A year ago today...

The new stage (training group) gets here in just over a month. It’s mind boggling to think of how much I’ve learned in the past ten months. Walking off that plane I immediately became dependent – on my host family, on Peace Corps staff, and on the PCVs that were our trainers. The PCV trainers amazed me with their French, local language and knowledge of Burkina and its people and now I’m going to be one of those trainers! I’ll be working for six weeks with one of the biggest trainee group Burkina has ever seen. There are close to ninety of them (compared to our thirty two). I’m really excited.

To anyone reading this that is going to be IT I would recommend doing a sweep of your house and neighbors houses to find old sticks of PC100 and PC133 RAM. Almost everyone here came to a lab where they are running on 128MB or, if they are lucky, 256MB. One more stick of RAM can go a long way to maintaining your sanity as your students don’t really get (despite countless reiterations) that computers with 128MB of RAM are slow and end up opening thirty or so copies of whatever program you are trying to get them to open – which of course puts that computer out of commission for almost the whole class.

And to everyone coming over I would recommend getting an awesome sun hat. I wasn’t really much of a hat guy back in the states but my hat, along with my laptop and camera are my most used and appreciated items that I brought with me from America-land. You can literally feel the sun sapping away your energy here and having mobile shade-generation capabilities is a big plus. Currently the number of volunteers who have electricity is trending upward and I think we passed the 50% mark recently.

If you find yourself with extra room (ha!) your future malnourished trainee self (everyone loses weight during training) will be extremely grateful for any snacks you can tuck away in your bag. Anything that won’t melt or explode is good but protein especially (jerky!). If you don’t have room there are always those flat rate shipping boxes! My stash of cliff bars was just about all that kept me going for a week or two there. Training isn’t a cake walk. Get ready.

First Rain

The sunburned, parched land aches for rain. From the puffs of dust that dance in the air after every step to the wilted and nearly dormant plants it can be seen everywhere. It’s in the eyes of the half crazed chickens as they dash from shade patch to shade patch, mouths open panting. It’s in the desperate flight of flies, attacking anything that sweats, fighting for a little moisture. It’s in the dry, hot air, literally sucking the moisture out of every breath. It’s everywhere. And yet we can do nothing more but to wait.

The sun blazes its way across the clear, faded blue sky marking the passing of each day. There hasn’t been a cloud able to stand up to its bright, strong rays in months. And then a telltale breeze flickers through my hair so softly I’m sure I must be imagining things. And yet it comes again, stronger this time and this time with a touch of ozone. My eyes dart up the horizon seeing a looming wall of dark, strong clouds. I rub my eyes and look again, almost surprised to see its still there.

Minutes pass and the wind is coming in gusts, carrying with it the overpowering scent of clean, beautiful wet rain. I stand up and step outside – not wanting to miss what might be the first rain drop I’ve seen in half a year. And I’m not disappointed.

The first drop strikes the skin of my shoulder, stabbing me with a pinprick of coldness. Then another, and another and they are dropping fast and furious around me. I’m soaking now. The ground itself is dancing and alive as it absorbs its fill then starts to form small puddles. Fighting down the urge to shiver I smile. The first rains have come to Toma.

Seeing Red Again

I wake up to an eerily soft light filtering into my room. Something isn’t right. I reach for my cell phone sitting on the desk next to my bed and as I start to push aside the mosquito net a shower of dust cascades down, covering my hand. Well that’s not good.

After very carefully squeezing my way out of my dust trap of a mosquito net I take a look out the window at another world. A strange red glow has replaced the usual bright blue of the sky. The familiar trees and buildings around me were obscured by a reddish fog. And everywhere, small pieces of dust are precipitating down like small, red snowflakes. I close the window. I close all the windows. I’m really hoping they cancel class today but by the muffled sounds coming in the direction of the school it sounds like they haven’t.

After finding and dusting off a dust mask I that had laid dormant in my closet every since its first journey with me from Ouagadougou I stepped outside. The first thing I noticed was one set of footprints across our concrete patio tracked through the thin layer of dust gathered there. On the way over to the school I saw more - the solid tracks of motos and the thin ribbon of passing bicycles as well as two python tire treads. I want rain.

My students have taken on a variety of defenses against the dust. Most are covering their noses and mouth but some also insist on wearing a hat. One is wearing her winter coat. Whatever works. As we set off toward the computer lab several things are running through my mind. First I’m glad that I remembered to close all blind-like window coverings last night. Second I’m really glad that I had won my first battle to get equipment for the lab – sheets to cover all the computers and keyboards. Finally I was wondering how bad this is going to be for my dilapidated fleet of ancient computers. They’ve seen worse – I’m almost sure of it.

The room holds surprisingly little dust waiting for us – no more so than would accumulate in a couple weeks of inactivity. Class is over just as the students are starting to get a grasp on what I’m talking about as par usual. I spent the rest of the day shut up in my room trying not to breath.

Who’s to blame for this? I think Iceland. Asking around the jury is pretty split. I’ve gotten responses ranging from this is definitely the volcano to this is the Sahel and it happens every year to I don’t know but it hasn’t been this bad for twenty years! Whatever is the case, I’m relieved it only lasted a day and I’m really hoping we don’t see a day like that again here for twenty years.

My Spring Break 2010 – With selected highlights

Toma -> Pô -> Ouagadougou -> Bobo -> Sindou -> Ouagadougou -> Togo -> Ouagadougou -> Yako -> Toma

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Pô

“Hey kid, what are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Good well then come help me.”

Suddenly the task of cleaning the computer lab seemed a lot less daunting with six student helpers. The place was so full of dust and so poorly organized that I had really wanted to just clean everything out of it right away but I didn’t think I could do it alone and Neal was in a meeting for the next several hours. I knew that the students at my school would leap at the chance to work in our computer lab and evidently it was the same here.

The lab had all of the essentials of a lab, computers, fans, electricity, as well as some perks, windowed glass and an air conditioner. Unfortunately the air conditioner hadn’t been working for some time and the glass windows were pinned open by some computers, resulting in a nice pile-up of dust. I put my small army to work, taking first chairs and tables, followed by cables, monitors and towers. Then came the least fun part – sweeping.

The room was covered in almost a centimeter of dust in some places. Being in the room while it is being swept out is like getting a really bad seat on transport on a really dusty part of the road – you don’t quite end up as red as you do after transport but you feel like you do. I send three unhappy kids in armed with ‘village’ brooms – a bunch of grass or straw tied at the bottom with a cord. Sweeping the household is traditionally part of girls’ daily chores so I had chosen three boys to do the first round. I opened the windows and turned up the fans, hoping to get them some clean airflow and let them go to work. A giant dust-cloud and a few minutes later and the lab looked much better. One more thorough sweep and it almost looked like new.

By the next morning everything was back in the lab, sorted according to operability and I was madly dashing from computer to computer starting installs, entering details, testing CD drives and swapping hardware. Somehow the two days I had allotted myself to finish with the lab had slipped away under the mountain of small tasks and now I was working all out – something I really hadn’t done much of since my last big programming assignment was turned in two weeks before graduation. It was exhilarating and the teacher who came in and out the lab didn’t really know what to think of Neal and me running around crazily. And then it was time to go – I had a bus to catch.

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Ouagadougou

The next morning I was most definitely not catching the bus I promised myself I would wake up for. In fact I wasn’t doing much of anything besides feeling the effects of last night. Besides a massive hangover I had some scrapes from a late-night run in with the pavement on the way back. I struggled out of bed and forced down a liter of water before plopping right back down. I repeated this a couple times before I felt I up to the eight-hour bus ride to the other side of the country. By this time it was lunch, and after learning the next bus out of town left at 2pm, I decided to stay for delivery. After a delicious BLT and equally good grilled cheese with bacon and tomatoes I had my stuff packed out and was heading out the door. I had thirty minutes to get across town but I wasn’t too worried – buses down make a habit of leaving earlier than five minutes to five hours after they are supposed to.

Still I was quite happy to see the taxi pull up that was dropping off some other volunteers. After explaining that I was a little short for time the taxi driver was off on a shortcut to the station, only stopping once to pick up someone headed the same direction. We pulled at 2:00 on the nose. The bus was doing the ritual last minute get-on-the-bus-we’re-leaving honking and I jumped out the taxi waving them down.

Up until this point I’d never met someone running any sort of transport in Burkina that wouldn’t at least try and squeeze one more passenger on. As the bus pulled out of the station after some yelling for me to get out of the way I was shocked. Despite the two-hour wait for the next bus I was overall very impressed by the bus company, Rakieta. They stick to their schedules like clock-work, their buses were cleaner than most I’ve taken in the states, they were comfortable and best off all had air conditioning! These were all firsts for me.

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More to come later but I wanted to get this first part up because it’s been forever and a day since I posted something!