This one's for the people back home.
I’ve realized there is a lot I forget to tell you guys or that’s difficult for me to explain. I forget that many of the realities I deal with everyday make no sense to you, because I forget that they are not “normal” or thought of in Americaland. And, sometimes I just feel weird posting about the honest realities where anybody with internet access can read them.
I’ve realized there is a lot I forget to tell you guys or that’s difficult for me to explain. I forget that many of the realities I deal with everyday make no sense to you, because I forget that they are not “normal” or thought of in Americaland. And, sometimes I just feel weird posting about the honest realities where anybody with internet access can read them.
I am a second year volunteer, which means that there was a Peace Corps volunteer in my village doing the same job description for two years before me. This is not true for all volunteers or in all places, but it does happen. I was a little surprised at first hearing that I would be the second volunteer in my village because it’s not exactly in the PC brochure, so I’m assuming many of you also don’t think of me that way.
The idea is to prolong impact, as two years is not long at all when you spend most of the first one just trying to adjust. The idea is that three volunteers (6 years) instead of just one gets new ideas and behaviors off the ground for sustainable development (if there is such a thing, but that’s another discussion). I was lucky with the volunteer before me, but even most conscientious volunteer leaves complications. They made the first impressions, the first projects, and the first ideas the community has about who Peace Corps volunteers (and usually Americans) are. As any middle child understands, I will always be compared to the first. Even people I know extraordinarily well will forever mistakenly call me her name. Everything I do is still analyzed as to if it’s the same or different from her. I have made peace with this long ago (honestly), but it is something that continues to affect my day-to-day service that I don’t mention much. (Apologies to H, but I’m sure you understand).
The idea is to prolong impact, as two years is not long at all when you spend most of the first one just trying to adjust. The idea is that three volunteers (6 years) instead of just one gets new ideas and behaviors off the ground for sustainable development (if there is such a thing, but that’s another discussion). I was lucky with the volunteer before me, but even most conscientious volunteer leaves complications. They made the first impressions, the first projects, and the first ideas the community has about who Peace Corps volunteers (and usually Americans) are. As any middle child understands, I will always be compared to the first. Even people I know extraordinarily well will forever mistakenly call me her name. Everything I do is still analyzed as to if it’s the same or different from her. I have made peace with this long ago (honestly), but it is something that continues to affect my day-to-day service that I don’t mention much. (Apologies to H, but I’m sure you understand).
My village is on a paved road to Ouaga (the capital), which is a big deal. I live a little off the road; far enough I can’t get electricity, but close enough I can still sometimes hear big trucks passing at night. The road is why our market is so large and why we occasionally get strangers traveling to or from the capital. I have about the easiest transport of any volunteer to get to Ouaga. Usually I just go by the road and wait (not more than 2 hours) until a bus comes any day of the week from about 6am to 6pm. I take the bus about an hour and a half on the paved road, and then I catch a taxi to the Peace Corps.
There are 4 parts to my village that are officially recognized called quartiers (“kahr-tee-ay-s”), though there are 2 or 3 more that people name that aren’t recognized. The quartiers were originally their own tiny villages started by one or two big families, and they have grown from there. Each has their own personality. One is home to its own ethnic group (the Peuhl/Fulani). The number of people in my village is based on a government math calculation, so God only knows how many people there actually are. The main part of town (by the market) is where I live, and there are an estimated 1500-some people living there. These are the ones I actually see all the time. The total population of my village is somewhere around 4000, but as with my quartier most of these are kids. (The median age in Burkina is 16.)
The healthcare system here is government run and controlled. It was made more localized about 20 years ago (thus my village medical center I help at), and there are a few doctors in bigger villages and one real hospital in Ouaga. The local village medical centers serve a district of people, but these districts (like most districts, I’ve found) are not always the most wisely set up. In our district for example, we have only our own village, but 48 percent of our consultations last year were from outside of our village. The local clinics have only nurses and midwives. They are trained 2-4 years after finishing as little as 6th grade, though the head nurse (the Major: “mah-johr”) has to finish high school and the BAC. These nurses often come from more well to do families (as they had the money to continue in school), and are considered lucky to have a government job with a regular paycheck. They often live very different lives than others in the village they work in, and can consider themselves better.
People still depend heavily on local healing and traditional curing. More recently, people have started buying (black-)market drugs as they are cheap and widely available. People here often attribute the cause of sickness to beliefs like sorcery or God’s will rather than the equally invisible (to them at least) germs or viruses of science.
There is for all purposes no insurance (I’ve heard of a few NGOs trying in bigger cities, but no real progress), and there is also no real access to banks (which suck anyway). Which means, that many times people can’t afford being sick. They often have little or no money in savings. It’s just not part of the culture here to think about the future like that.
…
More to come.
Peace, Jessi
