“Back to the Grinding Wheel…-Work”

The holidays are over unless you are catholic (there are a ton of Catholic holidays and the catholic sisters I work with are always telling me about another holiday they have coming up which means food, drinks, and hangout out with people…oh yeah, of course there is prayer and remembrance for that special celebration).  Might I add that that comment has absolutely nothing to do with this blog, I am just astonished at just how many holidays there are that are celebrated in the Catholic Church!  I am so happy that I live in Burkina Faso where people of all religions can hang out and celebrate together, it is like the ultimate cultural and religious exchange.  But back to the real topic…WORK!

So the holidays are over and it has been the time to get back into the grind of things.  I cannot remember how much I have told you all about my work here, but I will try to summarize.  I work at a community house and help plan life skills sorts of activities for the girls.  For example in the month of November the topic of the month was Hygiene and health, December was all about communication strategies and being assertive and confident.  This month is about decision making and goal setting.  I also have English clubs with the girls because they take English as a foreign language.  Finally, I am helping to documents the progress of the community house, since it is a pilot program we have to look at whether or not girls living in the community house are measuring up to their peers.  So for the last week I have been making more tables and charts and comparing data based on more data than thought I ever would.  I must say I may have been spoiled by the wonderful technology HCPS purchased to analyze data because right now creating my own excel worksheets to do such is well uh...some work, but its cool.  I enjoy helping out :-).  The community house just got a computer so hopefully in the next few months I can try to transfer some of this knowledge over to the administration here so they can have the joy of making excel sheets, or at least maintaining the ones already created.

For the last few months of my stay here I have decided to try to up the ante and work in the town a bit more.  I now have an English club with some administration of the jail, which is quite interesting to say the least.  Some of them are working toward professional goals that will take them to English speaking countries so they are trying to improve their conversational English.  There is a huge AIDS Day celebration that I am helping with (yes we are 2 months late, but it’s going to be huge…blog coming soon), and I am also trying to set up some peer educator trainings in the nearby high schools.  There are other things in the making, but I would rather wait until things pan out a little more before sharing.  To say the least, things are going well and I honestly feel like my work here is going well.  The thing I love most is that the ideas and the resources for these activities are here already and I am just another support.  My hope is that my work is sustainable development, not “here comes the American plopping some info in our laps that we didn’t ask for”.   I am truly trying to work with the human resources here and well, things seem to be working.  Wish me well as I continue to explore and work.   

“It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas…”

So actually, it looks very little like Christmas for a few reasons:

-1-It is January 26, 2012 and I am just getting around to blogging about the holiday season.  Heck Christmas is over a month old now!

-2- Christmas in Burkina Faso is nice, but not quite what I think of when I am in the Christmas spirit because people do not put up Christmas decorations and trees all over the place, though some do, it is quite a rare delight when you do see it.

-3- Christmas time in America was not what most people think of in my good ole state of Virginia.  This winter was warm and in the 60s.  What kind of Christmas season is that?!

But, I must say, despite the aforementioned reasons, this Christmas/Holiday time was an impeccable time of celebration with those I loveJ.  Here is my story…

This Christmas I decided to go back to my old village where I did my original Peace Corps service and celebrate with them.  Since my return to Burkina Faso, I had yet to visit, so I figured the holiday time would be perfect because all of the students would be home for school break, those who now work in towns far away would be home for the holidays; it was just perfect timing to see everyone at once.  First I must say thank you (sarcastically) to the Burkinabe school system for making the last day of school before the break 23^rd of December.  Meaning that every person, their momma, their cousin twice removed and of course I travelled on the 24^th (might I add that is Christmas Eve).  A trip that should have taken me maybe 8 hours total on a few buses turned into 2 days.  I left my town and travelled to the capital to change buses and yep kiddies you guessed it, all three possible bus companies were booked.  I had to take a latish bus which put me in the next town where I needed to switch buses again near dark and well, you can see where this is going.  I had to sleep there and then wake up at 5am to catch a bus taxi into my old village.  Nice thing I did, I was able to spend Christmas Eve with about 15 other volunteers, which was nice.

Christmas day I arrive in my old village and seriously, it felt like a “Cheers” (TV show) intro music was my background music…sing with me!  “I wanna go where everybody knows your name –doom-doom-doom-doom- and they’re always glad you came!”  It was fantastic!   Olivier, who was like my baby, is about as big as his big brother Roger was when I left.  Roger is no longer chubby…still a little bandit… and they have 2 new siblings.  Yeah, I know, NUTS!   One of my old students is married now, my next door neighbors are pregnant (really only the wife is pregnant, but it is nice to think that the man might be sharing in the process).  Most of the village looks pretty similar, but there are new houses, some new faces, and definitely changes in the magnitude of fish and veggies available.  When I was there the place was overflowing, but the environmental workers have cut down on gardening and fishing in the area because the area was being over exploited and would in the future lead to a barren town…so sadly and also fortunately for the future they’ve cracked down on things a bit.  

Despite all of the surprising changes, it still felt like home.  There is a new volunteer there now and I stayed with her (in my old house) and a couple of times I referred to it as “my house” and she politely reminded me that I no longer live there…no comment, just an LOL.  But I guess I feel like even if I move to a new geographic location anywhere in the world or in Burkina Faso, it will always be my village.  It is the first place I ever lived outside of the USA and things just felt like home.  Christmas is about remembering that the Christ was born, to save us.  Somewhere along the lines even if you are not Christian, you still may celebrate Christmas and say that it is about family and love.  Well I agree with both because when Christ was born people travelled from all over to come and hang out, to share love, gifts and laughter.  And that is just what I did. J

And then I left the next morning to be greeted by….”WAIT FOR IT” (this is a quote from the sitcom “How I met Your Mother”, funny show by the way)…another long return because everybody’s uncle, brother from another mother and I travelled back to their respective locations on the 26^th.  Yep took me 2 days AGAIN!  I will not go into detail about how one of the bus taxis I rode in broke down every 25 minutes because there was a leak in the gas tank so it would only ride for 25minutes before we would run out of gas.  I will just keep that one to myselfJ. 

Some pictures are on my facebook page for those of you who have access.  Those who don't I will add some pictures when I am in a town with good internet connection...takes longer to load on blogger than on facebook.