Sunday, January 23, 2011
New Website
We have a new website here in Burkina: www.pcburkina.org. I'm the ICT committee representative for Girls Empowerment and Education (GEE), and although I can't really take any credit for it, we're doing some cool stuff with volunteer resources. Volunteers and our program directors have the ability to upload news about their projects, events, grant opportunities etc. Check it out!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
The first Noel...
I just passed a major milestone: my first Christmas away from home. Although I was anticipating the worst (locking my windows and doors, drowning my sorrows with filtered water and playing the Glee Christmas album on my ipod) it actually wasn’t a bad couple of days. Two of my closest volunteer neighbors were able to spend the holiday with me in Navielgane and it was definitely a Christmas I’ll never forget.
Hailey and Austin came in on the evening of the 24th – Hailey bearing the boxed wine we’d purchased the day before, Austin toting a chicken and a guinea hen. We were definitely at no shortage for livestock since around 7 that night my tutor shoed up with yet another chicken. Christmas day, after a breakfast of care package blueberry pancakes (thanks to Austin’s parents) we attended a four hour long (no that’s not a typo) church service held almost entirely in Dagara. We filled the rest of the day with a series of unconventional, yet delicious meals (including care package stuffing, homemade tortillas, and of course the boxed wine), puzzles, and naps. I’m still in total denial that the holiday even happened, or that time continues to pass in the U.S. in my apsence, but if I have to have holidays without my family, I’m glad I have other volunteers to share them with. And the Burkinabe too of course.
New years was spent with my neighbors and a few other people in village. Holidays here are starting to look the same when celebrated with Burkinabe: lots of chicken, pasta, and Dolo. I didn’t make it to midnight on NYE, but the real celebration here is on the first.
In a couple of weeks I’m headed o my final round of training. In December was a week of language: I had an awesome trip to see Burkina’s one and only tourist attraction- Banfora falls. Now, its off to more technical training. I’ll be spending a week in my old training site and then another in Ouaga. I’m really looking forward to this training (IST) because it means that I’ll be able to start projects when I return to Navielgane, YAY!
This past week I had a meeting with a few members of the CVD. The actual meaning of CVD escapes me as I write this but it’s basically the equivalent of the village council. I wanted to ask them what were, in their minds, the most important things for me to do or their village. It was good to hear their perspective prior to training, so that now I have some things to research, gather materials on, etc. while I have access to them in Ouaga. It was definitely one of the most productive feeling days I’ve had in village in a while.
Not much else to report on this end. I’ve received a couple of really awesome care packages in the past few weeks, so I’ll end this post by saying thank you thank you thank you to: Mom and Dad, Erin, Tim and Chris, Grammy, Pilo and John, Sam, Uncle Joe, and all the aunties! Your support means the world to me and I’m so lucky to have family and friends like you back home. Love and miss you all!
Hailey and Austin came in on the evening of the 24th – Hailey bearing the boxed wine we’d purchased the day before, Austin toting a chicken and a guinea hen. We were definitely at no shortage for livestock since around 7 that night my tutor shoed up with yet another chicken. Christmas day, after a breakfast of care package blueberry pancakes (thanks to Austin’s parents) we attended a four hour long (no that’s not a typo) church service held almost entirely in Dagara. We filled the rest of the day with a series of unconventional, yet delicious meals (including care package stuffing, homemade tortillas, and of course the boxed wine), puzzles, and naps. I’m still in total denial that the holiday even happened, or that time continues to pass in the U.S. in my apsence, but if I have to have holidays without my family, I’m glad I have other volunteers to share them with. And the Burkinabe too of course.
New years was spent with my neighbors and a few other people in village. Holidays here are starting to look the same when celebrated with Burkinabe: lots of chicken, pasta, and Dolo. I didn’t make it to midnight on NYE, but the real celebration here is on the first.
In a couple of weeks I’m headed o my final round of training. In December was a week of language: I had an awesome trip to see Burkina’s one and only tourist attraction- Banfora falls. Now, its off to more technical training. I’ll be spending a week in my old training site and then another in Ouaga. I’m really looking forward to this training (IST) because it means that I’ll be able to start projects when I return to Navielgane, YAY!
This past week I had a meeting with a few members of the CVD. The actual meaning of CVD escapes me as I write this but it’s basically the equivalent of the village council. I wanted to ask them what were, in their minds, the most important things for me to do or their village. It was good to hear their perspective prior to training, so that now I have some things to research, gather materials on, etc. while I have access to them in Ouaga. It was definitely one of the most productive feeling days I’ve had in village in a while.
Not much else to report on this end. I’ve received a couple of really awesome care packages in the past few weeks, so I’ll end this post by saying thank you thank you thank you to: Mom and Dad, Erin, Tim and Chris, Grammy, Pilo and John, Sam, Uncle Joe, and all the aunties! Your support means the world to me and I’m so lucky to have family and friends like you back home. Love and miss you all!
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Greetings from Bobo
Happy independence day! Although it's still hot here and I feel like it should perpetually be summer in the U.S. as well, I know it's not July 4th. I am currently in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina's second biggest city (I think), and am returning to village today after over a week here. It's been strange being gone from Navielgane for so long, but the week has been busy and fun with more than twenty five of my closest friends living in a 3 bedroom house celebrating Burkina's 50th anniversary of independence.
I arrived here on Thursday the 2nd after a long, hot, five hour bush taxi ride. I have never been to Bobo before and didn't exactly do my research in terms of transportation here. I had heard that I could take a bus around 8 or so in the morning straight from my village so I was out on the highway nice and early that morning. I'm no stranger to catching busses from the paved road that cuts through the middle of my village, however, each time I get a little nervous the busses won't stop, I'll get on the wrong bus, or something of that nature. Every time I gratefully accept help from one of the many villagers having coffee etc. at the kiosk near the road. This time, however, I got peer pressured to take a bush taxi. Not awesome. I was warned by another volunteer that this was risky, as what should be a 2 hour trip frequently turns into 5 or even 8 hours in a van. Because of this I was looking forward to taking a nice comfy bus from a company I use every time I go into Ouaga. But like I said, peer pressure. A teenager in my village was on his way to Bobo, and perfectly content with taking a bush taxi himself, I was talked into taking it as well. As I feared, we were held up several times along the way and I didn't get in to Bobo until about 1 in the afternoon. Luckily, Keith was waiting at the Peace Corps "office" with a diet coke in hand for me :-)
We didn't all descend on Bobo just to celebrate the parade, it was a pretty productive trip as well. The trainer for the Small Enterprise Development (SED) sector in Peace Corps Burkina organized a gardening formation (I don't know if that makes sense in english) for some volunteers and organizations in the area. Wednesday and Thursday a group of people spent the day with a group of inmates learning gardening techniques and brushing up on their Dioula skills. Friday and Saturday, another group (including me this time) went to an organization called REV+ to do the same. The organization works with HIV and AIDS positive members of the community by teaching them certain skills (including gardening) for generating income and nutrition education among other things. I really enjoyed learning the things I would need to start up a community garden (or even one in my own courtyard) to bring in revenue for my primary school (or just fresh veggies for myself). At the end of the two days we donated tools to the organization to continue the garden on their property.
On the agenda for the weekend was also a celebration for International Volunteer Day. Unfortunately, a mix up at the printers led the government of Burkina Faso to leave this off the programme for the events of the week (from what I understand) and the event was just cancelled all together. In the end we all got t-shirts for the event that never happend and I"m not quite sure what we actually were scheduled to do in the first place, so I didn't mind the free time on Sunday.
Next up was parade practice which lasted Monday through Thursday for about 5 hours each morning. Basically this consisted of all of us standing around, playing cards, eating, applying sunscreen etc, until about 11 when we would practice marching the route of the independence day parade, and then go home. I've never been in a parade before, but they were pretty serious about everyone marching with the same foot, swinging their arms, etc. Luckily, the gendarms who were assigned to watch our group had a good sense of humor (and weren't to hard to look at either). Saturday was the actual day of the parade, and while it was a long day of standing around, it was pretty cool to march past tons of Burkinabe changing "Obama" or "USA" as we walked by. I feel pretty special to be able to say I was one of 25 Americans to march in the 50th anniversary parade of Burkina Faso's independence, kind of cool right? We all wore traditional completes made out of the 50th anniversary pagnes, and although I felt a little toolish at times, I think we all looked pretty great. Pictures to come soon hopefully!
So now the week is over and I'm headed back to village for a short 2 days. After that it's of to the first of two In-service Trainings (IST). I"ll be spending the week with a small group of volunteers to work on language training. Unfortunately I'm the only volunteer from my training group or "stage" that is currently learning Dagara, so I"m going to join some others learning Dioula which is also sometimes used in my site. I think it will be helpful because many of the fuctionairres in my village speak it as well, and it is more widely spread throughout Burkina than Dagara.
All in all the week was a success. ALthough it wasn't exactly luxiourious having 25+ crammed into a house all week, (but of course luxury to me these days includes anything better than a thermarest to sleep on and a diet of rice, so I was living like a queen all week), I really enjoyed getting to see many of my closest volunteer friends as well as learn a few things that I think I'll be able to implement at site. Until next time!
I arrived here on Thursday the 2nd after a long, hot, five hour bush taxi ride. I have never been to Bobo before and didn't exactly do my research in terms of transportation here. I had heard that I could take a bus around 8 or so in the morning straight from my village so I was out on the highway nice and early that morning. I'm no stranger to catching busses from the paved road that cuts through the middle of my village, however, each time I get a little nervous the busses won't stop, I'll get on the wrong bus, or something of that nature. Every time I gratefully accept help from one of the many villagers having coffee etc. at the kiosk near the road. This time, however, I got peer pressured to take a bush taxi. Not awesome. I was warned by another volunteer that this was risky, as what should be a 2 hour trip frequently turns into 5 or even 8 hours in a van. Because of this I was looking forward to taking a nice comfy bus from a company I use every time I go into Ouaga. But like I said, peer pressure. A teenager in my village was on his way to Bobo, and perfectly content with taking a bush taxi himself, I was talked into taking it as well. As I feared, we were held up several times along the way and I didn't get in to Bobo until about 1 in the afternoon. Luckily, Keith was waiting at the Peace Corps "office" with a diet coke in hand for me :-)
We didn't all descend on Bobo just to celebrate the parade, it was a pretty productive trip as well. The trainer for the Small Enterprise Development (SED) sector in Peace Corps Burkina organized a gardening formation (I don't know if that makes sense in english) for some volunteers and organizations in the area. Wednesday and Thursday a group of people spent the day with a group of inmates learning gardening techniques and brushing up on their Dioula skills. Friday and Saturday, another group (including me this time) went to an organization called REV+ to do the same. The organization works with HIV and AIDS positive members of the community by teaching them certain skills (including gardening) for generating income and nutrition education among other things. I really enjoyed learning the things I would need to start up a community garden (or even one in my own courtyard) to bring in revenue for my primary school (or just fresh veggies for myself). At the end of the two days we donated tools to the organization to continue the garden on their property.
On the agenda for the weekend was also a celebration for International Volunteer Day. Unfortunately, a mix up at the printers led the government of Burkina Faso to leave this off the programme for the events of the week (from what I understand) and the event was just cancelled all together. In the end we all got t-shirts for the event that never happend and I"m not quite sure what we actually were scheduled to do in the first place, so I didn't mind the free time on Sunday.
Next up was parade practice which lasted Monday through Thursday for about 5 hours each morning. Basically this consisted of all of us standing around, playing cards, eating, applying sunscreen etc, until about 11 when we would practice marching the route of the independence day parade, and then go home. I've never been in a parade before, but they were pretty serious about everyone marching with the same foot, swinging their arms, etc. Luckily, the gendarms who were assigned to watch our group had a good sense of humor (and weren't to hard to look at either). Saturday was the actual day of the parade, and while it was a long day of standing around, it was pretty cool to march past tons of Burkinabe changing "Obama" or "USA" as we walked by. I feel pretty special to be able to say I was one of 25 Americans to march in the 50th anniversary parade of Burkina Faso's independence, kind of cool right? We all wore traditional completes made out of the 50th anniversary pagnes, and although I felt a little toolish at times, I think we all looked pretty great. Pictures to come soon hopefully!
So now the week is over and I'm headed back to village for a short 2 days. After that it's of to the first of two In-service Trainings (IST). I"ll be spending the week with a small group of volunteers to work on language training. Unfortunately I'm the only volunteer from my training group or "stage" that is currently learning Dagara, so I"m going to join some others learning Dioula which is also sometimes used in my site. I think it will be helpful because many of the fuctionairres in my village speak it as well, and it is more widely spread throughout Burkina than Dagara.
All in all the week was a success. ALthough it wasn't exactly luxiourious having 25+ crammed into a house all week, (but of course luxury to me these days includes anything better than a thermarest to sleep on and a diet of rice, so I was living like a queen all week), I really enjoyed getting to see many of my closest volunteer friends as well as learn a few things that I think I'll be able to implement at site. Until next time!
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