On the Ground

I'll start from the very beginning (a very good place to start). I had an uneventful flight out of JFK and arrived in Paris on Saturday morning. I hopped onto the RER to meet my NYC roommate and soon-to-be MBA graduate Ursina for a quick day trip into the city during my 8 hour layover. I got off at the train at the Notre Dame metro stop and realized I was in the middle of some sort of Catholic Youth march or pilgrimage. There were hundreds of Catholic kids and young adults in hiking gear marching past the cathedral. I still haven't figured out what they were doing exactly (I think Sunday was Pentecost so maybe something related to that?) but I haven't had reliable internet on which to figure out this pressing question. Catholic diversion aside, lunch and catching up with Ursina were great. 

I arrived in Ouaga on Saturday night and immediately stepped off the plane into the intense heat, even though the sun had gone down 3 hours before my flight touched down. I made it through passport control, which was somewhat overwhelming, and I was grateful I had made the call to get my visa in the US rather than wing it. I also was grateful that I am working for the US government this summer, as I had an embassy "expediter" who could come through security and help me through the lines etc. Waiting for my luggage, I met up with my boss, Molly, whose house I am currently staying in and who was on the same flight from Paris after a week in D.C. for work.  

When we got to her house, she showed me my room and bathroom, and then offered to let me call my parents on the vonage phone... but the internet was not working, apparently because the power was quite irregular in the week she was gone, which had burnt out the wires (or something. Science!). The internet was only just fixed this morning, which helps explain why this blog has been so boring for the past few days. 

I got all settled in and promptly slept for 11 hours, waking up at 10 on Sunday AM. Molly was also jet lagged and sleeping in, and her two kids, Fatou-Mary, age 7, and Allioune, age 9, had the run of the house.  I decided to get in their good graces by proposing a game of Chutes and Ladders, which I lost. We then played more board and card games for another few hours, many of which I also lost. It's funny to play with little kids because they get so into the games, but these two also needed to work on their poker faces. We played "Old Maid," and you could track who held the old maid based on their joy or devastation after a card was picked.  

Sunday night, I went to a small dinner party with three of my colleagues from MCC. It was a great way to meet them and get a little bit more of an idea of what to do in Ouaga, what to see in Burkina and of course what to wear. Burkina is a more liberal country than many of its West African neighbors, but women are still expected to wear skirts that come below the knee (other countries in the region require full shoulder coverage and skirts or pants to the ankle).
The hosts were cat sitting for the head of the MCC in Burkina, who has a very lovely house in Ouaga 2000 (more on that later) with a pool and a chicken coop. When we walked through the gate from the car, someone pointed out that there was a chicken seemingly cooling itself in a pool. I wondered aloud whether chickens can swim, as it looked rather tenuously positioned on the step of the pool, and, while I am no great interpreter of chicken emotion, I thought the chicken looked kind of uneasy. We thought nothing of it, but yesterday, sadly, my colleagues awoke to find a drowned chicken in the pool. May she rest in peace.

Dinner was great (Ali and Chris, two former peace corps volunteers, cooked delicious spanish food for us) and I returned home ready to start work. 

I have more to say on the start of work and such, and I still haven't had the chance to explore too much. Thus far, I will say that being with a government agency and with people who have lived here for quite a bit of time gives me a much more limited perspective (or at least a different one) on Ouaga than one would get either as a tourist or working for a smaller organization or NGO. I am looking forward to starting to work in a Burkinabe office(today and yesterday, I am working out of the US Embassy) and to seeing a little bit more of the city than the ex pat section I am currently living in. 

I don't have any pictures just yet (I obviously missed a great chicken photo op), but you were warned about the quality of photography on the site.