Traveling like a Grown Up

In PST you get treated like a child- and sometimes it’s appropriate, other times not so much. Logistically, it’s not something that needs changing- it’s just something that is. They pick us up at the airport, they bring us to the hotel, they bring us to the training village, they bring us back to Ouaga, etc.

IST is different. For those of you unfamiliar with how IST works when you’re a health volunteer in Burkina Faso (yes, I realize that’s a rather small niche). There’s PST, then three months at site where you study the community- figure out what the needs are, what you can do, get to know people, smile, wave, kiss babies, etc. After the etude period comes language IST- a week of intensive language training (intensive meaning you only have classes on language- though I would argue being in a village for 3 months trying to learn a language with no basis in romanticism through a language that is also- not your first is more intensive in terms of brain straining). But, I digress. There’s a week of language training, then you go back to site for about two weeks only to leave for another two weeks to do technical skills, learn how to write grants, enjoy some food that’s not rice or to (but can be if you want it to be).

In between the two I had an interesting miscommunication with my mayor-adjoint (adjunct) and I guess I need to rewatch arrested development because- this is “why you should always leave a note”. So, I told most people in my village who I talk to on a regular basis- I’m going to Koudougou for a week to learn Moore- I’ll be back on Saturday. Well, sometime along that week the mayor- adjoint (M-A from now on) realized that he hadn’t seen me in a while.

So, he asked my moore tutor- “Hey man, have you seen Andre (what they call me in village cause there is no “w” sound in moore when the “w” is at the end of the word- and Dre would just be super confusing)?”

My moore tutor replied, “nope. Haven’t seen him for a while.”

M-A: “He must be really angry cause he hasn’t left his house in a week. Or, he’s sick. Or dead.”

Moore tutor: “Damn” à I feel like this is a good time to interject that both of these people knew where I had gone and I guess they just forgot.

So the moore tutor goes to my Major…”Major, have you seen Andre?”

Major: “Nope, but he’s in Koudougou for a week learning Moore, he’ll be back Saturday.”

Moore tutor: “oh yea”

I come back to site a few days later and everyone says: “Hey! You’re back!”

Tuesday rolls around and I’m having my moore lesson with my moore tutor and he brings up, “Andre, listen the Mayor-Adjoint is a little pissed you haven’t gone to hang out with him in a week, let alone the fact that you haven’t left your house.”

Me: “What do you mean? I was in Koudougou all last week. I told everyone before I left. I came back on Saturday.”

Moore tutor: “Yea, I know that. He must’ve forgotten.”

In an effort to smooth things over: cause being on a bureaucratic crap list is never a good thing- I went to the bouvette in an effort to find the M-A. So I wandered on over and sure enough found my buddy the M-A. And of course, he buys me a beer. And we get to talking. We talk about work, we talk about the weather, we talk about our favorite types of to- and corresponding sauces. It’d be quite the statistics problem to find out how many combinations of to and sauce you can have.

Me: “Monsieur le mayor, I’m sorry for the misunderstanding- last week I wasn’t mad, sick, or dead I was in Koudougou learning moore.”

M-A: “Yea, you told me.”

You know how it can be difficult to recall information unless something jars your memory? Apparently that’s the case here cause- hey, the Mayor-A is a busy, busy man.

So, that is why you always leave a note.

Given that the title of this blog is about traveling I guess I should broach into that subject and talk about how travel is different between PST and IST.

Well, in IST not only do you have to provide your own transportation- you also have to figure out where the hotel is. You get a name and the rest is up to you. This is actually where having my impeccable sense of direction comes in handy. Whether it’s trying to take a shortcut and realizing you’re not where you thought you would be- or biking across Ouaga on a Sunday afternoon dodging potholes, cars, other bikers, and the occasional large bus- being able to tell you’re heading in sort of the right direction is always a bonus.

Next week we head to Koudougou- we’ll be taking public transport. It’s super easy, you get on the bus- you travel in almost a straight line from Ouaga to Koudougou (waving at my house as you go by, of course). Then we’ll bike to centre unitas which is where I had language IST (good thing I’ve already been there and know which short cuts don’t work. Good information to have all things considered.