Another Update

So I wrote this long entry after finding out that week we didn't have school for an entire week. I'll save you the details. Suffice it to say that we asked plenty of questions about how to plan the final few weeks of class and were rewarded by showing to an almost-empty school. I'll note here one little quirk of the Burkinabé though:

Learning that class had been canceled for the week when I should be teaching and not the week before is one thing. But this information was not just passed on to us, "Hi Amy and Aaron, there is no class this week because of the strikes. See you next Monday." No, instead we walked into empty classrooms and then decided to go hang out with the other teachers who seemed to be waiting for the late students. It was during this casual prattle that the censure, the guy with all the info, mentioned in passing how there was no class. This is how it is with all important information. If you don't listen carefully you'll miss the whole point.

Another typical exchange: I sat down at my favorite sitting spot in town and this guy approached and asked if I wanted coffee. Well, this was new to me so I asked, "That's possible?" And he said, "No, there's nothing."

On another note, I've been meaning to mention the bird situation here. It is quite surprising, but Burkina is a mecca for bird watchers. On a typical morning or evening bike ride I'll see many awe-inspiring birds. There are the huge diabolical vultures. The intense falcon (that may have eaten one of our cats), the fighter jet-inspired hawks, the iridescent tropical birds, many brightly-colored song birds, white crane-like birds that go lost on their way to the Nile, something similar to a kingfisher... My favorite bird though is the feather bird. I know, aren't all birds "feather birds" and isn't that a stupid name? Here's the thing: imagine the longest feather plucked from a California condor's wing. Then shove it up a hummingbird's behind and you have the "feather bird." This minutely-bodied bird steers itself through the air much like a rafter navigating rapids--he paddles furiously and seemingly to no avail, but somehow he makes it out alive. A film of this bird in flight would be a great addition to that "air is a fluid" science lecture. Watching it swirl though the sky you have no doubt of air's fluid-like nature.

Book update:

Book Number 13: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

An excellent book. It sums up the history of science from Newton to modern biology in a never-boring way. It's filled anecdotes of the crazy, boring, and sometimes evil figures in science history. Bryson set out to write the book because he had never taken an interest in science and realized as a result he had no clue how scientists knew the amazing things they know. Therefore the book is extremely accessible, informative, and entertaining. It could help change the popular geeky view of science in America.

Book Number 14: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Another winner. This book manages to write seriously, creatively, and... dare I say beautifully... while making fun of serious creative writing and never undermining itself. It's like a basketball star convincing everyone that basketball is lame and so are its players but yet you marvel at his talent and lack of arrogance. I think even the ridiculous critiques of the book on the back cover were written by the author. If you want to read something classically new, read this iconoclastic burlesque.

School's Out!

As of 7am this morning we are finished with our first trimester. All the grading and recording has taken us most of the last 3 days but we are finally finished. The thing about not having electricity is that you don't have Excel (among other things) so that means you are writing the grades for hundreds of students and calculating their averages by hand. And all school records are written in ink on carbon copy paper so you normally want to do it more than once to make sure there are no errors before you record the grades. What a pain!

Our students did pretty well. We can always tell which students have cheated on our tests because they will have the exact same completely absurd answers. On my last test I has a true/false question asking whether 'l'homme' (man) is an example of an autotrophe (plants that make their own food) and I had three boys say that 'l'homme' was not an autotrophe because it was 'les femmes' that prepare all the food at the house.

Our big victory this week was that Moussa, our student that hangs out all the time, has solved 3 Sudokus!! I'm so proud. At first, when it was taking two days to do a word search, I was losing hope, but he's getting the hang of it now. Also, we have a few sprouts in our garden already. We already have some little bean, carrot, thyme, and tomato plants.

Yesterday the US Ambassador came to visit us. Okay, she didn't come up to visit us specifically, she was in the area and stopped by, but we still felt like celebrities. She even brought us a Christmas present of homemade brownies and banana bread: it was awesome!

Animal update: we are down to one cat and one pigeon now. Moussa thinks someone stole our pigeon but we aren't sure. So I guess we have plenty of room for chickens now. There's this mangy dog around town that Aaron wants to adopt (he calls him a 'fixer-upper') but I think I might veto that (Editor's Note: With a little TLC he'll make a great dog. I think of him as an investment. Kind of like that VW 'fixer-upper' Bug that's been sitting in my parent's garage for years).

Well, I guess that is all the news. The weather here is still warm so it's hard to believe that it is almost Christmas. The other day it was actually cloudy and we got about 10 drops of rain, which was pretty exciting but aside from that it's sunny and warm. We've been told that midnight on Dec. 24th it will get cold (kind of like how in a month we will have electricity).
Thanks to Mom and Ron for the packages.

Tabaski

Nye Taabo a tout le monde. It turns out that this week is a big week of Burkinabé holidays. Monday was the Muslim holiday of Tabaski, Thursday is a national independence day, and Saturday is the anniversary of a reporter that was killed and all the students go on strike. Naturally, Aaron and I were about 2 steps behind everyone else learning about all of this. The whole situation was really confusing. We were told that Tabaski was coming but nobody seemed to know what day it was. We get the whole week off of school but we didn't find this out until we arrived at school ready to teach. These holidays are a big deal, too. It would be like if nobody told you about Thanksgiving in the States.

So Tabaski is called the fête of the mouton (sheep) and is one of the big Muslim holidays in the year. Everyone starts early with prayer in the morning and then around 10 they kill the mouton and start preparing a big meal. So what better way for us to celebrate and learn about it than by eating chicken with our Catholic friend? Our friend, Bernard, had us over for some chicken, soup, and dolo (imagine really bad wine). He was telling us that in Burkina, Muslims and Christians celebrate each other's holidays. So on Tabaski or the end of Rhamadan, his Muslim neighbors bring him food from their feasts and on Christmas and Easter he brings them food. (Basically, they just like a good party.)

We are thinking of getting a chicken and starting a chicken family at our house so that next year we will have our own chickens to eat for the different holidays. Bernard picked out a cock to give us so we just have to buy the hen and we're in business. We haven't seen the turtle in a while and one of our cats (the one good one) has been missing for a week (there is a chance that a neighbor ate it), so our animal population is almost back down to a reasonable level which means it's time to add some more. I think we will wait until after Christmas.

For Christmas this year we are going backpacking in Dogon Country, Mali for 5 days. It is supposed to be a must-see in West Africa so we are really excited. I'm not sure if we'll have cellphone reception so sorry in advance if we don't answer between the 23rd and 28th. Then we'll be back in Titao for New Years (Bernard has been building Titao up to be the Times Square of Burkina for New Years Eve, but I'm a little skeptical).
Okay, miss you all and hope you have a great Christmas!

Thanksgiving

Happy holidays everyone! I hope you are all getting your fill of cheesy Christmas songs in all the stores. We've been decorating our house for Christmas. Our theme this year: overkill. I would say between the streamers hanging from the door (Aaron calls this our "Christmas spirit") and the tons of stuffed Santa dolls in every room we are doing well.

Thanksgiving was lots of fun. We started first thing in the morning by killing the pig (we named it Bacon) and while the pig was being cleaned we snacked on some banana bread, goldfish, and beef brochettes. Then it was time to kill the 5 chickens we bought. Aaron and I each killed one and some other volunteers killed the other ones. Combine that with mashed potatoes, brownies, and beer, and you have a real feast Americana.

We did feel a little awkward the next week at school when the other teachers kept asking how our fête was (we didn't invite them, very unBurkinabé of us). The lack of an invitation didn't stop one of the teachers from coming by mid-dinner with his wife and kids and his neighbor's wife and kids and announcing that he came to eat dinner with us and can we pass him a beer. Oh well...

Dec 1st was AIDS day. I wanted to do something for my class so another teacher said he would get someone from the local clinic to come and speak to them. A week before, I reminded him and he said it was all settled "pas de problème". Three days before, I mentioned it again and he gets a blank look and says 'I thought you were finding someone' (but in French). So the night before we have a lady we don't know comes by the house and say that she was told to come to school and talk to our class the previous day and she went and nobody was there. We didn't know anything about this but asked if she could come the next day at 7 and talk to our classes. By 7:30 the next day, I gave up on her and proceeded to hold my own AIDS session. We're still not really sure who she was, and we haven't seen her since. I figure she will probably return at some completely random time ready to do AIDs education.

While I really enjoy teaching, I do find it sometimes difficult to teach a subject that I don't have much of a background in. This became apparent over Thanksgiving when I was talking to another volunteer who teaches the same subject and he was complaining about how he had to make his own curriculum because the book had so many errors. I not only teach straight from the book, but was using the book to teach myself the topics. I can normally cover up my ignorance in class with careful lesson planning but I think my cover might be blown. The student who gave us the pigeons likes to hang out at our house during the week and I think he has realized that I know next to nothing about plants. He used to sit in the yard and ask me stuff about the different trees or plants we have and when I didn't know that answer I would say "I don't know the word in French." But now he doesn't bother asking me questions and he's started teaching me about which tree to use for their leaves or fruit and what time of year they will be ready, etc.

He's also helping us start a garden thanks to the seeds we got from Aaron's grandma. This has required breaking up a lot of tough dirt in our yard. At first I was helping and he just kind of laughed, but then I guess he decided that it was time to get to work and politely informed me that I was just messing stuff up so I stepped aside and he had our plot ready in no time. We've been trying to teach him how to work Sudoku puzzles but so far he hasn't quite figured it out. Last week we took a step back and tried word searches and he is almost done with the first one. We'll get there eventually.

Thanks so much to Grandma Lois, Aunt Ann, Grandma Rose, Val, and Keith for the packages.

Lessons on Boarding a Bus

We managed to swing a free trip to town this weekend because Aaron is doing bike training with the PC drivers (so maybe it is just me who got the free trip), so that means it's a big weekend in the big city for the Roses. Things are going well. This November weather has been great. We are still sleeping outside, but now we actually use covers...covers! I even wore long sleeves the other morning because I felt a little chilly.

SIAO was lots of fun, we saw some really neat stuff and had fun getting our discuté on. The part we weren't ready for was the vendors from Ghana who can speak English. This proves to be problematic when you are in the middle of a good bargain and Aaron walks up to say "man, I thought we'd be paying twice that!" Oh well, it was still lots of fun.

The trip home from Ouaga was a little less fun. The first bus was broken so we had to sit around for a new one, then comes the epic battle to get on the bus and claim a seat. I was hanging onto the bus door with one arm and holding off an old lady who was trying to pummel me to the ground with the other. Once we managed to get on the bus and get to Ouahigouya, we discovered that one of the girls with us was missing her bag with all of the stuff she had bought in Ouaga. We're guessing the guys at the bus station took it off the bus at some point, but needless to say, that was really frustrating and sad. Our second bus home was also broken so they roll up an hour late with this bus half the size of the normal one. Madness ensues once again; this time we are fighting for a place to stand because hoping for a seat is a lost cause. After everyone gets on sardine-style and they spend a good half hour loading the bags on the roof, the regular bus rolls up. The best imagery I have to describe the scene comes from Emilie, another volunteer with us. She says that the girl running next to her between buses got stuck behind people and Emilie looked back at her and started to slow down but the girl just waved vigorously and said "Allez, allez." It was madness. So within another hour we were on the road finally heading home until our bus broke 5km down the road. I knew it would be a while when I saw the guys starting to make new parts with a machete and a piece of wood. We finally made it home later that night, so I would say we did okay.

We have some new pets. One of my students brought over two pigeons and helped us pluck the wings so they wouldn't fly away and made a home for them. (I tried to take pictures but our idiot camera didn't work.) After a while when the pigeons have made some babies we'll eat the adults. We still have a rat problem and our attempts to kill them are getting more desperate. We used to strategize and plan, now we run around at 2 am trying to smash it with a shovel or drown it in a hole. They are supposed to make great cadeaux for the neighbors if we can ever kill one. We now have a slingshot, a shovel, and a new trap so either that rat is going to get it or one of us is going to be calling our PC doctor to explain how we got hit by a slingshot at 2am.

Other than the rats, things are great. School is going well. We only have about three week left until our break. I am currently reading Ulysses, which leaves me between states of literary bliss and wanted to be hit in the face with a slingshot. This book is nuts, but I am determined to get through it.

We're really excited about Thanksgiving next week having people over. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you back home.

The male half here. How are you folk? And the family? And the health? And the spouse? And the [period of day]? And the work? But seriously, I hope everyone is doing well. Also, that's an example of a greeting Burkinabe style. Not sure if we've really mentioned this aspect of our everyday life, but you greet everyone you see no matter what. Unlike in America where someone may run by with a quick 'hullo' and strangers say nothing at all and that's just fine, here that kind of, um, let's say efficiency, is taken personally. Of course, it's rather nice even if it just a formality. I liken it to the forced-smile effect. They say that if you're feeling down, even a fake smile can trigger something in your brain to make you feel a little better. Therefore, even formal greetings can make you feel welcome. Which leads to another important point: these formal greetings are surprisingly consistently genuine which makes one feel even better.

In Burkina Faso if you want to have a good day, all you have to do is turn to the nearest person and say 'Ca va?'

Of course sometimes, as an American, I forget that being late isn't taboo and walking into a room full of professors and immediately shaking all their hands and exchanging greetings isn't odd. The other morning, for example, I approached the Salle de Prof and, running a bit behind schedule but trying to be Burkinabe, paused at the door, got into the greeting zone, practiced my finger-snap handshake (a must to be cool), and effulgently burst through the door with a smile, a handshake, and a 'Bonjour' for the first person I saw. After the I-just-walked-into-a-dark-room-from-the-bright-outdoors-blindness wore off and I was on my second or third greeting, I simultaneously saw Amy surreptiously flagging me to shut up and heard the Proviseur (read Big Dog, my boss) addressing a committee for some meeting. Oops.

That's about all the excitement I have. I'm looking forward to the bike training this weekend. I'll be teaching the new trainees some basics and answering some questions of the staff who have received some training. If all goes well I may get to go to Ouaga sometime and do more in depth training and help out with the loaner bike situation there. I've been practicing my French bike lingo, so hopefully I can limit the amount of simian hand gestures.

Thanksgiving. Yeah, it's going to be bonafide. We have a local guy, the grillier, or meat-cooker, who has experience throwing Thanksgiving parties. He took care of business last year for Jill and Markus. We're going to finally have an entire pig cooked with pineapple (I wanted one for the wedding), chickens, beef brochettes (shish-kabobs), veggie soup, turkey, mashed potatoes, cold beer and sodas, cafe au laits (that's nescafe and sweetened condensed milk), sandwiches, the whole nine yards. You've still got a week to buy your plane tickets. Vous etes invites!

Really, that's all I have to say. Have a great Thanksgiving and we'll write to you later.

12

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende

Excellent. An MIT graduate student decides to live in a Mennonite-like community where technology is carefully scruitinized before its use is allowed. Brende's hunch is that though technology is supposed to make our lives easier and higher in quality, all technology is not created equal. Some technology actually leads to more work, more stress, and less enjoyment of life. Living in Africa, his tale is especially poignant.

For example, to wash clothes, he and his wife heat up water on the gas stove and put it in a hand crank washing machine that he claims does just as good a job and isn't too hard to operate. Amy and I set our buckets in the sun, dump some soap in, and in an hour each week our laundry is done. Then it line dries. It doesn't really bother us, that hour, and we use much less water and energy achieving the same result. We also save money and get a little workout That water and energy we just saved also just made someone else's life easier because now there is less demand for those two commodities (less demand that's not good for the economy...that's not the point). Therefore, washing clothes in a bucket is a technological advance over a washer and drier. Would I add a hand crank to my bucket? Yes, that would be easier without any major negatives. Would I add a motor? Perhaps, if the energy it required was small and easily provided by my habitat. Would I add a direct water line, drain, and electric heater? No.

Washing my own clothes, I've realized that cotten is really the only fabric I own that is hard to clean. My more technological synthetics just need a rinse and all the stains are out. That's technology that's worth it. If I didn't have any cotten to wash, I could use three 5 gallon buckets of cold water with a little soap each week and be done with the laundry in under an hour. That's comparable in time to modern laundry and way more efficient.

Those are the kind of conflicts of interest Brende points out. Technology has many hidden negatives such as cost, use of resources, maintenance, etc. that sometimes make tasks more difficult. Being a practical sort of guy, I like this thinking. True engineering takes as many factors as possible into account, so we need to review each new piece of technology to see if it's truly engineered or if it's sequiously engineered.

Also, Brende reminds us that we are social beings and one of his simplest, most profound discoveries is that work isn't work when you're amongst friends. "Working" the fields is an opportunity to hang out friends. Canning vegetables is a party. It sounds silly and perhaps obvious to some, but many Americans have forgotten this as they sit in cubicles 8 hours a day, or traffic 2. Many people dream of a sinecure and when they get it end up unhappy and bored. Humans are social beings and technology shouldn't interfere with that.

Bon travail M. Brende.

11

Book #11 A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Essentially an autobiography of James Joyce growing up. Not a great novel by itself but contains a taste of stream of consciousness writing, had great descriptions, of hell for example, and contains well-written, well-developed passages on various topics. Should be a good intro to Joyce’s famous “Ulysses” as it introduces the reader to the main character and to Joyce’s bizarre writing style.

10

Book #10 Active Liberty: Interpreting our Democratic Constitution by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

A bit boring; most of the main points are in the introduction and conclusion. Basically, Breyer says that the constitution was designed as a framework for making decisions meaning: Where the constitution doesn’t clearly resolve a problem, stop looking for an answer in its text, and start using your ingenuity and common sense. Breyer claims that a good judge must recognize the times when the language of a law prohibits it from clearly conveying the point the writers were trying to make and then make a sound decision based on what makes sense and what the writers would have thought. Breyer also claims that we need more “active liberty,” i.e. participation, in today’s government as opposed to apathy.

9

Book #9 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Definitely a worthwhile book for everyone to read, despite terrible redundancy. This book was recommended to me as a less philosophical, more concrete alternative to Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael,” my favorite book. It’s worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it won for its content and not its long-winded prose.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is an attempt to answer the question, “Why did Europeans end up technologically superior to the rest of the world and not China or Africa or Papua New Guinea?” This question is of course a generalization of the last few hundred years. Diamond answers the question by exploring the ultimate role geography, climate, and resources had on the proliferation of guns, germs, and steel which are the more immediate or proximate answers to the questions. He describes, based on anthropology and other sciences, how humans went from hunter-gatherers to today’s agricultural societies and where the different countries diverged.

Interestingly enough, Daniel Quinn hits the nail on the head in “Ishmael.” Diamonds scientific explanations of humankind’s progress back up Quinn’s theories on the same subject. Kudos Mr. Quinn.

8

Book #8 1984 by George Orwell

Awesome book. It warned of cold war-like events years before the Cold War. Probably as applicable today as ever. Just read it and see for yourself. I suddenly understand a lot more allusions in everday reading.

7

Book #7: How to Spend 50 Billion to Make the World A Better Place edited by Bjorn Lomberg

This book is the result of a conference of world-leading economists (8, 3 Nobel laureates) asked to perform cost-benefit analyses of spending money on various world problems. The results are then brought together and ranked in order of priority.
The results:
HIV/AIDS – 27 Billion with a cost-benefit ratio of 40
Malnutrition – 12 Billion
Free trade – “Small” cost resulting in huge benefits, e.g. 2,400 Billion/year
Malaria – 10 Billion

It’s interesting that all the economists agree that free trade is a no-brainer. They explain that the resistance to free trade is purely due to lobbyists who have a lot to lose despite the obvious overall gains of the countries involved—gains which will in the end make it back to the lobbyists and their corporations. I.e., in the short-term some companies lose and that’s enough to create so many holdouts.

Notably, global warming didn’t make the cut. The meeting (The Copenhagen Convention) occurred, though, before the recent slew of IPCC reports that greatly strengthened the evidence for global warming. When the report was published there wasn’t enough data on the economic feasibility of fighting global warming so the economists suggested the issue be looked at again once those studies have been completed. Now that those studies have been completed, and the results generally show economic benefits of fighting global warming, I’d be interested in seeing an updated report.

...

Book #6: Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman

This book by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist is an excellent overview of physics comprehensible by anyone. Feynman is well-known for his “Feynman Lectures” in which he taught physics to undergrads at Caltech in an easy-to-understand manner. This book is the introduction of those lectures in which he covers physics past and present (1960’s) in the simplest terms. He relates classical, modern, and quantum physics and describes the problems facing physicists today. I wish I had read this book my freshman year of receiving my physics degree as it really helped tie all those classes together.

...

Book #5: The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest by Po Bronson

A book about as outdated as the technology it describes. The First 20 Million is a novel about Silicon Valley software engineers writing the next killer app, starting a start-up, and dealing with copyright issues. It’s poorly written with a mediocre plot. Goes to show that just because you graduated from Stanford University doesn’t mean you can write a good book. It might have passed as interesting or at least entertaining back during the technology bubble.

Next...

I figured out how to have posts added in the future. Therefore, since there are so many book reviews to add, and some people (Jason) complain about our rate of adding new content, this should help pass the time.

Book #4: Eat, Love, Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert

Give me a break. Let’s just say I don’t think we’d be buddies. This “spiritual journey” is only redeemed by the slightly elucidating discussions of Hinduism, Yogism, and other Eastern religions and philosophies; my typically limited American perception of these topics was filled out a little better. Other than that, the book was mostly like listening to a self-asorbed, I’m-worldlier-than-you teenage brat. In the end this attitude is replaced to some degree with a new-found humility that I hope persists.

Book reviews

I've updated my list. Here goes.

Book # 3 : The Brothers Karamazov by Fydor Dostoyevsky

Everybody has heard of Crime and Punishment but critics call this Dostoyevsky’s best book. Einstein called it perhaps the greatest novel ever written. Freud referred to it often. Tolstoy died with it next to his bed. What do I think? Well, I have the goal of reading a bunch of the classics while in BF to make up for the relative lack of reading during college, and I decided to start with the Brothers. I believe it has been an excellent choice.
It’s an 800 page book that reads like 400 it’s so well written. Yet it’s no Redwall; there’s much to think about including religion, crime, guilt, community, wealth, and poverty. It covers much ground in great depth, makes one stop and think, and manages to tie it all together fluidly with a great storyline. That’s the definition of a great novel, right? Highly recommended.

Aaron's Update

Life is good. Who’d have thunk it? I feel like I live here. Everything seems normal and I’m comfortable knowing I’ll be here for two years. I think that’s a good place to be. It’s funny the things you get completely used to. Bucket baths; no baths; sleeping outside under a mosquito net; pooping amongst the spider, lizards, flies, mice, and other bugs; pooping in a hole; pooping outside; pooping water; cooking with a camping stove; washing dishes and clothes with buckets; never driving a car; riding or walking everywhere; the heat; the dust; spiders everywhere in the house... Sometimes I think, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s not normal.” But of course in BF it is.

Most of our time is spent cooking, cleaning, teaching, lesson planning, reading, and studying. That’s our day. Nothing ever seems too urgent or stressful. What a nice life.

A note on water. Once a week we pay about 55 cents for about 55 gallons of water delivered to our door. Most of that is used for washing dishes and laundry and the rest is for cooking and drinking and showering. For showers we use a 5 gallon pail that lasts anywhere from 2 to 4 showers depending on how clean you want to be and how cold the water is. Therefore, one bathtub probably contains the amount of water we use in a week.

A note on the fou. Amy mentioned that a fou stole my Nescafe the other day. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on her face while she was dumping my coffee into her place. It was a look I’d forgotten existed. It was the mischievous, “I know better but I’m going to do it anyway because I know I can get away with it look.” It immediately brought me back to elementary school where I used see the look all the time in R.B.’s face. He was unique, though, and so was this fou.

I want to say congratulations to Mr. Obama. I have a feeling that Americans are probably 50/50 elated and disappointed. For what’s it worth, America just got a lot more popular in Africa and I think, rightly or wrongly accomplished, that is worth something. (Just heard someone say his name.) Listening to the BBC and the African portion of Voice of America was like a birthday, graduation, and wedding party all in one—everyone was praising and congratulating America and Americans. It was a nice change of pace.

Also want to say congrats to Paul Krugman, the economist who just won the Nobel Prize. I heard a speech of his last summer and thought it was brilliant. Then I realised this great article I was reading online was by the same guy. Now, he’s gone and legitimized my feelings by winning the Nobel. Nice work buddy.

Amy and I want to send a shout out to the following people: Aunt Annie, Amy, and Natalie; Paul and Steph; Mom and Dad; and the other Mom and Dad. Here goes: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PACKAGES. THEY REALLY PUT A SMILE ON OUR FACE. HOLY MOLY M&Ms ARE AWESOME. COFFEE GALORE...X 4!!!! IT WAS LIKE XMAS AND WHAT DAY IS BETTER THAN XMAS? Thanks a bunch folks, it was a really great month.

Another quick note: I'm told that the remaining kitten that we gave to a friend has passed on to a deeper spot on Earth. Something like, "It started twitching like it was having a seizure then keeled over." RIP little buddy.

Hurray for a new president (elect) !!!

Everyone here in Burkina is really excited about Obama winning the election this week. We had arranged to watch the election results all night at the place where they show the soccer games but, nothing ever works out like we think it will, and we spent the night sitting around our radio at home listening to the BBC and Voice of America. Finally, around 4am, they called the election for Obama (fist pump).

Luckily, I only had one class the next day and ample time beforehand to drink coffee (kind of like college). Classes are going well. I am giving my first test this week, we’ll see how it goes. I’ve been trying to incorporate activities and review games in my class to make it more exciting but last week I received a total slap in the face (figuratively) from one of my classes. They were a little chatty after we finished our warm-up game so I asked if they would prefer to skip the rest of the day’s activities and take notes in silence for the rest of class and received a resounding “oui” in response. What the heck?!!! They preferred to take notes in silence for 90 minutes than play my games. Ouch. Well, that’s what we did and it was so boring (for me, at least). I guess for them that is the easiest way to have class since they seem to learn by taking notes and memorizing them. But I am still going to make them play my games every now and then so they practice thinking for themselves.

A few weeks ago we had a big awards ceremony for all the schools in the area to give prizes to the students who had the highest grades last year. We arrived at 8:30, as instructed, just in time for the ceremony to start around 10:30. There were a bunch of big wigs, like the governor, there who gave speeches for the first hour. Then, we gave out about 10 prizes and they announced that it was too hot and the ceremony was over. I felt bad for the 40 or so students who had to collect their prizes later without a big applause. The prizes were pretty good, though. Everyone got some shoes, notebooks, money, and some students got a bike.

Then it was time for lunch at the High Commissioner’s house. There were 2 buffet tables laid out, one for the teachers and the other for the students who received prizes. We sat for an hour for no other apparent reason than it had been a while since our last wait. Then all of the sudden, it was time to eat. I would describe this experience as an African running of the bulls with rice. There was no line. People were grabbing entire platters of food and running off with them. Aaron couldn’t even get a plate. I got a little meat because a guy we knew threw some on my plate as he ran by with handfuls. Then, I looked up to see the students standing quietly in a single-file line at their table. It was nuts.

Speaking of crazy experiences with people and food, we were eating breakfast the other day (bread, butter, and coffee) at a table in town and one of the town fous (the name for crazy people here) walked up, took Aaron’s coffee, dumped it in her bowl, and ran away laughing. It was ridiculous. Oh well, I guess she probably needed it more than us.

We met a girl from the UN World Food Program the other day who was explaining what the WFP does in Burkina. I guess Burkina just got demoted to “emergency” status by their organization. Their program provides free meals at school to encourage parents to send their kids to school. A volunteer in a neighboring village says the program at her school has doubled the attendance.

We are heading to Ouaga this weekend to go to SIAO, an artisan festival that occurs every 2 years. We are going at the end, so hopefully we’ll get some good bargains. Later this month, we’ll be hosting Thanksgiving at our house. We’re trying to get a pig to roast.

Thanks to Aunt Annie and Val and Keith for the packages…real coffee!!! And thanks to Steph for the phone call and Maria for the text. Miss you guys.

Where have I been?

It’s been a while. Here’s some recent info from me, Aaron. I’ll have even more next time (I've read a bunch of books I need to add).

We bought a computer on ebay a little while ago. Luckily to avoid shipping fees and import tariffs we were able to have another PCV returning from a visit to the US bring the computer with him; import tariffs on computers can run in the hundreds of dollars we’re told. Why a computer? Well, I’ve started studying for the general and physics GREs and hope to take the two before leaving BF and the computer is a handy study tool. (I can get a few days off to take the GRE in Ghana. There are two times a year to take the physics GRE there.) Aside from studying, the computer will be useful for starting applications and writing essays and my statement of purpose for grad school. Also, we can read e-books, pre-type emails and blogs, and download articles for reading at our leisure.

With this in mind we bought an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) aka the one-hundred dollar computer which actually costs two-hundred dollars. In theory, it’s perfect. It’s durable, light, good on energy, actually easier to see in direct sunlight, and looks like a toy which is a deterrent against theft.

The one problem is that it’s designed for kids, so to make the operating system a little more grown-up, people have been installing Linux. I actually thought of this as a bonus because it would give a chance to learn the operating system, which is becoming more common, and brush up on my Unix skills.

Well, I said it’s perfect in theory for a reason. Things haven’t worked out so well. Most of the time spent with the computer is trying to get it to work right. After a long process, we got Linux installed, sans programs. Shortly thereafter, before we had the chance to install any programs, i.e. make it useable, it stopped working correctly—we couldn’t type—and now it won’t even boot. So, we figured we’d get by using the childish operating system built-in. Nope, that’s not even really working. The version shipped with the computer is really old and really buggy and the keyboard still only works some of the time. We’re heading to Ouaga at the end of the month so hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of the wireless internet there and get things working again.

Ironically, I’m reading a book right now by an MIT (The school where the computer was conceived) grad student’s quest to answer the questions, “Does technology really make life easier,” and, “How much technology is too much?”

Education in BF

A little about education in Burkina Faso. The government has this goal—namely that all of the youth in BF get an education. They even have a law stating that school is required for everyone under the age of 16. Yet, there are two obvious factors working against this goal.

The first is that school is not free. As you’re probably well aware, it’s hard enough for families to feed themselves already. Asking them to pay extra to send a working (money-making) child off to school is incongruous with this fact of life. The cost of school is somewhere between 10 and 25 mil (thousand) cfa or 20 to 60 dollars depending on the exchange rate. For most families that’s a lot. I made the mistake of flashing a 10 mil bill once in the marché; the looks of those peoples’ faces…

The next roadblock to the goal is the education strategy itself. In training we are taught, by Burkinabé teachers, that our goal is for 50% of our students to pass on to the next grade level. Therefore, we’re supposed to aim for an average grade of 10 out of 20 on all our tests, where 10 is passing. This goal is easily achieved. One might think it would be necessary to write some really hard problems for a class to average 50%. Actually, the Rote teaching method makes this goal a cinch to achieve. Due to their training, which is a carry-over from the old Frech-Colonial days I’d guess, the students are excellent at taking notes, following extremely specific directions, and regurgitating exact phrases. Give them a test with the exact example problems from class and they’ll mostly ace it. The problem comes when you change the numbers—when the familiar becomes one step removed. That’ll get you close to a 50%. Then, if you add the typical problems that have different numbers and are a little different in format, you’ve got your 50% fail rate.

The problem is that students here aren’t taught, and obviously lack, critical thinking skills. This is one area I’ve already started working on in my classes. Almost every class we do some sort of puzzle that is applicable to math and requires the students to apply their math skills to a new problem. The good news is that the older students, despite years of Rote learning, eventually figure it out for themselves, if a bit late. Therefore, if you can keep the students in school long enough, learning becomes self-catalytic and the students will continue to grow without formal education.

Which leads to the paradox: economists know that education spurs economic growth, and, assuming BF wants to see economic growth, one would think they’d be ushering students through the school system, not failing them and making them “redouble” (take the year over) which is more costly. The one reason I can see for holding back the number of students is that there’s already a teacher shortage, and maybe, for the short term this practice is actually beneficial.

That being said, our school has close to a thousand students in grades 5 through the end of high school. They are all probably more motivated and definitely more disciplined that most Americans in this age group because to them school is something new and special; school is not taken for granted. That’s encouraging and I think despite the imperfections the schools are a promising sign of BF’s future.

Restaurants

A funny thing happens almost anywhere we can order food or drink.

We ask, “What do you have to eat/drink?”

The reply, “Riz sauce and tô (yup, that’s food).”

“Is that all?”

“Riz gras.”

“Okay I’ll have the riz sauce.”

15 minutes later, “The riz sauce is gone.”

“What do you have again?”

“Tô and French fries.”

“Wait, I thought you have riz gras too.”

“Oui.”

“Anything else you’re not telling me about.”

“Soupe and igname (another form of potatoes).”

“Oh, well then, I’ll have the French fries and soup. What kind of soup is it (the answer is meat or chicken)?”

“Oui.”

“Ok, thank you…”

15 minutes later our food arrives. I get soup (meat), no fries. The guy next to me get riz sauce.

And that’s that. I’ve thought it was due to poor language skills on my part or theirs, but it’s actually just the way it is. Huh.

Good Riddance to Bad Eggs

Happy belated National Wash Your Hands Day to everyone. That’s right, Wednesday was the big day. In my class, we talked about why it is important to wash your hands, when you should do it, and who should wash their hands (“everyone”). It was really exciting. We just finished our second week of school and everything is good so far. We are both teaching 15 hours a week. Aaron has three sections of 5th grade level math that he teaches 5 hours a week. There are 80 students in each section. I am teaching the three sections of 5th grade biology, and two sections of 6th grade biology for a grand total of 380 students. I have given up trying to learn their names and just call them by their tshirts (I have some boys named, Shakira, Brittany, and lil Bow Wow). I’ve had to kick a couple of students out of class and told many more than they couldn’t come in because they were late, but aside from that the students are pretty well-behaved.

Last week was the one year anniversary of the Doctors Without Borders office in Titao so they had a little shindig that we went to. It was fun and we got to meet the chief of our village. We also did a tour of the DWB facility here learned about their program. Their work here is focused on malnourished children. If the child is under 5, and meets their standards for being malnourished, the mother and child can come to their facility and receive supplements and treatment until the baby reaches a certain weight and is allowed to leave. It was pretty sad to see all those rooms full of sick babies and sad moms who basically sit around all day watching their babies who may or may not survive with a bunch of other moms doing the same thing. I am hoping we can do something with them. If nothing else, maybe we can try to go and visit with the moms and babies every now and then to give them something new to do.

We have been listening to the Presidential debates on our radio. They come on at 1am here so it is normally a kind of dreamy, surreal experience. We slept in a little for this last one and missed the first half but the commentators afterwards said it was just a bunch of mud-slinging anyway. We missed the VP debate so we downloaded the transcript and acted it out (which was way more fun). We had to switch roles every now and then, though, because we both found Palin to be really annoying and needed to share the burden.

Normally, when we ride or walk through town, people tend to sit with an expecting look, waiting to see if we are going to saluer them or not. They get in this position where they are ready to say hi back in case we greet them but equally ready to pretend they didn’t even notice us in case we don’t. So anyways, the other day I rode by this guy and said gave him the ‘ol “bonsoir” and he did a fist pump! He didn’t even say hi back: just closed his eyes and fist pumped, it was so funny. I think I am going to incorporate more fist pumps into my daily life. When my students get a question right…fist pump; when the veggie lady gives me a cadeau of some extra onions…fist pump; when I crack an egg and see that it hasn’t gone bad, you better believe I will fist pump. We have had a string of nasty egg incidents lately. They say that when you buy eggs, you should put them in water and depending on whether they float or not, you can tell if they have gone bad. Well, we tried that but the trouble is we can’t remember if they are supposed to float or sink. Also, it turns out that once an egg goes bad it turns into a miniature explosive device and won’t just go bad in your bowl; that thing will spray all over the counter, your clothes, everywhere. We had one last week that even the cats wouldn’t eat. Flour bugs are another new thing that we have discovered. I guess we will have to find a new way to store our flour.

I think our French is getting better or at least we are reaching a comfortable level of ignorance. I have found another teacher at our school who is going to tutor me so hopefully that will help. We had our meeting of teachers last week where we discuss the school schedule and other stuff for the year and Aaron and I were pretty much lost the whole time (thus the “other stuff” because I don’t actually know what they talked about). The meeting was supposed to start at 7 so we showed up and 6:50. Around 8 the other teachers started to roll in and we finally started. The other teachers have been really nice and helpful. I am friends with the PE teacher; I call him “coach” and we listen to Beyonce in the mornings on his cellphone.

Overall, life is good. They have started killing the pigs around town so we’ve been having Pork Thursdays. It is always takes me a little by surprise when I am digging into my bowl of meat to look up and see a pig carcass sitting in the counter right next to us, but it doesn’t seem to bother me anymore. We are heading to Ouaga at the end of the month for a big artisan festival that happens every two years and people come from all over West Africa to see it. Mom, we finally got your package this week!! Thanks so much, we were really excited. And Steph and Paul, we got yours too. You guys are awesome.

Still no school

We made it through our first month at site! Aaron and I are getting settled into Titao pretty well now. We have a friend- a friend!!! - who is a police officer and we go to his house for tea on Saturdays (Burkina tea: imagine a shot glass of foamy mint tea with lots and lots of sugar, slurp loudly, and voila) and we found a place that shows Champions League soccer games on Tuesdays and Wednesday, so what else could we need right? A few weeks ago we went to a play/dance party put on by some of the older students in town. The skits were in Mooré so I didn't really follow them but everyone was cracking up so I am guessing it was funny, but the dancing was really fun. These kids can move; and not just the girls, the boys can dance too. Imagine Dalia as an African high schooler in jellies (all the guys here where jellies, remember jellies?) and that's what I am talking about. For those who don't know Dalia, turn on MTV and pick a girl from a rap video.

I did the Titao church tour the last few weeks. We have a Catholic Church and a Protestant church, both services are a whopping 3 hours long. The Protestant service was fun because there was an hour in there that felt like a musical: there was a guy up front who was talking but it seemed like every minute or so everyone would suddenly bust out into a song, I never saw it coming. And the songs would end just as abruptly. As a result, I stopped clapping along after the third time because I was always getting stuck clapping when everyone else had finished and it was quiet (that's not embarrassing). My favorite part of the service was the end when they announced they had a special gift for the pastor and did a big schpeel about his contributions and had some important people present him with his gift. What was this gift? Shoes and extra laces. That's right. In Burkina, that's a really good gift because the men are obsessed about their shoes, but it still made me laugh. Then, to wrap things up, they had an auction fundraiser where they auctioned all kinds of stuff from chickens to onions, to individual Bic pens. By comparison, I would sum up the Catholic service as: stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Nice, but none of the flair.

We haven't started teaching yet. We were supposed to have a meeting with all of the teachers on Tuesday to get our teaching schedules and make the school calendar and then start teaching the next day, but that didn't happen (we didn't really expect it to either). What we had expected was that someone would have given us a heads up that the 7am meeting was cancelled. I guess everyone else just knew it was cancelled because nobody else showed up. Turns out the meeting corresponded with the end of Rhamaddan so it was cancelled for the holiday. Our proviseur (school principal) says the meeting will be Monday and we will start teaching on Tuesday, so we'll try again next week. It's kind of a funny way to do things: tell the teachers what classes they are teaching and what the school calendar is the day before classes start. Luckily, we already know pretty much what we are teaching. Aaron will be doing math at around 5th grade level and I am doing biology to 5th and 6th grade (that's my best guess for the approximate grade levels, could be wrong).

Rhamaddan ended (or is ending, I am not sure how long this lasts). It turns out that the end of Rhamaddan is kind of like Halloween here. The kids walk around and sing you songs and you give them candy. It was pretty fun and we even considered putting on costumes for the kids coming to our house to be more festive but decided that might not be culturally sensitive. We did try to get some candy by singing to the kids we passed on the street before they could sing to us, but it didn't work (probably because we didn't know most of the words and had a lot of "da da da"s). I am not really sure what the adults do to celebrate. I know what they don't do and that's go out in town and eat a restaraunt because we tried that and everything was closed.

Amy's Moment of Whining: you can skip this paragraph, but I've got to put it out there. It is hot here. I have never sweated so much in my life. Honestly, I don't think someone with my sweat glands should be allowed to live in West Africa. The PC needs to include this in their medical screening. Not only is this a medical concern, I must be on the verge of dehydration all the time, but it is an environmental problem. Can you imagine the copious amounts of water it takes to maintain this body? It's a lot. By the end of our 2 years, I think I will be a leading cause of desertification in West Africa. It sounds like we have one more month of heat (or never-ending sweat sessions for me) then it will cool off. The good news is we just started making our own sun-dried tomatos and they are yummy. Aside from that, I can't wait for the heat to be over.

On a sad note, we are down to 3 cats now. I know that we should be excited to only have 3, but the situation was really sad. Our mom cat disappeared a week ago, no idea what happened, so we have been taking care of the kittens. Let me just say that kittens are only cute when their mom is around to feed them and clean them. Whatever we fed them (milk, eggs, meat) they ended up with it all over them and within a few days they would stink so bad we had to wash them. We might not ever have kids after this experience. So last night, we saw a new cat in our yard and chased it out because we didn't need any more cats. But I guess it came back later and took two of our kittens. We caught it taking the third one and scared it off, but not before it bit the kitten and killed it. We are giving the last kitten to another volunteer today. I feel bad about how things worked out but I guess that's life.

To end on a happy note, yesterday before the kitten incident, was really great. It was like Christmas: a PC car came and delivered our packages from Ouaga. Thanks so much to Val and Keith and Tommy and Hiyam. We are so happy! Hiyam, I haven't forgotten your post card, I just haven't found one yet. I'm not sure if the tourism industry in Burkina is up to postcard status yet. Also thanks for the calls from both of our parents; it's always great to hear from home. We are staying in town today and are planning on catching the VP debate tonight (it comes on at 1am here). Until next time...

So far, so good...

Well, we have finished our first few weeks in Titao and are getting settled in our new house. We decided to bike the 45 km to Ouahigouya, the nearest town with electricity and internet, today. I would say the first 40 km weren’t too bad, but the end got pretty tough. Hopefully, I will get in better shape with time. The good news is that because it is the rainy season, the ride was really pretty because everything was really green.

Overall, things are going really well in Titao. I spent the first day on a spider-web killing spree. I know that spiders “are really helpful because they catch other insects” and all that crap, but we currently have more spiders living in our house than any of the other insects combined. I counted at least 40 in our latrine the other day. Plus, I am afraid of spiders, so there’s my ulterior motive.

We also had 4 cats awaiting our arrival: a mom, Laffi, and her three kittens. By the end of our second day we had decided that we needed to downsize our cat population. Dinner was like a scene from a cheesy sci-fi movie: Meow of Death. We had barricaded ourselves inside the house so that we could eat dinner and there were two cats crawling up the screen door, another one jumping in through the hole in the kitchen window screen, and the fourth one walked in from a back room (where did it come from!). We were under attack and they had us surrounded. There was nothing about fending off cuddly kittens in our Safety and Security training so we were on our own and somehow managed to get through dinner (I think standing up) before the cats drove us nuts.

So, of course, later that night around midnight we are woken up by some weird noises in the house and go inside to find the mom giving birth to her second kitten of the night on my underwear pile (gross!). By the time it was all over, around 4 am, she had 4 new kittens; or should I say we had 4 new kittens. Figures. (Don’t get me wrong, they are really cute, but come on: 8 cats!)

That’s enough about cats and spiders, we have been interacting with other humans too. We normally have between 5 and 10 kids come by to watch the “nassara show”. They just sit and watch us. We tried asking them questions but they just say “oui” to everything we say (How old are you? Oui. Are you 8? Oui. Are you 50? Oui). So we’ve been trying to find little things for them to do around the house while they are visiting. Otherwise, once the “nassara show” gets boring (which takes a surprisingly long time) they start the “je demande”s where they start pointing to stuff and asking for it: bottles, plastic bags, our bikes, everything. By the time the “je demande”s get going, we normally make them leave which means they will be standing outside of our gate for the next hour yelling stuff at us and running away if we walk towards them. We’ve met a few adults around town who stop by to visit every now and then but this is the time of year when most people are out cultivating all day or on vacation so there aren’t a lot of people around.

One thing Aaron and I have discovered here from our interactions with both the kids and adults around town is how funny we are. We ride our bikes, people laugh, we eat, people laugh, we speak French, Moore, or English, all are equally funny. We’ve just been on the wrong continent all this time because over here we are a riot. Sometimes we get tired of being so darn funny all the time, but I prefer that to the alternative of blatant staring and we are learning how to just laugh along.

Cooking for ourselves has been great! Right now, we have onions, green bell peppers, eggplant, tomato, and (sometimes) spinach in season so most of our meals consist of that stuff thrown together with a different sauce. It sounds kind of plain and monotonous, but we’re pretty happy. The only tough part is finding fruit. It looks like the only thing we can get right now is watermelon, which isn’t my favourite.

Right now a lot of people are observing Ramadan. I am learning a lot about it one cultural faux pas and misstep at a time. The other day at the market I got really annoyed because the man selling eggs and refused to talk to me or even look at me to sell me the eggs. He even third-partied me (used a third person as intermediary) to give me the eggs and take my money. I tried really hard to get him to acknowledge me and let him know how rude he was being only to go home and learn that part of fasting is fasting from women too. Well, my hats off to the egg guy (along with my sincerest apologies) for not breaking his fast.

Just a quick word about the marché in general. We have a marché every Friday, when the calm, quiet town of Titao is transformed into a bustling village metropolis with rice, flip flops, little kids underwear, and knock-off t-shirts (“50 cents”) everywhere. I think Aaron describes it best. He says it is like taking all the crap from 10 Wal-Marts and throwing it in a city block. You walk around and see the same cheap stuff over and over, but every now and then you’ll find something cool and unique which makes it worth your time.

We are nearing the end of the rainy season and we’ve been told there will be one more hot month and then it is bye-bye heat, flies, and mosquitoes for the winter. I am especially happy about the mosquitoes since the cats have been putting holes in our mosquito net and I look like I have the chicken pox. Word to the wise, if you opt to use one of those head mosquito nets, make sure there are no mosquitoes in there before you seal your head up for the night (ouch!). Aaron was trying to make me feel better and said my red cheeks looked like I had put on make-up. Okay, this has been pretty long, so I’ll wrap it up for now.

Thanks to mom and Ron for the call, it was great to hear from you. Val and Keith, we heard that your package is in Ouaga and will be making its way up here shortly. Maria, thanks for the text and checking up on us. Oh, and our camera has been working lately, so I will put up some new pics. A la prochaine!

Waggadoogoo

Hello from two new Peace Corps Volunteers. That's right, we are moving up the PC acronym hierarchy from PCTs to PCVs. OMG! Our time in Ouaga was great- it could probably be summed up in one word: food. We ate so much delicious food: Chinese, Indian, pizza, ice cream...it was amazing. For our wedding anniversary we went to a yummy French restaurant and ate way too much.

I have discovered some universal truths about PC volunteers here in Burkina (and maybe everywhere), we are all obsessed with food. And it seems to be an obsession that has developed while we've been here. Anytime someone came back from the hotel in Ouaga, the first question asked was always "what did you eat?". And that is almost always followed by "how much did that cost?" which is the second universal truth of volunteers: we are incredibly cheap.
We did do more than just eat in Ouaga, though. We did a tour of the PC office and the US Embassey (where we had delicious fajitas, burgers, and milkshakes) and met the ambassador. On Friday, we had our swearing-in ceremony which was fun. Lots of nassaras in Burkinabé clothes. The ambassador and the minister of education were there and some of the volunteers from our group gave speeches in French, Mooré, Jula, Gulmancema, Fulfuldé, and Lobiri. That was probably my favorite part and it also helped establish some equity in the crowd because I know that everyone present got to experience a few moments (some more than others) where they had no idea what was being said.

We also did lots of grocery shopping. The PC gives us money to buy supplies for our new house and since we didn't need a whole lot (thanks Jill and Markus) we bought lots of food that we cannot find in village. Speaking of food we can't find in village, some people have been asking for what they should send us so we made a wish list and posted it conveniently close to our mailing address. If you think the list is boring and would prefer to blow our minds with something we didn't even know we needed, feel free.

In other news, Aaron is better. They found his amoebas, gave him some meds and he is all fixed. He's actually been better for a while, I just didn't get the chance to tell anyone. Thanks for caring, and sorry for those who were worried.

Tomorrow we are moving to our village. We have a month before school starts to meet people and get comfortable. It sounds like the first month or so consists of a lot confusing miscommunications and staring at the wall out of boredom (anyone ready to visit yet?). And while there are goats and chickens a plenty, they don't have their wi-fi connection yet so it might be a while before we get online again: we are hoping to come to town once a month. So feel free to call or write letters. Also, our blog will be picture-free for a while until we get a new camera or our current one stops acting like an idiot. Right now, Aaron and the camera aren't speaking and he refuses to take it anywhere just in case because "what is the ****ing point, the ****ing thing waits until we get to ****ing Africa where we have to way to ****ing fix it and it ****ing quits working!" (He hasn't said that exactly, but the emotions are there.) So for pictures from swear-in, you may want to check out other blogs.

And if anyone finds themselves in Iowa thinking "man, that river is cool but I wish there was some way I could learn about the history, geology, ecology, etc. along the river while aboard some sort of floating craft..." I hear Stephanie gives awesome boat tours, just watch out for the mean driver.

I (heart) les Jeux Olympiques

There are some people out there who don’t like the Olympics. I am pretty sure I wouldn’t get along with these people. I love the Olympics, love ‘em. I love the Olympics like the Burkinabé love Celine Dion, and they really love her. Our host family has a Celine Dion dvd and we have watched that thing more than once. The cyber café has a Celine Dion calendar and I have stopped being shocked when I see a bad-ass African guy driving a moto, smoking a cigarette, and sporting a Celine shirt.

The Olympics also serves as a good way to spend some time with the host family. They like to watch t.v. and sleep during the day because it is their summer break and since I can only watch so many Burkina gov’t sponsored soap operas and they keep refusing my offers to go head-to-toe at nap time, there isn’t a lot of interaction on the weekends normally. But now I can watch the Olympics with my fam and we all have fun. This weekend I watched some soccer with our host sister and brother. Quick note about this host brother: he was introduced as a brother but we really aren’t sure who he is. He’s someone between 18 and 30 years old and just showed up one day and he’s been staying here for the last week. Family trees are pretty much impossible to discern here because everyone seems to be a brother or aunt or something when they are introduced. Our host mom has only given birth to one son and yet we have met three host brothers and been told about others (and this isn’t because our dad has multiple wives as is the case in other families).

The Olympics have also given me a pleasant distraction from training on the weekends and now we are almost done! Only one week left. Then we go to Oauga for a couple of days and finally, on Friday, we have our swear-in at the ambassador’s. I am really excited to see the end of training approach, but it will be sad to see everyone dispurse to their various sites. I will definitely miss our weekly training newsletter, the Haut Cinq (that’s “high five” in French). Every week a different group of 3 to 4 people put together a newsletter and it is always lots of fun. The latest one included a choose-your-own-adventure trashy romance haiku.

As part of our Peace Corps commitment to share American culture with others abroad, we’ve been teaching our Burkinabé teachers American cultural staples such as “that’s what she said” (ça c’est ce qu’elle a dit) and “douche bag”. Every now and then they will use it correctly and we feel like we are really making a difference here.

But seriously, I can’t wait to get to our site and get to work. I have so many ideas I want to try and if one or two of them results in maybe a couple of community meetings or a girls club at my school I will be so excited. We went to a talk on female genital mutilization last week that was really interesting. Sadly, it is a big problem here, made worse by the fact that any kind of intimate subject (puberty, sex, etc.) are taboo to discuss here. I am not sure how, or if, we will be able to address this in our community but I would like to try. A lot of what we will do will depend on what the community needs, not what we want them to do, so we will have to wait and see.

Other than that, things are good. Aaron has been pooping blood for the last 6 weeks so he is going to Oauga tomorrow to get some tests done. Poor guy. I had some girls in my class give me a letter today with some pictures of flowers that I’ve taught them and a letter that says they want to be my friend and it has their email address. It is really cute.

I put a few pictures up. There is Aaron sporting his new outfit. The men here have a pretty sweet deal in that their formal outfits can also double as pajamas. Then there is picture of us all dressed up with our family. See if you can pick out which ones we are. Finally, there was this really sweet jumping spider that caught a fly and Aaron got some really good pictures of it.

Peace Corps Funding

As Amy mentioned, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is providing ~$500 million to Burkina Faso over the next 5 (or so) years for agriculture, road improvement, and female education projects. Here’s what slays me: This $500 million was approved by Congress. The Peace Corps budget is also approved by Congress. I forget the exact number, but the PC budget for the entire globe is on the order of $400 million. Furthermore, the budget for BF is ~$2.5 million, and decreasing. Now, if we didn’t have a demand or a supply of volunteers, I would say go ahead and cut the budget, but as it is, they actually have to limit the number of volunteers they can let into the country each year, purely for budgeting reasons. Now, it sounds nice to say, “There are more Americans that want to serve Burkina Faso than we can afford,” but when Congress gives 200x the PCBF budget to our country, it makes one think that perhaps it would be worth it to throw a little more in our direction.

Now, I know that, “it just doesn’t work like that,” but just look at the numbers. And how efficiently do you think that money will be spent? At least some of it is going to end up in the wrong hands/bank accounts. PCVs don’t build roads, but there is an established agriculture program in PC (not in BF, but in many PC countries) that teaches communities what kinds of crops to grow, how to grow them sustainably, and how to do without expensive fertilizer (Kai, a friend and PCV in Zambia is teaching just this. He says the local word for agriculture is synonymous with fertilizer, obviously there are some misconceptions…). It seems like adding this PC program and a bunch of volunteers to the country and making the MCC funds available to their communities would be a good way to ensure that the funds are spent wisely and effectively.

On the other hand, a note about the program’s effectiveness: The program has been operating for 2.5 years already building schools. In that amount of time they’ve built 132 schools. Compare this to the poor guy I discussed in my post about the book “Three Cups of Tea.” He has been in Pakistan and Afghanistan for 14 years and has built 50 schools. The difference funding makes.

That’s all. I just want people to see the numbers. Compare the PC budget with other government programs’ and NGO’s budgets and look at the quality and efficiency of the work the PC does and it begs the question, why isn’t more spent on the program? President Bush recently said of the PC, “It really is the best foreign policy America could possibly have.”

Hello everyone. Hope you are all well. To those of you who have already started school, I am sorry to hear that. Everything here is going great. We are almost done with training!!! We officially swear in on August 29. Model school is going well. Aaron kicked someone out of his class this week. I played Jeopardy with my class. We are giving our first tests this week. I am going to need some time to get used to the grading system here. In America, the "average" grade is always above average, around 70%. But here, it seems like the gauge for making a good test, a good homework, or a good class is if the average is more like 50%. Kind of depressing: my first test average was a 7.85 out of 20.

Aaron and I got formal Burkina Faso outfits made for our swear-in ceremony. We will put some more pictures up along with pictures of us teaching. Aaron's picture is kind of dark because I didn't want to disrupt his class by using the flash (he caused quite a stir in my class).

For my engineering brethren out there: last night I dreamed that I was teaching statics in French. About the time I woke up, I was trying to translate "free body diagram".

We recently heard that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has approved $500 million for Burkina Faso to support agriculture, building roads and schools, and girls’ education. I guess Burkina finally made the cut for funding by being a good democracy. It's really exciting to hear about the funding but it is also a little frustrating for us because the Peace Corps budget for Burkina Faso is less than $3 million and our budget was just cut 4% for next year. This means that they will have to reduce the number of volunteers here. Aaron has been writing feverishly since hearing about this so I am sure he will write more about it later. Prepare to be outraged :)

Jenn, we got your letter last week! I thought it was a goner for sure. Thanks so much for the letter and news articles. Mom, thanks so much for the spices and pictures. We can't wait to get cooking. Thanks to Marissa, Dara, and Trish for the emails and comments. We love hearing news from home. We are in the process of trying to buy a one laptop per child laptop so hopefully when we get that sorted out, we will have more time to spend writing our blog entries. Until next time...

The new Jill and Markus

Everybody keeps calling us the new Jill and Markus so here you are:

Meet Joanna Thomas

I would just like to start by saying that here at the Rose's blog, we pride ourselves on customer service. We are all about giving the people what they want and need. We know there are other blogs out there with more interesting stories and better grammar (I hear Michael’s blog is pretty good), but you are reading ours and we appreciate it.

So in the spirit of customer service, we have heard that some people (I am talking to you Joanna's boyfriend and parents) have been checking the blog in hopes of new pictures or stories of Joanna only to be disappointed time and again. My first reaction upon hearing this: Are we not good enough? What's the big deal about Joanna anyway? But then I remembered our goal of serving the people so this blog entry is for you Joanna's parents and Aaron (Joanna's boyfriend):

Joanna Thomas: exposed

Perhaps some of you have seen pictures of a tall, blonde forever smiling and found yourself asking, "What is it that makes her so happy?"
The answer: unhappiness

World, meet Joanna Thomas. She goes by many aliases; in her village they call her Aisha, but I think Danielle says it best when she describes Joanna as "the captain of the bitter boat". This string bean of gloominess is always the first to complain whenever it is time to do group work, go to language class, ride bikes, eat, breathe...If this were Snow White, Joanna would be Grumpy Dwarf (only surprisingly tall).

Yes her persistent bad mood and negativity is annoying, but what really gets my goat is her complete disregard for the cultural values here. In a country where skirts should be below the knee, I would deem Joanna's tube tops and miniskirts not culturally appropriate. And yes, her language skills have improved, but as Danielle again points out "Joanna has learned most of her French from the guys at the bars every night."
Maybe the fact that she knows every cabaret in town could be described as good integration into the community but I think bringing sachets of whiskey to morning language class is a bit much.
As far as I can tell, Joanna's favorite past time is seeing how many kids she can bring to tears on her rides through village.

So there you have it, it's not pretty. Maybe it is best if we stick to tales of the latest parasite Aaron and I have contracted.

But all joking aside, we love this girl. She's probably the most cheerful person I have ever known and we are lucky to have her here with us. Sorry there aren't more pictures for you but we only get to see her once a week.

Model School and such

Alright, model school is in full swing now. I am teaching 4 classes a week of biology at a 7th grade level and Aaron is teaching math to the older kids. I don't remember ever taking biology in school, so I have been learning a lot about non-flowering plants. (I'm sorry to biologists out there, but this stuff is boring!)

It seems like the priorities in school here is discipline first, teaching second. We have a lot of rules that we are supposed to enforce in order to keep control of our class. For example, if a student comes late, you do not let them in; if a student's phone rings, take it from them; if a student is being distracting or annoying, kick them out of class, etc. I am actually finding it easier than I thought to be strict in class. I haven't kicked anyone out of class yet but I have yelled at them to shut up (which is totally exceptable here). My first class was with the older kids who aren't as well behaved and only half the class stood up when I entered the room so I told them all to stand and made them wait while I put down my bag, took out my notebook, arranged my chalk, and took a sip of water; then I told them they could sit.

The students seem to be hard workers. If you give them a definition, they will have it memorized by the next class. The trouble is critical thinking: if you ask them to give you the same definition in their own words, they are stumped.

So last week I was talking to Steph (are most devoted blog commenter) and she asked me a really good question and of course I gave her a really lame answer because, like all good questions, you can't think of a good answer until later. I am going to try and answer it now, though. Her question was: what do you like the most about being there?

I think what I like the most is the change of pace and priorities of life here. Right now, I have no idea what the price of gas is, I don't know what the summer fashions are (not that I ever had much style), and I have no idea which young actress is being arrested these days. I feel like despite the new food, clothes, people, language, etc. my life has been simplified. Also, it seems that there is nothing so important that it cannot be postponed for a wedding, baptism, funeral, etc. The sense of community above self, is a new concept for a lot of Americans. It has also been nice to get to know the other volunteers in this setting, without the pretext of our cars, or clothes, or jobs that we left back home. We always joke that if we were to meet in America, we would not recognize each other.

Okay, I think that is better than my original answer which was something about liking this yogurty-millet stuff I get for breakfast sometimes.

In other news, thanks so much to Steven for the package!! You totally made our week, buddy. We will try to sneak some action shots of us teaching this next week to post on the blog.

Aaron Speaks

This is kind of long. Here goes.

We started model school this week. Model school for the students is summer school to help prepare them for the upcoming school year (October). For us PCTs it's practice to learn how to write lesson plans, deliver effective lessons, and discipline the students. Today I taught my first class to the quatrième group (like 8th grade, only some of the students are probably in their 20s). I taught the first lesson in the PC book (physics and chemistry) on solids and liquids. 4eme is where they first see physics and chemistry topics, so we start out easy with the differences between a solid and a liquid, what is volume, and how do we measure the volume of liquids.

The 4ème class is the biggest class in model school; next week it will be split into two groups. There were about 50 students and they were a bit noisy. Helping me teach is one of the current PCVs. When the students get too rowdy the PCV can step in and tell them to shut it. I suppose it went alright today, no one threw anything at me, no one walked out, the lesson plan itself was fine. The hard part is getting excited about defining a solid and a liquid--pretty boring stuff to be honest.

Next week I'll start teaching one of the 4ème sections either algebra or geometry. I think that will be a bit easier and perhaps more fun to teach.


In other news. As Amy mentioned earlier, we went to our future site, Titao, last week. The trip was stereotypically Peace Corps. As the events of the trip unraveled, I felt like I was more of an observer than a participant, comparing what I saw to what I had read or been told should be happening in a given situation. This position of observer was possible because we were being chauffered by PCVs or our homologues the whole time and all I had to do was smile and nod. An example follows in the form of dinner plans one of the nights:

The Plan

Jill and Marcus informed us on Friday that we were to have dinner with the proviseur, the principal of the school, and a bunch of the big wigs at the school. The dinner was a big deal, as the proviseur is probably only second in status in the community to the mayors and chiefs, and the dinner was sponsored by him. Also, the dinner was specifically for Jill and Marcus for the school staff to say their thanks and goodbyes and give Jill and Marcus recognition for their work. We were to meet at 7 pm at the "Garage" which is a local buvette/bar with outdoor and indoor seating. Moussa, the resident factotum of Titao, was to bring the chickens and guinea fowl for dinner.

The Reality

Jill, Marcus, Amy, and I arrived at the Garage just before 7 and just as it was getting dark. At the same time a storm was rolling in and we were glad we just missed it. When no one had arrived by 7:05, we realized there must have been a change of plans that someone had forgotten to inform the guests about. Thus started an exchange of broken telephone calls between Jill and Marcus's two phones and probably everyone else who was supposed to be at the dinner. With the storm, the cell signals of the three providers in town were cutting in and out so that Marcus would get reception back only to be calling someone with another provider whose service just went down, etc. By the time we deduced that everyone else had gone to Moussa's, in the other direction from which we had come, and another km or so from the house, the sky was dark, the frist drops were falling, and the wind was blowing dust sideways. The proviseur was on his way to Moussa's, in a car of course.

We would have asked about moving to one of the local restaurants that has an actual tin roof, but of course the phones were totally dead by now. Therefore, we got on our bikes and headed straight into the storm, using our little lights, riding on dirt roads and watching out for the occasional dog, goat, donkey, guy on bike with no light, drop-off, etc. At this point I smiled--"So this is the 'Peace Corps Experience' " I thought. We couldn't see. When we could see we had to close our eyes because the dust was being blown straight into us. When we could open our eyes we were about to crash into something. And we were going about 5mph because the wind was so strong. And then there was Marcus answering a phone call from his mom, "Umm, this isn't the best time..."

We arrived just as the rain really started coming down and we headed to "shelter" immediately. Of course that was halted by everyone coming out into the rain to greet us. Half-wet, we walked into the shelter expecting shelter. Of course this was an old, poorly thatched room. We sat down in the pitch black, moved around two or three times to find a new stream of water to sit under, and got drenched. I actually shivered. At this point I smiled again, "So this is the..." We commenced with the meal of chicken, guinea fowl, beer, and soda and under using our bike lights. The chicken, actually, was great. The beer was warm and bubbly.

After a bit, the proviseur said some words--thanks, good luck, and even a good luck to Amy and I for the future. A couple of the others spoke and they gave Jill and Marcus some fancy local cloth as a gift. Then we shot the shit for the bit in French.

Once the beer (they only have the big bottles here) had worked its way through a bit and I really had to go, I went out and after a few steps found myself in the middle of a field, animal bones everywhere, dark, low, ominous clouds covering the sky, lightening and thunder non-stop, and the rain. I smiled for the third time, "Awesome!" I went back in, rubbed my belly, and we left shortly thereafter.


I think my training--via the books I read before leaving for Africa, stories I heard from RPCVs, PCV blogs, and the official training of the past 6 weeks--has desensitized me. I'm not likely to get too worked up about anything now. Everything that happened that night would have been very frustrating normally and I was aware of that while it was happening, yet it didn't bother me in the least. That's the Peace Corps. More precisely, that's Africa.

Thanks for listening.

Titao ("Teetow")

We finished our site visit this week to Titao. Our site seems pretty cool and our house is bigger than our old apartment in the States. We have a market where we can get meat, fruit, and veggies all year round and while there's no electricity yet, you can still get cold drinks at some places. Currently, there are 6 cats residing at our house, but we are hoping to get that number down to at most 2 when we return in September. Not that I haven't always wanted to be a crazy cat lady, but I think 6 is a bit much.

Honestly, the most memorable part of our 4 day site visit was the actual travelling. I would compare Burkina transportation to a ride at Disney World. The wait was longer than the ride itself (in our case, the bus was 3 hours late for a 1.5 hour ride), all the little details seem so exaggerated that they are fake (the music was a few notches above enjoyable and seemed to be playing at 1.5 times the normal speed and the old man next to us decided to dedicate all of his time to staring unblinkingly at us), and as with all popular amusement park rides when all is said and done you have to ask yourself if it was worth all the wait and effort.

We actually had an extra element of fun on our ride: since this is the rainy season there were huge puddles in the road. When you combine that with our driver who must have been preparing for the Daytona 500, I felt like Harry Potter on the night bus swerving all over the road.

This week we start 5 weeks of model school, which is a summer school that we put on to give us practice in the classroom and extra lessons for the students. This week I will be observing Burkinabé and PC teachers and on Friday I am teaching a physics class. While I am nervous about teaching to actual students in French, I think it will help the rest of training go by faster.

Aaron and I have been listening to this program in the mornings called Voice of America. Has anyone heard of this show? We find it both funny and a little troublesome that this one program has decided to represent our country to all other countries in the world, especially since most of it's programs are obviously biased propaganda. Our favorite one comes on a few times a week when they highlight international students who are attending "one of America's great universities". They interview the student and talk about how awesome America is and every now and then they will mention what that student is studying or something about their home country. By the time we are done praising America, there normally isn't much time left to discuss what is happening with the election or economy or things like that. But we still listen because it is nice to hear English and we need a good laugh.

Mom and Val and Keith thanks for calling this week. We were so excited to get a call! Jenn we haven't gotten your letter, but we'll keep looking.

Barak Obama discounts, homologues, etc.

On Saturday we took another language test to see how we have progressed over the last four weeks. There are three main levels: novice, intermediate, and expert. And each level (at least the first 2) have three subcatagories: low, mid, and high. When we first got in country, I tested in novice-low and now I have moved up to novice-high, which is exciting. Aaron is intermediate-low now. In order to "pass" training and become teachers we have to get to intermediate-mid, so we are getting close.

I met my counterpart (homologue) this week. He is really nice. He speaks English, jackpot! He works as a French and English teacher at the school where I am going to work. We've been doing a lot of U.S. vs Burkinabé culture activities. Monday we played a game that asked questions to see how well we know each other's culture such as "what is starbucks?" (the Burkinabé answer: tv show). One feature of American culture that all Burkinabé seem to be informed about is the upcoming election. Everyone wants to talk about Obama. At our local bakery, we have what we call the "Barak Obama discount". Go in there, make sure the owner knows you are American and that you will be voting for Obama, 15CFA off your baguette. Perhaps this is an abuse, I don't know.

Oh, here's a fun story for those of you who are more scientifically inclined. Friday night we had a big rainstorm. Really big, huge... Now I am not sure if you have seen this in the pictures but we have metal things on our windows that serve as blinds as well as metal screens to keep the bugs out. So Saturday morning, Aaron got up and went to open the blinds and noticed that he was getting a small shock when he touched the metal. Something happened Friday night and now there is a connection between our outside light (which doesn't work now) and our window. This was very difficult to explain to our host family. When we just had them touch the window to see for themselves, the kids totally freaked out and thought they were going to die. I think our host dad is going to call an electrician so hopefully it will get fixed.

Thanks to Ashley's mom and Uncle Dale for your comments and uplifting words. Uncle Dale, we haven't heard of those books but there is supposed to be a big PC library in the capital so we will see if they have any of them.

The Weekend

Hi everyone! I feel like I have a lot to write, so I am breaking it up into parts so that maybe it's easier to read. We had a really fun weekend. Saturday we cooked an American dinner for our family. This was kind of a multi-purpose exercise: we wanted to do something nice for them, teach them (and ourselves) how to prepare food we like with their materials, and have a meal that we really enjoy. So we made hamburgers with caramelized onions on top, garlic mashed potatoes, and sauted some veggies. It was really good (at least to us, I don't know if they really liked it or not).

The whole experience was a typical African business deal. We went to the market Saturday morning to order the beef and we were told "no problem", it will be delivered that afternoon to the center where we have class. By 3pm there was no meat so we got the phone number for the butcher and called and he said he would send the meat right away. Shortly after we got off the phone the butcher's son came to say we weren't getting the meat after all. So we went home (about 1km away) and decided just to do potatoes and veggies. After we got home, we realized that I forgot the milk at the center so I rode back to get it and the butcher's son was back with the meat. So it all worked out. We are learning to adjust to the way things work here. For example, when you go to a restaurant and order food and they say ok, it doesn't mean that they have the food and will make it for you. Sometimes they have run out and just don't like telling you bad news so they wait about 10 minutes before telling you.

Sunday we did laundry and went to the pool. The pool was great! We even ate some pizza, sort of. It was ground beef, cheese, and onion on a pizza crust which is good enough for me.This week we meet our homologues and visit our site. I don't know if I explained the homologue situation so here it goes: we each get a person at our site who is involved in similar work that helps us integrate into the community and answer any language, work, cultural, life, etc. questions we may have. Then we get to visit our site from Thursday to Sunday. Aaron and I have it easy because our site is only 45km away but some people have 2-day journeys to get to site. Also, Jill and Marcus (who we are replacing) have one week left in country so they will be there to show us around. I am really excited.