Kristinas Thoughts

Hey everyone

So KDawg and I just got into Leo today, our means of transportation was an ambulance. No, dont worry mother, there was no practical need for it to be an ambulance, BHM just needed some stuff and we needed to be dropped off so into the ambulance we got. To make it better, it was an English ambulance, so the wheel was on the ACTUAL wrong side of the road = not the "it doesnt feel right" wrong side when you are in England and it is right. It was just chalked up to another experience.
What follows here is actually thoughts that Kristina has penned, not I. They are far more articulate than anything I could say (our favorite new Emily line is "They were Communist so they like had stuff but life like blew" = there was no context when I said it either) so I got her permission to post them. It basically goes through what our biggest struggle is right now; luckily it still has nothing to do with culture shock, at least not country culture, though it can probably be considered organizational culture shock after years of brainwashing on sustainability from RC and EWB. Anyhow, I`ll be sure to let you know how it pans out.

"Its not that we want to experience the culture: there is no culture. We want to experience a culture. Somehow this is hard to communicate: maybe they aren’t used to it. I don’t want to learn the traditional dances, or about the festival of masks. This is the stuff we use at home as filler. We accentuate it in visiting other places because the differences when we go to visit Alberta or California aren’t significant enough that they are interesting on their own otherwise. So we supplement whatever day-to-day, down-to-earth culture, with the museums and the festivals and the guided tours. Don’t get me wrong: I love that stuff, its interesting, and tells neat stories. But when there is more available, when the living culture is more than enough, more than huge, then that is what I have to go for.
Culture is how people live day-to-day. You don’t get that from museums or festivals or parks. It is the small, meaningless things, like the walk into town for groceries, or the chatting with strangers, or the laughter among friends. You get that from interactions with people. You get that from ongoing, sustained, continuing, simple interactions. This kind of culture isn’t easy. I don’t know how to speak the first languages. I can’t understand the politics. I’m not familiar with the foods. I don’t follow the religion. It’s work. It’s impossible. But I’m up to trying: I don’t want to feel cheated of that opportunity to put in the effort.
I hate that I’ve gotten attached to that idea: it would have been much easier if I hadn’t, if I had stuck with the initial broad project, if this place hadn’t stolen our hearts. Heart and Soul. That’s what Emily said. That we’d put it into whatever project. If it isn’t this one, she’s going to have to re-convince me, which won’t be nearly as easy as it was the first time.
I can completely justify this in what I’m seeing is a neat, logical way. I could begin with the easy one, we are paying for it. However, that isn’t really a fair justification, as we are here for more than that, we are asking for more than that. But there’s justification beyond that. We’re compromising, we’re making things work, we’re bending over backwards to be allowed to contribute. We continually ask what we can do, we are flexible, but we want it to be real. We understand that tourism is different, and that this is what they are seemingly more used to. Maybe that isn’t a fair statement either. But still, it shouldn’t be this hard. We’ve now had to apologize for being difficult, but append that with the statement that though we were sorry, we weren’t going to stop being difficult if we still hold any hope.
Beyond the logical, we just want to. I’ve already said it, Heart and Soul. Not normally one for a home, I’ve gotten attached to settling it, to a routine, so dramatically different from any previous one. I’ve gotten attached to seeing familiar faces, to wondering who will come up the road, to expecting ‘good morning’s from friends, to constant teasing, to awkward attempts at complicated conversations with second languages.
It’s a good thing its on paper: we may have to burn it.

Emily says I should give this context, and she’s right as usual, so here it comes.

Since early on in planning internships, Emily and I have been planning to do different projects while in Burkina Faso. She was to be working with NGO’s, on capacity building programs with them. I was to be working in education (the plan of exactly what changed 6 or 7 times before I left) in speaking with different stakeholders in the education system about the challenges they were seeing, and what might be done to lessen these.
About a month before Emily and I left home, because of some confusion in wording of conversations, we emailed Daniel to clarify that he knew we expected to be together, that though Emily and I were doing separate projects, we needed to come home to the same house each evening. We clarified that this was an expectation that we ourselves held, that our parents held, and that RC wanted (good ol’ RC, always stepping in where we need them to) for safety concerns. The response was slightly confusing: we were told that of course we would be together, but also that we would be fine if we were apart, that it had been done before by individuals our age and that they had managed fine and that we need not worry about being separated. So, though it seemed like a slight backtrack, we assumed that it could be taken care of. No worries.
As we arrived in Ouaga, we were presented with two separate schedules that had been drawn up for us: Emily was to spend a lot of time in Leo (where most of the NGO’s were based), and I most of the time in Boura (the center of the school district). They said that they had heard the week before that we were actually supposed to be together, and that they were still unsure how to make this work out. Easy enough, we decided to start together on most of my schedule and compact Emily’s a bit to do together later in the summer. It was reiterated several times that the schedule was not written in stone, and would be as flexible as we needed it to be.
So, its now week 3, and Emily and I have been visiting schools in Boura and generally settling in. (see previous postings if you aren’t convinced that we love it here).
Ah, I’d better explain why we love it here. We are able to be fairly independent, we are doing interesting work, and we are getting to talk with a lot of people. All of this was non-existant in both Leo and Ouaga. Ouaga is a giant city, having the benefits of some ‘from home’ ammeneties, but mostly the problems of urban centers. We were isolated, cut off, and generally stuck on our own, unable to be independent or meet with people, unable to settle in: we would always be ‘new’ in Ouaga, because we would invariably always see people to whom we were new. This means that both we are unable to feel at home and non-new ourselves, and, as importantly, that we are unable to get beyond very basic, surface conversations with anyone. Leo presents challenges of another kind. Where we stay in Leo is far from town, and we have to rely on someone to drive us to and from anyplace we want to go. As well, Pascaline (our translator) grew up there, and so has family and friends to visit, which is good for her, but necessarily leaves us even more isolated. We’ve become quite attached to the independence we’ve been able to assume in Boura, and to the relationships forged because of this, and aren’t anxious to give it up.
Not wanting to leave Boura is one reason we are trying to modify our schedule, though there are others. Emily’s project, as explained here, has turned into more of a ‘sightseeing’ expedition: go see what these NGO’s are doing, and be amazed by what they accomplish. Which means that we ourselves are accomplishing nothing, except being foreigners (in French, they use the same word for this and ‘stranger’, which more aptly describes our predicament) coming in to inspect, supervise, and gawk. We don’t want to encourage any sense of us being there to ‘check up’ on them and their work: we are not managers, we have no expertise, and we can’t understand an organization from a few translated meetings. We don’t see what BoH can possibly gain from this (we both see a lot to lose, in perpetuating stereotypes), and are mystified as to why they would have us do this.
Thirdly, from what we have seen in the schools and the very real challenges they face (mostly in students not going to school or not going very far in school), and ongoing projects within BoH to assist with these challenges, we see real opportunity to put in some of the grunt work needed to expand on these to increase their contributions to the community. On encouragement from one of the people here, and from Daniel in Canada, we’ve dreamt up (and apparently become quite attached to) a project which would help children who aren’t going to school to further their learning and to show them opportunities available to them in their community. Emily and I drew up a plan that would have us finish the work with the schools before they are out for the summer in July, and do the report on them as planned, and use shortened versions of Emily’s NGO visits to understand resources available in the community to individuals. From there, we would devote all of July to expanding on a club for children, in running programming and testing how its impact can be furthered. Both wary of short-term projects, the idea of this would be as a test-run, or proof that such a concept can (or cannot) work with positive impact in the community, with the idea that BoH would then take on the resulting group as a permanent project.
We are quite thrilled with this project and it’s potential. We would get to stay in Boura, build significant relationships with a group of youth and build leadership (how RC) and self-confidence ideas in them. We would be starting a project which would have long-term impact, long-term duration, and a lot of support from the Canadian head (which is where (unfortunately) all funding comes from at this time) (they’re working on changing that). It’s enormous.
And it’s recognized as such. Except that so far, people in charge of us (our schedule) aren’t seeing on the same page as us. They are trying to take Emily and I’s two very different schedules and cram everything into one common schedule. Life doesn’t work that way, or at least it doesn’t work well that way. We had two separate things: now we are being asked to do two things at once. We could do it, but not well. Never mind that one of the projects is ineffective on its own, it would cramp the other enough that both end up being ineffective. It is hard to be enthusiastic about. On top of that, it seems that, they are quite attached to the idea of us visiting as much of the country as possible, in as short amount of time as possible. They’ve got us travelling all over the place (a very expensive prospect, and not an effective use of time), spending a few days in Bobo-Diasolou doing tourist-y stuff, a few days visiting a small village in the north, and a lot of visits to Ouagadougou, where we are apparently supposed to visit the American Recreation Center (it has a pool and movies) and feel ‘at home’. Its so hard to explain that we aren’t here to feel ‘at home’, but that we are quite content to feel ‘at home in Boura.’
So, we have a final chance to convince BoH on either Thursday or Friday: wish us luck, wish us tears if that will help convince them, wish us good health until then, and wish us … I have no idea. Just make it happen, I’m not sure if we’re ready for alternatives."