This week has been a little tough communication wise. I tried using the internet café a couple of times during the week, but couldn’t get onto my email either time. It can be a little frustrating since you often have to wait for 30-45 minutes just to get on a computer and then you can’t even do anything when you get on. The internet café that I use is at the high school and it has 4 computers total, not all of which are working at the same time. There’s another internet café at the post office, but that one seems even worse connection wise.

I did make some progress on getting a cell phone. I know where to go to buy one and also how much it will cost. (35,000 francs for the phone; 3,000 francs for the SIM card; and then I’ll probably charge it with about 5,000 francs – the plans here are all prepaid. So it’s about $86 total.) The only stumbling block now is getting access to my money. There’s 2 ATMs in the city, neither of which wanted to work for me last week. There’s also 1 place that I know of to exchange US dollars, but it’s never been open when I’ve gone by. Business hours are shorter here since a lot of places will close for a while after noontime because of the heat. The phone I’m getting actually has a flashlight built into the top of it which I guess can come in handy when you’re out at a bar or restaurant and you’re trying to make your way to the latrine. Anyhow, getting almost anything done here is an exercise in patience.

I think the highlight of the past week is that I survived teaching for 10 minutes in French. I also had a chance to play a little soccer after classes one of the days with some of the other trainees and some local Burkinabe. As you can probably imagine, the local Burkinable pretty much ran circles around us on the field. There’s a lot going on here for the next week or 2. This Wednesday I have another ‘microteach’ session where I need to teach in French for 30 minutes. (not sure what the topic is going to be, last week I chose ‘triangles’) After that session, the Secondary Education trainees have their site announcements where we find out where we’ll be living for the next 2 years after training is over. We each had individual interviews this past week where we met with the lady in charge of the Secondary Education program. She asked us a few different questions on what type of site we would prefer – size of the village, living in a family compound or by yourself, how far you would be willing to bike, subjects you want to teach. I pretty much told her that I don’t have much of preference so it’ll be interesting to see where I end up. Then Friday we have our mid-training language test so that we can have an idea of how we’re progressing. Also, after the test they’ll mix up the language classes again by level – usually there’s between 3-5 people per teacher.

Next Sunday, the Secondary Education trainees leave Ouahigouya for the week where we’ve been training. We head down to the capital, Ouaga, for a couple of days for a counterpart workshop where we’ll meet the person who has been designated as our counterpart at our sites. After that, on the 12th we’ll be splitting into small groups and visiting the site of a current volunteer to get an idea of what life is like by yourself at site. The following Sunday we return to Ouahigouya and continue with the regular training sessions. So it seems like it’s going to be a pretty busy couple of weeks.

Ok, now a few random topics…

I do have toilet paper here. There’s a few shops that you can buy it in, although I think they sell it just for the ‘nasara’. (white people) I’m pretty sure almost all the local people use the left-hand with water method.

I am lucky in that my host family speaks French with each other. If you’re in the village, this definitely isn’t the case and it isn’t always the case in the city here either. The Mom and Dad at the house are 2 different ethnicities (Moore and Bissa) so I think French is their common language.

As far as transportation, I use my Peace Corps supplied bike to get pretty much everywhere. It’s pretty nice, a brand new Trek mountain bike with front shocks. As far as the local Burkinabe – mopeds, motorcycles, and bikes are far and away the most common form of transportation. You might see 1 car for every 20 – 30 two-wheeled vehicles you see. The rules of the road are pretty straightforward – if you have a bigger vehicle then you have the right of the way. Obviously, this puts pedestrians on the bottom of the transportation totem pole. Most of the roads aren’t paved. The main road that goes through the city which leads south to the capital and north to Mali is paved. Also, there a few other roads that are paved for at least a little bit, but for the most past you’re biking on dirt roads.

The garbage situation is a little interesting. I guess in the capital, Ouaga, they have trash pickup and a landfill, but there isn’t anything like this in other parts of the country. It’s pretty much acceptable here to just toss your trash on the ground since there really isn’t any other place for it to go. So it really seems like there’s only 2 options for trash here – either you burn it or you just throw it on the ground. As you can imagine, this makes for there being a good amount of trash just lying about.

As far as the cross-cultural training, there haven’t been any really big surprises. There’s the obvious like don’t use your left-hand to exchange things. Then there’s other things like comparing and contrasting American culture and Burkinabe culture. Americans tend to be more individualistic and future-oriented where Burkinabe tend to be more group-oriented and past-oriented. Some of the trainees who live in the villages have had a tough time because here it’s considered to be a bad thing to be alone. So if you try and get away to study or read a book for a little bit by yourself, someone will come with you just so that you’re not alone. They don’t really understand the concept of needing some personal time by yourself.

The rainy season has just begun and it goes through about September. This means that we get some rain here about every 2-3 days right now. The dust storms and rain storms are pretty impressive – one of them knocked down my family’s hangar/porch the other week. They seem to come on pretty quickly and you definitely don’t want to get caught outside in one or the wind will practically knock you over. A good rule of thumb is that if you see the locals start to run for cover, it’s a pretty good time to start thinking about finding some shelter yourself. The rain does usually cool things off for a little bit which is good, but unfortunately it also brings with it an abundance of flies. There’s not much more annoying than sitting down and sweating in the afternoon heat with about 15 flies buzzing around you. From what I understand, the months to look forward to are December through about February. I guess it doesn’t get much higher than the mid-80s during these months so you can get through the day without barely breaking a sweat.

The last thing I’ll write is a quick lesson in Moore – the primary local language that’s spoken here. So if you ever find yourself talking to someone from Burkina and you want to ask, ‘what’s up?’ the equivalent expression in Moore is ‘mana wana?’ That’s about the extent of my Moore language skills so far so whatever anyone responds means absolutely nothing to me.

Ok, hope everyone has a good 4th of July! For the most part, I think it’s just a regular training day for me. Although I think they may be trying to organize something for the evening. I’ve even heard rumors of hamburgers, but I’ll believe that when I see it.