Saturday, October 07, 2006
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Balla
So I am finally a real Peace Corps volunteer. Last Friday we had our Swearing-In Ceremony at the Ambassadors Residence next to the US Embassy. It was a pretty big news in Burkina and was even on TV! The ambassadors residence was ridiculously nice, and the food at the party was boarder-line American. After many long winded and repetitive speeches thanking various contributors to our training, 5 volunteers gave five different speeches in the 5 main languages of Burkina; French, Moore, Jula, Fufulde, and Gormanche. After the ceremony we had a party to say goodbye to our language and cultural teachers. It was hard to actually say goodbye to some of them after spending so many hours with them everyday trying to learn French. I met some really good people and really good teachers. Most of the Peace Corps trainers live in Ouagadougou and are teachers during the school year at public or private high schools. I have heard that a job with the Peace Corps is one of the most sought after jobs in all of Burkina, I was told that they make more during our 11 week training, than they do for the rest of the year as Burkinabe teachers. They are worth every penny and are the best teachers in Burkina.
My Village
Balla = French
Baala = Jula
Bala = Not correct but commonly used.
There is some discrepancy on how to actually spell the name of my village and I find that funny since the village was named prior to the knowledge of written languages. The French write is as Balla, but locals say that in Jula it is written Baala. Anyway, it is a cool little village. One of the Peace Corps Land Cruisers dropped me off at my little house last Tuesday, and I was greeted by my coworkers and neighbors. My house is actually really nice in Peace Corps terms. It has four rooms; Kitchen, Living Room, Bed Room and Shower Room (room with sloped floor and drain in the wall). It obviously has no power or running water, but I am getting pretty good at taking a bucket bath. I have a private latrine next to my courtyard. ( No seat, just a hole in a cement slab over a deep pit) I have been getting some really great quad workouts lately. I am the third volunteer at this site, thus my house virtually came fully furnished. The last volunteer left me all the essentials; bed, stove, tables, chairs, etc. Being a replacement volunteer is also easier in the fact that you don't have to explain why you are there over and over. The first volunteer at a site usually spends most of the first month explaining the Peace Corps, America and their job to the villagers. Being a replacement volunteer has its downfalls too, I am constantly compared to the old volunteers. They say things like, "Well she did this and gave me this much money taught this way" But it shouldn't be too bad since the last two volunteers were girls.
There is a huge tree in front of my house straight out of the Jungle Book. It's awesome and serves as my reference point to find my way home when I get lost in village. Balla is really green right now and the crops are starting to come in. Harvest is about the same time as it is back in Iowa. Lots of corn, millet, and cotton in the surrounding fields. This area of Burkina has more rain and seems more tropical, not really tropical rain forest, just not Sahara Desert like what the north of Burkina feels like. I am only about 2 hours from Bobo-Dioulasso the second biggest city in Burkina where is can get a lot of western things. My new address for the rest of Peace Corps is
Jonathan Schultz
Corps de la Paix American
B.P. 1065
Bobo-Dioulasso
Burkina Faso
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
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.
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.
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