Doing Things Differently This Time Around

Upon arriving back in Titao after 5 weeks in Ouaga, we decided that this was a good time to make a fresh start. There are a few things that we've chosen to do a little differently for our second and final year in Burkina. On the right you can see one of our more personal projects: bringing back the thumbs-up!

First, the grass. Thanks to our enclosed courtyard that doesn't permit the stray animal to enter and an abundant rainy season, our yard was somewhat jungle-esque when we returned. The grass was up to my waist and I had to hack a way to the latrine. However, much to the dismay of our neighbors, we have decided not to have someone dig it all up like we did last year. Instead, we've been inviting boys to come by with their cows and donkeys to graze (and hopefully leave behind some fertilizer for the soil). This is mutually beneficial because while the cows get free food, we get free help sweeping the porch and doing the dishes.

Second, laundry. Last year we did our own laundry. I'm not sure why. I believe that there was some unspoken desire to get the notch on our belts and the supposed bragging rights which we felt went along with this torment. Thankfully, we have seen the light and this foolishness is now over. To be honest, I hate doing my own clothes; it makes my fingers bleed, takes lots of water and time, and I'm not even very good at it. Saturdays are essentially a new holiday for us. We wake up Saturday morning with a depressing pile of dirty clothes; then, the laundry fairy from across the street sweeps in and all the dirty clothes disappear; a few hours later we have a pile of impressively clean clothes waiting for us. It's amazing! We now have more free time to go visit the town barrage (picture on the right) or grill some chicken (picture below).

Third, school. We're trying to have more say in what subjects or hours we teach this year. At first, this looked really promising: I was told by our principal that it should be no problem for me to teach English and Aaron could take the upper level physics courses, as requested. However, during our visits to school over the past few weeks things have began to look bleak because we are missing a lot of teachers and the school might be forced to put us in the classes and subjects that are more critical. A few days ago when I went to visit, the censur was simply shaking his head and saying "we have no other teachers for biology, english, history, or physics" (this pretty much leaves Aaron, myself, and the P.E. teacher). Classes are supposed to began next Thursday, but since we aren't planning on learning what classes we teach until Wednesday, I think we'll put off the first day until Monday.

Finally, tree planting projects. Our Moringa projects have been semi-successful thus far. The 200 trees planted in Salla, a village 3km away, are doing really well and we even did a sensibilization last weekend with the women's group that planted them. Continuing our tradition in cultural sensitivity, we brought informational booklets on moringa for each illiterate woman in the group and planned to do a cooking demonstration with moringa leaves for our grand finale, forgetting that we are in the last days of Ramadhan (on the right, some of the women getting fresh leaves from the trees). The women didn't seem to mind and we all chowed down village-style by using our hands to dip out some moringa leaf and cous-cous mush, rolling it into a ball in our hands before popping it in the mouth...yum. The other 400 trees are still AWOL. The President of the women's group told me they were planted in two neighboring villages, the man from our forestry service says there were planted at a women's center in town where they are now dying, and someone else from town says they are still at the tree nursery. I've managed to cancel out the latter, but I can't seem to find this elusive tree-murdering women's center or get in touch with the woman to find out what villages she went to visit. I feel like a much less-interesting Sherlock Holmes hot on the trail. Despite these difficulties, everyone we've been working with is really enthusiastic about planting more next year so we are looking forward to planting more next spring.

It's Raining Moutons Over Here!

We are almost done with our month-long stay in Ouaga. English camp has been fun, but we are excited to get back and see our friends in Titao. Teaching students from Ouaga has definitely been a different experience from teaching students in village. Most of these students are wealthy, or at least their parents are wealthy. They all seem to have nice motos, wear nice clothes, and speak better French than I do. The real shock for me was seeing how little they know about village life in Burkina. Many of them have never been to a village in Burkina...never. For vacation, they fly to France or Cote d'Ivoire or America; it's really unbelievable. Our first week of camp, we talked about the environment and one day I was asking the students what they knew about pollution and I had students answering me with things like "global warming" and "geothermal energy"!! Where do they get this stuff?

Every week at camp we have a song competition between the seven classes. Each class picks a modern American song from a list we compiled and they create a routine and perform at the end of the week. It's been really fun to see how creative they can be while singing Rhianna, Bob Marley, Alicia Keys, and Mariah Carey. I've still got my fingers crossed that a class will pick some of the songs I added (c'mon Jackson 5!).

In other, bigger news, mother nature unleashed her fury on Ouaga yesterday morning. Around 5am it started raining. By 6:30, we realized that the enclosed porch where we were sleeping had become a lake with our mattresses serving as slowly sinking islands. Around 9, the power went out and we were told that because of the extreme flooding around town we shouldn't go out. By the time the rain stopped at 3pm, it had rained 26cm, thousands of homes had been destroyed, and at least three people had been killed. I have never seeen so much rain in such a short period of time and based on the reaction of those around us, neither have most people here. School has been cancelled for the next two days because the classrooms were flooded. Ironically, despite the enormous amounts of water dumped on the city yesterday, there is no running water. There's also no power in most of the city, but that is to be expected since it tends to go out every other day with or without extreme weather (I'm not counting hot as hades as extreme weather).

Hopefully, by the time English camp ends on Sunday we will be given the okay to travel out of Ouaga. I'm excited to see how our trees are doing. I've been told that the women's group finished planting the remaining trees in two other villages around Titao so when we return I'll be riding around visiting everyone and trying to set up sensibilisations on how to use the Moringa leaves. As you can see, I'm trying to get pumped up for a second, and last, year in Burkina. It makes sense that Peace Corps is a two-year program: the first year is spent stumbling around in the dark not sure what you are doing and the second year is when you can actually get some work done, hopefully.