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 :)

Other challenges

After finishing my last post just hours ago, I have continued to think about some of the more challenging aspects of my life here. The first one that comes to mind is language.

In the US we live in an almost exclusively English speaking world, especially the non-urban areas where i have lived my entire life. For most of us, school is taught in our first and only language. TV is always in the language we understand (you would actually have to pay more to get a channel that wasn't English only), we can flip on the radio and understand everything that is being said or sung.

Here, it is quite the opposite. I am constantly listening to, speaking and even sometimes thinking in 4 languages here. I hope i can say that French is currently first on that list, but there are definitely days where my long standing relationship with English beats out my newly founded, often fledgling, relationship with French. The next two on the list are the local African languages of Bwamu and Jula (sometimes spelled Dioula). Those two languages are barely acquaintances of mine at this point in time, but i'm surrounded by them. While i can clearly identify each of them while being spoken, i can't always tell WHO speaks each. Meaning, that as i'm greeting someone, i'll often start with a greeting in one language, and they with respond in another. And those are the days when i try local language at all...

But it isn't just talking that's a challenge. As i said before, it's all aspects of life that are now in another language. When i turn on the radio, it's French or Jula or even another local language, Moore. When i turn on the TV (one of the profs here has a TV that runs on a car battery charged by solar panels), it's French (in both French and African accents), Moore, or African-accented English. It's not really the lack of comprehension that becomes so frustrating, it's the variety i have to sift through! We live in a monotone (or rather mono-phone) society, and now this sudden explosion of variety of stimulation is coming at me all the time! I rather feel it is something like the overwhelming feeling Peace Corps volunteers often describe their first time at an American grocery store after two years in developing countries, too much variety! And it's not that Americans aren't used stimulation, it's that this is a new kind of stimulation.

And i have to admit, at this point in time, instead of taking all of this stimulation in and becoming some sort of super-lingual awesome person, i do what most Americans do to, i tune it out. When listening to French news broadcasts, i am able to take in information for about 10, maybe 15 minutes before i lose track of what they are talking about. The same happens in conversations as well, unfortunately. After a certain amount of time, or certain number of languages switches, i just can't keep track anymore, and i'm done. Then randomly, they'll ask me my opinion on something, and i'll have no idea what's going on. At the same time though, if i'm zoned out, but a random English word happens to come out, i catch it immediately. It's like when you're half listening to a conversation, but then someone says a dirty word and now you're all ears (don't deny it, we all do it). So for now, English has become those dirty words that suddenly make you much more interested in what's going on. Or sometimes the random French word thrown into the Jula mix will have the same affect. I'm just trying to grab onto something, anything, i can understand!

And what i really want to know is how well do others understand each other? I mean, i know that i feel lost all the time, but does anyone who lives here ever feel that way? I know that within my village alone there is the possibility of four local languages (the three above plus Dafing) and that there are people who know a little of each, while there are also people who only know their language. Are they just better at faking it? Or does it really get easier after a lifetime?

Long Weekend!

Well, hello old friends. It has most definitely been a while :) I personally think this because i don't really do anything worth writing about, but i'll let you be the judge :P

School: So this trimester i definitely do feel a little more at ease with the French and the content (we're finally done with electrical physics!), but i'm still running into challenges. I don't like to write tests until i've taught the material, meaning that i'm typically giving tests a week later than i should. For example, I am giving a test in each subject this coming week, and then next week they have there cumulative exams. Really, tests a week apart don't really help anyone, but here we are.

Something that has actually really bothered me these past two weeks is how mechanical physics is taught. I'm not going to bore you too much with the details, but it's kind of ass-backwards. In the US we learn that gravity is an acceleration and that falling bodies ('bodies' used in the scientific sense, not a literal human body falling) fall at a rate of 9.8 m/s/s. So their speed increases by about 10 meters every second. Here, they are taught that gravity is simply a proportion between weight and mass (weight=mass*gravity). They never hear the word acceleration, the never learn about any other sort of acceleration, although they do learn about forces (the formula for a force is F=mass*acceleration). So, i can't even teach the formula for what they supposed to be learning. All of this frustration might be coming solely because this is one my favorite parts of physics (and quite honestly, is the basis of everything to come), but when i think about it, i think it's more that i'm being asked to do a job and i'm not doing it well. I know as i'm teaching the students that what i'm saying i don't believe to be true (no, gravity does not equal 10N/kg. that unit doesn't even make sense!) But to do it the 'right way' would take too much time, and we have a lot of other material to cover that doesn't necessarily build on this.

When i asked another prof if they ever learn the material more indepth, he said yes, a couple years from now. I then asked him, why bother teaching it the wrong now, only to teach it again later. His response was that the students are just to dumb to learn it now (very typical teacher response by the way, i really should write a blog about attitude toward education here). I know there are probably examples of this in the US curriculum, but i can't think of any at the moment... So, for the benefit of the big picture of the moment, i'll skim through things hope the kids understand the basics. But i won't like it.

Math is going a little better, but not perfect. We are learning vectors right now, which isn't easy for anyone at the debut. I have to admit i did get frustrated with them the other day, because i thought they were doing ok because they didn't have too many questions. But really they didn't have questions because they were too lost to know what to ask. I know that happens to all of us, but it felt like even more of a blow because i thought things were going well in that class compared to physics. And now this week we lost two school days all of a sudden, so we have less time before there last test and final (which, as stated before, are too close together...) So, i guess this is just a lot of the 'end of the term' craziness of trying to get everything done!

Un Petit Repos

So here I am here at the end of my weekend in the capital, in an attempt to get a little work done. For the most part, i really just did some research and gathered resources for ideas of things to do in village. And being on the internet... :P

But one really cool thing that may be starting up: i may be starting a women's group!! I talked with the man who works for WaterAid in my village, and he is super excited to work with the women in the village. The conversation we had was simply amazing. He started by saying that women are the most marginalized group, and when they suffer, the entire family suffers. And he (we) would love to start something like a microcredit (basically a small bank, where people apply for small loans to start money making projects. The original capital can either come from an outside source, or people can each put in a small amount), but he has seen too many situations where money just disappears. So maybe down the road if we have a solid group we can talk about doing that. By the way, his name is Somé and he is Burkinabé. I met his wife earlier this fall when she would come chat with the women at the CSPS, and after i got to know her, i got to know him. He is super motivated and super excited to be doing things in the community, so i really hope that this goes somewhere :)

I also realized that i haven't written about Christmas or New Year's yet! I have to admit, Christmas just felt so non-Christmasy, that it wasn't too difficult for me. Haha, in some ways i feel that when i get back home, i'm not going to realize that two entire years did actually pass. But the holiday was celebrated much like Tabaski and Ramadan were, with lots of food and going to visit your friends to get said food. I went to the house of another prof, and he actually was really sick, so we didn't do a whole lot.

New Year's was a lot of fun, though! I spent the night at the local bar with friends, where we danced and generally hung out. That entire day was kind of cold, meaning that the night was even colder! Most of the guys wore suit jackets, and when i asked if New Years is normally that formal, the said no, it's just cold! (It was probably 55 at the lowest...) But at midnight, everyone goes around and shakes hands with everyone else and does the head touch thing (like the french cheek-to-cheek thing, but with the side of your head instead of your cheek) and wishes everyone else a happy new year. The usually wish longevity, prosperity, success, and health for you as well. And you have to do this hand-shaking/head-touching greeting whenever you see someone for the first time in that year. So i'm still wishing people a happy new year... But that night, after we went around to greet everyone, we sat down and ate at about 12:30. I didn't realize that we wouldn't be eating until after the new year, so i was pretty hungry at this point, haha. And the next day, people celebrated, like Christmas or other days. It was kind of weird, because in the US, you party on the 30th, but then the holiday's pretty much over. Here it was more like Christmas Eve and Christmas, where the real holiday is actually the day after.

Well, i head back to village bright and early tomorrow, but i just wanted to let you know i'm still alive! And Happy New Year to all of you!