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.
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Hey! I just stumbled upon your blog in the Facebook group. I'm leaving Monday for Burkina Faso to teach Secondary Ed IT.. is there anything else you would recommend bringing besides RAM?
ReplyDeleteFor work? A couple small screwdrivers would be really nice for repairing and replacing parts. You'll probably wish you had access to a lot more depending on your site but I think RAM is needed almost everywhere and its really easy to pack.
ReplyDeletePersonally? You'll almost certainly have electricity. If you are planning on bringing a laptop or netbook you should bring a travel case (lots of bumpy bus rides) and a USB-powered fan pad. Both will significantly increase the chance of your computer making it though the 27 months. You might also want to bring DVDs to backup pictures as harddrives have a nasty habit of succumbing to the dust and heat.
Hope that helps. See you in a week. Bon voyage!