Site Visit

Bonjour!

Right now I am using the wifi at a beautiful pool in Banfora eating salt and vinegar pringles and babybel cheese. My site is only about an hour bikeride (or 20 minute bush taxi ride) from Banfora where I can find cheese and cold drinks and cyber cafes and hotels and restaurants, including one called McDonald. I'm slowly but surely uploading pictures to my flickr but they're all on my facebook so you can view them there, too!

I got to see the house that I will be living in for the next 2 years as well as the cat that I will be living with! His name is George and he is the cat of the volunteer who I am replacing. My house is already decorated and ready to go, with a nice outdoor patio area with a hangar and bamboo shades that I can let down if it gets too sunny. I have a HUGE courtyard with my own mango tree, papaya tree, basil bush, small banana tree, and lots of room to plant tomatoes and other vegetables as well.

My town is surrounded by rolling green hills and there is also a lake within walking distance from my house. It is very small with only around 2000 residents but they are all very motivated. I was able to meet with a few of the women in the women's association that the volunteer I am replacing started. They make liquid and hard soap and neem creem (anti-mosquito cream) and sell it for a profit. I will be continuing her work with the women's group, her work doing health workshops on malaria and family planning, and her girls' clubs. I also hope to start a savings and credit program with the women's group so that they can have more power within their families. I will also start tutoring the CM2 girls since I recently found that very few of them passed the exam after primary school to continue on to middle school. As I mentioned earlier, there is an NGO who works with my town that pays for each girl who passes this exam to continue on to high school. I was able to meet the secretary of this organization in Banfora yesterday. I will also be working with the nutrition team at the health center in my town to organize a program where women can keep track of the weight of their babies and attend nutrition workshops.

I went around village with my homologue, or counterpart, who works at the health center. He introduced me to the chief and the chief of development in my village and I was able to visit both of the schools and the health center. I am excited to be replacing a volunteer who has done a lot already and who has given me a few ideas about what to do moving forward. I also think that I have the best of both worlds, since I have a small, manageable village where it will be easier to measure progress and integrate but I am only 20 minutes away from probably the best tourist town in Burkina. I can't wait to move in at the end of September after I have officially sworn in as a volunteer!

I will have a different address where you can send me packages once I move in and I will update that on my blog. I will also put up a wish list of things that I would like for you to send me! As always, I love receiving letters and calls, too!

Hope everything is well!

-Marlow

Site Announcement!

The day all we stagiares had been waiting for since the beginning of training came and went last week when the staff brought out a huge map of Burkina Faso and called us up one by one to announce where we will each be living for the next 2 years! Everyone placed a picture of their face where there village is located while they read a description of it.

I will be living in a BEAUTIFUL village in Southwest Burkina within biking distance from Banfora, known for its waterfalls and lush sugarcane fields and palm trees. I lucked out to be living in easily the most beautiful town in Burkina. Although I can’t tell you the name of my village for safety and security reasons, I can give you the description they read about my village…

The name of my village means “behind the river of the giant lion” and is half Muslim and half Christian. It is a small village with only 2,000 inhabitants and 1 primary school. But, an NGO that already works in this village pays for any girl who passes the primary school exam to go through high school so there is a wealth of opportunities to promote girls education in a meaningful way. There is also a dedicated women’s group who engages in income generating activities such as soap making and neem cream and they are highly motivated to start other projects as well. I have my own private courtyard but no electricity or running water. The market is every 5 days but since I am only an hour bike ride away from Banfora, I can also go to their daily market. My regional capital is Bobo-Dioulasso, the cultural capital of Burkina.

I couldn’t be happier with my AMAZING site. You can see pictures of my host family and other photos from training so far on the right hand side of this page where my Flickr link is. Pictures of my village and house will be up soon!

In other news, we’re in the thick of rainy season now, so every other day or so we get a heavy rainfall preceded by a sandstorm which kicks up all of the red clay dirt. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to already be in my house, where I can listen to my iPod and write and read and sing and generally relax and bask in the American ideal of privacy for a few hours. When the rain stops, my host mom will bring me heated bucket water to take a bucket bath and I’ll wrap myself in a pagne (the fabric you buy here) and enjoy the (relatively) cool weather that the rain brings. Other times, like when I’m stuck at a restaurant with other volunteers when the rain comes, I’ll hang around and drink and talk with them for an hour or two or three, or in one case four, until the rain subsides. In any case, the rain brings a welcome interruption to the heat here and I enjoy every second of it.

Life here is simple and beautiful and every day brings new and exciting adventures. I’m always learning new words, like the Jula word for butt- “bobara.” I learned that “bo” means poop and “bara” means bucket, so you can put the two together and figure it out. Or the fact that in Jula they have a word for the nonsense language of drunk people. If only English had such a word… As you can see, Jula is a really intuitive and amazing language.

For this week, I’m staying in a hotel in Ouaga and meeting our counterparts for a workshop and then heading to our respective sites to see our new houses!

And, in what has turned out to be the hardest part of training, I’m slowly learning the culture. My family is teaching me how to cultivate the fields and how to make tô. I play soccer every once in a while with some other volunteers and some Burkinabe on a dirt field. At first they seemed really concerned that girls would want to play, but now they just run us over like everyone else. I do laundry with my younger sister and have conversations about life in America with my younger brother and the Burkinabe friends I’ve made here. I’ll be doing model tutoring with 5 children who have been assigned to me so I’ll be teaching French and life skills like hygiene, anti-malarial, and sex education to girls and boys who are in CM1 and CM2, basically the equivalent of 5^th and 6^th grade. 

I’ve gotten into a routine and this has just become my normal life day to day, so sometimes it’s hard to find the funny experiences that would stand out to everyone at home. Enjoy the pictures!

Miss and love you all!

I Have 2 Mommy's! (and other tales of my progressive Burkinabe family)

Hello world!

I can’t believe I’ve been in Burkina for 3 weeks… it feels like so much longer!

First of all, I have been living with my amazing host family. My family is Muslim and polygamous, so I have TWO host mommy’s. Not only is my family Muslim, my host father is actually president of the Muslims in my village so he wields a lot of power. Needless to say, my family is pretty well-off compared to the rest of the host families… we have electricity but no running water. Villagers come to my house with chickens for my father so that he may give them religious advice and pray for them. And boy do they pray. 5 times a day and no less.

I have 4 brothers and sisters (I think, there are always random children around) and two girls that live with us which they call “bonnes” who do the housework. My youngest sister Djamilatou is 12 and does literally everything around my house. Especially for the nasara, me, who is incapable of even the simplest of tasks. It is completely acceptable here to have children run errands for you and although I felt bad at first, I’ve come to accept it. Djamila will take me to the tailor to have a dress made so that I get a fair price and she will run and get me cold water sachets as well. Who knew the fruits of child labor could be so sweet! (kidding)

As soon as I can put up pictures you will be able to see my room, which is blue and decked out with posters of Avril Lavigne and European football players, including the Arsenal team (sorry, Dad). I have my own separate house in the courtyard which is made of mud and brick. Inside I have my own water filter and the latrine that I use to take bucket baths is right next to my house, as well.

Since placing high enough in French to swear-in in September, I have started learning Jula while continuing French for an hour each week. Jula is the language spoken in the Western part of Burkina near Bobo-Dioulasso. So right now, in my head is a mix of French, English, Mooré (which most of my host family speaks), and Jula (which one of my host mommy’s speaks). Or as I like to call the linguistic concoction, Frangularé. Forgive me if my English is slacking.

Almost immediately after we got to our host families we went on a demystification trip to visit a current volunteer to see what they do. I went to a larger town in the Northeast with a few other trainees and we helped to weigh babies at the CSPS (local health center) which was a lot of fun. Basically, the mothers hang their baby up in a diaper-like contraption onto what looks like a meat hook and I write down the baby’s weight in kilograms. They keep track of their baby’s weight once a month when they come in to get formula, vaccinations, etc. So demyst was a good opportunity to get to see some of what a volunteer does and what volunteer life will be like after I swear in in September.

As for my daily life right now during training, I’ll give you a rundown. Most days I am awake by 5am to the sound of my rooster, who sets off the babies, who sets off the donkeys, who sets off the goats, etc. I sleep outside in my bug hut to keep cool because my house traps heat due to the metal roof. After taking a bucket bath, I meet up with another trainee who lives next door and we ride our bikes about 15 minutes to the training center. We have class all day, everything from technical classes about what we’ll be doing as non-formal education volunteers (life skills, tutoring, sex education, etc.) to language classes to medical classes about how to keep healthy. It helps that a lot of the classes are in the community, for instance drinking tea and practicing with some Jula speakers. We finish at around 5pm and then I grab a coke with another volunteer before heading home to study, eat dinner, read, and pass out at around 8pm. Sometimes I’ll play with my host brother and sister for a while. We listen to Akon and play a Burkinabé game similar to Sorry. Or I have some pretty hilarious convos with my host mom about life in the US (really, my family doesn’t cultivate ANYTHING). I’ve also shared with the neighborhood kids only the best of American culture, like the card game “bullshit” (or “tu as menti”, aka “you lied”, the more PG version) and frisbee.

Overall the good days are really good and the bad days are pretty bad. Some days I would really like some control over my own life, but I know that training is the hardest part and soon I will have more freedom than I know what to do with.