Ne windiga! (Good afternoon!)
Response: Windig kibare (How is your
afternoon?)
I am now in Ouagadougou at my
In-Service Training! This means that I have successfully survived my
first three months at site! It is really exciting to be able to think
about all that has happened in the last few months and know that
after this IST that I will be going 'home' instead of last time I
finished at training with Peace Corps. The last time I had training I
was pretty nervous about going to site but I already miss Silmidougou
so much. I have been calling Asseta, Bouriema, and Douada every day
to see how everyone is doing and just to remind them how much I miss
them! There has already been a birth since I left, so the whole world
is going to be different in two weeks when I get back.
So I know a few of my blog posts have
already been about work related things but I feel like now I should
fill you in all things you have already heard about!
I am spending every Wednesday and
Thursday morning at my local health clinic. Wednesday is
'malnutrition day' so we weigh babies, take arm measurements, and
have pregnant women whose weight has dropped come in. We then give
them food stuffs (I've been trying to see how we can make this more
sustainable) for them to take home with them that should boost up
their weight quite a bit. The majeur is really wonderful and has been
great to talk to about health issues in the area and projects they
want. We just got a new midwife who is wonderful. She is so dynamic
and hard working. I love working with them and they are really great.
I went one day to visit the midwife
just to quickly say hello after the medical staffs at all medical
facilities across the country went on strike. She was looking very
busy with a very large line of pregnant women waiting to get the
prenatal checkup. When she saw me she got a huge grin on her face and
she asked me to help her out. Not quite realizing what I was about to
get myself into I agreed and wandered into her office. Luckily, I
ended up just filling out the information of the women (e.g. their
basic information, and then whatever she had me write down), but I
was very surprised by a lot of the information I learned. Most of the
women were at least twenty, which was a relief, since most men in my
village have told me that frankly, I am too old for them to be
interested in (I am twenty-two, which I think is pretty young, but it
sure makes my life a lot easier at site). I also learned that in my
village female genital mutilation is almost one hundred percent. I
guess on the bright side it is almost only first degree however, we
did have a young women that had third degree excision (the midwife
had me look at it, since it is so extreme – I got pretty light
headed and had to keep my cool). We had a Fulani women come in that
had had a miscarriage that morning and did not understand what had
happened and that the baby had been lost. All in all, it was an
exhausting and overwhelming few hours and I have officially decided
that being a midwife is not a job I would like to have.
I have been helping a lot in people's
fields. I worked with my counterpart in weeding his bean field and
then later in the season went back to harvest them. It was very hot
so I made a rule that I will not work between 10-2 since I get very
dehydrated and also get very badly sunburned! Harvesting the beans
made me realize just how much insects ruin the harvest. It means that
there is a lot I can work on doing with people in my village but it
is so hard to see people only get what the bugs leave for them. I
also harvested millet in my village. I have worked on the fields of
my counterpart's dad and also the president of the group that is
hosting me in my village. It was really interesting to see what
people find more comfortable. They cut down the stalks of the millet
not just so that people can bring it back for their animals, but also
because they really prefer to bend over to harvest rather than
harvesting while it is at head right.
For my community study, I have been
doing some interviews with people in my community. These are to help
me get an idea about what has already taken place in the community,
where the level of understanding of different topics is, and what
they would like to see take place. The majority of them so far has
been with Dominique's family (the man that grows mangoes). When I
discussed with him and his family if they would be willing he was
very welcoming about the whole thing. When I came back, he gave me a
rooster! I, obviously, did not know what to do with it, so Moussa
tied it to one of my bunny huts and said that would be fine. The
rooster, later in the day broke the line and was running around. At
dusk he jumped on my roof and went to bed. Sadly, his sleep schedule
and my sleep schedule are a little off – mainly, I do not like
waking up at 3 am and then hear him yell for the next three hours. He
was gone by the time I woke up in the morning and I have seen him
twice since then. I am pretty pleased he disappeared because he was
obnoxious but I do feel bad that Dominique did not just keep him. It
is nice having so many wonderful people in my community, but
sometimes I am not very good at receiving the gifts they give me.
Some students that live in Silmidougou
but go to school in Mane (since they are above the sixth grade, so
they bike over ten kilometers to school every day) asked me to start
a club on Saturdays with them. They brought up that they wanted to
learn English, so the first day we met I brought Obama's victory
speech (I wrote the entire speech out by hand so I can use other
parts of it again later). Only two boys came the first day but they
did an awesome job and really impressed me with how hard they worked
to figure out who the speaker was. The next time we discussed what
other types of topics we would like to discuss based on what kind of
careers people want. At first no one said anything but quickly they
got really excited about what they could be. There are some that want
to join the military, another wants to be a soccer player, some want
to teach history, one wants to do scientific research, and others
want to work for the government. We then decided what they would be
interested in so each week we will rotate with different topics from
geography and science to public health and public speaking. It should
be a lot of fun, sadly at this moment the club is on hold because the
director of the middle school will not let us use the facility in
Silmidougou. Hopefully, I can work with the elementary school and use
their classroom since these students were so excited and came even on
the day they were told they were not allowed to meet on the school
grounds.
While in Kaya, Zach and I met with
“Projet victoire sur la malnutrition”. The director of the
project is a naturalized American citizen from Mali and works hard.
He was really excited to hear that we want to work with them. Their
work is an amazing collaboration between a lot of the biggest
development groups in Burkina. They do everything from agriculture
technical workshops to distributing food supplies to health centers.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what projects I can help them
with and seeing their projects in my region grow.
So that is all for this post. I am
hoping to get another few out in the next week or so. Much love and
write me a letter if you have the chance – the internet does not
seem like a good form of contact for me.
