The Project Rock

So some how I have made it through the long three weeks that was IST, or In-Service Training. As you know, I spent one week working on language here in Ouahigouya, a second week in the capital, and a third week back in Ouahigouya again. It was an exhausting training and I am glad to be back in village (even if I don't know exactly how to start).

The problem is like this. We are of course in the hot season where temperatures reach in the triple digits. This will last for about another month or two. And then the rainy season comes. And during this time, everybody is working in the fields with their crops. It is their livelihood here, so you can imagine how busy people are during this time. Thus, it is very very difficult to do any grandiose projects because nobody will come and everyone is too tired. So basically the best time to start these larger projects is after the rains and thus in the fall. So basically I have until June-ish to do any projects that I want to do before rainy season. Also I am going on a much needed vacation at the end of this month to Ghana for a week, which understandably cuts into my time but also is drastically needed. So where does that leave me?

It leaves me confused with little time to figure out what I need to do. But I do have ideas about what I want the next few months to look like, my ¨plan d'action¨ so to speak.

• I want to go on Monday and talk to the director of my primary school in village about setting up some times when I can come in and talk a little about health topics that relate to the students. I think this si easiest for me because the older kids should understand French enough that I don't need to bring someone to translate. Perhaps if I can get a twice-monthly health class going, that should give me several discussions before school gets out for summer.
• I want to find and interview the several women's groups that supposedly exist in Aorema to discover what their greatest needs are. I have become very interested in the formation of small savings and credit clubs, which teach groups to save and loan money among themselves. Because right now people have very little money (foods supplies are running short and their harvests don't come until the fall), it would make sense to wait until they have more money to start this, but I would like to at least get to know these groups and discuss their options for after the rains.
• The one good thing to do during the rains, obviously, is gardening because you don't need to water anything (though most people are actually too busy in the fields to take advantage of this). So my plan is when I get back from vacation to start hardcore growing of moringa seedlings. For those of you that do not know, moringa (known as ¨arzen tiiga¨ or paradise tree in Mooré) is an amazing plant that has highly nutritious leaves and is ideal for hot climates such as in Burkina. It is great to add to sauces and children's meals to add extra nutrients, since malnutrition is a huge problem here. So I want to start growing a lot of morninga and possibly start my own vegetable garden in my courtyard when the rains come.

Those are the main things I want to work on in the next few months. I also hope to work with my CSPS staff during their vaccination campaigns , baby weighing, and the other regular activities at the clinic. I think once things get going, it will be alot easier to keep the momentum going, but right now it feels like I am try to push a boulder that won't budge, an enormous rock that has never moved an inch.

Anyway, I'm here in Ouahigouya for the weekend, hopefully celebrating Easter with my major, one of the handful of people from my village who celebrate it. Hopefully, I can figure out how to get this boulder rolling when I get back. Happy Easter and Passover to all! Until next time!

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.

Mooré 201: 15 Credits

So I have begun taking Mooré ¨classes¨ this week, racking in a total of twelve hours.  Unfortunately for me, it is not at all an ideal situation for me to learn the language, despite what all my fellow villagers tell me.  Allow me to break it down for you.  I have gone every day Monday through Friday for three hours to a class known as ¨alphabetization,¨ which is another big (French?) word for a school for Mooré-speaking women to learn how to read and write Mooré.  Thus, my class has about 30 women and me, the only one who doesn't speak Mooré.  There is no French spoken, so I don't have the benefit of having translations of what is written, and I honestly have learned practically nothing. 

Yet people continue to tell me that if I go, i will pick up the language eventually.  Ha!  I think I have studied enough languages to know that it is impossible for me to learn this way.  But I have continued to go because at least I get to interact with the community more, and it should help my integration.  But I am still on the look out for someone who speaks French in my village who can tutor me for an hour or two a week (with pay of course).  Even the women in my class think I am doing a great job because when it's my turn, I can stand up and read what the teacher has written on the board, despite not understanding a single word of it.  The only useful day was when they were learning how to write the numbers and do simple math problems because I was able to work on my Mooré numbers a bit.  But once they found, I could do four math problems in about a minute, everyone now tries to cheat off me!  Whenever our teacher gives us problems or an excercise to work on, I have women in every direction trying to see what I've written down.  One woman even passed me a blank sheet of paper so I could do the work for her!  

But at least it's something to do, and people seem impressed by the way I can fake some Mooré.  But faking is not helpful to me in the long run.  I can't be as useful as I could be to these people if I can't communicate.  And while most volunteers seem to rely on other people to translate for them, I would really like to master the local language as much as possible.  I think when my boss (my APCD) comes to visit soon, I will talk to he about the tutor and maybe she can help me figure something out.

Other things that have happened this week:

• I was sick for a day and a half.  I don't know if it was something I ate or dehydration but whatever it was, I didn't feel good.  I will spare you the details, but I will just say I slept very close to my friend, Mr. Bucket.  I am 100% better now, so don't worry.
• Some PCV friends came out to my village to lunch and we visited the crocodiles again.  We saw maybe four or five.  The dam is drying up, so I think they are getting a bit more nervous.
• We had vaccination campaigns in my village and the surrounding villages, which meant biking in crazy amounts of wind.  It literally feels like some gusts are of tropical storm force, blowing dust everywhere.  One morning it felt like I was biking through water it was so strong.  But at least we vaccinated 100 plus babies against polio, measles, yellow fever, and other illnesses. 
• They are suppose to finish my latrine and shower today, so I will finally have one to call my own.  It is kind of embarassing having to walk all the way across my compound, passing by all the other people sitting around, to my major's toilet with my toilet paper in hand.  I might as well announce it: ¨Attention everybody, just FYI, yes, I am going to the bathroom now.  If you were wondering where i was going with this toilet paper, yes, I am going to the bathroom.¨

Gettin' Busy

Things have started to pick up lately, as my Etude de Milieu (first three months at site) begin to wind down. I have just about one month left before I am to return with my fellow health volunteers for three additional weeks of training. After returning from that at the beginning of April, I will be able to actually start planning projects and working more. These past couple of weeks have been packed with activities.

I have been helping out with our vaccination campaign here in Aorema, writing down names and dates for the different vaccinations inside each person's carnet, a booklet that keeps a record of all their medical histories. Most of our vaccines are for young babies under 11 months and include the likes of polio, measles, yellow fever. We also give vaccines to pregnant women. All these are subsidized by the government and are given free of charge to the population. We begin this week to do vaccinations in the three neighboring villages.

I have also participated in two sensibilizations this past week. This is just just a fancy (French?) word that means giving a presentation or demonstration to tach about a certain health topic, like when dental hygienists or nurses go to elementary schools with a giant toothbrush and a set of large plastic teeth to show the kids how to properly brush. This is a key aspect of my job here - to organize and perform sensibilizations. Both of these I attended, one led by my major and the other by the midwife, were focused on going to the CSPS for vaccinations, prenatal consultations and childbirth. I saw a lot of things that I can work on to improve. For one, they lasted about 3 hours each, way way to long for busy moms who ended up talking, sleeping, or walking out half-way through. They need to be shorter, more dynamic, with a much more focused topic. At least there was a fair number of women who turned out, about 50 or so at each.

I begin Mooré ¨class¨ tomorrow, so I am looking forward to that. It isn't actually a tutor like I wanted but rather a group of illiterate women who go to learn how to read Mooré. SO I don't think I will learn specific vocabular and grammar like I had hoped, but at least I will have the exposure with the language more.

So that's about all the exciting news about my job. At some point in the next four weeks, I need to gather all the info for my Etude de Milieu, write it up, and type it up to turn in to my APCD, the boss. This report is basically a mixture of demographic, geographic, and health-related information as it pertains to Aorema and is due when I go for training in March. I also plan to make a trip to Ouaga the capital to attend FESPACO at the end of February, Africa's largest and most famous film festival that takes place here every other year, as well as to pick up a box that has finally arrived that was sent from the US in November! Until next time. Wend na kod nidaare!

How Do You Measure A Day?

Yesterday, I measured the day in kilometers, 52 kilometers to be exact. I biked these 52 km, roughly 32 miles, with a group of volunteers to visit the village of Zogoré, where a fellow PCV from my training group lives. They had a huge celebration there as a way to raise awareness of AIDS, with traditional dance troops and even an all-female bicycle race. We each chose a different women to root for, and out of the twenty or so racing, I actually picked the winner. I think I should head to the racetrack when I get back to the States. While there, I met a volunteer from Japan working out of the Ouahigouya area. I was able to practice my crumbling fragments of Japanese on her. It was a lot of fun, and I actually enjoyed the 30 plus miles it took to get there and back. Now let's hope I have the energy to get back to my own village today. I certainly don't have any left to continue this post.