Sur leurs velos, pour le Faso

Last year, a group of volunteers did a tour of Burkina Faso on their bikes stopping at other volunteers’ sites along the way in an effort to raise money and awareness for gender equality. This year, they came back but with a lot more people and ambition. Knowing that we would have nearly 25 volunteers in our town, Luis, Scott, and I decided to make the most out of their presence. We put together a community fair in the town square to showcase Peace Corps as well as the other community development organizations and associations. After several weeks of constant planning, with the help of the bike tour volunteers, the fair went surprisingly well. We had around 250-300 people show up to watch theatre skits (a favorite of the Burkinabe) on sanitation and violence against women, workshops on nutrition, malaria, soap-making, and natural mosquito repellant, and a song from the Singing Nerd himself on the benefits of planting moringa (soon to hit Youtube).  This week is yet another fair, this time in the capital, Ouagadougou, to celebrate the 50^th Anniversary of Peace Corps. It will follow a similar format in regards to the educational workshops though it will be on a much larger scale than ours. Fortunately, I had no part in organizing this fair but I am going to help out as well as eat ice cream.  In all, one could say the weather, the work, and September in general have been “fair”.  Next month, back to school. 

For more on the Bike Tour, click this link Burkina Faso Bike Tour.

Below are some pictures of the fair. For more and better pictures, click here to see Scott’s blog. (By the way, Scott does an AMAZING job of blogging so if you want to learn more about Burkina and life here from a different perspective, make sure to follow his posts.)

A picture from Scott of the stage area with some VIP seating at the fair.

Luis, Scott and I with Troupe Yenyema, who performed a skit about forced marriage, female excision, and violence against women.

Another theatre group who performed a skit about sanitation.

John singing his song "Mangez Moringa" while some lady dances with a baby moringa tree.

 

Field update: 2 months

Pregnant corn. That little furry thing half way down is a bun in the oven.

Peanuts. I was told that the plants need to flower 3 times before they are ready to harvest. If my calculations are correct, the next time it flowers they should be ripe for the pickin.

Moringa. Clearly, I need to do some weeding. Kind of embarrassing.

 

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