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.