A few anecdotes from site

My underwear: Well, most of you probably have no interest in my underwear, but it’s a pretty funny story. The other day I was wearing one of my complets (matching shirt and skirt made here). Complets are normally worn pretty tight, especially the skirts. That morning I had class with my 3e class, and was teaching them all about the primary colors of light when there is a knock on the door. I go and look who it is, and it’s one of my students. She quietly says to me that the director needs to see me, then as soon as I step outside she leans in and whispers, “Madame, la fermeture de votre jupe est descendue.” And I was very confused, I thought she was saying something about closing my Jeep. She repeated it, and I realized that she was saying the zipper of my skirt was down!!! (It’s in the back of the skirt) I stepped out of sight of the door, zipped it up and came in and started teaching again. There were only a few giggles when I got back in, so hopefully not everyone knew. By the way, the complet was grey/black and the underwear was bright red floral, so kind of obvious…

Another story about animals: The other night I was sitting in my courtyard, eating dinner, when I hear some rustling on the thatched roof. There were a couple times when a neighborhood cat jumped up there, so I thought no big deal. The rustling continued and I didn’t see the cat, so I went for a closer look. I saw a head in a gap between bricks, so I now thought it was a kid messing with my stuff. I yell at him, and he continues to pull at the straw roof. I open the door and there is a giant bull eating my roof!!!! Once again, after recovering from a brief moment of terror (fyi, the bull was scared too, he ran away a few steps), I open the door again, but the bull is now facing me. I decide to just ignore it. After a few minutes, I hear someone yelling and the bull finally ran away. My neighbor come over and chased him off for me :)

Coup de Directeur

So a couple blog posts ago, I commented on the challenges I’d been having with my classes. Well, since we’ve been back from spring break, I really feel like I’m finally in the swing of things! I think part of it was that I enjoy the part of the curriculum we’re covering (and by ‘enjoy’ I mean I actually know what’s going on). But part of it too, is just reaching that point in doing something new where everything clicks. My French is doing good (or at least ok), and I honestly enjoy teaching about the structure of light and how to solve polynomial equations. Since coming back from spring break the students have been more motivated and things in general are going well. I have a better rapport with my students, especially my 3e. There are only about 5 weeks left before they have to take their national exams, and they know it.

Unfortunately, just this last week there was a bit of a tiff between the other profs and the students and director. It’s long and complicated, dating back to an event from last year from the yearly soccer tournament. When the tournament started again this year, the crap hit the fan. And even though it really has nothing to do to me, I really can’t help feeling like I’m stuck in the middle. We didn’t hold class Friday because of the disagreement, and I just talked to my director, and they still haven’t had class!!

Students here in Burkina have been striking nationwide about some other issues, but it hadn’t spread to Yaho yet. So, I have to admit that I find it amusing that national issues don’t reach here, but a fight over a soccer match is enough to get everyone riled up enough to boycott school! (I honestly don’t know if the students or teachers striking though). So I guess I’ll have an interesting welcome back when I get back to village…

The Leaf People

So one night, I was sitting in my courtyard, under my hangar, working on lesson plans for the next day. I hear my neighbor, Sita, laughing and knocking at my door. I open my door, and am terrified by the sight of this:

After recovering, I start laughing and ask what is going. Apparently this is a yearly tradition where kids dress up in leaves and go around asking for money (or food). Kind of like trick or treating. Well, I got out my camera and made them dance for me. (this is second blog in the row that made kids dance for me…) But they loved getting their picture taken, so they didn’t care.

Also, I gave them candy and money, so I wasn’t really that surprised when they showed up again the next night. With more kids. I once again made them dance and took pictures. I asked a few people about the tradition of the event, and it the leaves they use are from a specific tree from the bush that the cows like to eat.

The kids (boys) who come by are mostly cowherds, meaning that most of them are lucky if there were able to finish elementary school. They take the cows out early in the morning in search of water, and don’t return until the evening. They normally don’t eat during the day and simply carry a water bottle that they fill up at the same watering hole the cows use. When there is more water, they jump in and are swimming as cows wade in and around them. Honestly, these kids look like they having the times of their lives, but when I think about the fact that there is little or nothing in their futures, it does make me kinda sad. I never found out exactly the reason why the kids do this, but I’m glad they did.

My favorite part of this picture is the kid pretending to drink his Sprite.

Or maybe the machetes.

The leaf man.

Fancy meeting you here...

So I really need to apologize to all of you, I’ve been the worst blogger ever lately! But I’ve had limited internet, so I don’t feel too bad about it :P

I have few stories, so I’m just going to post them in somewhat chronologically.

8 Mars (March 8^th, International Women’s Day)

8 Mars is also celebrated as a national holiday here, meaning that there is no school and everyone has a party! The women fonctionaire’s group decided to host a festival and invited other women’s groups to party with us. We were at the Eliane’s house, one of the nurses and president of the fonctionaire’s group. We all came over the night before to fry up some fish, then arrived early that morning to start cooking all the food. We made rice and spaghetti, as well as zoom-koom (a drink made from millet flour and flavored with ginger and mint, it’s really good!), ginger juice (very spicy), and bissap (hibiscus tea). I helped with the zoom-koom and generally tried to stay out of the way. The rice and spaghetti were made in generally the same way, cooking the carbs up with some tomatoes, onions, carrots and green peppers mixed in. They added some sort of leaf to the rice and it turned out really good. They were both cooked in giant pots (maybe 50+ liters) over a fire. As we were preparing, the other women’s groups dropped by lots and lots of tô, so there was no way anyone was going to be hungry at this party!

After cooking all the food, everyone went home to change into their party clothes and take an afternoon nap. We all came back, ate lunch, and started dancing!! Although my village has no electricity, women need to go to the neighborhood well to get water one bucket at time, and most people cook over a fire; they have rocking sound systems. As we were setting up for the day, these kids came in pushing giant speakers in wheelbarrows. They connected these speakers to a dvd/mp3 player, and powered this all with car batteries. And that, my friends, is how you have a party in Africa. They had the music pumping and we were all dancing around under the mango tree.

It was really fun, some of my students came and I made them dance with me. Mostly because they were laughing at me (it was probably the first time they’d ever seen a white person dance, they weren’t doing it to be mean), but either way, I showed them :P

DANCING!

Check out those matching outfits :)