Back from Burkina

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I had a great mini-vacation to Ouagadougou (Waga), Burkina Faso, followed by an in-service training for business volunteers and an all-volunteer conference, and now I'm ready to get back to work in my village.

Waga is a beautiful city, very "developed" with big buildings, wide clean boulevards, good restaurants, and beautiful cinemas. I took a bush taxi trip up the country, so I got to see Kara and Dapaong for the first time, albeit briefly. Kara is especially nice, kind of like Togo's mini version of Waga, and I was impressed with their lush gardens. Then after crossing the Burkina border in Cinkasse, we took a bus (think American-style after about 20 years of hard use, seats falling apart, holes in the floor where you can see the road, but still nicer than bush taxis because for most of the trip I only had to share my row of three seats with a sack of grain) to Waga, another 6 hours to the North and West. Waga is like an oasis in a barren savanna, and I had a blast there. It was the FESPACO African film festival which is held every two years (see www.fespaco.bf if interested), so I got to see lots of films, shorts, and documentaires at nice theaters spread throughout the city. I even saw Blood Diamond and Last King of Scotland (both dubbed in French) and although both were entertaining I must say that what Iève seen in Africa has not included any machine gun fire, crazy rebels, or crazier dictators. While both these films could dor all I know be accurate to their real-life events, I'm concerned that they offer a very skewed and theatrical picture of Africa to Western viewers without any other images to balance them. I'll give a few quick mental pictures to think of if you'd expect to see villagers getting gunned down if you come here: any and everyone from children to old women offering to carry things for me from my heavy traveling bags to a little bag of food because that's how you treat special guests; otherwise brash taxi drivers automatically giving me the coveted front seat in the car; fathers being very expressive with their love for their children; people involved in spnsored events expressing their gratitude any way they can, such as by providing food and drink to the PCVs involved and singing songs of praise. Perhaps a lot of this is from me being white and a foreigner, but above all I see no guns whatsoever in this country, and the few thieves I've encountered have been openly punished by the entire village, so I feel safer here than I did in New York for example.

So back to the subject at hand... I unfortunately didn't get to see the top 3 movies, but I saw some artistic and touching films, especially from Guinee, Senegal, and South Africa; and I made some great friends, including PCVs from all over West Africa and a few nice Burkinabe guys as soon as I got used to the different French accent. All in all a great trip.

After that I just had a few days in village before our traning and conference. I got to do an abridged version of my planning workshop and received great feedback, and I also got some ideas and motivations for future projects, especially to work with businesses on marketing and recordkeeping instead of exclusively NGOs. The conference was one of the most eciting weekends ive had here with almost all the volunteers in country attending. We met our new Country Directore Brownie Lee and got to talk about some policies such as dress codes in our villages, etc. we also had a charity auction for girls scholarships and I picked up a tennis racket and a "date" with a friend.

Dont have a lot of time left but I wanna talk about a very significant change that (knock on wood) will be coming soon. I wanted to share this earlier but didnt wanna jinx it; now the chances look pretty good. In late July when the two businness volunteers in ATakpame close their 2 years of service, I will likely be leaving my village to continue their projects here. The move is desirable for many reasons, especially realted to me being in the Masters International program and needing to wrtie a thesis based on my work with NGOs, and they just received lots of money for 2 NGOs to start up internet cafes and would like a more experiences volunteer to ease the transition. Personally it would mean Id live and work oin a big city that I know very well alerady which is a huge plus for me. I have many friends and ocntacts here and Id even have electricity and running water! So cross your fingers for me. Of course I'll always love Elavagnon and I'll be close ebnough that I cn continue to work there and advise my replacement.

Thats all for now. Keep sharing the love and remember Africa is a beautiful and SAFE continent that is certainly worth experiencing, most of all beacuse of the strong and considerate people here.

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Comments

[nancy!chang!]

hey steve
glad to read that you are loving it. last quarter at the evans school!