Got Books?

Quick update on the library situation. Our money from the Peace Corps Partnership came in, and I've purchased almost 200 books for our new library. The three French teachers at our school came up with a list with titles ranging from "Le Petit Prince" (come on, you've heard of that, right?) to "Candide" (that too, right?). Ouaga has two nice bookstores- think Barnes and Noble, but the scale of a 7/11. The more interesting of the two is located next to the large National Cathedral and is, appropriately enough, run by nuns. The have an enormous selection of religious titles...but also plenty of other books. One of the sisters helped me out with my order, and a couple of hours later I walked away with two big boxes of books. Though we did purchase a some foreign works, the vast majority of the books are African novels, and mostly West African at that! A partial title list is below.

Though school is out for the summer, all the students have been informed about the library, and they are very excited to be able to read books beginning in the fall.

Thank you, thank you, thank you again for supporting our library. It can't yet compete with the Library of Congress, but I have every confidence that we have started something that will continue well into the future.

Titles purchased include:

-Les contes d'Amadou Komba by Birago Dirop

-Maimouna by Abdoulaye Sadji

-Le monde s'effondre by Chinua Achibe

-Sous l'orage by Seydou Badian

-L'enfant de la guerre

-L'etranger by Albert Camus

PS No, the picture above has nothing to do with the library...but I forgot my camera at the house, and this is the most interesting picture I could find at the moment. And I know you like pictures.

Koudougou Computer Camp

Pictures of the weekend are here!

As my final secondary project in Tcheriba, I decided to do something a little challenging and out of the normal. After talking to my school headmaster and Vincent, a PCV friend who teaches IT in Koudougou, I invited 16 of our best 8th grade students to a weekend computer camp at the high school in Koudougou. I was a little nervous about bringing so many students so far from home, but I was confident that we had chosen the best students and that after three years in Burkina, I would have the skills and resources to make the trip a success. And what a trip it was!

To set the stage: Of the 16 students, at least 12 had never been outside the immediate vicinity of our village: no paved roads, no bus rides, no running water, no electricity, no large markets, no rows upon rows of boutiques. They had never seen the river about 30km away, and ours was the biggest school they had ever seen. When we asked them what a computer is, the answers ranged from "something like a TV" to "a calculator that folds up". What I'm trying to say is that the excitement level was beyond belief. The morning we left the first kid showed up at my house over an hour early worried that we were already late for the bus. The boys had all shaved their heads, and the girls were in their best clothes. Several of the students from surrounding villages left their bikes in my house. I knew it would be an interesting weekend when one of them asked me to show him how my gas stovetop worked.

Once we got to the bus station, however, the complications began to arise. Quickly. The night before, a large lorry had been traveling on our road. His load was so large that he collapsed the tiny bridge over the creek about 20km from us. Consequence: no transportion that day. None. OK, plan B: the bus station chef in village would call the bus company to see if they were taking another route that would still run them past us. Problem: two of the three cell phone companies in Burkina had failed to renew their government operation licenses by midnight the previous day. As of Friday morning (our travel day) all phones on those services, including all the mobile numbers of all transport workers on all four of the transport companies on our road, were inoperable. So we couldn't talk to anyone. Plan C: Call someone with a bush taxi in Boromo and have them come up to get us. Nope: that guy was traveling. Plan D: I ended up calling Vincent in Koudougou and sending him to find us a bush taxi in Koudougou. Despite being deathly ill, Vincent made it into town, negotiated us a bush taxi, and saw the driver off. Score! Two hours and a plate of meat for 17 people later, the bush taxi showed up in Tcheriba. Half an hour later, after arguing over the already clearly agreed upon price, we were off. No windows on one side, three tries to get the door to stay shut, and lots of dust. But we were off. Images of my Mom shoveling the driveway at 5am after an all-night snow storm the day we were supposed to leave for Orlando flashed through my head. We WOULD make it to Koudougou.

From that point on, however, the trip was wonderful. We got to Koudougou in time for dinner and a quick tour of the market. We had two classrooms for sleeping at school (I was nextdoor in the computer lab), and we stayed up the rest of the evening playing cards and lounging around. Really not doing much. Everyone was pretty tired after a day of waiting by the side of the road for transport. Saturday morning was spent in the classroom. We talked about what exactly a computer is, what it can do, how people use them. We also discussed how people tell a computer what to do: via the mouse and keyboard. All this stuff was completely new to them. It took me a bit to get used to the fact that I had to explain EVERYTHING, but luckily Vincent's IT experience made for a productive and informative class.

The students were dying to use the computers, though, so Saturday afternoon was the much-anticipated moment. First thing: learning to move the mouse by drawing pictures in MS Paint. We started with squiggles and lines, and progressed to complicated shapes like circles. Several kids actually emitted squeals of excitement when they learned how to fill in shapes with colors. We also had a contest to see who could draw the best Burkinabe flag. Several were quite good, though there were many interesting interpretations of the tricky gold star in the middle of the flag. After they got the mouse down, we did some basic typing lessons with BlocNote. No one quite got to the point of typing 100 words a minute with their eyes closed, but they at least all figured out how to write in capital letters. Saturday night was dinner in town and movies on the computers at schoo- another new experience! (Though I couldn't get them to branch out from their Jackie Chan, kung-fu genre movie preferences.)

We had a similar schedule on Sunday, though this time we were ONLINE! The tough thing about teaching the internet was getting them to understand that they could find absolutely ANYTHING online. And once they got their heads around that idea, they had a little trouble coming up with useful things to look for. I vaguely remember that feeling from the first time I tried to figure out the internet: I remember thinking, "OK, so what's the point? I don't need information about everything in the world." I came up with some questions- kind of a scavenger hunt, and that seemed to work much better. Sunday afternoon we taught them how to use e-mail. I had given all the students my e-mail address, so they were eager to be able to keep in touch with me next year. (Nevermind that there's no internet in Tcheriba.)

Sunday evening I invited everyone out for Cokes and Fantas at a nearby restaurant. I can't even begin to explain how high their moods were. They were absolutely on cloud nine. Joking about learning how to drink out of glass glasses (a rarity in village), how they should wait for the drinks to warm up, telling a few city students that we were from "down the road, in the little corner of America where Barack Obama grew up". It was just fantastic. Sunday night we sat up watching more bad kung-fu movies until the wee hours of the morning. And Monday we went back home (they had repaired the bridge by felling a few trees to drive over so there was transport now).

Fantastic trip, and an excellent way to end my service.

Thank you!

To all of you who donated to our library...Thank you very much! Everyone at school is very excited. The project has been fully funded, and we will be purchasing the books soon. Our French teachers have come up with a list of African novelists that we will use to stock the library. The books won't be here in time for this school year (...already pretty much over), but the kids have been asking about them, and I am positive they will be eagerly read come October.

Yes, school is pretty much over. I've given my last lessons, corrected my last tests, and all that remains is calculating GPAs one last time. I'll see my 8th and 6th graders on Monday and Tuesday, but I "officially" said goodbye to my 7th graders this past week. Not an easy thing to do. My planned motivational, good luck next year, work hard, live life fully speech turned into a few quick sentences as I choked back tears. It's hard to imagine my life without my students, my village, or Burkina. That mysterious, scary place called West Africa somehow became home in the past three years, and while I'm definitely looking forward to spending time in my other homes- Minnesota and California- this one is going to be hard to leave.

But before that...books and computers! Along with one of my PCV friends, I've organized a weekend computer camp for 16 of Tcheriba's brightest 8th graders. We're going to spend next Saturday and Sunday in Koudougou learning everything there is to know about computers- or at least how to use a keyboard and mouse. With a little luck we'll even get online. I'm quite curious to see their reactions- most of them, especially the six girls, have never been out of Tcheriba, to say nothing of using a computer. How to explain a file? a folder? a double-click? the internet? One student told me he wanted to bring his notebook so he could write down all the information he could find about his biology class essay topic- he's going to need quite a few notebooks is my guess.

A Library in Tchériba!

Big news from Tchériba this month!

Last fall the English teacher at my school and I attended a workshop hosted by the Peace Corps about opening a resource room and library in our community. We were quite impressed with the workshop and had lots of ideas that we wanted to try to implement in Tchériba. Once we got back to school in October, we spoke with the school headmaster and the other teaching staff. Everyone was equally excited, and the headmaster told us that he had been working an idea along similar lines for a couple of years. The current "library" at our school consists of a single shelf in the accoutant's office. As you can imagine, for a school of 600 students, this system has proved quite inconvienant and in practice means that no one uses it.

Fast forward a bit. After several months of negotiating with the Mayor of Tchériba, the Parents' Associtaion and the school administration, the Mayor has agreed to completely fund the construction of a new library. Not a new shelf...but a whole new building! Once the agreement was made construction was completely finished in less than a week. (The photo above was taken last Wednesday; by Friday afternoon the door, window and roof were in place, and the inside and outside had been painted.) Everyone is very excited.

The Parents' Associaiton has set aside some money to buy new books, and though this is a very important start, showing their commitment to the project, they don't have enough money to form a selection significant enough for this entire new building. That's where you come in. I've submitted an application to the Peace Corps Partnership Program (same program we used for the project at the elementary school last year) to raise funds to help us buy books. That will hopefully soon be approved and online, and any help you can give us would be immensely appreciated. Most of our students have never read a book for pleasure, and I hope you will agree that magic of Dr. Seuss or Harry Potter is something no one should have to miss. All donations go directly to me, and 100% of your gift will go towards the purchase of new books.

I'll be sure to post the link when the project gets online. Thanks in advance for your help.

In other news, my friend Mimi arrived yesterday for a weeklong visit. We hung out in Ouaga today, and (assuming her luggage arrives tonight with Air France) we'll be heading to village tomorrow. Good times!

Masks and More

Welcome to the new home of my blog.

A few weeks ago a bunch of friends and I went to an international mask and artisans' festival in Dedougou, my regional capital. There were about 20 of us, and we had a great time. We saw masks from all over West Africa- including Burkina, Togo, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal and Mali. "Masks" doesn't really do justice to the get-ups worn by the performers. They are more like full body costumes made from dried and live plants and elaborately painted. I have no idea how the performers got into the costumes, or for that matter how they survived on what was undoubtedly one of the hottest weekends of the year so far. You'll have to check out the pictures. It is also kind of amazing how so many people from around the continent could manage to arrive in Dedougou, a small and difficult-to-get-to city in Burkina. A few of the gang stayed at my place on Thursday night before the festival, and we were treated to a soccer match between the 6th and 8th graders as well as some delicious chicken.

We're on spring break right now, and last week a few friends and I took a little trip down south to check out Sindou Peaks. The peaks are a series of neat rock formations, and we spent a few days camping, biking and hiking. According to our guide, the Peaks are part of the same rock formations that run up Cote d'Ivoire, through Burkina Faso, and into Mali's Dogon Country. It's unbelievable how different the landscape is in southern Burkina: trees and greenery everywhere, hills...and cool weather. I woke up one morning around 4am too cold to sleep. (You don't want to know what temperature it was. What am I going to do next winter in Minnesota?) It was quite a good trip, despite a 2 hour bike-ride up the hills on the wrong road. Oops. Guess we'll have to come back another time to see Addy's village.

The second trimester at school finished well, though the students may not have thought so. All the teachers were really tough on them, so the grades were pretty low. It's OK though; we'll let up a bit the third trimester, and everyone will be happy at the end of the year. Which is in five or six weeks. Every year it amazes me how short the third trimester is- this year five and a half weeks. Yikes! Then I'm done with Peace Corps. My last day as a volunteer in June 24. After that I hope to travel around West Africa a bit and be back in America sometime in August or September. Anyone know of any good jobs opening up? Haha.

Hope all is well. Happy Easter!

Still Kickin'

One of my PCV friends just told me that monthly updates is more more than adequate for a Peace Corps blog, so I guess I don’t feel too bad that I’m pushing two months.

At the beginning of the trimester I had all of my students write me letters. The 6th graders wrote about what they had done over the trimester break, and the older kids wrote about what they wanted to be when they grow up and their goals for the new year. A lot of soccer playing, dancing on New Years, and dreams of being a teacher or a nurse. It got me thinking about their futures and hoping that someday one of them- I’m only asking for one- will somehow contact me and let me know what he or she is up to. The absolute highlight of the letter writing was one of my sixth graders. He told me that over the break he had gone to America, had dinner with Barack Obama and played soccer with all the white kids. In the midst of reading (and brieftly responding to) three hundred letters that were all quite similar, I laughed out loud when I got to his. (The neighbors gave me a sideways glance.) Love the creativity.

Things at the elementary school are going really well. I forgot my camera in village, but the kitchen and latrine are built, and the garden is planted. Cucumbers, lettuce and onions have even pushed up (that doesn’t sound right in English, what do we say…sprouted? budded?) from the ground, and some tomatoes are in a nursery at one of the big gardens in village. The kitchen building has an overhang to protect the front porch area from the sun, and inside there are three places for modern stoves called “foyer ameliore”. Traditionally women cook with a pot balanced on three stones above the wood, but this lets most of the heat escape and is very inefficient. Recently there has been a big push to put mud around the stones, basically creating a chiminey that brings a much larger percent of the energy to the cooking. Our kitchen building has three such fire pits enclosed by cement. High tech indeed.

Fractions in sixth grade, exponents in seventh grade, and vectors in eighth grade. I’m also going to try a small group test in eighth grade. I’m kind of nervous about trying something so new, but hopefully it will be a learning experience for us all. I’ve been with these same kids for three years now, so they’ve gotten used to the fact that I’m not quite like their other teachers.

95 and sunny here. Hope all is well wherever you’re reading this from. And that you East coasters are digging out all right. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Holidays from Burkina

Pictures from my friend’s wedding are here.

Uh, wow. It’s been a while since I’ve written, huh? I’ve been spending most of my time in village this fall, so I guess that explains it. Electricity is coming to a village 60km from me sometime next year (supposedly), so maybe we’re next.

I had a wonderful Christmas (though sadly less snowy than Minnesota’s Christmas). Christmas Eve I was in my friend’s village. Four or five of us PCVs living “nearby” got together for an afternoon spent in his market making friends. Transport was interesting- two full buses passed us by, but I was assured that there would be a third. No problem. Uh, well, the third bus showed up on the back of a flatbed. I thought they were going to have us all pile into the bus and ride in the bus on the flatbed all the way to town. Nope. Instead, they piled us all into the cabin of the truck. 4 adults, 3 students, 2 kids, 1 infant…and a partridge in a pear tree. However, we made a delicious pork stew for dinner on Christmas Eve, so all the mediocre transport (I say mediocre because though crowded it was the first time I haven’t had to stand for the ride to town in about three months) was quickly forgotten. Then Ryan and Sonia’s host family brought us dinner #2, then the family called us over for music, dancing…and dinner #3. We stayed up celebrating until around 1am (WAY past village bedtime), but the family was out until at least 4am. Good times had by all.

I was in Ouaga on Christmas Day, and again we feasted: this time turkey, beef, mashed potatoes, wine, stuffing, and apple crumb cake. Delicious. I must admit, however, that despite all the good food, it was the bread with REAL BUTTER that disappeared from the table the quickest.

The day after Christmas I went north to Kongussi. One of my colleagues got married, and since I’ve never been to a traditional wedding, I figured what the heck. Nothing like an American wedding. The groom and all his friends and family gathered in the morning (late morning…Africa time). We started off by all going over to the bride’s family compound and speaking with her father. The groom’s friends spoke on his behalf and asked for the girl’s hand in marriage. He consented (this was all arranged months ago), and so we went over to the bride’s mother’s family’s compound. We spoke with the bride’s grandmother and her friends, mother and sisters, female relatives, and another group of women. Each time, the groom’s posse gave a little money and kola nuts and spoke highly of the groom. At the end, we all had a big feast. Everyone feasted except the bride and groom- they kind of played socializing roles, making sure people had what they needed/wanted and even serving a little bit. Once the feast was over and guests got up to leave, the bride’s friends blocked the doorway. Much arguing pursued, and in the end we were all forced (especially the groom) to pay to leave. A nice little trick to make sure the groom and his friends appreciated the feast.

I think the most interesting aspect of the wedding was how little a role the bride and groom played. I asked about that, and I was told the bride didn’t even need to be there. I pushed on that issue a bit, and then I was told that really, the groom didn’t need to be there either. The ceremony seemed to be more of an agreement between the family and friends of the groom and the family of the bride. I guess everyone knows the bride and groom already like each-other, so it’s more important to make sure the families involved have given their approval. No wedding vows or anything. I think I only even saw the bride and groom together once in the whole afternoon. A family affair.

Happy holidays to all, and all the best for 2010.