Having Patience

Tyler and I are proud to welcome a new member to our Tougan family – our new kitty, Patience. As Tyler said, this is the first time in his life that he has had a pet that doesn’t live in a glass tank! Patience, so named to remind us how important it is to have patience here, was a gift from our good friend Yaro. The first few days were rough (as they ought to have been considering that Patience was vaccinated and transported in a cardboard box on a very bumpy bike ride to our house)! But since those initial two days, Patience has proved to be the most social cat either of us has ever known. He is a blessing to have in our home, helps us slow down a little each day, and has significantly and pleasantly depleted the cricket population in our house :)

Tyler started teaching at the provincial high school last week and loves it! He teaches three math classes of middle school-aged kids and is really enjoying getting to know them. Tyler teaches during the morning hours and does lesson planning in the afternoons. Little by little, Tyler is also getting to know the other teacher and how the Burkinabé education system works (which is not always easy to get use to!) Teaching and planning in French is definitely a challenge, but has thus far proven quite rewarding.

Work for me has been a bit more “undefined” as it is not yet clear what group of kids I will be working with. The education ministry, on a Tougan level, decided to invite me into Alwata Diawara (1 of 9 elementary schools here in Tougan) to start my work. Since classes at Alwata did not officially begin until this week, a lot of what I have been doing there is hanging out with teachers and strategizing with the school director and my counterpart. By next week I will probably be sitting in on a couple of classes each day to get to know the students and teachers better and start identifying which girls I would like to work with (i.e. to do girl’s clubs, health classes, awareness meetings, etc.) I have also been keeping busy attending various meetings in Tougan related to Girl’s Education and Empowerment (i.e. monthly meeting of Tougan’s women’s group and a training for the province’s parents of students associations). I also had the great pleasure of meeting Mr. Tapsoba, the person sent by the ministry of la promotion des femmes (promotion of women) to work in Tougan. Mr. Tapsoba and I are equally excited to have met and look forward to working together on girl’s education and empowerment issues.

Aside from work, Tyler and I have been keeping busy meeting up with new friends and acquaintances and attending community events. Unfortunately, such community events have included two funerals within one week – the first for the young owner of a local bar/eatery and the other for the young daughter (school-aged) of a teacher at Alwata. Both funerals were attended by at least 200-300 people (if not more) and were very much somber community gatherings. It was, however, amazing to see how everyone came together - Christian, Muslim, and Animist – to mourn with the family and pray that God give healing and strength. According to one of the priests at the service of the young girl, she was the second student the private school has lost this year alone.

Tyler and I continue to have a close connection with the Yaro family and are at their house every other night for dinner. We have eaten so much tô (the staple dish here in Burkina) in the last month that Tyler and I have finally admitted defeat and have actually taken a liking to the once avoided food. Tô, for those unfamiliar with the food, is a squishy, almost jello-like white substance usually made of crushed corn or millet and served with one of several sauces (i.e. fish sauce, okra sauce, eggplant sauce, leaves of a baobab tree sauce, and if we’re lucky, goat meatball sauce!) Traditionally, the dish is also eaten with your hands, though Yaro always offers us a spoon. My counterpart, Alice, has also had us over for several meals and continues to join us at our house every once and a while to “see what American food is like.” Our last culinary exchange was a very tasty chili served with an excellent corn bread that Tyler made in our Dutch oven. We also spent last Saturday “hanging out” with Mr. Tapsoba and his wife Salma eating lemonade cookies that I made, and if you can believe it, watching two Steven Segal movies at Tapsoba’s house (the first activity was certainly preferred over the second!) Nonetheless, it was a good time.

We’ve kept relatively busy with our efforts to improve our once barren courtyard. When we arrived it was a lot of red-brown dirt, various ugly piles of gravel and rocks and bricks that we weren’t allowed to use. Since then we’ve made a walkway with the gravel and rocks and managed to plant some trees, flowers, shrubs and other plants. We’ve been told that we will be eating bananas, papayas and this thing called pomme cannelle from our courtyard before we leave, and can currently make tea using the mint and lemongrass that we’ve planted. Our next improvement will be having a hangar (thatched roof awning) constructed next to the house which will provide some shade for us to sit under with our guests, and hopefully keep the walls of our house from warming up so much during the day.

October has been a hot one, with temperatures in our house reaching 95°F (even warmer outside). The unshaded concrete walls retain a lot of heat, and if you touch them at three in the morning they are still warm from the afternoon sun. Fortunately, we’ve been told, the weather should start cooling down in November and we can look forward to days in the 70s! We shall see.

Thank you again to everyone who has been writing and Skyping us (it is always one of the best part of our days, hearing from all of you!) We continue to miss you tremendously and pray all is well back State-side. Much love!

Jessi & Tyler

Home sweet home in Tougan. There was actually a rainbow over the house when we took the photo but its pretty faint.

This is the barrage/seasonal lake next to Tougan. No hippos here, but supposedly we can find them 20 miles from here.

Jessi demonstrates how to eat the IMFAMOUS tô (pronounced toe) with our favorite goat meatball sauce, made by Madame Yaro. Ok, we actually use spoons most of the time.

Transporting chairs and lemongrass and mint back to our house the Burkinabè way, on bike (donkey cart and moto work too). We have transported a surprising array of things on our bikes.

Painting our house the first week here. If you think this looks precarious, you are correct, it was. Thankfully the paint didn't dry quite like that.

Tyler bringing water into the courtyard for our seedlings. Yes, it is as heavy as it looks.

Tyler and one of the many trees we planted. Note the mint and lemongrass in background, and overall color of the yard. Yep, it was just dirt before.

Welcome to our study/dining room. The blue really does make you think its cooler inside than it is. We spend most of our time in this room, probably because the two windows in here make it 15 degrees cooler than the other room in our house.

Welcome to our kitchen, the second half of the room shown above. Gas stove, propane tank, cupboard that doesn't keep insects out of our food, and our water filter. Oh how we miss running water, but cooking really is an escape for Jessi (especially when we can mimic US food).

Jessi and our kitty, Patience. Isn't he cute?

Patience is definitely Tylers little boy. Tyler is considering being a cat person over a dog person, at least in Burkina.

Whats happening in Tougan

Apologies for the delay in blog entries (this one was actually written 5 days ago but we haven't had internet til now). Life has certainly been busy with meeting people, language tutoring, hosting other volunteers, my first week long teacher inservice, and making home. I realized this week that we’ve already completed over 10% of our service here. Holy cow! Here’s a couple highlights.

Floby

Jessi and I forgot to mention it last blog, but on our third night in Tougan we had a great opportunity for cultural integration: a Floby concert. Floby is a Burkinabé musician, who has sort of been a one-hit-wonder during our time here. All during training the Burkina television would play this one music video of his over and over, and the radio played this one song over and over. So we went with Nick, another volunteer from nearby, and Alice, Jessi’s counterpart, to this Floby concert. To no one’s surprise, the 8pm concert started at 11 (we are getting more accustomed to West African International Time, aka WAIT). It was sort of an outdoor venue, as most Burkinabe events are, with a covered center pavilion for Floby to perform on, and the audience sitting around the center. We had seats right up front. As we were waiting for the concert to start we kept noticing that the distant lightning wasn’t so distant anymore, and with the wind picking up we knew a storm was imminent.

Floby hadn’t been on the stage for more than two minutes when the rain started to pour. Everyone picked up their chairs and flooded the stage where Floby was performing, leaving him about a square yard to lip sync and dance in. Then about halfway thru the concert the sound system went out, and they couldn’t get it to come back on. Sound systems, and particularly microphones, here are pretty crappy and unreliable, which is why most musicians simply lip sync and dance instead of taking their chances with microphones. The system finally came online again for one last song, the infamous one from our training. Out of nowhere Floby came over to Nick and pulled him up from his seat to dance with him for about 15 seconds. People went wild, and we all thought it was hilarious. Then a minute later some of Nicks friends, Alice, and myself pushed Jessi out onto the stage to dance with him, which he had no objection to. The concert really turned out to be quite an event when all was said and done, and was certainly not something we expected to be doing three days into our life in Tougan.

My Birthday – Warning! FOOD rant

Our second week in Tougan my birthday rolled around, and Jessi worked some miracles to make the day special. She started the day off with a stack of pancakes and some black-raspberry syrup and then let me play games on the computer all morning. While I was enjoying that, Jessi was out on the town trying to figure out how to get ground beef. She went to a restaurant where we knew we’d seen it before, and they had somebody run and buy the beef, and then taught her how they put it through the grinder and cook it up for their meals. She said it was quite an experience and a lot of fun for everyone involved. She came home, made some homemade salsa, homemade tortillas, homemade lemonade, and taco meat using a packet of seasoning my parents had sent. She had also got our dutch oven set up and baked me a cake with chocolate frosting for my birthday. That evening we made popcorn and had a few friends over for popcorn, cake, and lemonade. They were all really impressed with the cake (you can’t find anything like cake back home here), and equally impressed with the dutch oven itself, and the lemonade. We wrapped up the day with a game of Phase 10. It was a really fun day for both of us.

Making home

I paid our first electric bill here this month, so I guess that means that we are official residents! We’ve slowly but surely been getting the furniture we ordered, which has really made our house feel more like home. We’re working on planting some flowers, trees, and other shrubs in our giant courtyard of nothing. I’ve come one step closer to being a true Burkinabé by weeding our courtyard of anything green that wasn’t actually planted there. Its kind of depressing that the end result is a much browner courtyard, but considering we don’t want rodents and have seen two scorpions in the house, the brown courtyard is probably worth it. We’ve got a kitten picked out that will be making home with us soon, if we can ever find a vet with a rabies vaccination. It’s all kept us very busy but has been a lot of fun to do.

Yaro’s family

We’ve felt very privileged to have met some really great people in Tougan already, especially the Yaro family. We met Mr. Yaro, who was assigned as our language tutor, on our site visit to Tougan when he had us over to his house for supper with his family both nights. There are seven kids in their family, plus a nephew and a girl that helps with house work. According to what Yaro told us, we are now to be included in those numbers too. Supper at the Yaro’s has become somewhat of a tradition for us now, and we probably share supper with them five nights a week. We’ve had a lot of fun watching TV, eating good food, and discussing cultural things together. We’ve had a good time doing language tutoring with Mr. Yaro too, which has been centered around reading the national newspaper aloud together to improve our horrid pronunciation, and discussing the current happenings around our host country. The Yaro family has really made us feel welcome here, and I can’t imagine how different it would be without them.

Ramadan

Yesterday marked the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Muslim holidays are on a lunar (11 month) calendar, so they fall at a different time every year, and nobody is exactly sure when the dates will fall until the night before, which makes it a little exciting. The end of Ramadan is marked with massive celebrations, and we joined in with our friends and neighbors and the Yaro family in celebrating. The night before Ramadan the Yaro girls helped Jessi put henna ‘tatoos’ on her hands and feet to prepare for the festival, and Jessi helped the neighbor girls make little gateau (cake like things) since they had invited us to eat with them. The morning of Ramadan we went to the Yaro house to help with food preparations, which were a lot of fun. We spent the afternoon and evening visiting neighbors and friends to wish them a ‘Happy Ramadan’ and share little candies with their kids. This visiting of nearby neighbors and friends is a cool little tradition that crosses religious boundaries, as Christians will go visit their Muslim friends to celebrate Ramadan and Tabasky, and Muslims will visit their Christian friends to celebrate Easter and Christmas. At every house we went to we were offered immense amounts of food and drink, and partook in more than our bodies could really handle. According to Jessi, it definitely ranked in her top ten “I’ve never eaten so much in my life” days. It was our first real holiday in Burkina and it was a lot of fun. Jessi and I are already trying to figure out how to make Christmas cookies to share with everyone, and are searching for fabric so we can have new clothes made for the next festival (Tabasky).

Like I said, life overall here has been very good here. We hope to get photos up online of Tougan soon, but we really don’t want to flash around our camera just yet. We’ve certainly felt homesick on a number of days, and we miss everyone back home a lot. Thank you all so much for your prayers, emails, letters, packages, and phone calls. I don’t know what we’d do without them. Until next time!

Swear-In... Its official!

We made it through training and have officially sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers! The last two weeks have been very exciting for us, full of changes and transition. We left our training city of Ouahigouya on August 23rd for the capital city of Ouagadougou. In Ouaga, Tyler and I enjoyed ourselves immensely with Chinese food, hamburgers, pizza, burritos, and even fried calamari (all the sort of things you can’t readily find outside of the capital)! Our swear-in ceremony was on August 25th and was held at the U.S. ambassador’s residence, which is right next to the U.S. embassy. There were nearly 200 people at the ceremony, including Burkina’s Minister of Primary Education. It was, in my opinion, a very successful event that really pumped us up for the next two years of service. The day after the ceremony, Tyler and I headed for our new home, Tougan.

Since our visit to Tougan last month, our opinion of the small city has remained positive and optimistic. We have had an extraordinary time in Tougan so far with visits to the marché (market), friendly conversations with neighbors, and meals eaten with my homologue Alice and our tutor Yaro. Almost everyone we interact with is incredibly kind and good humored. Tyler and I have found ourselves at one of the local cafés, Vis-à-vis, several times to partake in what we believe is the best yogurt in Burkina. We have also discovered a very scrumptious chicken soup (which is more like a big piece of chicken in broth than the noodles, meat, and veggies that people in the US usually consume) at Hotel Nerwaya, and a very acceptable ground beef sandwich, again, at Vis-à-vis. (Yes, we recognize that we have talked about food several times already in this blog, but it’s always a treat to enjoy something here that is not just rice! – yes Tom, I admit it, rice can be quite a bore J)

Life in Tougan, more than it has afforded us with good food options, has finally allowed us some of the independence we lacked during training. We have had a blast cooking for ourselves again (tuna melts have never tasted so good), organizing our new house, and having significantly more control over our daily schedule. Tyler has done a fantastic job searching our plants for our courtyard – lemon grass/citronella (which mosquitoes don’t like) and mint (which flies don’t like – both of which will make an exceptional tea). We are also looking forward to planting numerous flowers and trees, most of which produce fruit, but of course not before we leave Burkina. Perhaps some of the familial green thumb has finally rubbed off on Tyler (though he is skeptical to see if anything he has planted will survive). We also painted the inside of our house with a turquoise-like color, all with the help of our new friend Salam, the son of our landlord.

Salam has been a great help to us in our first few days here, fixing broken lights, painting, negotiating difficult rope for our clothesline, and dealing with our still broken French. All of it he has done with great enthusiasm, never asking for anything in return, except to practice some of his English. Salam, like many Muslims here right now, is also fasting for Ramadan. Fasting meaning no food or water during day-light hours. It is an amazing feat considering that those observing the fast still work all day in the fields, often in the scorching heat!

Fortunately, it has cooled down the last few days with a sudden downpour of rain. Unfortunately, however, that has meant major flooding for Ouagadougou and other parts of Burkina. The damage is significant, including impassable roads, falling bridges, and destroyed homes. Alice, who is originally from the Ouaga area, says she has never seen a flood like it. No flooding has occurred in Tougan, but we are worried about our Peace Corps comrades in and around Ouaga. We hope to hear more updates soon.

Other than that, Tyler and I have been spending most of our time getting comfortable in our house, having furniture made, doing two weeks worth of laundry, and all in all relishing in the time spent “making home” in our first home together.

Jessi

Two weeks left of Training?

Our Washing Machine at Tyler's host family

Jessi's host sister and her daughter

Tyler's Host Family at Alim's 1st birthday

Jessi' Host Sister Marriam and son Issouf

Jessi's host brother Adama, Issouf, and one of the many village kids that hang out at her house

Jessi and her host sister who never leaves her side

It is impossible to believe, but two weeks from today we will be leaving our host families and leaving training. Two weeks and two days from now we will be sworn in as members of the Peace Corps at the US Embassy in Ouaga, and it is hard to believe that over two months have passed since we left the US. The prospect of leaving our rigid and rigorous training schedule, the “parenting” of the Peace Corps training program, and starting our home in Tougan is a welcomed one, but the idea of leaving our host families and friends that we’ve made here is not one that is easy to embrace either.

I’ve completed two weeks of teaching math in French at model school. Though it is only one class of one hour each day, it has been challenging. However, when I think about the fact that I spoke no French 3 months ago and now I’ve taught a bit of math to those 35 students in French, its downright amazing! (Note: model school classes are really small… typical class size in Burkina Faso is 70-140 students in one classroom) Model school has forced some improvement in my French because I have to answer questions off the cuff, and there is no one in the room to translate for me or otherwise help me if I don’t understand. We have two more weeks of model school left, and I’m hoping that my vocab will continue to increase with it.

We’ve both been under the weather a bit the past couple of weeks, and we don’t know what to attribute it to. Could be food, or a bug, or who knows what. Being sick here means lying down in an unventilated room that could double as an oven and sweating profusely until you can’t tolerate it any more.

Because of aforementioned scorching rooms, we’ve been talking about buying an oscillating fan for our site, and decided it is probably a good idea to get one while we’re at training since we’ll have somewhat of a better selection (well, that and because when we are forced to sleep inside here, even at night, it is a sweatfest). Today I decided to go out and browse around for fans. I was checking out a fan at a street vendor today and noted that the box (which was in English and Russian) promoted a two year warrantee that came with this fan. I chuckled to myself and asked the vendor if it was true. He smiled and said (not in English) “Ha! This is Africa. Things don’t work like that here.” In reality, if I took it home, plugged it in, and it quit after an hour I would have no retribution. I have no retribution with the vendor because he has no retribution with the manufacturer.

Though I held off on buying the fan, it really segued into one of the things I often struggle with here: a lack of guarantees. By guarantees I mean simple assumptions too, such as if I decide to buy 100cfa (25 cents) worth of Bissap and pay with a 500cfa coin, the likelihood of the person having change for me is really low, even at a restaurant. Similarly, when you go out to a restaurant that advertises various items on its menu, it is likely that 30% of the items won’t actually be available, though they may have been 10 minutes before. In my mind, I wonder why they couldn’t stock a little extra (there truly is a lot of potential business lost). However, there really is no guarantee for the vendors either, and if nobody buys their products it is simply food that you can’t afford to refrigerate, and thus money down the drain, something that no one can afford here. It is petty but its one of the little quirks here that has taken some adjusting, and I can’t believe how much I enjoyed that simple consistency and reliability back in the US. Both of those qualities are truly the mark of wealth I am now realizing.

So I know everyone thinks that Jessi and I are off living this incredibly exciting and adventurous life in Africa with the Peace Corps, and that may be true to some extent. However, I just want to mention again how much we enjoy hearing anything from home. It is seriously good for our mental health, even the simplest of notes. Thank you to everyone that has written, emailed, or called us.

Neighbors and Ouagadougou

During our Tougan visit we met up with Nick, a PCV who lives about 45k from us. He showed us a couple of cool places to visit in Tougan, where we can check our email and get good eats, and went around to meet people with us. He actually ended up being our first guest at our new home! He also had us come up to his home for an evening of food and drink and good conversation on that Friday night. He ordered a mutton (goat) for us and some of his friends from village for supper, as well as Cokes and Brakinas (the ‘national beer’). I know some of you have some aversion to eating goat, but let me tell you, this goat was amazing! It was seasoned with spices Nick brought, grilled with onions and peppers, and then slow cooked again over a fire. I think it could’ve converted some of you! Just being able to have a meal that wasn’t 90% carbs was amazing in itself!

We also spent the weekend in Ouagadougou, the capital city. For the most part, Ouaga is a very modern city, with many of the luxuries we experienced back in the states such as air conditioning, cold drinks on demand, readily available internet access, and a variety of foods. For supper one night we had pizza, and I mean it was actually pizza. The next night the trainees were invited to a PC staff member’s house to eat Mexican food (soft shell tacos with chips and salsa etc). Yes, I realize we get a big hung up on food here, but it really does have a big influence on our outlook. Processed food, like cheese, and foods that require refrigeration are difficult to find in Burkina, so it really is a treat when we encounter them!

Tomorrow model school starts for me, which means I’ll be teaching math in French every day. Its intimidating to say the least, especially the French part. A lot of the math terminology looks similar to the English but the pronounciation is quite a bit different and some of the concepts are approached entirely differently. It’s a challenge but one that I really look forward to.

With the rains in Burkina come the mosquitos, and they are actually starting to get thick. Yes, Northern Minnesota thick, except the world never seems to cool off here. Jessi and I are constantly dabbing anti itch cream am bug repellant on ourselves, but I think the mosquitoes here have learned that the scent of DEET = human blood to be drank, and thus are attracted by the stuff instead of repelled by it.

Rooster Story!

After what seemed like an epic battle with the cock in our courtyard for sleep over the past month the dust has finally settled, and sleep can once again be found. For the first month here, the cock in our courtyard woke up at 3:00 AM every day, and crowed until 7:00 AM. To put this into perspective, realize that windows and doors here do not have glass on them to keep noise out, and 4 out of 5 nights most of my family (self included) sleep outside in the courtyard to escape the heat of the house. Thus, if the cock goes off at 3:00 AM, there is no way to escape its decree. A couple of mornings I would wake up to my host father chasing the cock with pieces of hose and wacking it in an attempt to silence it. I also saw my brother put a bucket on top of the damn thing one morning in a similar attempt, but it continued to crow in an even more deranged manner since the sound was reverberating inside the bucket. One morning they even tied the cock’s foot to a chair behind the house so it was at least away from us. It seemed like this would continue indefinitely.

Well, two weeks ago I finally remembered that I brought earplugs, so when the cock started crowing at 3 AM, I put my earplugs in and enjoyed another three solid hours of silent sleep, outside, under my mosquito net in the cool 80 degree morning air. I woke up at 6 AM, earplugs still in, to my host brother leaning over the mosquito net, reaching for the cock which was sitting on top of my sagging mosquito net, 3 inches above my face, squawking and flapping its wings like mad. I was sure that I was going to start of my day with a face full of chicken poop! However, after my morning bucket bath, my host mom informed me that enough was enough, and that the cock had menaced everyone for too long. The following night we all slept soundly without the deranged crow of the cock, with bellies full of fried rooster. As twisted as it sounds, having won this battle by frying and eating my enemy was particularly satisfying.

After spending the past 12 days together, Jessi will return to her host family in village tomorrow night. I know it has been hard to be away from them for so long, but we have greatly enjoyed being able to spend so much time together.

Hope that all is well on the home front. Until next time!

Visit to Tougan

Whatever doubts Tyler and I had about forming a vision of the next two years in Burkina were pleasantly dwindled after our visit to Tougan, our future post.

Fortunately, our journey to Tougan via public transportation was relatively easy-going. Tougan is only a two-hour bus ride from our training city – and while the road was bumpy, it was easy to pass the time with a book in hand ;)

After arriving to Tougan, it didn’t take long for Tyler and I to fall in love with the small city. Quite a bit smaller then our training city of Ouahigouya, Tougan is more easy-going, the streets have less traffic, the air is fresher, and everyone we met was very laid-back and friendly. Our favorite part – the trees! Hundreds of trees of different sizes and shapes shading our path as we traversed through the city.

Our new house, currently uninhabited, is a simple two-bedroom home placed in the corner of a fairly large courtyard. While the house does not have running water, we will have electricity by the time we move in at the end of August (a privilege only some volunteers have here in Burkina). There is a small out-door building we can use as our kitchen or a storage area, and a walled-in area for a latrine and bathing spot. Because Tyler and I will be the first people living in the house, we will have the freedom to "make it our own" by painting the inside, planting trees and flowers, adding a hangar to our porch, and more. (Tyler and I find it increasingly amusing that our first home together will be in Africa – we absolutely can’t wait to move in!)

As far as our schedule in Tougan went, Tyler and I spent a lot of time "hanging out" with people and meeting local leaders, authorities, and others in the community. Our counterparts (i.e. individuals trained by Peace Corps to help us integrate into the community) were very helpful. Tyler’s counterpart, Yaya, is a teacher at the same high school where Tyler will be working. My counterpart, Alice, is a teacher at the primary school where I will be doing some of my work. Two individuals that should also be mentioned are Solange and Yaro. Solange works with a branch of the Education Department in Tougan and will be assisting Alice and myself. Yaro, as far as Tyler and I can tell, has been assigned as our "tutor" (though we are still unclear if that means he’ll be showing us the ropes or providing us with local language instruction?) Yaya and Yaro were very hospitable during our 3-day visit and were constantly inviting us to eat meals and spend time with them and their families.

Yaro’s nephew Arnaud was also very generous with his time and gave us two separate tours of Tougan. During our tours, we discovered that Tyler and I will have the great privilege of having access to an array of restaurants with cold drinks and "good eatin’," limited internet use at the local cyber café, an outdoor movie theater (usually playing action and karate films from what we can tell), and a large market every Sunday. We will also have a seasonal lake (which is absolutely beautiful) during the rainy season.

As you can see, our visit to Tougan has energized us tremendously. We are finally able to envision in greater detail what our next two years in Burkina will look like. We look forward to moving in at the end of August, making new friends, and getting to know our new friends even better.

- Jessi

Site Announcement!

We found out our site in Burkina! After swearing in as official Peace Corps volunteers on August 25th we will be heading to Tougan, which is about an hour and forty five minute drive from Ouahigouya (where we are now). While we do not know a whole lot about Tougan right now, we will be visiting for 3 days starting Wednesday and will let you know what we learned :)

Site announcement has been all that anyone has been thinking about for the past week, but as usual we have been staying busy with trainings, Jessi's first girls club meeting, and teaching my first math lesson in French. Are bodies are well, and our spirits are high. We got to spend a day at the pool today at the hotel in Ouahigouya, which was incredible! I never expected the water would feel so good! We also enjoyed Cokes and garlic chicken for lunch, a treat for sure!

Hope all is well and spirits high in the States as well! Please email us with what is going on back home too, as we love to hear from everyone stateside. We look forward to sharing more information on our site as we find out more. Stay tuned!

PST Continued (f/ Tyler)

My view on training has been similar: it`s intense, especially with one day off per week. Most everything, including simple things, such as using the latrine and doing laundry, has required some form of adjustment here. Happily, we are making those adjustments and what once was new seems more normal now.

I live in Ouahigouya (why-he-goy-ah), the 4th largest city in Burkina. My host family is wonderful. My host father, Harouna, is the director of a primary school in Ouahigouya. My host mother, Beebata, maintains the house and sells water, bissap, zoom koom, and other refreshments at their streetfront window. She spends a lot of time taking care of Alim, my 11 month old host brother. My host sister Aguiratou is about 20 and spends the most time working at the window, selling refreshments. Alimata (12) and Romatta (9) are my other two host sisters, and Mohammed (14) is my other host brother. The three of them are in school, and they each do Karate (Jessi and I went to one of Romatta`s sessions last week, which was fun!) Romatta and Mohammed are my professors in French, Mooré, and Burkinabé life, and they are incredibly patient with me. When I first met Alim he was curious about me, while at the same time terrified of me, but now he will reach out for me to hold him when I am around. I like to hold him and play cell phone ring tones, which he dances to by turning his head right and left. Its hilarious, and I need a video of it before we leave.

My family has an outdoor courtyard area that is surrounded by bedrooms, a kitchen building, a living room, and the refreshment storefront. My family has electricity, and to my amazement, satellite TV. I usually start and end each day watching France 24`s news programs, so I can stay up to date.

I also sleep outside frequently to escape the heat. However, today it rained and the world is full of red/orange mud, so I will probably bunk inside at Jessi's tonight when I visit. The rain storms here are truly a sight to see. You see dark black clouds with a green tint approaching, and then the clouds turn brown. Intense winds picking up sand and leaves and everything else hurdle towards you, and last about 5 minutes. Then, in the midst of the dust storm the rain comes, and it is practically raining mud. Sometimes the rain cancels the wind out, and other times the wind continues to howl. This morning I got caught in the dust storm portion of the storm on my way to the training center. It is difficult to bike in the storms, and my mouth was filled with dirt by the time I made it in. When the rain came the winds didnt subside, and it seriously looked like hurrican footage with the intense rain and wind. Then, a couple hours after the rain the land looks dry like it has't rained in weeks. It rains 3-4 times a week during this season, and while it is not fun to get caught in the storm, they are fun to watch.


Sitting here and typing makes me realiwe how fast time is flying. Next week we will find out where our site placement is already, and the week after we will visit.

We hope you are all doing well, and thoroughly enjoy receiving mail and emails from people. Take care! We'll post our site announcements next week when we receive them! Salut!

Tyler

PST & More!

Okay, so we readily admit that finding the time to blog has proved to be much more difficult than we originally planned. How to catch you all up on two plus weeks?!

Last we reported, we were eating mangoes and it was hot. Since then, we continue to eat mangoes, and yes... it is hot! PST, or Pre-service training, however, is much more than that.

As many of you already know, Tyler and I live with seperate host families. Tyler lives in the city of Ouahigouya where our main training center is located. I live in a small village called Bogoya F - about 7 km from the city (about a 35-40 min bike ride one way). I live with a very nice family called the Kindos. My host-father, Oussman, has already re-named me with the Mooré name Zallisa. Whenever I sleep outside to escape the insulated heat of my house, Oussman is sleeping close by to make sure I feel safe. My host-mother Salimata, takes good care to make sure I am fed, have a clean hangar (i.e. porch), have hot water for my morning bucket baths, and anything else to make me comfortable. My host sister Mariam is always smiling and laughing with me when I try to make her little boy Issouf smile. She is so bright and has a way of making me feel quite welcomed (as do they all). And then there is Adama, my 17-yr old host-brother. He is my cultural guide, French & Mooré teacher, my meal buddy, and friend. I do not know what I would do without him!

When I am not with my family in village, playing Mancala or frisbee with the neighborhood kids, or watching the Burkina Faso vs Coté d`Ivoire fùtbol match on one of the only TVs in the village, then it is all about PST. As a GEE (Girl's empowerement and education) trainee, I switch off between three different villages and the city for language and technical training. French is going better than expected, but I am still far from where I need to be before training ends (I will be required to have an intermediate low comprehension to be sworn in as a volunteer in August). Technical training is diverse and includes topics such as the Burkinabé education system, social issues concerning Burkinabé women and girls, how to start and maintain girl's clubs, and more.

Training with solely GEE trainees occurs about 4 days a week in our villages. For 2 days a week, myself and the other GEE gang join the SE (Secondary Education) trainees, including Tyler, in the city for group training on topics of health, security, culture, and other relevant subjects to help us navigate Burkinabé society. PST is very very helpful, but intense and often times exaughsting. Sundays we have the day off and are able to spend our time as we choose. When I go to the city for group training, I am able to stay with Tyler and his family (who are amazing - though I'll let him tell you about them).

Well, there are a zillion other things I could say, but my lunch break is over and I need to head back to PST. We miss you all tremendoulsy and hope to write more soon!

- Jessi

we made it!

Just a quick note to let you all know we arrived safely and are doing well. We have had a warm reception, literally and figuratively. the people are great, and weve been sweating buckets. Training is intense but we have mangos to distract us.

Will write more soon from a US keyboard...

Tyler and Jessi

Leavin on a jet plane

We made it to Philly, safe and sound, after many hard goodbyes to friends and family. We seem to have a great group of about 30 people that we are training with, which will really shape our experience in Burkina.

We leave for Burkina this evening at 6:00. Its really difficult to believe that its actually happening. It was delayed so many times that it felt like we were chasing something that was faster than us. Well, that thing has stopped and I think we're going to crash into it and the reality of being a Peace Corps Trainee. Our hopes are high and our anxieties still present. Thank you all for your support over the past months of our preparation. We will miss you all!

Won't have internet until a couple days after we arrive, so worry not if you don't see an immediate post.

Take care!

Welcome to the Blog

Bonjour! This is where we will be posting our experiences from Burkina Faso during our two years and three months with the Peace Corps.

To give you a heads up on the process from here, we will be heading to Philadelphia on June 9th for two days of "staging" where we get some immunizations and fill out a bunch of paper work. It doesn't sound like the most enjoyable two days of our lives. From there we will fly with our cohort of volunteers to Burkina where we will spend the next three months immersed in intensive training, probably in one of the bigger cities.. We will hone our skills in using French while practicing the skills we will be needing to use daily in our work. We will also be learning another "local" language, such as Moore. While French is the official language of Burkina Faso, the people in the villages speak their indigenous language in daily life. Kids learn French during school, but I've been told that their knowledge of French won't be much better than ours. During our training we will be staying with a host family which will encourage us to use French and learn about Burkinabe Culture.

After training (assuming we "pass") we will be asked to swear in to the program and will be assigned to a village or a city (though that is less likely) where the program director feels our skills will be best matched. I will be teaching junior high - high school level math. Jessi will be working with the Girls Education and Empowerment program, which is a government sponsored program to encourage communities to send girls to school. Its a bit vague at this point to us, but how the program works is dependent on the conditions and needs of the village we work in.

From there we will carry out our two year commitment.

Thats good enough for starters. I hope to post some other PCV blog links on here soon so you can see photos of Burkina and other volunteers' points of view.

Thank you everyone for the immense support that you have given us thus far. It is overwhelming. Of all the challenges we may face in the next 27 months, the most difficult one will be living so far from the people we love.

Au revoir!