Life is like a box of chocolate

Have you ever thumbed through National Geographic and seen a scene where there is asinlge woman dressed in brilliantly colored clothing and jewels braided into her hair, emerging from "the bush", walking along, seemingly into a great expanse of wilderness and sand? Welcome to Gorom-Gorom. If there was any doubt before I arrived here, I can now say definitely that Ive never been to a place quite like this before. The day after swearing in, I along with another PCV jumped into the PC car to make the trek North. Thanks to some recent road improvements we were able to make the trip in a day although it was anything but quick. As we continued North, trees turned to shrubs and dirt became sand. Here everyone dresses in garments that are long and free-flowing enough to allow them to wrap the cloth around their face to shield them from the blowing sand. It does wonders for my respiratory system, I assure you. I live in what many consider to be the most culturally diverser area of the country; there are a number of ethnic groups here including the Fulani, Tuaregs, Tamashek and Songry. With so many different people, it is quite rich in color and custom.

Earlier this year, Gorom was hit hard during the rainy season and was flooded, rendering much of the town and a large percentage of houses uninhabitable, if not totally destroyed. Among those homes that were destroyed was the house formermy occupied by the previous volunteer whiwh was also to be my new home. So instead of moving in and setting up shop, Ive been living in temporary housing nearby. To the casaul observer, the house may seem mole lux accommodations, complete with indoor shower and electricity. I assure you that this is most definitely not the case. I was told that my house would be ready in 2 weeks but that deadline has come and gone and I still havent moved which has proven to be the biggest stressor that Ive faced since being here. I am now fully aware of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, perhaps for the first time in my life. It is true, without your basic necessities intact you do feel quite vulnerable.

My first three weeks here have been largely spent meeting people, socializing and drinking tea. Gorom is a small town, with 5,000 to 8,000 people depending on who you ask, so everyone knows about the newbie in town. Ive met everyone from the mayor to the post office workers and everyone in between. Its strange to think that this is all apart of my job. Its white daunting trying to remember so many names--no Michaels, Jims, Sarahs or Kims here. Only Hamidou, Mamadou, Assieta and Fatimata. And those are the easy ones. Lots of "Im sorry can you please say that again" going on which can quite humilitating since most have no trouble remember Ivet. (Yet another spelling and pronunciation to add to the running list, mom and dad.) The balance of my days have been spent haggling at the market and turning down marriage proposals. (Theyre persistent I tell you.)

My first three months at site I am supposed to focus on integrating into the community and getting to know the resouces that are here as well as identiyfing protential projects and potential parters to work with. Just walking around, I see a number of NGOs but Im not really sure what most of them do. Lots to learn in the weeks ahead. Burkina like many developing countries seems to have no shortage of NGOs although what they really seem to be lacking is a long term committment of human labor vs. dollars. At this point Im still trying to wade through it all to determine where I fit in. An interesting yet challenging task. Im starting to see why the PC is two year committment instead of one.

In the days leading up to Christmas, there was some fighting and shooting going on between the military and the police in the capital which left all of us on lockdown and wondering what was next. While there were some scary momnets, thankfully the situation was resolved 48 hours later and all went back to normal. Not sure whats floating around on the wires, but no one from the PC was hurt. I guess these two groups have had flare ups in the past but nothing like this has ever happened. Im just glad its over. Thanks for the concerned emails.

Christmas came and went in Gorom without any real fanfare. Not a single santa claus, christmas light or event tacky christmas tree. It was just another day here in the largely Muslim town. The other PCVs in the region came in for a visit and we all celebrated together; who knew that a white elephant gift exchange could be so fun.

Other than that not much else to say. Just trying to be patient and trying to adopt a more take it as it comes attitude. All of my list-making and detailed orientedness have no place here. Guess I'll just have another cup of tea.

Happy New Year!

Divide and Conquer

JFK was right --being in the Peace Corps is the touhgest job that you'll ever love. Sometimes I am more certain of the former than the latter but I digress. Its been a month since I swore in and became an official volunteer and oh what a month's it's been. To back track a little - the last two weeks of PST flew by. I spent my first American holiday away from home but had the good fortune of being able to share Thanksgiving with my new PC/Burkinabe family. We prepared a huge potluck dinner, complete with turkey and most of the trimmings. While sheep and goat meat are very popular here, turkey is not. Lucky for us, one of our host families raises turkeys because the father thinks that turkeys are cute. He normally tries to sell the turkeys in pairs and in fact offers a better price for 2 vs. 1 because he wants others to breed turkeys as well. You can imagine his reaction when we told him that we wanted to eat them. It took some coaxing but the CFA (local currency) prevailed.

During our last week of training we ran hurriedly around town as we prepared to be parceled out to Burkina's farthest corners. In true Burkinabe style, we would head to the marche to pick up whatever we needed and then strap the load to our bikes. We were quite the site one afternoon when 7 of us biked home, each of us with a 100 liter trash can strapped to our bikes. Looking back on this now I realize that was nothing; just yesterday I saw a man go by on his moto with a huge pig onboard.

The last few days in Ouahigouya were spent with our counterparts during a multi-day workshop. Each PCV is assigned a counterpart that acts as his/her go to person in their host community. The counterpart helps with everything from negoitating a fair price at the market to helping brainstorm new community development activities. Over the course of my 2 years I will undoubtedly work with a number of different people based on the type of project Im working on, however its nice to have formal counterpart that I can go to as well.

Meeting my counterpart for the first tile was a memorable, and at the time, a very nerve-wrecking experience. I was having all of these visions of frequent, awkward pauses because of the language barrier but thankfully I feared the worse for nothing. My counterpart, Ousmane, has turned out to be very patient and light-hearted and appeared to be happy that we would be working together. I am also replacing a volunteer that has served in this region for the past 2 years so he is already accustomed to Americans' various quirks. When day two of the workshop came to a close, I felt content with how things stood and anxiously anticipated swearing in. The next morning, 38 out of the 39 people that were apart of my training class swore in, determined to help fulfill the mission of the PC. There were several speeches from both the US and Burkina government and another 5 speeches given by fellow volunteers in various local languages. We were quite proud of ourselves for having made it through training as we hooted and hollared while watching ourselves on the local broadcast that night after the celebratory dinner. Little did we know the the toughest part was yet to come.