"ça fait deux jours!"
on Wonderous Wanderland (Burkina Faso), 13/Jul/2011 08:31, 34 days ago
When people haven’t seen each other in a while they greet each other like this, meaning...it has been a while :-). And it has! Time flies here in Burkina and I cannot believe I have been gone now for 5 months - only one more month and I have to make the decision whether I want to extend my one-year mandate or not!The past two weeks particularly have been very hectic, so just a very short update. Work-wise there's not much more to say than that, with exception of a 4-day workshop last week, I have been doing interview after interview after interview. Very repetitive :-) and I do my best to keep pretending I still don’t know how many work meetings they organise per month (“Only one? Are you really sure?” :-)). I honestly have gained so much more respect for people who do this for a living, interviewing day after day, and still manage to be enthusiastic about their jobs - hell, about their lives even ;-)!The focus groups we held with the beneficiaries of the organisation were really great though. Picture a half-open mud and straw shed-like construction, with white plastic chairs and wooden benches for the participants, but also a few laptops and a beamer projecting on a white sheet we pinned up for the occasion between two metal poles. Africa, a continent full of opposites :-)! The discussions itself were great too - partly in French, partly in Mooré - the participants very cooperative and my local colleague the perfect co-facilitator. Two days of hard work in which we had to improvise a lot and find on-the-spot solutions for unexpected problems (of course!) and events too - like when we had one of these huge dust-whirling/thunder/rain stormsand we all had to flee into a tiny but very noisy dark little shed, and they were still debating enthusiastically, shouting their opinions to transcend the thundering noises coming from outside. So, all in all a very rewarding and a great experience :-)!Besides work it has been very busy socially as well. There’s been diner parties at Alison& Martin’s, after work beers, a girls-only night at My's (watching Bridget Jones’ Diary and eating ice cream!), my first guest using one of the spare bedrooms for two nights...yay :-), getting visits of the local children who come knocking on my door every night and who call me'tanti', a very interesting (laughable!) experience in one of Ouaga's poshest restaurants and two new dresses and skirts made by my next door-tailor! On the 'downside', there’s been people leaving. Before coming out here we heard already about a lot of volunteers in Burkina returning home before the end of their mandate. And it is true, people are leaving - for all sorts of reasons - and even our little “family” of 9 who arrived in February is losing precious members, and it does make you think, and the past couple of days especially all of a sudden Belgium seemed very close and too far at the same time. So time to change scenery for a little while and start planning my holiday to Ghana next month :-)!