First Blog Post

Aw dansé! That means “welcome” in Dioula, the local language I am learning. This is officially week 5 of Peace Corps training and I’ve just gotten around to firing up the laptop and inviting you to catch a glimpse of what has transpired thus far. This blog post is really verbose since I have a lot to catch up on, but subsequent posts will be more manageable.

At this juncture, its appropriate to review the 3 goals of Peace Corps since they govern the purpose of my stay in Burkina Faso:

Peace Corps Mission

“The mission of the Peace Corps is to promote world peace and friendship by:
-Helping people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women
-Helping promote better understanding of Americans on the part of peoples served
-Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans”

Although I had many presuppositions about what to expect of Burkina Faso and the Peace Corps’ role, my perspective has changed dramatically since arriving and continues to adjust daily with each new interaction, conversation, awkward cultural faux pas, etc.

However, I’m sure most of you do not want to hear about how my life is forever changed by having come here, how I’ve grown as a person, various introspective discourse, etc. So I will get on with it.

Pre-service Training

Right now I am knee-deep in pre-service training, which entails 9 hours of training Monday through Friday (and half days on Saturdays) in:
-language (French and Dioula)
-Small Enterprise Development (“SED”) technical training
-cross cultural training
-medical sessions
-safety and security
-miscellaneous other topics






The SED Peace Corps Trainees (PCT’s) total 13 and there are also 19 Health volunteers who are part of our 9 week training program, though SED is generally segregated from Health during the training. I feel very fortunate that everyone is extremely nice and a pleasure to have in my face all the time J. Here are the stats on the SED PCT’s for the quants out there:
-46% graduated from college in June 2008
-8% over 30 years old; this figure will swell to 23% by the time we leave Burkina Faso in December 2010
-46% are women and 54% are men, an anomaly for the Peace Corps as I’ve heard that worldwide ~70% of volunteers are women
-15% are great dancers
-38% have thus far gotten pretty ill (gastro-intestinal problems lasting more than few days). I’m pretty sure the rest of us have had ill periods lasting one day or less.

My Host Family

I am living with a wonderfully sweet and kind host family throughout the training period and then moving out to my permanent site at the end of December. My host parents have seven children, but the oldest daughter is married and lives in another part of town. The children living at home are aged 7 (girl), 12 (girl), 15 (girl), 16 (boy), 17 (boy) and 19 (boy).

I live in a 2 room guest house. The family compound consists of a main house with veranda, large courtyard, latrine, kitchen building and hair salon. Most of the family sleeps in the main house; unfortunately I have displaced the three brothers and so while I’m here they sleep in the courtyard (actually a common practice). The outdoor latrine is not bad even thought it is replete with huge beetles at night. Cows, sheep, pigeons and rabbits live in the courtyard; they function as stores of wealth for the family as they are procured at a young age, raised for several years and then sold at a profit.

I tried to add a rough sketch of the compound layout but I am too much a blogger novice to figure out how to add it - I'll try in the next post.

Burkinabé do their laundry by hand so that means that I do my laundry by hand. My 12 year old host sister helped me the first time and showed me how to do it (it is an intense three tub process with two lather cycles and one rinse cycle) but it was very tiresome so now we pay someone else to do it. Undergarments are a very sensitive matter for the Burkinabé and no one else must ever see one’s undergarments, so we still wash those ourselves every Sunday, as Saturday is a bad-luck day to do laundry. The sensitive nature of undergarments requires that they be line-dried inside one’s abode. Here is our laundry line inside the front room of the guest house – seeing Dave’s boxers like this reminds me of the flags of different nations that hang outside the Boston World Trade Center:



The neighbors also have chickens, roosters and donkeys so it gets pretty loud. Stray dogs also fight loudly all night. I have never previously lived in a Muslim community so I don’t know if this is common, but every morning around 4 AM there is a call to prayer that is shouted over loudspeakers at the nearby Mosque, such that it is broadcast throughout the neighborhood. I don’t know if they are speaking in Arabic or Mooré (another local language) but the shouting continues for about 15 or 20 minutes.

Sleep

Sleep is a very interesting pastime here. All PC volunteers are on malaria prophylaxis since its endemic to Burkina Faso and the one I am taking, Mefloquin, is known for causing vivid dreams. Throughout the night I have the same weird dreams I had in the US, but the dreams are extremely lucid and are interrupted periodically by the cacophony of sheep bleating, donkeys braying, dogs going crazy and booming calls to prayer. Despite this I am getting better at sleeping through the night.

Weather

One thing that has helped me get more sleep is that the nights are starting to get a little bit cooler (~ 70°). The daily highs still average ~100° but I am slowly becoming habituated. The conservative culture also dictates that people cover their shoulders and knees, limiting the amount of relief I get through clothing. I frequently remind myself that millions of people have lived their entire lives in this heat wearing this kind of clothing. The mornings are getting a bit cooler (~ 70°) and consequently my host family will wear blankets and knit caps to shield against the cold. Of course, I have also seen people wearing knit caps, ski jackets and woolen mufflers when it is 90° so I’m not fully sure what constitutes cold weather to the Burkinabé.

My Wheels

My Peace Corps issued mountain bike is my main mode of transport. The bike took some getting used to as I have not ridden a bike in over 10 years. I can now ride approximately 1 km before feeling like I’m going to have a heart attack (baby steps, people!). One of the Burkinabé technical advisors said it’s a really big deal for the local people to see Peace Corps volunteers riding bikes because we all have university degrees and Burkinabé would never deign themselves to ride a bicycle after having achieved such education.

Food

Prior to coming here, many people asked what kind of food Burkinabé eat. Here are the major foods offered in Burkina outside of Ouagadougou (the capital city has an atypical array of diverse cuisine):
-Tô, Rice or other carbohydrate with various sauces, such as Baobab, okra, peanut, tomato, random greasy oil, etc. Sometimes the sauce features mutton, fish or beef.
-Spaghetti (usually spelled Spaguetti)
-Benga (rice with black-eyed peas)
-Porc au four (greasy, salty baked pork morsels)
-kabobs
-Sandwich with sausage or egg

Restaurants that cater to Westerners usually also have French fries and other such delicacies at prices 6x the average price of a normal Burkinabé meal. Last Sunday we splurged on hamburgers and fries and the meal cost more than that which we would normally have spent in one week on lunch. We were getting a little desperate since its so tiresome to eat those 6 aforementioned choices all the time and furthermore only 2 or 3 options will be available for any given meal due to poor inventory management on the part of almost every restaurant owner. I am really surprised that I eat fish almost every day since Burkina is a landlocked country. The fresh fish comes from a nearby lake (I think its mackerel) and dried fish comes from Côte d’Ivoïre. Luckily the host family prepares excellent dinners that I look forward to every night. They put fish in everything, including the spaghetti, and other PCT’s say their host families do the same.

Random Côte d’Ivoïre Factoid

Something I was surprised to learn is that Burkina Faso is to Côte d’Ivoïre what Mexico is to the United States in terms of migrant workers. It is a bit of a generalization but interesting nonetheless.

Animal Whisperer

It is easier to communicate with animals in Burkina than in the States. When the rabbits try to approach to share my dinner I say, “Sssssssssss!” and they know to back off. Sheep are likewise always trying to get food from the hearth area or drink water when I am filling up my bucket to shower, but when they hear “A-yo!” or “Ay!” they retreat. Dave did the latter during one of his language classes to some stray goats that came around. It worked, but the Burkinabé teacher looked at him like he was crazy.

My Daily Routine

I wake up around 6:30, or earlier and pretend to sleep until the alarm goes off. The family wakes around 5:30 and they bang around a lot in the courtyard so they’re hard to ignore. They also probably think I’m lazy since I don’t get up with the sun, but I believe they try to remain culturally sensitive. I leave my guest house with my pagne (makeshift towel) and bucket and fill up my bucket with water from the robinet (random water spout coming out of the ground) out in the courtyard. It is not polite to talk to people in the morning until you have washed your face so I try not to make eye contact with anyone and noiselessly skirt into the indoor shower area. I take a quick bucket bath and then come back out to the courtyard to greet everyone. Then I hustle back into my room and get dressed. My host mother delivers breakfast to my room, a baguette with Nescafe coffee and powdered creamer. I usually listen to the BBC on shortwave radio while eating breakfast. I brush my teeth with the leftover boiled water for the coffee and then head to the training center via bike, about 1 km away. On the way, various children excitedly yell the Mooré equivalent of “Good morning white person!” while I ride past.

Training from 8 to 10, then at the 10 am break I walk or ride my bike to see Priska, a vendor with a refrigerator near the training center, to score some cold yogurt that Dave and I usually share. Another training session until 12:30, at which point I seek out lunch at one of 4 restaurants that are reputable (i.e., I have a decreased chance of getting violently ill from eating there). Then training picks up again until 5:30. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I stay late to water a garden that the SED PCT’s started so that we could practice gardening, a popular income generating activity that many volunteers facilitate at their sites.

Many nights the PCT’s will grab a cold beer before heading home to our host families.

Once I get back to the compound, I have to take a bucket shower before dinner, per Burkinabé cultural practice. Since I’ve been sweating all day in 100° heat it’s usually not a bad idea. We eat dinner on the veranda; men and women each are segregated into two circles and eat dinner separately. After dinner, the two older sons leave to go study at school. The other kids do homework or study in the dim light of the courtyard. I usually chat with the host dad for a while after dinner unless I have homework to do. After chilling in my front room for a bit after the chatting is over, I climb into my mosquito-net esconced bed and try to get some sleep.

Visit to PCV’s Site

I recently went to visit Meghann, a volunteer who has nearly completed her 2 years of service and is preparing to go home to Philadelphia. Meghann lives in a small village called Niankoudougourou near the Côte d’Ivoïre border. Seeing all that she has accomplished during her tenure here was truly awe-inspiring and very encouraging. Despite coming to Burkina with a low level of French ability and fresh out of college, Meghann achieved the following:
-Become extremely well-integrated in the village
-Won support for, procured funding for and founded the first library in the village, which now boasts over 250 members
-Collaborated with the local cotton union, one of the 3 major cotton unions in Burkina
-Created & maintained several Savings & Credit Clubs for women (microfinance)
-Acted as a consultant to and procured funding for a very large garden which is a robust income generating activity for a women’s association
-Devised and hosted many trainings on other income generating activities for women
-Organized and prepared girl’s camp (for empowering girls) that featured computer literacy classes

The list goes on but I don’t want to embarrass her any further. Needless to say, I was really encouraged by all of her progress. My time here will not be for naught if I am able to attain at least a fraction of what she was able to do. Here are some fun pictures from the trip to her village:

Roses
I will finish this long-winded note by thanking those from back home who tendered generous emotional support thus far!! It really has meant a lot, and I’m sorry that I’ve been so lazy about writing individual letters / notes to express my gratitude.

@----->--- My mom and dad for calling all the time and sending a nice care package!
@----->--- My sister for calling all the time and saying that she will send a nice care package!
@----->--- Gina and Russ for sending a care package *before* we left the U.S.!
@----->--- Aunt Judy and Uncle Matt for helping us with getting the rest of our stuff here and for including lots of nice goodies!
@----->--- Liz and Mike for the very nice care package of magazines!
@----->--- Aunt Lori and Uncle Peter for the very nice message!
@----->--- Aunt Liz for the very nice card!

Thanks and love you guys!!

PS – Some of you haven’t seen me with short hair yet, so here’s a photo we took at our last lunch in the US before leaving for Burkina Faso and from our layover in Paris en route to Burkina Faso.