Sunday, November 28, 2010
Thanksgiving pics continued
Thanksgiving!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Miscellaneous SEDness
Learning Gulmancema
As I may or may not have mentioned at some point earlier, we PCTs have to reach an intermediate-mid level of French in order to swear-in at official PC Volunteers. This is also the benchmark for starting a local language. So, throughout training, we have Language Placement Interviews (LPIs) and our second one (the first was our initial language placement) was 2 weeks ago. I think I got lucky, or my interviewer felt sorry for me, or some combination of various favorable factors allowed me to place at intermediate-mid. PC now trusts that when I'm dropped off alone at a village in the middle of nowhere, I'll be able to get by and fend for myself with the amount of French I've learned in less than 2 months. Ah, the wonders of immersion language learning. But for me, the most exciting thing about reaching inter-mid is that I get to start my local language!
The Eastern region of Burkina is inhabited mainly by the Gormatche people, and they speak Gormatchma. Or Gulmancema, spelled in the language. Pronounced [gaulmantʃma] approximately. My IPA is a little bit rusty so that might not be very accurate or useful for you non-linguistics major readers. But anyway, it's exciting to start another language! And interesting because I'm learning it from French. There are only about 3 weeks left in training, so I'm guessing I won't be able to get too far in Galmancema, but hopefully it'll be enough to get by. Also, my site is a pretty large city so most people will speak French. In fact, my predecessor got by without much Galmancema, though he was only there for 1 year. Since I'll have 2 years at site, it would probably be helpful for me to learn the local language. Not to mention, it's just really cool to learn another language! Most of the PCTs and even some of the language teachers were getting kind of tired of French classes, so it'll be nice to mix it up a bit.
Thanksgiving plans
Being in a completely different culture kind of makes you cling to things that are American and familiar, so we're going all out for the very American holiday of Thanksgiving. The PC office has kindly gifted us Butterball turkeys, I believe imported from the US, and we'll all be cooking traditional-ish food. We kind of have to make do with the ingredients we can find here, so some things might not be exactly authentic. For instance, I'm in the mashed potatoes group, and we recently found out that the market has run out of potatoes. Horrible timing. So, we'll be making our dish with patates, which is kind of between a potato and a yam. Looks like a potato, but is slightly sweet. And hopefully it'll taste good mashed and covered with gravy. Next week, or sometime post-Thanksgiving, I'll let you know how the dish turned out. And that blog post will most likely be accompanied by lots of Thanksgiving festivity photos!
Oh, and also, if you have any questions or want me to write about anything, feel free to leave a message in the comments! I might not respond but I'll definitely read them!
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Tabaski pics
More puppy pics!
Photos courtesy of SW and his camera.
Site announcement pics
Site announcement!
Finally, the day we were all waiting for. Monday, November 15 was site announcement day. We finally found out where we were going to be for our 2 years of service in Burkina! As can be imagined, we were all really excited and anxious, and they made us wait until the second half of the day to actually tell us.
The announcement ceremony was actually pretty cool. First, it began with a short skit covering the process of picking out a site to the arrival of a new volunteer. Then, a Health PCT and a SED PCT together unfolded a huge map of Burkina, with all our sites and some of the big cities labeled. Each PCT picked an envelope with a short description of a site and association, and then we guessed/the staff told us whose site it was. And then the PCT would stick their picture on the map by their site, take an envelope, and read the description of the next site. This was also nice because we could see where everyone was in relation to each other.
Well, I'm not actually supposed to post my site name...
Our CD (Country Director) told us we shouldn't post our specific sites on blogs for security reasons. So I guess I can just be sort of general here. I'm in the Eastern-most PC site in Burkina, kind of close to Togo (Hi Ellen!), but pretty far from Accra (Sorry Catarm). The city I'm in is pretty large, and thus has quite a few amenities. Apparently I'll be able to get cold sodas, toilet paper, and other “Western desires” relatively easily. There's a market there every day, which will be handy if I decide to cook, though there are also quite a few restaurants in the area, so I might not even need to cook! Also, my site is right by the entrance to some of Burkina's wildlife parks, so if you want to see some elephants or lions, come visit! I'm told that there's an internet cafe there, and I'll be able to get electricity in my house.
So, the only potential downside of this site (that I can see so far) is that it's relatively isolated. My closest neighbors from this stage (aka group of PCTs) are SW and LC, who are about 3-4 hours away on various paved and unpaved roads. I hear that there are some other current volunteers a little bit closer to me, but I haven't met them yet. I'm replacing a current volunteer, who was actually helping out with training a few weeks ago. That means I can ask him all of the questions I have about PC/site/work! Very convenient. Though unfortunately he'll be leaving before I get affectated (the PC term for going to site).
Food Galore
I cooked dinner for my host family this past Sunday! They said they liked it, but they might have just been being nice, lol. With my limited cooking skills, I made mashed potatoes, attempted eggplant in garlic sauce, and fried plantains. My host sister helped me with dinner, and showed me how to properly peel potatoes with a knife. Most of the food was stuff that they have here, just in a slightly different form with different sauce, so I think it wasn't too big of a difference from the normal fare.
Tuesday was Tabaski, a Muslim holiday. It's a national holiday, and we got most of the day off from class! After a brief session in the morning, I headed back to my house with SW and DT, two PCTs who live with Christian families and thus don't celebrate Tabaski. They ended up watching my host dad and a few other men slaughter a sheep, which is the central part of the holiday. I decided to skip out on that part, though I did taste some of the fresh sheep meat when my host mom made liver for us. It was an interesting experience, definitely. We also ended up going fete-hopping (fete is french for celebration), and stopped by some other people's houses for some more food and fun!
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
More demyst pics
And it's a pain to upload pics with Picasa. Wans, I'm looking at you to solve that problem! lol
Demyst
Over Halloween weekend, all of us stagiers (as they call us in French) went on demyst visits. Kind of a weird name, but it's just a demystification of what a PCV actually does. We spent a day in Ouaga all together, then split up into smaller groups. I traveled with Puja, Kate and our LCF/language teacher, Konfe to Banzon, a village in the SW of Burkina. As luck would have it, this also happened to be the farthest away site visit.
The bush taxi experience
We had a long journey ahead of us, and had to get up quite early to catch our 7 am bus.
-Bus from Ouaga, the capital, to Bobo, a regional capital: 5.5 hours
-Bush taxi from Bobo to Banzon: 2 hours
The bus from Ouaga to Bobo was similar to any coach bus in the US. Air conditioning, tv playing interesting music videos, etc. The interesting part of traveling was the bush taxi. These are basically van/truck/trolleys for transporting livestock, people, and all their belongings to smaller villages that larger buses don't go past. Actually, maybe a better description would be a very large jeep. There are probably around 6 rows of about 5 seats across, but they manage to fit many more than 30 people in one bush taxi. There are generally also a few guys who ride on top of the taxi. The combination of open air windows and dirt roads meant that by the time we reached Banzon, everything was covered by a noticeable layer of red dust. Pretty sure I still haven't been able to get it completely off my backpack. Needless to say, it was quite an experience. There weren't any cows or goats on our taxi taking up space and being loud, but I'm sure we won't be as lucky next time.
Keith the PCV
We visited one of the new SED PCVs, Keith. He's from the group that came to Burkina in June and swore-in in August, so he's only been at site for about 2 months. This means that he's still in the etude de milieu (might not be the right spelling) stage. For the first 3 months at site, you're supposed to spend time getting to know people in your community and not really doing any projects. This allows you to integrate into your village better and assess the needs of the community so that you can do projects that people want and support. It seemed like Keith was pretty integrated already, and knew a lot of people throughout Banzon. He has also adopted some Burkinabe mannerisms, lol.
Each PCV has a local counterpart, who they work with as their primary project. Keith is working with a local development agency, and we met with some of the leaders of the association briefly in an informal meeting. PC also gives organizations a max of 6 years of volunteers, which I didn't know before, and Keith is the 3rd and last volunteer to work with this group, at least for a while. It seemed like they really appreciated having a PCV to work with, and were very welcoming and supportive of PC in general. One of the guys in his association owns a banana farm and gave us a huge box of bananas and papayas.
Another activity we did during demyst was soap making. One thing that SED volunteers focus on developing is Income Generating Activities (IGAs). A way to do this is to teach specific skills to others that will allow them to create a product and sell it. Soap making is a pretty popular IGA here because it combines business and health. You can teach about proper hygiene while teaching a group of women to make soap, and also provide them with a way to get some income for themselves. Often, men are the ones who work, so women rely on their husbands to give them spending money. However, with IGAs, women get the opportunity to profit on their own and get a bit of financial independence. Keith's host sister had expressed interest in selling bottled liquid soap at the market, so we got instructions and soap making materials provided by PC, and ended up learning how to make soap that weekend! Keith's host mom and brother helped out. We made probably about 16 liters of liquid soap, and put that into used and cleaned soda bottles for his sister to sell. That's another thing about Burkina—everything is reused. Soda or water bottles are used to hold soap or homemade drinks. Food is generally finished and little of it is wasted. Keith said his host family often finds uses for things he throws out as trash. Every little thing is very precious and saved.
A Jack-O-Lantern watermelon
Our demyst fell over Halloween, and we decided to try to celebrate it, with a few adjustments. We actually did find squash or pumpkin that we could have carved, but it was easier to get a watermelon, and tastier too, in my opinion. Kate cleaned out the inside of the watermelon, Puja designed the face, and I carved it out. During the cleaning, we accidentally got a large crack in the watermelon, and thus decided to go with a two-faced theme, and you'll hopefully be able to see in the pictures, if they upload correctly. And then, since I can't let good watermelon go to waste, I ended up eating about half of it, since everyone else was full and didn't want any more. So tasty! And now I'm ready for any future watermelon eating contests. Our finished result was named “Fato”, which means “crazy” in Jula, one of the local languages in Banzon. Pretty fitting name. Keith's host family got a kick out of what we silly Americans were doing. They seemed to like Fato, and laughed hysterically at it. I had brought along some candy, and we tried to teach Keith's young host brothers to say “trick or treat” for a piece of candy, but not quite sure if they really got it. It was a fun time though, and during dinner, we put a candle in Fato, and he lit up our meal.
And speaking of meals, we had such good food in Banzon! Keith really enjoys cooking, and he made things like curry, spaghetti with homemade marinara, and fried eggplant for us. I think we all enjoyed the change from the usual Burkinabe rice and sauce dish that we eat. His house doesn't have electricity, but he bought a car battery and solar panel and thus gets enough power to recharge his phone and power a light that makes cooking way easier. It gets dark around 6/6:30 pm here, so to be able to do anything after then, you need a light. And cooking, with the whole fire and boiling water thing, is something you want to be able to see.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
so i guess i can only upload 4 pics at a time?
So, PC is really into skits. and interpretive dances. this is one group going over rules and regulations of PC.
Photos!
Some photos, finally
This is the welcome party that greeted us as we got into Koudougou.
I make babies cry
Burkina Faso has a pretty young population, and thus, there are many cute little children running around! One of my neighbors has a young boy, and has brought him over to my host family's house a few times. However, every time I look at him, he starts to cry. I'm not even that scary! Lol. I think many children haven't really seen white people before, so they're not used to it. Most of the time though, children are curious and wave to me. I also busted out colored pencils and crayons the other other day for my host brother and some of the children in the neighborhood, and they seemed to enjoy that. But so far, I think I've scared about 3 babies.
Left hand = bad:
An interesting cultural tidbit about Burkina Faso: you're not supposed to use your left hand for anything. This stems from the fact that the left hand is used for wiping, in the lack of toilet paper, and thus is considered unclean. So whenever you wave to people, eat, or hand something to someone, you're supposed to just use your right hand. Considering I'm left handed, this will take some work. Mostly, it results in me being uncoordinated and awkward. Definitely have had some trouble trying to use a fork with my right hand, lol. Luckily, there are 2 other left-handers in my group so we can suffer together.
Sunday is for reposer-ing
As you can see, I've adopted the PC habit of using Franglais already. Reposer basically means to rest, and since people have school and I think work on Saturday, for a half-day, Sunday is pretty much the only full day you get to rest. Quite a big change from my 4 day weekends spring term senior year. Yay for 10A-2A-3B schedules! Lol. This past Sunday, I ended up waking up a bit later than normal, at around 7 am or so, and then had my usual breakfast of half a baguette and tea. Then my host sister brought me to the marché (market) to buy some vegetables. I learned some useful words for various foods, and then promptly forgot them all. Maybe I should start carrying a small vocab notebook or something around with me. Well, afterwards, I came back to the house and had fun drawing with kids. Hung out with some PCTs for a bit at a local spot, called El Dorado, and then learned to do laundry! And man, it was a workout for the arms. My host sisters showed me how I was supposed to do laundry by hand, and there's a lot of scrubbing involved. Pretty sure that all the Burkinabe women are jacked, lol.
And speaking of the women here, I guess they don't really get Sunday off. This is a pretty patriarchal society, and women are generally expected to do things like cleaning, cooking, general household duties. Women and men also usually eat separately, though we PCTs are considered kind of a third gender. That means we don't really fit into the traditional gender roles here, so I eat with my host father and brother. My host mother seems to always be busy with something, whether it's cooking dinner over a campfire or washing buckets full of laundry. It's pretty impressive how much she works. I'm too lazy to even clean up after myself, so I feel like I probably wouldn't have the stamina to take care of an entire household
Also, photos coming soon, hopefully! And we had demyst this past weekend, when we went and visited PCVs out in the field. Will post more about that later! Miss you all!
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