Work, work, work

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.