Hello lovely people,
So I skillfully navigated public transportation and made it back again to my lovely village. Once again it was wonderful to hear the 'Welcome back' in different languages.. that was until they followed it up with another sentence 'Tu est plus grosse!' Literally translates into 'you look fatter!' Great. Thanks. It's really good to see you too. I'm just going to keep telling myself that it's a cultural comment meant to flatter and not actually true...
I'm going to go ahead and jump right to my most eventful moment of the month. I had been working late at the Cotton Union/Radio office playing secretary, (which I complained about not having anything to do before so I probably shouldn't complain about having to do secretary type work...) so that by the time I arrived home it was dark. I grabbed one of my water buckets along with my nifty little flashlight phone and headed over to the well in our courtyard to start pulling my water. After the first pull I poured about half the amount of water into my bucket when I heard a weird splash. One of my neighbor girls had come over to the well with me and I turned to her and said 'Wow, must be a big fish!' I was of course incredibly excited because I've never been all that good at fishing or any of those type of chance carnival type games, but for once I had just become one of those lucky few winners! So my neighbor girl grabs my light and shines it on my bucket. Definitely not a fish. Definitely a giant rat. Not a winner. I started yelling (in English of course, couldn't think of enough bad words in French to say at the time), enough so that another neighbor came over, took one look in my bucket, went back into his house and returned with a machete. He walked about 10 feet away from us, poured the bucket out and started trying to hack the thing to death. Not successful. Instead it started running frantically around the courtyard so I took off to hide in my neighbor’s house while screaming in English and leaping over buckets and small children. Not the bravest moment in my life... but it was definitely a life or rabies type of choice. Moral of the story is that I will never again pull my water at night. Now all the courtyard kids like to say 'It's a big fish!' to me and even taught the only girl in the courtyard who speaks no French how to say it in French. At least now when she actually does see a big fish she'll know what to say in French. I'm always trying to help people learn. Huh.
Actually things around here have started to pick up quite a bit. My counterpart and I have gone out to a few surrounding villages now to do compost formations which have all had a decently large turn out... of men. It's definitely a little disappointing to see that the women are never included in any of these formations, seeing as they work just as much and as hard as the men in the fields. The compost is pretty essential here due to the terrible conditions of the soil and these men, who could have continuously done the compost since right after harvesting, have waited until after the last possible moment to start their composts. This means that it won't be ready for the end of May/beginning of June when fields are being prepped, which is a really disappointing since so many of these farmers struggle to have enough money to cover an entire year. I have a feeling that the women would be a lot better at making sure to do it in time as well as be able to use some of the compost for the gardens that most of them have during the non-rainy season. Hopefully we'll be able to hold some composting formations for them as well at the end of the harvesting season, but this means that someone will have to contribute money to the compost supplies and I'm not entirely hopeful that the men will be willing to do that...
Since I've been playing secretary to the Cotton Union lately, I've been able to spend quite a bit of time over at the office which houses both the Union and the Radio. Despite the fact that over here they don't ever rigorously work to establish 'a positive work environment' or have numerous 'team bonding' workshops, the office has such an awesome work rapport. Basically they spend quite a bit of time making fun of each other and handing out sarcastic comments, which believe it or not is something I'm a big fan of! I'm also slightly obsessed with music so it's fun to be able to play my music for them and even get them to play some of it on the radio (which I'm sure is highly illegal).
Thanks to a lot of hard work from fellow PeaceCorps Volunteers, a lot of chances for already funded opportunities have come through (funding is not something we find a lot of in the PeaceCorps). One such chance was to have our village host an agriculture expert to speak with our community about harvesting, planting, fertilizing, etc. Fortunately Solenzo was one of the villages that got to host an expert so the past week we had our 3-day training seminar. We picked team leaders, so to speak, from our surrounding villages and started off the first day in a classroom. The first day was not pretty. We discussed rotation of the crops and spent what felt like 4 hours doing examples of how to rotate crops. Literally the Ag expert would put up a big box, divided into four different boxes with names of crops in each box, and ask the farmers there to rotate the crops throughout 4 years, not repeating the same one in the same box. That first day not one person in that room could do it. It was a very hard and frustrating thing to watch, both because for us that would be something in the ball park of 2nd grade math, but also because it just shows how much the education system here fails the Burkinabe. The truly wonderful thing to watch though was that these guys asked for homework example from the ag expert, came in the next day, and got the problem on the first try. I was very impressed by their desire to learn as well as help their fellow villagers and cultivators improve their field.
So I think that’s quite enough for one post…
Hope all is well for everyone back in the states and that you’re enjoying spring!
Much love.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Hello lovely people,
Today is officially the last day of In-Service Training (IST) for us fellow SED volunteers and it’s definitely a bit bittersweet…
We kicked off IST in what has now officially become my favorite region of all of Burkina Faso, Banfora. Those of us located within the Southern region got together for a week worth of language studying, exploring and eating at the world’s favorite restaurant….McDonalds!! Okay not the real golden arch kind but a restaurant with the name, incredibly good burgers and probably the world’s sweetest T’s. As of now it’s my life goal to be just like the wait staff there and somehow get a McDonald’s T with a huge hamburger on the front and wear it every day in village. Besides eating at Micky D’s, we’d have about 4+ hours of language a day along with 2 hours to go visit with a fellow NGO, womens’ groups, Burkina ministry of something or other, etc. Our teacher was unbelievably good and I’m telling you, by the end I was speaking French like a native… well a native Burkinabe at least. We also got to see what must be one of the more well-organized and bigger women’s groups in all of Burkina along with some small organizations, environmental agencies, etc. All in all it was a great week and to top it all off at the end of it we biked to one of our fellow PCV’s sites 8K away and saw the Domes and Cascades. Beautiful is not a word that us PCVs often use in describing the landscape aspects of Burkina Faso, so it came as a pleasant shock to be able to see such beautiful scenery. To put it rather cheesily, it was the perfect ending to our first week of IST!
The following week the SED crew was reunited in Bobo for our first week of technical training. It was wonderful to be able to see everyone again and get updated on everyone’s running to the latrine in the middle of the night horror stories. We spent the first week more or less going over what we did during Pre-Service Training (PST), discussing how we could improve on PST and the SED program, met NGO’s and mainly hung out together and laughed at how sweaty each one of us was capable of getting. For a couple days our counterparts also made the journey down to visit us and we held a workshop to draw up plans for future projects for our sites. It’s always a lot of fun when we have these workshops because by the end all of us PCVs and our counterparts are ready to head back to village and change the world.
But, there has been no changing of the world yet because we had one final week in Ouaga to spend some more time on SED and cross training. Before any of that began though… There was the Burkina Faso vs. Guinea qualifier game for the world cup!!!!!!!!! For a total of 2 dollars we got to cheer while our home team of Burkina Faso crushed those Guineans. Seriously awesome. It was all the better because before the game started they were watering the lawn with a sprinkler, the score-board was broken and the clock was a hand clock that was also broken. Gotta love it. There was quite a few people in Ouaga for the event and we wrapped ourselves up in flags and took to the stands singing with the Burkinabe. At one point we even attempted to start the wave… unfortunately no one besides us Americans seemed to catch on. Hopefully that was all just a warm up for the actual 2010 WC in South Africa… Anyone in? As for work during our Ouaga stay, we took a field trip out of the city to look in on a fellow SED PCV’s site who had been there for over a year. At his site he’s worked a bunch with Moringa (a tree which grows very rapidly in West Africa with little water, in of itself a miracle, but whose leaves also contain large amounts of nutrition) so we got to see some of his fields, how he processed the leaves and how he sold it. It was very impressive and I think we all left feeling a little inspired and wanting to plant thousands of Moringa trees ourselves.
So basically during our three weeks of training we learned a lot both in the way of language and technical information. I can’t say enough about how inspiring it was to be with the fellow volunteers. Just to sit around, bounce ideas off of each other, give each other advice, and plan together was such a difference from the solitude of village. It definitely made it seem as if we would approach everything as a team and less like individual… Very comforting since after spending 3 weeks speaking English, hanging out with friends, eating good food, having access to internet, etc., village once again seems, well, a bit daunting. Fortunately it won’t be starting from scratch like before and my counterpart and I have some projects to take care of for April… So I’m crossing my fingers that the villagers haven’t forgotten about me yet and that I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for the next 20ish months..!
Oh yeah and I was able to upload some pictures while I had all this internet time! The pretty scenery is of the cascades and domes, unfortunately not my village. There’s one with myself and my host family (Burkinabe think it’s cooler to not smile in pictures.. And seeing as they were a wealthy family they could eat more…), the one with the weird dresses is from the swear in, there’s one of 10 of us in that taxi (very safe parents), a couple from Tabaski and a couple from before and during the soccer game.
Hope all is well for everyone.
Much love.
Today is officially the last day of In-Service Training (IST) for us fellow SED volunteers and it’s definitely a bit bittersweet…
We kicked off IST in what has now officially become my favorite region of all of Burkina Faso, Banfora. Those of us located within the Southern region got together for a week worth of language studying, exploring and eating at the world’s favorite restaurant….McDonalds!! Okay not the real golden arch kind but a restaurant with the name, incredibly good burgers and probably the world’s sweetest T’s. As of now it’s my life goal to be just like the wait staff there and somehow get a McDonald’s T with a huge hamburger on the front and wear it every day in village. Besides eating at Micky D’s, we’d have about 4+ hours of language a day along with 2 hours to go visit with a fellow NGO, womens’ groups, Burkina ministry of something or other, etc. Our teacher was unbelievably good and I’m telling you, by the end I was speaking French like a native… well a native Burkinabe at least. We also got to see what must be one of the more well-organized and bigger women’s groups in all of Burkina along with some small organizations, environmental agencies, etc. All in all it was a great week and to top it all off at the end of it we biked to one of our fellow PCV’s sites 8K away and saw the Domes and Cascades. Beautiful is not a word that us PCVs often use in describing the landscape aspects of Burkina Faso, so it came as a pleasant shock to be able to see such beautiful scenery. To put it rather cheesily, it was the perfect ending to our first week of IST!
The following week the SED crew was reunited in Bobo for our first week of technical training. It was wonderful to be able to see everyone again and get updated on everyone’s running to the latrine in the middle of the night horror stories. We spent the first week more or less going over what we did during Pre-Service Training (PST), discussing how we could improve on PST and the SED program, met NGO’s and mainly hung out together and laughed at how sweaty each one of us was capable of getting. For a couple days our counterparts also made the journey down to visit us and we held a workshop to draw up plans for future projects for our sites. It’s always a lot of fun when we have these workshops because by the end all of us PCVs and our counterparts are ready to head back to village and change the world.
But, there has been no changing of the world yet because we had one final week in Ouaga to spend some more time on SED and cross training. Before any of that began though… There was the Burkina Faso vs. Guinea qualifier game for the world cup!!!!!!!!! For a total of 2 dollars we got to cheer while our home team of Burkina Faso crushed those Guineans. Seriously awesome. It was all the better because before the game started they were watering the lawn with a sprinkler, the score-board was broken and the clock was a hand clock that was also broken. Gotta love it. There was quite a few people in Ouaga for the event and we wrapped ourselves up in flags and took to the stands singing with the Burkinabe. At one point we even attempted to start the wave… unfortunately no one besides us Americans seemed to catch on. Hopefully that was all just a warm up for the actual 2010 WC in South Africa… Anyone in? As for work during our Ouaga stay, we took a field trip out of the city to look in on a fellow SED PCV’s site who had been there for over a year. At his site he’s worked a bunch with Moringa (a tree which grows very rapidly in West Africa with little water, in of itself a miracle, but whose leaves also contain large amounts of nutrition) so we got to see some of his fields, how he processed the leaves and how he sold it. It was very impressive and I think we all left feeling a little inspired and wanting to plant thousands of Moringa trees ourselves.
So basically during our three weeks of training we learned a lot both in the way of language and technical information. I can’t say enough about how inspiring it was to be with the fellow volunteers. Just to sit around, bounce ideas off of each other, give each other advice, and plan together was such a difference from the solitude of village. It definitely made it seem as if we would approach everything as a team and less like individual… Very comforting since after spending 3 weeks speaking English, hanging out with friends, eating good food, having access to internet, etc., village once again seems, well, a bit daunting. Fortunately it won’t be starting from scratch like before and my counterpart and I have some projects to take care of for April… So I’m crossing my fingers that the villagers haven’t forgotten about me yet and that I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for the next 20ish months..!
Oh yeah and I was able to upload some pictures while I had all this internet time! The pretty scenery is of the cascades and domes, unfortunately not my village. There’s one with myself and my host family (Burkinabe think it’s cooler to not smile in pictures.. And seeing as they were a wealthy family they could eat more…), the one with the weird dresses is from the swear in, there’s one of 10 of us in that taxi (very safe parents), a couple from Tabaski and a couple from before and during the soccer game.
Hope all is well for everyone.
Much love.
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