The dog days of Summer

Summer blog 2

Tim's Time at Training
It's been a couple of months since we got back to BF and things have been pretty busy for me and slow for Becky. After flying in I headed out to work training for the new volunteers. There are almost 80 new trainees and we were moving to Koudougou. It is one the largest towns in BF about an hour south of Ouaga. Unfortunately most of the trainers and staff had never spent time there. It was hectic trying to find the stores that the trainees were asking for. After about a week, we had a list of a few restaurants, a couple of grocery stores, and an internet café for everyone to go to. Training itself was pretty busy. The trainees just started model school and were stressing out over having to teach in French. I had to teach a couple of classes as a demonstration, then they started teaching. They were doing a good job and it was interesting to see how they started and where the took the classes. They would sometimes teach a lesson I would have never thought of or thought wasn't practical, but it worked and their classes seemed to understand the ideas they were trying to get across. I also planned a couple of other technical sessions on IT setups/options and a session on Positive Deviance.

The work hasn't been too hard it is just difficult to get back into the habit of working from 8 to 5. The new trainees are a good group through and I can't wait for them to swear-in. There are 22 new teachers, 7 of which are IT teachers. The group is much different than our group last year. Most of their experience is in end-user things like Excel, graphic design, and such. There are also 4 women in this group. Quite a bit different than our group of all guys who have been working in tech rooms trying to fix broken things.

Becky was there for the last two weeks of training. All of the trainees were getting pretty excited about being done with training. It was very interesting being on the other side of training and watching them. It brought back some good memories of the last weeks, particularly Becky's last language test. During her last interview, she spent most of her time trying to explain Harry Potter to someone who has never heard of the story and has drastically different ideas about magic/wizards. It must have turned out OK because she passed her LPI. She spent time talking with the people who hadn't made language level trying to calm their fears. She gave them the same advice that we got last year, that you'll learn a lot more in the month that you're in site by yourself, and that it comes a lot easier when you're in site because you have to speak French all the time and there isn't an American buffer.

We had our mid-service conference in the middle of August. It was basically a glorified doctor's visit with a one day meeting where we got to talk about our “feelings” on our service thus far and what we hope for the next year. Becky got reelected to the VAC, the student council for volunteers. It was nice to get to see everyone again. It was the first time that we had seen everyone since January.

After mid-service, we went to a tree planting in Dori. It was a bit of a hassle for Becky and her friend Lorena because they were in charge of recruiting volunteers. Getting hold of 80ish volunteers is not easy. We are notorious for not answering our phones and refusing to commit to anything. The tree planting went better than expected, but was still an event that happened in BF, interesting to say the least. Buses getting stuck, another trying to tip over, pee breaks every 45 minutes if not sooner, and planting almost 20,000 trees. Overall opinion of tree planting: SUCCESS.

Swearing in was a great time this year. The ceremony was at the new American Embassy. The First Lady of BF came and gave a speech. The Embassy is beautiful and the refreshment after were wonderful. Even the weather cooperated and was wonderful.

Becky just had her 25th birthday. It was the best one she has had in the last couple of years. It started raining in the morning and then stayed cool the rest of the day. We both went and got out our hoodies since it was only 75 degrees out. We got to use our new camp oven and I made a stuffing pot pie thing and we had a bottle of wine. Becky was Queen of the Computer for the day so I suffered through Cougar Town, True Blood, and Julie & Julia. She got phone calls from both parents which was nice. Now she has all the scuttle on both families. She is such a gossip hound. :P

NB Thanks Matt for fulfilling Becky's B-day wish.