Having now
spent a full month in wonderful Burkina, we thought it might be appropriate to
hand over the reins to William and Serge for this week’s blog post.
Hi, Morning!
We are going to talk to you about differences between international and local
volunteers or between Africa and Europe if you want. We can begin with our differences
in clothing. Local volunteers prefer clothes of smart fabrics with long
trousers, and UK volunteers prefer light clothes such as tee shirts and shorts.
They also like to swim, unlike the local volunteers. We also don’t have the
same ways of doing many things like eating for example. They all like eating
riz gras, salad and pizza to name but a few. In Africa we like to eat with
hands whereas UK volunteers prefer spoons and forks and knifes. In addition,
African love eating as much as possible, and it is not the case with the British.
In IT, they are very speedy on their keyboards, which means they use them a
lot. In Africa, IT is not among our habits, we use it from time to time.
The most
important difference concerns our culture, but it is an advantage for the both parties
(national and UK volunteers) because of everything we are learning from each
other. We think that our differences are not a problem but a source of richness
and learning. By sharing our experiences, we improve the level of our English.
It is true we have been studying English for 8 or 9 years, but when we first
spoke with UK volunteers, we noticed big differences, in the style of speaking,
the way of writing, the way of pronouncing the words, the rapidity of the
speech and so on. With time however, we have learnt to understand better what
they’re saying. It is a very exciting experience to learn English with them. We
also teach them how to speak French and Moore, a local language in Burkina. But
they have not all got the same level in French, for some of them have already
visited some French cities like Paris. We also exchange about their way of behaving,
the snow, their education, sport.
When it is
too hot, they have been suffering with the burning of the sun. We hope the heat
will diminish in order to allow them to have a good stay in Burkina.
We sometimes
have lunch together with the UK volunteers at their home, we compare our way of
cooking to their own and it’s amusing. During the training, we played a
football match, and we have been discussing about the way to play again a match
between England and Burkina.
On the
weekend, the UK volunteers went to Tenkodogo, one of the towns in Burkina Faso
and its 200 km from Ouagadougou. They attended the wedding of our friend and
colleague Biba, which united all the IS volunteers and we were all so happy. They
had to wake at 3:00 am to get the bus which took 4 hours! They all had a
wonderful time and wore special African clothes.
Thank you so
much, we hope you have enjoyed reading our blog!
William and
Serge
P.S. R.I.P. Rex the dog, 2010 - 2014
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