Hello everyone,

This is my first official post from Africa. As of tomorrow night, I'll have been here for exactly one week. (I'm writing this on Tuesday night, but I probably won't be able to get to the cyber cafe until Wednesday to actually post it.) There's a lot of detail that I could go into, but I'm going to try and tell a little bit about everything that's been going on for the past week. I'll save some of the more detailed information for future posts.

We arrived in the capital, Ouagadougou, about 8pm last Wednesday night. The airport was extremely small - one runway and then what felt like mass hysteria with the 33 of us trying to collect our luggage from the baggage area along with everyone else on the flight. There were Peace Corps folks who met us after we got off the plane and took us away to some compound in the capital where we would stay for the first couple of nights. I don't think it was on purpose, but it felt like they were slowly trying to break us into living in Africa. The compound had a ping pong table, showers, and we had every meal prepared for us. Most of this time was spent doing general administrative stuff - medical interview, language test, bike fitting, getting walk around money, more shots... (7 shots and counting for those keeping track at home.)

On Friday afternoon, we made the trip up to Ouahigouya. This is where I'll be staying for my entire 3 months of training. Ouahigouya is I believe the 3rd or 4th largest city in Burkina. When you think city, think lots pf people living together and a pretty good sized market. There maybe a few buildings that are 2 stories, but that's about as tall as I've seen so far in Ouaigouya. Here, we also stayed together in a dormitory style facility for the first couple of days. This facility also had showers, however the water wasn't running most of the time. Also, we could buy meals at the facility, but we had to pay for them out of our allowance. These 2 days consisted of more safety and security training, language survival skills, orientation on meeting our host families, as well as meeting a traditional African leader. The meeting with the traditional African leader was interesting, however for some reason we met with him in a room where they decided to close all of the doors and the windows. As you can imagine, after 20 or so minutes the room turned into a sauna and I think people were pretty close to passing out by the time the meeting finished.

Sunday night was the 'adoption ceremony' with the host families that we'll be living with for our 3 months of training. I could go into tons of detail about my stay with my host family, but I'm going to save that for sometime in the next few days as it's getting pretty late. For now, I'll just say that they're extremely nice and I think I'm lucky to be staying with them. There's a Dad, Mom, 3 daughters (I'd say the youngest is about 2 and then the other 2 are probably in their teens or early 20s.), a dog, and probably some other animals. Compare this situation with other volunteers in my training group who are living with families of 50 or more people!
Also, for those who placed their bets - I've been here for 6 days and haven't gotten sick yet. (I'm not sure what the Vegas over/under is on that, but I have to be coming pretty close to beating it.) As a matter of act, no one in my training group got sick until after living with their host families for the first night. From what I can understand, it's pretty unusual for it to take that long. I think only 3 or 4 of us have gotten sick and it hasn't been anything beyond diarrhea and vomiting.

My days are pretty packed right now. We have training almost every day except for Sunday and it goes from 8am until 5:15pm. It's consisting of technical training, language training, cross cultural training, and safety and security training. It is extremely hot pretty much all the time and it's definitely not a comfortable, dry heat. You pretty much learn to live your life constantly sweating and sticky. Even at night time, it doesn't cool down very much.

Ok, I think that's it for now. I do want everyone to know that I'm doing good and am being taken very well care of. I'll write again soon, there's plenty more to talk about: my host family, the food, the animals, the traffic, the World Cup, language (or lack thereof), the beer...
If anyone's interested in writing, my address is below. Please don't send anything beyond letters (except for possibly Gatorade packets). I really do have pretty much everything I need at this point. If anything, I feel like I have too much stuff with me. If you do write, I'll definitely get back to you. However, keep in mind that letters take about 2-3 weeks each way and I can only get on email every few days. Oh yeah, I also should have a cell phone sometime within the next few weeks. Ok, hope everyone's doing good! I'll write again soon...

Bryan Chambers, PCT
S/c Corps de la Paix
01 B.P. 6031
Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso
West Africa