Happy Holidays from the BF,
Our training has finally come to an end and as of December 19th, all 32 of us who made the initial journey to Burkina Faso together swore in as volunteers! We’ve now got a few days to live and relax at our training site before we get shipped off to our sites for the next two years…
But before getting into that I’ve got to describe a little bit about what happened over the past weeks… To begin with we were able to take part in one of the biggest Islam celebrations throughout the year known as Tabaski (although probably not known with that type of spelling…) Seeing as our training site is up North where a large population of Muslims live, our entire city seemed to be out celebrating the holiday. Fortunately for us we were able to get the day off of training in order to partake in the festivities! At around 9 in the morning we headed to the ‘Place of Nations’ where hundreds of Muslims took part in the prayer. It was an incredible experience, whether or not you are Muslim, to be among hundreds of people who were praying together in unison. After the morning prayer, those of us who had Christian families decided to go on a ‘Tour de Tabaski’ to other volunteer’s houses who lived with Muslim families. Over the course of the day I think we made it to four other houses where we received plenty of sheep meat (families are required to buy a white sheep and slaughter it on this day), rice, cuscus, green beans, juice and whine. Overall it was a really unique cultural experience and all the delicious food that we got to eat definitely makes it one of my favorite Burkina holidays thus far!!
For this month of December we’ve been finishing up our language and technical courses in preparation for our move to site. Last week was somewhat of the grand finale of training and all of our counterparts (the person we’ll be more or less collaborating with on projects for the next two years) all made the trip to our training site. I’d say we were all a bit nervous to meet the person that we would be spending a majority of our time with for the next couple of years, especially with most of us not quite being fluent in French yet… And of course within the first few minutes when I was trying to ask my guy what his wife does I ended up asking him what his husband does instead...How long they’ve been married for… I’m sure he was incredibly impressed…
During this time those of us who spent training in the city were also busy packing up our rooms in our host family’s house. On December 19th, same day as our swearing in date, we were once again living on our own. It was definitely nice to have freedom and independence once again but at the same time it was hard to say goodbye to the people you’ve grown accustomed to seeing and chatting with for the past 2 months. My nails and hair will not be getting the same treatment for the next 2 years…
For the time being we’re all living at our training site together… I’d say it’s pretty similar to those days I spent at Camp WAPO, although with no camp-wide capture the flag. Instead we spend the days watching movies, replaying episodes of the Office and eating as much good food as we can before village! It’s nice to have a few days to relax and hang out together before we all leave and it’s especially nice that we’ll all be able to spend Christmas together. Our plan for that day is to open Secret Santa gifts, play a little white elephant, eat at a very nice restaurant and maybe have a little ‘no-talent’ show later in the evening. All in all seems like it’s going to be a good day, although maybe a little bit weird because it’ll probably be around 90 degrees…!
It’s definitely crazy to think that in less than a week I’ll be the only English-speaking, ‘Nasara’ for quite some distance…
Hope you are all having wonderful holidays! Enjoy that snow… Merry Christmas to you all and a very Happy New Years!!!
Much love.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Greetings from BF
First of all I’d like to start by saying Happy Holidays to everyone! It’s definitely tough spending the holidays here but I get to be thankful that I am with the other volunteers at the moment! We were all able to spend thanksgiving together, and despite the fact that I missed Grandma’s cake roll, we still had an amazing feast!!
The end of the training period is coming up fast. We only have a couple weeks left of actual training, then a down week to shop for our new houses, Christmas and then we’re shipped out to our villages the following day. It’s crazy to think that the people that we’ve been seeing everyday for over the course of our time here will soon be gone. It’s definitely a little intimidating to think that sooner than later we’ll be out on our own…
During the past few weeks though they have been cramming as much knowledge into our brains as possible. We have continued on with our French learning but have also added on a local language. My local language is Jula, which, in my opinion, is a pretty amazing sounding language. Besides from the millions of language courses we’re taking, we’re also taking classes for our SED programs, such as environmental classes, soap making, miranga trees, etc. We have even taken a couple of field trips, one was a biking one to a semi-nearby village (I think it must have been more than 10K, it felt like forever) for AIDS day and the other one was to a current volunteers sight to watch a women’s group tye-dye and make hard soap (luckily we were able to get a ride to that one).
This upcoming Monday is one of the biggest festival/celebrations in Islam as well as in Burkina Faso called Tibaski (definitely not spelled right). Those of us who live in the city and have Christian families will be doing a ‘Tour of Tibaski’ to our fellow volunteers who live in a Muslim family. We’ve been told there will be plenty of food, including the slaughtering of many white sheep, as well as music and a lot of all around merriment. I am incredibly excited to take part in this grand celebration and quite possibly even more excited that we get to miss almost a full day of classes for it!
The only other thing to report is that this morning I woke up and had to wear long sleeves and pants for a good chunk of the morning. Definitely made my day to see a man zoom by on his moto in a winter parka, thick gloves and a bright scarf wrapped around his head..!
I have a feeling the rest of the time in training is going to fly by and before I know it I’ll be living in my village… hopefully with a brand new, shiny little puppy!
Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas to everyone, Happy Birthday to the many that are coming up and congrats on graduating to those that will soon be leaving Eau Claire and elsewhere.
Much love.
First of all I’d like to start by saying Happy Holidays to everyone! It’s definitely tough spending the holidays here but I get to be thankful that I am with the other volunteers at the moment! We were all able to spend thanksgiving together, and despite the fact that I missed Grandma’s cake roll, we still had an amazing feast!!
The end of the training period is coming up fast. We only have a couple weeks left of actual training, then a down week to shop for our new houses, Christmas and then we’re shipped out to our villages the following day. It’s crazy to think that the people that we’ve been seeing everyday for over the course of our time here will soon be gone. It’s definitely a little intimidating to think that sooner than later we’ll be out on our own…
During the past few weeks though they have been cramming as much knowledge into our brains as possible. We have continued on with our French learning but have also added on a local language. My local language is Jula, which, in my opinion, is a pretty amazing sounding language. Besides from the millions of language courses we’re taking, we’re also taking classes for our SED programs, such as environmental classes, soap making, miranga trees, etc. We have even taken a couple of field trips, one was a biking one to a semi-nearby village (I think it must have been more than 10K, it felt like forever) for AIDS day and the other one was to a current volunteers sight to watch a women’s group tye-dye and make hard soap (luckily we were able to get a ride to that one).
This upcoming Monday is one of the biggest festival/celebrations in Islam as well as in Burkina Faso called Tibaski (definitely not spelled right). Those of us who live in the city and have Christian families will be doing a ‘Tour of Tibaski’ to our fellow volunteers who live in a Muslim family. We’ve been told there will be plenty of food, including the slaughtering of many white sheep, as well as music and a lot of all around merriment. I am incredibly excited to take part in this grand celebration and quite possibly even more excited that we get to miss almost a full day of classes for it!
The only other thing to report is that this morning I woke up and had to wear long sleeves and pants for a good chunk of the morning. Definitely made my day to see a man zoom by on his moto in a winter parka, thick gloves and a bright scarf wrapped around his head..!
I have a feeling the rest of the time in training is going to fly by and before I know it I’ll be living in my village… hopefully with a brand new, shiny little puppy!
Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Merry Christmas to everyone, Happy Birthday to the many that are coming up and congrats on graduating to those that will soon be leaving Eau Claire and elsewhere.
Much love.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Greetings from the BF,
I’ve gotta start out by saying thanks to everyone that sent me snail mail. I never actually thought I would get excited by snail mail, but I’m telling you, it’s the little things these days! Anyway thanks for the letters, especially from those people that were born into the world of email and internet and still decided to send me one old school style anyway (I’m going to have to give my Cale and Bess shout-out at this point…)
This week was a big week for us here at Camp Peace Corps… the week that our future sites would be revealed to us. I found out that I will be living in a fairly large town, I believe around 30,000 Burkinabe residents, and will be residing incredibly close to the Mali border. For safety reasons which Denny emailed me about, I guess I am probably not allowed to reveal the name of the town on the blog, although he has also said he will be happy to show anyone my town on the map if you’d like to get into contact with him. Huh. Anyway the site has electricity throughout most of the day from 7a.m until 11p.m. which is crazy! It also has three rooms in it, although I’m not really sure what all of them are for. It is cool to think that I am only 22 and live in my very own house.. Even if it is in Africa..! There was a girl that was living there before me and left some pretty nice things behind, so I guess I am not really going to be ‘roughing it’ in the African bush for the next couple of years. As disappointed as I was to not have mud and a thatched roof, I actually got over it decently fast! The only real bummer about the site is that I am the only Peace Corps Volunteer for about 100K… So I’m probably going to get a dog. And quite possibly a goat which could bring back some nice childhood memories of Snickelfrince, my old buddy I used to ride around the grandparent’s farm. If you have any suggestions on pets or names for my pets let me know!
Also this weekend a couple of us ‘city girls’ took a trip out to the villages to see our fellow trainees. Village life was awesome. Not only was the ground not littered with trash, it wasn’t as dusty and therefore we could see pretty much all the stars in the universe at night! You definitely get celebrity status in the village as well but it’s a different kind. In the village everyone waves hello to you and tries to help you carry your things, which is a nice change from the city where all they do is point, stare and yell. The people there were really welcoming and fun to be around… Not to mention how wonderful it was to sleep outside under the stars. It actually made me wish that I was going to a smaller village where, well, everybody knows your name…!
Us SED volunteers also started working on our Income Generating Activities this week. We split up into three groups and have each paired up with a local businessperson to help them come up with ways to improve their business, both through actual sales and through other ways like accounting and marketing practices. Our group proposed the idea of iced coffee to a vendor that we frequent and she was very open to our suggestions. She sold our iced coffee one day and the next day came up with her own idea to sell iced chocolate milk and tea. We were definitely ecstatic not only because she was making changes to her business by introducing new ideas, but also because we got our very own Starbucks in Burkina! Not sure if she will keep selling all this stuff once her loyal American customers are gone but we can only hope! The business style here, both on the selling and consuming end, are quite a bit different from everything were used to back in the states… I think that’ll be a great subject for the next time…
Today (Sunday) was also cleaning day and I did wash my clothes again today by hand, although one of my sister was telling me the whole time that I wasn’t getting them clean… And then they made me clean my shoes as well, (brown Asics included although I kept trying to tell them that I had gotten them because they were brown so I wouldn’t have to clean them) although to their credit my shoes really do look like they’re fresh out of the box. My clothes are another story… Pretty sure they think I’m the most unclean human being on the planet! But oh well, they still like to paint my nails.
Much love.
I’ve gotta start out by saying thanks to everyone that sent me snail mail. I never actually thought I would get excited by snail mail, but I’m telling you, it’s the little things these days! Anyway thanks for the letters, especially from those people that were born into the world of email and internet and still decided to send me one old school style anyway (I’m going to have to give my Cale and Bess shout-out at this point…)
This week was a big week for us here at Camp Peace Corps… the week that our future sites would be revealed to us. I found out that I will be living in a fairly large town, I believe around 30,000 Burkinabe residents, and will be residing incredibly close to the Mali border. For safety reasons which Denny emailed me about, I guess I am probably not allowed to reveal the name of the town on the blog, although he has also said he will be happy to show anyone my town on the map if you’d like to get into contact with him. Huh. Anyway the site has electricity throughout most of the day from 7a.m until 11p.m. which is crazy! It also has three rooms in it, although I’m not really sure what all of them are for. It is cool to think that I am only 22 and live in my very own house.. Even if it is in Africa..! There was a girl that was living there before me and left some pretty nice things behind, so I guess I am not really going to be ‘roughing it’ in the African bush for the next couple of years. As disappointed as I was to not have mud and a thatched roof, I actually got over it decently fast! The only real bummer about the site is that I am the only Peace Corps Volunteer for about 100K… So I’m probably going to get a dog. And quite possibly a goat which could bring back some nice childhood memories of Snickelfrince, my old buddy I used to ride around the grandparent’s farm. If you have any suggestions on pets or names for my pets let me know!
Also this weekend a couple of us ‘city girls’ took a trip out to the villages to see our fellow trainees. Village life was awesome. Not only was the ground not littered with trash, it wasn’t as dusty and therefore we could see pretty much all the stars in the universe at night! You definitely get celebrity status in the village as well but it’s a different kind. In the village everyone waves hello to you and tries to help you carry your things, which is a nice change from the city where all they do is point, stare and yell. The people there were really welcoming and fun to be around… Not to mention how wonderful it was to sleep outside under the stars. It actually made me wish that I was going to a smaller village where, well, everybody knows your name…!
Us SED volunteers also started working on our Income Generating Activities this week. We split up into three groups and have each paired up with a local businessperson to help them come up with ways to improve their business, both through actual sales and through other ways like accounting and marketing practices. Our group proposed the idea of iced coffee to a vendor that we frequent and she was very open to our suggestions. She sold our iced coffee one day and the next day came up with her own idea to sell iced chocolate milk and tea. We were definitely ecstatic not only because she was making changes to her business by introducing new ideas, but also because we got our very own Starbucks in Burkina! Not sure if she will keep selling all this stuff once her loyal American customers are gone but we can only hope! The business style here, both on the selling and consuming end, are quite a bit different from everything were used to back in the states… I think that’ll be a great subject for the next time…
Today (Sunday) was also cleaning day and I did wash my clothes again today by hand, although one of my sister was telling me the whole time that I wasn’t getting them clean… And then they made me clean my shoes as well, (brown Asics included although I kept trying to tell them that I had gotten them because they were brown so I wouldn’t have to clean them) although to their credit my shoes really do look like they’re fresh out of the box. My clothes are another story… Pretty sure they think I’m the most unclean human being on the planet! But oh well, they still like to paint my nails.
Much love.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Greetings from Burkina Faso… a land that is basking in the glow of Obama’s win.
A few of us stayed over at our training sight, ECLA, to watch the ‘live’ television coverage of the election on Burkina’s local (and I believe only) channel. Needless to say the set looked like something out of the 60’s and there were no pretty colored charts, maps or predictions to follow. I won’t lie, I fell asleep at about 11:30pm BF time since the coverage wasn’t quite as stimulating as CNN… Anyway at about 5am BF time I woke up in time to catch the end of Obama’s acceptance speech. There were only a few of us volunteers left to watch the election but we cheered particularly loud when he talked about the people huddled around a radio listening to the results. Ours was a little fancier then a radio but I’m pretty sure he was talking about us… The next day we were celebrities around Ouahigouya and instead of being solely called ‘Nesara’ (not a clue how to spell that but pretty sure it means foreigner or whitey) and ‘les blancs’ by the small children we were called Obama by all. It was a welcome change!
To back up a bit and write some about the week beforehand…
We had our much anticipated Dymystification visits last week along with our overnight stay in the capital city. Myself and three other girls got to go and visit a Peace Corps Volunteer located in the center of the country in one of the largest city’s, Koudougou. Let’s just say that our visit ended up being a bit more like a vacation... Well I suppose to us this was as exciting of a vacation as going to Hawaii if we were living in the U.S.. But to you all it would be more like a vacation to Iowa complete with a three nights stay at the DaysInn. Our ‘vacay’ went a little something like this: picked out dresses from a catalogue that we wanted made, shopped at a local market for materials, dropped off the photo and material at a tailors to have it made, made delicious food like fruit salad and mashed potatoes (to be fair I didn‘t do any of the cooking, I mostly just ate the fruit as soon as it was cut up and put into the bowel.. Luckily we had our very own Rachel Ray with us), lounged out by the local pool, and spent the last night celebrating Halloween with costumes and a pumpkin but were safely tucked in bed by 8:30 before things got too out of hand…It was definitely nice to get away from Ouahigouya for a little while and to be able to see how a fellow volunteer lives and works.
After our visit our entire Small Enterprise Development (SED) group met up in Ouagadougou to spend a couple of nights at the transit house. Although the name implies that it is somewhat of a halfway house for recovering addicts, turns out it’s just the place that all Peace Corps volunteers around the world can stay in for a very low price… Free internet included! If that doesn’t make you want to join…. While we were in Ouaga we also had a Mexican feast cooked for us at our SED director’s house. It was probably the most amazing thing I’ve eaten yet!!
We returned back to ECLA after our little vacation/trip and it was back to classes in Ouahigouya. We’re fast approaching the mid way mark of our pre-service training and I can speak for most of the group when I say we are looking forward to the end! It seems as if everyone had a great time on our Dymst visit and cannot wait to get into our villages. Although I don’t know if us SED kids are entirely ready for the village seeing as many of us have electricity, a television and some of us lucky ones even have running water… A couple of my health volunteer friends came over to see the house and meet the fam and let me know that this life was in no way similar to village living. I will be taking a trip out to the bush next weekend to stay the night though, so I’m going to finally experience the African bush!
And as a side note, I think that language for all is improving. It seemed like so long ago that I was telling my host mother ‘I friend rice’ rather than ‘I like rice.’ Luckily for me though, there have been other large blunders within our group. I think my favorite of all the stories though has to be about one of my favorite health girls sprinkling millet (some sort of grain) all around her toilet because she thought that her family had told her to do that. They were a bit confused when she came back with the bin and no millet… Pretty soon we will begin attempting to learn a local African language so I’m sure there will be plenty more miscommunications along the way!
Not too much else on the horizon except within a week we will be learning which village will be graced with our presence! I know Denny is particularly looking forward to that seeing as he bought the worlds most detailed map of Burkina that shows every city/town/village/tribe/elephant and I’m sure he’d be happy to let you know precisely where I’m located!
Wishing I was in the states right now to see the aftermath of the elections….
Much love.
A few of us stayed over at our training sight, ECLA, to watch the ‘live’ television coverage of the election on Burkina’s local (and I believe only) channel. Needless to say the set looked like something out of the 60’s and there were no pretty colored charts, maps or predictions to follow. I won’t lie, I fell asleep at about 11:30pm BF time since the coverage wasn’t quite as stimulating as CNN… Anyway at about 5am BF time I woke up in time to catch the end of Obama’s acceptance speech. There were only a few of us volunteers left to watch the election but we cheered particularly loud when he talked about the people huddled around a radio listening to the results. Ours was a little fancier then a radio but I’m pretty sure he was talking about us… The next day we were celebrities around Ouahigouya and instead of being solely called ‘Nesara’ (not a clue how to spell that but pretty sure it means foreigner or whitey) and ‘les blancs’ by the small children we were called Obama by all. It was a welcome change!
To back up a bit and write some about the week beforehand…
We had our much anticipated Dymystification visits last week along with our overnight stay in the capital city. Myself and three other girls got to go and visit a Peace Corps Volunteer located in the center of the country in one of the largest city’s, Koudougou. Let’s just say that our visit ended up being a bit more like a vacation... Well I suppose to us this was as exciting of a vacation as going to Hawaii if we were living in the U.S.. But to you all it would be more like a vacation to Iowa complete with a three nights stay at the DaysInn. Our ‘vacay’ went a little something like this: picked out dresses from a catalogue that we wanted made, shopped at a local market for materials, dropped off the photo and material at a tailors to have it made, made delicious food like fruit salad and mashed potatoes (to be fair I didn‘t do any of the cooking, I mostly just ate the fruit as soon as it was cut up and put into the bowel.. Luckily we had our very own Rachel Ray with us), lounged out by the local pool, and spent the last night celebrating Halloween with costumes and a pumpkin but were safely tucked in bed by 8:30 before things got too out of hand…It was definitely nice to get away from Ouahigouya for a little while and to be able to see how a fellow volunteer lives and works.
After our visit our entire Small Enterprise Development (SED) group met up in Ouagadougou to spend a couple of nights at the transit house. Although the name implies that it is somewhat of a halfway house for recovering addicts, turns out it’s just the place that all Peace Corps volunteers around the world can stay in for a very low price… Free internet included! If that doesn’t make you want to join…. While we were in Ouaga we also had a Mexican feast cooked for us at our SED director’s house. It was probably the most amazing thing I’ve eaten yet!!
We returned back to ECLA after our little vacation/trip and it was back to classes in Ouahigouya. We’re fast approaching the mid way mark of our pre-service training and I can speak for most of the group when I say we are looking forward to the end! It seems as if everyone had a great time on our Dymst visit and cannot wait to get into our villages. Although I don’t know if us SED kids are entirely ready for the village seeing as many of us have electricity, a television and some of us lucky ones even have running water… A couple of my health volunteer friends came over to see the house and meet the fam and let me know that this life was in no way similar to village living. I will be taking a trip out to the bush next weekend to stay the night though, so I’m going to finally experience the African bush!
And as a side note, I think that language for all is improving. It seemed like so long ago that I was telling my host mother ‘I friend rice’ rather than ‘I like rice.’ Luckily for me though, there have been other large blunders within our group. I think my favorite of all the stories though has to be about one of my favorite health girls sprinkling millet (some sort of grain) all around her toilet because she thought that her family had told her to do that. They were a bit confused when she came back with the bin and no millet… Pretty soon we will begin attempting to learn a local African language so I’m sure there will be plenty more miscommunications along the way!
Not too much else on the horizon except within a week we will be learning which village will be graced with our presence! I know Denny is particularly looking forward to that seeing as he bought the worlds most detailed map of Burkina that shows every city/town/village/tribe/elephant and I’m sure he’d be happy to let you know precisely where I’m located!
Wishing I was in the states right now to see the aftermath of the elections….
Much love.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Ne y ebiogo fellow Americans,
Thought I’d throw a little African dialect your way, spice up your day a bit…
Well it’s week two of the journey although I’m pretty sure my fellow trainees and I have been here for 2 months instead… It is amazing what you become accustomed to in such a short period of time. I am no longer bothered by the hundreds of flies that land on me per day nor the fact that there always seems to be a perfect circle of sweat on my stomach. It also feels as if I’ve known all of my fellow trainees for an incredibly long period of time since up until this week we’ve pretty much seen each other’s sweaty faces 24/7. Sadly though, this week our happy group of 31 has split into two, with 13 of us Small Enterprise Development people living in Ouahigouya and the rest spread across three villages outside of town. It’s definitely weird to not see everyone every day and definitely a bit more lonely…
Although I am missing my fellow trainees out in the African bush, I did move in with my host family on Sunday. Let’s just say that I am living in upper Manhattan compared to most of the rest of the volunteers residence in Queens. My family, which consists of a mother and four daughters ranging from 12 to 22, has a television, electricity and running water for their indoor shower!! Probably the only thing bad about this place is that the bathroom is still outside and filled with giant bugs so I try as hard as possible to never to visit it and prefer to hold it until I get to our training site. I’m sure I’ll pay for this later when I have severe bladder problems for years to come but for now I’d say it’s worth it! I haven’t quite adapted to the giant cockroaches yet…
The family is as wonderful as their ‘modern’ house. From what I sort of understand from my wretched French, the mother works for the Economics and Finance department of the government and oversees banks in Ouahigouya. To be fair this could be incorrect though seeing as I don’t seem to comprehend much…Communicating has been a bit of a struggle but I am determined to be able to speak with them in French (and after I conquer that hopefully the local language Moore). Each day has seemed to be a bit of an improvement over the last although I have to credit some of that to the fact that the two older ones have studied a bit of English. Despite the fact that I can only speak and comprehend simple sentences I enjoy hanging out with the family and even get to occasionally watch a soccer match on the television.
The typical SED trainee day in Ouahigouya consists of waking up at 2:30a.m. because the idiotic roosters outside the window somehow think that it is sunrise, again at 4:00a.m. because the donkey ran into the goat and won’t stop hee-hawing, and again at 5:30a.m. because the sun really does come up then and the roosters just won’t quite. Finally at 6am it’s time to rise, check the room because there is guaranteed to be some new bugs that have nestled into our room and hop into the shower/bucket bath. Breakfast consists mainly of bread and nestcafe so most of us (grudgingly at this point seeing as we‘ve had bread at pretty much every meal) grab the bread and head out the door to language tutoring. The next few hours are split into two sessions, one session of language tutoring and another of either health, safety and security, culture diversity or SED training. For lunch we zip around town on our ten speeds and grab a lunch which has mainly consisted of a sandwich, beans, or rice. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to expand our horizons much seeing as it is incredibly easy to get lost in Ouahigouya due to the fact that almost everything seems to be covered in the same reddish/brown dust and buildings are never greater than two stories. Afterwards it’s back to training for the rest of the working day, tutoring afterwards and possibly a run. Although to be fair that last part seems to be rare because it is rather difficult to run in Africa seeing as the temperature doesn‘t like to drop below 80 and the small barefooted, sometimes naked African children run after you screaming ‘Mensara mensara” (white person) which potentially drowns out the Ipod... This is not to say that the kids here are not adorable because they are, especially when they are wrapped to the back of their mothers with only a towel like cloth. I still can’t figure out how they stay on… Anyway for the rest of the night I’m at my host family’s house hanging out with the sisters and attempting to converse while they comb my hair.
The days seem to get long and repetitive here but luckily we all still enjoy each others company and small things, like watching a heard of goats and those funny cows with the big bump near their head cross the street, still makes me smile. Fortunately we also have sessions that every so often remind us why we are here. It’s in those sessions, the ones where we talk about the illiteracy rate, the mortality rate, the small businesses, the exports/imports, the agriculture, the generosity of the people and their willingness to accept everyone, where we finally breathe again. These are the sessions that put things into perspective and remind us why we are working so hard and giving up all those things in life that we know and love…
I think I’ll stop there before I get too dear diary… Anyway that will be my life for the next couple months. We’ve got some great sessions coming up, such as visiting the capital during one of the biggest craft shows in all of Africa (presents anyone??) as well as traveling to a current trainees village to see what sort of things they are doing there.
Stay safe and healthy! Thanks for the emails, although I struggle a bit responding quickly enough with the limited internet time and French keyboard…
Much love.
Thought I’d throw a little African dialect your way, spice up your day a bit…
Well it’s week two of the journey although I’m pretty sure my fellow trainees and I have been here for 2 months instead… It is amazing what you become accustomed to in such a short period of time. I am no longer bothered by the hundreds of flies that land on me per day nor the fact that there always seems to be a perfect circle of sweat on my stomach. It also feels as if I’ve known all of my fellow trainees for an incredibly long period of time since up until this week we’ve pretty much seen each other’s sweaty faces 24/7. Sadly though, this week our happy group of 31 has split into two, with 13 of us Small Enterprise Development people living in Ouahigouya and the rest spread across three villages outside of town. It’s definitely weird to not see everyone every day and definitely a bit more lonely…
Although I am missing my fellow trainees out in the African bush, I did move in with my host family on Sunday. Let’s just say that I am living in upper Manhattan compared to most of the rest of the volunteers residence in Queens. My family, which consists of a mother and four daughters ranging from 12 to 22, has a television, electricity and running water for their indoor shower!! Probably the only thing bad about this place is that the bathroom is still outside and filled with giant bugs so I try as hard as possible to never to visit it and prefer to hold it until I get to our training site. I’m sure I’ll pay for this later when I have severe bladder problems for years to come but for now I’d say it’s worth it! I haven’t quite adapted to the giant cockroaches yet…
The family is as wonderful as their ‘modern’ house. From what I sort of understand from my wretched French, the mother works for the Economics and Finance department of the government and oversees banks in Ouahigouya. To be fair this could be incorrect though seeing as I don’t seem to comprehend much…Communicating has been a bit of a struggle but I am determined to be able to speak with them in French (and after I conquer that hopefully the local language Moore). Each day has seemed to be a bit of an improvement over the last although I have to credit some of that to the fact that the two older ones have studied a bit of English. Despite the fact that I can only speak and comprehend simple sentences I enjoy hanging out with the family and even get to occasionally watch a soccer match on the television.
The typical SED trainee day in Ouahigouya consists of waking up at 2:30a.m. because the idiotic roosters outside the window somehow think that it is sunrise, again at 4:00a.m. because the donkey ran into the goat and won’t stop hee-hawing, and again at 5:30a.m. because the sun really does come up then and the roosters just won’t quite. Finally at 6am it’s time to rise, check the room because there is guaranteed to be some new bugs that have nestled into our room and hop into the shower/bucket bath. Breakfast consists mainly of bread and nestcafe so most of us (grudgingly at this point seeing as we‘ve had bread at pretty much every meal) grab the bread and head out the door to language tutoring. The next few hours are split into two sessions, one session of language tutoring and another of either health, safety and security, culture diversity or SED training. For lunch we zip around town on our ten speeds and grab a lunch which has mainly consisted of a sandwich, beans, or rice. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to expand our horizons much seeing as it is incredibly easy to get lost in Ouahigouya due to the fact that almost everything seems to be covered in the same reddish/brown dust and buildings are never greater than two stories. Afterwards it’s back to training for the rest of the working day, tutoring afterwards and possibly a run. Although to be fair that last part seems to be rare because it is rather difficult to run in Africa seeing as the temperature doesn‘t like to drop below 80 and the small barefooted, sometimes naked African children run after you screaming ‘Mensara mensara” (white person) which potentially drowns out the Ipod... This is not to say that the kids here are not adorable because they are, especially when they are wrapped to the back of their mothers with only a towel like cloth. I still can’t figure out how they stay on… Anyway for the rest of the night I’m at my host family’s house hanging out with the sisters and attempting to converse while they comb my hair.
The days seem to get long and repetitive here but luckily we all still enjoy each others company and small things, like watching a heard of goats and those funny cows with the big bump near their head cross the street, still makes me smile. Fortunately we also have sessions that every so often remind us why we are here. It’s in those sessions, the ones where we talk about the illiteracy rate, the mortality rate, the small businesses, the exports/imports, the agriculture, the generosity of the people and their willingness to accept everyone, where we finally breathe again. These are the sessions that put things into perspective and remind us why we are working so hard and giving up all those things in life that we know and love…
I think I’ll stop there before I get too dear diary… Anyway that will be my life for the next couple months. We’ve got some great sessions coming up, such as visiting the capital during one of the biggest craft shows in all of Africa (presents anyone??) as well as traveling to a current trainees village to see what sort of things they are doing there.
Stay safe and healthy! Thanks for the emails, although I struggle a bit responding quickly enough with the limited internet time and French keyboard…
Much love.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Hello dear people,
Just as a precaution, this is going to get a little long. You may want to grab a snack in between or possibly take a short nap before wading through all of this… I guess the best place to start would be from the beginning….
Leaving the States sucked. Let’s just put that out there. I never knew that saying goodbye could be so hard/awful, but turns out it is! I am above and beyond blessed to have such an awesome group of friends and such a caring family all of whom sent me off in the best possible way. Thank you so much for all the love and support, although it definitely made it much harder to leave!
On to Africa….
Flew into Philadelphia on Monday, oddly enough on the same flight as another fellow Peacecorps volunteer from Eden Prairie. I met her along with another guy in the airport (we were able to pick each other out because of the overwhelming amount of luggage we were toting) where we grabbed a quick lunch and went to orientation to meet our fellow trainees.
All of the trainees fall into the age bracket of 22-31 which includes one married couple. I’m not going to lie, everyone here seems to be pretty brilliant. For instance pretty much everyone has traveled and stayed in a third world country before, has an impressive resume and education background and can speak at least one language, some people even taught themselves French within a matter of months and can speak it adequately. Needless to say I think the group is decently intimidating but at the same time everyone is extremely friendly, outgoing and helpful.
We arrived in Africa on Wednesday night (I know most of you will never believe this but Africa is HOT) which is odd to think that it has only been 5 days since we’ve been here since it feels like I’ve been in this completely different world for so much longer. Since the beginning, each day has seemed to stretch on for ages since we have had tons of meetings, orientations, classes and tests beginning from sun-up to sun-down. For our first night we stayed in one of the nicer hotels in the capital city where we had more information thrown at us along with language testing and medical clearance. I can say that I passed the medical exam but definitely have some major work to do with language! The following day we headed towards our training sight in Ouahigouya where I and my fellow Small Enterprise Development people will be living for the next couple of months. (The community health development volunteers have to stay out further in the villages for their training although they do come in at least once a week for volunteer-wide training. Suckers). It’s definitely going to be weird being split up from one another since we’ve all seemed to bond incredibly fast within the short time that we’ve been together… Luckily we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other still!
Training days range from 7am-6pm and consists of language, culture, how not to get AIDS/malaria/diarrhea, and a wide variety of skills that we may find handy for small enterprise development. As nerdy as it may sound I’m actually unbelievably excited to work on my language (both French, Moore - a widely spoken dialect here, and possibly another local language) and SED skills which have classes titled Animal Husbandry, Gardening, Environmental, Microlending… etc. Cool right?!? During the entire time that we are in training we will be staying with a host family which we actually find out today! We have lovingly titled today as our adoption day (no one can replace you Denny and Linda, no worries) and get to spend the following couple months in a room in a Burkinabe family home where we get breakfast and dinner cooked for us. Not a bad deal if I do say so… And speaking of which the food here is not bad thus far. We’ve had spaghetti for a meal, along with rice, fries, curry and chicken, so nothing has been too out of my element yet, although I am hearing that I will soon be eating something called Toe (sp?) and something called Foo (sp?) which I guess is a local specialty here…
I feel as if I’ve got about a million and one more things to write about but this is grossly long and I‘m sure there will be quite a few more to come… Anyway if you so feel inclined to send snail mail my address here is
Corps de la Paix Americain
01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso (West Africa)
Or if you prefer modern technology my email her is ofstedaj@gmail.com. (and I’m getting a cell phone pretty soon so stay tuned for my African number!!)
I hope all is going well for everyone back in the states. Make sure you write to me and tell me about the election and how everything is going in your life!
Much love,
Abigail
Just as a precaution, this is going to get a little long. You may want to grab a snack in between or possibly take a short nap before wading through all of this… I guess the best place to start would be from the beginning….
Leaving the States sucked. Let’s just put that out there. I never knew that saying goodbye could be so hard/awful, but turns out it is! I am above and beyond blessed to have such an awesome group of friends and such a caring family all of whom sent me off in the best possible way. Thank you so much for all the love and support, although it definitely made it much harder to leave!
On to Africa….
Flew into Philadelphia on Monday, oddly enough on the same flight as another fellow Peacecorps volunteer from Eden Prairie. I met her along with another guy in the airport (we were able to pick each other out because of the overwhelming amount of luggage we were toting) where we grabbed a quick lunch and went to orientation to meet our fellow trainees.
All of the trainees fall into the age bracket of 22-31 which includes one married couple. I’m not going to lie, everyone here seems to be pretty brilliant. For instance pretty much everyone has traveled and stayed in a third world country before, has an impressive resume and education background and can speak at least one language, some people even taught themselves French within a matter of months and can speak it adequately. Needless to say I think the group is decently intimidating but at the same time everyone is extremely friendly, outgoing and helpful.
We arrived in Africa on Wednesday night (I know most of you will never believe this but Africa is HOT) which is odd to think that it has only been 5 days since we’ve been here since it feels like I’ve been in this completely different world for so much longer. Since the beginning, each day has seemed to stretch on for ages since we have had tons of meetings, orientations, classes and tests beginning from sun-up to sun-down. For our first night we stayed in one of the nicer hotels in the capital city where we had more information thrown at us along with language testing and medical clearance. I can say that I passed the medical exam but definitely have some major work to do with language! The following day we headed towards our training sight in Ouahigouya where I and my fellow Small Enterprise Development people will be living for the next couple of months. (The community health development volunteers have to stay out further in the villages for their training although they do come in at least once a week for volunteer-wide training. Suckers). It’s definitely going to be weird being split up from one another since we’ve all seemed to bond incredibly fast within the short time that we’ve been together… Luckily we’ll be seeing quite a bit of each other still!
Training days range from 7am-6pm and consists of language, culture, how not to get AIDS/malaria/diarrhea, and a wide variety of skills that we may find handy for small enterprise development. As nerdy as it may sound I’m actually unbelievably excited to work on my language (both French, Moore - a widely spoken dialect here, and possibly another local language) and SED skills which have classes titled Animal Husbandry, Gardening, Environmental, Microlending… etc. Cool right?!? During the entire time that we are in training we will be staying with a host family which we actually find out today! We have lovingly titled today as our adoption day (no one can replace you Denny and Linda, no worries) and get to spend the following couple months in a room in a Burkinabe family home where we get breakfast and dinner cooked for us. Not a bad deal if I do say so… And speaking of which the food here is not bad thus far. We’ve had spaghetti for a meal, along with rice, fries, curry and chicken, so nothing has been too out of my element yet, although I am hearing that I will soon be eating something called Toe (sp?) and something called Foo (sp?) which I guess is a local specialty here…
I feel as if I’ve got about a million and one more things to write about but this is grossly long and I‘m sure there will be quite a few more to come… Anyway if you so feel inclined to send snail mail my address here is
Corps de la Paix Americain
01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso (West Africa)
Or if you prefer modern technology my email her is ofstedaj@gmail.com. (and I’m getting a cell phone pretty soon so stay tuned for my African number!!)
I hope all is going well for everyone back in the states. Make sure you write to me and tell me about the election and how everything is going in your life!
Much love,
Abigail
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