To the People Gathered Around Radios in Far Away Worlds

Peace Corps was wonderful to us stagiares this past Tuesday for the US elections. They came around early Tuesday morning to our language classes and asked who wanted to stay at ECLA, our training compound that evening. 25 of the 32 volunteers signed up to stay in town. Even the health volunteers biked in from village to be closer to the action. I was just excited to be with everyone. ECLA has a TV and a satellite and I think they were going to try to figure out some way to watch French news. Some of the stagieres were hard-core and I knew they would keep us all updated on what was going on with statistics.

I of course went home right after training Tuesday night and like a dutiful daughter told my host family that I would not be staying there that evening, instead I would be staying at ECLA because of American elections. All I really had to say was Barrack Obama and all doors open, haha. My house dad of course freaked out and jumped up and down and wanted to know if I liked Obama. I of course said yes. He hugged me and said tampon tampon, which entails hitting his fist to my fist. Everyone loves Obama over here, however not many know what that means. Many people here do not even know what politics, policies, democracy, and bureaucracy mean.

Later that evening at ECLA, everyone was so excited to be together and nervous for the outcome of the election. Since we are 5 hours ahead of east coast states, it was pointless to wait around. Most of us decided to nap and get up around 4am to see if any results were in. There were a few die-hard stagieres, Chris and Josh that stayed up the entire night. There was one TV channel that showed sporadic French news mainly it was football (soccer) all the time. Most of us had not seen the health people for over a week so I spent most of the night catching up on everyone’s past week and demystification.

I had about 4 hours of sleep when Amanda came running into our room at 4:30 am shouting that Obama had won in a landslide and he was about to speak. We all ran outside to the TV where about 10 stagieres were bundled up blurry eyed in front of a small TV. I was so emotional, excited and euphoric all at the same time. We were all in shock most of us thought it would not be decided till the next day, Wednesday. It was not even midnight on the east coast and the United States had a new president-elect. We were all silent listening to Barrack speak English with French overtop. It was surreal and a part of me wished I was back home in the states. I felt proud to be an American and I am not going to lie, I became teary eyed, a little bit. It was a historic event and I will forever remember where I was when Barrack Obama became president.

The silence broke just once during Obama’s speech; when he called out to the people gathered around radios in far away worlds. We all clapped and shouted and laughed because he was talking about us and the Burkinabe people we are here to help.

After Obama finished speaking it did not take long for football to come back on, you know what matters the most everywhere besides the US, football. We all went back to our rooms and tried to get a few minutes rest before training began. Many of us feel so removed from it all because there is no CNN, internet, or television informing us of every move people make. There are no tabloids or SNL skits to watch, therefore things that happen in the states or elsewhere in the world take so much time to reach us. “Perfect knowledge” is definitely not present here in Burkina.