Peace Corps, Take Two--Aaaand, Action!

The last few days have been a whirlwind!  I arrived in Ougadougou (pronounced WAH gah dew goo--really like baby coos when broken down phonetically), Burkina Faso (pronounced bur KEEN a FA sew), in West Africa on Thursday, June 6th, with a crew of 34 completely shiny new future Peace Corps volunteers.  Before our touch down in Ouga, as Ougadougou is affectionaly called, I met all of these new trainees in Philadelphia for another round of the exact same prepartory staging event I completed just 6 short (and yet so very long!) months ago.  It was pretty strange to look around at everyone, imagining their anxieties and excitement so vividley, as a recent veteran of the experience.  As the news of my celebrity status started to trickly through the group, the questions started to seep in.  I enjoyed every minute of it!

The celebrity status has only gotten better since arriving in Burkina.  All the conversations with the Peace Corps associated people here has started out normal, with some odd looks at my broken French skills, followed by someone else's mention of my Peace Corps Mali evacuee status, and then either a look of renewed respect, or, the real pleasure, a rush of greetings in Bambara. Yaaayy! They speak Bamara, the lanuage I was learning in Mali!  Well, actually they speak Jula, which is very similar to Bambara.  I think my French is going to have a real shot at blooming here as well.  I rarely used it in Mali, but here it is used all the time.  It's great!

Burkina seems to be similar in many ways to Mali--the soils is a rusty red, the women wear the same decadent, multi-pattern and multi-colored clothes, kids still stare up moon-eyed at white faces, and the heat still swirls around you in a dusty hug. I am so happy.  I feel like I am coming home, a very strange feeling considering how short my time in Mali was and how many difficult growing pains I had.  I'm really excited, I feel prepared and recharged, and I'm totally thrilled to get to my site in a couple of weeks and dig in! In the meantime, I'll be desperately working on French and pouring over objectives and goals at the bureau. Woohoo!

Let's hope Burkina is a little gentler with me than Mali...

Be in touch soon! Bon nuit from Burkina--

Alex