ACCIDENT I saw my first African accident scene today. After language class on my way to lunch, I took the main road back towards our training center. Up ahead I saw a large group of people on the left side of the road, sort of hanging out, chatting, some were leaning up against a wall and just looking around, and there were a lot of bikes and motos parked around them. On the right side where there are little boutiques and random tradecraft stalls, more people lined the road. There was also something in the road and from a distance it [View Full Entry]

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Village Saturday I met up with Brian, a GEE (girls education and empowerment) trainee, who lives just outside of town about 5km into the bush in a small village. He Brad (another IT trainee) and I rode out to stay the night in Brian’s village. Brad and I live in town, have class around town, eat in town and basically had no reason to have left yet, so we wanted to check out what village life was like. We rode out around 4pm, so as not to get roasted by the sun - the ride is only around 5km but even [View Full Entry]

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After trying to write chronological blog posts covering the last week like I did when I was in the army, I decided to sum everything up under topic headings. It should give you an idea of what it’s like being here. There are definitely some things I have already become accustomed to and won’t remember to include here, but they might crop up during other entries. Internet access is unbelievably slow, so pictures and videos will be few and far between. Also, it is not polite to take pictures of people without asking their permission first, and busting out the digicam [View Full Entry]

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We left Philadelphia at 17:30 on Tuesday 10th 2008 on a 7 hour flight to Paris. The flight for Ouagadougou didn't leave until 16:10 and since quite a few of the trainees hadn't slept, people were crashing. Brian and I played an indoor game of urban disc golf with the mini's and wandered around the terminal. I layed down and tried to sleep for a bit with no luck. At some point I rolled over and heard a couple people talking to someone with an American accent about Peace Corps and I sat up to find a married couple who were [View Full Entry]

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My new address at site: ROUX Vincent BP 73, Koudougou Province du Boulkiemde Burkina Faso, West Africa If you send things by USPS write AIRMAIL and PAR AVION on the envelope or package. Use RED pen to write on the package - superstitions are powerful. Padded envelopes are a better way to send smaller items (and may be cheaper if you stuff multiple envelopes with the same stuff you would have put in one box). Postcards tend to end up on the post office wall as decoration rather than in anyones mailbox, so stick it in an envelope to increase the [View Full Entry]

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So! I arrived this morning in Philadelphia, PA for my Peace Corps staging event. I got in at around 11am and soon found some similarly lost looking young people with way too much luggage for domestic travel - my fellow Peace Corps Trainees (PST's - peace corps loves acronyms). We all hopped in a shuttle to the hotel, checked in, ate some lunch and went to register for training. Staging consists of some orientation before getting to Africa. Today we ran through some "ice-breaker" activities, learning who everyone was and how everyone was feeling. Feelings were quite mixed: nervo [View Full Entry]

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