“The Place of Excellent Fruit”

One of the most exciting times of stage is site announcement, which is when you find out your home for the next two years. The trainers drew a huge map of Burkina on the ground with stars marking our future sites. I stood there blind-folded imagining what type of site I will have, and I couldn’t help but think of my little village in Guinea. For those of you who don’t remember, I lived in an extremely small village in a mud hut without electricity or running water. This was pretty much the stereotypical Peace Corps experience. The life there was easy, but I was really hoping to get some amenities in my new site.

So, back to the Burkina map. The trainers led us one by one to our future sites, still blind folded. I was trying to determine how far I walked to guess where my site would be, and peak out the side of my blind fold to see who my future neighbors would be. Then, the grand reveal! My future site is …

“The Place of Excellent Fruit”!

At this point I would tell you the name of my town, but because of security reasons, we are not allowed to publish this. But, my new site could not be more different (in a good way) from my site in Guinea. I live in a decent size town, and will have 2 sitemates (other Peace Corps volunteers in the same town as me). I live in the part of the country where it rains a lot, so the climate is much cooler and everything is green. Also, as the name would suggest, there is fruit everyday, for the entire year… oranges, bananas, mangoes! Yum! And exciting news, I not only have electricity, but running water! I have an entire bathroom, including a working toilet and shower! Yayy! When you walk into my house, there is a large salon (like a living room and kitchen combined). Then, there is my room and a guest room (Mom & Dad get ready!)

In my town, there is everything I could need. I have a small daily market, and a huge market every Saturday. There are boutiques that sell everything from cold drinks to yogurt to toilet paper. Like I said, everything I need haha.

When I was there, an older woman adopted me as her child then fed me dinner. She brought out catepillars and rice... welcome to Burkina haha.

There are 3 high schools in my town. I will be working at the Lycee Municipal, which is the small high school for students who live in my town. Unfortunately, because it’s smaller, there are less resources available. I will be teaching biology, math and english. My sitemate will be teaching at the other high school, Lycee Provinicial, which is a huge school for students who live in surrounding areas. His school just got a grant to purchase their first 10 computers, so he will be teaching IT there.

In the region that my site is in, there are also a lot of great things. There are waterfalls, lakes with hippo tours, and huge mountains for hiking. And, I only live one hour from a huge city. So, all in all, I think I got a great site! I’m so excited about living there.

A small side note: This is not related to my site, but is really exciting. Burkina has the largest elephant population in West Africa! One of the volunteers in my group is living down in the eastern part of the country, which is literally on a wildlife preserve. He was in a taxi driving to his site, when the taxi stopped and he didn’t know why. He looked up and there was a herd of elephants crossing the road!