How Do I Reach These Kids!

ςa fait deux jours! It's been two days! This is what we say in Burkina when you haven't seen or spoken to people in a while. I would say it's a helpful piece of colloquial knowledge if you plan on visiting the region and can help you avoid many awkward conversations where you respond, "no, it's been 3 weeks", followed by a weird silence.

The closing ceremony for English camp went well. We were told it started at 4, so we arrived at 3:30, just in time to hear that it didn't start until 6:30. The extra time was helpful, though, because they wanted one of the volunteers to give a small speech in French to the 200 or so students and parents present and that volunteer ending up being me. I think only those who witnessed me cringe and shake my way through freshman-year speech class can fully understand what a big step this was for me. Did my hands shake? You bet. But overall, it went well and I was somehow infinitely less nervous than during that first 5 min pick-your-topic practice speech from freshman year.

Unfortunately, our trip to Ouaga ended on somewhat of a bad note. We had a lot of heavy books and things to bring back, so we opted to take a cab instead of riding our bikes to the bus station. There was already a man in the backseat of the cab so I sat up front and Aaron sat in the back with one of our bags since our bikes had filled the trunk. The driver was acting weird and kept asking Aaron to move his bags so that he could see and the man in the back was coughing a lot and leaning over Aaron and out the window. At one point, we pulled over to the side and the cab stopped so the driver asked Aaron and the other man to get out and push, saying we were pretty much out of gas. Honestly, we didn't think much of this since we've experienced much worse things in Burkinabé cabs. Finally, after we'd driven a little further, the driver said that his car couldn't make it and pulled over to the side and started throwing our bikes on the side of the road. He told us the ride was free, he was out of gas, and pointed in the direction of the gare (bus station).

It took Aaron about 15 seconds to realize that his wallet was gone from the zippered pocket in his pants and by then the car (which suddenly had lots of dispensible gas) was gone. Interesting to note that although those jerks robbed us and dumped us on the side of the road, the driver actually pointed us in the right direction to the gare. That's service! After about 20 minutes of riding around with our heavy bags, we found the gare, hopped on the bus, and tried not to talk about what just happened.

School is in full swing now. Aaron and I are both teaching more hours this year. Aaron has three 6e math classes again as well as 1 5e math class. I'm teaching 3 6e English classes and 1 6e biology. We were told that, despite our requests to teach older students, the administration prefers to have us teach the younger kids because we motivate them to continue. While this is nice for the ego, we're fully aware that they're just making stuff up because Burkinabé teachers don't want to teach the younger kids. Can you blame them? This year, each of the four 6e classes have over 100 students and their French is poor to nonexistent. That is why M. and Mme Rose aren't taking any lip this year. We were told that classes started Oct. 1, so we began teaching Oct. 1 and our classes are silent. The other teachers at our school are funny. For the first 4 or 5 days, they came to school during their class times, but instead of going to class, they sat in the teacher's lounge and talked about how it was impossible to cover all of the material. When their allotted class time was over, they went home.

I'm always surprised at what an emotional rollercoaster teaching can be for me. There are some days when I walk out of class feeling like the queen of secondary education: I can teach these kids anything. Other days, I am overcome with flashbacks from Stand and Deliver, "how do I reach these kids?!" Overall, I think this year will go much better than last year for both of us.

I think by this point Americans have grown accustomed to the wide array of get-rich-quick reality shows that have inundated our culture. Some are interesting, but I feel most are rapidly speeding past "gone too far" territory. (i.e. recent story of couple who faked their child's disappearance in a hot air balloon with the hopes that it would result in a lucrative reality show deal). Well, our country is not alone, nor- I think- are we the worst: last week in Sudan they held a Koran quiz competition. Nothing wrong with seeing which of your neighbors knows their Koran the best, until you realize that the big winners receive AK47s!!! For the runners up, there are hand grinades, other small arms, and computer parts. Pretty scary.

Along those same lines, every year there is a prize awarded to an African ex-leader in recognition of good governance called the Ibrahim Prize. This is the biggest prize in the world: $5 million plus $200,000 every year for the rest of your life. This year, the committee announced that there will be no recipient. This is a sad commentary on the state of African politics and unfortunately overshadows many of the good things happening on the continent. But I believe that the Ibrahim foundation is correct in one aspect: most of the improvements and developments we see cannot be attributed to specific leaders, but are the results of the people coming together to improve their country.

One final note, I recently read the short story "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" by Hemmingway. Before reading this, I had heard two comments on it: 1. "that really made me want to climb Kilimanjaro" and 2. "isn't that the one about abortion?". Now let's look at the story: there is a couple who is on a safari-type trip in Tanzania. When the story picks up, and for the ensuing 26 pages the man is dying from gangrene on his leg. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that reading about how one little thorn in Tanzania can wreak such havoc on the body didn't leave me with any burning desire climb Kili. And perhaps I am too dense for the embedded gangrene-aborted fetus symbolism, but I didn't catch anything about abortion. Up next on the list is F. Scott Fitzgerald; I hear it has aliens!