March 30, 2013
The morning after making tofu, I was headed to Ouaga! It was time for my COS conference. Weird.
I feel as if I just arrived in country a few months ago. How can it already be time to talk about
going home?
The conference was held March 25-28, at the fancy Hotel
Excellence. We had air-conditioned rooms
with flat screen TVs and mini fridges, Wi-Fi, a swimming pool, and a free
breakfast of croissants and pastries every morning. The conference didn’t actually start until the
26th, so the 25th was like a free day at the pool. Most of our stage had arrived in Ouaga a few
days early (like me) and so by 8am the morning of the 25th, we were
checking-in to the hotel. Why stay in
the non-air-conditioned and overcrowded transit house, when you could be
lounging pool side with a beer in your hand?
And then, go take a nap on a real bed in a freezing cold room resulting
in you covering up with a blanket for the first time in months? Yes, please.
We enjoyed the pool all afternoon.
Maybe enjoyed it too much. We
started doing summersaults and backflips off the side, which was a lot of
fun. And very dangerous. Mind you, the pool was neither very big nor
deep…and a lot of people had been drinking a bit. I got over my fear of doing front
summersaults into the water and then progressed to backflips. But I was paranoid about hitting my head so I
usually just ended up doing back flops, which really hurt. Then, we decided that it’d be a good idea to
throw people up into the air and have them try to flip or turn as they fell
into the water. That was all fine and
dandy, and a lot of people did some really cool tricks, until Luba almost
died. Her head was maybe half an inch
from smacking down on the side of the pool.
We all screamed as she came spiraling down above the cement.
Miraculously, she was alright. She didn’t even notice how close she was to
the wall, and she came up from the water laughing. Thank god.
There’s a video of it on facebook somewhere. But it doesn’t accurately capture the heart-stopping
experience or that Luba almost cracked open her head…. I guess that’s a good
thing. Anyways, immediately after the
Luba incident we stopped. No more
diving. No more throwing people. Only thing we allowed ourselves was standing in
the shallow end while sipping a beer. No
more fun. No more tricks. We didn’t need anyone to die during our COS
conference.
We had a welcome supper the first evening with
our bureau staff (i.e. country director, program managers, office secretary,
etc.) and were taken to Namastae India, an authentic Indian restaurant. (All restaurants are “authentic” in Burkina
and run by people who actually come from India or Lebanon or Ethiopia or
China….or America, as in the lady who makes real southern fried chicken and
biscuits with gravy. Thus, the food in
these restaurants is superbe … but it’s also rather
expensive.
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| Jill, our country director, making a speech |
It’s not at all like in
America, where you have your vrai (real) Chinese restaurants, and
then your fake Americanized-Chinese chains, like Panda Buffet. Or a real Mexican restaurant versus Taco
Bell. Fast food or “fake” food just isn’t
really a thing in Burkina. That’s one
thing that Burkina does better than the USA.)
Anyways, Peace Corps had rented the restaurant out just for us, and a
delicious buffet was prepared. Veggie Samos, Chicken Samos,
Chicken Tikka Masala, Chana Pindi, Dal Makhani, Naan, and Biryani Rice. It smelled and looked SO good! And since we knew it was buffet style, most
of us didn’t eat much for lunch that day – we were going to get our fill from
Indian food.
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| so festive and decorative! I loved the wall and ceilng decor! |
Except I was a little worried. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to eat much. I’d NEVER eaten Indian food in America, and the two times I’d tried it in Burkina, I’d gotten sick. My stomach couldn’t seem to handle the Indian spices, which were very different from anything I’d ever eaten – a typical Midwesterner, I grew up on potatoes, corn, white bread, and a slab of meet covered in gravy. None of this curry-hot-spicy-sweet stuff. I just couldn’t digest it. I’d eat a few bites, find the food to be interesting, force myself to eat more of what I’d ordered, and then go back to the Transit House and throw up. This also could have been a result of eating too much other food, in general, during the same 24 hours (i.e. cheese, milk, ice cream, pizza… all that good stuff that we pig out on in Ouaga cuz we can’t get it in village). So, I’d sampled some Indian food before, but never had good luck with it. I hoped that our COS dinner would prove different – third time’s the charm, right?
I started slowly, just a bite here and there of everything, and much to my surprise, I discovered I really liked it! It also didn’t seem to be bothering my stomach (yet). Marlow told me that she’d helped with the menu, keeping all of us Midwesterners who can’t handle “hot” in mind (there’s several of us; I’m not the only one), and picking out plates that weren’t too spicy. She did good! I even went back for seconds. And now I know what things to order if I ever go to an Indian restaurant again. Oh, and we had ice cream for dessert. What a great night.
Overall, I found COS to be very beneficial and worthwhile. Our facilitator was Don Johnson, a volunteer who had served in Niger back in the 1990s, I think. Now he does a lot of international teaching work and leading of seminars. We talked about résumés, job searching, networking, how to say good-bye to Burkina, how to return to America and fit in again, grad school options, and more. We were also given the procedure for COSing – i.e. our final week in country, we need to take care of medical appointments, sign papers, close our bank accounts, etc. A large part of our conference time was spent talking in small groups about our accomplishments and learned skills throughout Peace Corps. How do we put this stuff on our résumés? Or talk to someone in an interview? Or summarize our 2 years into just a few sentences? We had to be reminded that a lot of what we do as PC volunteers (such as organizing a project to teach kids to wash their hands) might seem informal or like it’s not worth mentioning for a job as a computer programmer or whatever we’re aiming for, but really, it IS a big deal. The work we do involves so many hidden talents that we forget we even have usable, desirable skills in the real world: the ability to cross language barriers, people skills, monitoring and evaluation systems, procuring of funds and budget reviews, being able to poop into a hole and eat anything without silverware…. (Ok, perhaps those skills aren’t quite so applicable to the American workforce…)
The résumé workshop was, in particular, extremely beneficial for me. Don singled me out, along with about 4 others, as having the best “pre-Peace Corps” résumés in our group, in terms of appearance, wording, organization, etc. I’ll admit I was proud of that. Dang right I have a good résumé. Now the only problem is figuring out what to DO with this beautiful, well-organized sheet of paper; where to apply to, what kind of job to tailor it towards, etc. There’s no point in a having a good resume if I don’t know what I’m doing with my life…
When working one-on-one with Don on my résumé, he gave me a lot of ideas on how to reorganize and update it. Over two years has passed since I’ve touched my résumé, so it definitely needed to be made current and have my Peace Corps service listed. Which meant several other (older) things had to go. As Don said, “You’re so young! How can someone so young have so many concrete things and notable accomplishments already listed on her résumé? I’m not sure what we should take out…” He was right. I couldn’t delete honors such as “Minnesota Beef Queen” or experiences like working for 7 years at a nursing home. But eventually we simplified some things and opened up a chunk of space for me to describe my Peace Corps accomplishments. Me résumé is definitely a mess at the moment, but hopefully I’ll have something usable in the next few weeks. It also makes it difficult that I’m obviously not done with PC, so describing my projects and end results aren’t possible yet.
Additionally, during the conference Don forewarned us that as much as our family and friends love us, they don’t really wanna hear about Africa. They’ll listen for the first few days, and after that, they’ll never wanna hear another “One time, in Burkina….” story again. Which is all the more reason why it’s important to stay connected with our PC friends and use the Returned Peace Corps groups back in our home towns/states. Even if no one else wants to listen to us, and no one in our family can relate to what we’re talking about, at least other PC volunteers will be there.
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| G24 Swear-in Ceremony: Welcome to Burkina! |
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| G24! (two years later) Watch out world, here we come! |
The highlight of the conference was the COS party, of course. The last night, March 28th, our party was held, and many of the “younger” volunteers joined us (i.e. volunteers from groups after us). It started with a lasagna and salad supper, followed by dancing in the conference room, watching our slide show and announcing superlatives, and swimming into the wee hours of the night.
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| The three cutest girls in the valley!! |
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| make that the FIVE hottest girls in the valley... |
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| And everyone said I'd find my husband in the Peace Corps.....right. |
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| riding in the trunks of taxis might have happened... |
I ended up being a loser and going to bed around midnight. In fact, most of us did.
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| lookin' good |
The people who stayed up all night were the
other volunteers; the ones who were there for the party only and hadn’t just
finished with a busy and tiring 3 days of COS conference workshops. COS was fun, but also bittersweet. It is the last time when all of us will be
together. Many of my 45 friends, I might
never see again. We’ll all go back to
village, finish our projects, and starting the first week of August, people
will be leaving. There’s no guarantee
that I’ll see them before they fly out.
It’s sad. But that’s why a G24
reunion is already being planned for June 2014 in Texas!!! (We’ll see if that actually happens…)
G24! G24! G24!
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