The Arrival of the New Trainees

Two years ago, I was finishing up training in Guinea. I was glad to be done, and at the same time looking forward to coming back to stage the next year as a trainer. Then, I was evacuated. The next year, when I should have been a trainer, I was a trainee again, sitting through the same exact sessions I had the previous year. It was torturous… to say the least. At the end of my second training, I wanted nothing to do with coming back to training as a trainer. I wanted to be far away from training. Then, after a few months at site, I changed my mind. I remembered why I wanted to be a trainer to begin with. I wanted to help the new trainees who come to Africa with big goals and ambitions, then arrive here and are sick, scared, hot, tired and confused all the time. I wanted to help them and share my own personal experiences and tell them that it really isn’t that hard and despite what you think now, you will get used to it, and you will be comfortable living alone here. So, I applied to be a trainer and luckily, they chose me.

Each trainer works 2 weeks of the training, and my 2 weeks are split up between the beginning and the end. I chose it this way because I thought it would be fun to see the trainees at these two points of stage and see how they’ve changed. It’s really amazing how quickly one can adapt living into a completely new environment and being completely comfortable in it.

Last week was my first week at training. I was looking forward to it. I was excited to meet the new trainees. As a volunteer trainer, we are responsible for working with the program director of education to plan all technical sessions. Because this was only the first week, there weren’t many technical sessions, so there wasn’t a lot for me to do. It was mostly core sessions, like health, safety, etc. I was there with 2 other volunteers, and we were in charge of only three sessions: Intro to Education in Burkina Faso, Project Framework of the Education Program, and Demyst Preparation. The first two have to do with the basics of the Peace Corps Burkina Faso program in general. They are boring sessions, but important for the trainees to learn at the beginning. The third session was about Demyst, or ‘demystification’, which is when the trainees in groups of 3-4 to volunteer sites for a few days to see what the life of a volunteer is life. I have to admit, the most exciting part of the week was that the volunteer house at the training site had a brand new oven, which I used to make cookies for the trainees. On Thursday, the trainees left and headed out for demyst, so before I knew it, I was finished with my first week of training.

But, then came the fun part, demyst. I had 4 trainees and their French teacher at my house for 4 days. I was nervous because I wanted to give them a good impression of Burkina, and wanted to get them excited to be a volunteer, and I didn’t want any of them to get sick, it was only their first week. Luckily, I was at the training site, so I was able to travel with them back to my site. This made their lives significantly easier and less chaotic. Traveling here can be extremely difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing. Thankfully, we made it to my site with no problems. For the next few days, I showed them around town and introduced them to the life of a volunteer. We went on a school tour, to the market, to a women’s association, and of course, we went to drink dolo. A lot of times, trainees come back from demyst sick and knowing where they don’t want to go for their service. When my demyst-ers left, none of them were sick and they all wanted to come live in my region! I think this means I succeeded in planning a good demyst and showed them a good introduction to life as a volunteer.