Welcome!
If you're checking this out, you might already know that I'll be going to Burkina Faso with the Peace Corps in June. And since I finally thought up of a decent title, a theme, if you will, for the next two-odd years, I've started this blog to commemorate the experience.
First, you might ask: what's a Burkina Faso? Burkina Faso is a small country in Central-West Africa, landlocked and completely surrounded by other countries you might have vaguely heard of: Benin, Togo, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali and Niger. It's famous for the annual Pan-African Film Festival, the bi-annual International Arts and Crafts Fair, and former President Thomas Sankara, who gave the country its modern name. Burkina: "Men of Integrity" (in Móoré) Faso: "Father's House" (in Dioula)
What might you ask next? Depends on who you are.
If you are/were an econ major:
"What's the economy like there?"
Here are few interesting numbers:
550 - Burkina's income per capita. This makes it one of the poorer countries of the world-- GDP rankings put it close to Nepal, Bangladesh and neighboring Mali.
85 - The percentage of Burkinabé who work in agriculture. Popular crops include sorghum, corn, black-eyed peas, soybeans and groundnut. Cotton and gold are the biggest exports.
5 - Percentage of Burkina's exports that go to China. As strange as it seems coming from the US, China is actually the biggest importer of Burkinabé goods.
If you want to make small talk:
"What's the weather like there?"
Hot and fairly dry. The average day in the hot season (March-May) will top out over 100º F. Nightly lows in theory will average in the 80s, but current volunteer blogs suggest otherwise...
During the "cool" season (December-February), temps usually get into the 90s during the day and drop into the 60s at night. Apparently, this will come to feel downright frigid.
Rain is seasonal-- most of it falls between June and September. The north is more arid, the south more humid.
I'll find out for myself soon enough, but I'd like to think this quote from the incoming volunteer Facebook page sums up the weather in a nutshell:
there has been a request from current pcvs that you bring super soakers or other water guns. hot season is here...
Challenge accepted.
If you are concerned about health:
This issue, the Peace Corps takes most seriously. In fact, the medical screening process is the most rigorous part of the application. I have to be thankful for my good health thusfar: I only had to take care of a cavity and get vaccinated against yellow fever (actually a requirement for anyone entering Burkina). I believe there is another round of vaccinations at staging (pre-service orientation), but I'll find out more about that soon.
I do know that taking an antimalarial will be part of my weekly regimen, with the possibility of teaching malaria prevention techniques to my host community: malaria prevention is one of the "High Five" goals of Peace Corps Burkina Faso. Here's an eye-opening post from a current volunteer about the epidemic, in observance of World Malaria Day (April 25th).
If you are struck by the title of this blog:
Les oeuvres saute is a grammatically incorrect way of saying "The works (of art) jump" in French. How is this relevant?
The official language of Burkina Faso is French*. I studied that language for a semester in college! Which is to say that my knowledge of it is un peu mauvais...
But in hopes saving myself from some embarrassment come arrival in-country this June, I've been going back to study. This has involved some textbook work, watching videos, writing some "journal entries" in French, but most importantly, it's involved going to French language meetup groups and of course, making embarrassing mistakes in conversation. Example:
We are discussing different ways of cooking in French, and someone mentions how the English word "sauté" comes from the French word, which has the exact same spelling and meaning. But "sauté" is very closely related to the word "saute", which means "jump". We puzzle over this for a minute and decide it makes sense. After all, French chefs flip their sautes with flair, as if the food is jumping out of the pan.
I take out my notebook, and draw a picture of a couple of eggs jumping out from a frying pan with a corresponding caption. Voila. Les oeuvres saute.
Except eggs = "oeufs". Wrong word. I find this out later, when a Burkinabé family comes to the table and I move over to join them. As I show them my notebook, everyone breaks out laughing. Embarrassing... but fun. I learn a few new words that I'm unlikely to forget anytime soon. And hopefully, just hopefully, I've learned to pay more attention to verb conjugations.
But the most important take-away from this experience is that for the next two years and three months, I'll likely get into countless similar situations, mixing up language, inadvertently doing the culturally inappropriate and generally dealing with the awkwardness of being an outsider. Making terrible puns. Failing and learning from it.
One question that may also come up:
So what exactly are you going to do there?
Fair question. The title of my position is Formal Education Volunteer, or more specifically, "IT teacher". While the details are still unclear, I'm likely to teach a high school computer class for about 10 hours per week, and then use the rest of my time to work with kids (and other teachers) outside of class. But here's a more immediate timetable:
I leave for Burkina this June (33 days and counting...), train for three months in Saponé with the other volunteers and then (hopefully) be sworn in and placed where I'll serve for the next two years. I actually don't know where this will be yet-- the Peace Corps will decide after a few weeks of training. When I arrive on-site in late August/early September, I will spend the next 2-3 months conducting an Etude de Milieu-- a feasibility study that will define the scope of my work for the last 21 months, after I go through one more month of in-service training.
This puts me at ~Jan. 2013, when the "real" Peace Corps experience begins. And while I can't be sure exactly what I'll be doing at that point from here (on top of teaching 10 hours/week), a few interesting options include:
- Sponsoring student clubs/spelling bees/science fairs. Possibly a school garden where students get to sell the produce? This is one of our guide's recommendations.
- Getting students involved with local businesses, and possibly even tech startups!
- Planting and managing 625 trees per year with the environment volunteers, to help fight desertification and erosion.
- Collaborating with the health and environment volunteers on Malaria, HIV/AIDS and hygiene workshops.
One thing to note: I don't have all too much experience with any of this. Most everything I'm set to do will be completely new to me. But somehow, I have been invited with a good-sized group of other Americans to facilitate "sustainable economic development" in a country I'd heard of once before this past November. Pretty cool, huh? But what does this "sustainable economic development" really mean? I've never been into formal definitions, but maybe I'll find out soon.
To conclude? I'm intimidated and excited at the same time. It's not unlike the feeling you get when you know you're about to do something great, but will have to work hard in order to do it right (as it should be!). It's similar to the feeling of a les oeuvres saute moment, where the pleasure is learning and then pain is making a fool of yourself. I can guarantee that I'll have a lot of those, and I'll share them here as my connection to the internet and will to write permits.
À la prochaine!
ETH
* Just because French is the "official language" doesn't mean that everyone speaks it. So, I'll be learning one or two local languages (likely Móoré or Dioula) as well!
