October
8 marked my one year anniversary of arriving in Ouagadougou, which means that I’ve
spent over a year in Burkina! It feels
good to say that. So I’m going to say it
again. I’ve spent over a year in
Burkina! More than 365 days! Over 8,760 hours! But who’s counting……
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| My training group (G27) one year ago. We were so blissfully ignorant....and clean.... |
As I
mentioned in earlier posts, I was selected to work as a Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitator
(PCVF) for the training of the new group of health volunteers. I spent my one
year anniversary in Burkina Faso welcoming the new trainees of Group 29 (G29)
at the airport. In true African travel
fashion, their flight from Brussels was delayed and redirected through Togo and
Cote d’Ivoire before finally arriving in Ouaga at 8pm, 5 hours late. I gave them each a cold bottle of water
before they got on the bus to the hotel.
I hope that bottle of water made them feel better about Burkina. I know
it comforted me when I first arrived in an “there’s cold bottled water
somewhere in this country” kind of way. The
group consisted of 21 Health trainees and 10 Community Enterprise Development
(CED) trainees.
 |
| G29 (Newbs) |
We spent
the first week at a convent (nuns run hotels) in Ouaga taking care of a lot of
administrative stuff and letting the trainees adjust to Burkina. I’ve obviously spent too much time in this
country because I was unreasonably excited that the coffee breaks had cold
sodas and chocolate croissants. I also
excitedly told trainees there was a restaurant with ice cream close to the
convent. They smiled at me and responded
with a sympathetic “Oh honey...we just came from America” look. I looked at the other PCVFs and we exchanged
an “Oh honey….just you wait” glance.
The
trainees quickly realized they were out of their element when we conducted a
session focused on living with host families in village. Topics included how to take a shower out of a
bucket and how to defecate in a hole in the ground. We also tried to cover most of the cultural
faux pas that they might commit when first meeting their host families, but
ended with the advice that “Oops I’m a stupid American” is sometimes the best
excuse.
On Friday,
I traveled with trainees two hours south of Ouaga to Leo, where the rest of
their training takes place. They were
taken immediately to their host villages and participated in a small “adoption
ceremony,” introducing them to their host families. Thus commenced the most awkward night of
their lives. Except for the guy who’d done Peace Corps four times already. He probably wasn’t too surprised.
Clearly
the trainees experienced an overload of Burkinabe culture from the moment they
were adopted into their host families, but I’ll just focus on the highlights of
the first couple weeks. After a scramble to find TVs in their host communities,
the trainees were lucky enough to be able to watch the Burkina national soccer
team defeat Gabon for a spot in 2014 World Cup!
They also got a day off to celebrate Tabaski, an important Muslim holiday,
in their villages.
Rather
than bore you with the contents of the technical training sessions I helped
facilitate, I’ve decided to dust off a gem that Hallie and I worked on when we
first got to site. During those months
of insane boredom and unbridled enthusiasm for the three goals of Peace Corps,
we developed a project plan that addresses all 3 goals while simultaneously following
the Peace Corps “Community Development Cycle” model.
Project Plan: Casual Fridays
Sample
of a project plan to implement casual Fridays at the Takaledougou CSPS. Plan follows the community development cycle
as advocated by Peace Corps
Where Are We Now?
Baseline
Data Collection
·
Observations of dress code at the CSPS on different days of the week
o
Record numbers of men, women, and children
who are casual vs. formal
·
KAP Studies - focus groups designed to
collect information on the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of a particular
segment of society
o
“Casual” KAP Study
§ Knowledge
·
What is your definition of casual?
·
How is casualness transmitted?
·
Are there any negative physical or
psychological effects of casualness?
§ Attitudes
·
How do you feel when you are casual?
·
How does it make you feel when others are
casual?
·
Is there stigma against those who are casual?
§ Practices
·
On what occasions is casualness practiced?
·
How many times per week would you consider
yourself casual?
o
“Friday” KAP study
§ Knowledge
·
What day is it today?
·
How many Fridays are there in a month? A year?
§ Attitudes
·
Does Friday feel different from other days of
the week?
§ Practices
·
What do you do on a typical Friday?
·
What do you wear on a typical Friday?
Where do we want to go?
·
Priorities
o
After a needs assessment, many community
members identified the formality of life in village as a key concern
o
Formality was seen as necessary to maintain
order, but societal norms were too strictly enforced resulting in the exile of
community members who expressed their casuality
·
Ideas
o
Dedicate one day per week or month to
casualness
o
Convince community leaders to be more casual,
resulting in trickle-down effect that reduces
discrimination against those who are casual
How do we get there?
·
Project Design
o
Goals
§ Promote
casualness
o
Objectives
§ Increase
community acceptance of casualness
§ Increase
number of community members expressing casualness
Execute Plan
·
Casual Friday took place at the CSPS on
October 25, 2013
How did we do and what did we learn?
·
Evaluation
o
Over 100 community members showed up to the
CSPS in what could be defined as casual wear on Friday.
o
GREAT SUCCESS!
 |
| Keepin it casual on a Friday. |
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| The Peace Corps T-Rex Development Cycle. Often confused with the Community Development Cycle... |
After
nearly two weeks of straight work, I finally got a Sunday off. I decided to bike to my former host village,
Sanga, and visit my former host family.
I was happy to discover that they recognized me. I also confirmed my suspicion that my host
dad speaks barely any French. During
training, I thought that maybe my pronunciation was just bad, but it became
extremely obvious about one minute into our conversation that he had no idea
what I was saying. I also got to see my
favorite kid in all of Burkina, my host brother Bouba. He’d grown about 6in since I last saw him,
but he was still the same awesome baby, following his dad everywhere and trying
to imitate everything he did. Leah, the
trainee who is now being hosted by the family, and I traded stories about the
family. I found that she already knew
the names of more of the kids than I ever did.
Working
as PCVF was an extremely stressful experience.
The job requires one to achieve a precarious balance. On one hand, I was
treated like a member of the training staff, assisting with session planning,
facilitating those sessions, and helping coordinate logistics when necessary. On the other hand, the trainees saw me as a
personal problem solver, an expert on volunteer life in Burkina, and their
advocate to in relations with the training staff. Therefore, they approached me
with every concern and question that came up during the first couple weeks of
adjusting to Burkina Faso. I was happy
to help, but it was overwhelming at times.
It was clear to me that I had adjusted to the work schedule of a
Burkinabe village, which allows for much more relaxation than a Peace Corps
training modeled on an American work schedule.
However,
the PCVF experience was extremely valuable.
I was constantly reminded of how much I’ve learned and grown as a person
during the year that I’ve spent here. It
was hard to believe that I had showed up to Burkina with no knowledge of French
or Burkinabe culture. It was also obvious
that by now I’ve accepted most of the hardships of life here, because I found
some of the trainees’ complaints pretty ridiculous. My solution to most problems here is to do
my best to address them, but at the end of the day putting my headphones in,
closing my eyes, and bumping some good tunes. Trainees weren’t always happy with
my answers, but I promised myself that I would stay honest because they deserve
the truth.
For
example, during one session the following question was posed to me: “How many
hours of productive work would you say you do each day?” I explained that the concept of work as a
volunteer is completely different from working a 9-5 (or 8-8) job in the States. I consider any time that I spend with the
people in my community “productive work,” because part of my job is cultural
integration. I may not be doing actually
health work every day….or even every week….but if I’m interacting with people
in my community then I’m doing my job.
