Peace Corps Fun!

2011-09-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

2008-12-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

wow america's cold! So i'm back in america, turns out i caught some strange african disease so i'm here in washington, dc to get better. they're going to do surgery and take out a piece of lymph node tomorrow to see what kind of fun parasites are inside. awesome. I'm just worried that they may not let me come back since i only have nine months left. But I really want to come back!! I feel bad leaving my students since the school is already understaffed, i have tests and stuff to give, i have projects planned like a theatre group and a school garden that i really want to get done, i have all these vacations planned not to mention that francois and my friends and my dogs are over there. I really want to go to the ivory coast in august :( we shall see. For now, i'm somewhat enjoying america, eating at every moment i'm not asleep, feeling cold for the first time in 2 years, having REAL coffee with international delight coffee creamer, and discovering things like peppermint hersey kisses! And chocolate skittles??? And John and Kate plus eight. My family picked me up from the airport, i'm staying at a really sweet place with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen and has lots of public transport options. There's other peace corps medevacs here from other countries, and another one from burkina faso! Alexis drove up and spent the day with me yesterday which was nice. Friday after the surgery I may be heading up to spend the weekend at home in philly!! That'll be awesome i'll get to see the dogs and the house and the neighborhood :)

so most of my free time is spent considering what to do now. Best case senario, they figure out whats wrong with me, fix me really fast and send me back to africa with no problems. I have 45 days to get better and then if everyone is cool about it they will fly me back to continue working in the same village. If recovery takes longer than that and i can't recover in africa for some reason they will send me home to philly and then within one year once im better i can apply to be reinstated in the same country but in a different program and a different village. After a year i have to completely reapply to the peace corps. Well, after a year i would probably have to find another job in burkina since the odds of getting the same country are pretty slim. The whole reason, of course, that im thinking so much about all of this is cause i dont want to leave francois. well, we shall see what happens. we should know more next week.

2008-11-01T09:52:00.000-07:00

This week is Siao, which is a big arts and crafts festival in ouaga. All the artists in west africa come to ouaga to sell their crap. I'll be alone so i know i'm going to be hasseled BIG time with people wanting to rip me off from the taxi ride on but i can't not go, theres going to be so much cool stuff there! Good/bad thing is, the banks are closed today because of some obscure holiday so I'm only going to siao with 10,000 CFA, about 20 dollars, so i can't go crazy on the buying stuff. Though I may be coming back to ouaga on thursday to pick up grant money, if so i can go to the bank and then i can go crazy with the buying stuff!!

So what else is going on. Some of my friends and I are planning on camel treking through the desert for thanksgiving, then doing a safari about a week before christmas and then spending christmas on the beaches in togo. Then I'll come back and spend new years with francois in ouaga. With a week in togo i should have about one week of vacation left to go hiking in mali, and maybe swing by and see the garaffes in niger some time before my peace corps adventure runs out. I also really want to see the elephants and the waterfalls in banfora sometime!! I feel like I still haven't done a whole lot to take advantage of my time here, but I'm planning things and some of them, like the camel treking and safari and togo vacations are starting to materialize. Also the vacation I'm REALLY looking forward to will be when peace corps is over around the end of july francois and I are planning to spend all of august and september lying on the beaches and eating pineapples in the ivory coast. That will be SO nice!!

okay well i'm going to head to siao now have fun in america land!

2008-10-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

HAPPY RAMADAN EVERYONE!!! Actually ramadan was two days ago so happy late ramadan! Karem is the 30 (i think) day fast that muslims do where they cant eat or drink anything from 5am till 6pm, and its very difficult in this hot weather. Well the last day of Karem everyone goes to the mosque in the morning then around 10amish the prayer is over, the fast is over, and everyone is relieved and happy and they celebrate by gorging themselves until they get sick (I drank so much bissap that I literally thought I was going to throw up). Last year ramadan was soon after I got to my village so I didnt really know anyone, but this year I was with francois in his neighborhood so I got the full experience of ramadan. It's like the best possible mix of thanksgiving and halloween: you go door to door to all your neighbors but instead of getting candy you get entire meals. And bissap. Lots and lots of bissap, which is like a syrupy-grapeish type of juice made from boiling flowers. Seriously drank SO much of that stuff, and then we biked way way out to buy really good zoom koom, which is like sugared flour water (really good once you get used to it), but when we finally got there, they didnt have zoom koom that day. What did they have????? Bissap of course!! Bissap was like the last thing in the world I wanted to consume more of, but since we had biked all the way out there I figured what the hell, and we drank more bissap, and then the owner came out and of course since francois knows everyone in this country he knows the owner of the zoom koom/bissap place so he came out and greeted us with... YOU GUESSED IT more bissap!! So thats when i started to feel ill like I was literally going to throw up all over the place and we still had that long bike ride back. I didn't throw up, I'm happy to say. But to this day I still don't feel quite right. I guess rediculous ammounts of that syrupy grapey juice just isn't good for you.

So francois is on his way over to help write a new grant for the theatre project. We're still working on that its taking way longer than it should. The deadline is in four days so we'll see if this thing actually ever happens.

Okay well I just found out I'm getting a sitemate!!!! That means another peace corps volunteer will be living with me in bourzanga. Score!!

2008-08-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

hello again!!
okay so i'm blogging again when the summer is almost over. it's now the middle of august. I've been sick for like a month I dont know what is up with that. First francois gave me a cold, and from there i got headaches which turned into a cough which turned into a fever with sneezing and the worst headache i've ever had in my life which no ammount of drugs would make go away, until i took antibiotics, which didnt work, finally I came to ouaga and took very strong antibiotics and codine to ease the pain, which worked, but i still feel sick to my stomach and dont have an appetite, and i just started sneezing again. Okay so the doctors when they healed me with strong antibiotics called it a lung infection cause they could hear crackling in my lungs but at the same time i had ameobas, which i guess caused the stomach problems. Anyway, theyre all supposedly cured and gone at this point but i still dont feel quite right. I'm going back to village tomorrow, maybe a few days of lots of sleep and relaxation (ie bordem) will do me good.

mmm i just ate a banana split

anyway, things are going very well. I just got back from ouahigouya where i talked to the new trainees about what it's like to date a burkinabe. They were more interested than I thought they'd be. We went over on time but they all stayed and asked lots of questions even after already hearing a long speech about it given by me and my friend andrea. I remember this session from when i was in training and I remember noone asked any questions. So anyway it was good.

So what have I done this summer. I've been avoiding village as much as I can, theres nothing to do and its really boring during the rainy season (thats now). So I hang out in ouaga when I can, since francois is here, and I've gotten to know his family and neighborhood friends a bit. I went to koudougou for life skills training, francois and I went horseback riding which was freaking awesome, I spent a little bit of time in kongoussi in the beginning of the summer, a week in ouaga for mid service training, and two weeks in france with my parents. France was fun but it was way too romantic to be there with my parents, I missed francois. But it was very fun and great to be in a developed country again!

So i learned something scary today. My friend has been dating a burkinabe for a year and he just got married to someone else a couple weeks ago that she had no idea about. What the hell??

hi everyone. this is cassandra's friend zach. you should come visit.

Ya that was zach. He says I can delete that but I think I'll keep it.
Anyway, I think this year I will work hard on actually getting secondary projects going. I am going to get a ton of moringa seeds and give them to my students so we can plant them and grow them together, and then I will teach them how to care for them in their courtyards and how to cultivate the leaves, or maybe we will start a school garden, or plant them around the community, I'm not really sure. Francois and I are also working on getting funding for a theatre production about HIV, and I will do an english club.

Okay Im going to go watch pochahontus. bye!!

2008-04-12T10:12:00.000-07:00

so im in kongoussi. thats funny that i wrote about my inability to start a relationship in that last blog cause exactly two days after writing that blog i started dating someone!! his name's François, hes a beautiful man with a georgeous smile and he treats me like a princess. hes the history and french teacher at my school. he grew up in cote d'ivoire and now lives in ouaga when hes not teaching in my village in bourzanga. he makes me very happy :) ive been out of bourzanga two days and i miss him. anyway, hes been my best friend in village for about six months and i think its been pretty obvious from the beginning that we both liked eachother but for some reason he wouldnt ask me out until this last break we were hanging out at the american embassy in ouaga and i told him "you like me, i like you, for the love of god do something about this!" so weve been together ever since :) anyway, just wanted to report the good news!

i came down to kongoussi to go to the bank and it turns out there are seven other volunteers here for a birthday party so im staying the whole weekend and partying with them. last night we had meat and drinks (coke for me, beers for everyone else) (one doesnt eat meat very often here so eating a bunch of goat meat and then very good grilled chicken makes for a good celebration) and then today they convinced me to stay instead of going home to my man and we spent all day watching House DVDs and eating frozen M&Ms. life is good in kongoussi :) so i guess tonight well be partying again maybe with some more meat and coke, or im hoping to get my hands on some really awesomely good kongoussi yougurt ive been craving since i got here. they serve it very cold with bread and its amazing.

next weekend im in djibo for the big april birthdays joint party in the north! my birthday is monday im turning 25! i cant tell you how happy i am about turning 25 in africa. i feel like im accomplishing things, experiencing things and seeing things. i feel very good about where i am right now and i cant wait to spend my first birthday in africa!

okay well i do actually have to accomplish some things on the internet (ie write my quarterly report) so im going to get on that. africa rocks!! till next time bye!!

2008-04-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

hey there! well its been five months since ive written in my blog. sorry! i will try to write more often. the bad thing is, i dont write letters or emails, i dont even have a journal and i hardly take pictures. im going to leave and after a few years i will have no memory of this place. but i read a quote that inspired me yesterday "Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly start remedying them - every day begin the task anew" --Saint Francis de Sales. so here i am, i will journal!

so things have changed a little bit in the last few months. i no longer have the happy 11 hours of teaching every week, i now have 19 hours. the students werent happy with the way the director was teaching english so they went on strike and got a new teacher, and in order for him to teach 3eme i took the two 6eme classes, so that makes 19 hours for me. i decided i really dont enjoy teaching and i dont even like those damn kids they are all like little soldiers with every teacher except for me, in my classes its like a party, the little bastards. anyway, the teachers are awesome, we setteled into a routine at the end of this last trimester where everyday at 3 oclock we would start tea and end when it got dark so everyone can go eat and sometimes we would reconvene after dinner and then the tea-taking would continue until maybe 11ish. its fun, even though i dont participate too much in the conversation. im to the point in my french where i can always get the point across but when it comes to rapid fire conversation intersperssed with local language, i still get pretty lost.

yesterday i decided to say a big SCREW YOU GUYS IM GOING HOME to the world for my eternal singleness and made a conscious decision not to see my inability to have a relationship not as a fault but as a virtue and exploit it for all its worth. being unattached at this age grants almost unlimited freedom to do adventurous things. so screw you, world, when im done with africa im going to asia. after peace corps, ill travel around east africa, spend a few months in america then im heading off to somewhere in asia to teach english. the programs are easy enough to get into for americans and they actually pay real money. awesome! im doing it. im already sad to be leaving africa. i really do love it here. i will most likely do a third year working with an ngo in a regional capital before heading off to asia. africa's an amazing place, and having at least a loose idea of a plan for afterwards makes me sad to leave, i can already imagine missing burkina lots. i will be sure to appreciate this place as much as possible while im here.

so let me elaborate on the whole tea taking process. process is definately the correct word for it. it takes hours and hours, often all day. you have charcoal, two tiny tea pots, one to four shot glasses, one large glass, a tray or plate, tea, sugar, water, and if youre lucky mint or vanilla. first you wash everything with water (noone ever skips this first step), get the charcoal hot in a little basket, then you measure out one shotglass full of tea and one large glass full of water and you add that to a little tea pot and put it over the charcoal to heat up. then you wait for it to heat up and when its boiling over, you pour the tea out into the large glass, then pour the tea back into the pot and pour it back out several more times then put it back on the charcoal to heat up again. repeat about two more times, then you transfer the tea to the second teapot, add water to the same tea leaves in the first tea pot (this is called the duxieme) and heat that up, meanwhile you add sugar to the large glass and mix it with the tea in the second tea pot, then you make the foam by pouring the tea from way up high over the large glass, then into the tea pot, over and over until theres lots of foam, then you put the foam into the little shot glasses and heat the tea (with mint or vanilla optional) over the charcoal, meanwhile you mix the duxieme into the large glass, then you pour the hot tea into the shot glasses with the foam, and serve it on the plate or platter, in order of the most important people present. its really good with peanuts floating in the tea. In america tea parties are for little girls and their stuffed animals, but here its a very testosterone driven male-only activity, and at any point of any day you are gauranteed to see groups of men outside taking tea. i have managed to inflitrate this world and take tea with my teachers daily, i have even made the tea several times, mastering the entire complicated process. i rock. they just say that my tea is a tad too strong.

so for christmas and new years me and almost all of the volunteers in burkina went to ghana! now that was fun! christmas on the beach!! it was awesome. i had kenny chesney's "all i want for christmas is a real good tan" stuck in my head the whole time. we took a 24 hour bus down to the coast and that on its own was an adventure. i used so many of the most unsightly latrines imaginable on that trip. many people resorted to going in feilds, between buildings or behind cars but i never did. we stopped in the middle of the night for about an hour at a place where we all got off and ate egg sandwiches and drank hot chocolate. i cant tell you how happy i was to eat egg sandwiches and drink hot chocolate with my friends in the middle of ghana at 2 in the morning just a few days before christmas. It was just one of those expriences i will taken with me forever. so some people actually managed to sleep on that bus ride, i was not one of them. we spent a week with a volunteer's friend who is researching sea turtles on the beach so after lounging around on the beach for several days, on christmas eve at night we went walking down the beach looking for turles laying eggs. we didnt find any and then we got tired so we stopped by a fishing boat and we all fell asleep on the sand. we then woke up at midnight, said merry christmas and walked back. christmas was spent on the beach and eating seafood and then a party at night. i got a little sick so i went home early at the party but i had a great time. after christmas we went to a second beach and stayed at an amazing resort where we all got a faux mudhut literally right on the beach with a resaraunt, bar, gift shop, bonfires every night. it was all for 5 dollars a night! ya, it was freaking awesome. so new years was spent there, specifically watching a really bad magic/hiphop show. but the whole trip was amazing, ghana is definatly a more developed place than burkina, and the beaches were beautiful.

so recently ive traveled around a bit, visited djibo, dori, kaya, ouaga, and a little village east of ouaga. thats most of the central north and central burkina, next i want to visit west and south, in the bobo, banfora, cote d'ivoire region.

there are now two new volunteers in kongoussi, my regional capital. i went five weeks once without leaving my village and i was going INSANE so after that ive been leaving every two weeks on the dot to kongoussi and the two volunteers, the electricity, big stores, and internet. it was a very wise decision.

well i cant think of anything else to say. i love africa, my site, my collueges, the other volunteers. im excited about my plans for the future and im working on appreciate every moment i have here. i miss america a lot sometimes, and the people there, especially lex, my best friend. but i will see everyone again someday, once africa's done with me and i'm tired of traversing the world.

oh im going to france in the end of june just got my ticket. im so excited cant wait!!! the developped world woohooo!!!

bye!

2007-11-16T11:25:00.000-08:00

hello! so its been a long time since ive been online, over a month now i think. internet here is a difficult thing. i made it out to kongoussi, a regional capital, a month or so ago but the internet was down. several weeks before that i was in kongoussi and the internet worked but the next day it didnt work. anyway, then a few weeks ago i went to another capital, djibo, but it doesnt have internet. im very happy at my site so i guess i dont leave enough to have regular access to internet like that. now im in the magical land of ouagadougou which has AIRCONDITIONED internet! and its free! aaahhhh life is good in ouaga :) we're having chinese food tonight for dinner :) and for all the people who havent received letters (thats everyone) sorry! writing letters and getting to a post office is difficult here, but i have started letters for my parents, lex, hope, tom and meredyth, and sara, so sometime in the next two years i will send them... or ill just wait and put them in a mailbox when i get back to the states! My email is Catasyne_7@yahoo.com so if i dont have your email please send it to me and whenever im online i can send you a message.

so lets update the blog i forget where i left off i know its been a while. im at site, and life is good. the first couple of months at site were definately the hardest time in all of peace corps for me. it was very hard leaving my friends from stage and suddenly being the only american for miles and miles. the hardest part for me is definatly the language barrier. my french is slowly coming but those first couple of weeks at site i lost the ability to speak or understand french and those were a lonely couple of weeks. i figured out something about myself, when im nervous i loose the ability to speak french, and those first couple of weeks was a pretty nerve-wracking experience. but life is good now. i got four great teachers at my school, and were all really great friends. i see everyone everyday, we hang out everyday to the point where if i just come around at night they're like where were you this morning? so we chill all the time and we seriously crack eachother up its awesome i love my site and i love the teachers! the people are what make me love my village, the village itself doesnt have a whole lot but im happy with what i have. the simplicity of village life is nice sometimes. theres one bar where i go a lot to drink cokes with my friends or with people passing through who decide they want to buy the white person a coke. theres one church that has services on saturdays in french. theres no electricity or running water or paved roads until you hit either kongoussi to the south or djibo to the north, but those things arent necessary really, today i took a cold shower at the transit house by choice i actually prefer cold water over hot water now. the cooking situation is difficult, because there are no magical boxes called microwaves to cook my food for me and there are no magical boxes called dishwashers to wash my dishes for me and doing everything by hand is tedious and difficult and i still havent gotten the hang of it. but it will come.

I am teaching sixieme svt and cinqieme english, thats like sixth grade science and seventh grade english. ive got about three hundred students between three classes. i only have to work 11 hours a week which is nice but the other teachers work a lot more and i think they're bitter about that. oh well. it seems to be pretty normal amoung the peace corps community.

i have a puppy her name is sarabi, shes two months old and a little terror. she likes attacking my feet. but shes good company and we go on walks to the other teachers houses every night. shes starting to walk more and more with me which is great at first she would follow only as far as road right in front of the house and then she would turn back but now she goes a lot further before turning back and one time she actually followed me all the way to another teachers house i was so proud of her! usually if i want her to come i have to carry her until she doesnt know the way back and then she will follow. she mostly stays outside because she isnt house trained and she enjoys destroying the things in my house. the kids in my family are very good about playing with her and keeping her entertained. i really like the kids in my family, i give them sugar everyday to put in their to, which is this horrible millet-based food that they have to eat everyday but apparently with sugar its better. ive noticed i have grown accustomed to the burkinabe cuisine because i used to hate all burkinabe food but then i liked these things called bu-maasa which kinda taste like donuts without sugar. so then i would take them home and add sugar and theyre really good! now i like bu-maasa, somsa, gallets, and the traditional tea that they drink a lot here. its served in a shot glass and its very very strong and bitter even after they add a ton of sugar. i HATED it with a passion through stage and in the early days at site but now i love it i drink it a lot with the neighbors and the other teachers and the gendarmes. its definatly an acquired taste.

well lets see what has been happening lately... im in ouaga right now with another teacher from my village, he is going to help me by chasing away the crazy people and negotiating the prices for clothes at the market. hes a great friend did i mention i love my village??

okay i have to go eat chinese food now horray!!!

bye!!

2007-08-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

im really happy here and i want to talk about how awesome things are here cause im in a happy mood today. i love alot of things about stag i sure hope i like my site as much as i like stag. its hard for me to describe how awesome the people are here. the lcfs (trainers) im convinced are the greatest people in the world. theyre all burkinabe and they are the most proficient english speakers ive met in country. i really dont know how they got so good in english because my counterpart got his degree in english and he was the best english speaker of all the counterparts at the workshop and his english wasnt as good as the lcfs. someone said the lcfs left country to learn english, like to europe or something but my lcf vini (hes SO awesome!) said he has only ever left burkina once, when he went to cote d'ivoire a few years ago. but vini is an amazing english speaker and he also speaks italian and spanish and native languages and the guy i was tutoring with is named patrice and hes fluent in im convinced every language. tutoring is my favorite part of the day now isnt that just weird?? theyre also just the most awesome people youd ever meet anywhere like the other day in tutoring i got a call on my phone from someone speaking french and i couldnt understand him so i handed the phone to patrice and he talked to him for me. and the first week in country, when i managed to get myself hopelessly lost and scared out of my mind in this big scary city a burkinabe saw me and took pity and called the peace corps and told them theres a lost white person here and three lcfs showed up within minutes in a car to drive me and my bike home. i now realize i was about a block away from my house. and theyre always happy and joking and laughing and about everything theyre the kind of people you want to hang out no matter where you are. 30 minutes late to class cause you were doing your laundry and you started too late cause youre just lazy like that? pas de probleme! oops sorry i just ran over your foot with my bike cause i was stupid and not paying attention! nah, c`est pas grave, pas de probleme! i swear they say pas de probleme fifty times a day and when youre freaking out because youre in a strange new culture and you just majorly screwed up AGAIN and you have to appologize AGAIN cause everythings so different here and you cant keep your times and cultures and customs straight, you need every one of those pas de problemes. seriously, pas de probleme makes everything better. pas de probleme is the answer to all of lifes little problems. its the theme song of my life here, like hakuna matata!
oh and being late is no big deal here cause nothing ever starts on time, the accronym we all say here is WAIT: West African International! Time haha! this is my kind of place!

2007-08-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

hello again!
so my friend who was serving in kenya got admin sep'ed from peace corps but im not sure why. it made me a little worried about my position here i hope they dont just randomly kick people from peace corps for no good reason like that. anyway, so i have a gross story about pooing in a cup if you dont want to hear it skip the paragraph below.
okay so i have had diareha for a week and i finally called the pcmo about it and she said to send a stool sample to the hospital to see if i have a bacteria or something. so i had woke up real sick this morning and used the latrine right away, then i used the bathrooms about 30 minutes later when i got to ecla, THEN i called the pcmo, who said to poo in a cup but i was empty by then and couldnt poo anymore so i waited for a while, and i ate an entire package of mints lex sent me, and i ate a granola bar and drank a coke and then my stomach hurt, so then i jumped around in circles for a while in the med unit but it didnt work so i finally went to session, called the pcmo again and she said the lab closes at noon and if i couldnt do it by then i could do a miff kit tomorrow and save it till monday and they could test it then. a miff kit is when you put a little bit of poo in preservatives. anyway, at about 11:45 all my hard work paid off and i was able to poo in the cup and the driver took it to the hospital. but the problem is all my hard work paid off too well and now cause of all that crap i ate i have diareah really bad right now, obviously, since i ate a whole thing of mints and a granola bar and a coke and i jumped around in circles, and i was already sick to begin with. the funny part was trying to explain in french to the driver how i couldnt go right now but i will be able to go in a little bit, if he would just wait, he didnt get it though he thought i had forgotten about it and thats why i hadnt given him the cup back.
that stories nothing though, another stagiere who wont be named, got sick in the morning, but the latrine was occupied so she had to poo in a bag in her room, but then she had to carry the bag out to the living room where her family was, and everyone was shaking her hand and greeting her while she was holding her bag of poo and then she was biking with her bag of poo so she could throw it out somewhere, and then when she tossed it into a ditch two kids ran over really excited to the bag thinking there was something exciting inside and she just yelled "ne touche pas! ne touche pas!" and biked off. now thats an awesome story!
anyway, it looks like i really messed up discipline in model school during the first two weeks, my kids were recking havok the last day. im going to have to crack the whip this next time around i start a new class on tuesday with quatrieme geology, i am going to have to speak louder i think and pretend im mad all the time though aparently there arent a whole lot of discipline problems in this class. the last day of class i thought i was doing so well, i showed up before anyone else at 7:15 to work on my lesson and report my grades, and i was still working on my lesson at 9:15 when i realized class starts at 9 today, not 10, like every other day that week. so i showed up fifteen minutes late and the proviseur was there and he was pissed cause my kids were of course aaaall over the place and being really loud. so ya i really screwed up but im going to try to make it up during the last two weeks of model school. trainings almost over!! we had another language test today and our safety and security test today. for our safety and security test we have to make a hundred percent or we cant swear in as volunteers. if i didnt make a hundred this time around i can take it one more time but then they say theyll kick me out. i hope i made a hundred this time that would be nerve racking to take the test again knowing if i screw up i have to go home. as for the language test im worried my level might have actually gone down since the last test, cause i was real nervous before the last test so i studied a lot and had tutoring every day to prepare. i still get tutoring every day but this time i didnt really mind the test that much and i just winged the whole thing, plus the last one was only two weeks ago so i think my level may have actually gone down since the last test and they may say im intermediate low now instead of intermediate mid. i have to get to intermediate high to go to site.
so ive officially lost 10 pounds. i also lost my belt. this means i have to button my pants in the first belt loop for them to fit, and actually right now theyre getting to wear theyre loose in the first belt loop and im going to have to switch to the second belt loop soon. its because of all the biking im doing mostly, i still eat junk food i buy from the supermarches and that i got in care packages. also im not sitting around watching tv all day im actually outside all day doing things cause unless you have a fan being inside is just too hot. seriously everyone here lives outside im inside right now but i have a nice big fan on right over me so its okay. all our sessions pretty much are outside under the hangar, all our language classes are outside under hangars or at restaurants where all the tables and chairs are outside. even when its "inside" usually theres a wall missing for better air circulation so its really more like a big hangar. when im home my family always hangs out outside unless they are watching tv or taking naps, but i dont join them usually cause its too hot.
anyway, not much fascinating has been going on here. africa is awesome! teaching is hard. its been really hot here, despite the rain. im sick, but i pooed in a cup to get better. thats about it. oh my computer wont turn on so it might possibly be dead. it may be because of the heat, these arent exactly ideal conditions in which to store a laptop. oh well i will try again on monday. if it doesnt work again i dont know what i will do. i guess keep it to prop up my bed if it gets wobbly. i dont know how i could repair it here or send it home.
we had the best class ever the other day, it was a cooking class where we went out and bought ingredients and created our menu and cooked our food and we made mexican pizza and mac and cheese and onion rings and crepes with mango preserves and it was all sooooooo good! then we had an after class tutoring session on how to make and serve traditional tea. it was given by siaka, who is the sweetest guy ever and hes completly addicted to tea so he knows all about how to prepare it. that was a fun session. however, i was sick then, i guess this was monday? so i couldnt drink much and i had to leave. i learned a lot though and im definatly going to get a tea set if kara didnt leave me one. i didnt think to look for one during the site visit.
okay well dont know what else. will write again latta! oh and if anyone feels like writing to me, my address again is:

Katharine Heaton, PCT
S/c Corps de la Paix
01 B.P. 6031
Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso

send:
spice packets
all kinds of fast food sauce packets
parmassen cheese
any and all cheese products that dont need to be refrigerated
real coffee!
powdered coffee creamer!
anything to add to real coffee!
brownie/cookies/cake mix
mashed potatoes mix with gravy mix
any just add water food
any american food or candy
anything else at all will be appreciated i promise :)

thank you!!

2007-07-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

helloooo again ya im writing two blogs in two days can you tell im bored? well lets see today i got up a few minutes after 6 and i thought i had overslept my alarm until i remembered its sunday. i couldnt fall back asleep after that though so i just hung out in bed till 7:30 then i got up and ate what remained of breakfast with the delicious yummy coffee creamer i got from the states (thank you!!) then everyone was out doing things and im officially out of underwear and i had a small mountain of it under my table in my room and the thing about underwear here is youre not allowed to wash it in front of people cause they freak out so youre supposed to wash it when you take your bucket bath but i had so much this morning that when everyone was gone i just filled up two buckets of water, brought them to my room and washed my underwear there and hung everything up on my misquito net. there was a lot of laundry though and it took a long time to wash and then immediately after i came outside my mom told me to do my laundry. ssooo i brought all my non-underwear laundry outside and started scrubbing that but by that time my hands were getting raw and red from all the water and scrubbing and half way through they started to bleed so i told my mom i cut myself on something and the bond finished the laundry for me so that was nice. after that i finished cleaning my room and swept it for the first time in five weeks. this is after a dozen or so sandstorms. lets just say there was a very large pile of dirt at the end. after that i worked on my lesson plan until lunch and then i came here. so i feel very ackomplished today and i have to say fairly confident in my ability to teach a whole lesson tomorrow. i practiced a few sentences in front of my mom and later im going to recite the whole thing to make sure it is understandable. for lunch my mom made tamarin juice with filtered water and it was good but its messing with my stomach right now. eating and drinking here can be tricky. americans get sick very easily off of this stuff i have been lucky so far my family does a good job preparing everything so as to not make me sick and im very grateful for that.
well not much else to report since yesterday.
okay well hope everything is going well in the states. if anyone is so inclined you can send me stuff to cook with like spice packets so i never have to eat to again! okay bye!

2007-07-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

random blog
heeey its me again. i have been coming here alot since i re-discovered the internet! anyway, so model school has officially begun; i co-taught on friday and it went pretty well, the kids understood me at least to the extent that i got all of the right answers out of them when i asked the questions at the end. sooo much better than the micro-teach where i got only blank stares and i panicked and my french completely went away and i felt like an idiot. on friday i had a pcvf almost write my whole lesson for me but this time i ran out of time and couldnt do that so it will be interesting to see if it goes as well when i actually have to write the lesson myself, or if it will end up more like the micro-teach.

anyway, only a few more weeks of training and then i am living at my site. its actually a really scary thought. i dont want to leave the trainees and the lcfs i have spent everyday with for months theyre the only thing i know about this country so its going to be sooo much different after stag.

aaahhhh okay im sick of having to delete stag and stageires, its french and people here speak french and i speak french or usually franglais now not english and these are two words i dont even ever think about in english anymore unless im writing a blog or an email so im just going to teach you the words now so i can use them and not have to keep changing them back to english: stag means training, stageires means trainees. stag, stageires... got it? okay good... moving on...

so its like you could totally hate stag and love your site or love stag and be miserable at site cause everythings really so different. at site i wont have electricity or other stagieres or the lcfs (trainers) that i have been spending all of everyday with since day one so im real nervous about moving to site but i didnt join the peace corps for the training i joined to move to a village so thats what im going to do its just going to have to be weird for a while i guess.

thank you for everyone who has sent packages and letters!! thank you thank you!! i have received four packages so far and a lot of letters and thats more than almost everyone and people hate me for it and that makes me very happy so thank you!! thanks to you i now eat granola bars every day and drink delicious creamy goodness in my coffee every morning instead of disguisting instant watered down nescafe crap! so thank you! the letters and packages really do make me very very happy everyday :)

anyway dont know what to say.. kinda like in the states, im completely out of underwear so i guess im going to have to faire my lessives (do the laundry) today when i get back. a stagiere explained why we have to say faire my lessives in franglais and we never say were doing the laundry because here fairing your lessives means putting omo in a bucket of water and scrubbing the lessives and rinsing them in another bucket, doing laundry means throwing dirty clothes in a machine and pushing a button then throwing the wet clean clothes in another machine and pushing a button. theyre two very different processes and so they have different names even though they technically translate as the same thing.

aaanyway only eight minutes left so im going to roll. enjoy america for me!!

2007-07-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

elcome back to the world of burkina faso!! so i just got back from site visit. it was a pretty awesome experience. it started in ouaga where i was in heaven eating nothing but pizza and ice cream and milkshakes and hamburgers and french fries and creme brulee and chimichangas and chili cheese fries and i was sssooooo happy for my three days of food heaven. we also hung out at the american embassy and met a couple of other americans who werent peace corps which was first for me. i played pool and watched american tv on a big screen tv and ate more good american food and milkshakes. we also went to a wine bar which was the nicest place ive seen in burkina. it had air conditioning and big cushiony leather couches and big flat screen tvs and expensive bottles of wine and cheese platters. i think for a while we all forgot we were in africa. oh ya and we also had a counterparts workshop where i met the person im going to be working with at site and hes actually my director and hes the best english speaker of all of the counterparts. after that they tore me kicking and screaming from ouaga up to my site. its pretty north and the landscape is pretty dry and sparse and lacking in any kind of folliage or color which is why i was shocked to show up to a lake at my village! its like an oasis it has greenery and big trees and a ton of baobobs and its really beautiful there, theres even this big rock mountain-esque thing in the distance which pretty to look at. its like living in a park where you would go to have a picnic except its in my backyard right below the sahel desert and i wasnt expecting that at all it makes me very happy :)
another thing that makes me happy: my house is stocked! i expected an empty or sparsely furnished house but its seriously stocked with everything i will need it even has a spice cabinet filled with spices and theres vinager and soy sauce and onions in a bowl hanging above the double burner propane stove and im seriously going to have to learn how to cook! there are also three or four storage trunks and theyre all filled with stuff the previous volunteer left including everything from cooking things to a ton of teaching supplies and everyday things i will need theres even two solar panels and two shortwave radios and a tape player and tapes and a power adaptor and a cot for sleeping outside and a frying pan and a desk for working and three matresses for the bed so i almost feels like one real matress, she even put up a calendar of kittens and opened it up to august and wrote "welcome to bourzanga" in the last week. do you get the picture? im completely set up and ready to go im sooo excited about living in my awesome house!
the house is in the courtyard of a family im going to be living with there are three girls and two boys i think and i think one lives next door for some reason. my parents are awesome and the dad gave me the african name which is a tradition here and my name is awa. i love my name :)
anyway, after the site i went to the bus station and threw up for the first time since i was about ten, then took a VERY bumpy ride up to djibo and watched family guy on a volunteers laptop. the next morning we biked 25 km north through the sahel desert to get to a village with no transport. we were supposed to bike 30km but the wind was pounding the entire time in the wrong direction so that down hill felt like uphill and uphill felt like dieing might be easier and the thought of ever moving again made me want to cry and mac got sick and started halucinating (seriously) so we stopped at a volunteers village who lived a little closer to "take a break for a couple hours" but mac was still sick and i still wanted to destroy my bycicle and all people who suggest ever biking anywhere ever so we ended up staying the night. he lives in a teeny village in a mud and straw hut it was pretty cool checking out the life and site of a real peace corps volunteer. it rained right before the ride back the next day which cools everything down and gets rid of the wind. it was sssooooo much easier with no wind and because we pretty much went separatly so i could go my own slow speed. i have to tell you, when it comes to seeing africa, biking alone is the way to go. i passed baobob trees growing out of lakes with communal birds nesting in the branches, and straw huts and mud huts and people riding camels and big rock mountain-esque formations and women carrying things on their heads through the bush and beautiful bright almost neon blue birds with super long tails it was awesome. the ride back was just awesome, almost made the hell getting there worth it.
anyway when we got back me and another volunteer took a bush taxi back to ouahigouya which was interesting. i had to hold my bags on my lap the whole time which made my whole body hurt except for one time when we all got out of the car to walk across a river that had taken over the road because of the rains. so now im back in ouahigouya and its kinda sad for the vacation to be over but it had to happen and at least the site visit went well and i have something to look foreward to in my village. my time is almost up and im starving so im going to go get bagettes and dip them in the nutella and honey i bought in ouaga :)

2007-07-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

heeey so ive officially been here for a month! thats exciting... Hmmmm... i smell fried chicken... how is this possible? you have to understand ive been spending the last month eating nothing but rice spaghetti macaroni and yams and every house and restaurant ive ever been to has ever only had those things so this is actually the first time i have smelled fried chicken in a month and it smells sooooooo good i want to know where she got that chicken!!
heeey ray just got here thats cool. now im one of two white people in the cyber cafe horray.
anyway its hard to believe its been a month it seems not that long to me. but at the same time everything seems very normal to me here. my routine is, get up around 6:30, take a bath out of a bucket which is actually amazingly refreshing, stumble over to the breakfast table, say a few greetings in french then zone out as my family chats away in french or moore (i dont sleep very well here so im usually very tired in the morning) breakfast is alaways eggs in white bread and coffee, then leave for ecla around 7:30, class starts at 8. the first class is usually language and lately thats been at a professors house in the courtyard under a tree with only one other student, me, and the language teacher and we talk in french. today were language placement tests which also consisted of just talking to a teacher and he decides based on the number of gross errors in your french who hes is going to group you with. i was nervous i think i may have made a lot of mistakes but i have been tutored everyday this week so i think my french is actually a lot better than before. after the language tests three teachers came out with scrabble boards and we all spent the next hour or two playing scrabble in french. it was a lot of fun. anyway i was talking about my routine. after language its usually a technical or cultural session. a couple days ago we had a cultural session on taking public transportation and it was in the form of a skit and it was sooo freaking funny the trainers were acting out the worst case senarios all happening at the same time and they actually ended up bringing a real, live goat and chicken into the sketch it was awesome we were all cracking up. a lot of our sessions are like that, skits brainstorming and group work rarely do we have to listen to boring lectures and if we do even for five minutes we all start falling asleep haha!
anyway after the second sesion is lunch that for me lately in an attempt to not have to eat rice macaroni spaghetti or toh ive been getting yogurt, between three and five little cakes, juice that you suck out of a bag, and a mango, and today i also got sweet coconut candy which was pretty good. i usually eat that stuff at a cafe that serves egg sandwiches which i dotn get cause i get eggs every morning for breakfast, or back at ecla. there are always other people there so i usually talk with them or try to take a nap. after that there are more classes of lang, technical and cultural sessions, then i usually hang out at ecla for a bit with other trainees or head to an internet cafe and then head home. at home i may help cook, ie, watch other people cook, or play with my little brother or talk to my big brother. occassionally i get to do something really cool like watch a local soccer game or visit and hold a new little three day old baby. but usually i start to get bored after a while so i study and go to bed early after dinner.
tomorrow we are heading over to ouaga early in the morning to meet our counterparts we will be working with for the next two years. after a few days were heading back up to the sahel to visit my site for a day then im heading farther up to meet another trainee and a current volunteer. were going to hang out in djibo for a day then in the morning if were up to it were going to bike 30km to his village out in the middle of nowhere to see what an actual volunteers site looks like. it will be similar to mine i think except more camels and sand dunes, less transportation and no cell phone reception. my site is small and its north but theres regular transport to cities that have electricity, though the road for that transport isnt paved, but if you keep going to hit ouaga the capital. anyway the next day were biking back 30km and heading on a bus back to ouhigouya for the rest of training. Im looking forward to a break from the normal routine of tons of classes and training, though the whole thing will be like one big language class but at least it will be somewhere different! im excited about meeting my site my school and my counterpart and visiting the north and seeing all the camels :)
anyway thank you everyone for your letters! i havent written any actual letters yet theyre really expensive to send but i will start i promise. and thank you for the packages! i havent received any yet but i know they are on their way so thanks for that!
well this session is almost over so i will have to go for now. africa rocks! will write again after the site visit!

2007-07-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

site announcements and the fourth!!

so its the first holiday away from the states and more importantly its site announcement day!! thats the day we learn where we will be living for the two years. my site is the second farthest north of all the new secondary ed people and i also one of only two people living with a host family. this weekend were meeting our counterparts in ouaga and then im headed back up to the sahel to my home sweet home for a few years!! im excited all i asked for was a small village with no electricity and it sounds like i got what i wanted as much as possible, in general ed people dont get tiny villages but my village only has 2000 people in it plus its north which is more rural than the south in general. im also excited about being close to ouhigouya so i can visit my current host famly a lot. Also im going to be near camels! a current volunteer said my place has some camels and the regional capital to the north has a lot of them. so other than that, its the fourth of july today and were having a party in a village tonight to celebrate america day so thats exciting. i havent been to that village before so its even more exciting for me. its funny though how we have to go all the way down to ouaga for the counterparts workshop and then we turn right around and go back up to the sahel for the site visit. i will write more when i see my site. just a few more days!!

2007-07-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

helloooo from africa!! ya so everyone else is updating their blogs all the time so i guess its time for me too. well what can i say im here im alive and all is wel. i havent gotten sick yet which is saying a lot here. everyone has gotten sick pretty much. i am living with a family, i have a mom who i think has a liscence to be a doctor but is looking for work, i think, so she is mainly at home taking care of the kid and the house and my dad is a teacher and he runs a non profit organization for the development of burkina faso, and he owns two resturants. he works a lot. right now he is spending the rest of the summer in france to get fun,ding for his organization to get clean water and mediine to the villages. sorry this keyboard sucks and its french but i dont have time to go back and spell check so whateverr.

so i go to a lot of french classes whiwh can be detrimental to myy self esteem sometimes. its a clas of five people and i tend to be the retard of the group but im working on it. we have a big important test coming up this week which will determine the remixing of the classes so i have been studying a lt foor that and i pan on getting tutored a loot for that too.

i love the people here. they are the friendliest happiest people just about all of them are. joking around seems to be a very important cultural habit here to the point where people are just always smiling and happy and if someone tells a joke, which happens a lot, forget about it everryone is cracking up and just as happy as they can be. that true for the families the staff at the training center, the guy who just took my money at the cyber cafe, the waiters at restaurants and all the random kids i wave to on m bike, theyre all those people who are so rare in the states that are just happy and smilng all the time that everyne loves to be around. i heard about it before i came and its true the people here are amazing.

so this weekend was my first time away from ouahigouya i visited komsilga this tiny village a few miles away. it has lot of mud huts and farm animals and traditional living. the girl i stayed with has her own hut in a family compound with her own latrine i think and a hangar but the animals al sleep right outside her door so she says she has a lot of trouble sleeping. i never sleep much here anyway so it didnt bother me at all. another trainee in the village lives in this huge walled complex of housess, he has his own hut and couirtyard and latrine and when he plays his guitar all the kids show up and he has a big audience. another gir lives kinda off in another area in the village she has a traditional round hut with a grass roof and her family speaks moore. at night we took bucket baths and ate yams with sauce and talked to the neighbors while the kids all stared at the new nasara (thats me) in town, then with the help of some friendy children esorts we heded over to another trainees hut and he held a little concert for the kids and we talked and hung out in his courtyard until i started to fall asleep (it was the late late hour of 9:30 after all) then our escorts brought us back hme and i had a lt of fun blowingn up my air mattress and settingn up my teny whle all tttthe girls stared and laughed and tried to help by holding up the matress nd tent. seriousy i was blwing up the matress with an audince of about eight girls all holding onto the matress and staring at me i couldnt stop laughing. it was awesome. i listened to the sounds of animals off and on during the nght and in the morning more peple came over and i met them and tried to talk a little bit but my french still isnt very good. we then left to take a little tour of the village, visited another trainee and headed hme. im coming bck this weekend to take pictures sine my betteries were deadd. i really liked the village i think i willll be happy in mine. i asked for a small vllage during the site interviews and i am glad i did. the village seemed like a very safe and friendly place. i think i would feel very safe there whereas now in the city i dont feel like i should go out on my own at night just cause i live nears some bars and i have no idea who many of my neighbors are.

i guess i should describe my neiighborhood too since this is my first entree sine arriving. all us education volunteers live in ouhigouya which is a regiiional capital and i think a big city for this country. its in the north of the country so its all deserty. all the roads are dirt except for the main road and i think there may be only one traffic light. there is a swimming pool though and a restaurant that serves haaamburgers. i havent tried one yet. we have all of our tech and sme language sessions at ecla whiwh is a training center slash hotel i thinkk. theres electricity at my houe but no running water. we have a big cuourtyard with a well. my family does pretty much everything outside since its too hot in the house, the cooking is outside over a fire. i take a bucketbath twice a day and i do laundry by hand out of very big buckets. when my family helps me they can get really really clean.

okay my time is just about up at the cafe. i really like it here a lot ad i am realy excited to leeearn about my site on wendsay and to visit it soon after that. will write more later. burkina rules!!

2007-04-26T13:41:00.000-07:00

packing list

Okay so like I mentioned in the last blog, I have most of the stuff I am bringing with me to the peace corps. I decided to post a draft of my packing list, just because I enjoy reading other peoples' packing lists so much and I find them very helpful :) I didn't add any quantities cause I really have no idea about that. I am going to try to go as lite as possible.

clothing

tank-tops/short-sleeve shirts
t-shirts (check)
blouses/button-down shirts
light, long skirts (check)
slip
light capris
jeans (check)
shorts (check)
chacos (check)
tennis shoes (check)
socks (check)
rain jacket (check)
bras (lots)
underwears (lots) (check)
sports bras
sleep outfit (check)
swimsuit (check)
belt (check)

Camping stuff

mosquito tent (rei bug hut 2) (check)
sleeping bag ( north face propel this bag is so AWESOME it is 1lb, synthetic, rolls up to fit in the palm of your hand and it was on sale at ems for 120!!(check)
sleeping mat ( ems crash pad the EXACT same thing as a thermarest for half the price(check)
very high spf sunscreen (I may have to continually have these sent from home if there isn't a good, strong brand readily available in burkina)
bug spray with deet (same as above)
tarp, one as a footprint and a huge one for a rain cover (check)
tarp rope, pegs
pocket knife (check)
water bottles (1 liter cyclones) (check)

technology

mp3 player creative zen sleek photo 20gb not sure how often I will ever use this, since my solio can't seem to charge it(check)
solio (check)
rechargable batteries (lots) (check)
battery charger that can work with solio (any suggestions?? anybody???)
hand-crank flashlight (check)
shortwave radio/clock/alarm
wristwatch
lantern?
headlamp (check)
digital camera (check)
large-capacity camera cards (2gb and 512)
UBS flash drive (?)
portable speakers (check)

other stuff

diva cup (check)
non-stick frying pan (check)
spatula (check)
peeler (check)
knife (check)
can opener (check)
sunglasses (2)
book of stamps
envelopes (check)
journals (2)
pens (check)
duct tape
ziplock backs (various sizes)
tupperware (various sizes)
scissors (check)
photo album to share
photo album to keep
towel (check)
games
pillow with pillow case

toiletries

shampoo/conditioner
toothbrush
toothpaste
dental floss
razer and blades (1/2 packs)
deoderant

luggage

duffle bag (check)
huge backpack (check)

teaching stuff

lesson planner
stickers (lots)
colorful pens/pencils
pencil sharpener
colorful paper
colorful markers
science text books
how-to-teach books
french/english dictionary
french text book
graphing calculator (check)

food stuff

mrs. dash
taco seasoning
italian seasoning
powdered drink mixes
candy/junk food

2007-04-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

my first peace corps post as a 24 year old!! My birthday was on the 14th :)

Haha okay anyway, so, today I was going to finally write an email to smartwareetc.com because I had ordered a tropic screen tent from them about 10 days ago and they still hadn't sent me an email with a tracking number. I figured they had shipped it and the email somehow just didn't get to me. No, no, I opened my email to find an email from them saying, actually, they don't have that tent. Hhmmm thats interesting, since it's still up on their site and it took them ten days to tell me they're not sending my tent.

I became instantly bitter about all online retailers. I went right out and bought everything I need for the trip from local stores. Seriously, everything. I shopped for 7 hours. I went to REI, EMS, radio shak, jc pennies, k-mart, and sears. I bought a mosquito tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, a camping mattress, a non-stick pan, a spatula, can opener, more kitchen stuff, a headlamp, a sewing kit, a good knife, power converters and adapters, a 2gb camera card, travel clock/alarm/thermometer/calendar, rechargable batteries, a converter for my battery charger, and a TON of other stuff. I spent a fortune. I came home, moved money around and I now have 65 dollars in my savings account hahaha! But I am returning 100 dollars worth of stuff tomorrow at radio shak because it doesn't fit (2gig camera card), doesn't work (battery charger converter) or I decided I don't actually need them (super-high capacity rechargable batteries).\

SSsoooo ya, I discovered that shopping for seven hours is really tiring cause I'm really tired right now, I'm going to watch tv and go to bed!!

2007-04-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

for the next two months:

Fill out passport and visa papers (check)
Take passport and visa photos (check)
Send out passport and visa information (check)
Reformat resume
write aspiration statement
send out resume and aspiration statement
fill out all the other forms and send those out
order chacos
order macabi skirts
get better memory card for camera
visit friends in oklahoma and maryland
see the museums in new york
go on a four day hiking trip in central pa
spend as much time as i can lounging around watching TV, movies, going online, talking on the phone, and eating junk food
order travel pack from REI
compile a packing list
have a blowout going away party in oklahoma
buy sara's wedding gift
try (try) to save a little bit of money before I leave
QUIT PETCO!!

mmmm sounds like a fun two months!!

2007-04-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

Suggested reading list

Thought I'd share this in case any potential PCV's ever bump into my blog:

Suggested Books to Prepare for Peace Corps

General

So You Want to Join the Peace Corps: What to Know Before You Go by Dillon Banerjee

The Travelers' Guide to African Customs & Manners: How to converse, dine, tip, drive, bargain, dress, make friends, and conduct business while in sub-Saharan Africa by Elizabeth Devine & Nancy Braganti

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski

The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith

West Africa/Francophone Africa

Do They Hear You When You Cry by Fauziya Kassindja,

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover

Somebodyâ€™s Heart Is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa by Tanya Shaffer

King Leopoldâ€™s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha by Sarah Erdman

Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway

Eastern/Southern Africa

Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa

Donâ€™t Letâ€™s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

The Power of One by Bryce Courtney

My Secret History by Paul Theroux

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town by Paul Theroux

The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

The Zanzibar Chest by Aiden Hartley

Love In The Driest Season: A Family Memoir by Neely Tucker

Number One Ladiesâ€™ Detective Agency Series by Alexander McCall Smith

Any books by Nadine Gordimer

Books on HIV and AIDS

The Africa Placement Team has put together a list of suggested reading materials that we believe you will find both interesting and informative as you prepare for your tour of service. We encourage you in particular to become familiar with the growing AIDS pandemic in Africa. Peace Corps projects in all sectors are addressing the multitude of problems caused by the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Love in the Driest Season: A Family Memoir by Neely Tucker

Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village by Sarah Erdman

Global AIDS: Myths and Facts, Tools for Fighting the AIDS Pandemic by Alexander Irwin and Joyce Millen

The Skeptics Guide to the Global AIDS Crisis: Tough Questions, Direct Answers by Dale Hanson Bourke

A Generation at Risk: The Global Impact of HIV/AIDS on Orphans and Vulnerable Children by John G. Williamson, Geoff Foster, and Carol Levine

The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice, and Unfulfilled Expectations by Michael Kirby and Larry O. Gostin

AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and Globalization by Tony Barnett and Alan Whiteside

Human Rights and Public Health in the AIDS Pandemic by Lawrence O. Gostin and Zita Lazzarini

Black Death: AIDS in Africa by Susan Hunter

A Broken Landscape: HIV & AIDS in Africa by Noerine Kaleeba, Reverend Gideon Byamugisha, and Gideon Mendel

Children Of Africa Confront AIDS: From Vulnerability To Possibility (Ohio RIS Africa Series) by Farid Esack, Arvind Singhal, and W. Stephen Howard

Children of AIDS: Africa's Orphan Crisis by Emma Guest

The First Year â€“ HIV: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed by Brett Grodeck and Daniel S. Berger

Living Well with HIV and AIDS by Allen L. Gifford, Kate Lorig, Diana Laurent, and Virginia Gonzalez

AIDS Issues: A Handbook (Issues in Focus) by David E. Newton

A Woman's Guide to Living with HIV Infection (A Johns Hopkins Press Health Book) by Rebecca A. Clark, Robert T., Jr. Maupin, and Jill Hayes Hammer

Sustainability and Permaculture

Two Ears of Corn: A Guide to People-Centered Agricultural Improvement by Roland Bunch (Paperback - Jun 1995)

Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability by David Holmgren (Paperback - Dec 2002)

PERMACULTURE: A Designers' Manual by Bill Mollison and Reny Mia Slay (Hardcover - Oct 1, 1997)

Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway and John Todd (Paperback - April 2001)

Gardening

How to Grow More Vegetables: And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons (Paperback - Mar 2002)

New Complete Guide to Gardening (Better Homes & Gardens (Paperback)) by Susan A. Roth and Better Homes and Gardens Books (Paperback - Sep 15, 2001)

Vegetable Gardening by Dean Johnson (VHS Tape)

Soil Erosion

Soil Erosion : Processes, Prediction, Measurement, and Control by Terrence J. Toy, George R. Foster, and Kenneth G. Renard (Hardcover - May 27, 2002)

Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming by John M. Laflen (Hardcover - May 24, 2000)

Forestry and Africa

Contesting Forestry in West Africa (Making of Modern Africa) by Reginald Cline-Cole (Hardcover - Dec 2000)

Tree planting practices in tropical Africa (FAO forestry development paper) (FAO forestry development paper) by M. S Parry (Unknown

Social forestry in West Africa: Myths and realities by Marilyn W Hoskins (Unknown Binding - Jan 1, 1982)

The 2000-2005 Outlook for Forestry and Woodworking in Africa by Inc. Icon Group International (Paperback - Jul 2001

Okay that didn't paste as well as I thought it would but I'm too lazy today to go back and fix it so you'll have to figure out what books are hidden in the wide spacing. Also here's a link to the Burkina Faso welcome book:

http://www.peacecorps.gov/welcomebooks/bfwb686.pdf

tons of info in there.

2007-04-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

My address

Hey I just started reading the Burkina Faso welcome book and I discovered my address during training! Here you go all you letter writers, fire up those pens, find some cute stationary and prepare for some serious hand cramps as for probably the first time in years you write an ACTUAL LETTER as apposed to an email:

Katharine Heaton, PCT
S/c Corps de la Paix
01 B.P. 6031
Ouagadougou 01, Burkina Faso

note my name will probably be "Katharine Heaton" instead of Cassandra though I don't know if that will actually matter or not. Remember you guys if you care about me at all you should start writing letters about 3 weeks before I leave so I will have something fun to read during my first few weeks of being completely freaked out/culture shocked. Remember candy and comics are ALWAYS appreciated!!!

And of course my email is Catasyne_7@yahoo.com though I don't know how often I will get to check that.

I also discovered through this book that my living allowance will be $240 a month, plus $24 a month vacation allowance, and $60 quarterly for work-related travel. So that sounds pretty good to me, I thought I would be making 50 bucks a month or something and its nice to have that travel and vacation money too. They also discourage bringing extra money because you are supposed to "live at the level of the villager" which is fine with me since I doubt I will have any money when I leave anyway.

2007-04-05T07:37:00.000-07:00

Burkina Faso!!!!

So the package came yesterday and it turns out it didn't get lost in the mail, it really did take two weeks to get to my house. Very strange. Anyhoo, it's official: Burkina Faso!! Woohoooo!! I'm going to get the coveted stereotypical peace corps experience!!! No running water no electricity in a rural village in a country noone has ever heard of!! Awesome :)

Okay here's what the pamphlet says specifically about my assignment:

Country: Burkina Faso
Program: Secondary Education
Job Title: Science Teacher
Dates of Service: August 24, 2007 -- August 23rd, 2009
Pre-Service Training (in Ouhigouya, Burkina Faso): June 7, 2007 -- August 24, 2007

Here's some tidbits about the country, taken from the pamphlet and wikipedia:

Statistics:
Development efforts in Burkina Faso are important because Burkina Faso is one of the ten poorest countries in the world. Burkina Faso ranks 175 out of 177 countries in the UNDP's Human Development Index: of countries with a Peace Corps presence, only Niger rates lower. Life expectancy is 47.5 years, 50% of the population is under the age of 15, literacy rate is only 12.8%, primary school enrollment is 36% (31% for girls), only 9% in secondary schools. Less than 1% reach university levels. Official statistics show that between 2.3 and 4.2% of the adult population is infected with HIV/AIDS. Nearly 86% of the population lives on less than $2 per day.

However, the pamphlet assures me that Burkina Faso is peaceful, stable, and making steady progress towards transparent and democratic governance.

Geography:
Burkina Faso is a landlocked nation in West Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the south east, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the south west. 80% of the working population is in agriculture. There is mineral exploitation of copper, iron, manganese and, above all, gold. Burkina Faso has very few isolated hills it is overall a very flat country. It lies just below the sahara desert with the northernmost regions within the sahara. The middle of the country is dry sahvana and the south is more green and lush. Temperatures within the country range from 60 degrees (in the coolest darkest hour of night in the dead of "winter") to 120 degrees (all summer). I say winter and summer but really in africa there is only two seasons: dry season and wet season. The dry season is hotter ("summer") and dry with no rain, and the wet season is hot ("winter") and it rains about once or twice every day for an hour or so. The rain cools everything down to the 90's or so on average. This'll be fun for someone who thinks 80 is hot!!!! And no air conditioning!!! Ya I'm looking forward to some wonderful character building there :) :)

Religion:
Approximately 50% of the population is Muslim; Christians account for about 30%, and followers of traditional African religions (typically animism of various forms) make up about 20%. Many Christians incorporate elements of animism into their religious practices.

Peace Corps presence:
90 Peace Corps volunteers work in Burkina Faso right now, including 18 in Health, 21 in Small Enterprise Development, 24 in Education, and 26 in Girl's Educations and Empowerment. I will probably go to training with about 30 or so volunteers but I don't know the specific number yet.

Training will be for 11 weeks in a town called Ouahigouya (don't ask me how to pronounce that). At first I thought this was a misspelling of the capital city (Ouagadougou, can't pronounce that one either), but it turns out this is a seperate town about 182km north-west of the city. We will spend the first few days in Ouahigouya, then we will meet our host families and live with them for the duration of training in the surrounding villages. We will all meet once a week in Ouahigouya for cultural training. We will be assigned host families and villages based on our french proficiency and volunteer program, and we will be in groups of 4 or 5 per village where we will study french and have technical training together. So I will be in a village of 3 or 4 other people who have a similar knowledge of french and who are all education volunteers, and then I'll meet up with everyone else who went to other villages once a week in Ouahigouya. The training model is community-based with many opportunities for interaction with the community. On top of learning french, I will be learning one of the local languages too, such as Moore, Jula or Fulfulde.

"The technical training component will prepare you to teach effictively in Burkinabe secondary schools. You will learn about the structure of the Burkinabe educational system and the main differences with the US school systems. You will learn to prepare lessons to meet the needs of students with different learning styles and to implement them effectively. You will learn how to write and administer a test. Youw ill have an opportunity to learn stragegies for developing students' critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Classroom management can be a challenge so stragegies for dealing with this will be covered during training. In addition to the theoretical sessions, there will be a number of opportunities for practice, starting with peer teaching and working up to teaching full-length, full-size classes in a four to five week Practice School (in the form of a summer school program for local youth). This will provide the opportunity for you to strengthen your pedagogical skills and prepare for the donditions you will likely find in your assigned school at your site."

Pre-Service training also includes health and safety/security and cross-cultural sessions. There will also be opportunities to travel away from the training location for a "site visit" with a current volunteer. There will also be a 2-day counterpart workshop where we meet our future counterparts and visit our future volunteer sites. My permanent site will be assigned based on my level of french proficiency, the second language I have been learning and the need for education volunteers in the area. I will almost certainly be the only volunteer in my village.

Teaching Conditions:

I will work about 20 hours a week in a classroom with between 50 - 100 students, sometimes over 100 students per class. Students will not have books, and there most likely will be no photocopy machines, no printers, no overhead projectors, often the only resource will be a blackboard and chalk. I will have to come up with (very) creative ways to get the kids to learn without books or handouts. The Burkinabe teachers usually lecture and have the kids copy notes from the board and memorize everything. We are encouraged to be more creative than that. I will have a counterpart (another teacher) which should help me to integrate easier into the school and will help me and give me feedback about my teaching style and other classroom issues. The classroom schedule is flexible and will allow for time to incorporate issues like AIDS prevention and evironment lessons. All volunteers in Africa are involved in HIV/AIDS education and prevention. As a science teacher with a captive audience I will have a golden opportunity to teach that subject extensively.

Living Conditions:
As a secondary school teacher, I will be placed in a large village or small town. I will be expected to live in a manner similar to my Burkinabe counterparts. Housing will likely consist of a modent building constructed from mud bricks or cement blocks with a tin roof. Floors are made with cement.

SARA AND ASHLEY STOP READING NOW

("dont be surprised if you occasionally have vistors in the form of spiders, cockroaches, mice, ants, etc")

OKAY SAFE TO CONTINUE

I will most likely not have running water or electricity. Water may come from a well or a pump. Depending on the distance, I will either transport the water myself or pay someone to do it. This means I will take bucket baths (big bucket full of water with a plastic cup. I hear from the PC blogs the best strategy is to dunk your hair in the water first to conserve water, then lather up and rinse off with the plastic cup. I'm not sure if I will ever really be clean that way), and pit latrines. A pit latrine is basically a hole in the ground surrounded by concrete and four walls. It's usually outside apart from the rest of the house/hut. Usually this is also your "shower" area or there may be a second "shower" area in an attached room.

The staple food in Burkina Faso is called To. They pretty much eat this stuff breakfast lunch and dinner. It is made of millet and it is ground and baked into a playdough-like texture and served in a large communal bowl. You eat with your hands (did I mention most Burkinabe don't us toilet paper? Do you know what they use instead? I'll let you imagine what they use instead of toilet paper and how that relates to me sharing a bowl everyone is eating playdough out of with their HANDS), roll the To into a little ball, dip it into some type of green sauce (haven't found out yet what that green sauce is made out of), and eat it. I hear from the blogs that it tastes terrible and can actually make you really sick. Mmmmm looking forward to that!! Food selection is actually pretty limited in the villages. Usually there will be only one fruit or vegetable available, especially in the dry season, and I hear right now that fruit or vegetable is onions. Yum. Nothing like a fresh, crisp onion in the morning!! Haha!

Okay well that's what I know so far. I looked through the paperwork last night and it's daunting but doable. I have to get passport and visa pictures taken, and fill out a bunch of forms. But first I have to read through the peace corps volunteer manual and accept my invitation. I have ten days so I will do that today or tomorrow. I'm soooo excited and I feel soooo lucky to have gotten Burkina Faso!! I had a feeling for a while I was going to Burkina Faso and I was getting really excited about it but I was worried about siking myself up just to be dissapointed if it turned out to be somewhere else so I wasn't allowed to read about Burkina Faso anymore and I read as much as I could about other countries and started to get excited about those too but then I ended up actually getting the country I wanted!! Thats so awesome!!!

Why was Burkina Faso my first choice? Well, lots of us PC volunteer wannabes are attracted to this extreme climates/conditions. If I wanted comfortable living conditions in another country I'd move to canada! But I want to see how different life can be, and live and work and get to know people in a community as different from my own as it can get, and fill a need in the community. The most daunting thing about this task is being a teacher since I have never taught and teaching conditions sound very difficult but that is all part of the challenge! I am looking forward to this sooo much and I'm super excited and can't wait to go :) Oh and you guys had better write to me!! I'm surprised I actually got a couple people at work wanting to write to me while I'm gone so that's super duper awesome!! I'm sure I will have plenty of awesome stories to write about and plenty of time to write them to all of you :) You could even send me packages with candy and stuff in them if you really want to :) and I could send you genuine african gifts like dresses or voodoo potions! You could even visit if you wanted to!!!

Okay well believe it or not I actually was supposed to be productive today and I've been on here writing this blog for over an hour now and I haven't even eaten breakfast so I am going to go hope you guys enjoyed learning a little about my future awesome home of Burkina Faso!!

Au Revoir!!! (see I know lots of french!)

2007-04-02T12:50:00.000-07:00

learning persistence thru the peace corps application process

the pc application process has definately taught me persistence! It actually surprised me today. I've been waiting almost 2 weeks for my invitation letter and it still hasn't come. This is especially strange because my po told me that it was sent out two wensdays ago, and I live about 20 minutes from philadelphia so it's not like I'm out in the boonies. I started to freak out about how long it was taking and every morning was getting more and more frustrating when I discovered my letter STILL hadn't arrived and I couldn't get a hold of my placement officer because I lost my cell phone and I didn't even remember his name (only talked briefly once when he told me the invite letter had been sent). So I called the regional headquarters office and I asked if they could tell me the name of my recruiter and the guy said no, he can't do that. (two weeks ago a guy in his chair actually did do just that so I know he actually could!) I told him not to refer me to the placement office because that just goes straight to a machine that noone ever checks. He said well then there's nothing I can do for you. Well, I ended up leaving a desperate plea on the placement office's machine, then I called headquarters again and I got a new person this time. I asked her if she could tell me who my placement officer was and she immediately transfered me to the answering machine aka. the placement office. So I called back again and asked to be transfered to my former medical screener because he at least usually tried to be helpful but he wasn't at his desk. So I called headquarters again and asked to be refered to ANY po. At first she said she couldn't do it but then she did and that guy wasn't at his desk but he gave a number of someone you could call if you needed to speak with someone. I couldn't get a pen in time and my horrible memory couldn't even retain the first three digits after I found one. So I called headquarters again and asked to be refered to a po again, and this guy said he couldn't do it he needed a name. I said that the other person JUST did it so he actually can refer me to someone. The guy was actually laughing at this point because he and the lady he was sitting next to had talked to me about five times by then. He told me to hang on a sec and promptly hung up! Or maybe we got disconnected, but I sure wasn't talking to anyone anymore. I went online to my toolkit to see if there was any contact info for anyone on there but I only found the number to the headquarters office. I even checked the archives of the yahoo forum to see if anyone had any success with finding their po's. I ended up calling headquarters again and got a new person. This time I explained everything about how I was waiting for the invite for two weeks blah blah he listened and then transfered me to the placement office machine. So very frustrated and starting to loose it I went through some old emails seeing if there was any contact info where I could possibly get ahold of my old recruiter. I then found at the bottom of an old forgotten email there was a direct number to a student aid in the african placement office! I called and she was there! I told her my situation, she took my info, looked up my file, reassured me that my spot was still open and available for me, and said to wait two more days and if the letter still has not arrived she will have it sent again. She even gave me the name and extension number for my placement officer! Wow. My faith in the peace corps staff and humanity in general was restored. This is of course only one example out of dozens during the medical screening process where I stretched my level of patience and persistence. Before applying for the peace corps knowing me I definatly would have gotten frustrated and given up on this last epic battle but I'm surprized by how much persistence I have now and it actually paid off! Hot diggity!

2007-03-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

I forget where my last blog left off. Well, my toolkit was updated last thursday that my invite was mailed on wensday. so I've been obsessive-compulsively checking the mail the moment I get up ever since but no letter yet. I still think it's either cameroon or burkina faso and I'm still happy about both. It's funny that it's taking this long because I get letters or packages from oklahoma sometimes and it usually takes one or maybe two days to get to me because I live in a suburb of philadelphia so it's not like I'm way out there or anything, I'm actually relatively close to DC. Oh well, I'm actually not stressing out too much about it. I'm actually glad the mail comes only once a day as apposed to email which can come at any time. when I was waiting for med clearance I checked my email about as often as I breathed during the day (ya bad metaphor but you get the idea).

so in case you were wondering, here's a day in the life of a peace corps invitee awaited the invite letter: Wake up before the alarm goes off. I think for a while about the weird dream I just had about the peace corps (last night I received three packages with books describing people I would be working with who live in the jungles of cameroon and who carry speers and wear a lot of red, the night before that I dreamed I was going to burkina faso. I've also had dreams about going to south america and another burkina faso dream). I roll out of bed, immediately put on my shoes, walk downstairs and outside to check the mail. If the mail hasn't come yet, I stalk the mailman through my window until he's at my house, and then I meet him at the mailbox. I calmly search through the mail and am dissapointed to see the letter still hasn't arrived. I search again just to be sure I didn't miss it. I put the mail on the table (my mom has been very happy I've been getting the mail for her every day the last two weeks! Haha!), whip out the laptop and check email, myspace and pc blogs. THEN I get up, go upstairs and brush my teeth and get ready for the day. I have a normal day from there on, and the next morning it repeats. LoL I may not know what to do with myself in the morning once I do get my letter, I may get up and automatically go to the mailbox just out of habit.

Anyway, I'm off to maryland for three days sans letter. It's coming tomorrow, I just know it! One day too late. Oh well, if it's not here by friday I will call my PO, he said it should be here by the end of this week :) it doesn't really matter I guess, I'm happy with both burkina and cameroon, but still, it would be soooooo nice to know which one I'm going to :) And it would be hilarious if it were someplace completely different since I've been so focused on cameroon and burkina for a while now, it would show how much I know!! Haha oh well I shall update you hopefully soon when I figure out where in the world I will be living in june!!! Woohoo only like 10 weeks away I will be there!!! yyyyaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!! Whereever there is!!!!!!

peace.

2007-03-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

Burkina Faso or Cameroon!

so according to the unofficial directory on the yahoo peace corps page, I am either going to burkina faso or cameroon! I am secretly hoping for burkina faso because I think that will give me a better chance at getting a rural placement. Though, I could still get a rural placement in cameroon :) and it's beeeeeaaaauuuutiful there!!! So I guess it's a win/win situation, I am just going to have to sike myself up a little more if I go to cameroon :) I just want to know!! I should know by the end of next week but hopefully sooner than that :) I'm excited :)

2007-03-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

Invited!!

so less than a week after being medically cleared (it's now thursday and I was cleared on saturday) I checked my email and it says my peace corps page has been updated!! I checked and it says I am now officially an invitee. I feel a little nervous and a little excited. They said they mailed it out yesterday so hopefully I will get it in a couple days. I still haven't been able to get a hold of anyone in the placement office even though I've called every day since I got cleared, the placement office right now seems to consist of a desk with an answering machine sitting on it as far as I can tell. Haha!! Oh well at least the answering machine matched my mad skills to a program and I will find out soon where that program is!!! Woohoo!! I'm going somewhere doing something leaving sometime!! Isn't that great!!

2007-03-19T23:27:00.000-07:00

On saturday I got up way too early after going to bed way too late and my dad and I went to the bank so he could pay off my car. Woohoo no more care payments!!! Maybe I can go to africa with five dollars!! The idea was originally to sell my car and worry about the no-car thing when I get back. Well, my dad liked the idea at first but then he didn't like it because he would loose money on the down payment and blah blah blah but he didn't want car payments or anything so he bought it, and early enough that now with my pathetic income it doesn't all have to go to my car anymore and I can start saving!!! Oh and a funny thing happened cause my dad tried to pay off the loan with his check card but apparently it has a limit on it so they wouldn't let him do it but the lady when he handed her his card looked at him like he was literally robbing a bank or something, she just stared and shook her head really slowly. I asked why it matters whether its a card or a check cause it's coming from the same account, but she didn't say anything she just stared at me with that same "oh my god i can't believe you're robbing a bank" look. I was like... oookay gues not... i'll just.... go then... LoL it was funny! (also what was funny was this morning at the gym this old guy was singing loudly to himself to music he was listening to on his headphones so of course he sounded really high-pitched, I don't think he even realized he was doing it, it was sooo funny and we were all laughing at him, it was really hard to keep a straight face when he started working out right next to me) So then Irene and Rachel showed up at the bank we just robbed aparently awith a checkbook, and afterwards we went to breakfast and I got yummy yummy eggs benedict!! Afterwards I went home and went downstairs and fell asleep to an old eppisode of dr. phil. I then had to get up to get ready for work, but I realized I hadn't checked my email yet. It was the first time in over a week I didn't check my email about 10 times a day looking for anything from the peace corps, since I mailed my polio stuff in last week. Well I checked my email and wow!! My toolkit on the peace corps website has been updated!! I checked, and as it was loading it occured to me that it could say that I'm not cleared... hmmm... but that fear passed a second later when it popped up that I am officially medically cleared for service!! Woohoooooooooooo!!! I've been working on medical clearance since september and here it is!! So since I am supposed to leave in june, I should get my invite really soon. I couldn't get a hold of the placement office today but I will try again tomorrow. I have to tell them my phone number has changed. Anyway!
Oooooh oh oh oh and I have other news!! I found this awesome peace corps group online that has a database of when everyone leaves for the peace corps, and what they do there and where they go. It's an extremely useful and at least partially accurate guide to where you may be going when you are nominated. So according to the guide I am either going to cameroon or burkina faso!!! I'm super excited about both!! YYyyaaaa!!! Burkina Faso or cameroon!!!! Isn't that great????

2007-02-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

My doctors want me to get polio.

So I got a letter from the peace corps medical office that they want to know if I have gotten a polio vaccine after I was 18. I called my doc the next day and they called me back the day after that and she said I had not had that vaccine and she asked if I wanted to get it done there. I told her to hold off on that until I call the peace corps. So I call the peace corps and they said to get the vaccine and mail in the paperwork proving I did it. So I call my doctor back and she said that they can do the vaccine there but that they do not have the vaccine at the moment, they will have to order it and it should be in by the end of this week or the beginning of next week, and they said they will call me when they get it in. So at the end of the week I call them and they said they don't have it yet but they will call me when they get it. Okay so I wait and by thursday of the next week they still haven't called so I call them and they say ya, they have it now (ya, thanks for calling!) it's just upstairs in another office, so they just need to know when I want to come in and they will go up and get it. So they don't have another appointment until next week on tuesday so I'm like okay I guess I can wait another week. So over the weekend they left a message on my machine that a polio vaccine is in this other hospital and that I can go there to get it, but since I had this appointment on tuesday I figured I would just get it there. Well on tuesday morning I call and ask what time I made it for because I had forgotten. They then told me that I didn't have an appointment on tuesday at all. So after arguing about that point I made an another appointment on thursday since I was going skiing the next day and couldn't go then. So on wensday while I was sitting in the ski lodge my doctor calls me and tells me that the other hospital she mentoined over the weekend has the polio vaccine and I have to go there to get it and thats why she erased my appointment on tuesday. So whatever I get home and the next day I call the other place and ask them about getting a polio vaccine. Yes, they say, we have that! The ask if I want to make an appointment I say yes, anything available today? There was a big snow storm so I knew there would be a lot of cancelations. She said I can come as long as I don't mind waiting. I don't mind at all so she said to leave now. So I dig my car out of the snow and try to back out of the driveway but I get completely stuck and can't get out at all and I have to call my mom to push me back into the driveway. I call the lady and told her I got stuck and can't actually come in today. So I set an appointment for early the next week. Okay, I guess I can wait another week. So that was on thursday, on friday I get a call from my main doctor and she said that the people from the other hospital called her and said that they want me to go to a travel clinic instead to get the polio vaccine. I was like why can't I just get it there, we have an appointment! She said they just can't do it. So I called the other hospital and ask again if I can get a vaccine there and they said they are not taking "new patients". So ya okay whatever, I call the travel place and ask if I can get an appointment with them. They say yes but we don't take insurance. I was like well that sucks. So at that point I was sick of talking to everyone on the phone so I drive to the hospital (roads are better by now) and walk over to the information desk but there's noone there. I wait around for a while and still noone shows up. Then I remember there's another one upstairs. So I go upstairs and there's noone there either, there's just a note on the desk saying "information desk available downstairs" and I'm like huh, no it's not! So I check the map and go to a random office who it turns out has a list of all the doctors in the hospital, and also a number to call for the referal place. So I go outside to my car in the cold because I know you're not supposed to use your phone in hospitals. I called the referal place and it rings and rings forever before this old lady answers and I ask about getting a polio vaccine. She leaves for a while then comes back with a number. I call the number and they say no, we don't give vaccines. So I call the referal place again and it rings and rings again and this time the old lady doesn't pick up. So I'm like fine, I look in the book that has a list of all the doctors and I call one that says infectious diseases and I ask if they give polio vaccines she says no, we don't. So I call the next number that says infectious diseases and ask and the lady says "you just called here!" so apparently she is sitting there next to two phones or something. But then she says she doesn't know if anyone in the hospital gives vaccines, but I know this one doctor used to do it I'm not sure if they still do why don't you call this number. So I call that number and the doctor says yes we do give vaccines but we don't take insurance. At this point I don't care anymore, so I set an appointment but the earliest I could get in was the 26th.
I called the peace corps and they said they are not going to reimburse me for the vaccine but that I have to get it. Ooookay so if its this difficult to get a polio vaccine I thought maybe my doctors just want me to get polio??

2007-02-03T09:23:00.000-08:00

so after many, many months and enough phone calls to be considered borderline harrasment, I got a letter from the peace corps!! It wasn't informing me of my medical clearance like I had hoped, but they wanted to know if I had ever been vacinated against polio after the age of 18. My doctor told me I had not been vacinated for polio since I was a baby so I called the peace corps and they said to get the vacination and send them the paperwork. So my doctor had to order it from another office and they should hopefully contact me by the beginning of this week that they have it so I can send this off as soon as possible. I'm just happy to be hearing something from them. Aaron just found out he's going to kenya on may 21st I think... and I'm supposed to leave in june so theoretically I should find out soon... though, lyndsey didn't find out till like a month before she was leaving so I guess it is up to the peace corps gods as for when you get to find out!
I'm a big dork so the other day I went to the peace corps website and read the descriptions they have of all of the countries where the peace corps is currently active in africa, and I matched them with the vague description of the position I was nominated for. I was looking for a country below the sahara desert that has french as an official language, and that has peace corps volunteers who teach science and english in secondary schools. It looks like the countries with assignments that most closely match the description I was given are: Burkina Faso, Guinea, Benin, and Cameroon. I'm of course very happy with all of these countries! Burkina Faso would be awesome because it specifically said that education volunteers teach in small rural villages and I have always wanted to experience life in a rural village in Africa. Cameroon would be awesome too just because I hear that is a beautiful country, with lush rainforests on the coast and desert to the north and savanah too. Plus it would be slightly closer to aaron and lyndsey. Guinea and Benin are a little scarier because it said the science teachers teach either chemistry or physics, which I'm pretty unfamiliar with. If I teach science I assume it would be in biology since that is where about 90% of my training and interests lie, but if not thats okay I'm going to africa to be challenged and that would certainly be a challenge!
Okay well on non-peace corps news, my cat has ring worm and my dad just caught it from the cat and it looks like my mom is getting it too and ever since she said that this morning I started to feel itchy though I'm hoping its just psychological!! I don't know, living with two people and a cat with ringworm I am probably fighting a losing battle against trying to not catch ringworm, but for now I'm trying not to touch anything, I'd float above the floors if I could.
Ciao

2007-01-12T09:50:00.000-08:00

Why am I joining the peace corps? Well, I'm not officially in yet, but assuming I will be invited, I suppose I should answer this question. I guess because it is unexpected? So I can do something that really matters to people as apposed to working to make more money for an evil corporation forever. Or maybe its all for the adventure of living alone in a village in africa for two years! There are many reasons to join the peace corps and go to africa. Besides, I don't have anything tying me down here in america. No family, career, house payments, debt, health issue or any other obligation that would prevent me from being able to go. I figure I may never be as free as I am now so if I'm going to do this thing, this is the time. It's one of those things where you don't want to look back and wish you had done it. So I'm doing it! Africa here I come!!
Where in Africa I'm not quite sure yet. The only hurdles I have left to jump are medical clearance and the placement office. The medical clearance shouldn't be a problem since I have no medical problems to speak of, and hopefully after I'm cleared it won't be too long before I'm placed somewhere!! I already filled the paperwork out and sent it in back in november I think, and I'm still waiting for them to look at it. This year long application process is nothing if not a lesson in patience, a lesson I have unfortunately failed a few times, like everytime I call the guy in DC and ask "have you looked at my med packet YET??" Haha oh well I know it will be done eventually. I decided I'm not going to call anymore... it'll be done when its done and I will focus on other things. Like finding a real job. I have no savings at all right now and I am hoping to go to africa with at least a little bit of savings as a backup in case I need extra money, also so I can travel a bit and visit my friends in their countries who will also be in the peace corps. One is going to zambia, and the other will find out anyday now where he is going! Thats exciting!!
The process goes:
first application-- second application-- essays-- reccomendations-- send everything in-- wait-- wait-- more paperwork-- interview-- nomination-- motherload of paperwork-- doctors visits -- dentist visit-- psychologist visit-- more doctors visits-- send everything in-- wait-- dental and legal clearance-- wait-- wait-- wait-- call DC-- wait-- wait-- wait-- call DC again-- wait-- wait-- medical clearance-- wait-- placement-- buy supplies, pack, say goodbye and go!!

Notice all the waits?? Haha ya very much a lesson in patience! Right now I'm in one of the "waits" after "call DC again", so according to this very accurate timeline, I should be medically cleared very soon horray!!

2006-10-24T08:32:00.000-07:00

Okay so I've been reading so many peace corps blogs lately that I decided I wanted a peace corps blog too! My current blog isn't really a pc blog, its just a recounting the details of my boring life blog.
Anyway, right now I'm FINALLY almost finished with the dreaded medical packet horray!! If you've never had to deal with a peace corps med packet, first of all, I hate you, second of all, its very long and tedious and in my opinion entirely unecesary. At least parts are. For instance, I, for reasons I can't understand at this point, told them on my application that I talked to a counselor. By that, I meant, on only two days I talked to a counselor about some stress I had been having cause I figured that's what they're there for, right? After two meetings, I got a job at petco which interfered so I stopped going and haven't had issues since (well, not too many). So with this information, the pc makes me fill out the same forms I would have to fill out if I had been hospitalized for being criminally insane! I had to go to a meeting with a therapist, they had to get my file and fill out all this paperwork and ask me all these questions and I had to write a personal statement and my therapist had to write a statement and it was all very stupid.
Note to the wise: if you're going to apply to the peace corps, tell them only what's significant, if you're honest about little things, they'll punish you big time.