aishaj83 - Growing Pains

If I have ever written you a letter during my stay here at some point in the letter I probably said something like: "Life is confusing, frustrating, and complicated and I love every minute of the experience; I can't think of anything else I would be doing if I were not here." I usually also say something like: "I am learning so much about my strengths and weaknesses because I am so far away from everything and everyone I understand as 'normal' everyday life."

Hmm...all of this is true, but my love-hate relationship is definitely challenging at times. Just an FYI, ok 2 FYI's: 1I have a letter writing rule that if I write and don't hear from you in 3-4 months you can count on not getting another letter until you write back. Sometimes I write more than once in a 2-month span without response, but you should show a little love back...I won't say any names or titles, but you know who you are! 2. I am writing this blog entry about my personal experience. It should not be over generalized to every volunteer's experience in Burkina Faso, Africa, or the other countries and continents of the world. I know how some people get a little carried away.

So back to the subject at hand... I work as a Girl's Education & Empowerment volunteer (see blog entry: working days). I have, I guess what you would call, 2 doors into the community- my counterpart, who is the school director, and also the A.P.E/A.M.E., which is equivalent to the PTA (Parent Teacher's Association) except the APE is made of the fathers and the AME is the mothers. (I think I explained before basically every aspect of live is separated by gender: eating, church service, holding hands, etc when you are not in a big city). Most of my interactions between the community and I are mediated by my counterpart. That includes scheduling meetings, interpreting my French into local language, getting to know the community, etc. Work on a large scale is done through the APE/AME. As a matter of fact they are the ones who found and take care of my housing. (Thank you very much my house is beautiful :-).)

I have regular contact with the counterpart/school director because he was the first person I met before coming to my village, he is my local supervisor, I work as a member of the school staff, and he and his family are probably one of the closet relationships I have in village (aside from my neighbor).

My relationship with the APE/AME is a little different. Unlike my school director, they are actually from my village. Government employees, including teachers, are assigned to random villages in a region. They live there for a few years (usually 2-5) to do their work and then are assigned to another village. So the members of my APE/AME know the customs and traditions of the community better than my counterpart would since he has only been there for 2 yrs. As with any PTA-like program, the parents have jobs or other work to do other than have meeting at the school. Most of the members are cultivators; in fact, I think all of the executive board of the APE/AME in my village is cultivators. Needless to say, they don't have much time on their hands to spend getting to know the ins and outs of my job.

Since I have been here I scheduled one meeting with the AME (mothers), once meeting with the APE(fathers), and one meeting with both. At the meeting with the mothers 3 members showed up, the secretary, co-secretary, and events coordinator and the meeting started 1 and a half hours after is was scheduled to because only one of the 3 was present. At the end of the 1 hour long meeting the vice president came. So I lied, there were 4 members present.

At the meeting with the APE after 2 and half hours of waiting no one showed up. And the president, who stopped me on the side of our dirt road on my way to school to confirm the meeting, went on a trip somewhere. Growing Pains!

For the joint meeting the secretary, treasurer, and events coordinator for the AME was present within the first hour of the meeting time. Fr the APe the secretary came an hour late and about 10 minutes before the meeting was over another APE member came.

In all fairness I need to explain a few things on their behalf and put things into a logical cultural context. First off being on time means very little to cultivators for the most part. They gauge the house of the day by the position of the sun. So if it is a little cloudy that day, judgment might be a little off. Also in terms of punctuality, being an hour late to a meeting is like being 10 minutes late to us. Time is not money here. I mean at least they showed up! In terms of workload, like I said all of the members are cultivators, Cultivating is hard and time consuming. If you don't do it yourself no one else will. It's their livelihood in terms of feeding families as well as a source of income (but not for all-some are subsistence farmers: they farm/cultivate to eat). Another argument on their behalf is that when I got here it was the rainy season and that is peak cultivating time. The rainy season is over and so it is time to recult (gather everything from the fields...that might be recult or maybe harvest in English...I think cultivate might be farm in English also...there are words in French that I can't always remember the English word for, but I know what they mean.) In a nutshell, they are busy!

Regardless as to how busy they are, I am still expected to work on the goals of my project. In the joint meeting I asked the APE/AME to help me to get to know members of the community. Their response was I don't speak local language well enough for them to help me (I think it was a joke, but it is not a very funny joke when you are new in town). Growing Pains! I guess it is understandable how it would be hard, but I just learned to speak French, I'm learning one local language, but considering that my village has about 4 different languages WILL SOMEBODY CUT ME SOME SLACK!

Anyway, I have activities to do that help me get to know the community and help the community to look inward and start discussions about their development ideas. Considering that my community is so diverse, I figured I would do the activities with the chief of the village and his group of advisors. This way I could have a wide range of info from different parts of the community to have a clear sense of the community.

Because I don't speak local language I had a meeting with my counterpart and decided to use the secretaries of the APE and AME as well as him and another teacher to lead activities. Plus in the spirit of sustainable development, it is better to use the community members themselves to lead activities because is better received than from an outsider (that would be me). We set a date form me to train the 4 of them and a date for the actual application of the activity.

The day of the training, the APE secretary, my counterpart, and the female teacher were all present and ON TIME! (Growing?!?!) The AME secretary was not present, but since the female teacher was there she is confident enough to lead the activities alone (the activities are done separated by gender to ensure everyone’s ideas and opinions are voiced). I trained them, they understood, life was good.

The day of the actual activities we lugged 3 portable chalkboards to the village chief's house. My counterpart, teacher who is leading the activities, 2 other teacher for a little moral support, and I sat at the chief's house from 8am-11am and no one showed up other than the chief and 2 old men who live there. Notice I never said the APE secretary came because he didn’t and just a reminder he was supposed to least the activity.

Well after waiting so long the chief and one of the old men suggested rescheduling. It is normal to be 1 and a half hours late, but not 3 hours late. I left there not at all sad, because I am getting used to what people here call "l'heure Africaine," which means African time or late. (I'm a little sick of race based time...I mean it is just not nice to generalize like this, but I see why one might be lead to feed into the foolish terms). Plus while I was there, the teachers and I discussed some strategies for me to have study groups with kids who don't have a lamp or oil at their house. And it was a good lesson from the "school of patience." We rescheduled and I went on my way without thinking about it twice.

that night I was hanging out with one of my village friends, who is also doing development work for environmental improvement. He is actually really cool and we often talk about religion, philosophy, psychology, human development, and first encounters of village life and cultural exchange. He is Burkinabé, but grew up in the capital as well as 2 other large cities in Burkina. His first assignment an extremely small village that was ethnically different from his. He didn’t speak their language, and they spoke no French. Needless to say, he understands my struggles even though he is Burkinabé.

Anyway, we got on the subject of the process for joining the Peace Corps and why the heck am I doing it. I explained the long tedious process of essays, medical exams, and lots and lots and lots of waiting that can take 1, 2 or 3 years to complete and I am doing it all because, well...I'm weird. LOL. During the conversation he said something along the lines of "that is a long process and not easy either when you can live in the states and have an easier life because you already understand how it works, but you came here." I agreed and said "only if everyone else knew what I went through, they would come to my meetings." We laughed for a while and he gave examples of meetings he scheduled weeks in advance that were pretty much forgotten or not that important to the villagers. And his advice was just to continue to be patient and work with the people that will work with me. Good Advice.

Well being the curious person he is, he did a little investigation to find out why no one came to my meeting. I had no idea he was going to do so, but I'm glad he gathered the information because it is very interesting results. Drum roll please...no one came to my meeting because the APE was not invited/informed. AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON?!?! DID I MISS SOMETHING?!

Let me just recap: the APE secretary and AME secretary were scheduled to lead the activity...hmmm somebody knew! Plus when I schedule meetings with them usually no one or just a few people show up. And that is so annoying to crusade against someone just because you don’t feel like the proper people were informed so you tell everyone else to boycott. GROWING PAINS!

So this has been a life lesson I am taking very seriously. One thing, I passed the inform along to my counterpart who then shared it with the respective people. I am starting to have suspicions that everything between him and the community are not normal, but I'm not sure. In the future, I will inform the respective persons myself. Also the two secretaries are the same ethnic group as my counterpart so some people understood that as my counterpart choosing to only work with his ethnicity. No one considered that they are the only 2 that know how to write...go figure! Also, by me going to do the activities at the chief’s house with his assembly, it seemed like I was trying to leave them behind like I was fed up with working with them...which I was not, I was just trying to use other strategies.

Well, now I have a long apology-meeting schedule. From not on I will do activities with them and when I am interested in venturing out to other sources in the community, I will "ask their permission/favor" first just as a sign of respect for the cultural work protocol. My hope is that this misunderstanding and cultural confusion can be put behind us and our working relationship will improve.

It is definitely a frustrating way to learn cultural protocol, but it was a lesson I had to learn. This "school of patience" is hard, but I am making it. Thank God for the growth during the hard times and pain. Oh those growing pains. **sigh**