Wanna Dance?

Quick update on my life at site:

1. I got a puppy! His name is Cooper and although he is a pain a lot of the time it is nice to have another living thing at my house.  My village has a history with dogs, a long time ago, and a result none of them own dogs.  So for now, Cooper is the only dog around.  Although he is little a lot of people are terrified of him and his life is confined to my courtyard unless he goes out with me.  Over the two months I've learned I prefer living with other people to being on my own.  Sometimes, I find myself doing wacky things in order to entertain myself.

2. Pre-school has officially started.  Things have been off to a slow start but at least some of the students are starting to come.  This past week 30 of the 90 kids have shown up. I think having the kids come slowly is better than seeing all 90 kids on the first day. I can't even imagine all the crying that would have gone on because they are absolutely terrified of me.

Now down to business. 

During my two years in Burkina Faso I have the privilege to work on a committee that supports and fund volunteer projects dealing with youth development.  Our committee is currently planning a dance marathon or "Dancing For Development".  On November 23rd Middle School students will be competing in the marathon as teams, as well as attending various youth empowerment activities, sessions on HIV/AIDS, malaria, family planning, saving the environment, listening to motivational speakers, and participating in dance contests.  The theme of the event is focused on youth taking charge of their own future and because Burkinabe love to dance a dance marathon is just up their alley.

Peace Corps' Third goal is sharing the culture of Burkina Faso with our friends and family back home in the States. That's why it would be great if you would consider hosting your own "Dancing for Development" dance marathon at your school, office, church, etc.  The theme of your event would be slightly different and focus more on teaching your group about the little West African country of Burkina Faso. Your event could be as huge as a school-wide Saturday night event or as small as a classroom activity one afternoon. As long as you are all learning about Burkina Faso and the Peace Corps.  There is also a flexible timeframe for you to hold your own event, although preferably before the spring.

We are also trying to raise money for our committee so that volunteers can apply for grants through the Youth Development Committee and receive support for their youth-related projects at sire.  So, even if you are not interested in hosting an event, please check out the directions to donate to out project below.  Thanks!

If you are interested in partnering with us and holding your own "Dancing for Development" event, we wanted to make it as easy as possible.  We have already made you a slideshow of pictures, music, and facts about Burkina Faso. Download the slideshow at: pcburkina.org/dance. We created a "Toolkit" with all the information, including more details, helpful tips, flyers, music list, etc. to get you started without too much work on your end.  The Toolkit can also be downloaded at pcburkina.org/dance.  I am also here for more support!

If you are at all interested or have any questions you would like to ask me please do not hesitate to email me at christen.maguire13@gmail.com.  Sorry, I can't promise a timely response due to limited internet access.

Thank you so much for all of your support! It is always nice to know that I have people back home supporting me in my work.

If you are interested in donating follow the directions listed below:

1. You donate to the Burkina Faso Country Fund by going to the Peace Corps website:

www.peacecorps.gov/donate

2. By indicating that you want the funds to go to youth programming, the Burkina Faso Peace Corps office will allocate the funds to the Youth Development Committee.  You MUST type "YDC Projects" into the comments section on the donation site.

3.  YDC will accept grant applications for volunteers' youth-related projects to support Burkinabe youth. Your donation will fund these grants, financing a variety of important youth activities across the country.

Tabaski!

Meat marche

            In the span of two days I managed to consume more meat than I have in the past three years combined.  On Tuesday and Wednesday it was the fete of Tabaski and during these two days everything I had become accustomed to changed.  The children were all running around in new clothes with their new hair-dos, there was an abundance of rice and meat instead of just the normal to and leaf sauce, a marche appeared in my village and not the neighboring one, and for one night the nightlife was hopping.   These two days were unlike any other day in my village and I am so glad to have celebrated the fete with those whom I have grown close.   Living in an entirely Muslim village (there are 7 mosques for the 1,000 people who live here) I will not have the opportunity to celebrate the holidays I am used to, such as Christmas and Easter, but I am so grateful to be able to experience the new ones.

            The first day of the fete consisted of the village gathering in a clearing to pray and then making our way to another clearing for the meat marche.  In the past month I have been putting off praying with the rest of my village.  The majority of the people here pray multiple times a day but Friday afternoon is when everyone gets together at the mosque to pray as a group.  It’s not that I was opposed to praying with them but I had no idea how to go about it.  I knew your head had to be covered and that was about it.  But for the fete I sucked up my pride and was prepared to laugh along with everyone as I figured out what to do.  So, Tuesday morning I walked over to the other neighborhood with the old women and children who live near me.  Luckily the women I went with took me under their wing and showed me what to do.  I was surprised by how relaxed the whole thing was.  The motions consisted of raising your hands in front of you and then wiping them down your face.  I wasn’t required to mutter any words and I feel like I got the hang of it.  People were still amused by my actions but they are amused by anything that I do.  The prayer only lasted about ten minutes and then it was marche time.  The fact that the marche was being held in my village is a pretty big deal.  My village is very small and we do not have any stores of our own or our own marche.  In order to buy anything we have to go to the neighboring village which is about 3kms away.  I know that’s not too far, but when the sun is brutally shining down it is further than I would like to go.  The Tabaski marche was full of meat.  There was a long aisle of men selling their animals to those who don’t have any of their own to kill or want to give a cadeaux to someone.  I was lucky enough to have two bundles of meat cadueax-ed to me.  Luckily, my homologue cooked it all for me.  Scattered amongst the men with meat were a few women selling gateaux, fried dough balls, and friend yams, which are very similar to French fries and something I really enjoy.  After hanging around and talking with people for a little while I rejoined my older women and children to walk back to my neighborhood.  The rest of the day everyone spent around their own homes preparing meat and rice.  This was such a treat.  Normally people eat to, which is flour and water cooked into a mushy substance, with a sauce that has the consistency similar to slime.  I’m not the biggest fan of this meal but I eat it pretty often because I don’t want to have to cook for myself. Anyway, meat and rice is a rare treat and as I walked around visiting people everyone insisted on serving me a bit of meat.  Before coming to Burkina I was a vegetarian so having to eat all the meat was a bit tuff at times, especially when it was goat intestines.  I tried to pretend it was like eating macaroni, but it really wasn’t the same.

            The next morning my friend Celestina came over to experience the second day of the fete.  Celestina’s village is about 15kms away so it’s not too terrible a bike ride.  Luckily, by the time she got to my village at 9 I had already been given more rice and sauce than I could consume by myself in a week.  Shortly after she got to my house the “youth” of my village came to greet me and say hello.  When I use the term youth I am referring to a group of young men in their early twenties.  The youth were accompanied by the presidents of the preschool and primary school.  After shaking hands with the 25 men who had gathered outside my courtyard I was cadeaux-ed a rooster.  A chicken or rooster is a traditional gift to give to someone upon their arrival, so for anyone thinking about visiting a chicken or rooster might be coming your way.  After a few kind words were said the youth were on their way and Celestina and I left with my homologue to make the necessary greetings to the village.  Part of the Tabaski fete includes walking around visiting and greeting everyone in the village and at each stop along the way you are given food.  After stopping at the third house I didn’t think I could anymore without exploding but then at the next house we were given spaghetti! At village this is more of a delicacy than rice, obviously I could not turn it down.  By the time we returned to my house five hours later I was exhausted and five pounds heavier.

Tons of rice and sauce

            Celestina both laid down on my plastic mat to take a quick siesta before the party that night.  In the past month the farthest I have wandered after dark is 200 meters to eat with my homologue and her family.  It was kind of exciting to be out and doing something after dark.  At 6:30 Celestina and I were accompanied by my homologue and a few children over to the night marche, which is really just a big party.  When I get there I couldn’t believe I was in my village.  Rice bags had been sewn together and strewn up as make-shift walls to create a small movie theatre in one spot and in another a dance club.  For a village that doesn’t have electricity they pulled out all the stops for this party.  In a long line were women selling gateauxs and juice, and men selling coffee to help people get through the night.  People come from the entire area to attend this party and it really was off the hook.  Everyone looked so sharp in their new clothes and the kids were having a field day.  After visiting the women selling food Celestina and I found some of my friends and went to go break it down on the dance floor.  At around 11 we made our way back to my house with a big group of women and children.  The party continued on without us and I heard people coming home around 4 and 5 in the morning. 

The crew dressed up for the party

Adama!

Party Shenanigans

Making gateauxs

            The next day the village was quiet, very similar to a Saturday or Sunday morning on a college campus.  Normally people are up and going about their morning chores at 5 and 6, but everyone was too tired to go on with their normal routine.  For the whole day everything slowed down and people caught up on sleep from the night before.

            Now that I have filled you in on two days at my village I’ll give you a run down on what I do with the rest of my time here.  I was assigned to train the pre-school teachers and teach at the pre-school.  The universal start date for school in Burkina is October 1^st.  I do not know anyone who started school on October 1^st.  On the 1^st teachers showed up at school and a few students were there to help clean the school grounds.  The rest of the students were at their family farms helping with the harvest.  A lot of my time is spent meandering around the farms and helping Rasmata with her harvest.  Now, the date is the 18^th and I have yet to commence pre-school.  I’m hoping things will get started this upcoming week.  Schools have finally started but because the pre-school is community run it is a little it different.  At the primary schools and the lycees the teachers are paid by the government, so they have more incentive to start.  The teachers at my pre-school are three women from the village who have taken teaching on top of their everyday chores of farming, cooking, and cleaning.  They have all been preoccupied with making sure their farms get harvested before the crops spoil, so I haven’t yet pushed to get things started at the pre-school.  If things don’t get going in the next week I may start to drop hints that we should maybe get going.

            Other than farming I spend a lot of my time hanging out with kids.  Spending time with the kids has been really helpful in learning Moore.  My one friend Ham is a three year old boy who I walk around with and say “yaa boe?” What’s that and he gives me the Moore word. Now I have quite a bit of Moore vocabulary but my ability to form sentences is still lacking.  Once the pre-school starts I am hoping to pick it up really quick, otherwise I will never be able to teach a lesson on my own. If language fails me at least I have become pretty good at charades and drawing images of what I am trying to convey.

HAM!

It's official

I just want to preface this blog entry by saying the first part I wrote about two weeks ago, but never had time to post until now.  I thought about now posting it, but I didn't feel like writing another entry with all the details in another tense. So bear with me.

A Time of Rain

                Finally there are moments in the day when I am not sweating.  Burkina has just entered into the rainy season and I am SO grateful.  The rains have made it more humid but it has significantly cooled down.  I even find myself a little bit chilled late at night and in the early morning.  Unfortunately, the rainy season brought along the end of mangoes.  When I first got to Burkina I could find mangoes every quarter mile along the road and now there are none to be found.  In the United States I was used to eating any fruit at I wanted at any time of year.  Now I can only find fruits and vegetables seasonally and it really makes me realize how many fruits and vegetables are imported in the United States.  Eating seasonally is going to be hard at times because at times I am going to have very limited options, but it also makes me feel like I am eating more naturally (except for when my food is cooked to mush or drenched or in oil). It’s comforting to know that I am buying my food from the person who grew it and that it did not travel thousands of miles to get to me. I really like how local everything is in Burkina and relationships with vendors is something that is cherished.  For example, buying onions from one woman, even though there are better onions in the market, because you have formed a personal relationship with her over time.  Relationships are highly valued in Burkina culture and I am glad to say that I have formed relationships with the people who I have interacted with on a regular basis.

                Now when I ride down the street there is an occasional child shouting Tantie Christen instead of nassara or la blanc.  When I hear a child calling after me with my actual name it makes my day.  I feel like I have become part of this community, in a way.  This past Thursday I celebrated the Assumption of Mary with my family.  We got up early and biked out of the town and up a “mountain”.  It wasn’t so much a mountain as a small hill, but it’s a lot more than I have seen so far in Burkina.  When we got to the top of the mountain mass was held in front of a shrine for Mary.  During the mass there was a lot of music and dancing.  It truly was a celebration.  After mass I had a picnic with my family and enjoyed some more dancing.  All over the place people were enjoying meat brochettes and dolo (the local beer) as they spent time enjoying the company of those around them.  It was a blast and I had great time spending this time with my family.  I am not looking forward to leaving them.  They have already invited me back for Christmas and there is a good possibility I am going to take them up on that offer.

Now that I have gotten comfortable in one place it is time to pick up and move onto the next.  This Sunday, 8/18, I will leaving my training location and going to the capital for swear in.  After two and a half months of training I will officially be a Peace Corps volunteer.  Then I will be moving and settling into my home for the next two years. I am pretty nervous about the challenges that living on my own will bring.  I have never lived by myself in the United States, so living on my own for the first time in a foreign country might be a bit tricky.  I am not looking forward to having to prepare my own food. I am not the biggest fan of cooking but hopefully this will change during the two years.  Maybe cooking will be one of my hobbies to fill all of the free time I am going to have.  I think I am going to find myself doing new and odd things as a way to keep myself entertained.

Sana, Hawa- My first week in village

                In one of my other blog posts I mentioned that my village had named me Mariam before my arrival at site.  Apparently Mariam is not a name that suits me because almost immediately I was renamed Hawa and given the last name of Sana because that is the family that I live with.  The village has been very welcoming and has made sure that I everything I need.  Even with their help this past week has been quite the adjustment.

Things that have changed since moving to site:

1.       My name

2.       Access to electricity- now I have none

3.       The simplicity of getting water- instead of turning on a spout in my courtyard I have to take containers to a pump and fill it.  This has been quite the struggle and my village is amused by my efforts every time. 

4.       Ability to communicate with people- very few people here speak French, so my Moore is going to be pretty good after two years.

5.       Increased number in farming invitations- Everyone farms in my village and there are pretty much only farms in my village.

6.       Personal time- I am either out talking with people or someone is stopping by to say hello.

7.       Ability to laugh at myself and laugh at myself along with others

8.       Realization that this is my home for the next two years- My village has been so welcoming  that I already feel like they have included me in the village family.

Goats on the roof

Last week I had my first encounter with public transportation in Burkina and I would have to say it was never boring.  On Sunday I left the training city for the capital, Ouagadougou (pronounced wah-ga-do-goo) to meet my counterpart.  A counterpart is someone selected from the village to work alongside the volunteer on both primary and secondary projects.  My counterpart’s name is Rasmata and she seems very enthusiastic about working with me on projects at the preschool.  Rasmata does not speak a lot of French so we weren’t able to talk all that much.  We spent two days in Ouagadougo getting to know each other and going through training sessions.  After the two days we set out on our transportation adventure to my village.

In order to get to my village from the capital there are two legs in the journey.  From Ouagadougou there is a bus almost every hour that leaves for my regional capital, Kaya.  I traveled to my capital with my counterpart and a friend and her counterpart.  We left Ouaga at 9:30 and arrived in Kaya two hours later.  The road to Kaya is pretty well maintained, so this part of the journey was not too bad.  After we arrived in Kaya we had o wait three hours before we could catch the only bush tax that goes from Kaya to my village.  The bush taxi journey was pretty crazy.  About thirty minutes before the bush taxi was supposed to leave it started to pour down rain.  Usually I am wishing for the rain because it cools things down, but I was so tired of sitting around and was ready to get to my village.  After about 45 minutes the rain subsided and people started loading up the bush taxi.  A bush taxi is essentially a 15 passenger van that gets jam packed with people and animals.  I was surprised to see three goats, giant rolls of rope, and a few bikes all thrown on top of the bush taxi.  After the top of the taxi was loaded people were packed inside based on the order in which they would be getting off.  Luckily, my village is one of the first stops on the road so I got to sit near the front.

After a bumpy 30 minute taxi ride Rasmata calls out to the driver that he should stop.  I look up and see nothing but a small shack. Rasmata turns to me and says, “C’est ici” or “It’s here”.  I turn to my friend and we both laugh because there is literally nothing there.  I get off the taxi with my counterpart and we start walking.  After a minute or two I start to see a few buildings and realize there is more there than just a shack, but not too much.  My village is very small.  If I had to guess I would say there is under 1,000 people living in the village.  A few months ago I was thinking the College of Wooster was small and I am about to move to a community even smaller than my college.  My village consists of the 7 mosques, a primary school, and the pre-school. That’s it.  In order to get my food and anything else I may need I will have to bike 5 kms to a neighboring village.  I think it’s a good thing that I will have to venture to another village because I will probably go stir crazy if I never left mine.

The two days I stayed in my village were full of greeting people.  Rasmata and I walked around the village greeting the chef (chief), Imam (head of the Mosques in the village), and other people I will be working with in the preschool.  This was exhausting.  I am used to having to greet people all the time but trying to do it in Moore was really tiring.  There are very few people in my village who speak French, so my Moore is going to be awesome after two years.  Moore is a very challenging language to learn because it is so foreign from anything I have ever heard.  In Burkina there are four main local languages that are spoken in areas where a large majority of the same ethnic group live.  The ethnic group of my village is Yarce, but this is not a common ethnic group in Burkina.  The Yarce live in a vary Mossi area and as a result have taken the language of the Mossi, Moore.  There is a lot of history between the ethnic groups in Burkina, but in present times everyone gets along well with each other.  This is something that I love about Burkina.  There is so much diversity but everyone is open to the ideas of others.   There is no religious tension and the people get along so well with everyone.   It truly is amazing how accepting the people of Burkina are of each other.

After spending two days in my village it was time to head back to training.  In the morning my counterpart and about 8 people of my village walked me out to the road to wait for the bush taxi, the only one that goes into the capital that day.  After an hour the bush taxi arrived and my village was there to see me off and on my way.  It was nice to see how excited my village is for my arrival and provided me with a lot of encouragement.

Now I am back at training and model school has officially started.  During model school I practice teaching in the preschool from 8-12 everyday.  This has been going on for 5 days so far and it has been great.  The children are adorable and most of them have gotten used to my presence in the classroom.  I am working in the petit section which is the three year olds.  Most of the children only speak local language but I have found ways of communicating with them that don’t require any words or I use the few key phrases I know, such as “waka” (come here).  On Thursday I will be teaching my first lesson on my own and I am starting to plan fun activities with the children.  If anyone has any suggestions for games or songs (in French) that would be good for children ages 3-6 feel free to send them my way.  I have a lot of lesson planning to do and could use some new ideas.  For the next five weeks, until the end of training, I will be working in the preschool and finalizing last minute tasks until I will officially be sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer and move to my village.

Site announcement, 4th of July, and my first attempt at teaching

 Site announcement

I finally know where I will be living for the next years!  I am not allowed to post the name of my village due to security but I am very excited about my placement site.  I am going to living in a small village North of the capital, Ouaga.  I was given a brief overview of my village, so the information that I give you now is all that I know.  The population of my village is less than 1000 and it is a Muslim village.  It was decided during one of the town meetings that my new name at site will be Mariam.  Already being given a new name is both good and bad.  Its good because it means my village is really excited to have me there, but bad because my name is not Mariam and its definitely going to take some getting used to.

In my village I will be teaching at a preschool and working with the instructors of the preschool to teach them engaging ways to educate the children.  The preschool program is a Pilot program for the Peace Corps.  This program has never been done in Burkina before, so myself and the five other preschool volunteers are pretty much guinea pigs.  Being part of a new program is exciting but it is also very challenging because there is no one who knows a lot about how preschools work in this country. When I am at site I have been paired with a counter part of who is petite-mama, teacher, in my preschool.  I am hoping that she is going to be able to show me the ropes of how everything works.  I will be meeting my counterpart in two days and then traveling with her to visit my site.  So, the next time I post I can provide a it more information about where I will be living.

4^th of July

On top of site announcement it a also the 4^th of July! In order to celebrate the 4^th of July my training group organized a party for the staff and us.  This party had some of the best food I have yet to have in country.  We made salsa, guacamole, mac and cheese(kind of), chips, chicken, and a pig.  It was great to have food that was familiar and not covered in oil and resembled food that we would eat in the US.  For being so far away from the US, we did a pretty good job of making it seem like home.

My first teaching attempt

Yesterday I had my first attempt at teaching a lesson in French to 18 3-6 year olds and it was definitely a learning experience.  My French is not as good as I would want it to be, but for the most part I was able to get across the message I wanted to.  I was teaching the children about the parts of a mango and having a mango as a prop made it a lot easier.  One of my biggest flaws was offering my left hand to the children to high five.  Burkina is a right handed society because the left hand is considered to be dirty and this is something that I have not yet adjusted to. The kids were adorable and I am looking forward to spending my days with little children.

I finally got around to including some pictures of my family.  They are the bomb!

Also, Happy Birthday mom and Grandma! Wish I could be there to celebrate with you guys. I hope you both have a wonderful day!

 

Puppies!

So far so good.

I apologize for the jumble of this blog post, but I figured something is better than nothing.

The past two weeks have been filled with many new experiences and challenges I would have never encountered were I still in the United States.  One of the biggest challenges at this point has been the heat.  Coming from Arizona I thought I would be somewhat used to this weather, but I was wrong.  In the past two weeks I have sweated more than I have ever before and there is no escaping it.  At night it cools down a little bit outside, but the houses are made of concrete and this takes much longer to cool down.  I am eagerly awaiting the start of the rainy season and the beginning  of the cool months, which seem like they will never come. 

Another major challenge I have faced so far is language.  French is the national language of Burkina and people typically speak French and a local dialect or just a local dialect.  Being immersed in the language has really forced me to do my best to pick it up and I have never been so motivated to learn something new before.  Right now, my communication consists of a lot the words I do have in my vocabulary and a lot of gestures.  Over the past two weeks I have become so much better at charades. 

The third challenge for me is becoming a morning person.  Everyone in this country is up and going about their day by five am.  For those of you who do not know, I hate interacting with people in the morning.  As soon as I wake up I am expected to go greet my entire family and ask how everyone slept and see if they need any help.  I do not want to be doing this when I wake up, especially because I probably didn’t sleep through the night because of the 4am call to prayer at the Mosque and the donkey yelling out back.   Morning  have been tough so far.  Luckily, my family never asks me to help them with anything so I have a little bit of time to sit by myself before leaving for the Peace Corps center.

Family

For the next three months I will be living with a host family and learning about the culture of Burkina.  My family here is amazing.  If it were not for them I think I would be slightly more insane by this point.  My family consists of five children and two parents.  My father works as a tailor and my mom sells produce from the house.  Between these two I am able to find everything that I will need during the next two months.  Four of my host siblings live at home and one is away at school.  Edith is 18 and is my best Burkinabe friend.  Edith has so much patience for my French struggles and helps me whenever I need it.  Its really nice having someone around my own age to talk with.  My other host siblings are 12, 7, and 4 months.  Amongst these three I always have some sort of entertainment.  I also tend to be the source of entertainment for my family.  The baby is not really fond of me at this point and my family finds it funny to put him in my lap.  I’m hoping that overtime he is going to become more comfortable with me.

Food

The food in Burkina is not as good as I would have hoped.  Every meal consists of some sort of carb: rice, bread, couscous, or toh.  This is then followed with a sauce that usually has some sort of fish in it.  Burkina is a landlocked country.  I still struggle to understand where all of the fish is coming from.  It is in everything and the fish taste is often overdone.  I don’t expect this taste to ever grow on me.

Daily life

For the next three months my life is very scheduled.  I have training six days a week from 8-5.  During this time we talk about hat our roles will be as Peace Corps volunteers and how to go about doing our jobs correctly.  We also have between 2 and 4 hours of language class every day.  Because of this I do feel like I have already made a lot of progress with my communication skills.

Burkina Faso has been great so far.  I am very lucky to live with a family that has electricity.  It gets dark here around 7 and having access to lights makes everything a lot easier.  I have adjusted pretty well to the shower and bathroom situation.  I would still prefer to sit on a toilet than squat over a hole, but it hasn’t been as bad as I was expecting.  I am glad that I brought along some toilet paper when I was packing (Thanks Aunt Eileen!). I am also adjusting to having eyes on me all the time.  Burkina is not a very common tourist destination so the sight of a Nassarra, or foreigner, is very startling to the people.  Everyone is eager to greet us and children chase down us down shouting out nassarra as we ride by.  For the next two years I will constantly be living in a glass bubble and I am going to have to adjust to a privacy level of zero.

Burkina Faso is a great place so far and I am eager to share my life and stories with you.  I must warn those of you following along that I can make no guarantees about how often I will update blog.  I have tried this blog thing before and failed, but I will make an attempt to keep it semi updated so you can all know I am still healthy and alive (So far I have yet to have any health issues and hopefully this will continue to be the case).

The beginning of the journey

For the next 27 months I will be living and working in Burkina Faso as a non-formal education volunteer with the Peace Corps.  For a long time I had always considered joining the Peace Corps, but it was always a far off thought.  Last July I submitted my application still unsure whether or not the Peace Corps was what I really wanted to do.  In February I received my acceptance and spent a week going back and forth between being positive the Peace Corps was what I wanted to do and being completely unsure.  I finally came to the conclusion that the Peace Corps is truly what I want to do and I couldn't wait to start my service.  Now that my departure has finally arrived I am nervous for the unknown, but positive that this is exactly what I want to be doing at this point in my life.  I can't wait to put myself into a completely new situation and experience everything as it comes.  Throughout this entire process my family and friends have been extremely supportive and for that I am so thankful.

So, what exactly am I going to be doing?  Right now I only have a vague idea of what I will be up to.  I have been assigned as a non-formal education volunteer.  I have been told that I will be working on female empowerment projects in schools and working with children at the pre-school level.  I am so excited with my placement and cannot wait to hang out with kids all day. French is the national language of Burkina Faso, so most of my work will take place in French.  Right now I have a slight French background and I am hoping to pick it up again once I am there.  It has been three years since I have even though about French, so hopefully this is not too challenging.

Tomorrow, 5/31, I leave for Washington DC.  The following day I start my orientation with my training class.  Orientation in DC is only for a day and I fly out on Sunday with the people from my training class.  From DC we will fly to Burkina Faso and begin out three month in country training.  During the three months I will be living with a host family and getting acquainted to the new culture.  After the three months I start my two years of service and will be placed at my site.  Right now I am not sure where in the country I will be placed.

At this point in time I have a lot of uncertainty about what is going to come and that makes it difficult for me to provide details.  I will try to keep this blog updated, but I cannot make any promises as to how often that is going to happen.  For now I will do my best to keep everyone in the loop on this new adventure.