Site Visit and Other Adventures

Hey, All.

I'm back in Ouaga, sitting pretty at the air-conditioned Peace Corps bureau, after a busy few days visiting a current volunteer and checking out my future site. It's been an intense and educational few days. I left Sunday with the two stagiares whose sites are close to mine. We got up bright and early and caught a bush taxi (QUITE an experience) to the site of a current volunteer, off the road to Fada but not as far East as we'll be. We spent three nights at her site, bumming around, meeting the locals, and catching up on some much needed sleep! It was very cool to finally have the opportunity to see a volunteer at site and get a real picture of what life in village will be like. She's a health volunteer who is heading home in a month and a half, so it was so great to hear about all of her experiences and the various stages she's gone through during her two years. She definitely seems so well integrated and, though she's excited to head home, she kept reiterating how bittersweet it is to be leaving.

After our three-day visit, we caught a bus to our stop on the road to Fada and disembarked in the middle of an inconvenient rainstorm (though rain in Burkina is always a good thing). The three of us hung out at a maquis (bar), sipping some Sprites in the rain until it let up and we could head off to our sites. Nancy, the stagiare 10k from my village, and I headed down the very muddy road with our packs strapped to our bikes toward her village where we were to spend the night (my village is 21k off the main road, so we naturally opted for the shorter trip). Luckily, Nancy's homologue (counterpart, a teacher in her village), her village school director, and the director of one of the five primary schools in my village met us on their motos after we'd made only a bit of progress (heavy bikes and muddy roads are a bad combination!). They kindly unloaded our bags and we all proceeded to Nancy's village and her director's house, where we enjoyed a short repose before I continued down the road by bike to check out my village.

The school director (who is the equivalent of a principal for one of the village primary schools) and I chatted as we made the 12k trip entirely UPHILL. Yes, I am skinny AND buff, thank you. The abundance of green and general beauty of the landscape made the ascent much more tolerable and I started to get pretty excited that I'll be spending the next two years in some place greener and prettier than in northern Burkina, where we're living during stage. There are so many more trees and hills in the southern half of the country, richer soil (thus better farming), as well as lots of cool boulders and rock formations.

When we arrived in Diabo, we stopped by the director's house and I met his wife and daughter and we sat and rested for a bit before heading over to the Education Inspector's office (every region in Burkina has a school inspector) where I met a bunch of education officials, some of whom I'll probably work with while in Diabo. After that, I got the grand tour of my future maison, which is located close to the director's house and even closer to the aforementioned robinet! It's a spacious, two-room house and, on the Burkina scale, is really modern, as are many of the houses in Diabo. The majority, however, are still made of mud brick (for houses) and straw (for graineries and storage), so rest assured that my African village looks like an African village.

After that, we headed to Ecole B, the director's school, but I got a flat tire on the way so we detoured to the marche, where I had my tired repaired by the local bike mechanic (pretty much everyone in Burkina has some knowledge of bike maintenance, it's great). He repaired my tire for 100 CFA (that's 20 cents American) and I got an quick history of the region and the Zaosse people in the meantime - talk about a good deal. Loube, the director, his two very cute and impressively polite kids, and I walked back to his house where we sat and shared a beer (Burkinabe beer is impressively good by the way) with Aissatta, my homologue, and Fatimata, his wife. After that, he accompanied me back on the 12k ride to Nancy's village and we talked about potential projects for my time in Diabo.

We arrived at Nancy's director's house where we enjoyed an excellent American-style dinner and ice cold Cokes. It was interesting to get a taste of fonctionaire life in Burkina. Fonctionaires are any and all government employees, which includes all teachers and directors. They definitely live entirely different lives than most villagers since they are highly educated, make more money, and typically come from all different parts of the country (they are assigned to their respective schools by the government). It was interesting to see how different the family dynamic was at the home of a fonctionaire. While they still embody many of the characteristics of typical village families, they also interact much differently. For instance, in most village families, men, women, and children never eat together. Men eat first, then children, then women. In a fonctionaire family, that's typically not the case and the whole family tends to spend more time together. This is definitely a generalization, but it was cool to witness a family dynamic more reminsicent of the Cleaver's than a traditionally unegalitarian Burkinabe family situation.

After dinner, we headed to Nancy's homologue's house to sleep. I was definitely worn out after our very busy and exciting day and was not all that psyched to get up before 6 this morning to bike back to the goudron and catch transprot to Ouaga. Luckily, after we met the other stagiare at the goudron, we were able to catch a bush taxi quickly and made it back here in about 3 hours.

So things are good. I'm now an experienced veteran in regard to transport in Burkina, my future village is great, and I'm relatively healthy for the moment. Now I'm off to relax at the Peace Corps hostel, enjoy a much needed shower, and head off the check out the American embassy (which has a POOL!). Tomorrow, we head back to Ouahigouya for the remaining five weeks of stage and beacoup des classes Francais et Moore!

All for now. A bientot.

Chrissy

Greetings from Ouaga!

Bonsoir!

I'm currently in Ouagadougou with the other Girls' Ed stagiares for a counterpart training workshop. We've spent the last two days with our homologues, counterparts in village who will assist us with our work, language, and general cultural integration.

But before I get into THAT, I have many exciting things to report! This has been an incredibly full week of feedback, announcements, and travel! First, I am very excited to report that my language skill level en français has jumped a whole level from Novice-Mid to Intermediate-Mid in one short month! I was very excited to receive that feedback since language is so crucial to our work and general well-being. The Peace Corps uses three level designations (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced) so I'm hoping to achieve at least Advanced Low by the end of stage (5 more weeks). We also received general performance evaluations from our formateurs (language and technical teachers) and mine was really great, which was certainly a nice boost. We've all been working our tails off, often while sick with a variety of parasite and climate induced maladies! Speaking of which, I'm currently experiencing my second round of stomach illness which, happily, is less grave then before.

The day after our evaluation feedback, we got our SITE ANNOUNCEMENTS! Talk about apprehension and excitement. We gathered together the morning before our departure for Ouaga and had a neat little ceremony where we affixed our pictures to a giant map of Burkina on which our sites, and those of the Secondary Ed stagiares, were designated. I will be spending the next two years in Diabo, a large village in the Southeast of Burkina, almost directly north of the border between Burkina, Ghana, and Togo. Apparently it's a rather large village, since it has at least 4 primary schools and a lycee (high school). It also has a CSPS (clinic), a pharmacy, a few telecentres, and boutiques that sell household things and food as well as a marche (market) every three days. This is all extremely reassuring as my current village is really small and it definitely requires a bit of a bike ride to get to a phone, market, or place that sells crucial stuff like toilet paper. I'm also a mere 10k away from another volunteer which is also super sweet since it guarantees an English-speaking reprieve when necessary. One of my current village mates is also only 25k away - hooray for bikeable proximity! Diabo is 2 - 3 hours away from Ouaga and 50k from Fada n'Gourma, one of the bigger cities in Burkina. It's about 20k off the main paved road which means catching a bush taxi or biking to the goudron (paved road) to catch transport to Ouaga or Fada. I'm definitely much more central to other volunteers and closer to a major city than a lot of other people. Happily, Fada provides a nice central location for quite a few of us, so weekend reunions will be a definite possibility.

Diabo is comprised of mainly Mossi and Zaosse people and is Zaosse in origin. The Zaosse speak Zaore which is a variant of Moore but is very similar. I've been told that Zaore and Moore are pretty much interchangeable so I should be able to commincate with most Moore speakers, a very nice thing. It's so great to see the typical Burkinabe reaction when you come out with a greeting or comment in Moore, they don't get too many white folks speaking local languages here, as you can imagine. Though it has been fun to see other expats while we've been in Ouaga. Even in Ouahigouya we see the occassional Nasara, usually a European with an NGO, and last week we had a huge group of French tourists infiltrate our little city! But I digress. So Diabo sounds pretty great and I'll find out for myself in two days when I visit my site after staying with a current volunteer for a night en route. Aissatta, my homologue, described my house to me a bit and it sounds pretty spacious and is conveniently located next to the nearest water source which (drumroll please) is not a pump, nor a well...it's a ROBINET! A real, live faucet!!! And, if my translation skills are good, it sounds like it runs well all year round with little threat to use during the dry season. So, in summation, this all sounds pretty auspicious! I'll have lots to report on my site visit in my next blog entry.

Le Moyen du Transport (means of transport)

Rewind a few days to site announcement and our departure for Ouaga. Our voyage marked the first and quite formative experience with transport in Burkina Faso. On the subject of transport, perhaps shiny new cars initially come to mind...a good old American SUV or an ever-practical compact. Now there are, of course, cars in Burkina, even the odd Benz cruising through the bush (really). But transport, Burkina-style, typically refers to a bus or bush taxi. There are several bus lines that operate in Burkina travelling between the major cities. Some lines are more timely and reliable than others, but all represent the risk of being stranded on the side of the road until the next bus comes along, or longer. Also, an aside, all of the bus line names are acronyms...STAF, STMB, ZST, SOGEBAF...weird. Anyhow, we took the STMB line to Ouaga at 14:00, arriving in Ouaga around 17:00...not bad at all if you disregard the frequent honking at bicyclists swerving to get out of our way, goats crossing the road and other unfortunate creatures in proximity to the road. The bus itself was a formidable machine, resembling a Greyhound with exponentially more miles and less paint. As they say in Burkina, ça va aller (so it goes). It was definitely a memorable experience, for our group and the other Burkinabé stuck on transport with a bunch of nasaras. I had a window seat and enjoyed the now VERY green landscape whilst listening to my iPod. I look forward to my upcoming transport "firsts" including tomorrow's journey by bush taxi to Koupela, where I'll be staying with a current volunteer to check out her site and meet with the regional education official before heading to Diabo to visit my site.

Sejourn in Ouaga

As aforementioned, I've been in Ouaga for three days and two nights, during whih I have enjoyed my first Burkina pizza and Burkina ice cream (the proverbial oasis in the desert, if you will). Our first night here, a group of us ventured to one of the dozen or so recommended restaurants in Ouaga that cater to fonctionaires (government employees), tourists, international types, and Peace Corps volunteers craving Western-style ANYTHING. Let me tell you, it was incredible. Not only did the place have atmosphere, reminiscent of a quaint Italian restaurant, with a huge candlelit patio area, but the food was incredible. I ate an indescribably delicious pizza followed by a bowl of the best sorbet and ice cream I have ever had. Needless to say, I was a happy camper.

In addition to the good eating available around the city, our two-day workshop was held in an air-conditioned room (heaven on Earth) and we ate several meals at our hotel that consisted of more than one basic food group. I've eaten at least 5 different types of vegetables in 3 days...this is a BIG DEAL. I've also enjoyed several real showers and the use of plumbing in general. It's been a nice little vacation for sure. Tonight will be our last flirtation with convenience and modernity until we return for a night at the end of the week before heading back to Ouahigouya and our villages for the last 5 weeks of stage.


I guess that's all I have to report. This Peace Corps thing seems pretty real after site announcements and our counterpart workshop, although I still have to take moment every now and then a tell myself that yes, I really am in Africa and yes, I will probably feel this white the whole two years (albeit with a nice tan)! It's certainly a continual rollercoaster of highs and lows, with lots more to come. I have frequent moments of self-doubt countered by moments of surprising strength and reaffirming clarity. There are so many beautiful and wonderful things about this experience and I am learning to muster courage and fortitude I didn't know I had, but it is HARD. This is certainly no vacation, especially three months of training to be a functional member of a community in a place that is about as foreign as it gets. The more job-related things we learn, the more we know we're up against. Gender inequity here is endemic and, as was evidenced during our workshop, touches each and every woman regardless of education or social status. This battle isn't just uphill, it's Mount Everest during an avalanche.

There are however, inspirational rays of hope in the incredible Burkinabé staff who are so dedicated to our training and our future work, and the principles that drive them. The passion they have for progressive change in this country and the challenges that many of them, especially the women, have faced and surmounted, are reason to hope and to take du courage in the face of a difficult, unreceptive environment. They will have crammed an amazing amount of skill and information into our brains by the time stage is over, preparing us for much failure and hopefully some sustainable success.

As always, thanks for the e-mails.

With Love,

Chrissy

Under African Skies

Bonjour!

It's been quite a week and feels like a lifetime since the last time I wrote. We spent the majority of our week au village with loads of French classes, cross-cultural activities, and more tech discussions and practice sessions.

We started the week off with a 4th of July celebration in Bogoya, our neighboring village, in the courtyard of another Peace Corps stagiare (trainee). It was quite the to-do with American-style foods such as mac and cheese, hot dogs from a can, and, of course, coca cola. Mind you, all of the fare was prepared in traditional Burkinabé style, over open fires in marmites (big, cauldron-like cooking bowls). All of the Burkinabé Peace Corps staff were in attendance and many of the villageois joined us for some intense and impressive dancing aprés notre diner. It didn't really feel like the 4th, but it was certainly nice to be together en masse, celebrating with friends, American and Burkinabé alike.

We've started holding some meetings in village with our école's APE and AME (the equivalent of parent-teacher associations). The meetings are intended as practice for the work we'll do at site, although the goal is to produce a substantive, useful end-product. Our meeting went surprisingly well, with both the men and women in the groups participating in some very candid disussion of the problems facing young people, especially girls, in the village, with particular regard to issues in school and with retention of female students. The APE/AME members made some very quick and insightful connections between poverty and unwanted pregancy, the biggest issues for girls here. We ended the meeting with the idea of creating an extra-curricular club of sorts focusing on AGRs (Activités Genteratrices de Revenue) and money-management for young people (saving money is a difficult and often foreign concept in much of Burkina). We've included many of the older village men in our idea-exchanges with the hope that this effort will flourish with our initital guidance and after our departure in 6 weeks. I certainly have some reservations about getting hopes up and starting something that will potentially fall on its face with our departure. At the same time, these experiences are invaluable for us and, if nothing else, we've helped to introduce dialogues that rarely take place in our village. We've also made a significant effort to give both young men and women roles of responsibility within the club with the idea that they will play an equal role in decision making as far as potential projects, etc. Some of my sisters are particpating, which is great since they already have a successful income-generating project wherein they prepare a dinnertime meal to sell to passersby on their way from the city or from cultivating en brousse (in the bush).

Speaking of the bush, I took my first tour of the bush (and by bush, I mean the fields that the villageois cultivate and the Mango-tree groves which provide the most AMAZING respite from beaducoup de soleil and the ever-present heat). Aisha, my fellow PCT/stagiare and village-mate, and I headed out par velo ( on our super-spiffy mountain bikes) after classes and were greeted by lots of villageois, adults and kids alike. I got some great pictures our some our neighbors, including two little boys riding a donkey...I will try to post pictures soon but it's a bit of a challenge in the land of latent technology. It was amazing to see the total contrast from the dry, dust and sand covered landscapes of the village and surrounding areas (most of Burkina Faso is flat and dry and dust/sand-colored). En brousse, however, we were presented with an abundance of green, beautifully cultivated fields with complex irrigation systems (all hand dug). It was neat to see this other hugely important element of village life. I had a long conversation with my host-Dad today about cultivation and we set a tentative date for me to go out with my family to cultivate in two weeks when I return from a sojourn in Ouaga and a site visit to a current volunteer.

On the topic of sites - we find out next week where our site of two years will be! We've ascertained that most of us will be in the Northen Sahelian region (desert) or in the East (where the big national park is...few lions, but lots of elephants, hippos, etc.). I'm somewhat certain that I'll be in a Mooré-speaking village, though I'm not sure. Some stagiares are already learning local languages since the have Advanced French proficiency, so their site choices are limited to those of their language. I'm crossing my fingers for Mooré and am excited that I'll have a location to give the next time I post!

So, in order to paint a fuller picture of la vie au village, I though I'd give a topic-by-topic rundown of the often amusing, frequently awe-inspiring, and always interesting elements of village life.

La Cuisine Burkinabé

An interesting and important topic. At first, I had a tough time getting used to the Burkinabé diet, but I'm acclimating slowly with lots of trips to the "super-marché" in Ouahigouya for the odd package of butter cookies and a cold drink (Fanta is a PCT favorite). The Burkinabé staple is To ( a porridge-like millet dish that involves the vigorous pouding of millet into powder form, creating a sound that can be heard at almost any hour somewhere in the village). To is often served with ocra or various types of sauces. I have tried To and...it's interesting. I feel that I will grow to love and appreciate it but am convinced that I should ease my way in to the wild world of To. My family usually prepares me Benga (beans and rice...so good!), pasta with various types of sauces, or rice with peanut sauce. The variety is limited, but so it goes. My family also often gives me vegetables and fruits (cucumbers, onions, mangos, guava, a rare orange or banana), which are a treat (after a round of washing with bleach...no more parasites for this girl). It's tough to provide variety since staple crops all have a limited season. The rainy season, in particular, is less than U.S.-summer long. People definitely make do and my family is both generous and creative. Breakfast typically consists of a baguette and a glass of Nescafé (you grow to love it, really) with sugar and powdered milk. So that, my friends, is la cuisine Burkinabé (though you can find much creative fare in any city). We PCTs often frequent Madema Koulibaly's "Kiosque Exceptionelle" which is truly "exceptionelle." We buy sandwiches with egg, avocado, and other veggies, and top our meal of with locally-made pasteurized yogurt (which comes in a plastic container with an expiration date!). Good eating, for sure. I am, however, a bit slighter than I was...I've dropped 5 kilos or so, a problem in that my clothes are a bit baggy...the drawstring capris were an important foresight...thank you, J. Crew. The other night, my sisters were looking at my photos from home (family and friends - chances are a village of W. Africans is familiar with your face and name). Anyhow, they told me that I was gros (literally fat, though it's a compliment in Burkinabé culture) and that now I am trés petite (logically, not such a great thing). That's what all those kilometres of biking will do. I have heard that the skinniness is stage-related and chances are that, after going to site and cooking for myself, I'll gain a few of those kilos back! Now now on to the next topic...

L'EAU!

Ah water, sustainer of life. How I miss thee, kitchen faucet. Water is a BIG DEAL here and women cart it from the water pump in jugs on their head ALL DAY LONG (this is a feat I may try, perchance master?, at some future time...for now I watch in awe as they walk, turn their heads, pick things up, hold conversations, with gallons and gallons of water on their heads). And little kids do this too, REALLY little kids! I, despite frequent insistence, am not allowed to get my own water because my host Dad has "cinq filles! cinq!" (five daughters) who do it for me. To boot, my bath water is heated every morning and night. I do however, play some small role in my water consumption in that I filter and bleach my drinking and tooth-brushing water. Granted, this is a small effort in comparison but hey, it's not like I have a faucet or a sink! In all seriousness though, water is a cultural staple here as it represents a social forum, a source of pride for Burkinabé women, and a fundamental custom of hospitality (to not offer water is a travesty). That said, some plumbing infrastructure would be pretty sweet.

C'est tout pour maintenant, mes amis. Thanks for reading and for the e-mails. I would like to publically express my incredible excitement that Lea, fellow Colgater and friend extraordinaire, will be joining me in West Africa in mere weeks for her UN internship in Ghana...the beaches of Accra, here I come! Thanks for the e-mails, all, keep 'em coming! Also, I'll make a plug for snail mail corerspondence once again...it's like summer camp all over again.

Lots of Love!

- Chrissy

Manna Wanna!

Manna Wanna (what's up), tout le monde!

Just biked into Ouahigouya from my village after a morning of French class and reading Newsweek and National Geographic with one of my "little sisters" in my courtyard. It was an odd experience to look at pictures of the war in Iraq with her, trying to explain the situation...in French, no less.

Things are good, though I had my first major negative gastrointestinal experience last week. Let me tell you, without going into detail...diarrhea in Africa SUCKS. Luckily, Peace Corps has supplied us all with the means of preparing our own stool sample, which I have done TWICE, thankyouverymuch. Turns out my intense discomfort was caused by some very persistent bacteria hanging out in my intestines...praise Allah for Western meds.

Aside from the intestinal difficulties, training's been going great. My French is improving and I am proficient in the art of greeting (which is truly an ART in Burkina Faso) in Mooré. I have a "good morning" conversation with a least 20 people each day, often before the 6:30 or 7. Speaking of which, sleeping past 6 has become a luxury afforded to me only on the days when I am tired enough to sleep through the roosters crowing, donkeys baying, children yelling and singing, and the profusion of conversation that all begin by 5:30 each morning. Oh, and there is NO WEEKEND in Burkina Faso, work is done every day and people se reveille at the same time every day as well. Days are definitely full and I am often tired, a good thing since it allows me to fall asleep despite the constant din of LIFE that is ever-present in my compound.

On a more serious note, as we delve deeper into training and learn more about Burkinabé life and the struggles and challenges particular to women in this country, I am overcome by my fortune as an American woman. You cannot imagine how fortunate we are in the States until you spend each day watching people work from sunup to sundown just to live. The women I am privileged to live with do more in a day than I could imagine accomplishing in a week - from pouding millet to doing laundry to constant cooking and cleaning to helping the men cultivate in the fields...often with a baby tied to their back during all of these tasks. Regardless of this, the people in my village constantly reiterate how privileged they feel by our presence and bend over backwards day after day to make us comfortable and welcome. You don't know what hospitality is until you've visited Burkina!

The rainy season is not in full effect in Burkina and, more often than not, nights are accompanied by what my dad would brand "a gullywasher". The experience of a storm in Burkina is intense and awe-inspiring from the time you see the dust-laiden clouds rolling over the flat expanse that is ALL of Burkina until the moment the deluge begins pounding on your corrugated metal roof with a power unexpected. The winds that precede the storm are incredibly fast and the pre-rain result is a coat of dust and sand that envelopes everything, inside and out. The first few storms were a bit disconcerting, but now they are a welcome relief from the heat, as the post-storm air is cool and moisture-filled, ensuring a good night's sleep. There is also a post-storm phenomenon of cooled drinking water (regardless of where the water is stored) that is indescribably welcome. Despite the heat, drinking water that is hotter than air temperature when it's 105° out is pretty awful.

That's all the news for now. It's still hot, the mouches (flies) are still ever-present and totally obnoxious, but morale is high and I'm starting to feel a little more Burkinabé every day (although many of the kids in my compound still call me "Nasara" - white person). In general, however, whenever I walk out of my compound into the village, I'm greeted with a chorus of "Chris-tine! Yibeoogo kibare" (good morning, how are you)... to say that this is nice, gratifying, welcoming, etc. would be an understatement.

I miss you all lots and am grateful for the frequent e-mails. Alissa - you win the award for FIRST SNAIL MAIL CORRESPONDENCE! Thank you so much for the postcard. I know real mail is antiquated but it is an AWESOME thing here so do write if you have the opportunity!! My address is:

Christine Hart, PCV
Corps de la Paix Americain
01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso, West Africa

Writing back is difficult and a little expensive but I will make every effort to respond to any mail..e-mail's a little tougher as access is infrequent so forgive me if I don't always respond but your e-mails are read and MUCH appreciated.

Until next time and with love!!

- Chrissy