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.