Answers to Questions

I sent a bunch of answers to some questions I received and figured it couldn't hurt to post these in case there are others wondering the same things.

The city I'll be living in is huge - 140,000 people if I remember correctly, maybe it's the size of Burlington. There are plenty of people who speak French. All schools nation-wide are taught in French because there are so many local languages. Anyone who has attended school speaks French, so a lot of people in my city do because there are many schools there and anyone who has moved there from somewhere else did so probably because they were educated enough to find work here. There is the occasional person who speaks English. They learn this at school as well, but only for a fraction of their school time and not so well either. Many many people will ask me to teach them English. My host sister is in private school where they're taught English much better and earlier on in their school career. I've already started working on vocab with her.

I'm in an apartment with 2 rooms and a bathroom in a 2 story house. The family is like a host family for me. They try to do everything for me. They are so, so nice to me. The family has resovoirs in their back yard which contain all of the water they collect when the water does run. They share this with me. This water comes from a treatment center so it's safe to put in my water filter and to use for bathing.

The job is whatever I want it to be. I am partnered up with an NGO, but I select the projects I'd like to work on. For the next 3 months, I'll be observing my community to learn as much as I can about it. During this time, I will try to find out what the community needs most and from there I can start to formulate ideas for projects. My NGO partner does business trainings. They want me to help them with trainings, computers, and English. I can pick what I want to do, so who knows what I'll be doing. I met people at my NGO and they are really nice. My counterpart seems very motivated which is fortunate. Coming from America, often there can be mismatches in terms of work ethic. Again, I select which projects to undertake, so I may find a community member with whom I want to work with on something, so I don't know yet who I'll be working with.

There's the dry season and the rainy season. The rains should start in May/June and last til Oct/Nov. It's been warm - in the 90's with humidity. There were a few days where it felt cold - maybe 80's or 70's. That was about it for the winter, I think it starts warming up again. It's also humid which makes things sticky.

The standards here are different in terms of clothes. As long as I'm in something clean and pressed, I'm formal. I will also wear clothes I have made here. These are always formal by the standards here. They are often skirts with a top (all tailored) made from brightly patterned fabric. I will be moving in to my city next week. I'll be there for the whole 2 years.

Visuals from Training

The kitchen at my host family's house in our training city. During meal preparations, sauce is usually cooked in a big pot on the right and rice in a big pot on the right. They jam sticks in from all three sides to get a roaring fire going. Amazingly, the dried roof never catches fire, at least from what I observed.

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This is a view of the street from the front yard of my host family's house. There's a pretty serious rutt in the road, not uncommon in this country. The ground is just so dry. I washed my shoes well for the goodbye ceremony, as my host mother insisted, but only 10 feet from the house and my shoes and feet were dirty all over again. Oh well.

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This is the duck living with my host family to keep my sister healthy. She told me she faints sometimes, perhaps epilepsy? I've received this sister's name and so has the duck. My sister is [her name] #1, I'm [her name] #2, and the duck is #3. The duck is not often treated so nicely by children here, so I tried to counteract this by being super nice to the duck. Not sure how much success I had with this. But my family definitely made a lot of jokes at my expense. So I succeeded at something! For example, when I pulled out the camera to take pictures of my family, they insisted I take some of the duck too. Of course I agreed!

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This is a view of the well.

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This is the jerry can with a cutout often used to retrieve water from the wells.

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This is a pineapple field on a beautiful farm we toured in a rural district of my city.

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Isn't it just paradise? We've dubbed it Hanali - from Puff the Magic Dragon.

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This is a view from where we held our workshop with our counterparts. You can get a sense for the houses. This is a hilly region of the country. It was also rather chilly in the mornings here, perhaps in the 60's.

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More views from the workshop site.

Training is over

We've completed our training and left the training site for good yesterday. It wrapped up with a goodbye ceremony during which we thanked our host families and city officials for taking such good care of us. I was one of a few people to give a speech in a local language. I was so nervous, but it seemed to have gone well. I'm learning the local language that my host family speaks, so I wanted to do the speech as a way to thank them.

We have our swearing in ceremony tomorrow where we become volunteers. A few days of traveling and then I move in to my site. A little nervewracking, but it will be nice to have my own space and to unpack my bags for good. My apartment is in a family's house, so it's like having a host family again. They are so friendly and nice to me, so I know I won't be lonely if I don't want to be.

I've updated the mailing post (my first post, so you'll have to click View Old Posts to see it) to include a list of requests for packages. This is for those who were wondering, because by all means, I am so happy to receive packages. And letters are wonderful as well! It's so great to hear about home and to know how much amazing support I have. I really appreciate it, thank you!