I am an official volunteer!

Special Announcement: I am officially a volunteer! (but ill explain the week first)

Sorry its been so long, things have been very busy, so ill try and catch you all up quickly.

On Monday we had our thank you ceremony for our host families and spent our final night at our homes. It all went very smoothly. When I got home from the ceremony I finished packing all my stuff, and when my mom got home she had with her a dress and shirt that she had made for me as a parting cadeau (gift). The dress fit pretty well and was very nice. It is a pagne with the American and Burkinabe flag on it, its all the rage right now especially among my fellow volunteers because Burkina just had their independence celebration last weekend. The shirt however, was a different story. I remembered having seen the particular pattern my first night staying with my family. The last volunteer they hosted was wearing the same shirt, and my mom was wearing a matching outfit of the same material. Unfortunately, she had gotten the same size shirt made for me that she had made for the previous volunteer who was a boy who is not my size, so I looked pretty ridiculous, but lets be honest, it’s the thought that counts and now Trent (previous volunteer) and I have matching clothes! The rest of the evening was spent laughing, doing a photo shoot and helping me pack.

I woke up Tuesday and spent a little time with my family before riding off to the center for the rest of the day for exit interviews and last minute administrative things to do. I spent the day with friends, we had a leisurely lunch and then I ran back and forth to see the tailor to make sure my dress was almost finished for the swearing in ceremony Thursday. That evening we had a talent show and it was fantastic! Virtually everyone in our stage had something to contribute and it was pretty hilarious.

We left very early on Wednesday for Ouaga. We had an administrative session and received our checkbooks and then hit the town to buy lunch, get money from the poste and shop for our soon to be homes. Since I will be living in a big city, I didn’t do much shopping and just spent time with my friends and helped them shop for their new homes. We went out to dinner, took it easy and just enjoyed having internet in our hotel room on Wed night.

Thursday was the main event. We woke up early, did some shopping, and then came back to the hotel to get ready for the ceremony. Our entire stage of 30 people all bought matching pagne (fabric) and had outfits made for it, so we were a little overwhelming. (Incidentally, later that night a few friends and I were mistaken for stewardesses because of our matching attire.) The ceremony took place at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Ouaga and it was a BIG DEAL. Dignitaries from the government, NGOs and associations were there and it was taped for national tv. The country director, the ambassador and a top ranking minister gave speeches in French and it was very well done. 7 of my stage-mates were chosen to give speeches in each of the local languages that our stage has been learning. They were all truly amazing even though I could only really understand the speech in French and a little of the Moore and Jula speeches. Then we were officially sworn in as volunteers by the ambassador. It’s the same speech that they use for the President, so I am sure you all know it, and it was really cool. Interesting and exciting as it was for all of us to FINALLY be volunteers, the real excitement came in the fact that there was cold draft beer and cake to eat after the ceremony. It was heavenly, the cake tasted like cake and the little quiches had actual cheese which was really a treat for us. It was kind of embarrassing for 30 well dressed and official Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) to be stalking the cater waiters to see if they were serving more finger foods, but you get over that kind of thing quickly here. After the ceremony I went out for dinner with friends from stage, and then we met up with more people and went dancing. It was a great way to end our training. I slept for 2 hours before waking up at 6 to get ready to leave for the bus station (gare). For me, it was a tearful goodbye with my friends the next day. As excited as I am to get to site and start my new life, I can’t help but be sad about leaving the people I have come to know so well over the past two months. It doesn’t seem like it should be a big deal, since I have only known these people 2 months, but its difficult to say 2 sets of such important goodbyes: to family and friends at home & to my new host family here, and to my friends. But as is generally the case, goodbyes, though sad, lead to new hellos somewhere else and today I begin the journey to my new home.

It is 7 am here in Bobo, and I am leaving in a little less than an hour to go to my new home. Most of my friends have already been at their new sites for 2 days, and I will be the last volunteer who left Ouaga Friday to arrive at my new home. I am very excited, a little nervous and ready to start my new life here. I had the opportunity to meet my counterpart (ill explain in a different posting) 2 weeks ago. Her name is Odette and she is the secretary of the women’s association that I will be partnered with for the next two years. This organization’s priorities will be my top priorities over the next two years and I will work closely with them to improve/expand their agro-business. I am hoping that Odette will meet me at my house and show me around the city a little bit. I have NOTHING in my new house, since it has just recently been built, so I will have to buy everything I need from a chair to sit on, to spoons to eat with over the next few weeks. I am waiting to buy supplies until I get to site so that I can get to know people in the marche, vendors, work on my language skills, and get to know my way around, and start to integrate into my community all at once. (hopefully this strategy will prove effective) In any event, check out my photos on my facebook page and wish me luck on my big move! As always, thanks for reading! Miss you all!

Training/Demystification

We have classes from 8am-5pm everyday at our training center and then various activities afterwards, like tutoring and technical skills. We started a garden in our schoolyard and its going very well. We are growing okra, salad, tomatoes, haricots, moringa trees, onion, corn, cabbage, and wild eggplants. It’s pretty exciting to finally be doing something productive and working with my hands again. The classes vary, but we usually have language for at least 5 hours/day. The rest of the day consists of safety and security briefings, cultural sensitivity training, technical training for our projects (marketing, accounting/bookkeeping, gardening) and medical training. Soon we will be learning how to make mud stoves, desert fridges and how to compost properly. I am very excited to learn how to make the last two things, I think it will aid me greatly when I finally get to site.

Over the Halloween weekend we went on Demystification (Demyst). We were all split into groups with our LCFs (Language Cultural Facilitators) and were sent to various parts of the country to spend the weekend with a currently serving volunteer. I was sent to the south, to the FARTHEST site they sent trainees for Demyst. On Thursday morning we took the bus from our training site in Koudougou to Ouaga, and spent the day touring the Peace Corps central office, and getting prepared for our journey the following day and visiting the transit house. The transit house is lodging for currently serving PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) to stay in when they come to Ouaga. You have to pay each night you stay, but it’s pretty great. They have nice beds, a full kitchen with a stove and oven and fridge, tons of books and movies, and a screened in porch and great room. The transit house looks like a tropical style Real World House circa 1990, but it already feels like another home away from home and I can’t wait to organize people from my stage to meet there for a weekend when we finish our first 3 months at site. I got pretty spoiled on this day/night in Ouaga  because the hotel we stayed in had air conditioning, and I got 2 letters from Matt and Amy (thanks by the way!) That evening, the SED trainees (Small Enterprise Development) were invited to my boss’s house for dinner. After eating rice with sauce, spaghetti and to with our families for virtually all of our meals for the last 3 weeks, when Dan’s wife brought out chips, salsa and burritos we were drooling all over his beautiful home.

The next morning we woke up at 5am and took an 8 hour transport to our Demyst destination. The bus was pretty comfortable and I spent a great deal of the journey watching highly amusing Burkinabe music videos which were played on a tv that was literally bungee corded to the ceiling. (The tv would literally bounce to the beat of the music video at some points). In any event, in between these videos, it was amazing to look out the window and watch the terrain change from dusty and flat to verdant, hilly, and beautiful in the south. When we got off the bus, our host PCV greeted us. His name is Keith and he is the spitting image of a modern day Bobby Kennedy and I got really lucky being matched with him for Demyst. He was a welcome and friendly face after our first major traveling adventure in country. We arrived in the middle of the day just in time to see the bustling city of Bobo come to almost a full stop for afternoon prayer. As we walked aounr and entered the grande marche I looked down one of the streets, and instead of the usual activity of bikes and motos sprinting from one end to the other, it was eerily quiet with row after row of men who lined the width and length of the street on their prayer mats waiting for the call to prayer from the mosque. At the gas station, instead of cars and motos parked next to the pumps, there were also men readying themselves for the prayer, if a moto needed gas, they would simply have to wait until after the prayer was over, because there was simply no room for them to move around and all the pumps were blocked. In that moment I couldn’t help but think about this situation being translated back into the States.

We took a bush taxi to Keith’s site another 2 hours away. Our taxi was a glorified truck with hot black leather seats and men, women, babies and animals were cramped into every square inch of the back cab. There was no glass or screens in the windows so we got a very hot, dusty, but welcome breeze all the way there. We made a ton of stops on the way to our destination and the taxi staff who rode on the top of the vehicle with all the luggage, bikes and animals who would not fit inside, would jump down and climb back up when we would stop to load/unload people’s belongings. I was abruptly awakened from a restless sleep a few times to find a staffers boot coming through my window/armrest to use as a foothold as he scrambled back up on top of the taxi.

Our weekend on Demyst was amazing. We were able to see a different part of the country, see an actual volunteer site and home, and get a real sense of what exactly we will be experiencing a little less than a month from now. We met the association members who Keith will work with for his project, and they were very friendly and helpful in explaining the purpose of their organization and how much they enjoyed working with PCVs. Keith is the “3^rd Generation” which means that there have been 2 other volunteers at his site before him. The way the site selection process works is: a village/organization/association has to request a volunteer. In order to get a volunteer there is a very stringent selection process, complete with tons of paperwork, site visits from Peace Corps staff, meetings with Associations/members and housing selection. A village can have a volunteer in cycles of 6 years, so after Keith leaves his site 2 years from now, there will not be another volunteer replacing him. I believe that in a few years, the village can request another volunteer, but there is another waiting period, which I believe is a few years, before they can get another one.

Keith was very welcoming and his home was very nice, but he was also fantastic cook also so we got really really spoiled that weekend. It was comforting to see that there is a whole realm of food possibilities that exists outside of our life here in Koudougou where our families make most of our meals. Don’t get me wrong, my family is GREAT and they are excellent cooks, but no matter how much I like eating the to, spaghetti, goat and fish each night it will be nice to be able to have some control over what I am eating and vary my diet a little more. Our first night Keith made us rice with a spicy coconut curry sauce (SO GOOD) once I get the recipe, I will be asking you all to send me some ingredients. On our second day there two large chickens were delivered and later Keith’s brother and sister made us fried chicken which was nothing like the Colonel’s but delicious nonetheless. Saturday was Halloween and we spent the day touring the marche, talking with people in his village, having language class, and finally getting a chance to observe the repo (siesta period) in the middle of the day. I finished a fantastic book that Jack gave me before I left and was able to write in my journal a little bit. We had a few language classes and bought a large watermelon in lieu of a pumpkin which we later carved into a jack-o-lantern and named Fahto, which in Jula means “crazy”. As you can imagine, my first American holiday in country was celebrated with much success! Demyst was a great experience and it was sad to leave Keith because we had so much fun, but it really did finally help focus my view of the kind of life a PCV leads and it has only made me that much more excited for December when I will get to swear in. 

 (Sorry these posts are so behind!) Ill catch up soon I promise.