More news from Burkina

August 8, 2006

Yesterday was my two month African anniversary, and I am starting to appreciate Burkina more and more. There are many things that I still don’t understand about this culture and probably never will, but am starting to accept them. Most of the things I can’t come to grips with deal with efficiency. For example women here are always bent over while working and sweeping is no exception; women use a clump of grass like a broom with no handle. I just don’t understand why they just don’t attach a long stick to the clump of grass and stand up straight. It drives me freaking nuts, but they have been doing things this way for centuries and it seems they are in no hurry to change. Similarly the workers in the fields use a type of hoe called a “Daba” that is at most only three feet long. Again bending over all day; just put a freaking longer stick on that thing and it would be much easier. I have informed them about my grand idea, but they think it would result in working slower and becoming lazy. Anyway enough venting, you can’t change the world in two months.

My French has now reached the required level for swearing in as a volunteer, and now for the next few weeks I am going to be focusing more on learning my villages’ local language of Jula. Jula is only spoken in western Burkina but it is also spoken in many other West African countries. The main native language of Burkina is Moore, but is only spoken in central Burkina. I am pretty excited to be learning a language that is more widely spoken and the resulting benefits. Jula is also spoken in Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal. I am planning on learning as much Jula as I possibly can since most villagers will speak little French.

In terms of health I have just finished my third round with E.Coli. I have been able to conquer the little buggers each time with the help of Cypro, the same antibiotic they give you if you are exposed to anthrax. Peace Corps Burkina Faso is the long standing leader in number of cases of diarrhea out of all of the Peace Corps countries, and so far I am definitely helping us stay on top. The change in diet and lack of protein has definitely decreased my muscle mass. I am looking skinnier everyday; thank God there is no light beer here. There are about 4 local types of beer and Guinuss is the only import I have seen with any regularity. No American beers yet. Luckily when I was in Bobo, the super market called Marina Market or “the white mans market” did have a surprisingly good selection of Scotch. Which I believe will make my stay in Burkina much more tolerable.

Now there are only two weeks left in Ouahigouya with my host family. It has been a great experience living with a Burkinabe family, but I am definitely ready to get my own place. Also during the training, the Peace Corps can have a very bureaucratic way of watching every move the you make and the babysitting can get old fast. Thus I am ready to get to my village chill out on my own.

Model School

Midway through our training our model school started. The model school is basically a summer school for the local high school students and is organized by the Peace Corps and the participating high school. There are 4 different classes where the students range in age from around 10 to over 20. The model school is a way to give us some experience teaching in the Burkina school system prior to commencement this fall. It is a great opportunity for us to deal with potential problems resulting from discipline and language. Each day we teach for an hour in our respective subjects. I am teaching Physics/Chemistry to the oldest class of students. My class of about 100 students has an average age of around 18. I have had only a few problems with discipline. Last week when I arrived in class there were three girls in my class sleeping, and had been doing so for the previous volunteers’ class. So I made them stand for my entire hour lecture. This may seem harsh back in the states but I assure you it is mild in comparison to the punishment given by the native teachers. Just yesterday I also had a student passing a note in class. I made him stand up and read the entire note aloud for the class. I wasn’t really sure what it was about since some of it was in Moore, the local language, but the entire class was erupting with laughter, he was embarrassed and my point was made. I really enjoy teaching and students here are a lot of fun. The older classes have been very helpful with my French, especially when I confuse the gender of an object. Confusing Le for La is one of the most amusing mistakes for my students. In village the students will have less exposure to French, and I have heard horror stories from current volunteers saying that when the younger students barely know French and you barely know any French the lectures can become very entertaining exercises in charades. One of the biggest problems in class is lack of materials, most importantly textbooks. Most students can’t afford the textbook, so their only resource to study at home is their notebook. Due to this there has been an extreme importance put on exactly copying what the teacher writes on the chalkboard. This means that even a simple drawing that would take students 30 seconds to sketch in the states, requires a ruler, a compass different colored pens and about 5 minutes. This makes the pace of most lessons ridiculously slow. Even if I underline a title or an important word on the board, they use their ruler to underline it in their notebook. This anal retentive tendency must have been brought here by the French colonists. Anyway it slows things down a lot, and I have learned that I can only finish about half of what I would think should take an hour in class due to the amount of time required for copying. Nonetheless teaching is really going to be fun and I am pumped to meet my real students.