Friday, May 26, 2006

My boss from Washington is coming in 2 days? Oh my!

Before I go any further, I have be told that I need to write a disclaimer that the views expressed on this blog an my own views and do not officially represent the Peace Corp. Ok, I hope that suffices.

Am recently getting over the panic of having the Director of Peace Corps Africa come and visit me at my site. It seems that she was visiting Burkina to check up on the office here and wanted to visit some volunteer's villages. Because I am relatively close to Ouaga and I have a business volunteers as a close neighbor, my site was chosen.

I say I was panicked because I only had about two days to prepare my town for the visit. My theater group was asked to preform a short skit and I had to notify all the nurses at our clinic. Now, you might think that two days is more than enough time to be prepared for a short, morning visit. Let me just remind you, however, that this is Africa and when my gas tank for cooking ran out it took a month and my trying to bike thirty km with the tank to get the tank filled. As a further complication, the president of our group, who is one of the few people who can understand me and has a leading role in the play that was chosen to be preformed, was out of town working. Amazingly, however, it all came together and the group worked really hard to make things happen.

The director of the health proggram came out with the visitor from Washington as well as the director of the business program. All three women enjoyed the play and were impressed by the humor and intelligence of the piece. After the play we went to my neighbor Elizabeth's village to eat and visit with a women's savings and loans group that she had started.

All for of my close neighbors and I had gone around doing sensibilisations on the savings and loans groups. Elizabeth did most of it but with her and Amanada's help I started three groups in my village and have helped with three others in a neighboring village. On the whole the entire project was very rewarding and sucessful so it was good that Elizabeth was able to talk about the project.

Because the savings and loans group worked so well, Elizabeth and I are planning a similar approach for these amazing trees called moringa trees. They are incredibly nutritious and can really help with malnutrition. It is good because it is a health related topic as the last event was more business oriented. So, in June wee will bike around to villages in our district and talk to people about the benefits of the trees. We are going to hand out sapplings to those who would like then. Then in August we will go around to the people's houses who took the trees and do follow ups with them. Likewise, because we want to be able to track the progress of malnurited kids who eat the moringa leaves we will work with the nutrition clinic in our villages and monitor the kid's weight. I am really excited about the whole thing.

Other than that I am awaiting Spain in a month and a half. In June I will spend a week in Ouaga with two members of my theater troup learning about malaria and TB. Also I am going up north for a week to do talks on the Guniea Worm. Yes, that disgusting worm that gets inside you then tries to break out of the pores in your skin and you roll in out cm by cm with a match stick. Fun stuff.

Oh yeah, and last night I went to this concert of a famous Reggae star from Cote d'Ivorie. His name was Alpha Blondie. It was great and the fans were all so enthusiastic. We had heard about the concert on May 11th (Bob Marley fete day which is apparently a big celebration here -- my neighboring town had a parade -- and pot is legal here for the day only). Accidently two friends and I happened to be in Ouaga and stumble onto this reggae festival with local bands. It was one of my best nights in Burkina and also it made me feel a little like I was in Austin. So I guess on the whole things are looking up now.