Well, the working hard may be true enough but it's sure not for the money (though, as you can imagine, $240 a month goes a lot further in the W. African bush than...anywhere in America).
We finished up the aforementioned APE/AME (Parents' Association/Mothers' Association) Workshop this past Friday. It was a productive week, though indescribably frustrating at times. Despite the fact that we were working with some high level civil servants, there remained a constant and sometimes insurmountable cultural barrier in terms of professional norms and approaches to the tasks at hand. A lot of our activities focused on groupwork, which was at once enriching and infuriating. I found myself often playing the role of taskmaster and having to guide (sometimes not so subtly) the group discussions back toward a more relevant course. It was pretty fascinating to observe how the education system in Burkina Faso and cultural norms impact professional life and, specifically, efficiency and productivity. It's easy, even after 15 months here, to take for granted the cultural and professional norms of the U.S. and "developed world." Tangents and anecdotes, no matter how related or relevant they are to a conversation, are typically unacceptable, especially in a structured and scheduled work environment. I found myself constantly looking at my watch and venting to other, equally frustrated volunteers during our coffee and lunch breaks. Despite the frustrations, however, we managed to produce some valuable material for the manual that will result from our efforts and I was able to conceptualize and articulate more fully and realistically the activities that I have in mind for the coming school year, such as meeting protocol and management training for the Parents' Associations and specific activities with the students at my primary school. All in all, a positive and useful experience.
We finished up the aforementioned APE/AME (Parents' Association/Mothers' Association) Workshop this past Friday. It was a productive week, though indescribably frustrating at times. Despite the fact that we were working with some high level civil servants, there remained a constant and sometimes insurmountable cultural barrier in terms of professional norms and approaches to the tasks at hand. A lot of our activities focused on groupwork, which was at once enriching and infuriating. I found myself often playing the role of taskmaster and having to guide (sometimes not so subtly) the group discussions back toward a more relevant course. It was pretty fascinating to observe how the education system in Burkina Faso and cultural norms impact professional life and, specifically, efficiency and productivity. It's easy, even after 15 months here, to take for granted the cultural and professional norms of the U.S. and "developed world." Tangents and anecdotes, no matter how related or relevant they are to a conversation, are typically unacceptable, especially in a structured and scheduled work environment. I found myself constantly looking at my watch and venting to other, equally frustrated volunteers during our coffee and lunch breaks. Despite the frustrations, however, we managed to produce some valuable material for the manual that will result from our efforts and I was able to conceptualize and articulate more fully and realistically the activities that I have in mind for the coming school year, such as meeting protocol and management training for the Parents' Associations and specific activities with the students at my primary school. All in all, a positive and useful experience.
Kim and I articulating some fascinating and important points.
And the ground-breaking ideas flow...
Group work. Many brains are better than...
You can't see the audience but, believe me, they were riveted.
Flip charts - a Peace Corps volunteers' best friend.
Girls' Ed and Empowerment volunteers.
Burkinabé workshop participants.
Volunteers, counterparts, and education officials.
"He scoured the bookstores on the Boulevard St.-Michel for African travel books written in English. He found books aplenty on traveling in East Africa, but nothing on West Africa...Tourists, it seemed, preferred lions and the Serengeti Plain to poverty and the Sahel."
Richard Dooling, "White Man's Grave"
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