a change of scenery

so regarding project slash volunteering details- things have changed a bit. before we left for ghana, kristin and i took down our mosquito nets and packed up our bags in sapone to head to the big city of ouagadougu to live with our friends kat and anthony. basically the state of project was that there was a fundamental lack of resources preventing me from me from being particularly helpful. they wanted me to do research at the agricultural centre but they could not arrange a computer for me. after seven weeks of struggles and frustrations trying to make things work out with my project we kind of decided that it just wasnt going to work and i felt pretty strongly about having feeling like i had accomplished something by the end of all this. fdc, the organization truly is an incredible organization but they have a different way of communicating and organizing and unfortunately just didnt end up having the resources to capacitate the project. it is somewhat disappointing but i have absolutely no regrets. i was able to get incredible insight into the challenges facing ngo s in developing countires. and my time there was super interesting.

however it feels great living in ouaga now. so ive joined up with kat and anthony working with boys from the streets. while theres a lot that goes on at the centre the main thing that im focussing on is literacy. the majority of them are between the ages of 12 and 19 and most of them dont know even half of the alphabet. so well just be sitting there and someone will come up to me with some left over paper and a broken pencil crayon and start writing a,b,c, then stop and ask what comes next. its pretty rewarding. while they are incredibly energetic and you can never really have a minute of solitude, they are so eager to learn, extrememly respectful, and absolutely hilarious.

so the four of us are living together in quite small quarters with a host family 5 mins from the centre. its working out super well and im really happy. i feel much more productive here but i still really value all of my experiences in the village. plus its great being able to buy cold water here!