Site re-design & unpublished posts

3. October 2007 by admin.

After realizing I could use iWeb to design a blog offline, I did so the other night. Now, I’m having trouble uploading it and really can’t be bothered at the moment to figure it out. I began work on Monday at L’Oeil des Jeunes and my days begin at 8am to 12 and 3pm to 6:30pm, these are the regular work hours. In effect, these work hours are suitable for the climate here. It’s too hot to arrive to work later than 9am and leave before 6pm.
So I’m going to copy and paste the other posts I wrote when I anticipated using iWeb as blog software. I hope this will satisfy your curiosities!

Monday, October 1, 2007
City tour

On Saturday, Edgar took us on a tour of the city by car. Ouaga doesn’t have the concept of building vertically. The neighbourhoods, but they are usually mixed, rich and poor. And as far as I know, there are no specific neighbourhoods tailored to a specific service (restaurants or tailors, for example) or shopping areas, except for the market.
And then there’s Ouaga 2000. A surburb of the city, where the residents were chased and their homes were demolished to build new and shiny buildings. This vast area is where most of the embassies are, as well hotels and the presidency.
As you can see, the roads are the width of highways and there is still much construction to be done. More like Ouaga 2020, perhaps?
I have no idea what this tower is, it reminds me an African version of the Eiffel Tower though. The French remain influential here, although Burkina Faso has been independent for a while. They funded the construction of several paved roads and other buildings.

And believe it or not! As a landlocked country, Burkina has a body of water. I’m unsure of whether its artificial or not, but people fish here.

Friday, September 28, 2007
Headquarters

The offices of Oxfam are located on the Bangida. It’s a major paved street that intersects Charles de Gaulles street in the centre of Ouaga. Apparently all the offices of Oxfam are housed there. Including Oxfam Belgium, Oxfam Intermon (Spain) and Oxfam GB. The Belgian is alone, whilst Intermon employs all Burkinabès and who knows what the English are up to! However, Quebéc has Canadian and native workers.
Check out their view:

Saturday, September 29, 2007
Training

Our first real “training” session was on Friday by meeting the organizations we were going to be working with. Stephanie came bright and early at 7:30an to pick us up. Note that the above photo is not her truck, we drove in a sedan to the offices.
I’m sure you’re curious to where I stayed for the first couple of days…Well it was here! The sign translates to: National Evangelical Council to fight against AIDS and STDs.

So off we went to spend the day our respective supervisors of the organizations we are going to spend the next 4 and a half months with. In my case, I’ll be working with the “Réseau Informel de Journalistes” aka“Informal Network of Journalists” by training journalists in audio and visual software such as Photoshop, Audition and Xpress. Although, since it is “informal”, can I stressed that word more? They don’t have an office and I’ll be shared between them, the RIJ and a youth journal called “L’oeil des Jeunes”, translated to “The eye of the youth”. My office is located at L’oeil, but I’ll be going between the journalists offices every now and then.

Sunday, September 30, 2007
First weekend in “Waga”
Can’t you tell that I’m tired? It’s been non-stop since our arrival!
On the weekend, we ended up at Edgar’s family’s “maquis”, akin to a hawker stand in Southeast Asia. We were served beef “brochettes”, which were tough to chew but cooked well!
Here, I’m surrounded by Québecois’ and Edgar (Stephanie’s Burkinabè husband). From an Ontarian speaking relatively decent French, boy did I have a hard time! I really had to tune my ear to the accent and the expressions! So I’ve become a bit of a mute.
Most of the people here are international development interns, with the exception of Edgar, Stephanie and the girl at the bottom, who is visiting Julie (in the red shirt) for a couple of weeks.

My housemates are Mathieu in the blue striped shirt, Nicholas in the black shirt (in the photo above). And Cindy who’s grining beside Edgar in the photo below. From left to right: Julie’s visiting friend, Cindy, Edgar, Alexander (an intern from Koudougou) and Stephanie, the youth coordinator for Oxfam-Québec.

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