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!