Meet the new Burkina Faso PCVs!

It's official! Tonight we officially became PCV's (peace corps volunteers). :) Our swear-in ceremony at the US Embassy was wonderful and we all looked fantastic in our new Burkina Faso styles.

the new SE volunteers

the new GEE volunteers

Model School and the End of Training

Hello from Ouagadougou! Before I explain why I’m in Ouaga (there will be extensive descriptions in a future post), I need to explain a bit about our Model School and the wrap-of training.

Our “stage” or training group is comprised of people from two of the four Peace Corps sectors in Burkina Faso: secondary education (SE) and girls education and empowerment (GEE). Of course I’m part of the SE program and will be teaching physics/chemistry (PC) (they’re combined here). As part of our training, the Peace Corps organized a summer or “model” school for us for the month of August. Students from the Ouahigouya community paid to attend our math, science and IT classes. The program consisted of four weeks of instruction and included two tests. The levels taught were 6e, 5e, 4e and 3e or roughly middle school – high school. At the end of the school the top three girls and the top three boys from each class were given prizes in the form of paper and other school supplies.

I ended up teaching the 4e PC classes (3-6 classes each week). It was so much fun and teaching in french wasn’t difficult at all! The Model School helped ease our jitters and gave us a better sense of what our two years in BF are going to be like.

Model School finished with a ceremony last Friday. People gave speeches, awards were handed out and there was even a dance performance by some of the 4e girls. By the way, the girls rocked the classes, getting the top marks in nearly all the class levels.

In addition to wrapping-up Model School, us trainees were finishing our training. We took tests in language, cross culture, security/safety, technical and medical. For language we needed intermediate mid and a couple weeks ago I attained intermediate high. Whew! :)

Saturday we had a thank you ceremony for our host families. We spent the week-end packing and on Monday left our families. Tuesday morning we all loaded into a bus at six o’clock (am!) and headed to Ouagadougou (more on this next post). So now I’m writing this post from the lobby of our hotel in downtown Ouaga after have a vanilla chocolate chip ice cream cone! It really is the small things in life that matter. Hot showers are paradise and wifi an extreme luxury.

last class

SE trainees

the audience

officials

dancing!

Address

I've decided to post my regional address online.
Letters are always welcome! :) I'll do my best to reply, but just a warning, sending letters from here is expensive. There may be a long delay.

Bridget Williams
Corps de la Paix
01 B.P. 392
Ouahigouya 01
Burkina Faso
WEST AFRICA

Also training is unofficially over. We had our last test today along with a ceremony for the host families. I'm fairly exhausted and really looking forward to our trip to Ouagadougou for our swear in next week. Time to relax a little!!

L’histoire de ma future maison

Précédemment, j’ai ecrit au sujet de ma maison. Malheureusement la maison que j’ai décrit n’est pas ma maison maintenant. Le propriétaire a décidé de la louer à sa nièce. Mais ce n’est pas grave!

Mon homologue a trouvé une autre pour moi. Comme la première maison, la deuxième n’est pas loin du lycée à 801 metres. Elle est un peu petite que la première, mais elle est une nouvelle construction. Je serai la première locataire. Ma maison contient deux chambres, un grand salon et une salle de bain (sans toilette, mais avec une douche et un lavabo). Contrairement à la première, elle n’a pas une cuisine! J’utiliserai une chambre pour faire la cuisine par nécessité. L’évier de la première va vraiment me manquer!!

Les meilleurs aspects de ma nouvelle maison sont les lumières et les ventilateurs dans le salon et dans chaque chambre. Aussi les murs dedans sont jolis avec la peinture verte.
Les couleurs fraiches (les bleues et les vertes) seront très importantes en Burkina Faso pour moi parce que dans la saison sèche la température pourrait atteindre 130 °F! Les murs verts aideront au-dessus de mesure avec la sensation de froid. Je suis en train de chercher les autres choses qui m’aideraient à la refroidir. En ce moment j’ai les murs verts, les ventilateurs (électriques ou manuels), mon pagne trempé, restant à l’ombre toujours et des boissons fraiches grâce à l’électricité. Et pour quiconque voyait ma chambre en “high school”, vous comprendriez ma obsession avec les couleurs fraiches.

Retournant au sujet à portée de la main: Dehors j’aurai une petite cour rocheuse et parce que la maison est nouvelle, il n’y a pas de plantes. En fait, j’aurai un jardin des roches si je ne fais rien. Avec les roches ce sera difficile de faire pousser un vrai jardin. Je trouverai la terre riche pour ma cour sans délai.

La semaine prochaine j’irai à Ouagadougou avec les autres stagiaires pour notre prestation de serment. Pendant mon séjour à Ouage, j’achèterai beaucoups des choses dont j’ai besoin. Après je vais afficher “la liste des choses que j’achèterai.”

À la prochaine fois!

Animal edition . . .

... because I've been too tired to take "real" pictures. Thank goodness training is almost over!

baby moo

the coolest cat in Burkina Faso

the most annoying creature on earth

a duck at the market - ruddy ducks are much cuter

Burkina Faso musings ... or things that didn't warrant an entire blog post on their own

• Fabric softener is amazing – after washing my clothes they’re practically surf boards. Cherish your washing machines and trust me there’s no excuse to procrastinate. I have to use a big tub and 2 buckets. I wash my clothes with detergent in the big tub with a bar of soap too, then this is followed by two rinse “cycles” in the other buckets. The soap still remains in the clothes and my hands are not happy afterwards. Separate whites and colors? More like wash the really dirty stuff last so the water is somewhat clean for those things that are almost passable.
• Avez-vous la monnaie de 2,000/5,000/10,000 CFA? Small currency is hard to come by. Par exemple: bissap or jus de weda (better than bissap!) costs 50 CFA per sachet, yoghurt is 200 CFA and toilet paper 250 CFA for one roll. Try buying any of the three with a 10 mille note!
• Fanta, Coke or Sprite?
• Why can’t I get away from grey & white tabby cats? They are cute though...
• Franglais is necessary here (trust me) and I just noticed it’s starting to show up in my writing! I officially refuse to correct it – franglais will remain as it falls.
• I have a new house...long story! It has everything, but the kitchen sink (or a kitchen for that matter!). More in a few weeks with pictures.
• The Olympics started yesterday?
• Mauritania had a coup d’état?
• Fanta, Coke or Sprite?
• There’s another world out there besides training?
• Teaching in french isn’t so bad and teaching in BF is remarkably similar to the States. However the students here actually “boo” you when they disagree with test questions on reclamation day, the day the tests (devoirs) get handed back. Although to be fair to them it was a bad question, at least half of it anyway. They all got a point back making my average 8.9/20 with a high and low of 16.5 and 2.5, respectively.
• Let me qualify my test scores by saying the average grade in Burkina is a 50% (10/20 on tests)! (kinda like grad school, but un peu différent...) So my test was completely reasonable. Tough love is the norm here not just at school, poor kids. American students have it easy with averages of 70% and clean water!
• Dogs here are NOT cuddly! They chase me when I go running!! Some volunteers carry rocks to keep them away. Not a bad idea...
• By the time I leave Africa I will have read 10% of all books on Earth. (Really this is not an unrealistic goal. I’m on book #3 for the month of August!) I just started Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and I highly recommend it after only 20 pages. And no, I will not read the end of this book first. :)
• Fanta, Coke or Sprite?
• Mosquitoes love: heels, elbows, ankles, tops of feet, toes, knuckles and shoulder blades
• Flies love mosquito bites. Yuk! We have a few infected bites among the trainees right now (not me thank goodness, applying insect repellent over a wound is quite antiseptic even though it hurts more than...well many things.)
• Tuesday, I pick-up my Swear-in Ceremony complète. I’m so excited! Pictures to come...butterflies and roses are involved.
• News flash: “Kitten Steals Mouse from Mother” {see picture below}
• Telecenters here have gone the way of Kodak film – they exists, but barely. Cell phones are ubiquitous, even in villages. Do land-lines exist anymore? To top it off I’ve become a “texter” because it’s so much cheaper. This is very frightening to me.
• Even more frightening is listening to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” every night for ~ week ... on repeat! Well to be honest the tape was played over-and-over making it vers 3 to 4 times an evening. At least I’m not forced to watch Celine Dion music videos like Chris!
• Fanta, Coke or Sprite... wait Fanta Cocktail exists!
• Les crapauds are nice to fall asleep to, but roosters are decidedly not pleasant to wake-up to! It’s also not great falling asleep to Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”...
• Keyboards: qwerty > qwerty-csa >> azerty and switching back and forth between all three is confusing!
• Mango Season is wrapping up. I’m not happy about this development! Hopefully a suitable replacement will come along... if not: Fanta, Coke or Sprite?
  

Snails are everywhere!

French verbs!

My first rainbow in BF

I love clouds!

Mushrooms

What is the world coming to when kittens steal mice from their mothers? (the mouse tail is just visible)

The Three Amigos

I thought I should give these guys their own blog post since they make me smile so often. The kittens belong to my host family and were born about the same time I arrived in Burkina Faso, so they’re about two months old now. We’ve had many incidents of “disappearing kittens”. They usually end up locked in the boutique across the street, the why/how of which stills remains a mystery.

I’ve named the three according to their personalities.
Gros is the biggest. He doesn’t really say much and basically eats and sleeps when not playing.

Méchant is not a nice kitten. He’s constantly trying to attack his bothers and mother. He’s actually very afraid of everything. I think that explains a lot about his personality.

Bruit talks a lot! He’s also incredibly smart and has taken to following me around. Usually he ends up sitting with me on my canteen while I read a book. Bruit is my favorite kitten.

The family

Bruit

Bruit

Méchant (left) and Gros (right)

Méchant

Méchant about to attack Bruit