PST (again)

This time last year I was at stage (the French word) or PST (the Peace Corps acronym- which stands for Pre-Service Training). This year I’m at the same training but in a different capacity. I am a PCVFP (Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitator Permanent) for this new training group. Basically this means that I helped design the training calendar and figured out what the sessions would look like, etc. I also get to spend three weeks with the new stage working with them and helping them as they go through nine weeks of training.

I guess it’s best to back up and start at the beginning. Sometime in the middle of September I went to Ouaga for three days with two other PCVFPs (we’re three in total) and met with my direct supervisor, and the technical trainers to go over the health program. A week or so later we went to Leo (a village in Burkina Faso and pronounced lay-oh) with all of the PCVFs (Peace Corps Volunteer Facilitators), tech trainers, language trainers, and all the supervisors of the programs to participate in a week long training about Peace Corps policies, what and what not to do/ say around the trainees, and to plan the actual sessions- who would say what, how long each session is going to take, etc.

The process, while straightforward and not conceptually difficult actually was slightly challenging. First of all trying to follow standards set by somebody in a country 4,000 miles away- who isn’t actually in the country is difficult. Also knowing what you’re going to say and the supplies you’re going to need sometimes two months before you need them is tough too. Also, the lesson plans are being standardized but they’re still supposed to be unique and reflect the situation in that particular country. Not that those are inherent contradictions but still, it can require some finagling and creativity because you want the sessions to be informative but also entertaining otherwise people aren’t going to listen and take something away from the session.

Perhaps the best part of the TOT (training of trainers) was seeing how invested the members of the bureau (Peace Corps office) were invested into the program. Everybody wanted the trainees to succeed but just seeing how above and beyond the staff were willing to go (especially the language trainers and the technical trainers) was amazing, and really energized me as well.

This is the first time that PST will be in Leo. I did my training in Sapone (as well as the stage before and after me). Needless to say I think the Peace Corps got pretty comfortable there. Leo is a little bigger than Sapone with more widespread access to electricity. At the same time there are more material items that you can buy which is a bonus for the trainees. Also, there’s a pool. You can imagine which one I’m most ecstatic about. 

The bad news is that you don’t get paid a whole lot during training so in reality you can’t often enjoy all of this- especially when you’re in class from 8AM to 5:15PM. But it makes the weekends nice I’d imagine.

Right now, you’re probably thinking something along the lines of, “If the trainees have all of these amenities, won’t it be more difficult if they get affectated (posted) to a small village where there isn’t such easy access to such things?” And yes, but the trainees aren’t living in Leo- they are split up into three smaller training villages (for lack of a better term). Two villages for the health and one village for DABA (think agriculture and kind of/maybe/sort of business). They live with host families in this village and then bike the 10 or 14 kilometers into Leo almost every day. This might seem daunting at first but hopefully gets easier as time goes on. For a point of reference I biked roughly 7 kilometers to get to my training center and that was one of the longer bike rides for the trainees in my group.

So, now I’m in Leo again. A month after that training (TOT), a month after the trainees arrived, and right in the middle of things. All in all, it’s a good place to be. 

Fonctionnaires

Burkina Faso has civil servants just like any other country- and the professions encompass nurses, doctors, teachers, etc. Usually, any profession requiring some type of special higher education is going to be a fonctionnaire profession and the individual will most likely be employed by the government. The civil servant system is very much like the Peace Corps system- you go where they send you. They call it “affectation” or, an appointment/ posting.

The way the system was explained to me was that somebody is posted to a region, the region then sorts through the candidates and decides who goes where. That decision is then brought to the mayor of the commune (county-ish)/ village and if the person is okayed- the process moves forward where the mayor tells the district, the district tells the old district that was responsible for the person, and then the note gets posted that they have been reassigned.

If you’re talking about a new fonctionnaire- someone who hasn’t had a post before it’s really easy- they just pick up their stuff and go. But, if you’re leaving your old site to go to a new one that means that your replacement has to show up, before you can leave, and that could take a while. And, that creates some issues as well because as a fonctionnaire you don’t know when your replacement is coming so you pack up your house and get rid of your stuff bit by bit but you don’t want to get rid of too much because what happens if your replacement doesn’t show up for two months, but you don’t want to send too little because what happens if he/she shows up tomorrow? Just food for thought.

From the perspective of a Peace Corps volunteer this is a double edged sword in almost the truest sense of the word. Say for example there’s someone you have a difficult time working with- if they get reposted you don’t have to work with them anymore and there’s the potential that the next person will be easier to work with and, if they’re difficult to work with- the status quo hasn’t really changed. However, if you have an awesome person to work with- someone who speaks local language better than you do for example, or someone who knows everybody in the village, or somebody who is just really good with people, is open to new ideas, and is willing to expand their own horizons- well that can be kind of sad. Because you don’t get to work with this awesome person anymore and it’s tough. So you can hope that the process gets delayed and the replacement doesn’t get immediate permission to go because their replacement hasn’t showed up yet but, once the reposting assignment is posted well, resistance is futile.

As you might imagine, my CSPS is losing three people. One is going to Ouagadougou, and two are going to Koudougou. And, I’ll just have to wait and see if any of the nurses who are coming in are as cool as the nurses that are going out. But, maybe it’ll be the same thing for them when I leave next year.  

Bike Tour does Poa

A few weeks ago (and by that I mean the middle of September) bike tour came to my site. This begs the obvious question of, “what is bike tour?” and well it’s a tour, of Burkina Faso, on bikes. More specifically, it’s a fundraising opportunity for the Gender and Development Committee.  They biked all around Burkina figuring out what sunscreen SPF works best, what type of roads are harder to bike on than others, and which volunteer has the best latrine.

When my site figured out they were coming they got really excited about it. They decided that they would convene all the village leaders to welcome the other volunteers. We also decided to do a sensibilization with them- which I decided was going to be neem cream. Neem cream is a skin cream made from soap, shea butter, and neem leaves (which have a natural chemical in them that repels mosquitos). And, there’s a group at my site who wanted to learn how to make it (and then sell it) for a while but every time I would set up a meeting for them to learn, they wouldn’t show up. I figured the chance of them showing up would be higher when there were going to be other volunteers around…and I was right.

Anyway, there are lots of things you can predict in Burkina Faso- the heat, the fact that it probably won’t rain again until next June, and that’s just to name two. One thing you can’t predict is when a group of volunteers biking from the opposite side of Ouagadougou will make it to your site. That’s why it’s good to know people. When the time that the bikers were supposed to show up came…and went I stopped by the bus station and asked the guy who runs the station (Wad) to call down the road and see if anybody had seen the bikers. He did, and he actually had to call quite a few people before he found them. Each conversation kind of sounded like this (translated of course), “Hey, what’s up? It’s Wad, yea, Poa. Anyway, have you seen 8 foreigners biking through your town wearing funny helmets? No, alright well when you see them call me.” So, after we found them, we were kept informed by a steady stream of phone calls saying when the bikers had passed certain villages.

Once they reached Poa we went back to my house, everybody dropped off their stuff, and we went to meet the CSPS staff and the village leaders. They decided to speak only in moore so that I could translate for the volunteers (they really like doing that when other people are around).

After that the neem cream demonstration actually went really well and now the organization that is responsible for paying the CSPS bills will be able to supplement their income and will not be in danger of having to declare bankruptcy anytime in the near future.

The chief (chef) gave us a goat, and then we ate some rice- and everybody was pretty tired so we all just kind of went to bed after.

The next day it actually decided to rain so the departure of the bike tour was postponed a bit but in the end, they made it out alright and they biked the 55km to the next village.

Yippee ki-yay

Life is all about balance. Work and play, exercise and rest, speaking French and speaking English…Well, it’s the same about life at site.

Spend too long at site and your productivity drops a little because you get a little tired of village life, or no one is around to work with you because their all in the fields, or because you run out of ideas for projects and you just can’t think of anything.

However if you don’t spend enough time at site people there might think you left, might have forgotten about projects you were doing, might have forgotten that they were supposed to do something for you- or all of the above.

It might sound hard to believe but after a hiatus from site, it’s actually really nice to be back. Everybody knows you, your house is there (hopefully), and after spending time with volunteers (or away) you’re ready to accomplish something.

And this was most definitely the case with me. Call it a “game on” mantra, or a “yippee ki-yay” type thing. But I was definitely ready to get stuff done.

My first two days back at site included a lot of music and a lot of cleaning. Because I wasn’t there to fight the good fight- termites had succeeded in sealing my doors to their frames and starting to make a go at the walls. Luckily me and my can of insecticide (technology) shifted the balance of that particular skirmish. All in all, the results of me being away from site weren’t that bad. Just some dust to sweep out, some laundry to wash, and some buckets to bleach.

There was also some difficulty in getting to my house because the weeds, herbs, millet, a bit of corn, all blocked the way down my path because, well, I hadn’t been there in a while to weed it (or to encourage others to weed it). Luckily, the COGES president (and my moore tutor) came by that afternoon with a really sharp machete and took care of it. Along with a pretty amusing anecdote: in rainy season people have to tether their animals so they don’t ruin all of the crops. But, they have to have food around so that they don’t get hungry. Well, some enterprising child saw I wasn’t there and left his bull in my courtyard so he could eat the weeds and such, and because there was a wall, he wouldn’t be able to get out. My neighbor saw this kid and apparently said, “Hey! Get out of Andre’s courtyard! If Ablasse (my moore tutor) sees you there, oh boy is he gonna be pissed.” I thought it was funny and pretty creative on behalf of the child.

He also introduced me to the most interesting mossi proverb I’ve heard so far. Translating it, it goes a little like this, “If somebody leaves, you shouldn’t clean his courtyard when he’s gone because you never know when he’s going to come back, but when he does come back, you have to go over and clean their courtyard.” It really does make a lot of sense as far as proverbs go. Why clean someone’s courtyard if you have to go back and do it every day because they haven’t come back yet? Or, why do it if all the weeds are just going to grow back and then look like you didn’t do anything at all? Although, I especially liked the part about their being a responsibility to helping your neighbor make their courtyard tidy when they returned.

Going back to work was much as I had left it- though quite busier with a higher incidence of malaria. All the nurses had (basically) the same reaction, “Andre! You’re back. Boy, it’s not been easy without you!” Not the best thing ever but, it meant that I most definitely wasn’t bored those first few days.

In short, it was awesome to be back at site- with the desire to see my friends, some ideas for projects, a lot of motivation, and a “game on” mantra. 

Science Camp

The first week in September I participated in a Science Camp that was held in Koudougou and was organized by Peace Corps volunteers. And yes, I do realize that I’ve fallen a little behind on blogging. The camp had a focus on the scientific method, creative thinking, and problem solving.

Now, why might volunteers want to do this? The education system in Burkina Faso is based around copying (from the board or dictation) and memorization. It’s very “know-what” oriented. The other skills such as “know-how”, “know-who”, and “know-why” aren’t emphasized at all. This makes it hard to take an example and extend it to other situations in life such as doubling a recipe.

My role in science camp was a bit hard to define. First of all, I was the community liason. It was my job to know where to go to get certain things, it was my job to talk to people and make them like us, and it was my job to get things that other people wanted.

I also taught the Astronomy classes at the camp. Unfortunately most of the nights were cloudy and rainy but, one of the nights we were able to get a hold of a telescope and spent an hour and a half staring at stars with 40 kids. Someone asked a question about the apocalypse, someone asked if you could really slingshot around the sun to attempt time travel (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), and if going through a black hole really meant that you would go back in time. We also talked about the North Star, the importance of stars, and being able to navigate by them, why the moon changes frequently, and what makes a celestial object a celestial object (planet vs. star, star vs moon, planet vs star, etc).

And last, but not least, I worked with a nurse to take care of the sick and injured kids at the camp. I was also able to use this opportunity to teach the kids about health things like what a pulse is, how to take it, and the same thing with temperature and how a thermometer works, etc. Very interesting time.

For the camp, volunteers and their homologues planned sessions around: chemistry, physics, biology- anything that involved being able to touch, feel, see, hear, and above all think critically about. The kids were then tasked to plan their own science fair. Another volunteer and I helped with a group of kids who wanted to examine water under a microscope. They examined filtered water, pump water, and regular water from a barrage to see which had the greatest quantity of microbes and bacteria in it. Luckily, I had scooped some seriously gross barrage water and the bacteria was everywhere! And the kids said, “people drink that?” Which, was super cool because now the kids know what lives in barrage water and how there is so much less bacteria, microbes, etc in pump water and filtered water (what PCVs drink).

The camp culminated in a science fair where all the groups presented their experiments and their findings, along with how they used the scientific method along the way.

It was interesting to see how Burkinabe kids reacted to a new way of learning- because the reception was so overwhelmingly positive. It was the same with the Burkinabe teachers reacting to a new way of teaching- most received the information and skills in a positive manner and really wanted to try it at their own skills with different experiments to help explain different concepts.

Hopefully, the science camp will continue to be a part of the summer activities for Peace Corps volunteers.  

Parking

Parking is a hassle, finding a space, making sure your car can fit into the space, and then making sure it’s reasonably secure so that no one will double park you or park too close to your car. Invariably one of these fails and you end up getting into the driver’s seat through the passenger door or something equally inconvenient.

How could it be worse, you ask? Well not finding a parking spot could be an issue. But, I think that having to pay for parking takes the cake. Parking meters, parking attendants, those little automatic parking scanners that act sort of like a Fast Pass all help make sure that nobody forgets that parking is no longer free.

One of the things I never considered when coming to Burkina Faso was parking. I figured well I’m going to be on a bike, in Burkina Faso- who would charge for parking there? Oh boy was I wrong.

As it turns out, parking attendant is one of the most popular jobs in Burkina Faso. You show up at a building, and somebody takes your bike, and gives you a piece of paper, then “protects your bike”. This usually involves sitting on a bench, drinking tea, and chatting. Then when you leave you have to give the guy 50 FCFA (10 cents) for guarding your bike. There is no choice because even if you don’t give the guy your bike he will STILL charge you for the parking. But, all in all, you do what you have to do, and when you get back you know your bike is going to be there. It’s not too big a deal unless you don’t have change; in which case, it becomes a huge issue.

What gets me is that the attendants also want to be paid for the work when they’re not there. When I was working at the American Language Center, this exact situation happened to a friend and I. We had gone to a bakery to get breakfast one day and since we had been going there for a while we knew the parking guy. He wasn’t there so we just left our bikes, walked inside, ate breakfast, and when we came out we grabbed our bikes the parking guy comes running up and told us to pay him for the parking. We explained that he was not there so we shouldn’t have to pay for the parking, and yes we knew he wasn’t there because the entire front of the bakery was made out of glass. So he told us all about how he had something happen at his house and he couldn’t get there on time, etc. We didn’t want to feel like jerks so we paid him- told him that if it happened again we wouldn’t pay him (because why would you expect to get paid for a job you didn’t do?) and we continued on our way.

A couple days later the same thing happened. He asked us to pay him, we explained the situation to him again, and we reiterated that if it happened again we wouldn’t pay. We strongly considered not paying but part of the Peace Corps mission is to prove that Americans are cool, awesome, benevolent and we thought to squabble about 20 cents would be a little ridiculous.

A few days later we went back to the bakery and the same thing happened. Again. This time, however, he came running up, saw who it was and just said, “See you tomorrow, right?” He then explained to us that he wasn’t there to do the work so he didn’t really expect to get paid, but he thought it was really nice how we talked to him each day and that tomorrow he would be there on time. And he was.

It was pretty awesome seeing that much behavior change within the span of four weeks. If only all my planned projects went that well. 

ALC

I’m spending the month of August working at the American Language Center (ALC) in Ouagadougou, the capitol of Burkina Faso. I’m working with 20 kids or so by helping them learn, and practice English. The program is organized kind of like school where there are 7 classes that meet 5 times a week between 8 and 12:30. The 7 classes mean that there are 7 Peace Corps Volunteers helping out and each volunteer is assigned to a class which meets between 8 and 10 everyday. Our roles vary by class but I pronounce words (so the students can learn how an American pronounces things), correct grammar exercises, explain tricky grammar rules, and occasionally translate French words to English and vice-versa.

The PCV’s are actually in charge of the “camp” portion of the program- which runs from 10:30AM-12:30PM. This is supposed to still have the general idea of learning to speak, and practicing English but is more camp oriented- songs, games, etc. We have designated this month to be the English Olympics and it’s built around pillars that are similar to those of the actual Olympics. They are: excellence and individualism, respect and diversity, teamwork, and community engagement. So, all of our ideas are tied into those themes which all relate back to the Olympics. Is it the most original idea? Nope. But, does it work? Yep.

ALC is a really interesting experience in that it’s really the first thing I’ve done in this country that has been mostly in English. All of the other teachers speak to us in English; the idea of the camp is to speak in English and to use a minimal amount of French, and the type of kids I’ve been working with is different than the type of kids I normally see in village.

First of all, the emphasis on English makes it more difficult to bring in Moore when I find myself in a situation that requires it (which isn’t that often here). But I will go back to my site at some point in time where I will definitely have to put in a lot of time practicing and studying (before I leave again).

Also, the grammar mistakes that the teachers make (various tenses, etc) create kind of an awkward situation, especially in front of the kids. Do you stand up, and say, “That’s actually not right”? Or, do you just let the mistake go and risk the kids picking it up? Either way it makes for an interesting conundrum.

The next huge difference is the kids. In the past, I have worked with kids who really want to be there, and are incredibly interested in learning what I have to teach, and usually it’s in a pretty fun medium (say for example, water). The first mistake is thinking that these individuals are actually kids. My class ranges from 13 years old to 21 years old (almost as old as I am). So the normal things that kids like don’t really apply here. They don’t really get into the games; they just care about winning- though to win, you have to get into it. They also don’t really want to be there, and who can blame them? It’s the equivalent of summer school. And, speaking English isn’t very high on their to do list- so about 100 times a day I have to remind them to speak English and that speaking French, contrary to popular belief, will not help them learn English. These are primarily wealthier kids who have laptops (including one with a macbook air, several with iphones, and a ridiculous amount with their own motos), and the differences between the socio-economic classes are staggering. Here, a wave will not make a kid’s day, and kids will not want to follow you around while you run, they will not be quiet when you talk for the sole reason that you are talking.

But I am learning things about teaching, about what I can do, about what appeals to kids, and how to handle a ridiculous range of maturity levels in a single classroom. And, am I having to think about why certain English rules are and why you never, ever end a sentence with a preposition? Oh yea.

Good way to spend a month? Most definitely.