An Intro to Stage

Bonjour! Well, believe it or not, today was only our second official day as stagieres. (trainees). Last week was week zero, so we are now in week one!

Monday night was my first night with my host family and it went really well! I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I have to admit the family was more modern than I was anticipating. They have a TV and computer in their living room. And I am one of the more spoiled stagieres, I even have a fan in my bedroom. My host father is the director at a lycee (school) and he is actually Congolais, not Burkinabe. My host mom is Burkinabe though, and I’m pretty sure she is from Ouhigouya. But because my father isn’t from here, he doesn’t speak the local language, meaning French is the common language for the family, so even their daughter speaks it really well, when most five year olds haven’t really started learning French yet. Their daughter’s name is Love and she is adorable by the way. I’ll have to get some pictures up here (I’ll have to start taking some pictures!!) My host father speaks English as well as French, which is really nice, because he is able to correct my French, which I definitely need. I tested lower in French than I had hoped, but even after my first night with the host family, I felt much more confident. We have French for at least 2 sessions a day, 6 days a week. By the end of Stage, I will have about 128 hours of language and I think an additional 15 hours of technical language (the vocabulary needed to teach each of our subjects). I have to reach a certain level in French, and once I reach that point, I will switch over to my local language.

Other than just language, Stage is when we learn everything we need to know for the next two years. We have sessions on medical, security, culture, our technical area as well as language. So far we have learned how to prepare our own blood slides to test for malaria and how to prepare a stool sample to test for parasites (We had to practice the blood slide, but thankfully, not the stool sample :P). We haven’t really started the technical sessions yet, but had an intro where they explained the process.

I can’t really believe that I’ve been gone for less than two weeks at this point, it seems like we’ve been here for about a month, but I’m still getting used to little things. Like being sweaty all the time, having to use a pit latrine (both my host family and where we have classes have a pit latrine, but the one at school has bigger hole, it’s nicer for beginners, haha!), and having to be careful about what I eat. I haven’t had anything I don’t like yet, but we just have to be careful that all the fresh produce we eat has been cleaned properly. So far it’s been a lot of rice, beans and sauce or egg sandwiches.

So, there is a little look at Stage. It will be the hardest part of being a PC volunteer, but I’m still really excited to be here! I’ll explain some of the other areas in detail as we learn more, but for now, I’m just hoping to improve my French!
I hope you are all doing well! Miss you all!