feeling hot, hot, hot!

Bonjour, toute le monde! I am now into week three!! This weekend the rest of my stage arrived here in Ouahigouya, and wow, there are a lot of them!! My group of secondary ed people came two weeks earlier, and there are only 22 of us, and now we have 57 new friends (whose names we might not know yet…)! But they few I’ve talked to seem as awesome as the rest of our group, so hopefully as they get settled and we actually have a session or two with them, I will get to know some of them better. They won’t be in any of my language or technical sessions, so it will only be once or twice a week where I’ll spend maybe two hours with them.


Sorry for the lame title, but for this little blog post, I wanted to discuss weather. I am amazed at how quickly I’ve gotten used to be in the heat! Every day when I wake up, the little thermometer in our living room says it is 30C, or about 86F. (I’m trying to get my head used to Celsius, but I’ll use Fahrenheit here for you guys :P) Right now, (5:30pm) it is 35C, or about 95F. And I can tell that things are cooling off by this time of day. 95F feels cool!! One of the guys in my group has a watch with a thermometer, and around lunch it is typically over 40C.

This is not the hottest part of the year, either. We are actually in the rainy season right now. “Rainy season” is used pretty loosely though, even now we’re lucky to get rain once a week. And rain is always a good omen. It rained our first night in Ouagadougou, and the next morning everyone was all excited for us, because it’s a really good sign! But the hot season is in March-April, where it will goes days on end at 120F or 50C and doesn’t rain once in those two months. I think they purposely have stage start right after the hot season, so we’ve been here as long as possible before having to experience that :P The cold season coincides with our winter, but I don’t think I’ve heard exactly what ‘cold’ means here. I’ll let you know in a few months.



A note about sleeping in the heat: I have only used a blanket/sheet twice since living with my host family. If you remember, I have a fan, meaning my room is significantly colder than my counterparts without one. But even with my fan, I sweat every night. I don’t have the circle of dried sweat on my sheets that some of my fellow stagiaires talk about, but I noticed that the tank-top I sleep in gets salty from dried sweat. (that is probably an over-share…) I no longer flip my pillow over to get to the cold side, I flip it over to get to the dry side! But it is crazy hot at night. And my room doesn’t get much of a natural breeze because it is about 3 feet from our courtyard wall. I do not look forward to sleeping in the hot season. At all. I have not slept outside yet, but I can guarantee you that without my fan, I think I would have been out there after one night.

Last Friday, I had my first little dust storm! We were sitting outside for class and the wind really picked up and things started to get really hazy. I have some pictures below, so hopefully you can see the difference. After about 10 minutes of dusty, windy stuff, it started to rain!! And the temperature dropped like crazy! We all loved it, I think it was the first time I felt anything close to cool since I got here. But some of the PCVFs (current volunteers who run our training) were practically shivering in the 23C temp (73F). But after the rain stopped, it got back up to 28C (80F-ish) within the hour. But it stayed pretty cool the rest of the weekend (in the lower 30Cs). Today got back up to a normal temp though…




When it was crazy dusty:

10 minutes later in the same courtyard, when it started to rain.

A couple exciting things coming up: this Sunday all 79 of the stagiaires are having a 4th of July party!! I’m not sure what that entails right now, but I’m sure it will be awesome.
And even more exciting: next Wednesday I find out my site placement!!!! CRAZY! I have a bit of an idea based on the local language I was assigned, but I’ll keep you all in suspense until I find out, hahaha! People ask if there is somewhere I really want to go, and to be honest, not really. At first, I really wanted to be in the south, but when I asked myself why, the only answer I could come up with was because everyone else seemed to want to go to there (that extra ‘to’ is for you, annakay!). For me, I’m more excited to find out who I will be near. Because everything can be awesome if I’m with good people. So, my plan is to update again after next Wednesday with my site assignment!