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