REVS+

The local partner organization that I’m going to be working for is called REVS+ (Espoir-Egalité-Vie-Solidarité), and yesterday I spent my first day there. I’m doing training until I leave for Houndé, the small town where I’ll be working. REVS+ is based in Bobo, but has antennas in Houndé and a few other surrounding towns. The staff from Houndé came all the way to Bobo to meet me, which was really kind, and they seem like very nice people. There’s one woman in particular, who is actually the woman whose job I’ll be sharing. It’s a neat set up…she’s called my ‘homologue’ (no idea what the English translation is) and basically we’re equals in the sense that our jobs are going to be identical, and my role is to support her in her job by helping create resources and tools so she can be more effective. It seems like a bit responsibility, and I’m wondering how I can do it when she knows so much more about the context and reality of the children we’re working for, but we got along very well, so I hope we’ll make a good team. When I get there, I’ll be shadowing her for about 2 weeks, and then we’ll sit down together and figure out my mandate. Basically, my mandate right now is really general, but essentially it involves providing support and programming for AIDS orphans and vulnerable children. We’ll be visiting the homes where they live, (which could include homes run by grandparents, by one parent, or by the children themselves), visiting hospitals, (which apparently here are used as a last resort…when you bring someone to the hospital, it’s because there’s no more hope…), organizing food distribution to families/children who need it, and organizing activities for them. When I start my mandate, we’ll come up with a list of activities, intended results, resources necessary, and an action plan, so I’ll get lots of say in what I end up doing, but with lots of guidance. I need to start learning dioula, the local language, firstly because it will allow me to communicate with everyone who doesn’t speak French, and secondly, because it sounds so cool!

I got to attend an activity yesterday at the Bobo office, which was basically a weekly gathering for the children to hang out and talk. They were adorable. Some of them look completely healthy, and others you can tell are sick. They are the cutest things ever though…really tiny, but what energy! And they’re very polite and mature…whenever one of them showed up, they would come and shake hands with all the adults. Greetings here are really nice. You really take the time to greet someone, which is no small undertaking. After doing this neat hand shake thing where you squeeze each other’s middle fingers and then do this fancy snap thing, you ask how they are, how their family is, how they slept, how their family slept, how work is going, if they ate well, etc. You don’t just walk by someone…you take the time to acknowledge them and greet them.

I also have news on my accommodation in Houndé. I’ll be living in a small house that’s actually attached to the office building. So no, I have no excuse to be late in the morning…the only sad thing about that is that I won’t get to drive my moped to work L (I am so excited about this moped!). I’ll live on my own, but the house actually is one of 4 that surround a small courtyard, so there will be other people around all the time. I also share a ‘bathroom’ with all of the inhabitants of those 3 houses. I will have electricity, but no running water. I can survive without the water, but with electricity I can have a fan, which will be a blessing once the rains stop and the hot season comes along. It’s hot enough right now…I can only imagine the ‘hot’ season. This is all I know, so more details to come later.

I tried ‘to’ yesterday, the most traditional of traditional Burkinabé foods. It’s basically corn flour transformed into a white gelatinous substance, with different sauces. The one I had was made of some leaf that I had never heard of before. The first bite was, um, interesting, to say the least, but the more I ate, the more I liked it! I was told that I’ll be eating a lot of it in Hound_é. Here in Bobo, the food is amazing. I’ve been eating meat almost twice a day, vegetables and fruits, and I have no complaints. It will change once I leave the city, but if I were to keep eating like this, I can see why Emanuèle (my friend who just finished her internship here) warned me about gaining weight…

Well, this is quite the blog entry! They won’t be too often, so I guess each time I’ll fill everyone in on weeks worth of news. In Houndé, my only Internet access will be at the medical building, which is the only building with Internet access. And that I’ll have to negotiate.

So far, I’m liking life here. I know it hasn’t been too long, and I do feel like we’ve sort of been living in a bubble, (we’ve had a driver, someone to take care of running errands for us, a great place to stay, air conditioning, running water, etc.) so I’m glad that I have a whole new experience coming when I move to Houndé and start working.

Take care everyone, and feel free to comment or send me an email. It’s nice to find them waiting for me when I find Internet!

A la prochaine!