e-mail on 8/10/2002 Return to List
I've been pretty busy over here as I reach the
last month of training. The work load itself hasn't really increased all that
much, but the fact that after a few more weeks all us stagaires (future
volunteers) are going to be leaving for our villages soon, has caused us to try
and pack in as much fun together time as possible. Somehow I've become the
social director for the group, so I'm always running around trying to get
things done and making announcements (let me right now apologize for my
horrible spelling, the more I learn or try to learn French, the worse my
English gets, but I'm paying for this time with my hard earned CFAs so I'm going
to be reckless...) anyways..
Well right now we've lost four volunteers. The
first two happened pretty close after site visits. For some it wasn't a real
surprise as they had pretty rough times in their villages. Plus troubles at
home and well it seemed like the right decision for them. The third was a complete surprise for
me. Her name is Karen and she just seemed so ready for the whole Peace Corps
experience. She was the oldest in the group (29) and had done an amazing
assortment of things already in her life. She was always upbeat and we all
loved her a lot. It was difficult for a lot of us when she left. The timing of
it was bad as well. The sante (health) volunteers have a series of overnight
health sorties in nearby villages to try and acclimate us to village life and
sante living. We were about to head out for the fourth of five visits when
Karen came up and gave me a big hug. She said good bye and I thought nothing of
it at first. We're a "huggy" bunch here, especially Karen, and I just
figured she meant good bye for the health sortie. I told her I'd see her
tomorrow and good luck with teaching. She started to tear up then and said
"No, I'll see you in a year" The tumblers finally started to fall in
my head. I remember I had seen her talking with Noelle (she's the head
coordinator for stage, a great person - though everybody is great here, she's
the one you talk to when you've made your decision to leave. Her leaving was the toughest of the
four. We didn't have much time to say a real good by, the van was leaving for
the sortie. The Education volunteers took her to the Jardin Cabaret that night
(an outdoor restaurant that has become the place of good byes), but all us
santes were out in village and didn't get to see her off. The next day she was gone
on her way to Ouaga to fly home. When you finally say you want to ET (early
termination) it's quick. They don't try to talk you out of it, or even say just
think about it for a few days, you are on the next available plane home.
Anyways... We've lost four, all Education. I
have a deep fear though that after we swear in and people starting going to
villages, there's going to be a few more people leaving.
Let's see! So going along with packing in as
much time together as we can, goes a general lack of sleep. I was lucky today
as they cancelled classes so everybody could take a trip to Banfora region to
see the waterfalls and hippos. Since I will live in the Banfora region, I
decided not to go and sleep in today, and it was good.
Tonight's my roommates and another guys
birthday, so it could be kind of crazy. Tomorrow we have Dee's birthday. Dee is
the coolest person we could all hope to meet. She is a former Burkina Faso
volunteer who just loves Burkina Faso so much that now she helps run Stage and
train us santes. We all love her greatly and I have a feeling Sunday will be a
wild time too.
Then Monday we leave for Worm Week. We head up
to a village in the north, all us santes, and spend the week doing training and
door to doors on the Guinea Worm. It's a problem that the Burkina Faso
government has asked Peace Corps specifically to help out with. Basically you
can ingest these guys by drinking water from ponds and lakes. They then grow in
you for about a year and usually head down your legs to your ankles or so
(though sometimes other places - there's a calendar in all the CSPS (clinics)
of a woman with a worm coming out of her breast) so yeah, they then break
through you skin and kinda just hang out there heads. It hurts like hell and
makes it difficult for the person to do anything physical. The only thing that
helps the pain is to submerge them in water, which upon doing, they release
their larva into the water. And if the submergion happened in people's drinking
water, the process just repeats. There isn't any medication or pills you can
pop to kill the suckers. The only thing you can do is tie the exposed end with
a stick and slowly roll the worm out. The only real danger to a person is if
the worm breaks as infection often follows. So when they're extracting a worm
they can only roll it out a little each day, then they tape the stick to the
skin and wait until tomorrow to roll a little more.
So it's a problem here, and some of santes
including myself, will probably be doing a bit of work educating and training
people when we get to our villages. Next week is just an opportunity for us all
to go to a village that has had a bad outbreak, do our thing, learn a little,
and well hang out a lot and have some fun. All the santes are looking forward
to it. I think education is jealous because they have to stay behind and teach
more model school, I'm so glad I didn't go the education route. Plus us santes
are really the life of every party so I'm sure it's going to be dull at ENEP
while we're gone.
We're spending a night in Ouaga on the way
back too which has gotten me even more excited. I haven't yet visited the Rec
Center (it's an adjunct to the American Embassy) where you can get American
food and they also have a TV room with a whole library of films. I've been
going through serious movie withdrawal and can't wait to tear in to that
collection for a few hours and see what they have.
Some of you asked when I'm leaving for my
village, it should be in the first week of Sept. I will still have access to
e-mail, though maybe not as often. I'll let all you guys know how Worm Week
goes when I get back.
Take care of each other,
Shaffer
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