Fun at IST

The first two days of IST have been incredibly different from stage (PST) in that we have already seen the benefits of the tools that we will be learning over the next few weeks. In PST it was hard to see how is this going to be applicable: and what isn’t just going through the motions of stuff the peace corps has to tell us.

Monday, the first day of IST, we talked about our etudes (I have yet to present mine but I’m assuming we’ll get to it at some point in time) and talked about issues at site, things we want to learn, etc. This is very much a program structured by the volunteers and what we feel we need to know. Fun fact: You can use condoms as balloons and no one should ever say that a condom “doesn’t fit”. Basically, the technical skills portion was decided by what we told our APCD (Dr. Claude) that we wanted to know. All in all, awesome to hear what people have been up to the past three months and it’s cool to think if I can or want to apply what other volunteers are doing at their own sites and making a Poa version. We also had a safety and security session which featured the section title: “Anatomy of an Assault” which 90% of the group misunderstood and heard “Anatomy of an Asshole”- something that is, believe it or not, quite different. Once we got that confusion sorted out- we kept on working.

Then for dinner, Dr. Claude invited us to her house for an amazing meal of chicken, potatoes, and some cake. There we exchanged our most embarrassing stories at site featuring: a bike race, a rat in a latrine, mispronouncing “thank you” and instead saying “sex”, getting locked in your own house, realizing that American expressions don’t always translate to other languages, and attempting to ascertain why someone tells your village that you don’t speak a language- while you’re conversing in that language. Well, you laugh, and learn, and laugh some more, and if you’re feeling extra good: you keep laughing.

Tuesday brought us to a pool, some sensibilizations, and talking to community health agents. We went to a place called Lumbala beach today. It’s basically a resort about 30 minutes from Ouaga that seems to be modeled after an Oasis- which is kinda bizarre. But, it had a pool- so I was completely content to just hang out. Unfortunately, before we could swim we went to do work- and myself and two other volunteers went to talk to a women’s group about proper spacing of children. In Burkina Faso, having lots of children is a status symbol- having children who aren’t malnourished is a better status symbol, and so on and so forth. So, you can have 10 kids if you want- but 10 kids all 9 months apart…not good. So, in anticipation of the assignment- 10 women who speak French we wrote questions in French, tucked them into condoms, blew them up- to play hot condom (a witty play on the popular game hot potato) we prepared ourselves. However the golden rule of Peace Corps showed up and starting at 10 became starting at 11. 10 women became 3. Speaking French became speaking Moore…oops. However, hot condom was a success and we smiled, patted ourselves on the back, and went to jump into the pool.

After we went to the pool we got dropped off in a tiny satellite village (our 3 person team) to visit an Agent de santé communitaire (community health agent)- however, this one was special- he went to a workshop and can now give malaria medication to people. So, if you think you may have a temperature you can go to him and buy malaria medication. Given the prevalence of malaria in Burkina Faso it’s a common assumption that most people have at least a tiny infection of malaria- but I still don’t like the idea of giving medication to people without a few basic diagnostic tests first. However, there are some benefits to having a community health agent as well. First of all, there is one per satellite village- which means everyone knows and respects the guy. So he can go into the houses of people and say- hey your mosquito net is set up wrong, let’s fix it. Or hey, lets sit down and chat about malaria and people listen. Way different dynamic than having the white guy do it- the element of trust plays a big role here- as it does everywhere else.

We then rushed back to the hotel to have an admission session where we learned about filling out receipts- which is always a learning process and we learned about how the living allowance works and what goes into it, how it changes, etc. Understanding those things can help develop a better appreciation for the system itself, or at least what you have to do to make sure the system doesn’t bite you.

Tomorrow will be IST day 3- hopefully more useful things ahead or at least more fun (and good food too).