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