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.