It’s been a few weeks since I last posted so hopefully I can think of something interesting to say. Our time in Ouaga is up, but the plumbing and wifi were nice while they lasted. The past few weeks have been pretty much non-stop training from 8-5 every day: we spend several hours a day working on language (I think I’m getting a litttttle better) and then have other sessions about health, safety, and GEE related activities. It has been long and exhausting but the bucket bath when I get home usually makes for a nice end to the day.
Two weekends ago the GEE group got a little break from training to go on ‘demystification.’ We were split up into groups of three or four and traveled to a current volunteer’s site for three nights. The town I visited was a provincial capital and most of Friday was spent in transit. We left Ouaga around 7 on Friday and took a bus halfway to our village. Apparently we were pretty spoiled because our bus was complete with upholstered seats and we were lucky enough to have some Chinese action flicks dubbed in French for our entertainment. We stopped for lunch before continuing the rest of the way on a bush taxi. Bush taxis are a primary mode of transportation here in Burkina and the staff and volunteers did a good job of talking them up beforehand. I unfortunately missed the day of training where a bunch of the LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitator) presented a skit (complete with a live goat) about the conditions of a bush taxi. The gist was that there would be upwards of 20 people in a van, the taxi has a high likelihood of breaking down, we would probably share it with some type of animal, and people just might hand us their children to hold for the entirety of the ride. My first bush taxi experience wasn’t half as bad as I was expecting. I was with a group of nine people who piled in first, but before leaving the town, what was probably meant to be a 15 passenger van was carrying 22 people. I was a little disappointed when there wasn’t any form of livestock on board (no comparison to another group who had upwards of 20 goats on top of their van) but we did have a couple of men standing on the rear bumper, hanging of the back of the van for the entirety of the two hour drive. By the time we finally arrived at the volunteer’s site, it was probably about 3 in the afternoon.
We stayed with a volunteer, Joanna, who lived in a small house that was part of a family compound. She had two rooms in a house to herself and electricity (!) that she shared with the other houses in her courtyard. We spent the weekend visiting her school, library, and meeting various people she worked with. Oh, and did I mention an LCF came with us? So of course we had our 2 hours of language each day. It was quite a relaxing weekend and a much needed break from training. The idea behind demyst was to be able to see the type of work other volunteers are doing, see how they live on a daily basis, and give us a better idea of what we are looking for in a site (running water and wifi?). Monday we returned to Ouaga before continuing to our new training city. There was a minor miscommunication where we thought we would be staying the night there before moving on, but we were able to make an afternoon bus and met all of the other trainees here that night.
Last Tuesday it was back to the 8-5 grind of training. That Friday we got new host families (yay!). This time around they paired everyone up – apparently it’s a bit difficult to find 80 families willing to host trainees in a matter of a week, strange. Now I’m living in a family ‘compound’ with another Secondary Education volunteer. We have our own ‘house’ which consists of two rooms: one sitting area and our bedroom. The house is complete with an indoor shower (corner of the room with a hole in the wall) and electricity. The family owns a small restaurant/kiosk that they run out of the front of the house. I’m still not entirely sure the how the family is structured, but I do know who the mom and dad are and there is one sister who eats with my roommate Roxanne and me every night. Although I don’t interact with them as frequently as I did with my family in Ouhigouya, they have been really accommodating and welcoming. I do have to report, that due to my lack of French skills and fear of being an inconvenience, I have given into eating meat. I had my first chicken wing last week and it wasn’t half bad. Thankfully I was in the shower when my family caught and slaughtered the chicken in our courtyard – I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet.
As far as ‘work’ goes, we started girls/girls and boys clubs last week with the students in “model school.” Model school was set up so the SE trainees get a chance to practice teaching, so a ton of kids basically signed up for summer school and a lot of them have been awesome enough to sign up to come in on Saturdays to guinea pigs for the GEE trainees. I’m working with two other girls with a group of troisième kids (basically ninth graders) in a small theater club. The first two meetings went really well and while there have been the expected snags due to communication difficulties, the kids seem to really be opening up and enjoying themselves. You don’t have to be in this country for more than a day to realize that just about every Burkinabe is a natural born actor.
In other news: I went to the tailor for the first time last week to have a couple of skirts made and they turned out surprisingly well. The way people buy most of their ‘traditional’ clothes here is they go to the marche and buy pagnes (rectangles of fabric), take them to a tailor, and have something custom made. A couple of people’s host families have gone crazy taking them to the tailor or having tailors come to their houses. My experience was part of a French lesson to basically see if I was capable of completing the entire transaction – and I did it!
There’s not too much else to report. I’ve been pretty healthy so far, which is more than a lot of people can say. I missed one day of training which I’m pretty sure had something to do with eating vegetables in a restaurant that weren’t bleached to my tummy’s liking. I think my body is starting to acclimate to the food and weather slowly but surely. There have been a few nights that I’ve even had to pull up a sheet over myself in my sleep which I thought would never happen. Luckily we are in a big enough town that we have easy access to internet cafes, can get cold drinks whenever we want, and have decent selection of fruits and veggies.
I guess that’s all I’ve got for now. I have been getting mail (yay!) so the address I have posted does work. Thanks to Al and Tines I have the beginnings of a small pantry, and art for my walls in the form of post cards provided by Ouisie. Hope everyone is doing well at home, I certainly miss everyone like crazy and will try to be better about updating on a more regular basis. Until next time!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Back to Ouaga
My last few days have been a littttle eventful here in Burkina. To fully explain what is going on here, it’s easier to give a little insight into what was supposed to happen…
So the last time I posted I was in Ouaga. I spent two nights there, getting oriented to training and all that. Friday came and we all took a bus to Ouahigouya. There, we spent three nights in a hotel, meanwhile getting to know the area, getting our bikes, and preparing for ‘adoption’ into our host families. On Monday, we had a ceremony where we all met our host parents and went back to their houses with them. My host family was small in comparison to many others: I had a host dad named Richard, a mom named Florentine, a brother named Brice and a one and a half year old sister. They were really nice, Catholic, very patient with my lack of French language skills, very accommodating to my veg needs (no I haven’t eaten meat yet).
I spent three nights in my host family, and was really beginning to become accustomed to the daily routine of 6am wake up calls, a full day of training, and returning home to eat dinner at home and spend some time watching world cup games or my brother teaching me French before retiring to the lovely oven of a room that they were providing me. This was supposed to continue for the full 9 weeks of training.
On Thursday, the last block in our training schedule was reserved for a “community meeting” where all the sectors (GEE, Heath, Secondary Education, etc.) were going to get together to discuss the highs and lows of the week, our plans for a fourth of July party (yay America) and a few other things. We started the meeting of and were told that our security officer had an announcement to make and would be joining the meeting shortly. Congo, the security officer entered the meeting a short while later to tell us that the Country Director had received notice of a kidnapping threat in our town of Ouahigouya. The ‘warden message’ wasn’t read to us at the time, but we were told that we would be spending a night in a hotel in Ouhigouya and not returning to our host families that evening. The health volunteers, who were living in families in villages surrounding the town, were told that they would be escorted to their villages at that time to pack up all of their belongings before returning to spend the night with the rest of us in a hotel.
Once everyone was finally together and somewhat settled throughout two hotels, Congo then came around to read us the warden message which went a little something like this:
"The U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou is issuing this Warden Message to update U.S. citizens on security concerns in the vicinity of Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso.
The U.S. Embassy has information that a group associated with Al Qa’ida in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) plans to kidnap an unidentified U.S. citizen in the vicinity of Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso. If the group is unable to locate a suitable U.S. citizen in the area, it intends to find another westerner to kidnap. The U.S. Embassy has declared the city of Ouahigouya and surroundings off limits to official U.S. government travelers unless prior authorization for such travel is expressly given. U.S. citizens are strongly urged to exercise caution and avoid unnecessary travel to this region.
This information is distinct from and in addition to the Warden Messages issued on June 5 and June 7, 2010, regarding the northern border regions of Burkina Faso."
We were told that we would be traveling to Ouagadougou in the morning, that the Peace Corps would be going around to all of our houses to collect our belongings, and we would most likely be staying in the capital for two weeks. Friday we arrived back in Ouaga, and yesterday our things finally met us here.
This chain of events was somewhat disheartening and a little frustrating to a lot of us. While we only had a few days to spend with our host families, there were volunteers in the region that were forced to pack up their things after almost two years in their villages. As of now, our training is supposed to start back up tomorrow and we will stay here until new host families can hopefully be arranged somewhere else in the country. Our director seems optimistic that training will remain on schedule and things will go back to ‘normal' as soon as possible. The things I’m certainly not complaining about right now are the WiFi, air conditioning, and plumbing- however it is going to be difficult to readjust to training in a whole new location, and without the total immersion that our homestay experiences were giving us.
Despite all the chaos, we had a nice 4th of July celebration today. We were able to rent out the pool at our new training site. We spent all days swimming (yay), eating hamburgers, and doing other American things. I think everyone is still in pretty good spirits and hopefully this little hiccup won’t effect our swear in date too drastically.
I received my first letter this week (thanks mom!) so I know it is possible to get mail, yay! Hope all is well in the land of the free and that everyone is having a fabulous holiday. I miss and love you all!
So the last time I posted I was in Ouaga. I spent two nights there, getting oriented to training and all that. Friday came and we all took a bus to Ouahigouya. There, we spent three nights in a hotel, meanwhile getting to know the area, getting our bikes, and preparing for ‘adoption’ into our host families. On Monday, we had a ceremony where we all met our host parents and went back to their houses with them. My host family was small in comparison to many others: I had a host dad named Richard, a mom named Florentine, a brother named Brice and a one and a half year old sister. They were really nice, Catholic, very patient with my lack of French language skills, very accommodating to my veg needs (no I haven’t eaten meat yet).
I spent three nights in my host family, and was really beginning to become accustomed to the daily routine of 6am wake up calls, a full day of training, and returning home to eat dinner at home and spend some time watching world cup games or my brother teaching me French before retiring to the lovely oven of a room that they were providing me. This was supposed to continue for the full 9 weeks of training.
On Thursday, the last block in our training schedule was reserved for a “community meeting” where all the sectors (GEE, Heath, Secondary Education, etc.) were going to get together to discuss the highs and lows of the week, our plans for a fourth of July party (yay America) and a few other things. We started the meeting of and were told that our security officer had an announcement to make and would be joining the meeting shortly. Congo, the security officer entered the meeting a short while later to tell us that the Country Director had received notice of a kidnapping threat in our town of Ouahigouya. The ‘warden message’ wasn’t read to us at the time, but we were told that we would be spending a night in a hotel in Ouhigouya and not returning to our host families that evening. The health volunteers, who were living in families in villages surrounding the town, were told that they would be escorted to their villages at that time to pack up all of their belongings before returning to spend the night with the rest of us in a hotel.
Once everyone was finally together and somewhat settled throughout two hotels, Congo then came around to read us the warden message which went a little something like this:
"The U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou is issuing this Warden Message to update U.S. citizens on security concerns in the vicinity of Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso.
The U.S. Embassy has information that a group associated with Al Qa’ida in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) plans to kidnap an unidentified U.S. citizen in the vicinity of Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso. If the group is unable to locate a suitable U.S. citizen in the area, it intends to find another westerner to kidnap. The U.S. Embassy has declared the city of Ouahigouya and surroundings off limits to official U.S. government travelers unless prior authorization for such travel is expressly given. U.S. citizens are strongly urged to exercise caution and avoid unnecessary travel to this region.
This information is distinct from and in addition to the Warden Messages issued on June 5 and June 7, 2010, regarding the northern border regions of Burkina Faso."
We were told that we would be traveling to Ouagadougou in the morning, that the Peace Corps would be going around to all of our houses to collect our belongings, and we would most likely be staying in the capital for two weeks. Friday we arrived back in Ouaga, and yesterday our things finally met us here.
This chain of events was somewhat disheartening and a little frustrating to a lot of us. While we only had a few days to spend with our host families, there were volunteers in the region that were forced to pack up their things after almost two years in their villages. As of now, our training is supposed to start back up tomorrow and we will stay here until new host families can hopefully be arranged somewhere else in the country. Our director seems optimistic that training will remain on schedule and things will go back to ‘normal' as soon as possible. The things I’m certainly not complaining about right now are the WiFi, air conditioning, and plumbing- however it is going to be difficult to readjust to training in a whole new location, and without the total immersion that our homestay experiences were giving us.
Despite all the chaos, we had a nice 4th of July celebration today. We were able to rent out the pool at our new training site. We spent all days swimming (yay), eating hamburgers, and doing other American things. I think everyone is still in pretty good spirits and hopefully this little hiccup won’t effect our swear in date too drastically.
I received my first letter this week (thanks mom!) so I know it is possible to get mail, yay! Hope all is well in the land of the free and that everyone is having a fabulous holiday. I miss and love you all!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Philly, New York, Paris, Ouagadougou
I'm here! After a quick 4 hour bus ride to JFK, a 7.5 hour flight to Paris, a few hour layover, and a 5 hour flight to Ouagadougou, I'm in the hotel in Ouaga. The past couple of days have certainly been a whirlwind to say the least. There are over 50 volunteers that arrived in Philadelphia for staging on Monday, and 20 or so that left a little earlier that we'll get to meet soon. Staging in Philly was basically 5 hours of logistical information, a little cultural training, yellow fever shots (I already had mine, woo!) and then free time to tie up loose ends, buy the last minute things we forgot, and soak up a little bit of America for the last time. I spent my time abusing the a/c and internet at our hotel and then was lucky enough to meet Carolyn for lunch right before our bus left for NYC (hi Carolyn!). Going through the airport was a little bit of a nightmare with so many people, but that was to be expected. The flights weren't too bad and after a nice nap on the floor of the Paris airport I'm feeling pretty good. Our country director Shannon, along with a few other volunteers and staff, met us in the airport and drove us to our hotel. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we not only have a/c, but free wi-fi, so I thought I'd take the time to post the boring details of my travels so far. I will be here in Ouagadougou until Friday, when we will take a trip to our main training site in Ouahigouya. Tomorrow we will be meeting with our Assistant Peace Corps Directors (the people charge of our specific programs - one for Girls Education, one for Secondary Education etc.), getting all sorts of malaria meds, being tested in French (yikes), and all that good stuff. I guess thats about all I've got for now - I'm lucky the good old think pad battery has lasted me this long. I promise to post again when I have something far more interesting to say than I have tonight. Thanks to everyone who called/texted/emailed throughout my last week, it really meant a lot to me! Lots of love!
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