There’s a saying in French here “Ca va aller.” It basically means, “It’ll be fine” or “Don’t worry about it.” It’s a very useful saying here. It works when I’m frustrated about something, when I’m stressed out about something, or when I don’t know what’s going on. It also works when I don’t understand what people are saying to me in French. I say it and people seem to just laugh. I have a feeling that “Ca va aller” may be a theme throughout my next two years here…

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Crispy...

July 26, 2010

Just a quick note. Time for bed right now. Bugs, not so bad. They were cooked, so they pretty much just tasted crispy. Not my new favorite snack, I’ll stick with peanuts. But if you had given them to me blindfolded, I wouldn’t have guessed bugs.

You know the episode of Friends where Joey tries to learn French? Sometimes I feel like Joey. I feel like I’m saying the right things, but nobody understands my French. Ca va aller.

We spoke to two midwives from CSPS in our training city today. Definitely thought a lot about the things I will see and preparing myself mentally for dealing with seeing really tough things.

Bugs for Breakfast



July 24, 2010

My host family is awesome. They’re so much fun and super nice. Today, my mom and some friends braided our hair (we’re in host families in pairs of two. Lindsay is the other trainee I’m staying with).

So we helped catch breakfast tonight. We were sitting inside watching TV (PS – Family Matters is hilarious in French), and lots of bugs were flying into the house. I glanced over at the bugs. Apparently my interest was enough for my mother to say “On peut le manger,” to which I responded “Quoi?!” After repeating to me multiple times that you can eat these bugs, I finally realized that it wasn’t my French comprehension that was the problem, but my crazy notion that bugs aren’t food for people. So my host brother catches one for me and hands it to me. Not really a fan of bugs, I’m holding it by the wing with my arm extended. They keep telling me to eat it, and I’m thinking, “Wow my French must be really bad because there’s no why I’m supposed to eat this.” After letting it go, my host mom said she’d prepare some for us for breakfast tomorrow. When the rest of the kids went outside to catch them, Lindsey and I joined them for some bug catching. Can’t believe we’re eating bugs for breakfast. Good source of protein. Still not exactly sure what the name of the bug is, but from what I gather, they come in with the rains and are attracted to light. I’ll update you on how delicious they are tomorrow!

West African International Time - WAIT

July 22, 2010

So as much as people warned us, one of the hardest things to adjust to is time here. The time zone is West African International Time – WAIT. It’s still tough to get out of the time is money mindset.

Today, we did a sensibilisation at a primary school in a village outside of our training city. Students are out of school for the summer, but the director was able to get some of the class to come in. We were supposed to meet up at 7:30 so we could begin at 8. Since I had never biked out to village, my host sister accompanied me the 6 km there. At 7:00 am, I was ready to go, but breakfast wasn’t ready yet. I was getting anxious, but tried to not worry. By 7:20, I had eaten breakfast and informed my host mother that I needed to leave. Problem was it had rained the entire night. Actually, let me rephrase that, it monsooned. I now see why no one does anything when it rains here. We left the house for village, me on my bike, my sister on her moto. So when it rains, the streets flood completely. It was like biking in a river. My foot got stuck in the mud and there were times while peddling, my peddle and whole foot would emerge in the water. After a difficult ride, only 25 minutes late, I arrived to no students. Because of the rain, no one came. Ca va aller.

We were able to do our lesson later in the afternoon. Just another moment where you remember to go with the flow and not worry or stress out. Time does not exist here and rain stops everything. Learning patience and flexibility every day I’m here. Ca va aller.

Narsara, Nasara!

Sorry for multiple posts at once - It's a lot easier to type them all at home and then post a bunch at once when I get internet. I'll try to date them all.

July 21, 2010

So one of the bizarre feelings of training is this completely crazy, what the heck am I doing feeling that has this odd calm to it. It’s really weird for such insanity to result in a calmness about everything that I am about to do. I think it just means I’m in the right place, doing the right thing. That it’s scary, exciting, and completely crazy, but that’s the wonderfulness of it all.

One of my favorite parts of training so far has been the conversations we’ve had with health workers and educators here. We’ve had a chance to talk to CSPS (health center) staff members, a CoGES (community-elected governing board of a CSPS), and different community-based organizations around health education. While the language barrier makes the conversations more difficult, one benefit from this is it forces me to listen to the answer to a question. I think Americans have become good at asking questions, but not really caring about or listening to an answer, or only listening to what we want to hear. We’re good at tuning out, whether it’s in a college lecture class or just checking in with a friend. There’s always something to be preoccupied with. When you have to translate mentally what is said, it forces you to listen and understand. It’s been really cool having conversations with organizations here about what the health issues are and how they could be fixed. It’s given me a more defined idea of the challenges I will face as a health professional in Burkina Faso and an understanding of the approach to health in Burkina Faso.

Moved into my host family this week and they’re totally awesome. I have two siblings, ages 2 and 8. My host mom is really cool and she works for an organization that does health education in villages, so we’ll definitely have a lot to talk about. They live in the “suburbs” of the city we are training in. They have running water, electricity, flush toilets, and satellite TV. I was originally bummed out because I wanted the true village experience in my host family to prepare me for my site. But then I remembered I have two whole years of using a hole in the ground for a toilet. It is odd because sometimes an American music video will come on the TV and I will almost forget how far away I am. As a health volunteer, I will be placed “en brousse,” (in the bush), and I certainly will not have these amenities after training, so I may as well enjoy them now. We also have a cat and two dogs, one named Scooby Doo.

Nasara is the Moore (a local language in Burkina Faso) term for foreigner. As we walk down the street, we are guaranteed to hear it multiple times. Often times I hear it in the marche, but usually that means “Hey foreigner. You have money, come buy my product.” That I try to ignore. But it always makes me smile when a kid says it laughing, pointing, and sometimes running after us. Some people are offended by this, that we have names other than Nasara. I find it endearing. It’s more out of interest and curiosity than being derogatory or harmful. It’s so funny how we’ve gathered quite a following of kids. As soon as we leave our training site, we have at least 4 kids following us, usually holding our hands. And they will hang out with us throughout whatever we are doing, even if it is eating dinner. Once you get over the crazy idea that their parents aren’t worried about where they are or that they’re with strangers, it’s actually quite fun. I’ve had so much fun attempting to learn to count to 5 in Moore, which I’m really bad at so we just laughed instead. I’ve also learned that some things transcend language. Like hand clapping games. The fun seems to be universal and you don’t need to speak the same language to play with someone. I’m sure soon the hand holding while I’m walking or being a human zoo will get annoying, but right now, I love having instant friends who walk me back to the training center after lunch.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Three Weeks In

I can’t believe I’m finally here! I’ve been in Burkina Faso for three weeks, but it still feels so surreal. I still have moments where it hits me and I can hardly believe what I’m doing because it’s so crazy. I’m going to live in a completely different world and speak a completely different language for 2 years… and somehow manage to do something in health development…

Training has been going great. I am in a stage (training group) of 79 people from four different sectors. There are programs in community health development (my sector), girls’ education and empowerment, small enterprise development, and secondary education. Most of us met in Philly in late June (secondary ed had to come 3 weeks earlier), and travelled here together. I still remember the first night – we arrived at the airport, and the power was off so we stood outside for about 15 minutes. After meeting the country director and being herded through customs like cattle, the chaos of baggage claim began. So you know the conveyor belts they have at most airports, no not here. Basically they start piling up the baggage in a small space and everyone pushes through to find their buried bags. It’s completely chaotic and overwhelming. I think at one point I just gave up and decided to wait until everyone had taken there stuff and mine would be easier to find. Patience is a skill I will develop here.

After a few days in the capitol city of Ouagadougou (Ouaga) and getting four shots in one day, we headed to our training site. Every day we have four classes. We take classes in language, medical (how to not get malaria, the diarrhea you will avoidable get, stuff like that), technical (stuff related to health development), safety and security, and cross-culture. Language is definitely the most overwhelming part of it. I feel like I’m so far away from being functional in French, let alone a local language too. People keep telling me not to worry, that it will come. I really hope they’re right. I really enjoy our technical training, the stuff on health development. It’s super interesting and it’s making me really excited for the work I’ll be doing over the next two years. We’ve learned about the health care system in Burkina, the structure of the CSPS (health center) and CoGES (community governing board of the CSPS), and analyzing community needs. We’ve also learned about malaria and how to make liquid soap.

Village life is a lot easier to adjust to than most people think. It will definitely be harder when I’m on my own instead of with a host family because I will have to do chores completely on my own, but the simplicity is actually quite enjoyable. There’s something really incredible about a bucket bath under the stars.

Since we’ve been in Burkina Faso, everyone we’ve meet has been so incredibly nice and welcoming. It’s awesome the way people here will always go out of their way to help someone, even a complete stranger. Biking is the main mode of transport for Peace Corps Volunteers. As part of our training, we got to shadow a Peace Corps Volunteer for a few days at her site. I went with three other people to a village close to the capitol city. During this trip, we had bike issues pretty much every time we tried to go somewhere. My friend’s bike broke down as soon as we got off the bush taxi (an experience in itself) and within minutes, we had four people around us, helping us try to fix it. It was beyond repair at the moment, so one of the guys (a friend of the volunteer we were visiting), gave us his bike to use while he sat on the back of another guy’s bike. Someone else volunteered to take the bike to the repair shop so we could have it fixed and pick it up the next morning. They are also good at making anything work again here, no matter how broken it seems.

The welcoming spirit is reflected in many ways in the culture of the Burkinabe. One custom here to greet a guest is to bring them a bowl of welcome water. There’s nothing special about the water, it’s a symbol. Unfortunately, because it’s straight from the pump and I don’t have the stomach for that yet, I have to pretend to drink it. Giving gifts is also a big thing in this culture. Despite the fact that they may not have anything to give, when a guest comes, they like to give the guest a gift. And it is extremely rude to refuse a gift. When we went to visit a current volunteer at her site, it’s respectful to go around and greet important people and elders in the village. We went to visit the chief, the imam, the pastor, some elders, and the president of the CoGES (the governing board of the health center). We were given a lot of pintard eggs and three live chickens. Just in case you didn’t know, I have a slight fear of birds. When we were given the chicken, everyone started passing it around. Figured I should start getting over my fear of birds. Better start now when I can quickly pass it off to someone else than when I have to bike it home on the handlebars of my bike all alone. So as the chicken came to me, with a bit of hesitation and multiple reaches, I held it. Everyone laughed at me, particularly the Burkinabe. Being afraid to hold a chicken is not something that happens here. And then we ate the chicken for dinner.

Getting to visit a current volunteer for a few days was really helpful. Because the job of a community health development worker is so elusive and vague, it was really awesome to see what a volunteer on the ground actually does. It was a moment where I could really picture myself doing this for the next two years. While there's definitely a sense of excitement about it all, everything is still really overwhelming. Thinking about language, technical skills, and being able to adapt. But I’m learning to not worry and be patient here. I’m really excited for both the opportunities and the challenges I will have here over the next two years. There’s a saying in French here “Ca va aller.” It basically means, “It’ll be fine” or “Don’t worry about it.” It’s a very useful saying here. It works when I’m frustrated about something, when I’m stressed out about something, or when I don’t know what’s going on. It also works when I don’t understand what people are saying to me in French. I say it and people seem to just laugh. I have a feeling that “Ca va aller” may be a theme throughout my next two years here…