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...