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The following is another excerpt from the story of our travels to Burkina Faso. Read along as we brave the Metro in Paris, become red with African Dust in Burkina Faso, and climb rickety ladders to reach rooftops. Our intent? To learn more about Earth Roofs in the Sahel and to see for ourselves the life-changing effect of this program. If you’re reading for the first time, you can see the other entries here.

One of the biggest things that the directors of AVN stressed to us, before we embarked on this journey to see their work in Burkina Faso, was the importance of cultural sensitivity. And it’s funny, I mean, it’s something people our age in California (or British Columbia, where I grew up) probably take for granted. Of course we need to be sensitive culturally. We know that.

The funny part is how a thing that seems so obvious can actually be so difficult.

AVN really strives to work in African ways in Africa. Although the method of building first originated in Egypt, it is from the same continent as the countries they are introducing it into, and not only that, it validates the West African value for simplicity and community. Many masons working together with their hands and feet in earth can form a home, can form a business, can form a new market of opportunity. AVN stressed to us the need to keep from triggering jealousies in the community. The community is the bedrock of culture in West Africa, trumped only by the family.

But we still ran into little difficulties, here and there. It is of course a little crazy to journey in a country where you don’t speak the language. (I understand “grocery store French”, which is to say that I grew up in Western Canada, the non-French side of the country, where we don’t learn the language very well but still have everything translated on all the packages at the grocery store. If you need someone to read a menu in French, I’m your girl. If you need someone to hold a conversation with a French-speaking person, you might get embarrassed just watching me try.)

Even with a translator, things got confusing, especially at dinner tables where five different languages were being spoken.

So we had some fun moments. There was the time (in Minata’s village) when Jessie looked around and realized she had enough mints in her bag to offer one to each of the kids. They were stoked, and cleaned her out. She wasn’t expecting the swarm that came running from all different corners of the village after that, though, hoping for some of the same. She felt terrible as they stood there waiting hopefully, despite her efforts to let them know that she didn’t have any more. But she just didn’t know.

For me, the communication breakdown had its peak in Safane, the lovely village where we stayed the night after our journey to Zeikuy, Tcheriba and Oualou. It may have been that we were exhausted, but for some reason, nothing would come out right.

When we jumped out of the jeep, the hotel manager said something to each of us that sounded like a greeting, as we shook his hand. So I repeated it to him, thinking it meant something like hello. When everyone laughed, I realized that he was saying “welcome.” So thoughtful of me, to welcome him back.

The hotel and AVN headquarters in Safane is a building with many vaults, painted a refreshing shade of blue inside, and lovely and cool after a hot day. It is run by a kind man who had been let go from the church he worked for after thirty years of working there. The opportunity to run this little hotel in Safane rescued him from the predicament of being unemployed after steady work, with six kids to take care of.

We sat outside around a table, slumped a little after a long hot day of travel, and drank our Fantas in the dark. Seri asked whether we wanted to bathe after eating or before, and I started counting on my fingers. We had eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner that day so far, dinner not so long ago. “We are eating again?” I asked, and from the looks sent my way, I realized that I was being incredibly rude, complaining about an abundance of food. It is a high honor, to be fed well in Burkina Faso. No matter how not-hungry we were (we were very not-hungry) it wasn’t culturally sensitive to turn down hospitality.

It all started feeling overwhelming. The hotel manager asked someone to help Zalissa serve the food, and as no one else stood up to do it, I realized he was asking us. But how do we go about doing that? Is there a special way? Am I going to offend if I do? If I don’t? Rather than helping, it seemed like a good time to just cry. Which I did, overwhelmed and confused. I was welcoming people who were in their own home, questioning the hospitality that was being offered to us, and now being completely unhelpful. (I was also in the early stages of expecting another child, which I didn’t discover for many more weeks, and may explain the tears.)

Anyways, all this to say that cultural sensitivity is not easy. Maybe in your country it is more polite to not make your host get up to get you anything, but in another country, it is completely rude to serve yourself. You find yourself reaching for the courtesy of your own upbringing, because it is what you know. And this is where misunderstanding occurs.

For us, it made it that much more amazing to see the good that AVN is doing, in partnership with Burkinabe people. There are so many ways to blunder, and I believe that every bit of who they are is for West Africa.

It’s truly good.

One more story: that night, we all found spaces to sleep. Jessie and Cindy stayed in a room together, and I felt kind of bad having a whole big double bed to myself, so I asked if Zalissa, Secretary for AVN, wanted to share my room with me. She told me no, she was fine, understanding that I was being polite. But Minata overheard, and you may remember that Minata is a very strong woman. (VSW) She was convinced that I was lonely and afraid and needed people to stay with me.

That night, I had two roommates. Minata was bound and determined to keep me from being lonely. And seeing as she is a VSW and I was learning a little about the consideration of the country, I didn’t even protest.