Last day of training

Tomorrow is the day when the 3 months of training comes to an end and I officially swear in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s hard to believe that the 3 months of training have finally past by. It’s great to be done with it and to finally be so close to actually going to my site, although it’s a little bittersweet at the same time in that the people I’ve spent the last 3 months training with are now going to be spread across the entire country. In a few days there won’t be those other people you can talk to everyday who are going through the same experience.

So for language I’ve reached the Intermediate Mid level. This is high enough to swear in as a volunteer, however it’s not high enough to teach. For teaching, you’re required to be at the Intermediate High level which is one level higher. I’m taking the language test again tomorrow to see what level I’m at. If I’m not at Intermediate High, I’ll stay in the capital for an extra week to take some more language lessons and get up to the Intermediate High level. Even if I do get the Intermediate High level tomorrow, I’m hoping that they’ll let me stay in the capital for an extra week and take some more French lessons just so that I can improve my French that much more.

We’ve been in the capital (Ouagadougou) now since this past Sunday. We’re staying at a hotel which has toilets and showers so that’s a nice change of pace. Being in the capital also means that I’ve been eating good too. So far this week I’ve had beef quesadillas, a bacon cheeseburger, pizza, falafel, and chocolate mousse. The sympathy points I get for living in Africa should probably decrease dramatically when I’m spending time in the Ouaga. (I’m sure you’ve figured it out, but ‘Ouaga’ is short for ‘Ouagadougou’.)

The last few weeks of training went by pretty quickly. I’m pretty sure almost everyone is happy for that part to be over with. There were a couple of different ceremonies at the end – one for the end of model school and another to recognize the host families. Model school was definitely a challenge teaching every day in French, but it was very helpful to be getting actual classroom teaching experience. Leaving my host family was also bittersweet. They were always really good to me and you can’t beat having pretty much all of your meals made for you. (even if they included fish heads sometimes) They also got me a few presents – a hat with some cool designs which they say I’ll need since I’m going to the Sahel, a keychain in the shape of a hut which I’ll soon be living in, and also some wallet type thing. I’ll definitely be stopping by to visit them when I pass through the city where our training was, Ouahigouya.

For tomorrow, I believe the swear-in ceremony is at the ambassador’s residence. It consists of a formal ceremony where you take some oath and I think that at least a clip of the ceremony will be shown on the national news in Burkina. After the ceremony, there’s a party at the ambassador’s with food and open bar and then after that we have our own party at a bar that we’re renting for the night. People start leaving for their sites the next morning and I think the last group leaves Monday morning. So the weekend will be pretty packed between the swearing-in ceremony, the parties, and everyone heading out to their sites.

If I am in Ouaga next week, there’s a pretty good chance that I’ll get another post or 2 up. I should know sometime tomorrow what I’m going to be doing.

Finally, the picture above is from when we visited a chief during our first week in the country. (I mentioned it in my first blog post from Africa.) I think it’s pretty obvious who the chief is. Also in the picture are the 32 other trainees as well as members of the Peace Corps staff. The chiefs in Burkina do not have any formal power in the government of Burkina. However, they still have a tremendous amount of influence. If you’re a politician and you don’t agree with the chief then you probably also won’t have the support of the people. Also, when someone wants to cultivate some land; they need to go to the chief who will assign them a plot of land to farm. Keep in mind that in the villages here you don’t really own land like in the United States. Rather, the chief pretty much tells you where you can live and farm.

There’s a light at the end of the tunnel

It’s hard to believe it, but there’s only 3 weeks of training left - 2 weeks remaining in Ouahigouya and then the 3rd week will be spent in Ouaga (the capital) doing mostly administrative stuff in preparation for swearing in as a volunteer on August 25th. Keep in mind that the Peace Corps is a government entity so there’s always plenty of paperwork / administrative stuff that needs to be done.

So right now we’re exactly halfway through the 4 weeks of model school. Every morning I teach a math lesson for an hour in French. I enjoy the teaching part of it, but it can be pretty frustrating at times because my level of interaction with the students is limited by my ability (or inability) to speak French. I can get my point across and I usually can understand any questions they have, however it’s often hard for me to formulate the response I want with my limited vocabulary. I took another language test this past Friday which I should probably know the result of on Monday. The final language test is on the 19th by which time I’m supposed to be at the required level. I’ve grown fairly accustomed to people telling me, ‘ca va aller!’ I think this translates to something like ‘things will work out.’

I finally had the opportunity to bust out my medical kit this past week. I took a couple of pretty good spills while playing soccer Thursday evening. I managed to go head over heels and land on my back one time. It was interesting having people run up to me and ask me if I was ok in French when I couldn’t even reply back in English since I totally had the wind knocked out of me for a couple of minutes. The other time I just fell and scraped up my knee. We play on a dirt and gravel field where some of the rocks are the size of bricks so any fall is going to at least result in a scrape. Anyhow, in the medical sessions that we’ve had they’ve emphasized how easy it is to get an infection here so I made sure to clean everything out and use some antibiotic ointment. The medical kit they gave is fairly impressive. There’s everything from band-aids and pain medicine to Tamiflu in case of the avian flu and medicine to begin treatment in case we think we have malaria. (There hasn’t been a confirmed case of the bird flu in Burkina since May 19th. We’re actually not allowed to prepare chicken because of this. We can eat it, just not prepare it.)

A similar topic is the water that I drink here. We’ve all been supplied with a water filter that looks like a large bucket on the bottom with a smaller one on the top of that. You put the water in the top bucket and it then passes through 2 filters. After that, you need to add 2 drops of bleach for every liter of water. In the end, it tastes like you’re drinking warm pool water, but at least it’s safe. They also supply us with cups for when we travel that use iodine to purify the water which gives it an unpleasant taste. Also, you can only use this for a limited number of days at a time since it’s not good for your body to have too much iodine. There’s also the option of boiling the water for a few minutes, but this usually isn’t feasible. Finally, there are places you can buy (at least in the cities) bottled or plastic packets (saches) of water that are safe to drink. These you can often get cold which is always nice.

I have found out some more information about the village that I’ll be moving to at the end of August. (Baraboule) The people who live there are called the Puhl. The main difference with this ethnicity from the others in Burkina is that they’re not cultivators. They’re main occupation is as cattle herders. This also makes them semi-nomadic when it’s not the rainy season since they’ll often need to go wherever there’s water for the animals to drink. From what I understand, they will almost never kill one of their animals, but rather use them almost solely for their milk. The animals are considered sacred and are treated more like pets in the sense that people actually get attached to them and there’s a sense of loss when one dies. One other interesting fact I learned is that when they eat, they’ll almost always leave some food on their plate. (even if they haven’t eaten in a couple days) I think this is to show some strength or will power over the food in that they don’t need to finish it. I don’t think the food actually gets wasted, but rather probably gets passed along to the children. The last thing I’ll mention right now is that this group also has the reputation of being more reserved and hard to get to know. It sounds like you really need to give it some time to be accepted into the community compared to some of the other ethnic groups. There’s a book I have that has a pretty good write-up of the Puhl which someone is borrowing write now. It’s a travel guide devoted to Burkina which I think is published by a company called Bradts. As far as I know, it’s the only travel guide in English that’s solely devoted to Burkina. I’ll try and describe the information on the Puhl once I get the book back.

The address that I supplied earlier will work throughout my 2 years of service. (The PCT in the address will change to PCV once I swear in as a volunteer: PCT = Peace Corps Trainee, PCV = Peace Corps Volunteer.) That address goes to the Peace Corps bureau in the capital where I can pick up my mail whenever I’m there. Once I’m at my site, I’ll probably also get an address in my regional capital (Djibo) which is about 30-km away from my village. So both will always get to me at some point.
Ok, that’s it for this week. Pretty soon, I should also have some links to blogs being kept up by other trainees in my group. It might be interesting to read about some of their stories since everyone’s experience is a little different even though we’re going though almost the same thing. Also, writing has never been once of my strong points so I can imagine that some of their stories might be a little more spiced up. Hope everyone’s enjoying their summer!