Paris? Yes please.

Sorry I've been ignoring my blog, but life has been busy!

Some momentous events that have happened or are upcoming…

1. I got to meet the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso a couple of weeks ago and helped give a presentation on the work we’ve done to help the flood victims. This is basically the second guy in charge of this country after the President. So.. that was pretty exciting. That would be the 3rd time I had a minor appearance on Burkina TV. :)
2. I’m going to France TOMORROW for a 10-day vacation, during which time I will get to celebrate my birthday in Paris and spend time with people who love me. I cannot wait!
3. Temps seem to be dropping into the 90’s before dark lately, so that’s been a nice break. Otherwise, it’s 110-120 degrees every day. Even at night, you can hardly feel a relief from the heat. It has started raining though, and that’s just been lovely…. Except for the continued flooding.
4. I officially accepted my invitation to Columbia University, so I will definitely be starting there in September.

The nature of the project I’m working on is a “crisis” so everything needs to be done yesterday, or as soon as possible…. ALL the time. Some days this is exhausting, but most days I don’t mind because the more I work, the faster time flies. I’m well past halfway through this assignment now, and I’m getting excited to come home and get back to my life I put on hold, start grad school, etc….

Our reconstruction has been moving along at a good pace. We’ve constructed well over 100 homes in just about 8 weeks now. Unfortunately, after we helped people construct solid foundations, they continued to build the remainder of the walls with unstable mud bricks that basically melt when it rains hard. And unfortunately again, that’s exactly what happened this past week…. Some of the “brand new” houses we’re building have already begun crumbling after the first few rainfalls.

This is all quite discouraging for many reasons, other than the obvious that is seems like we just took a huge leap backwards after many massive ones forward. The government is one frustration. They sent people out to the middle of nowhere, where there’s no drinking water, no infrastructure, no drainage, and it’s a flood zone. Therefore, thousands of displaced flood victims who have lost everything were given new plots of land about 5 or so miles away from their old homes IN A FLOOD ZONE. It’s a frustrating process. People here don’t have the money to construct their homes the way we’re advising them to, so we’re trying to revamp the entire program to help them construct the entire home now and not just a good foundation. We’ll see how this develops. Otherwise, it's really an unsustainable and pointless effort.

We're also planning a huge tree-planting ceremony in June. We're going to plant over 1,000 trees at the site, which will give people shade and help beautify the desert-like zone they were sent to. This will be a collaboration with the Peace Corps, so we'll hopefully have at least 30 volunteers, plus our African volunteers, running all over planting big old mango trees everywhere.

Otherwise, I really feel like the 4 months I've spent here so far have been more satisfying and impactful that the entire 2 years I spent here the first time. Not only have I been able to help people rebuild their homes (whatever part will be a success), but I've also been able to: help old friends secure work with my company who've been unemployed for years, get funding to get a pump installed in a village that has no drinking water source, participate in a school reconstruction project with some French people I met, and help plan various presentations for major international and national donors and political figures. It's been a much different experience than the Peace Corps was, and is proving to be as good an insight to my intended career path as I was hoping it'd be.

Well, my head’s already on Paris time, so that's about all I've got to say.. must get packing now!!
:-D

Merci et a plus!
Steph