Monday, April 24, 2006

Women's Day



Thursday, April 20, 2006

photos of Kelly





Kelly's mom here - asked for pictures of HER so here are some she brought home when she came for my mom's funeral.

Friday, April 07, 2006

A Rocky Month

After a somewhat rocky month of March, I am happy to say that things are looking up here in Burkina. Some of you have, by now, heard about the fiasco of women's day and the fight I got into with the village elders. For those of you who didn't, let me briefly
explain.

The day of the women's festival we were running behind (although I have yet to ever see a burkinabe on time the village elders were shocked by this news). Although I had asked for their advice ahead of time and they had shirked their responsibilties, I was informed by them that the committee, which they had formed that morning, was canceling the family planning play so that we could move on the the soccer match. Being that the reason we received funding for the festival was the play and that everything was set up for it and that all the people were already gathered around, I put my foot down as said that we were doing the play. A thirty minute argument then ensued and the play was indeed canceled. Let me just add that the play was only 15 minutes long and that by arguing we effectively lost 15 minutes of daylight.

After the argument I decided I needed to take a break from Tiogo. Luckily the next week was our national bike-a-thon. Two of my village friends and I headed east to a town named Zorgo. About 20 other pcvs and their burkinabe friends were there and we spent the next week doing daily talks at small villages over AIDS.

When I got back to village my closest neighbors and I spent the next week biking around our region. We talking to women about starting savings and loans clubs. Currently I am helping five groups of women in Tiogo and more groups in a neighboring village will get started in the next few weeks. So far everything is going very well.