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...