Bonsoir!
(Yes, the title of this entry is from a Cat Stevens song and yes, I think that is totally appropriate given that I am a Peace Corps volunteer).
I'm back in Fada and headed to village tomorrow after a week of traveling for our In-Service Training (IST). The In-Service took place in Ouahigouya, the city where we had our three month training upon arriving in Burkina. For those of you've who've been reading since the beginning, you'll recall that our Girls' Education and Empowerment group lived in four small villages outside of Ouahigouya, where we had most of our classes, biking into the city (realize that the term city is totally relative) a few times a week for training sessions. Our stage (training group) also consisted of Secondary Ed volunteers (high school teachers) who lived in the city proper (and enjoyed such luxuries as electricity and refrigeration...WEAK). Anyway, IST was only GEE volunteers, though we did get to see a few SE volunteers who teach in Ouahigouya. It was the first time our whole GEE group has been together since swear-in, a whopping five months ago. IST is supposed to take place three months into service, after the completion of our etude de mileu (comprehensive village study, basically). It didn't because a new group of volunteers immediately followed ours, which is unusual as they're typically spaced apart by at least a few months. I guess we can thank Mr. Bush for that, since he boldly issued a challenge in the 2006 State of the Union to significantly increase the number of Peace Corps volunteers abroad while Congress chose to maintain our paltry annual budget - democracy at it's best.
It was neat to be back in Ouahigouya, no longer wide-eyed newbies but now significantly more equipped (and slightly jaded) veterans. Our four-day training consisted of sessions on primary project design and management, secondary projects, analysis of our village studies and experiences and activities thus far, as well as a host of other useful stuff. We all took a short Myers - Briggs personality test and I am pleased to report that I have a personality and it is INTP (Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiver). From what I gather, we're a pretty interesting bunch (including the likes of Albert Einstein and Marie Curie)...
"They have a finely nuanced ability to analyse situations, find root causes and foresee consequences. They distrust action taken too quickly without the necessary investigation. They are usually levelheaded, objective, impersonal yet intensely involved in problem solving. They are fiercely independent, seeking input and comments from a chosen few. When reporting to others, they need to establish credibility first: their own and that of the person they are reporting to. If the gap in knowledge and expertise is too great and their own proficiency dismissed, belittled or ignored, they will lose interest and motivation.
They are less interested in running the world as they are in understanding it. They are curious and capable of explaining complex political, economic or technological problems, taking great pleasure in explaining all the factors and intricacies. They are rigorous with their thoughts and analysis, choosing the exact words that convey precisely what is meant. They may spend a lot of time defining words, concepts and systems in order to define a problematic solution.
They are armchair detectives, scientists and philosophers, spending most of their time in quiet reflection to ponder truth, and solve mysteries. They may tend to neglect social requirements and responsibilities, finding many relationships to be too superficial to be of much interest."
...so that's me apparently. Analyzng our personalities was fairly interesting, especially considering how intensely introspective just about every volunteer becomes after a few months in the bush. There's nothing like an intensive, substantive cross-cultural experience to put a person better in tune with themselves and shed some light on behaviors, quirks, idiosyncracies, and the like.
The most valuable part of the IST were the casual conversations, anecdotes and opportunities to discuss our experiences thus far with one another and the other volunteers who helped out with the training. We also had an afternoon free to bike out to our host villages and visit the families that we lived with during our initial training. I biked out to Sananga, my host village, with two other volunteers and we spent a few hours visiting all of our families and catching up on village news. Unfortunately (well, fortunately, really) I didn't get to see my host sisters because they were all in the city at their respective high schools. We did sit and talk for a long while with Harouna, my host father, and it was exciting to be able to converse more fluently in local language with my host mom. Our interaction during stage consisted mostly of lots of smiling and gesturing, so we were both excited to have a substantive conversation. They were definitely thrilled to see us in village and it was nice to come back with better lingual skills and cultural know-how in general.
I did see on of my sisters randomly when I was running one evening after our training sessions. I headed away from centre-ville toward the house of a volunteer who lives in Ouahigouya. As I was running, I noticed a young woman staring at me and, as I got closer, I realized that she looked familiar. We stared at each other for a few seconds before I realized that it was Zaalisa, one of my host sisters. She looked taller and a bit plumper (read: no longer super skinny - all of the kids in village looked healthier since this year's harvest was really good). It was so nice to see her and talk about her classes and the family. Seeing my host family made me miss the small-village experience of stage. Diabo is great, but it doesn't have the same close-knit feeling of Sananga (it's probably 10 times as big).
So IST was good overall; it helped me to clarify some ideas and identify new approaches for project implementation. I'm certainly motivated to get back to village and pursue some new projects and better organize projects that I have started. Our ride back was a bit eventful and constituted my absolute worst transport experience in Burkina thus far. A group of 8 or so of us had taken a bus together from Ouahigouya to Ouagadougou, the capital, where we were all planning to stay for two nights before heading back to village. An hour and a half into the ride, one of the tires on the bus blew out and we veered back and forth on the road (at high speed , because everyone drives like a maniac here) until finally and uneventfully coming to a stop on the side of the road. The tire was changed in shockingly good time (this is Burkina Faso, after all, and things that should take an hour often take four or five) but I could definitely could have done without this particular cultural experience.
We spent an enjoyable two days in Ouaga, eating well and celebrating the birthday of one of our volunteers with a fancy-smancy dinner at this nice restaurant near the Peace Corps hostel (I ate grilled capitaine, garlic shrimp, and sautéed calamari - I had forgotten that food like this EXISTED). I also had the opportunity to hang out with my friend Severin from Diabo, who goes to lycée (high school) in Ouaga. I hadn't seen him since September so we met up up, had a Coke together, and caught up on village news, his classes , etc. This trip has been a nice break-from-village-reality but I'm ready to go back...too many days in the big city (I'm falling behind on my reading)!
I guess that's all the news (that's fit) for now. La vie en Afrique is good (though I am in dire need of a bucket bath after my dusty, sweaty transportexperience). On that note...
"And what was that stench in the cupboard?" asked Jimmy.
"Africa," I said.
- Dea Birkett, "Jella: A Woman at Sea"
Thanks for reading.
- Chrissy
IST Welcome Dinner in Ouahigouya
Peace Corps Dance Par - tay, getting down at a volunteer's house
Joel and I
Philomene the coiffeuse (Eloi's wife) - tressing hair.
Richard, their son, waiting impatiently as dad makes tea.
A women's association in village, dying traditional pagnes (fabric) to be sold to benefit their work.
Laying pagne out to dry.
Boys playing foosball "baby foot" at the market
Ecole 'B': the primary school where I work. 
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