Hot Hot Heat! + Peace Corps and the Giant-est Training Ever!

One day Aaron was walking down the road towards his house when he thought to himself, “You know, the heat really isn’t so bad except for the burning sensation on your skin”. He then stopped and thought very hard about that, and how perhaps such sentiments are not entirely normal to other people. That was back in March when it was kind of true… the ambient temperature was reasonably acceptable to the body, although the sun itself might have been a tad unpleasant.
Now we are in the beginning of June, and the only thought entering into your average PCV mind is, ‘Please someone go sacrifice a chicken so it will rain’. Thus far, our lovely quotidienne cycle of ever-increasing heat and humidity ends only in giant annoying windstorms, which generally fail to bring the watery part of monsoons. Were I in the south of the country, I would already be enjoying things like planting millet and beans and corn in humid soil, and listening to the crazy thudding of actual rain on a tin roof. Instead I am in the north and, while we did indeed have a blessed few rains in mid-may, it’s been several weeks since any liquid coolant has descended from the sky.

At least there are mangoes.
…………………………………………
I am currently in the city of Ouahigouya (WHY-IH-GOO-YA) in order to help plan and prepare the training for 19 new community health volunteers, who will arrive in Burkina on June 23rd. I have talked to a few of them via the miracle of FaceBook, and by and large they seem concerned with languages and thermarests. This is about par for the course, although with the benefit of experience I can say that I use languages far more than thermarests, so it’s best to focus on the former.
So what is interesting about the group of incoming trainees? Well, beyond their inevitably diverse and effervescent personalities, the fact is that a total of 78 people are coming in for training all at the same time. This may not sound like terribly many people, but in fact it kind of is for the following reasons:

Thing 1: in the history of PC Burkina Faso, we have only ever trained about 40 people at any given time.
Thing 2: in addition to the 78 newbies, there will also be about 12 seasoned PCV teachers, 8 technical trainers, approximately 30 language trainers, and another 8 or so administrative staff. Altogether, we come to about 136 persons.
Thing 3: while all of this insanity is going on, there also needs to be enough staff in the Ouaga bureau to make sure that PCVs already in the field are reasonably well taken care of.

In short, PC Burkina volunteer training is a very significant undertaking. Our in-country staff will frequently be driving 3 hours between Ouahigouya and Ouagadougou (I still love these names….), and lots of useful resources like cars, bike parts, personnel, and tree seeds will be in high demand from many different directions.
At the same time, the veritable army of white people descending upon Ouahigouya will all be using the same 2 computer centers, the same post-office, the same 4-ish decent restaurants that the city has to offer, and just generally inundating the market with the purchasing of peanut butter, bananas, yogurt, sandwiches, and flip-flops. It is no real stretch to say that Peace Corps will be single-handedly changing the economic activity of the third largest city in Burkina.
Aaaaand we cannot leave out the social perspective. Firstly, for an incoming trainee, there are 77 people they have never before met, but who they are generally expected to try and tolerate. Creating a new set of family and friends in a foreign and ocassionally uncomfortable country is not the easiest of things. Secondly, current PCVs, for good or ill, are used to being quite on their own, having a good deal of privacy (notwithstanding pesky children clamoring at your door), making their own schedules, and being well-ish known and tolerated around their regions. Now we are back to being nameless ‘nasaaras’ (westerner) and having lots of what we refer to as “America Time”. This latter bit of ex-pat-esque jargon refers to social interactions between PCVs, and comes with pros and cons. On the one hand, ‘America Time’ is wonderful and allows us to speak in a first language about how hot we are, and about how the local school board refuses to help us make kids wash their hands with soap. On the other hand, being around lots of white people you can’t really claim to know all that well (see previous missives on idiosyncracies of Peace Corps friendships) can lose its shininess after a few days, particularly in large group situations. And as for scheduling, training is one giant expanse of blocked-out time. Yes we get an hour and a half for lunch, but in village we tend to get twice that, particularly during this part of the year when any sort of bodily movement is discouraged between the oven-like hours of 11am and 4pm.

I don’t even know how to sum this all up, other than to say that the nitty-gritty of ‘Development’ makes for some really odd situations, and certainly impacts a country’s economy simply via the maintenance of the development agency’s staff. Also, that PCVs are once again faced with incongruous social situations (but I begin to feel I have talked this latter, albeit interesting, point to death and my brain is beginning to rebel in general.)

In other news, my mom recently sent a bunch of old children’s books in french and english for kids in village. I opened the package, and what tumbled out but a well-worn and well-remembered copy of ‘The 500 Hats of Bartholemey Cubbins”. For about 5 seconds i didn’t move, and all too briefly felt the cozy sensation of being someone’s child. I then lifted out the accompanying hand-written note, signed by my parents, saying, “We love you more than you will ever know”. This is a really wonderful thing to (not) know.

Cheers
Aaron