One month down, two more to go!

Last week marked my first month in Burkina. I am now officially a third of the way done with my internship! In some ways, the time has passed slowly and in other ways, it’s sped by. The past two weeks, especially, have gone by so quickly. I have unfortunately been spending a lot of time in the office – last week, I was only able to conduct two interviews. That’s been pretty frustrating – I kind of went stir crazy, plus I freaked out that I wasn’t getting my research done fast enough! But I talked with Mme. Medembele (the ACCEDES staff member who arranges all of my interviews with IMPACT participants) this morning, and we’re going to start increasing the number of weekly interviews. We’re also going to arrange some focus groups! Woo-hoo! I’m pretty excited about that, and hopefully I’ll get to practice some hard-core PLA at the same time. (All you comm-dev’ers know what I’m talkin’ about J)
One highlight from last week was being invited over for dinner by one of the local American missionary families. We had tacos and iced tea and brownies (American food!!!!! Yes!!!!) and I got to speak English for four hours. It was lovely. They were so warm and welcoming, and the visit encouraged me so much. They are going back to the States for a month, so they let me look through their DVDs and borrow as many as I want. Plus they sent me home with half a pan of just-baked brownies…..which just happens to be my favorite dessert in the world! So I spent a good bit of the weekend snacking on brownies and watching fun movies. J It was great!
Right now I’m at ACCEDES, sitting in Marthe’s office (where she has graciously let me use one of the desks for the summer). In the ACCEDES courtyard, there is a food distribution going on. There are about 150+ people here to receive 50 kilos of corn. The vast majority of the beneficiaries are women, and all of them are HIV+. I attended the first half of the distribution this morning, in which two ACCEDES staff members gave the beneficiaries information on both spiritual and physical health. ACCEDES partners with Tearfund, and this distribution is sponsored by them. I got to meet a British Tearfund worker named Mark who is visiting ACCEDES for the distribution. He spoke to the women (in perfect French, I might jealously add) and asked for their feedback on the health and nutrition information they received. This began a dialogue with the women, and several of them stood up and shared various frustrations and questions that they had. It was really cool to see these women speak up. Mark explained to me later that it’s not good to just give these women information and instructions on how to use it unless we are also helping them realize that they have their own knowledge and abilities that are valuable and useful.
All this to say, it’s been really cool to work at ACCEDES and see development work happening right before my very eyes. It’s been so affirming to talk to real live development workers like Mark and the ACCEDES staff and realize that we share a similar vision and understanding of development.
Well….that’s all for now. It’s time to go home for lunch and I’m starving!!!!