Mid Point Email . . . two and a half weeks late!

Now this email was actually due for school . . . over two and a half weeks ago, however, due to wonky internet access and such, we didn’t get it in until just today. Kristina and I talked about it and thought that it may be interesting to some of you to have a read, get an idea of the logistical struggles of what we’re doing and what we’re responding to in terms of Renaissance College requirements

Mid Point Email – Emily and Kristina in Burkina Faso

Scene One – Ouagadougou.
We walk off the airplane and the heat hits us like a tonne of bricks. It is 7:30 at night, pitch black and still 35+ degrees Celsius. We are crammed into a bus and taken to a terminal. There were people everywhere, and we had no clue whether we were coming or going; all we could think about was the heat. We were the last two to go through customs, thus making it easy to pick us out as the two young Canadian girls that our driver was waiting for. He shooed us through the crowds of people, all offering in French and broken English to take our bags, drive us where we needed to go or telling us they would guide us, to meet Tatiana, the secretary for Bridges of Hope who would take care of us for the next several days. The car ride was surreal. Tatiana and our driver were in the front speaking a language we did not understand, occasionally pointing out something to us in French. We drove down endless unpaved streets, bypassing bicycles and motorcycles and people everywhere. There was no dividing line on the street, and there did not seem to be a need for one; we were the only car on the road, therefore we had priority as we dodged potholes. Along the streets were 3 walled shops, selling everything and nothing particular, in buildings that were no more than 10 feet square and with individual fluorescent lights illuminated the crudely stenciled signs.

Ouagadougou, as is the pronunciation of its name, was overwhelming. Excitement was the most prevalent feeling, but there was a nagging awkwardness; we had no clue what was going on, but we were more than happy to go along with it. Our home at the Bridges of Hope house in Ouagadougou had all of the amenities needed to ease our adjustment: air conditioning, running water, stove, fridge. From day one, we had someone cooking for us, a concept we were slightly uncomfortable with, but a concept we were even more uncomfortable to ask about.
Isolation summed up Ouagadougou for us. Big walls surrounded the BHM house, and when we did leave those walls, three times over five days, we were whisked around in a vehicle to places like the American Recreation Center and Ouagadougou 2000 – the rich end of town. We were not particularly concerned, though we were a bit confused, as we understood that there was a huge discrepancy between what we were seeing and what the city actually was. This isolation was also visible in our interactions with the organization; we did not see our program until Saturday – 3 days after arriving. We quickly identified a big problem, namely that for a big chunk of the internship we would be separate. That this was a huge problem was actually a good thing, as it meant that the fear of being apart was enough to drive us to insist that this change. The fact that our assertion was well received, ultimately gave us the confidence to take a very proactive role in the construction of a tailored internship.

Scene Two – Leo
An empty house far away from town. A translator and guide who frequently ran into town and left us. And dehydration. Two days in Leo was hard to handle to say the least.

Unlike Ouagadougou, Leo was beautiful and green, but five isolated days in Ouagadougou left us in need of more than just greenery and each other. The first night saw Emily cry and Kristina on the verge of tears. We were not prepared for how isolated we felt and were seriously concerned for the first time about the rest of the summer. It could not keep going like this.

Scene Three – Boura
Talk about rebound. Boura was beautiful and green and right from the start we were meeting friendly, genuine and welcoming people. Throw in a good rain and an orphanage full of beautiful babies and we were ready to stay in Boura for the rest of time. Boura was the start of everything: we started meeting people we would see again, we started doing work, and we started to feel truly at home. In many ways, it wasn’t difficult: Boura greatly resembled PEI, with the red dirt, green everywhere, and the ‘barrage’: a dam holding in a huge pond of water, used to flood and irrigate fields.

It was almost entirely the people we met that made Boura feel like home. Pascaline, our translator, came out of her hard shell, to become a very close friend, and an incredible asset to our work and our leisure. The people with BHM were open and friendly, making every effort to help us understand what we could do to help them. Though we soon discovered that this wasn’t all that clear to them, and therefore difficult to explain to us, it was enough that we felt we could work something out that would be an asset to them.
More frustrations hit with our first visit to BHM’s private school. SDK school is currently composed of two grade one classes, of about 50 students each. From our very surface observations, we could see that the school was clearly flourishing, however after meeting with the teachers, we were left worried that our questions were inadequate, insufficient, incomprehensible, and possibly offensive. This was a great concern, and we spent a day trying to rework our questions to be able to get answers that would be of use to us and to BHM. A meeting with the parents of students at SDK was the instantaneous turning point in our view of our work. Over sixty parents showed up to meet and speak with us, voicing very real concerns about education, but also very real solutions and suggestions. While there were issues, they could see ways these could be resolved, provided that someone had the time to put it in place. We became truly interested in our work, and this increased as we visited the public school and met with the school inspector of the region. We loved it, and were not keen to leave it to do work with NGO’s.
While the work which had been initially outlined for with NGO’s had seemed interesting, it became clear that there was little real benefit that could come from this. We did not have the qualifications to do much work of use to them, and saw that our 4 day visits, where we were supposed to teach them about organizational structure and environment, was unsustainable. Plus, we wanted to stay in Boura.
We devised a plan. After talking with Jonas, the director of BHM’s social work, we drew up a schedule that would have us spending the remainder of the summer, after a brief two weeks in Leo (which we despised on principle of our bad first impression), in our beloved Boura. We proposed taking the Thursday Kid’s club that already existed and making it a summer literacy and youth leadership program that would run three days a week. Jonas really liked the idea but preferred that we work with the Thursday Kids Club, but focus on starting a club for girls who were otherwise not reached by BHM. We jumped on the idea, and drew up a detailed schedule outlining our plans to propose to BHM. Initially, the idea was poorly received. There was concern that we would not see enough of the country, that we would offend by not visiting the NGOs, and that we would quickly become bored with Boura. Our initial experience in Ouaga, asserting ourselves and our needs within our program to BHM helped us to not back down, and to really pull for what we both knew we needed the summer to be. Our insistence that we would benefit more from the relationships built in one place than from traveling and seeing sights was what tipped the balance in our favour: the stubbornness neither of us expected in the face of near strangers allowed us to truly shape our experiences here.

Scene 4 – Leo, take two
An English ambulance, standard, with the wheel on the right side of the vehicle, was our transport back to Leo, the place we loathed to return to. The ambulance (the drive in which was actually an experience all on its own, involving a carsick child, two live chickens, and concerns of diarrheic explosions) dropped us off at our house and left. Pascaline left soon afterwards, leaving us stuck in a house with nothing to do but mope about the patheticness of our situation. However, by the next day, things were looking up. We started spending large chunks of the days at Pascaline’s family’s house, playing with three kids and attempting conversations and tea-making with those our age. While there were significant organizational frustrations, the Zopoula family was what made our second Leo experience one a little hard to leave behind.

Despite the fact that we wanted to spend our summer in Boura, there was a need for us to visit Leo: we had some schools to visit in the city, and also were convinced of a need to at least show our faces at the NGOs there, so as not to offend. The school visits were certainly valuable, though slightly repetitive, however the visits with NGOs were a mess. We hated showing up, usually unannounced, and asking people to essentially entertain us for half a day. Furthermore, we were breaking to them the news that this was truly only for our benefit, that we had no qualifications to train them in anything, and little time to spend with them. To their credit, the NGOs were generally understanding, if disappointed, and we personally benefited a lot from seeing the different sorts of work, leadership, problem solving, and citizenship in action.
Leo was also the setting of our first (and only to date) moment of frustration with one another. An interesting thing about this trip is the reversal of leadership roles it forced in us both. While Emily tends to be a vocal leader, taking charge, making decisions, and asking tough questions, Kristina is quieter, and inclined towards observation and reflection. However we have both proven to be adaptable, to more than just heat; language has forced a near reversal of roles between the two of us. Kristina’s knowledge of French have required her to become Emily’s mouth, as well as her own, while Emily’s lack of French has forced her to take on a more observant and analytical role. This is sometimes difficult: Emily is not able to carry forth the decisions she wants to make, and Kristina finds the pushing of ideas concerning. This came to a head over a minor question of how to deal with the organizational frustrations we were experiencing with BHM. We both saw it had to be dealt with, but were unable to act on it, symptomatic of our non-articulation of the role reversal we were experiencing.
There are, as always, exceptions: Emily is still loud with kids, and Kristina will use translation as an opportunity to allow more time for reflection. We are learning to take on new roles, but still finding ways to make use of our more instinctive talents.

Epilogue – Reflection
Writing this reflection together was an obvious choice. We are having an amazing time together, and cannot imagine this internship with any other person. Most of the town considers us to be the same person anyhow, a stereotype we sometimes enjoy exploiting. Working together has not isolated us from the community as much as we had feared, but has rather been a perfect way to balance our two personalities in interactions with others, allowing for significant integration into the community: dancing, singing, attending church, making tea, learning Sissala, and having tough conversations. We are challenged, and we are able to challenge others. It is truly panning out to be a near perfect experience, the most complete Renaissance College internship we could have ever imagined, complete with leadership, culture, and individual challenges.