without thinking, I brought my hands to my eyes to itch them, and about two minutes later was struck with a terrible burning sensation in and around my eyeballs.

My eyes started tearing up and profusely crying out the insecticide I had just put on my eyes. But that did nothing to alleviate the problem as this was long lasting insecticide and isn’t simply washed away by saline solution. So all the skin on my cheeks started burning too. I took a bar of soap with water to my face and scrubbed it as best I could, only remembering afterwards that the natural soap I was using wouldn’t wash the chemicals away. After several attempts with different soaps, I finally started washing my face with detergent, and only then did my eyes stop burning. You will be happy to know I didn’t touch my eyes for the rest of my service, and that probably helped me avoid pink eye, but I did have minor chemical burns around my eyes for the few days after this incident. Only in Burkina.