Posh Corps

So, we’ve moved for the 5th time since being in this country. It’s getting a little tiring living out of a bag, so I was happy when we finally moved to our current training site. I also received my new host family, which for the count is my 4th host family in West Africa. Like my site, I lucked out. Because there are 80 people in my stage, it was difficult to find 80 new host families in a week. So we’re living with another stagiare for the rest of home stay. Luckily, I got a good roommate!

My new host mom works as a health agent, which I think is kind of like a nurse, and my host dad does the budget for the mayor’s office. They have 2 younger children and 2 extended family members who live here as well. In Burkina, it’s normal for extended family to live together. It is often time younger girls who will do the work for the family, like cleaning, cooking, and laundry. This is especially common in families where the mom works.

Our first night here, the family turned on the TV and started flipping through the channels. Then, they stopped at MTV and watched “Run’s House”. I couldn’t believe it! Then they flipped over to CNN so we could watch the news. At the same time, my host dad was surfing the internet… here, in the house! This never happens! I think we have stepped out of Peace Corps and are now in Posh Corps!

“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!

New Contact Info

So for the time being, I have cell phone reception, and would really love phone calls :) I know it's rather expensive to call Africa haha, but I believe skype is rather cheap. Talk to my parents to find out how to use it! Anyway, here's my new info:

Phone Number: (226- Country Code) 74 29 03 18

Skype: sara.burroughs1

I'm 4 hours ahead (of PA time).

An All Too Familiar Situation…

Training in Ouahigouya was going along pretty well. We were in the process of peer teaching and learning French. I was supposed to begin my local language training, Jula, this week. Then… I found myself in an all too familiar situation.

We (all the stagiares) were called to a community meeting, which normally would not be alarming, but in this case, they started off taking roll… of all 100 people. Then, the Safety & Security Officer of Peace Corps/Burkina Faso walked in and said he had an important announcement. I knew nothing good was coming. They announced that a warden message from the state department was issued for Burkina. You can read the message below:


U.S. Embassy Ouagadougou issued the following Warden Message on June 7:

The U.S. Embassy in Ouagadougou is issuing this Warden Message to update U.S. citizens resident in Burkina Faso on the security situation in northern Burkina Faso. This is a further update to the information relayed on June 5, 2010.

The U.S. Embassy has information that Al Qa’ida in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) plans to kidnap an unspecified group of U.S. citizens working on a humanitarian project in a village located in northeastern Burkina Faso near the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso borders. In addition, the U.S. Embassy has declared the area north of the road stretching from Djibo to Dori off limits to official government travelers unless prior authorization for such travel is expressly given. U.S. citizens are strongly urged to avoid travel to this region.



They continued on to say that we would be evacuated from Ouahigouya to the capital, Ouagadougou immediately. EVACUATED?!?!?!? Again?? Yes! I know! This is a little too much for me (and Ali & Zach, the other Guinea evacuee’s who are with me here) to handle. We all started crying. This says a lot considering that all three of us went through this once before and never cried. It sucks.

We were locked down in a secure place in Ouahigouya for the night… without any of our things. We left straight from training so the most useful (… or useless) thing I had with me was my French Dictionary and a bottle of sunscreen. Damn. So for the next four days I (nor none of the other stagiares) had deodorant, soap, or a toothbrush. It was a long … and smelly 3 hour bus ride to the capital. The Peace Corps drivers were supposed to go around to all of our houses to collect our belongings. I hoped all my things would make it to me, but was prepared for nothing to make it. I’m happy to announce that all my things made it!

I am now living safely and comfortably in a hotel in Ouagadougou for an unknown amount of time. They say that we will continue our training here this week, which looks hopeful for the stagiares. The Peace Corps/Burkina Faso staff and Country Director are highly qualified and competant. They are devoted to our safety and I feel secure in placing my security in their hands. This threat only affects a small region of Burkina Faso, which, obviously, is off limits to all Peace Corps volunteers. I’m hoping this will only be a small bump in the road, and we will be able to continue training as scheduled.

On a brighter note… the staff is throwing us a 4th of July party tomorrow! There will be swimming, hamburgers and cake… a real American holiday hahah. I am looking forward to this!

In other news, this whole situation, obviously, reminded me of Guinea. So, I would like to announce that they, peacefully, held their primary presidential elections yesterday. There were 2 front runners chosen and the main elections are scheduled for a month from now. Hopefully these continue without any problems… inshallah.

Les Blanches!

So, I’ve been here for about two weeks now, and training is really starting to pick up. We’re starting peer teaching next week, where we prepare one lesson and give different parts and varying lengths to our peers. My topic is “The Importance of Superior Vegetables”, whi ch is a pretty easy lesson. I plan on bringing in different items made from plant parts. For example, tô, which is a staple meal here made from corn, or bissap, which is a drink made from hibiscus flowers (and is really good!).
In other news, the new stagiares arrived today. This makes our stage the largest Burkina Faso has ever seen, and is single handedly doubling the total number of volunteers in country. For those of you confused about this, we (secondary education volunteers) arrived 2 weeks prior to the rest of the sectors because our training is longer. The new stagiares work in the following sectors: girls education and empowerment, health, and small enterprise development. This brings the grand total of stagiares to about 80! This is a lot of white people running around one small Burkinabe city. This will seriously affect their economy here for a few months. I’m really glad I came first with the smaller group because it’s much easier to be introduced to a new country with only 22 people, rather than 60. We had a nice amount of time to get to know each other, and to discover our way around Ouahigouya.
So, very similar to Guinea, small children here are get really excited about white people. They chase after us on our bikes, wave, and yell “Bonjour!”. The word here for white person is Nasara, so this is something I hear quite often, and actually respond to ha. In this culture, it is not dispectable to call someone a name refering to their skin color/race. It is actually more of a compliment. I was fully prepared for this, but one thing I never heard in Guinea are children calling me “Le Blanche” (The White). It was a little bizarre at first, but then I found it kind of funny… I’m sure this will stop being funny soon though ha. I have a stagiare who lives directly next door to me, so in the morning I wait in front of her compound with my bike so we can ride to school together. Well, last week, a few of the neighborhood little kids started to notice this weird white person standing out there. One kid was scared and ran away, but the others were intrigued. After they realized I was harmless, they started to like me. Now, in the morning while I wait, these kids line up, salute me, and yell at the same time, “Bonjour, Le Blanche!” (Good morning, the white!).

The Red Dust Storm

So, the most amazing/crazy/bizarre thing happened today. We were sitting in a panel discussion talking about the importance of women’s education in Burkina when we noticed the sky started turning dark. It looked like the sky before a thunderstorm, so I assumed it meant rain. I was super excited about this because when it rains, which isn’t very often here, it cools the temperatures down a lot! The next thing I know, the sky turned reddish-orange. I’m not talking a light orange sky like we sometimes have in America. I’m talking burnt-sienna (thanks crayola), and then the wind started to pick up and we were in a full fledge dust storm! We had to go inside the building because there was dust everywhere. We couldn’t breathe or see through all the dust! This lasted about 30 minutes or so, then the sky started to clear and the storm stopped. I left my bedroom window open that day, and when I returned home after school my entire room was covered in a red layer of dust. All my books, clothes, and bed were covered. That’s the last time I leave my window open for the Harmattan!

The Land of the Upright People

I landed in Burkina, my new home for the new two years, about a week and a half ago. It’s been crazy, busy, and exciting starting Peace Corps all over again. We had our staging (a Peace Corps orientation) in Philadelphia and it only lasted about 5 hours. It was almost the exact same set up as last time. We discussed the goals and purposes of Peace Corps, our anxieties and anticipations, and did a few awkward ice breakers. For those of you who do not know, Peace Corps has three main goals, which they base a volunteers service upon. They are:
1. Filling the need of trained people to interested countries
2. Teaching other countries about America and it’s people
3. Teaching Americans about other countries
These are just summarized in my own words, but I’m sure you get the point. The main focus of the goals in cross-cultural exchange. This is an important part of a volunteer’s service. This allows us to integrate into communities and successfully do our job here. Integration is also a key factor in our safety here. If we can successfully integrate into our communities and become a respected member, life here will be much easier, and funner, for a two year service.
After staging, we headed off to Burkina. The entire trip took about one whole day, and was successfully completed without any problems. We were greated in Ouagadougou Airport by our new country director, Shannon, and a few members of the Peace Corps/Burkina Faso Staff. Shannon handed us a short itinerary for the next few days, which I didn’t really look at too much. It wasn’t until later that night I noticed the cover of it said “Bienvenue! Welcome to “the land of the upright people!”. Almost two weeks later, I still don’t know the story behind this, or why Burkina was named that. It would have made my service much more diifficult had I came to a country where the people were pre-homo erectus! Hah!
Anyway, our first few days in Burkina, we stayed in a pretty sweet hotel. They had AC, and served us ice cream for lunch! This is huge in Africa. We had a lot of introductory sessions, and met a lot of the new staff. We also started the huge task of vaccinating everyone. Thanks to my time in Guinea, I already had all but 2 shots. Woohoo! Everyone else will be receiving about 15. Burkina has the same language requirements as Guinea, which means by the end of the three months of training, everyone must test at an intermediate-high level in French. As you all remember, last year, I knew no French and tested at a level of novice-low (the lowest level there is). Apparently all my hard work paid off because I tested this time at Intermediate-High on the first test! This means that I will be taking review and practice sessions of French for the first four weeks, which is when we receive the name of the site where we will live. At this point, I will stop taking French and begin taking classes in the local language at my site, which is called Jula. I’m pretty excited about this, and proud of myself for remembering that much French! This is a huge weight off my shoulders.
After our days in Ouagadougou, we went to the city where we will be living for our training for the next few months, called Ouahgouya. This town is also pretty nice. It has internet connection (although it’s slow and doesn’t work very well… it’s still internet!), electricity everyday, and a hotel with a pool.
Last week, I moved in with my host family, the Traore’s. My experience with them so far is much different than in Guinea! My family in Guinea, the Fofana’s was more of what I would consider a traditional African family. There were a lot of children, and my host mother stayed home most of the time and did house work, while my father went to work. My new family is not like that at all. My host parents just got married last year, so they are still a young couple, and don’t have any children yet. Although my host mom did tell me she wants to have at have 10 haha. My father works at pretty big bank that is in 6 west african countries and France, and my mother does small loans for the market women (at least that’s the best understanding I had of her work with my not so great French). They both work a lot, so I’m usually home with my 2 cousins that are staying here, Aissatou and Rashidatou. I think my parents are pretty well off though because we have satellite TV and I have a fan in my room, so I’m not complaining haha.
Another thing I’m rather excited about are the bikes. Now in Guinea, my bike was broken for the entire time I was there. I rode it once for about 5 minutes, then got a flat tire and pushed it back home. Now, in Burkina, there are brand spankin’ new bikes for everyone! I was a little nervous at first about having to rely so heavily on biking as my main mode of transportation, but now I’m getting used to it. I bike everywhere. I live about 2-3 miles from our training center so I bike to and from school everyday, as well as lunch, and anywhere else I have to do. It’s nice and relaxing… when it’s not 100°F and I’m sweating my butt off.