We just finished our Close of Service (COS) Conference in Ouaga. It was three days jam packed with info on everything that needs to be done over the next few months before we leave the country, how to put these crazy adventures into words for resumes and job interviews, and how to adjust to life back in America without annoying all our relations with “well, when we were in Burkina…”. No promises on this last point.
Aside from the comfortable hotel (AC!) and good food (shrimp) COS was a little stressful. I think we all left with long to-do lists and that excited, nervous feeling right before a big change. After two years of learning to do things much slower than reason would deem necessary, we are on our way back into the “land of bonnes choses”. We’ve learned a lot of great things here but I think we have also picked up some habits that Americans may not appreciate. I would like to go ahead and ask our family and friends to forgive us the following:
· Slurping tea
· Arriving late
· Talking about people right in front of them (in English)
· Eating with our hands (especially meat).
· The full hand lick that follows eating with your hands
· “outfit of the week”: Wearing the same outfit to work everyday for a week (hey, as long as there’s no stains or holes…)
· “send a kid to do it”: Forgetting that children are not public property and you cannot discipline them or send them on errands for you
· Arriving unannounced at dinner time ready to be fed
· Carrying a spare roll of toilet paper on hand at all times (you just never know)
· Elbowing or shoving to ensure we get our spot in the car first
· “Visiting”: coming over and then sitting in uncomfortable (for you) silence
· Referring to the left hand as the “poop hand”
· Picking our nose (seriously, with all this dust a Kleenex does not get the job done)
We are hoping to tone some of these down before getting back. Like I said, life in Titao is going to be busy the next few weeks. The third trimester is only 6 weeks long and somewhere between lesson planning and grading we are hoping to get the computer lab open. In June, after school is finished, we are planning on holding a computer camp for teac
hers and students. We’ve never been to Ghana and still have three weeks of vacation time left so we would like to spend at least a week at the beach before heading back to Titao in July. Then we have four weeks to pack up, make the rounds saying goodbye to everyone in town, pig out on mangos and chicken, and head to Ouaga for a final medical exam. It’s hard to believe we’re only four months, one final trimester, one potato festival, gallons of sweat, and a metric ton of mangos away from finishing our service.
Aside from the comfortable hotel (AC!) and good food (shrimp) COS was a little stressful. I think we all left with long to-do lists and that excited, nervous feeling right before a big change. After two years of learning to do things much slower than reason would deem necessary, we are on our way back into the “land of bonnes choses”. We’ve learned a lot of great things here but I think we have also picked up some habits that Americans may not appreciate. I would like to go ahead and ask our family and friends to forgive us the following:· Slurping tea
· Arriving late
· Talking about people right in front of them (in English)
· Eating with our hands (especially meat).
· The full hand lick that follows eating with your hands
· “outfit of the week”: Wearing the same outfit to work everyday for a week (hey, as long as there’s no stains or holes…)
· “send a kid to do it”: Forgetting that children are not public property and you cannot discipline them or send them on errands for you
· Arriving unannounced at dinner time ready to be fed
· Carrying a spare roll of toilet paper on hand at all times (you just never know)
· Elbowing or shoving to ensure we get our spot in the car first
· “Visiting”: coming over and then sitting in uncomfortable (for you) silence
· Referring to the left hand as the “poop hand”
· Picking our nose (seriously, with all this dust a Kleenex does not get the job done)
We are hoping to tone some of these down before getting back. Like I said, life in Titao is going to be busy the next few weeks. The third trimester is only 6 weeks long and somewhere between lesson planning and grading we are hoping to get the computer lab open. In June, after school is finished, we are planning on holding a computer camp for teac
hers and students. We’ve never been to Ghana and still have three weeks of vacation time left so we would like to spend at least a week at the beach before heading back to Titao in July. Then we have four weeks to pack up, make the rounds saying goodbye to everyone in town, pig out on mangos and chicken, and head to Ouaga for a final medical exam. It’s hard to believe we’re only four months, one final trimester, one potato festival, gallons of sweat, and a metric ton of mangos away from finishing our service.*All the pictures are from my parents' trip to Burkina in December. About time I posted some new pictures, right.
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1 comment:
After two years back in America (wow), I can tell you that most of those bad habits went away eventually. I still feel very weird about using my left hand to do anything that's not bathroom-related, although I'm getting over it! And I really don't think I'll ever stop saying, "When I was in Burkina . . . "
I hope you get a chance to go to Ghana. Markus and I took my mom and sister there to see the monkeys and eat as much lobster as we could stuff in our faces. Africa: where the toilet paper's expensive but the lobster's dirt cheap.
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