Toby!!

So i bought a puppy!! He is adorable and his name is Toby. About three days after i got him i realized the reason i probably thought that was such a good name for a pet was because it rhymes with my sister's cat's name, Coby. He is only about 5 weeks old and was not weened when i got him. He cried for almost the entire first day at my house, including the first night. I ended up letting him sleep with me, which worked for calming him down.

He is doing much better now, although i think he still misses his siblings. He now sleeps on my clothes instead of with me, so that's an improvement. He loves to run around and explore, although occasionally he gets lost.

There have been a few times when i would leave him in my enclosed courtyard only to come home and find him missing! It took me a day or so to realize that he is small enough to fit through the drainage holes in the courtyard and was sneaking out that way, haha! I tried blocking them with some rocks, but he still figured it out, meaning i just had to find some more rocks.

But here are some pictures, and i'm sure there will be more stories to come!

Friends

Friends!
So far, my closest friend is most definitely Sita, my neighbor. She is her husband’s second wife and she is pregnant with her second child. Her son, Yacoba, is 4 years old and adorable. He’s a little scared of me, but I’m sure that will go away with time. Sita’s husband and first wife live the courtyard next door as well, the husband owns coffee kiosk, so I spend a lot of time there just hanging out (also my house doesn’t have chairs yet, so if I want to sit and read, I’ll usually do it at the kiosk). The other wife doesn’t speak French, meaning I definitely talk more to Sita, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I forget her name more often than not (like right now…) But she is also really nice, we just aren’t really able to communicate right now. She has 3 or 4 boys as well (there is one I’m not sure if he lives there or just comes to hang out.)
Sita is only 21 years old, and was born and raised here in village. She did not finish school, but has pretty good French in spite of that. She is very social and I think just about everyone in the village knows her. The family is Muslim (note, two wives) meaning they just celebrated the end of Ramadan, which finished last week, and we had a giant fete! For the fete, instead of having all the friends and family over to their house, the women make lots of food, then go around and deliver it to their friends and family. I’m not sure yet if this is how all celebrations are or if this is specific to Ramadan, so I’ll get back to you on that. I have to admit, I because I didn’t know that how things worked, I kept waiting all day for everyone to get there. I was invited to dinner at Sita’s parents house, and also was expected a lot of people to be there, but it was just the family members who lived in that courtyard. At the end of night though, I did get to go out dancing with Sita and some other women! The bar was certainly packed!! I ended up dancing with the moms, mostly because after a couple guys asked me to dance, I realized that I don’t really know who any of my students are yet, and that dancing with them at a club might not be the best way to meet them… I was also exhausted because it was most definitely past my 9pm bedtime, haha! But it was really fun to see so many people from the village together.
Most nights after I eat dinner, I go over to Sita’s and we sit and talk for an hour or so after the sun sets (meaning I can’t do anything in my house) but before I want to go to bed. Even though we don’t understand each other perfectly, it is really nice to have someone to answer all my questions about the village. As I said before, Sita is very social, so I think she enjoys having telling me about the culture and customs as well :)
The second closest friend I have here is another women named Nadine, who works at the CSPS (health center) as a nurse. There are always at least 3 employees at a CSPS, the major, who is the head nurse and in charge of all administrative task (Alexander), the maternity nurse (Nadine), and a third nurse in charge of all the rest (Eliane). Our CSPS also has a health agent (not exactly sure what his role is, but he often seems busy) a grounds keeper (Felix) and a dispensary person (in charge of the pharmacy, Solange). I often go over to the CSPS to chat, and Nadine’s sister Chantal was visiting for the month, so she would often have a little more free time than Nadine to chat with me. Nadine is also unmarried, which is rare for a woman her age, which I think has to be at least 26 if not a year or two older. To become a nurse in Burkina you only have to finish CEG (college d’enseignment generale), which is somewhere between middle school and high school. The next level up is lycee, which is like a mix of high school and jr. college.
Nadine also told me that there is a women’s functionaires group in my village. Functionaires are anyone who works for the government, including nurses and teachers. The group consists of the two nurses mentioned above as well some primary school teachers and all the wives of male functionaires. I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about the idea of me joining the group. On one side, I know that all of these women will be able to speak French, which is a little hard to come by here, but on the other, I don’t want to associate only with functionaires when that isn’t the point of my being here in the village. But maybe I can also use the group as a starting point for things I might want to accomplish in the village (even that would be more of a top-down approach, which might not work in all situations). Either way though, as a friend pointed out, I’m sure the get togethers will have great food!!
Well, other than the small groups of friends I’ve mentioned above, I have to admit that I have been somewhat hesitant to get to know people here. I think part of that is that during stage we hear all of the worst case scenarios that have happened to volunteers, so I am probably the most on-guard right now that I will ever be during my service. I think part of it is also that I’m just not an entirely outgoing person unless I first have a reason to be interacting with someone. I know that I need to work on that because if I only befriend people I have a built in reason to interact with, I’m only going to be friends with the 5-6 men who work at the school with me! And as I just get to know people in general I’ll figure out who are the faux-types (literally: false types) and who are actually nice :)

At site!

Hello friends!!
Sorry for the delay, but I am finally at site, which means that I don’t have electricity or internet, so I’ve been saving all my good stories for now!!
I arrived at site Monday August 30th, after a slight delay. We (meaning me and another volunteer just to the south of me) were supposed to arrive the Sunday after swear-in, but we got within 3 km of the other site when we discovered there was a river crossing the road. At first we were going to drive around, which was at least 2 hours out of the way, but in the process of doing that we were informed that the other way around was also blocked by a river (there was a lot of rain the night before!). So we spent the night in Bobo, the second largest city in Burkina. We headed out again the next morning with more success :) We dropped her off first, then headed to my village! And I’ve been here ever since, haha.
My thoughts that first day were definitely very mixed. I arrived at site, dropped all my things off in my house and then the driver left. All within probably 15 minutes. It was very surreal. My counterpart and his family weren’t even there because of the change in schedule. I did have a few neighbors I recognized from my visit, but I didn’t remember anyone’s name. I obviously survived that first day, and all the ones following, but it was definitely intimidating.
Since then, I’ve found more of a routine, but I am certainly very ready for school to start. I have a little too much free time right now, which is just such a stark contrast to Stage. Most of my days, I get up at around 6, do dishes from the day before, make breakfast (usually just oatmeal because it’s easy), and do some other chores around the house (laundry, sweep and mop my floor, etc). I prefer to get them done in the morning because it gets hot later in the day and my house doesn’t have the best ventilation. Today for example, I weeded my yard, which was getting a little out of hand and took my about 2 hours! And even though I worked at 6am for at least the last year, I never got myself into a schedule where I was used to getting up that early. But it gets dark here around 6 or 7pm, and there isn’t a whole lot to do, so I go to bed. In the US, I would spend the evening watching TV or on my computer, neither of which are options here. So I’m usually in bed by 9, which is earlier than any enforced bedtime I can ever remember having in my life, haha!
The 15th was the day of rentrer (return) for professors and school administration. That means that my counterpart is back in town, as well as all the other school staff I wasn’t able to meet on my visit because they were on vacation. Yesterday I went and collected the books for the subjects I’m teaching, and I hope to get started with some lessons plans this week. Schools starts October 1st, which seems so late, but this culture is still largely agriculture based, and the harvest hasn’t happened yet here, so we just need to wait. I was talking to a friend last night and he said his school probably won’t start until halfway through October because of the harvest!
Well, I have some more subject specific entries following this, I just wanted to say that I am alive and well! And once school starts, I think I will have more of schedule not only for my personal time, but for when I will able to get to a place with internet access and say hello to all of you!