Aaron's Update

Life is good. Who’d have thunk it? I feel like I live here. Everything seems normal and I’m comfortable knowing I’ll be here for two years. I think that’s a good place to be. It’s funny the things you get completely used to. Bucket baths; no baths; sleeping outside under a mosquito net; pooping amongst the spider, lizards, flies, mice, and other bugs; pooping in a hole; pooping outside; pooping water; cooking with a camping stove; washing dishes and clothes with buckets; never driving a car; riding or walking everywhere; the heat; the dust; spiders everywhere in the house... Sometimes I think, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s not normal.” But of course in BF it is.

Most of our time is spent cooking, cleaning, teaching, lesson planning, reading, and studying. That’s our day. Nothing ever seems too urgent or stressful. What a nice life.

A note on water. Once a week we pay about 55 cents for about 55 gallons of water delivered to our door. Most of that is used for washing dishes and laundry and the rest is for cooking and drinking and showering. For showers we use a 5 gallon pail that lasts anywhere from 2 to 4 showers depending on how clean you want to be and how cold the water is. Therefore, one bathtub probably contains the amount of water we use in a week.

A note on the fou. Amy mentioned that a fou stole my Nescafe the other day. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on her face while she was dumping my coffee into her place. It was a look I’d forgotten existed. It was the mischievous, “I know better but I’m going to do it anyway because I know I can get away with it look.” It immediately brought me back to elementary school where I used see the look all the time in R.B.’s face. He was unique, though, and so was this fou.

I want to say congratulations to Mr. Obama. I have a feeling that Americans are probably 50/50 elated and disappointed. For what’s it worth, America just got a lot more popular in Africa and I think, rightly or wrongly accomplished, that is worth something. (Just heard someone say his name.) Listening to the BBC and the African portion of Voice of America was like a birthday, graduation, and wedding party all in one—everyone was praising and congratulating America and Americans. It was a nice change of pace.

Also want to say congrats to Paul Krugman, the economist who just won the Nobel Prize. I heard a speech of his last summer and thought it was brilliant. Then I realised this great article I was reading online was by the same guy. Now, he’s gone and legitimized my feelings by winning the Nobel. Nice work buddy.

Amy and I want to send a shout out to the following people: Aunt Annie, Amy, and Natalie; Paul and Steph; Mom and Dad; and the other Mom and Dad. Here goes: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE PACKAGES. THEY REALLY PUT A SMILE ON OUR FACE. HOLY MOLY M&Ms ARE AWESOME. COFFEE GALORE...X 4!!!! IT WAS LIKE XMAS AND WHAT DAY IS BETTER THAN XMAS? Thanks a bunch folks, it was a really great month.

Another quick note: I'm told that the remaining kitten that we gave to a friend has passed on to a deeper spot on Earth. Something like, "It started twitching like it was having a seizure then keeled over." RIP little buddy.

Hurray for a new president (elect) !!!

Everyone here in Burkina is really excited about Obama winning the election this week. We had arranged to watch the election results all night at the place where they show the soccer games but, nothing ever works out like we think it will, and we spent the night sitting around our radio at home listening to the BBC and Voice of America. Finally, around 4am, they called the election for Obama (fist pump).

Luckily, I only had one class the next day and ample time beforehand to drink coffee (kind of like college). Classes are going well. I am giving my first test this week, we’ll see how it goes. I’ve been trying to incorporate activities and review games in my class to make it more exciting but last week I received a total slap in the face (figuratively) from one of my classes. They were a little chatty after we finished our warm-up game so I asked if they would prefer to skip the rest of the day’s activities and take notes in silence for the rest of class and received a resounding “oui” in response. What the heck?!!! They preferred to take notes in silence for 90 minutes than play my games. Ouch. Well, that’s what we did and it was so boring (for me, at least). I guess for them that is the easiest way to have class since they seem to learn by taking notes and memorizing them. But I am still going to make them play my games every now and then so they practice thinking for themselves.

A few weeks ago we had a big awards ceremony for all the schools in the area to give prizes to the students who had the highest grades last year. We arrived at 8:30, as instructed, just in time for the ceremony to start around 10:30. There were a bunch of big wigs, like the governor, there who gave speeches for the first hour. Then, we gave out about 10 prizes and they announced that it was too hot and the ceremony was over. I felt bad for the 40 or so students who had to collect their prizes later without a big applause. The prizes were pretty good, though. Everyone got some shoes, notebooks, money, and some students got a bike.

Then it was time for lunch at the High Commissioner’s house. There were 2 buffet tables laid out, one for the teachers and the other for the students who received prizes. We sat for an hour for no other apparent reason than it had been a while since our last wait. Then all of the sudden, it was time to eat. I would describe this experience as an African running of the bulls with rice. There was no line. People were grabbing entire platters of food and running off with them. Aaron couldn’t even get a plate. I got a little meat because a guy we knew threw some on my plate as he ran by with handfuls. Then, I looked up to see the students standing quietly in a single-file line at their table. It was nuts.

Speaking of crazy experiences with people and food, we were eating breakfast the other day (bread, butter, and coffee) at a table in town and one of the town fous (the name for crazy people here) walked up, took Aaron’s coffee, dumped it in her bowl, and ran away laughing. It was ridiculous. Oh well, I guess she probably needed it more than us.

We met a girl from the UN World Food Program the other day who was explaining what the WFP does in Burkina. I guess Burkina just got demoted to “emergency” status by their organization. Their program provides free meals at school to encourage parents to send their kids to school. A volunteer in a neighboring village says the program at her school has doubled the attendance.

We are heading to Ouaga this weekend to go to SIAO, an artisan festival that occurs every 2 years. We are going at the end, so hopefully we’ll get some good bargains. Later this month, we’ll be hosting Thanksgiving at our house. We’re trying to get a pig to roast.

Thanks to Aunt Annie and Val and Keith for the packages…real coffee!!! And thanks to Steph for the phone call and Maria for the text. Miss you guys.

Where have I been?

It’s been a while. Here’s some recent info from me, Aaron. I’ll have even more next time (I've read a bunch of books I need to add).

We bought a computer on ebay a little while ago. Luckily to avoid shipping fees and import tariffs we were able to have another PCV returning from a visit to the US bring the computer with him; import tariffs on computers can run in the hundreds of dollars we’re told. Why a computer? Well, I’ve started studying for the general and physics GREs and hope to take the two before leaving BF and the computer is a handy study tool. (I can get a few days off to take the GRE in Ghana. There are two times a year to take the physics GRE there.) Aside from studying, the computer will be useful for starting applications and writing essays and my statement of purpose for grad school. Also, we can read e-books, pre-type emails and blogs, and download articles for reading at our leisure.

With this in mind we bought an OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) aka the one-hundred dollar computer which actually costs two-hundred dollars. In theory, it’s perfect. It’s durable, light, good on energy, actually easier to see in direct sunlight, and looks like a toy which is a deterrent against theft.

The one problem is that it’s designed for kids, so to make the operating system a little more grown-up, people have been installing Linux. I actually thought of this as a bonus because it would give a chance to learn the operating system, which is becoming more common, and brush up on my Unix skills.

Well, I said it’s perfect in theory for a reason. Things haven’t worked out so well. Most of the time spent with the computer is trying to get it to work right. After a long process, we got Linux installed, sans programs. Shortly thereafter, before we had the chance to install any programs, i.e. make it useable, it stopped working correctly—we couldn’t type—and now it won’t even boot. So, we figured we’d get by using the childish operating system built-in. Nope, that’s not even really working. The version shipped with the computer is really old and really buggy and the keyboard still only works some of the time. We’re heading to Ouaga at the end of the month so hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of the wireless internet there and get things working again.

Ironically, I’m reading a book right now by an MIT (The school where the computer was conceived) grad student’s quest to answer the questions, “Does technology really make life easier,” and, “How much technology is too much?”

Education in BF

A little about education in Burkina Faso. The government has this goal—namely that all of the youth in BF get an education. They even have a law stating that school is required for everyone under the age of 16. Yet, there are two obvious factors working against this goal.

The first is that school is not free. As you’re probably well aware, it’s hard enough for families to feed themselves already. Asking them to pay extra to send a working (money-making) child off to school is incongruous with this fact of life. The cost of school is somewhere between 10 and 25 mil (thousand) cfa or 20 to 60 dollars depending on the exchange rate. For most families that’s a lot. I made the mistake of flashing a 10 mil bill once in the marché; the looks of those peoples’ faces…

The next roadblock to the goal is the education strategy itself. In training we are taught, by Burkinabé teachers, that our goal is for 50% of our students to pass on to the next grade level. Therefore, we’re supposed to aim for an average grade of 10 out of 20 on all our tests, where 10 is passing. This goal is easily achieved. One might think it would be necessary to write some really hard problems for a class to average 50%. Actually, the Rote teaching method makes this goal a cinch to achieve. Due to their training, which is a carry-over from the old Frech-Colonial days I’d guess, the students are excellent at taking notes, following extremely specific directions, and regurgitating exact phrases. Give them a test with the exact example problems from class and they’ll mostly ace it. The problem comes when you change the numbers—when the familiar becomes one step removed. That’ll get you close to a 50%. Then, if you add the typical problems that have different numbers and are a little different in format, you’ve got your 50% fail rate.

The problem is that students here aren’t taught, and obviously lack, critical thinking skills. This is one area I’ve already started working on in my classes. Almost every class we do some sort of puzzle that is applicable to math and requires the students to apply their math skills to a new problem. The good news is that the older students, despite years of Rote learning, eventually figure it out for themselves, if a bit late. Therefore, if you can keep the students in school long enough, learning becomes self-catalytic and the students will continue to grow without formal education.

Which leads to the paradox: economists know that education spurs economic growth, and, assuming BF wants to see economic growth, one would think they’d be ushering students through the school system, not failing them and making them “redouble” (take the year over) which is more costly. The one reason I can see for holding back the number of students is that there’s already a teacher shortage, and maybe, for the short term this practice is actually beneficial.

That being said, our school has close to a thousand students in grades 5 through the end of high school. They are all probably more motivated and definitely more disciplined that most Americans in this age group because to them school is something new and special; school is not taken for granted. That’s encouraging and I think despite the imperfections the schools are a promising sign of BF’s future.

Restaurants

A funny thing happens almost anywhere we can order food or drink.

We ask, “What do you have to eat/drink?”

The reply, “Riz sauce and tô (yup, that’s food).”

“Is that all?”

“Riz gras.”

“Okay I’ll have the riz sauce.”

15 minutes later, “The riz sauce is gone.”

“What do you have again?”

“Tô and French fries.”

“Wait, I thought you have riz gras too.”

“Oui.”

“Anything else you’re not telling me about.”

“Soupe and igname (another form of potatoes).”

“Oh, well then, I’ll have the French fries and soup. What kind of soup is it (the answer is meat or chicken)?”

“Oui.”

“Ok, thank you…”

15 minutes later our food arrives. I get soup (meat), no fries. The guy next to me get riz sauce.

And that’s that. I’ve thought it was due to poor language skills on my part or theirs, but it’s actually just the way it is. Huh.