Burkina Faso #1

Hi everyone! I have now been in Burkina Faso for over a month and I have less than a month of peace corps training left! Sorry for not posting until now-internet isn't very reliable and training has been keeping me really busy.

I spent the first few nights in county in the capital where we were introduced to everyone in peace corps and learned a lot about what peace corps Burkina is. I met up with my friend from Senegal and she rejoiced about the cheezits I brought for her. We also had our language test and I testes out of French! I was placed into advanced low - I'm still excited since it means that once I got my site announced I was able to start learning Moore!

Since I'm sure you are all curious my site is north of Ouagadougou. My regional capital is kaya- which I will be 40 km west of and I will be just north of mane. My site is quite rural and in a pretty arid part of the county. The ethnic groups will be mossi and fulfelde (peul). There have been volunteers at my site before me, but they have all been health volunteers. I'm happy about that because it means that the community will have an idea of what a pcv does but the types of projects I can do will not be limited based on the last person! I have also been told that I will have a two room house that has a 'special grass roof'. I move in at the end of this month-so I will be able to tell you more in a few weeks! The two other pcts that will be near me are awesome. Zach and Mariko are really nice and fun but the are in education - math and IT - so i don't get to see them very much right now.

I am living with an amazing host family! I know that I was worried about that after mu past experiences with that. My host dad is a retired government worker. He is pretty old but he loves just chatting and talking about things. He is a very religious Muslim. He also plays the role of the day care center for all the kids under 10 so he is kept busy with his kids and his grandson. In one of the conversations i explained how strange i thought it was that they spend hours taking the skin off the beans when that is where so much of the good stuff for you is. The next time we had beans it had the skin on it. It was cool to see a conversation that changed a behavior.

I have two host moms here. The one I am closest to is wonderful. She works in the field all day (they are now subsistence farmers) and then comes home and cooks. She speaks very little French so we spend a lot of time attempting to talk but my Moore is not good yet. She spends a lot of time laughing at me though she really appreciates me attempting with the language and with stuff around the courtyard. My other mom is more aloof but on marche days I go sit with her for a few hours. She is a hard worker and quite an entrepreneur!

I have 13 siblings. Five of them are marries but two of mu brothers that are married live in Ouagadougou but their wives and children live with us. Most of the girls are in high school and work around the house a lot. They are really cool but do not have a lot of time for me. It was very recently that i realizes that my 14 year old sister is not only 20 but is my sister in law! The younger kids are crazy but really sweet. Two of the youngest that are school age walked proudly into the courtyard with their final grades. They were both then told but my host dad that one of them was in the bottom 10 percentile - my dad called the school and he wants him to redo the year - and the other one got the lowest grade in the class and is forced to repeat. They were shocked. My nephew here is 5 and I call him bebe cherkh though his name is cherkh Ahmed. They like his new name and i think it's funny. I have a wonderful 12 year old cousin who is in charge of the cattle during this season. He got in trouble for buying a piece of stolen property and now my host dad just calls him the bandit. When i got really excited one evening for knowing the vocab to talk about composting in Moore he walked up and taught me the word for kaka. He now tests me on different types of scat by picking it up and binging it over to me. He cracks me up.

I also have a crazy grandma that sits talking to herself. One i got here she has a little kitten that she would talk to. The cat would come out at night to go hunting. One day i realizes that i had not seen the kitten come out recently and so i brought it up to my dad. He said agreed and had one of my sisters go check. They realized then that grandma had been talking to a dead cat for a while. She is back to just talking to herself. She has never worn a shirt.

I'm going to leave this posting at this point. I am typing all of this up on a phone and my hands are tired. I miss all of you but i am having a lot of fun. I will so my best to write again soon!

Much love,



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