November Photography

New baby Siadou (Oct. 18th) with his grand mother and cousin Cynthia.  My very close neighbors.

Didier, the tailor I work with.  He has been able to save enough money to make improvements to his shop.  Check out the newly cemented floor.

At the restaurant I work at: Claris (the head lady), Ella, and Barnabe (Drink guy) eat some of the fried chicken and chilli I prepared.  

The american cuisine has really not been experienced beyond the restaurant staff.  They eat A LOT, it is crazy.

Abdul and Roman cleaning my courtyard from all the weeds.

Another American cuisine day and the only people that eat my food are the people that work at the restaurant.  The kid is Lefote, an orphaned student from my English club.  He ROCKS

Out under ASUDEC's student foyer, kids from my English club work on Math problems.  

Balebara shows Jean Luc and others how a math problem is figured out.  

Zerferhin, Mr. Tall, and Dominic pose in the room of literacy books for the villages.  All of these books alphabetize local languages for the region. 

The agents of ASUDEC and the American donors sit down at sunset to talk and enjoy a cold drink. November 10th

Madame Seb and Claris prepare french fries, veggies, and chicken for the inauguration of ASUDEC's hotel Chez Flo.

The agents of ASUDEC chill in the shade

This is a huge pot of chicken innerds, heads, and feet which will all be eaten. YUM YUM

This is what I prepared for the inauguration dinner, American fried chicken and french fries.

Dr. Schneider and the Director of ASUDEC cut the ribbon and head into Chez Flo with a ton of Burkinabe functionaires. 

Lagou my counterpart and Dr. Schneider plant a mango tree to commemorate the event.  

This would NEVER pass in the USA, preparing food ON THE FLOOR.  Yes you can imagine how frustrated I get working at this restaurant.  

The donor table with elite Burkinabe from Diebougou. 

Zerperhin and Barnabe enjoying the chicken way too much, they even eat the bones.

The director of ASUDEC (right) catching up with his brother who lives in Bapla (village)

Mamyata's (mom) family welcomes a new baby girl Grace (in the outfit I got her) with her older sisters Cynthia and Fleur

Baby Grace is soo huge

Grandpapa and Grandmama

Grandpa and Grandma with their grand kids, Baby Sidou, 1 yr old Yakouba, and Cynthia

Isn't she beautiful

Mariam, my really good friend, who shouts through my window everyday. It used to annoy me but now I love it.  She is a jokster

Adorable

Didier shows the outfit he made for my cousin's son Bryce.

I LOVE taking photos of elder Burkinabe

Baby Siadou 1 week old with his mommy Mamgellia

Yakouba on his 1st birthday, he is precious

Cynthia licking the bowl out of all the chocolate from the brownies I made for Yakouba's birthday.  

I Cannot Believe ONE Year Has Gone By

I cannot believe I have been living in Burkina for over a year. I feel like I have so much more to do here at my site and not enough time to do it. One year left does not seem like enough time, scary. October came and went by so fast and I know it was because I was so busy. I also said goodbye to one of my closest neighbors (32km away) and very good friend Matthew. He was a second year volunteer and he finished his service in the beginning of November. It will definitely be an adjustment living without his visits up to DBG this next year.


On the first of October I had a very nice and constructive visit with my boss and the Director of ASUDEC. I found this very helpful because it allowed me to organize my service and discuss things I have done and enabled me to plan for future activities. We were also able to discuss some successes and failures about my first year here in Burkina. It really energized me and I am happy to say that I have shed off the lethargic feeling of the summer, when it was difficult to any projects done.


I also began to spend more and more time at ASUDEC and it has incredibly helped with my deeper integration with my ASUDEC colleagues.


ACTIVITIES:

 ENGLSIH CLUB: School started back up in the beginning of October; therefore, I began facilitating English clubs for the “junior high” and “high school” students. For this school year we decided that I would do all the clubs on Saturday during the day. Even though the kids go to school Saturday mornings they are normally finished with lessons around 10am. I do two 1 1/2 hour sessions, the “junior high” kids come in the morning at 11am and the “high school” students come after repose at 3pm. Between the hours of 12pm and 3pm I stay at ASUDEC’s NEW restaurant and help any student on a one-on-one basis. Thus my ENTIRE Saturday is spent at ASUDEC. Attendance varies and I am trying to increase the number of girls, like everything else here in Burkina, it is hard to get girls to participate especially when their families want them at home “working.”


The first couple of weeks of English club entailed basic discussion, which is Gwen asking the students questions about themselves. As you can recall from last year they are fine with written English but oral English eludes them, and I find myself repeating question 4-5 times before one of their friends tells them what I asked in French. I know it is because they are nervous, and when put on a spot their minds become muddled. Rarely are they ever called on during school so this club aspect is different for them.


The students also began writing letters to my mother’s junior high students (Linglestown Middle School Silver Knights) back in the United States. Burkinabes treasure the opportunity to have a foreign correspondence but since most of my “kids” are in their late teens and early twenties it took a while for them to comprehend that they would be writing to students between the ages of 11-13 years old.


The student give me the letters when they have finished, some students wrote 3-4 drafts before they were ready to give it to me. I then mail them back to America and hope that the Silver Knights send responses back to me.


NOTE: It is hard to explain to Americans how much a correspondence means to a Burkinabe. I am asked everyday to find people correspondences back in the States. I do not know how this culture came about but Burkinabe think that their American pen pal will send them things or be able to bring them to the United States. Then on the other hand it is a prestige thing something they can tell people, brag about. I have been with my Burkinabe friends and they will bring out a 10 year old letter from a foreigner and they are SO PROUD of the letter and the photos that might have came with it and they INSIST that I read the letter because they do not understand a word of it.


 RAISING MONEY FOR LIBRARY BOOKS: With the help of my sister and mother who designed a website to raise funds back in the United States for the traveling village library I want to start here in the Bougouriba region of Diebougou. All of the details are on the website so PLEASE check out www.mrsarmstrong.com and if you would like to donate funds to this cause please email Kathryn Armstrong at karmstrong@cdschools.org. To raise money I have been purchasing African arts and crafts to bring back to the United States when I come home in December. The Linglestown Middle School will then auction off these items to raise more money for the library here.


The goal of this project is to provide funds to purchase books written in French and local languages to donate to the town’s library. Children, young adults, farmers, weavers, traders, and others in very poor villages should have similar access to information- through books and other media- as people in developed countries. Besides children’s books, books will focus on gender and development, women's rights, healthy reproduction practices, and how to start and manage a small business. By providing books written in French, many children could begin to understand the language before attending primary school. Books will also be bought to further the dreams and education of these village children; for example books with photos of the world (geography) and professions besides farming (98% of Burkina Faso’s population are subsistent farmers).


 RESTAURANT: As you read earlier ASUDEC is renting out a part of their building as a restaurant to gain more funding for projects at the village level. In October I went and worked first with the accounting and bookkeeping of the new restaurant owner, Claris, a former employee of ASUDEC. This is her first adventure into running a restaurant and bar. Along with tracking her inventory I have also made suggestions to the layout of the kitchen and insisted on more shelves being built and having produce NOT laying around on the ground. It has been VERY VERY FRUSTRATING. There have been many cultural barriers to cross and I have only just begun. Many days I will show up and have to wait around 1-2 hours because Claris decided not to be there. She employs her family and it is very hard to express myself sometimes. I have only brushed the surface of this activity and hopefully I will not become too frustrated with her. My counterpart Lagou has been a wonderful venting board and I am not alone with my frustration with Claris. Sometimes I wish they had found another women to rent out the restaurant.


Besides accounting and inventory in the future I hope to move towards food preparation, hygiene, customer service, and marketing. I have also opened the door to the idea of preparing American food on certain days of the week and teaching Claris and the other women how to make “American” dishes like tortillas and grilled cheese. This will start up in November and work towards an even greater cross-cultural exchange at my site.


 PREPARATION FOR DONOR VISIT: A main reason the director of ASUDEC wants me to work with Claris the restaurant owner is that a major American donor is coming to visit ASUDEC’s offices in Diebougou in the beginning of November. I am to help with the organization for the visit and help with food preparation for the guests. The donor, a very good friend of the Director, a Dr. Schneider from Georgia, is coming to open the 5 hotel rooms that ASUDEC built here this past year. The inauguration will be on November 11th and the Director has asked me to make Fried Chicken since one of his top 3 American things is KFC Chicken, ha-ha.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

“Summer has come and past the innocent can never last . . .

. . . wake me up when September ends.”

After being away from my site in august I was ready to put roots in the ground and stay in Diebougou for the entire month of September. I conducted a couple small projects around town but mainly stayed close to my own home. With burkinabe on vacation or in the fields, I took the time to gear up for a couple big activities that will commence in October.

Small Projects I worked on in September:

- I went out and bought a spiral notebook for my tailor. I am working with him to improve his small tailor business here in Diebougou. I did not mind paying for the notebook to get him started in proper accounting and money management. I sat down with him and constructed a way to organize all of his customers in the notebook so he could become accountable and reliable. We also talked about saving money and eventually improving the infrastructure of his shop or fixing broken sewing machines.

I follow up with him every week to track his business and make sure he is accounting every transaction. It helps that I went crazy buying fabric in August. I therefore, get something new made every week, ha-ha. I will have a whole new wardrobe when I come back to the USA.

He will not change his business transactions overnight, but hopefully by the time I leave Burkina he has learned something from me and he has saved up to improve his business and his family.

- The other small project I worked on was in my front yard. I asked my neighbors to come over to my house for little meetings and I sensiblized them on moringa trees. I then gave each of my neighbors 15 trees each so they could plant in their own courtyards and use the leaves for preparing meals. The kids and I then planted more moringa in my courtyard to replace the ones that were taken. I plan to continue to sensibilize people on the wonderful benefits of moringa here in Diebougou. My goal is to create a market for moringa in the market here in Diebougou. Presently, moringa is not sold in Diebougou and I plan to change that by the end of my service.

Besides these small activities I have been spending a lot of time with my neighbors integrating myself within my community here in Diebougou. I have also made vast improvements to my house. I have had masons come to my house to close some holes in my back wall where it connected to my tin roof. This was to not allow animals to enter my house. I was having bats enter my house at night and fly around, not the most ideal living situation. Well after all the holes were closed I had 2 bats that did not take a hint to leave during the construction. So I had to be super stealth and came up with a way to have them leave my house without me killing them. It involved me waiting silently in the dark for about 3 hours one night and opening the screen when they started flying around the house. My house is now free of bats (fingers crossed). I just have a couple lizards and my next task is to kill the mouse that has all of a sudden decided to take residence with me. I bet these are not the types of animals that pop into mind when you think of Africa. I also did not expect how much of my day would be consumed with thinking of ways to get them out of my house, haha.

On a happy note, I began to bike everyday (13-15km) as a way to keep in shape and greet more people using my local language. I mainly do it for sport and fitness and couple it with 30-45 mins of yoga and strength training when I get back to my house. It is so enjoyable to watch the sunset every day from the small mountains on the outskirts of Diebougou. It makes me so thankful to be here in Africa!!!!

October is gearing up to be a big month activities wise and I will also be celebrating the anniversary of living in Burkina Faso for ONE YEAR on October 15^th. Stay tuned for more updates at the end of the month when I will be in Ouagadougou for my Mid Service Conference. Yes, you heard right I am halfway done with my Peace Corps service, CRAZY!!!

Ohh I almost forgot I will be coming back to the United States December 15^th and will be States-side till January 4^th. Send me an email if you would like to catch up while I am back.

Blogs to come:

1. Activities in October

African Literacy Project- about the Traveling village library I am trying to fund with the help of Linglestown Middle School here in Diebougou for this region’s villages. If you are interested in learning more about this project check out www.mrsarmstrong.com

Summer Lovin. . .Happened So Fast

So I realized the other day that I have not written in a long time, since May and I was shocked that time has flown by here in Burkina Faso. Since it is the rainy season practically all projects have been put on hold because EVERYONE is out in the fields cultivating.

In June, I left BF for the first time since arriving last October and met up with my mom and dad in the UK. I had an amazing 18 days out of country and was surprised to find that I was excited to get back to Burkina. It has become home to me. After a month of travel I was ready for some peace and quite in July.

Going to the UK was not the jolt I thought it would be to my senses. I found that it was rather easy to just transition back to the developed world and all the amenities that England had to offer. While I was there, Burkina and my life here in Africa felt like a dream, another life, another Gwen. The hardest part was actually trying to explain the difference between Burkina and Britain to my relatives. I found that I could not verbally explain my experience here. It is hard for people to grasp the realities of life in a developing country. Having people imagine what life would be like with no running water or a toilet to sit on is a tall order to grasp and comprehend. My time here has made me appreciate everything we have in a developing country. Things as simple as a sidewalk or warm water while you take a shower, (or even a shower) are things that you take for granted if you never lived without.

Thinking about it, it is as hard as describing the United States to a Burkinabe.

My vacation was all about food and multimedia. I practically jumped up and down when I went to the movie theatre with my father. My days were programmed around food and drinking lattes. Some days I would have four desserts in a single day. Needless to say I know I gained almost 10 pounds while I was there. Seeing my parents was amazing and it was astonishing how we got back into our normal routine. Besides eating I spent a lot of time downloading TV shows and music from iTunes to entertain me when I got back to Burkina. Shopping consisted of books, magazines, and food I could bring back to Burkina. I also snatched up as many condiment packets as I could get, yeah HP brown sauce.

Coming back to Burkina was not hard because I had so much to entertain me once I came back. TV shows and books to read in the sactuary that is my house, made me actually look forward to my return to Diebougou. When I was back in Diebougou it felt weird and it took me two weeks to adjust back into my former life. I was happy to be back but it took me 2 weeks to get back into my former routine and actually want to talk to Burkinabe again. I wanted to be by myself and reaclimate on my own, therefore I spent most of my days in July at my house. Most of my friends had left Diebougou and I could not get much work done because my Burkinabe counterparts were either in the fields or on vacation. I think I spent maybe $30 in all of July and enjoyed my life as a hermit in my hut.
When I was in Hay-on-Wye, Wales I bought this amazing book on the body’s energy and the different studies around the world; Tai chi, Yoga, etc. It has changed my outlook on life and fitness. I now have included over an hour of Yoga/Tai chi to my daily routine.

I have not been in Diebougou at all, all of August. I had a girls’ camp the first week of August in a village 25 km from my site in Tiankoura. I partnered with Jen H. a girls empowerment volunteer; we facilitated a girls camp for 12 girls in her village for a week. View some photos below.

I then went up to cook with the volunteers in OHG and see my host family for the first time since I left them last December. I then celebrated my birthday in Ouaga with some funfetti cupcakes that had been sent to me, they were YUMMY and with some real icing (also sent over).

The days after my birthday I went southeast of Ouaga to my friend Brittany’s village in Beka and spent 4 nights there en brousse. It was my second week without electricity which made me very thankful that I do not have to cook in the dark at my house in DBG. Beka was gorgeous and really reminded me of Hershey because of all the farming and it was a lot flatter than my area of Burkina. It was so lovely and she lives 5 min walk to a lake. The only problem with her site is transport there, bush taxi. Imagine my family’s old Ford Aerostar with 35-40 people crammed in from wall to wall. 5 people across one seat with a huge hiker’s backpack on your lap for 4 hours (a seat spring sticking into your butt), the last 2 hours on dirt potholed roads. It was horrible and I am so thankful I have a proper bus to my site. I would never want to leave my site if that was my only transport option. Beka was beautiful though and I was able to do some baby weighing and watch vaccinations while there. Brittany is a health volunteer.

My last week in August I found myself in Ouaga for the week working (new volunteer swearing in and committee work), therefore I am really excited to be going back to site and being ALONE.

My facebook presently has up-to-date photos to last night so check them out. I also have AMAZING news my aunt Non bought me a plane flight home to the United States for Christmas and I will be home for about 3 weeks. 5 days will be spent down in Florida visiting her that first week. Make sure you put it in your calendars. Gwen in USA from December 15th to January 4th 2010. Send me an email and I can make plans to see you!!! I am super excited to be back with family and friends. I cannot believe it has been a year.

All of the girls that participated in the Girls Camp

Two artists finish up their sign to hang up for the Girls Camp ceremony

The girls practicing the theatre skit they had come up with and planned to perform in front of the village.

Girls having fun playing capture the flag

Jen plays capture the flag with the girls on the football pitch.

Girls love drawing something they never get to do.

Girls write up positive things about each other

Girls finishing up writing positive things about each other on their drawings

Izzy my lizard (in my house) meets Bart the bat in my spare bedroom. Bart is on the right of the cement cutout.

Lagou my counterpart sooooo HAPPY to get his Manchester United jersey from my trip to England. He kicks an imaginary football in my courtyard.

Photo Observations from an Outsider

A women carrying a canery of Dolo on top of her head. Yes that is filled with liquid.

My counterpart Lagou and his wife Mary out at dinner eating chicken out of a bag.

As a Peace Corps volunteer we get all of the medicine we could EVER WANT. Everything is for FREE and when we run out of something we just ask for more. Therefore please do not send me anymore Pepto bismal. :)

Lagou in my courtyard preparing a plot for my moringa trees. Yes he is wearing NO SHOES. Burkinabe do not wear shoes when farming and sometimes never at all.

I put Jen and Matthew to work planting moringa seeds. Matthew and Jen are my closest PCV neighbors.

We all get out hads dirty. The moringa trees were planted on April 17th and in later photos you will see how fast they grow.

Local Millet Beer called Dolo. Yum warm beer.

A women serving the dolo prepares it for the men beside me. She first uses a leaf to spoon off the foam.

She then pours it into a calabash and hands it to the man beside me.

Dolo. I try not to drink dolo due to the unfiltered water they use and I am not sure about how sanitary it is.

Pouring of the Dolo.

My OLD courtyard door. You can see how safe I felt. Anyone could come in whenever they wanted. I had NO PRIVACY. Sorry I forgot to take a photo of my new door will do that soon.

Abdul and Marque put dirt into water sasays getting ready to plant their own moringa.

I told them I would water their trees for two months and they when they have grown they could take them and put them in their family's courtyard.

This is right before a storm hits my village. It gets Crazy windy and I have to hide inside my house.

The road that I live on right before it rains.

My counterpart Lagou teaching a class on basic agriculture skills. This is what a traditional classroom looks like in Burkina Faso.

The only breeze and light come from open windors. Desks are raised benches.

Women pilling shea nuts in what looks like to be a tree trunk. This will then be boiled to make shea butter. Look at their arms, muscles.

In the action. They do this for hours in the heat. This is taken in the village of Navielgane en brousse.

Gwen with her Moringa trees, 3 weeks after planting them.

Moringa sasays which I can then give away to my neighbors.

Moringa cuttings. I will dry the leaves and then give them to my neighbors for them to use in their sauces. Tons of vitamins.

Diane and Arme help me pull the leave off the moringa and put them into tamis to dry.