Well not quite, but what a good title eh? I wouldn't want to wait for the 15th just for accuracy's sake. It has been quite some time since I last wrote here, and as usual I'm having some trouble getting started.
How about this weather eh?
The Harmattan is in full effect here in Dori. The Harmattan is a trade wind that blows across West Africa, over miles of hot, sandy desert, and into my living room. It leaves everything covered in a fine dust. This dust carries microbes that give people colds as well. YAY HARMATTAN!
Standing in this wind at noon is comparable to having someone hold a blowdryer in your face, while someone else throws sand at you. If you can find two people crazy enough to do this for you I reccommend it. It is worth the experience.
On the plus side I haven't seen a mosquito in two weeks on account of how dry it is. I drink silly amounts of water, and cover my arms with shea butter (an export of Burkina Faso) to combat dehydration.
I was in Ouagadougou an awful lot during February. First, for a safety and security meeting, and secondly, for an IT committee meeting. In between these two meetings I had one week in Dori of absolutely nothing; and I was climbing the walls of my house. It is hard to get things moving here when you can't be around physically to see them through.
The IT commitee is currently developing a fileserver for volunteers with the hopes of increasing institutional memory. A large problem faced by Peace Corps is inherent in the rate of volunteer turnover. Each 24 months or so we have a completely new group of volunteers, who generally don't have a ton of access to information gathered by the previous volunteers. This leads to each group"reinventing the wheel". Our fileserver will allow volunteers to upload project reports into a searchable database. So when Raymond Pularski from Iowa shows up in Burkina Faso in 2014, he will have access to a wealth of project info. Lucky Raymond.
Eventually we'd like to take the server regional, and combine our resources with those of Ghana, Togo, and Benin. This is a bit of a pipe dream at the moment, but I've got faith that we can get the ball rolling.
We've also updated our public website: http://burkina.ath.cx It is shiny and new now, and much easier to navigate in my opinion. Click on "English" for the public site in English.
Thats all for the moment. I'll try to get another post in in a few weeks, but the porc au four is calling my name down the street.
Monday, March 1, 2010
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