Site

Long time no see/hear?
 Maybe a couple of weeks?

I have now been at site for a little over a week now and love it. I have my fair share of challenges and triumphs but overall I am pretty happy. :-)

A brief Summary of my activities:

Dec 15th.
Swore in as a peace corps volunteer at the Embassador's residence here. Lots of great pictures that I hope to upload soon.  Swear in came with its share of politics and guest appearances by important people, none of whom i can name off of the top of my mind. After the party, we went across the street to the American Rec center. Pool party.

Dec 17th.
Clarissa, my site mate, and I bush taxi'd out to Fada where we spent a night and did some last minute shopping. Fada is a great city and we were able to get some fried chicken. FANTASTIC! Had a little run in with the police because we did not have bike lights, but ey, all good. We spent the night with a PCV in fada who took great care of us.

Dec 18th.
Clarissa and I met up with  a peace corps driver and we were taken 6 hours east to our sites. What a nerve wrecking drive but we arrived in one piece and our driver took greatc are of us. He was great gave us food and made sure we were all settled in.  We dropped Clarissa off first, moved her in,  and then went off to my site. My house, which is huge, was not finished and there were guys still working on it when we arrived. My driver was a bit pissed off and had some choice words with the workers in Gourmanchema. I think he purposely used gourmanchema instead of french so that i could not understand what was going on. Ca va aller.  I was thankful.
The workers continued building as I moved in and then my major, nurse, and I went to the CSPS where we started doing physical exams of high school students.  All troisieme students must pass a physical exam if they want to play a sport at the lycee, high school.
It was kind of stressful being thrown into my new house and job all on the same day but i was also kind of thankful for the chance to keep my mind occupied enough that I did not focus on how alone i felt at that time.

My first night in my new house was kind of scary. I crashed at around 6:pm and slept through the night....


Until insane drums woke me up around midnight.  Drumming, yelling, screaming....exorcism perhaps?
Anyways, i was freaked and tried to sleep through it. THREE HOURS LATA, they still going on so i decided to investigate.
I was not prepared for what i came across. A huge crowd dancing, yelling, and singing around a fire. Apparently, for funerals here, everyone in village drinks dolo, dances, and sings all night until the funeral in the morning. So they literally started at around 7pm and went through the morning until the funeral at around 10am.
INSANITY!!!!!!

I stayed until about 6am, but i was too tired and overwhelmed to dance all night.

Dec 19th.
My Major took me around to various religious/community leaders who were more than happy to greet and meet me. All in all, I got a day of VIP treatment. Pretty cool. I ended everything off by goign back to the funeral in the eveveening, getting free dinner. Pretty nice set up. 
Then went to the bar with my CSPS staff where we ate a grileld chicken.

Dec20th.
Tuesdays are Baby weighing day! I spent the mornign weigting and measuring babies as we screen for malnutrition. Great day. only 7 babies out of about 100 identified as malnourished. 
What was really exciting was being peed on. This one baby, as i was measuring him just let loose
klike... LET LOOSE LIKE NONE OTHER!
Boy was it impressive. What a well nourished and hydrated baby.  I got a squirt in the mouth and it tasted like water and was clear. Clear urine is a good sign on proper hydration and nutrition. Although the pee in my face/mouth caught me by surprise, i was genuinely excited to see such a healthy baby.

The afternoon consisted of Clarissa and her homologue coming to my site so that we coould greet/meet more leaders.
This resulted in free fanta/coke for us, and another grilled chicken

Dec 21st.
Did more physical exams of children, received a delivery of food from the world food program. Beans, flour, oil, and a lot of other godo stuff to help prevent/support malnourished families.  It seems like mhy village is really being supported by outside help. This is good but I would love to help my village support  themselves. Sustainability will be a big deal here.

Dec 22nd.
Spend the morning passing out food to pregnant women. The aim of this program is to prevent malnourishment by making sure mothers and women are well nourished before they have babies.That way, everyone wins and we are ahead of the game.

 Will finish later
Got to ruN!



Check out Clarissa's blog for  more about my Christmas! 

http://clarissa-burkinafaso.blogspot.com/