A Week in Ouaga

Well, my week's training here in the capital is coming to a close. We leave tomorrow to head back to my regional capital Ouahigouya for one last week of formation. It's been a busy week full of field trips, good food, and new people. Allow me to explain.

This week we have visited several of the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that work in Burkina. We visited the World Health Organization, Plan Burkina, Unicef, and Catholic Relief Services (CRS). While some weren't applicable to my service because they do not work in my region, they were all pretty interesting to learn about what they do and tour their offices. I especially enjoyed the Unicef presentation which focused on breastfeeding and the importance of exclusively breastfeeding to six months of age and complimentary feeding beyond that. We also got to meet a volunteer who has extended her service for a third year to work with CRS. It was really interesting to hear her point of view.

As I have mentioned before, food is never better than when we're in Ouaga. We ate Mexican at the Country Director's house one day, Thai at the SED APCD's (head of the small enterprise development program) house, as well as burgers, shwarmas, acheke, as well as my favorite frozen treat: Fan Milk. There are lots of boys who push coolers full of the stuff. Burkina's equilivant of the ice cream man. You can buy FanChoco (which tastes like frozen chocolate milk, 150CFA = $0.30), Lait Vanille (which tastes like frozen cake batter, 100CFA = $0.20), and several other fruit-flavored ice treats (50CFA = $0.10).

In other exciting news, we received a brand new Health volunteer last night. She was a volunteer stationed in Madagascar but if you have followed the news, political unrest has caused PC to evacuate from the country. While some PCVs there returned home to the US, others have been placed in other Sub-Saharan African countries. Because French is required for our country, only one girl had enough French fluency to be placed here. Ironically she went to high school with Christy from my stage. So last night, Christy and I, along with the Country Director Doug and two other staff members drove to the airport to pick her up and welcome her to country. It's excited to everyone to have a new volunteer join the group.

Today, I woke up and headed to the bureau for moto training. Although we are not allowed to drive motos, we can request permission to ride on one with your counterpoint for specific reasons such as vaccination campaigns in satellite villages or such. Of course, while 12 year old Burkinabe are allowed to drive motos, we need to go through training in order to ride on the back of one. But it was fine, actually kind of fun. Afterwards, I went back to the house, changed my clothes, then headed to City Hall. The daughter of one of the language teachers during stage was getting married, so a group of us went. Because moto training ran late, we actually missed the ceremony, but we were able to attend the reception and had some good food, such as chicken, salad, sheep brochettes, fries, rice, and to, washed down with some delicious bissap. It was really a cool experience and a nice closure to the week. As we head to Ouahigouya tomorrow, I am excited to get back closer to home. I hope to post again in a few days from there. Wend na ko-d nidaare!

In-Service Training

So here we are. Back in training again. I arrived in Ouaga two days ago, along with the nineteen other PCVs in the Health sector. Before that, we were split up for a week among our regional capitals for additional language training, myself and three others spending that time in Ouahigouya. It feels a bit weird to leave village for three weeks after having only been there for a few months and a part of me feel guilty, but I have to remind myself that this training is hopefully making me a better volunteer.

We had dinner last night at the Country Director's home. Nothing short of amazing. I have just one word for you: Mexican. We had tons of chips and salsa, followed by burritos with ground beef, and a great fruit salad with fresh pineapple, mangoes, apples, and strawberries. I ate way too much, but it was completely worth it.

This morning we took a trip to the World Health Organization and had an interesting discussion about vaccination campaigns, mosquito nets, and malaria, among other topics. Each volunteer also had a villager from their sites who arrived today to participate in the training for the next couple of days. My CoGes president arrived without incedent, along with the other counterparts from the Ouahigouya area.

Besides that, not a lot of news to report on this end. It's nice to have some different foods, rooms with fans, and showers for a short while.

FESPACO

The past few days have worn me out. It began Friday morning with a polio vaccination campaign in my village. My CoGes president and I went to each section of my village administering the oral vaccine to as many children as possible. He gave me the option of forcing the kids mouths open as they are crying and screaming or marking their pinky fingers with a sharpie to keep track of whose received the drops. Of course, I chose the marker, which was a good call considering that most of the kids were terrified. It didn't help that many children still didn't know me. I may as well have been a white devil to them. That lasted until 1pm or so until I returned home to get ready to bike into Ouahigouya.

The next morning I caught a 9am bus to the capital, Ouagadougou. Every two years, this busy city gets even busier as tourists from all around the world come to FESPACO, the largest and most famous film festival in West Africa. I stayed there for 4 days, watching a total of 8 movies that included films from Burkina, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, Senegal, and even America. Some were really interesting, like Drum, a South African film about an African journalist during the apartheid in Johnannesburg in the 1950s. I also saw a great Senegalese documentary about a Muslim singer whose country shunned him for making pop music with religious themes. There were also a few number of duds, like Zimbabwe, a South African film that looked like a home video about of a woman who wants to cross the border from Zimbabwe illegally for a better life. I couldn't tell you how it ended because we walked out an hour into it.

All in all, it was really interesting to see so many different African perspectives of life on this continent. I also walked around a lot, so I gained a much better understanding and comfort level of the layout of this sprawling city and ate a lot of good food too (but spent way too much money in the process). But I am happy to be home, back in my village. Besides, I have less than two weeks until I leave again for a three week training session in Ouahigouya and Ouaga. Oh and mangos are beginning to come into season. One word: amazing.