Anything is Possible; Nothing is Certain

I’m borrowing the title for my blog today from a French couple staying in my village. They left France a few months ago and are in the process of touring west Africa by van, having driven down through Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, and into Burkina. They’ve had a fantastic journey, and talking with them has given me a fresh perspective on my work in Burkina. In Africa, anything is possible; nothing is certain. That’s the fun of it.

Our second trimester of school ended this week with what seemed like a mad sprint of grading exams, calculating averages, and ranking students. At our end-of-the-trimester meeting, we discussed the fact that only 3 students in the class of 65 ninth graders have a passing overall grade average. Ninth graders take a national high school entrance exam at the end of the year, and teachers demand a lot of the students in order to prepare them for this very difficult and important test. Hence the low grades. If a neon warning sign is going off in your head, I’m with you. However, though concerned, none of my colleagues declared “catastrophe” at the meeting, so we’ll just keep plugging away.

A few weeks ago one of our two English teachers was assigned to a new school. (I know. It’s the middle of the school year.) Guess who her replacement is. While I’m not thrilled about teaching English, I managed to squirm my way into having only one class, so it shouldn’t be too bad. The difficult part is remembering/learning all the technical aspects of the language. What the heck is the present perfect progressive form of an irregular verb? The neat aspect of the English program, especially compared to the math curriculum, is that it is much less of a straight line- you don’t have to know adverbs to use the future tense, and vice versa- so I can pick and choose what I want to cover. The kids love learning song lyrics, so I’m going to do a couple of lessons on the Beatles after spring break- history, fame, and (of course) lyrics. Can you believe that none of them has heard of the most listened to group in music history!? Anyone want to come sing back-up?

The big event of the past few weeks has been the school soccer tournament. The sports season opened in mid-February with a day-long ceremony that included a speech by the mayor, an Olympic Opening Ceremony-style parade, two games, and the signature of a Burkinabe special event- meat and bottled drinks. Last week in the final, after barely beating the 6th graders in the semis, the 9th grade team got a chance to revenge a previous upset loss against the 8th graders. And what a final it was! 8th grade scored first, but 9th grade quickly responded. As the sun began to set, the referee (whose salary I maintain is paid by the 9th grade class) ended regulation (sort of at his discretion, there is no time keeper for these games) on a 1-1 tie. And then we went to penalty shots. The 9th grade goalie earned hero’s status when he blocked a shot by the 8th grade class president, sealing a 6-5 victory. Let the celebrations begin! Cartwheels. Back-flips. Singing and cheering. The winning goalie was paraded around the field on his teammates’ shoulders. The scene was amazingly similar to that seen in Anytown, USA after a big high school football victory, and it got me to thinking.

I keep writing of our students as kids, but the 9th graders are 18-25 years old- about the age of an American university undergraduate. The collective focus of the American undergraduate, and indeed much of the country, has undoubtedly recently turned to brackets: the NCAA Basketball Tournament. In a few weeks America will crown the champion of a tournament that annually eats up millions of dollars in advertising, scholarships, salaries, and professional contracts. The prize money for our school tournament was seven dollars. Despite the difference in monetary value, the heart of each tournament is theoretically the same: athletes playing for fun, camaraderie, and bragging rights. Why does the American tournament hide those intangible prizes under millions of dollars? How much does that dilute what competition is really about? Does all of the money make the American tournament more important? Does the lack of money and fancy equipment (like shoes and shin guards) make the Burkinabe tournament less important? Whose society is really richer? All interesting questions that I ponder while sitting on my front porch.

A couple of weeks ago, Dedougou, the nearest big city to my village, hosted the annual West African mask festival. The US Ambassador stopped in my village on her way to the festival and invited me to join her for the weekend. (Yeah, it’s a small country.) I must say, we travelled in style: air-conditioned SUV; best restaurants in town; and accommodations at the private corporate villas of Sofitex, a major cotton harvesting company. My room had AC and a bathroom! Ah, life with the Ambassador. When I asked if we could call Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, “just to say hi”, the Ambassador almost choked on her water. Apparently they haven’t even met. It went without saying that calling King George was out of the question. To my relief, however, she does have Sec. Rice’s phone number. (Hey, I had to ask. If we ever have to do a Saigon-style evacuation from the Embassy rooftop, you want to know that the Ambassador is talking to the Secretary, not some State Department lackey, right?)

The festival itself was pretty neat. Though we saw masks from Burkina, Benin and Senegal, all the performances had a similar theme: the masked dancers, representing spirits, were controlled by various types of music. Their every action- waking, dancing, and dying- came as the result of a change in music provided by guitarists, drummers, and vocalists. The Burkinabe dancers were wrapped head-to-toe in tree leaves; some costumes were form-fitting, others resembled a dancing Christmas tree. Not that this is hard to do, but they all made the Stanfurd mascot look pathetically amateur. The Beninese had the most elaborate show, with music, fire, and spooky metaphors for the devil. I’ll try to get pictures posted soon.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the past month or so. I’m on spring break right now, and though I’m ready for a little break, I must say I’m going to miss my village. The students are always at my house, and we have a great time hanging out- playing Uno and Dominoes and looking at magazines. Popular questions include: Do you have Coca-Cola in America? Do mini-vans really come with TV screens? Is Matel your brother? Why did he write his name on all your playing cards? I taught Cribbage to a few of my students, and after a few games one of my best math students challenged me to a one-on-one match. I kicked his butt. Twice. Call it revenge for finding two errors on the last math test I gave him. Little punk.

Happy Spring Break!