Control Freak

So yesterday (May 12th) I was supposed to have a site visit from my boss, Firmin. I had been preparing all week, cleaning my house, clearing out the courtyard, and even having a neighbor help me prepare a meal for my guests. The night before the he was to get here, it rained starting at about 1am. It was still raining that morning when I got ready for school, and I was actually the only professor to show up for classes that day. That’s actually typical for rainy days here in Africa, but it’s been a while since it rained, and I forgot how everything just completely shuts down.

Unfortunately, the rain doesn’t just affect schools. At 1:30pm, about 20 minutes after he was supposed to be here, I get a call from Firmin. He was almost to Yaho, but there was a river between him and me. I had actually worried about that for a minute earlier in the day because there is a place that was often flooded last year during rainy season, but I hadn’t given it too much thought. I was too excited to have a visitor!! So, I have to admit, because of how excited I was to have visitors, it made the sudden change in plans that much more sad. Another volunteer had even come with him to surprise me and see my village. After I got off the phone with them, I honestly was very close to tears. I had put so much time and effort into getting ready and looking forward to the visit. And now, when they were literally 5km from my house, it wasn’t going to happen.

Now, this might seem like an overreaction to a situation that completely out of my control, and I asked myself the same question. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that everything event I have looked forward in the past two months has been cancelled at the last minute:
The last week of March I was going to take a trip with the couple who went to Wartburg with me, but I was having some tooth problems and spring break was moved up two weeks at the last minute, so it wasn’t going to work out.

March 31st there was a goodbye party for the volunteers leaving this summer, but the morning of the 30th there were some violent protests in the capital and the party was now off limits to everyone who wasn’t already there. This was something I was really looking forward too, and the last time I would have probably seen some volunteers.

Over Easter, I had planned to visit some friends south of me, but the President of Burkina dissolved the government a few days earlier, so travel was off limits (that wasn’t as intense as it sounds, basically he fired his 29 ministers, rehired 17 of them with 8 new ones to bring the total up to 25).

And now I was supposed to get a visit from a friend, but it rained.

Now, every single one of these situations was entirely out of my control. But it got me thinking about just how much control I am able to exercise over my life here versus my life in America.

-In America we have a stable government, but also stable electricity and stable internet (you might not think that stable internet is that important in a developing nation, but with more and more of our business world happening online, it is. If the internet is down here in Burkina, I can’t get money out of my bank account. And because I have to travel about 3 hours to even get to the bank, it’s that much more annoying). That stability gives us a daily assurance of what to expect. We know that it is (highly) unlikely that we will see rioters, that our stores will be pillaged, or that we will get to the bank only to be turned away because internet or electricity is down that day.

-In America (or at least Minnesota), we have systems in place to deal with inclement weather. It’s so effective that I often complained during high school that our roads were always plowed before the buses had to come through, meaning we wouldn’t get a snow day. We don’t often have plans ruined by a simple rainstorm, or worse; we don’t have our houses collapsed by rainstorms because we are able to build houses with more than mud bricks. (Yes, this did happen in my village. There were two people in the house and they were both killed)
-In America we are able to plan ahead to the next weekend, the month or even the next year with a high degree of certainty that everything will work out. The big events of our lives are often planned months and a year in advance. I know another volunteer here had her wedding scheduled at the end of July, but with the unrest the national exams were changed, and her soon-to-be husband now has tests during their wedding. She had to change the wedding, and most of the Americans that were going to be a part of the service are leaving before the new date.

So here, I’m learning not to plan for more than a week at a time, or I’m just going to get myself excited for something else that might not happen. And especially with all of the unrest that has happened here since February, I am certainly in the mindset of having a plan B, C, D, etc for every plan. Though, since Easter, everything does seem to have calmed down here. I am very thankful for that, but things are still a little behind schedule and I don’t really know exactly when school is over, exactly when I will be working at stage this summer, or exactly when I’ll take my vacation to Ghana. And while occasionally disappointing, I guess I’m learning to be more and more OK with those uncertainties.

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!