Peace Corps BF Emails Consolidated

Disclaimer: The contents of this blog present the opinions of the author only. The opinions expressed herein are not those of the Peace Corps, the United States government, or any other agency. If you have a problem with anything posted here, your problem is with me, and with no one else.

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Hello all,

Just to tell you all that I made it to ouagadougou just fine, going to
be in ouahigouya for training soon, Internet access may be limited.
Nicer than Afghanistan by far, roughly as poor though.

Stay safe,

René

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Hi all,
Composed this list to keep people informed. If you want to be removed
(or added, if this was forwarded from someone else) let me know.
Likewise, please do not reply with forwards, like jokes, "charity"
chain letters, etc.
Responding individually will be rare for the next few months of
training, which so far seems more worthwhile than my BA in psych.
I am here to be a Small Enterpsise Development advisor. The Burkinabé
people are really nice, unnervingly so. The country is also dirt
poor, but not depressing like Afghanistan, by far.

I'll post more later

René
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Hello all,
More details of what I'm up to. The country I'm in is Burkina Faso
(landlocked nation in west Africa). From my "civilianized" résumé
(mostly PSYOP) I got the job of small business advisor, or will be
once I swear in. Lot of training first, and I Don't have time for
this Internet stuff regularly.
They tested me in French, and I did well enough to start with Mooré
also. I have been adopted by a Burkinabé family. "Dad" is around my
age, speaks French, and has a wife and 6 year old daughter that is
learning French (speaks Mooré). They are all Muslim, except his mom,
who is Catholic, and speaks only Mooré. There are 67 other languages
in Burkina, and many ethnicities. Tolerance is #1 as far as religion
goes. The Burkinabé are quite possibly the friendliest people I have
ever known. And so much has happened in the last week that I just
don't know what more to say.

Stay safe, and send this email around to anyone interested,

René
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Now, as far as what's been going on...
On Saturday I helped start a credit and savings club. It was awfully
easy, I guess the hard part is finding motivated people with enough in
common to get the thing going. The Burkinabé organize easily and they
don't kid around with club rules. They seem pretty relaxed, with a
similar "in shah Allah" attitude that the Afghans have, but when it
comes to organizing and working with "le blanc", the motivation just
catches me off guard. Almost makes it feel like saving the world here
will be a breeze!

Sunday was chill day. We paid 1000CFA ($2) to swim in the pool of the
local hotel. It was wonderful. And I got sunburn. And I will go
swimming again next and every Sunday if I can (and wear my sunblock
from now on, because I do have to bike with a backpack everywhere).
Also, I made a toast to Jon Santos & SSG Owen. The shotglass I had
bought for Jon, and now keep for him, I left at home, but my mom
bought me one to bring over. Plastic baggies of whisky shots are
available in many shops (many beverages are sold that way). JW red is
also available pretty cheap, but I want to avoid bringing a bottle of anything into my mostly Muslim household.

Today Monday I visited a handicapped artisans association shop, named Bang N Tum (I forget what it means). One artisan was making aluminum pots (artisan in this culture is anyone who makes stuff). He made his molds out of dirt. Pounded the shape into it, poured in the metal, cooled it, voi la, a pot. A pretty facinating process, considering the limited resources. Another artisan made patiques, cloth dyed with designs in many colors. His hands were scarred with lye burns that reminded me of the movie 'Fight Club'. He used gloves when he showed us his dyeing process.

Impressions and so forth: I compare with Afghanistan a lot. Afghanistan was a war-scarred mix of pre-biblical and modern that just left a post-apocalyptic taste in my mouth. Burkina never got that built up, and it never got torn down. The Burkinabé are pretty proud of their recent history, since it has been relatively peaceful. So it's bizarre to watch TV here. Every local show has a family that looks as poor as my family, in a clay house that looks like my clay house. The commercials are really low budget. Marketing here could go a really long way. But most of the products peddled are worth like $0.20 anyway. Afghanistan was blown up connexes and mudhuts with vendors dressed like Joseph and Mary selling Cokes next to the remains of a Soviet tank. Africa is that same National Geographic topless woman with tribal scars on her face and the baby strapped to her back, pounding away at grain in a giant mortar, suddenly whipping out a cell phone that is beeping butchered Beethoven.More than one trainee has gotten up from the cybercafe, walked out into the searing heat, and goats, and vultures flying around like pidgeons, and asked "Someone tell me again, where the hell am I?"


We have only had one female quit so far. She rarely talked to anyone,
and it is my understanding that she also chaptered out of the Army
BCT, and then also "quit" the airforce after a year. Everyone thought
leaving was the best thing for her. All who remain are in pretty good
spirits, despite the heat, the language barriers, and the diarrhea.
I'm fine now, thanks.
Some food is ok, the ñame is good. The rice just needs salt. The
omelet sandwiches are really nice.
Tô sucks. Tô tastes like what it sounds like. Tô is African grits,
with no flavor beyond that of boiled water, and it is served with a
baobab slime sauce. I finally got my family to stop serving it to me.
Salads have to be avoided, but they can be good if you want to brave
it.

Mephloquine Monday! I am on Mephloquine AKA Lariam, and at all times
it seems, someone near me has malaria. I am fairly certain that I
have the parasite in my system now, and that I will get malaria if I
miss a dose of Lariam. It seems like a common thing for volunteers to
get. I intend never to miss a dose of my beloved insanity inducing
malarial prophylaxis.

Many more fun things have happened so far, but I rarely have a chance
to stop and write anything down.

Further details for contact: My phone service provider is CelTel. I
am not charged for receiving calls or text messages. My time zone is
GMT 0, AKA London, AKA Zulu. If you want to call, please do so in the
evenings for me (mid afternoon and later for east coast US and PR is
fine). I hear calling cards for west Africa can be pretty cheap. I
have no clue what you have to dial to call me from the States, and I
am not responsible for any abuse you may suffer from your phone
service provider if you call me direct. I have not used Skype, but I
hear it works very well, and is one of the cheapest options.

Stay safe,

René
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Busy Busy
Since last time, I visited an HIV/AIDS support organization, AMMIE
(forget what it stands for). I don't know what to compare with, but I
was surprised by how well run this organization was. Stories from
members were all like "I was forced to marry this sick man, and after
he died his family rejected me, and my family treated me like crap,
and I got tested, and turned out HIV+, and my family rejected me too.
By the time I found out of this organization I was gravely ill, not to
mention completely infested with parasites. That was five years ago,
and as you can see, I'm fine now, thanks to AMMIE." Help and
treatment are not out of reach for even the poorest here it seems.
These organizations really seem to have their act together. One way
or another, we all will be working in some type of HIV/AIDS program,
be it awareness, condom distribution, etc.

We have had a lot of interesting classes, including cooking, and soon
they will teach us to make a mud stove. I want to learn how to make
that already, I want to upgrade the kitchen where I live, which
consists of exactly three rocks on the ground, with a fire burning in
the middle.

We visited a radio station today. Was kind of a trip down memory
lane. I will have my own 20 minutes on radio with my group in a week
or two. Our topic is diarrhea =) I'm happy that I will finally be
able to deliver my message myself in the target language.

Mooré class is good, I finally know what my granma has been telling me
all this time before I go out: "Wend na lebg laafi", "May God return
you safely". I have been neglecting a novel I'm supposed to be
reading for French class.

And now I have a class, so I might as well take my notes right here!

Information & Comunications Technology:
Local Cyber cafés - services provided: WWW access, data entry,
computer classes, Air Conditioning, some even have cold drinks for
sale.
Some have a limited interface, some give you full access to the OS.
Some are windows, some are Linux. If the place has no AC, then
workstations are prone to breaking down.
Costs are variable, 500F an hour here (about $1) but more expensive in
small villages, and cheaper in big cities.

Radio Stations - Voix Du Paysan - Focuses on the agricultural/farming
audience. People pay for ads like "I lost a cow, around the village
of X, it looks like so...". 8 people work full time, 24 part time.
Range of 100Km, sometimes broadcasts all the way to Mali. Software
used is Sony Soundforge. Government gives them a grant every year
(but this year they forgot to put in the paperwork and are not getting
any money) they also make money from advertising. They have a lot of
programming for educating and informing the audience, such as proper
farming practices, HIV/AIDS, female genital mutilation (which is still
done here, and is a leading cause of HIV infection).
They are really open to ideas, and had no problems making room for us
to go and talk one day on the air about diarrhea.

ICT activities I can try: getting more merchants to use phones,
establishing new cybercafés, [me personally, I want to look into
getting local artwork merchants to sell wares online]

Costs of a computer: More than double what one costs in the US.
Mainly due to high import taxes, since most people bringing in a lot
of computers are rich and/or foreign (which in this country, are
invariably also rich). Internet costs are a little crazy too: FasoNet
is 17700F a month, for dialup access, and add to that around 1200F a
minute(!) for a phone connection.
A cyber café is much more reasonable than Internet at home.

We will be getting a guide to computers in French, so I can say stuff
like "Double click the icon there". People learn variably here.
People with cell phones will have an easier time learning how to use a
computer it seems.

And I just got my "Trainee Directed Activities" notebook back. I have
to turn that in every week, with responses to a bunch of questions I
have to ask my family about their lives & businesses (dad has an art
craft store, mom sells sugared peanuts and coco au lait).

tick tock tick tock

like two days have passed and I still have not sent this out, so I'll
just make this email longer:

I also had an impressive class on agriculture in Africa from an
American PhD student that just happened to be in the area. Chances
are high that I will also work in Agrobusiness in one way or another.

I had an interview to help determine my placement in the country to
work. Basically, the information and communication tech stuff is what
grabbed my attention the most, and that is in the bigger cities. But,
I always stress that I don't mind working with whatever. I am more at
home with the ICT stuff, but I may discover I have a knack for
agribusines, or putting together credit and savings clubs, or doing
any of the things I am learning. And while I did pack optimistically
(regarding electricity) I can live without it. There are places I can
go to charge my laptops (yeah, I brought two, and other volunteers are
jealous. Apparently not a bad move here at all) near every village.
So I still don't know where I will be placed. There are people
requesting to be placed out in the boonies as far from light polution
as possible, and there are people who want to live like urban
princesses. And the Peace Corps is going to try to make everyone as
happy as possible. Let's see how that goes.

Mooré class yesterday was silly. We learned to count stuff, and
money, and that is not the same. Nu is five. Like, five chairs or
whatever. But it is also 25 Francs. Basically, multiply by five when
talking about money. So we need dictionaries and calculators to speak
this ancient tribal language. Class gave me a headache, saying 1337
Francs in Mooré is hard enough, doing the math to say it in French
about wore me out. And I may have to teach accounting in this
country... In Mooré (or Fulfulde, or Jula, or something else...)

Another day. Went to the marché (market) to buy stuff for our cooking
class. We made fajitas and banana bread. While at the marché I drank
zom koom (millet water beverage) and I checked on the progress of a
shirt and pants I'm getting made.
Also had a meeting with my savings and credit club, which I helped
start a while back. We also have a project for an income generating
activity, and we offered our idea (5 dried spice mix, popular kind of
thing here) to the group, and see if they feel like carrying it out.
If they end up making money, then all is good with us. I also plan
on making those nifty fly catchers I saw in Qatar, this country needs
them, and if a Burkinabé can make money making them, all the better.

And I had two encounters with locals who needed my English ability to
leave Burkina for work and school (one to the US, another to the
Netherlands).

And I was hit on by at least three women in various locations. I
haggled over the price of one of them with her brother in Mooré. She
cracked up when I said "barse, barse" (too much, lower the price for
me). I think he was saying he was giving her away for free.
And our cooking teacher (French Canadian) told us about how she never
expected to marry someone from West Africa, but did, and has been here
for 11 years.

;-)

And I think that is it for now, more later.

Stay safe,

René
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We finally know where we are going to be working for the next two years.
During my placement interview I requested a medium sized town, in the
south, electricity would be nice but not required. But I can be
flexible about all that, I could do something I already know, or
something totally new, like microfinance related stuff. I'm sure I'd
get the hang of whatever is thrown at me. And I can and I'm willing to
work in a structured environment.

I got Ouagadougou (formerly spelled Wagadugu, pronounced wagadoogoo),
capital of Burkina Faso.

Three of us will be working here. The other 35 are scattered accross
the country, in towns and villages of all sizes.

One volunteer in Ouaga will be working with artisans associations,
another with children's services of some kind. I will work with an
NGO, A.SU.DE.C (Africa's Sustainable Development Council). They do
stuff all accross the board - from health services, to agriculture
training, to microfinance - but emphasis seems to be on educating the
population about all that is available for them to do to improve their
situation in a self-sustaining way.
Among other things I don't know yet (which may become the bulk of my
work) I will also be doing website maintenance, and helping write
success stories about the stuff they do (ring any bells, anyone?).

We all went to Ouaga to find this stuff out, and I was lucky to be
able to visit my site right away. My office will be down the street
from the Peace Corps office.

Drawbacks: Pullution is nasty. Like Afghanistan, but with a little
more diesel fumes.
Everything is more expensive.
Crime is higher than in a smaller town. On our first night out in
Ouaga, a few hours after we were warned about the assortment of
thieves that roam the streets, a purse snatcher did his thing in the
cab I was sitting in, grabbing a trainees purse and dashing for it,
but only to get stomped by three volunteers that were standing outside
(they tripped him and stood on his back until police came. A local
punched him in the scuffle, and odds are the police beat the crap out
of the thief afterwards). The trainee lost none of her cash, but was
pretty rattled by the whole thing.

Details of ... protocol to note so far: If a thief is stopped, stolen
items dropped on the floor will not be touched by anyone (but the
owner). In a bar, a bottle will not be opened if whoever is going to
drink it is not watching it get opened.

A lot of Lebanese and European expats in the city. I can actually buy
a hookah and all related items at the supermarket. And there is a
regular Burkinabé market where I can shop for the ingredients I will
cook with. And there is a Vietnamese family in the city as well
(their story was one of great hardship, starting at the Ivory Coast
during the Vietnam war, and ending here in Burkina in a very
successful restaurant) And they have recao (cilantro) growing in
their front yard, which they imported from Vietnam. They got
Burkinabé citizenship just last year.

I will be paid more for being in the city, but probably not enough for
me to be able to afford to eat Indian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Mexican,
or whatever every day. Pho here is not as cheap as it is in the
States.

I got back to Ouahigouya yesterday. I will continue to study here for
another month, then I will swear in, go on a study period to my site,
then return here to get more technical training, for a few weeks, then
back to Ouaga.

More later,

René
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Hi all,
I'll just pick something random to start with:
The Burkinabé like to look good. Well, to a westerner good would be
subjective.
The Burkinabé like to wear bright, colorful, new-looking clothing.
They typically dress better than the average westerner for everyday
work or walks through town. Women that do not spend time or money on
their hair, wrap it in colorful headdress that matches their clothes.
The most basic garment is the pagne, usually just a piece of cloth
with a colorful pattern. In its most basic form, the pagne is used as
a skirt by women, simply wrapped around the waist and folded down a
little at the top to keep it in place. Female volunteers have been
wearing these from the start. Both men and women will have garments
made from pagnes. It is interesting to note that few patterns, if
any, are gender exclusive. Male volunteers are already having shirts
and pants made. My set cost around $8.25 (fabric and tailoring) and I
have only worn it on a couple of occasions. I will most likely wear
it for the swearing in ceremony. No female volunteers have worn any
pagne dresses yet.

Burkina Faso was rated by some big international body (UN
something-or-other I think) as being the 3rd poorest country in the
world (Afghanistan was number one, I think). Someone mentioned to me
recently, that his exellency Blaise Compaoré, president du Faso, now
on his third term, which is one more than the constitution here
allows, is one of the world's richest presidents. He has already
paved way to running a fourth time, thanks to the supreme court.
Pagnes and t-shirts with his face and party logo are very, very
popular. And the Burkinabé all laugh, some a little nervously like my
host father, when asked who killed the previous president (plus a
journalist and a singer who criticized Blaise). "Nobody knows!" they
say, with the exact same intonation and eye rolling as if they had
asked me to "Guess who!"

At least the people here are not really hungry. Malnutrition here is
merely due to ignorance. In the city where I am in, one can see a
child here or there with the classic Care commercial distended
bellies, or ladies with goiters, like my host grandmother. (After my
first informal sensibilisation, my family here is now adding iodized
salt to all of her meals.)
Kids here unfortunately, are typically fed crap. They often get only
leftovers and/or plain rice or tô (water and grain-flour "cream" not
unlike grits, and most often also made with corn, but sometimes millet
or sorghum.) [I got to try gourmet igname/yam/ñame tô, which is not
bad at all, and much healthier.] As a result of a protein and vitamin
deficient diet, kids often show signs of malnutrition. Beans,
peanuts, tomatoes, and a great variety of other foods like these grow
in every garden. Most health volunteers have as much of a background
in that as I do in business. Truly, what the Burkinabé need is just
someone with knowledge to walk around and teach them common sense and
dispel ignorance.
The word they use for this is sensibilisation. I have taken part in
at least two official ones: One over the radio, and one at my house.
The one over the radio was fun. I finally got to do what they never
let me do in Afghanistan: Sing to the target audience about diarrhea.
I also spoke as "village woman #2". All in French. I will supposedly
get audio files of this, which already played on the air. When I get
them, I will pass them on to you for your enjoyment, and benefit.
Remember, pour eviter la diarrhée, lave tes mains!
My other sensibilisation was about mud stoves. You all saw the
pictures of the kitchen at my house. The mud stove is basically a
more efficient version. A wall built around the fire to concentrate
heat, protect against wind, and overall reduce wood consumption (which
my family buys). So this morning I was helping mix 4 parts clay, with
one part water, one part hay, and one part manure. Yes! Join the Peace
Corps today, and you too can play with poo!

At least they are washing their hands before handling food pretty much
every time I take notice (remember, no running water, and they eat
everything with their hands) and meat is cooked fully everywhere here
(unlike in Rumania, where I never got a fully cooked piece of chicken
anywhere). Flies are a problem, and I am working on recreating some
nifty fly catchers I saw in Qatar. If I succeed in making them work,
I will pitch the idea to local vendors to make and sell (I can't
profit, of course).

The vast majority of goods for sale here seems to be made here, or
somewhere not too far here in West Africa. There are many notable
imports, like Laughing Cow cheese, and Guinness (Guinness Malta is
also available). Local beer is pretty good, and it is spoiling me:
Twice the size of an American beer, more alcoholic, and only a dollar.
Can't afford to get wasted, of course (and after drinking a bottle of
"sangría" that tasted like fruity Mannischewitz, plus a couple of
beers, I am going to watch what I put into my system from now on...
and if you must ask why I drank that, the simple answer: it was cold).

The weather is getting cooler. Roughly 80° in my room right now. My
host parents are now dressing up at night, with jackets even.
Occasionally a Burkinabé will don a puffy winter jacket if the
temperature dips to like 83° during the day. My family is convinced
that they can never visit Europe because the cold will kill them
immediately.

Stuff runs out. My mother in Puerto Rico once commented how people on
Vieques island will work only enough to make the little bit of money
necessary to get by, then close shop for the rest of the week.
Laziness like that is not very different here. More remarkable
however, is when stuff simply "runs out". On more than one occasion,
I have had to get up and walk to another restaurant, because they "ran
out of food" at the very beginning of lunch hour. In many cases, I
believe this really means that the chef ate lunch early, and is now in
'repos' or siesta (The Burkinabé enjoy a 3 hour lunch break, and some
do not bother to go back to work afterwards.)

Locally made stuff is often crappy. I spent a good ten minutes trying
to cut a toenail yesterday with a nail clipper I bought here. I gave
up. I bought a 'Much Bazooka' power adapter and extension cord here.
It fell from a height of two feet. It no longer works. My 'Super
Force' fan is working well still, I pray it survives transport to
Ouagadougou.

On the 22nd I move back to ECLA (Être comme les autres, some kind of
local NGO that works with everybody, kind of like ASUDEC that I will
be working with), where our training is based here in Ouahigouya. We
stayed there for a couple of nights before moving in with our host
families. I believe we will go to ECLA, swear in, then travel to our
sites for our étude period of two months, then back here for a few
more weeks of training, then back to our sites. I have to find out
how this is affecting our term of service, since we are swearing in a
little earlier. One thing I really like about the Peace Corps is that
we have an absurdly small amount of money, so great care is taken to
eliminate bullshit and make sure our training is relevant, and our
trainers and schedule are very flexible, and dependant on our
feedback. If the US Government gave the Peace Corps a
visible fraction of the money the Army gets, we would pretty much
automatically lose freedom and flexibility with our funds.
Oh well.
It seems paradoxical. I do feel as well taken care of as when I was
with the Army; if a volunteer gets sick, the treatment and handling is
the same (one criterium for selecting a work and training site is that
there has to be a field or something that makes a medevac possible),
and they take care to make sure I get fed three meals a day. And if I
request any kind of medical item, I will get it (including a packet of
orange flavored Gatorade, interestingly enough. Hydration is
important, and I request these daily). And they move all my stuff to
my site for me, so buying my furniture here in training is
recommended. But how am I getting to my site?
By BUS!
The volunteers working in the bush have it worse. A group of health
trainees were in a bush taxi van when it tipped over. None of the
trainees were hurt, and we all enjoyed hearing their story about the
lady that got out of the bus first, after stepping on peoples heads to
get out of a window, only to pop her head back in to demand that
someone hand her her phone.

I haven't had so much exitement... I tumbled off my bike once when a
car nearly hit me, and I spent a couple of hours the other day fixing
my first flat tire. After patching seven holes, I was given a new
tube. Thorns are the biking PCVs' mortal enemy. Well, not really
mortal, but health PCVs already living in village are sick of fixing
flats. My family quickly grabbed my flat and refashioned it into a
water hose for the metal drum that they wheel to the local well for
water. Pretty much nothing goes to waste here, and we fat, rich
westerners have to watch what we do with our garbage. Female
volunteers have already seen kids running around with tampon
applicators in their mouths.

I have to bring my laptop to the cybercafé and continue to download
Ouagadougou in Google earth.
I ate caterpillars last night. It is a delicacy in the southwest here.
I don't need to eat them again.
I have not received any physical mail yet, though to my understanding,
some is on the way. It's taking its sweet time.
And an ATM ate my card, just because. I won't be able to ask any bank
about it for a while though, not until I get back to Ouaga. I did not
feel like asking the guard about it at the time (Actually stands at
the ready with a shotgun while you are standing on his red tiles
getting your money).
I hate automation sometimes.
But I got paid $118 for the next two weeks today, so all is good =D

More later,

René
------------------------------------------
Notes:
To call me: dial direct 011 226 76 18 50 77, but calling cards are way
cheaper. 226 is the country code, and everything after it is my
personal cell phone number.
To mail me: AIR MAIL
Rene A. Prieto Polymeris
Corps De La Paix Americain
01 BP 6031 Ouagadougou 01
Burkina Faso (West Africa)
(Air Mail or better only, anything sent surface mail will never arrive)

To get added to this mailing list if someone forwarded this to you:
Just let me know -
To get removed from this mailing list: same
To reply, ask questions, or communicate in general: Same. Due to my
current salary of $3 a day, I can't afford the $1 per hour Internet
very often, and the connection is slow, so I may answer questions in
the general mail rather than reply individually, but I am always
looking forward to reading your messages. I'm sure when I get to my
site, I will be able to respond and mail more individually.