Waggadoogoo

Hello from two new Peace Corps Volunteers. That's right, we are moving up the PC acronym hierarchy from PCTs to PCVs. OMG! Our time in Ouaga was great- it could probably be summed up in one word: food. We ate so much delicious food: Chinese, Indian, pizza, ice cream...it was amazing. For our wedding anniversary we went to a yummy French restaurant and ate way too much.

I have discovered some universal truths about PC volunteers here in Burkina (and maybe everywhere), we are all obsessed with food. And it seems to be an obsession that has developed while we've been here. Anytime someone came back from the hotel in Ouaga, the first question asked was always "what did you eat?". And that is almost always followed by "how much did that cost?" which is the second universal truth of volunteers: we are incredibly cheap.
We did do more than just eat in Ouaga, though. We did a tour of the PC office and the US Embassey (where we had delicious fajitas, burgers, and milkshakes) and met the ambassador. On Friday, we had our swearing-in ceremony which was fun. Lots of nassaras in Burkinabé clothes. The ambassador and the minister of education were there and some of the volunteers from our group gave speeches in French, Mooré, Jula, Gulmancema, Fulfuldé, and Lobiri. That was probably my favorite part and it also helped establish some equity in the crowd because I know that everyone present got to experience a few moments (some more than others) where they had no idea what was being said.

We also did lots of grocery shopping. The PC gives us money to buy supplies for our new house and since we didn't need a whole lot (thanks Jill and Markus) we bought lots of food that we cannot find in village. Speaking of food we can't find in village, some people have been asking for what they should send us so we made a wish list and posted it conveniently close to our mailing address. If you think the list is boring and would prefer to blow our minds with something we didn't even know we needed, feel free.

In other news, Aaron is better. They found his amoebas, gave him some meds and he is all fixed. He's actually been better for a while, I just didn't get the chance to tell anyone. Thanks for caring, and sorry for those who were worried.

Tomorrow we are moving to our village. We have a month before school starts to meet people and get comfortable. It sounds like the first month or so consists of a lot confusing miscommunications and staring at the wall out of boredom (anyone ready to visit yet?). And while there are goats and chickens a plenty, they don't have their wi-fi connection yet so it might be a while before we get online again: we are hoping to come to town once a month. So feel free to call or write letters. Also, our blog will be picture-free for a while until we get a new camera or our current one stops acting like an idiot. Right now, Aaron and the camera aren't speaking and he refuses to take it anywhere just in case because "what is the ****ing point, the ****ing thing waits until we get to ****ing Africa where we have to way to ****ing fix it and it ****ing quits working!" (He hasn't said that exactly, but the emotions are there.) So for pictures from swear-in, you may want to check out other blogs.

And if anyone finds themselves in Iowa thinking "man, that river is cool but I wish there was some way I could learn about the history, geology, ecology, etc. along the river while aboard some sort of floating craft..." I hear Stephanie gives awesome boat tours, just watch out for the mean driver.

I (heart) les Jeux Olympiques

There are some people out there who don’t like the Olympics. I am pretty sure I wouldn’t get along with these people. I love the Olympics, love ‘em. I love the Olympics like the Burkinabé love Celine Dion, and they really love her. Our host family has a Celine Dion dvd and we have watched that thing more than once. The cyber café has a Celine Dion calendar and I have stopped being shocked when I see a bad-ass African guy driving a moto, smoking a cigarette, and sporting a Celine shirt.

The Olympics also serves as a good way to spend some time with the host family. They like to watch t.v. and sleep during the day because it is their summer break and since I can only watch so many Burkina gov’t sponsored soap operas and they keep refusing my offers to go head-to-toe at nap time, there isn’t a lot of interaction on the weekends normally. But now I can watch the Olympics with my fam and we all have fun. This weekend I watched some soccer with our host sister and brother. Quick note about this host brother: he was introduced as a brother but we really aren’t sure who he is. He’s someone between 18 and 30 years old and just showed up one day and he’s been staying here for the last week. Family trees are pretty much impossible to discern here because everyone seems to be a brother or aunt or something when they are introduced. Our host mom has only given birth to one son and yet we have met three host brothers and been told about others (and this isn’t because our dad has multiple wives as is the case in other families).

The Olympics have also given me a pleasant distraction from training on the weekends and now we are almost done! Only one week left. Then we go to Oauga for a couple of days and finally, on Friday, we have our swear-in at the ambassador’s. I am really excited to see the end of training approach, but it will be sad to see everyone dispurse to their various sites. I will definitely miss our weekly training newsletter, the Haut Cinq (that’s “high five” in French). Every week a different group of 3 to 4 people put together a newsletter and it is always lots of fun. The latest one included a choose-your-own-adventure trashy romance haiku.

As part of our Peace Corps commitment to share American culture with others abroad, we’ve been teaching our Burkinabé teachers American cultural staples such as “that’s what she said” (ça c’est ce qu’elle a dit) and “douche bag”. Every now and then they will use it correctly and we feel like we are really making a difference here.

But seriously, I can’t wait to get to our site and get to work. I have so many ideas I want to try and if one or two of them results in maybe a couple of community meetings or a girls club at my school I will be so excited. We went to a talk on female genital mutilization last week that was really interesting. Sadly, it is a big problem here, made worse by the fact that any kind of intimate subject (puberty, sex, etc.) are taboo to discuss here. I am not sure how, or if, we will be able to address this in our community but I would like to try. A lot of what we will do will depend on what the community needs, not what we want them to do, so we will have to wait and see.

Other than that, things are good. Aaron has been pooping blood for the last 6 weeks so he is going to Oauga tomorrow to get some tests done. Poor guy. I had some girls in my class give me a letter today with some pictures of flowers that I’ve taught them and a letter that says they want to be my friend and it has their email address. It is really cute.

I put a few pictures up. There is Aaron sporting his new outfit. The men here have a pretty sweet deal in that their formal outfits can also double as pajamas. Then there is picture of us all dressed up with our family. See if you can pick out which ones we are. Finally, there was this really sweet jumping spider that caught a fly and Aaron got some really good pictures of it.

Peace Corps Funding

As Amy mentioned, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is providing ~$500 million to Burkina Faso over the next 5 (or so) years for agriculture, road improvement, and female education projects. Here’s what slays me: This $500 million was approved by Congress. The Peace Corps budget is also approved by Congress. I forget the exact number, but the PC budget for the entire globe is on the order of $400 million. Furthermore, the budget for BF is ~$2.5 million, and decreasing. Now, if we didn’t have a demand or a supply of volunteers, I would say go ahead and cut the budget, but as it is, they actually have to limit the number of volunteers they can let into the country each year, purely for budgeting reasons. Now, it sounds nice to say, “There are more Americans that want to serve Burkina Faso than we can afford,” but when Congress gives 200x the PCBF budget to our country, it makes one think that perhaps it would be worth it to throw a little more in our direction.

Now, I know that, “it just doesn’t work like that,” but just look at the numbers. And how efficiently do you think that money will be spent? At least some of it is going to end up in the wrong hands/bank accounts. PCVs don’t build roads, but there is an established agriculture program in PC (not in BF, but in many PC countries) that teaches communities what kinds of crops to grow, how to grow them sustainably, and how to do without expensive fertilizer (Kai, a friend and PCV in Zambia is teaching just this. He says the local word for agriculture is synonymous with fertilizer, obviously there are some misconceptions…). It seems like adding this PC program and a bunch of volunteers to the country and making the MCC funds available to their communities would be a good way to ensure that the funds are spent wisely and effectively.

On the other hand, a note about the program’s effectiveness: The program has been operating for 2.5 years already building schools. In that amount of time they’ve built 132 schools. Compare this to the poor guy I discussed in my post about the book “Three Cups of Tea.” He has been in Pakistan and Afghanistan for 14 years and has built 50 schools. The difference funding makes.

That’s all. I just want people to see the numbers. Compare the PC budget with other government programs’ and NGO’s budgets and look at the quality and efficiency of the work the PC does and it begs the question, why isn’t more spent on the program? President Bush recently said of the PC, “It really is the best foreign policy America could possibly have.”

Hello everyone. Hope you are all well. To those of you who have already started school, I am sorry to hear that. Everything here is going great. We are almost done with training!!! We officially swear in on August 29. Model school is going well. Aaron kicked someone out of his class this week. I played Jeopardy with my class. We are giving our first tests this week. I am going to need some time to get used to the grading system here. In America, the "average" grade is always above average, around 70%. But here, it seems like the gauge for making a good test, a good homework, or a good class is if the average is more like 50%. Kind of depressing: my first test average was a 7.85 out of 20.

Aaron and I got formal Burkina Faso outfits made for our swear-in ceremony. We will put some more pictures up along with pictures of us teaching. Aaron's picture is kind of dark because I didn't want to disrupt his class by using the flash (he caused quite a stir in my class).

For my engineering brethren out there: last night I dreamed that I was teaching statics in French. About the time I woke up, I was trying to translate "free body diagram".

We recently heard that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has approved $500 million for Burkina Faso to support agriculture, building roads and schools, and girls’ education. I guess Burkina finally made the cut for funding by being a good democracy. It's really exciting to hear about the funding but it is also a little frustrating for us because the Peace Corps budget for Burkina Faso is less than $3 million and our budget was just cut 4% for next year. This means that they will have to reduce the number of volunteers here. Aaron has been writing feverishly since hearing about this so I am sure he will write more about it later. Prepare to be outraged :)

Jenn, we got your letter last week! I thought it was a goner for sure. Thanks so much for the letter and news articles. Mom, thanks so much for the spices and pictures. We can't wait to get cooking. Thanks to Marissa, Dara, and Trish for the emails and comments. We love hearing news from home. We are in the process of trying to buy a one laptop per child laptop so hopefully when we get that sorted out, we will have more time to spend writing our blog entries. Until next time...

The new Jill and Markus

Everybody keeps calling us the new Jill and Markus so here you are:

Meet Joanna Thomas

I would just like to start by saying that here at the Rose's blog, we pride ourselves on customer service. We are all about giving the people what they want and need. We know there are other blogs out there with more interesting stories and better grammar (I hear Michael’s blog is pretty good), but you are reading ours and we appreciate it.

So in the spirit of customer service, we have heard that some people (I am talking to you Joanna's boyfriend and parents) have been checking the blog in hopes of new pictures or stories of Joanna only to be disappointed time and again. My first reaction upon hearing this: Are we not good enough? What's the big deal about Joanna anyway? But then I remembered our goal of serving the people so this blog entry is for you Joanna's parents and Aaron (Joanna's boyfriend):

Joanna Thomas: exposed

Perhaps some of you have seen pictures of a tall, blonde forever smiling and found yourself asking, "What is it that makes her so happy?"
The answer: unhappiness

World, meet Joanna Thomas. She goes by many aliases; in her village they call her Aisha, but I think Danielle says it best when she describes Joanna as "the captain of the bitter boat". This string bean of gloominess is always the first to complain whenever it is time to do group work, go to language class, ride bikes, eat, breathe...If this were Snow White, Joanna would be Grumpy Dwarf (only surprisingly tall).

Yes her persistent bad mood and negativity is annoying, but what really gets my goat is her complete disregard for the cultural values here. In a country where skirts should be below the knee, I would deem Joanna's tube tops and miniskirts not culturally appropriate. And yes, her language skills have improved, but as Danielle again points out "Joanna has learned most of her French from the guys at the bars every night."
Maybe the fact that she knows every cabaret in town could be described as good integration into the community but I think bringing sachets of whiskey to morning language class is a bit much.
As far as I can tell, Joanna's favorite past time is seeing how many kids she can bring to tears on her rides through village.

So there you have it, it's not pretty. Maybe it is best if we stick to tales of the latest parasite Aaron and I have contracted.

But all joking aside, we love this girl. She's probably the most cheerful person I have ever known and we are lucky to have her here with us. Sorry there aren't more pictures for you but we only get to see her once a week.