Moore 101

Thanks to our friends at the marché, "Emy" and "Harouna" have slowly been improving their Moore. Here are a few key things we've learned:

sida = husband: Learning this during training would have really saved me some trouble. In French, AIDS is called SIDA so you can imagine my confusion when everyone at the marché one day kept asking me how my "sida" was doing. I told them, in Moore, that I actually don't have AIDS but they insisted I did and wanted to see it. I actually started to get a little upset as more and more people joined in to insist that I had AIDS until finally someone mentioned "Harouna" and I figured it out.

If in doubt, mmbaa or mmdaa: It turns out that this is an official response to a lot of things, so if you're not sure what someone is saying, just throw it out there and there's a good chance it'll work. There is supposedly one of these that women say and another one for men, but I can never remember so I just kind of mumble it. The other day some old guy rattled off some incomprehensible Moore to me so I gave him a nod and an "mmbaa" and he looked shocked and told all his friends that I speak Moore.

wend.....-> amina: There are a lot of different ways to say goodbye and they normally involve some kind of blessing and the word "wend" (might be "wenda") for God. Anytime you hear a sentence start with this, you can just tune out the rest because the answer will always be "amina" (amen).

ligdi ya wanna?: Pricing in Mooré is kind of odd. We've learned the Moore words for most of the prices we use in the marche (100F, 50F,...) but it doesn't actually mean we've learned the words for 100 or 50 in Moore. This is because there is a conversion of 4, or maybe 5 (I missed this session in training), between Francs and Shells. Moore prices are given in Shells which means when I wouldn't use the same Moore words to buy 25 mangos and pay 25CFA.

There's been lots of other things, but we'll leave it there for today. In case there are any lingistic scholars out there, many (and probably most) of these Mooré words might be spelled wrong. Since we learn by talking to people, I just write them how they sound to me and have no idea how to spell them.

Pictures!

Here are some of the new pictures:

Potato marché: every stall is full of potatos or onions.

Soccer with the girls club.

Issouf, our forestier, talking with the students

Planting the seeds

This picture wouldn't be nearly as funny except that it wasn't posed - this is how I found Aaron one day. This is what the hot season has done to us.

The kittens have brought out Aaron's maternal instincts. Quick note about the facial hair: Aaron decided to stop shaving sometime back in March. We have been shocked at how a culture of supposedly indirect communicators have been so direct in telling him that they don't like it and he should shave.

Nothing makes me happier than seeing teenaged boys walking around school holding hands. Here are some of our students.

Awarding the top students

Our trees after 2 weeks

This guy is incredible. He got all of the soil ready for planting and waters the trees everyday. He does it all for free but we occasionally bring him some lunch.

Holy Heat Rash!

School is finally ending. These last few weeks were tough for everyone: teachers and students. Luckily, there were enough (unexpected) holidays and special testing days thrown in to keep things exciting. The girls club has come to a somewhat tragic end for the school year. We had been playing soccer and dancing every Friday night and a few weeks ago during our soccer games, one of the girls called me "nasara". This immediately ended our soccer game and any future soccer games. I probably would have let her off the hook if she had apologized, but she decided to laugh about it instead...she should've apologized.

Each class at school has a "professor principal" who is like the homeroom teacher responsible for the class and any problems with discipline or grades can be brought to the PP. I brought the problem to the PP of her class thinking he might talk to her for a while, take a few points off....the usual punishment. The next thing I knew I had a bunch of girls in the salle de professors (teachers lounge) crying their eyes out and apologizing. It turns out that the PP decided to punish the entire girls club by lowering their grades (still not sure by how much), and expelling them from class for a week. I tried to tell him that we could just punish the one girl but he is now convinced that they are all bandits and the others should have corrected her, but they didn't, so they are just as guilty. While I appreciate his help and I'm sure this is how Burkinabé teachers handle problems like this, I feel like this might hinder any future girl's club participation. Next year if I try to advertise for girls to join, what can I say: "Remember that big group of girls you saw crying outside of class for an entire week? That could be you!" Maybe I'll try an English club instead.

We're getting ready for our trip to Tanzania next month. Getting in shape for Kilimanjaro has been pretty challenging since Burkina is blessed with an abundance of conditions exactly opposite of what we'll find on Kilimanjaro (hot, flat, sea-level). I do a lot of walking with a heavy pack on really early before it gets too hot and we've created a home gym equipped with weight machines (Puma backpack filled with rocks) and a stairmaster (cement block next to the house). After all this work, I really hope I make it to the top of Kilimanjaro. If I don't, I hope I can at least fail with some dignity. If I were to get violently ill from the altitude or get injured saving a fellow hiker from a falling boulder, there's some dignity in that - a little less in the case of the illness. But if I don't make it because I've stopped on the side of the mountain crying because I'm too tired to go on, that's just disappointing. I don't want to rule out crying like a baby, it might very well happen, but I do hope that I will get up and keep walking afterwards.

All that stuff I had said about it not being that hot...I was wrong. These last two weeks have been wretched. It's too hot to nap, but too hot to move, so we've been reading a lot. Luckily, I think we will start having some cloudy days every now and then to cool things off. We actually had about 5 minutes worth of rain last night which was enough to make the next day almost comfortable. My heat rash is awesome now. Everyday I discover new clusters of red bumps.

School is now over for us. Aaron had the fun idea to capitalize on the Burkinabé love affair with certificates and printed off certificates for the girl and boy with the highest grades in our classes and give them some candy. We also recognized the most-improved boy and girl in each class, but didn't have time to print them certificates so they just got candy. The award ceremonies were fun. We still struggle to tell which students are boys and which are girls based on their names; as a result, the most improved girl in 6C math turned out to be a boy, oops. Both Aaron and I met with our proviseur this week to talk about what subjects we'd like to teach next year. It sounds like I might get to teach English (a subject I know about) and Aaron will teach physics as well as math. Hopefully, this will all work out. I think the fact that the school doesn't have to pay us gives us a little sway in what classes we will teach, but not much.

Earth Day and other things

Other big news from Titao: The government-run electric company has finally finished their 5-yr long expansion of their power lines from the nearest city 28 miles away and we now have electricity!! Life is pretty good on the grid. It hasn't made a big difference in our lives except that we have street lights on our two main roads and we can finally find yogurt. Who am I trying to kid...yogurt!...it's made a huge difference. The other big arrival that we are constantly reminded of has been the infamous hot season. It seems to be the favorite pasttime of people around town to ask us how we are dealing with the chaleur. Honestly, it's hot, but I was expecting much worse. After months of hearing about the hot season, I was ready for unimaginable awfulness but it's really just a lot of imaginable sweatiness (and I mean A LOT of sweatiness), and the occasionally heat rash in unexpected places.

We are now finishing our first school year - hurray! It's been fun... sometimes. Lately, I've been trying to incorporate the kids' knowledge of American culture into our classes. Last week in Review-Jeopardy, Barack Obama destroyed Eminem, Shakira, and 50 Cent. I also taught the girls club some American dances. Really, they couldn't have found a worse resource for American dance moves...I know nothing. So far we've done the electric slide and the macarena. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know; otherwise, I'll have to bring out the lawnmower and maybe the sprinkler.

We heard the best song on the radio on Easter Sunday. It was set to lounge-type music and the only lyrics of the song were: "Jesus, il est comme ca" (Jesus, he's like that). Enough said, I guess. The kittens are now in their cute phase. Before they were boring and slept all day, and later they will be too big to qualify as "cute" so these are the golden weeks right now.

Yesterday we did our Earth Day tree-planting with the students from our school. We had about 45 students come representing almost every class at our school. The first hour or so was a sensibilisation from our local forestier about the importance of trees, deforestation, littering, etc. and then we had another PCV who lives near us speak about the nutritional and other properties of the trees we were going to plant. Finally, we got to work opening water sachets, packing them with pre-mixed dirt, sand, and manure, and planting the seeds. They planted 1000 sachets with 2 seeds in each sachet just to be safe. The majority of the trees were moringa which are becoming popular here for their use in malnutrition but we also planted some neem seeds that will be transplanted with our moringa trees because they are supposed to keep termites away.

Overall, the tree-planting went pretty well. There were the normal surprises and hiccups: like when our school told us three weeks in advance that there wasn't class Tuesday through Thursday only to tell us the night before that there was class and we needed to change the date for the tree-planting; or when the forestier told us 2 weeks ago he had extra seeds, but then he didn't bring them for the planting so he left to get them, and came back saying he didn't have any. I would still call it a success. Of course, we aren't done yet. Our work for the next month will be planning out the area at the hospital where we will be transplanting the trees, finding people to dig the holes and a way to protect the trees from animals, and teaching the people at the hospital about moringa and how to use it in their malnutrition program.


By the time we finish that, it will be time for a vacation! Tanzania here we come...

Potato Festival

Sorry for the long absense, we've been in village (without internet) for the last 7 weeks or so. We're pretty excited to get away for a few days. The only drawback to leaving village is taking transport. We still have a hate-hate relationship with our local transport. We hate that they are normally anywhere between 30 minutes and 3 hours late because the bus has broken down; but we also hate that sometimes the bus arrives 30 minutes early and leaves without you. Today was an early day. We arrived at 8:25 for the 8:30 bus to find that it had already come through town 30 minutes ago. The next bus doesn't come for another 7 hours and we didn't feel like waiting, so we stayed on the side of the road until we found a nice construction truck to take us. The ride was actually more comfortable (and perhaps safer) that the bus.

There's a lot to catch up on from the last 2 months, so let's start with the safari...

Like Aaron said, we went to visit the southeast of Burkina during our spring congé and went on a safari with some other volunteers. While it is true that our safari driver did drive kamakaze-style straight at a herd of running elephants with no escape plan, I would say that I was pleasantly surprised with our overall safari experience. I had visions of the car breaking down before we even reached the park, the driver demanding extra money or just not showing up at all, but everything actually worked out really well (except, of course, for the part where we almost died).

We arrived home to Titao just in time for the annual fête de la pomme de terre, or potato festival. That's correct: Titao's big claim to fame is the annual potato festival that happens every spring. Why a potato festival? From what I can tell, it is part of a bigger effort to fight hunger in Burkina and find plants that people can cultivate in the north where water is scarce (plus, we just like to party). If you are thinking that a potato festival can't possibly be that exciting, think again. This thing is a big deal. They sell t-shirts. There was a ceremony in the morning with the usual three hours of speeches and dance troops followed by prizes of farming equipment for the top cultivators this year and then they opened up the potato marché. This was the funniest thing I've seen in a while: rows and rows of vendors standing next to huge piles of seemingly identical potatos with signs that let the anxious customer know which village these particular potatos hail from. We wanted to take a picture at each stand, but realized it would take too long.

No small town potato festival would be complete without the election of Miss Pomme de Terre. The festival ended at night with a competition between 10 girls for the honor of being Miss Pomme de Terre. I wanted this so bad and spent all day securing votes, but it turns out the competition was already closed. Next year. Each girl had a tailored dress made and took turns walking out on stage, showing off their outfits, and striking their best poses. For the second round, each girl had to explain why they wanted to be Miss Pomme de Terre. Trying to pick the winner was tough; I felt like Tyra Banks. (That girl was fierce.) Of course, in the end I wasn't actually a judge and the real judges didn't care what I thought. One of my students was competing, so I was cheering for her, but she blew it on the Q & A so they gave it to another girl. The winner wasn't announced until 2am, so by that time I was too tired to be truly disappointed.