More Updates

Since the last time I wrote a couple interesting things have happened...

Went out to a Burkinabé "Bôite" (nightclub) the other night with the contacts from the HIV/AIDS organization and my whole team, and boyyy was that ever an interesting experience. Kinda funny the "North American" music they decided to play but the West African music is definitely something I am going to have to get my hands on before I head home. Pretty good night.

Sunday was a little bit of a flop... We were supposed to go to a national park but ended up never getting picked up so we ended up just walking around our neighboorhood where we ended up sitting and drinking some much needed ice cold fanta's (mmmmmmm) and talking about everything under the sun... I got into this really good convo with one of my teammates, once again randomly discussing development issues as well as our thoughts about where we saw ourselves being (professionally speaking) in the future... Along with the endless amount of options i have already considered for myself, law school kinda jumped into my head (yah mom I know... u can wipe that grin off your face now haha). Anyways, I guess we'll see how that ends up.

Back to Ouaga-work. Monday we visited the Medical school because the brother of one of our contacts in enrolled there. We also had a quick look at the public University (L'Universite d'Ouagadougou) but apparently their teaching assistants and profs are on strike now even though there were still students all over the campus. Was a pretty cool experience. Seems like universities are pretty much the same no matter where you go in the world... for the most part anyway. I must admit that some of the lecture halls are incredibly huge (sometimes up to 1500 students) and Im sure that if I were sitting in even the middle of one of those classrooms I would be hard pressed to read what was going on on the chalk board.

Been playing A LOT of bilingual scrabble (side note: who would've thought that Scrabble would be so popular here). All I will tell you guys is that I haven't won once yet but I've been really close! (Ps Thanks again for the travel set mom!)

Tuesday: Went to UNICEF. That was really cool. We spoke to a woman in the Health and Nutrition department and she really took the time to answer a lot of our questions about UNICEFs involvement with Burkina. Being that UNICEF obviously has a specific mandate to work for the benefit of children, she spoke about how UNICEF is working to train community workers that will be able to go in to smaller villages in specifically the nothern and eastern parts of the country where they will be able to give mothers - who typically prefer to have their children at home whether it be because of a lack of access to health centres or a lack of money - information that could potentially save their lives or the lives of their babies. So there was a pretty big focus on capacity building, which I love. She told us that in Burkina the yearly birth rate is estimated to be just under 700,000 babies a year; the mortality rate for mothers is 484/100,000 per year; and the child mortality rate (under 5 years old) is 184/1000 which they are hoping will be reduced by 2/3s by 2015 (part of the millenium development goals). She said that UNICEF finances the 7 vaccinations endorced by the government of Burkina for children (some of which were Diphera (sp?), Tetnus, Hep B, and Yellow Fever). She also talked about the time she spent in Toronto for the International AIDS conference. She said she remembered that the portion sizes for food at restaurants were huge and so were the beds in the hotel rooms (haha).

(Side note: Hope I didnt sound to harsh with CIDA in my last entry. I know they're doing great work and I actually hope to intern for them just would love to see more grassroots partnership but I understand all big organizations have their mandates to follow.)

Yesterday, myself a couple others were present for a "safe sex" kinda talk that was done by the HIV/AIDS organization we've been working with, with school children in a small primary school just outside the city. Pretty surprised at the amount of specific information these kids already knew regarding HIV/AIDS and that kind of signalled to me: 1st How real the epidemic must be if children that young are retaining all the information; and 2nd How well the message must be being delivered if (again) children that age are retaining all of that information. The second thought was kind of challenged after I watched the video they brought to show these kids. The video did nothing but show really horrifying pictures of what STI's and other diseases can do to the body and then underneath would label it and say "This is a person with HIV". Pretty harsh stuff that couldn't have helped but send mixed messages to these kids who were just told earlier that if you know someone with HIV/AIDS you can do everything and anything with them as long as your not swapping blood. Basically the video didn't appear to do much but reinforce hateful stigma but that what you get when you use outdated material.

I think thats about it. Have so far made a small dent in "Roots", about 182 pages in... (Kunta Kinte has just begun his journey through the middle passage... interesting/horrifying stuff.)

Thanks for reading! We leave for Bobo-Dioulasso on Friday, where we will be for a week. Excited for another change of scenery and hopefully more perspectives on life as a Burkinabé.

Until next time...

PEACE