A Brighter Future

Hello Everyone!  It has been an eventful couple of months and I am excited to finally get a blog post written.  I’m currently writing this in my village, around 10 a.m. and it is already 90 degrees outside.  So yes, if you are wondering, hot season is in full swing!

Last month I celebrated International Women’s Day in my village.  On March 8th, every year, countries around the world celebrate women.  Even though the holiday is not a big deal in the United States, here, schools are cancelled, events are planned, and men and women buy matching cloth and get clothes made with it.  Each year, the event has a theme related to women’s rights, women’s equality and gender development.  This year’s theme was economic development and income generating activities.  Emma came to celebrate in my village, bringing along her best friend and her daughter.  Komtoega celebrated with speeches from the mayor, free drinks for the women, and lots of dancing.  At one point, I was even called up to dance in front of 200 people.  During that particular dance, two women danced around in a circle, and at one point, one stomped her feet and then they bumped butts.  The goal is to bump the hardest.  If this happens everyone laughs and another lady comes into the circle to “compete”.  Of course my village thought it would be hilarious if I participated during this dance. So, I went up for all of 20 seconds, lost (obviously), and then sat down.   They thought it was very entertaining.     Later in the afternoon, I got a man to walk around in a traditional pagne (which is something only women wear). He also put a baby on his back, to show that both men and women can help out with children.  Here only women carry babies around.

After the ceremony, Emma, Alima (Emma’s friend) and I got invited to have lunch with the mayor.  We had chicken soup and bread and it was delicious.  In the afternoon, the Komtoega Women’s Association organized a women’s soccer match.  Although Komtoega does have a few girls’ soccer teams, there is still a huge divide between the boys and girls.  Boys’ teams get cool jerseys, nets on their goal posts, and a huge crowd to watch the matches.  Girls’ teams get none of the above.  However, on this day, a huge crowd showed up to watch, and we had a ref!  I also played in the match and it was so fun.  My team won 1-0, although we stopped early because our ball popped.  All in all it was a great day!

Me, Emma and Alima at the March 8 Women's Day Celebration.
The fabric we are wearing was specific fabric to celebrate the day!

At the end of the March was the Youth Leadership and Active Citizenship Conference that I have been organizing and planning for a few months.  35 youth from around the country participated in the event.  17 Peace Corps Volunteers each brought 1 or 2 youth counterparts that they identified as leaders in their communities.  Both volunteers and Burkinabe led sessions on leadership, gender norms, health talks, project planning, and goal setting.  The conference also had a disability rights component.  We had 5 deaf students, 2 physically handicap students, and 1 student with epilepsy, who also participated in the event.  The deaf students had a sign language trainer, who also taught the other participants how to sign hello, good morning, and other easy phrases.  The last day of the conference was the project-planning day.  Youth counterparts and volunteers worked together to organize a project that they will implement upon returning to village.  Project ideas included things like summer reading camps, malaria health talks or school gardens.  The deaf students wanted to organize a project on HIV/AIDS.  They said that the HIV/AIDS session during the conference was the first time anyone had given them a health talk on this topic.  They said the deaf community usually doesn’t get health talks, and that for their project, they want to do HIV/AIDS health talks with the deaf community!    
The other cool part of the conference was the guest speakers.  We had two physically handicapped speakers come and talk to the youth.  One speaker has devoted his life to making Fada, a city out East, more handicap accessible.  The other, Ismael, is a paraplegic since age 2, who now studies at the University of Ouagadougou, where he takes notes with his mouth!  The students were really interested in these amazing men, asked tons of questions, and wanted photos with them after. (More info on Isamel below!)

Ismael showing students how he writes with his mouth.

After the conference I was able to compare some pre and post-test scores and calculate that 79.4% of the students scored higher on the post-test than pre-test.  I was excited to see they all learned something and am even more excited to see what projects they complete in their villages.  One of the Peace Corps staff members came and helped out with one of the sessions and  said it was the best youth conference he has been a part of!

Participants of Youth Leadership and Active Citizenship Conference

I continue  working on the "Flags for the Future" project.  I am almost done with one of the neighborhoods, and then will work on implementing the project in another.  One of the hardest things about the project is when families tell me why their children aren’t in school.  For many, it is money problems, or that their kids have specials needs and dropped out because they weren't doing well. Sometimes families said that their children were sick during the start of school and weren’t allowed to sign up late.  For most of these, I can come up with an answer or help them figure out a plan to get the kids in school.  The other day, however, one of the families explained that the father is blind and to make any money, the son and father travel around begging.  They travel to places where transportation stops and ask travelers for money.  They said that if the boy goes to school, who will walk around with the father, and how will they get any money?  I tried to think of solutions but wound up leaving with no real answer.

In April I attended the Women’s Health and Leadership Conference with Dabre, my best friend in village.  Dabre is not only the hardest working lady I know, she is also the most caring person I have ever met.  She lives with her husband, Christopher,  and together they are the mother and father to the whole village.  They unfortunately couldn’t have any children of their own, however their house is always filled with neighborhood kids studying or playing games.  Her house is known as sort of a safe-haven and many people come to Dabre to ask for advice, financial help, or health questions.  She has told me numerous stories about helping children in abusive families, providing family planning advice, offering free liquid soap, at her expense, to poor families, paying education fees for high school students, and the list goes on!  We traveled together to Leo (the city where I spent the first two months training) for the 4-day conference.  12 other women from around the country also participated in the event.  The sessions covered health topics like hygiene, nutrition,  the reproductive system, gender topics like female circumcision and violence, and leadership sessions.   For many of the women, it was the first time they heard the word menstruation.  Dabre, who is 41, told me she had never been taught reproductive health and that she wants to teach younger girls about this stuff when we get back to village.  I can’t wait!

Dabre and I at the Women's Health and Leadership Conference

After the conference I visited the host family where I spent my first two months in country.  I love going back to see them and truly think of those months as some of the best times of my life.  Upon arriving to the village I heard people shout, “Natalie!   It’s Natalie!  She has come back!”  They are always so surprised and all the kids run over to greet me.  This time, going back, it was more shocking than the last.  My host dad had married a new wife - making the count 4 wives in all, the first wife had a 7-month-old baby, and the oldest girl, who is in 8/9th grade, was pregnant.  After catching up they cooked me lunch and brought out the old photo album that I gave to them over a year ago on the day I left.  They complimented me on my French skills (they have come along way since the first couple months!) and also asked if Burkina was very hard because I have lost a lot of weight.  After lunch my host dad and I biked back into the bigger city for me to catch a bus back to Ouagadougou.

A couple of weeks ago I got to spend the day with the new Ambassador of the United States in Burkina.  He is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and met his wife there while she was a Peace Corps Volunteer! First we went to Garango, a bigger village about 12km from my house.  There is currently a third-year volunteer there and it was also the site of the Youth Development Conference that I talked about earlier.  After Garango, we traveled together to Gando, a smaller village by Tenkdogo.  We were going to check out a school built by a famous Burkinabe architect.  Upon arrival, it just so happened that the architect, Mr. Kere, was there!  Kere has won several awards for his architectural innovations in Burkina and abroad.  He was unbelievably inspiring and remarkable.  He was originally born in the village of Gando, which is why he built the school there.  The school is an outdoor school, however if it rains, everything remains protected.  Many of the ceilings are arched.  There is a library, reading center, basketball court, food kitchen, and clay floors in the classrooms.  The classrooms have natural ventilation because of the design, which makes it cool and breezy.  The school is a public school, with all Burkinabe teachers.  Kere has also built an opera center and several other schools like this all over the country. He is still fundraising for money to continue building schools in Burkina.

Ambassador and Mr. Kere

The Gando School

After Gando, the ambassador, his wife, 4 volunteers and some embassy workers had lunch together in Tenkodogo.  All day I had wanted to bring up a story of one of the motivational speakers present at my youth conference.  I was waiting for the perfect moment.  Finally, at lunch, I was able to tell his story!

Ismael, as mentioned above, is from Bobo, a city in the southwest of the country, where there is a train that runs from Burkina to the Ivory Coast.  At the age of 2 he was in a train accident and lost both his arms and legs.  The doctors told his mother to give up hope and let him die but she refused.  He was in the hospital for over 3 months and miraculously survived the accident.  His mother used to send him to school with a bag of candy so that kids would be nice to him.  He managed to study hard and is now a university student in Ouagadougou.  He also was the President of the first Handicap Students Association in Burkina.  He currently moves around with an electronic wheelchair.  He has been able to travel outside of Burkina a few times, including an eye-opening trip to the Ivory Coast.  During this visit he saw that the Ivory Coast had handicap accessible buses.  He was not aware that countries near Burkina have them.  It made him wonder why his country wasn’t providing accessibility options for handicap people.  Upon his return, he wrote a news article asking the Burkinabe government why they haven’t implemented handicap accessible buses.  He said he never got a response but others told him it was a money issue.  He expressed his desire to go to the United States to learn more about the rights of people with disabilities and how they live in the USA.  Then he can come back and continued to petition the Burkinabe government.  I told him I would do my best to come up with a way for him to visit America which is why I wanted to talk to the Ambassador and his staff.  When I brought the story up, they were very enthusiastic about the idea. They mentioned a program that sounds perfect for Isamel and told me to send them his contact information.  The program is focused on Disability Issues in the United States and is a two-week program in July 2015.  The project focuses on American efforts to enable the disabled to participate more fully in daily life and economic opportunity.  It will include activities aimed at improving the lives of people with disabilities and participants will learn about the Americans with Disability Act and how it has enhanced accessibility to education, employment, transportation systems, and buildings.  The deadline had already passed but they made an exception for Isamel and together we submitted his application on Friday.  They told him he was the first handicapped candidate in over 4 years!  Everyone cross your fingers that he gets picked!  He truly deserves the opportunity. When I asked the embassy staff how his interview went on Saturday, they said, “I don’t think I’ll have any trouble winning over the panel with his story.” They also mentioned that in his interview he said that he wants to run for president of Burkina Faso in 2020 just to raise awareness of handicapped people.  Anything is possible!

N