Seventh Grade Math and Science Club Comes to Life

One of my biggest challenges as a teacher in Burkina is incorporating interesting activities into my daily math lessons. The national curriculum is packed full of topics, and with class sizes of 60-100 students, there isn’t much room for deviation from the norm. Unfortunately the norm involves the teacher writing on the blackboard, the students arguing over which arrangement of doors/windows open/closed allows the majority of them to see, and very little time for personal interaction with the students. I try to get my students up to the board to do problems and did a couple of full-class activities last semester, but that was pretty much it. My idea for a remedy to this situation is to have an after-school math and science club for the students. I want to have math/science themes each meeting, but really to use it as a time to get to know a smaller group of students and introduce them to different styles of hands-on learning. Basically, to have fun. Marshmallow snot rockets and capture the flag are probably out of the question, but science and math are so important to the development of Burkina, that I want to try to convince at least a few students that they can be fun as well as useful.

I decided to make the club an honors-type deal; I invited the top 10 boys and 10 girls from each of the two seventh grade classes. When I read the list to the students Wednesday morning, I just about had a mutiny on my hands. The kids who weren’t invited were mad because they thought the smart kids were going to get extra homework help. The kids who were invited were mad because they thought it was going to be just another class. Luckily after explaining things several times, I managed to pacify the non-invited kids and excite the invited ones. But it was a close call.

For the first lesson, I wanted to really emphasize my two goals: learning science and having fun. I decided to do a lesson about the brain. For obvious reasons (my limited French neuro-anatomy vocabulary and the student’s age), the lesson was extremely cursory. I told them about the differences between the right and left brains and taught about the main lobes of the brain. I also gave them a huge list of the brain’s functions; the only functions they came up with were “thoughts” and “something with reflexes”. They were shocked to learn that there are more; the most discussed function was a signal when it is time to urinate. I also managed to successfully embarrass a boy when I told him (in front of everyone) that his brain tells his heart to speed up when he sees a pretty girl. That brought down the house.

As for the “fun” part of the lesson: we drew pictures! I handed them each a sheet of blank paper and told them to draw something. I refused to give any ideas about what they could draw, and they were completely lost for about five minutes. “I don’t understand?” “What am I supposed to draw?” “Is it OK if I draw a _______?” When I finally managed to convince them that they could really draw ANYTHING they wanted, that there was no right answer, they went straight to work. Then I made a big mistake. I had told them to bring colored pencils, and I held up four or five packs of new colored pencils, asking if anyone had forgotten theirs. Despite them being Burkinabe colored pencils that are available at our weekly market, the kids went nuts. Every hand shot up as they had all suddenly forgotten their pencils. It should be no surprise, then, that they literally jumped over tables when I held up two packages of American-made markers. Complete chaos: markers flying through the air, being stolen from hands, screaming, yelling, complaining, fighting, accusing…I thought the club was going to have to disband right then and there. I finally managed to convince them that they each only have one hand and can therefore only use one marker/pencil at a time. They were still a bit punchy but generally settled down.

Seeing their choices of drawings was probably the most fun I’ve had in a classroom. It was really interesting to compare what they produced to what I was expecting from my experiences with American middle school kids. I was thinking the girls would draw flowers or butterflies and the boys would draw cars or guns. Yes and no. True to their Burkinabe school upbringing, many of them made practice drawings on a second piece of paper. I saw a lot of houses and motos- meticulously drawn using straightedges for the walls and compasses for the wheels. A lot of the kids drew maps of Burkina; they started by making a grid on the paper then placing certain key points in the border and connecting the dots. All of the maps were exactly the same and it was obvious that they had studied this extensively somewhere along the line. Between the maps and houses, there was very little winging it, but we did get a couple of really creative drawings- some traditional Burkinabe masks- based on a local festival- and some pottery- for which my village is famous.

All in all, our first meeting was a huge success, and I can’t wait to get everyone together again. Hopefully I’ll learn from my mistakes: schedule the fun activity for the end of class, and count the markers before the kids leave (apparently three of them have legs). Next week I think I’m going to introduce them to Sudoku, and the week after we might do a health lesson. Wish me luck!

Trip to Ghana

Careful, this one is long. If you get tired of reading, I’ve posted pictures; as the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

We had been talking about and looking forward to our trip to Ghana pretty much since we arrived in Burkina last June. And by “we”, I mean our whole training group. With that much hype, you might think that the trip wouldn’t be able to live up to the nirvana it had become in our minds.

You’d be wrong.

Most of us were in Ouaga for a Peace Corps training session the week before the trip and were able to use the time to get visas and arrange transport, which turned out to be surprisingly challenging. After several trips to the bus garage, we finally managed to find someone going to Ghana on Saturday morning. It was kind of sketchy because apparently Saturday is not the normal day to go to Ghana; this guy came up to us in the garage and said he’d take us and that we should show up Saturday morning ready to go. Um, OK? Not knowing what to expect, we foolishly hoped for the best: a private van for the 16 of us. Nope. Four hours after he promised we’d leave, a nearly full bus pulled into the garage. Great. Just the way we wanted to spend the next 16 hours. Sometime around 3:00am the next morning we switched buses in Kumasi and took a nice large van/small bus the rest of the way to Accra. Our entertainment for the trip? Listening to the Ghanaian election officials counting the ballots. Seriously. “One, two, three…four hundred eighty-seven…” This was definitely the first time I had ever heard democracy in action.

Once we made it to Accra, sometime mid-morning on Sunday, we met up with Megan and Andy, our hosts for the first part of the week. The two are studying sea turtles in a small beach town a couple of hours east of Accra, and eleven of us stayed at their house for a few days. What a life! They live in a gorgeous house a couple hundred meters from the beach, and their job is to walk the beach a few nights each week tagging sea turtles who beached to lay their eggs. Megan and Andy took the whole group turtle hunting, and on our second walk we got lucky. We came across a turtle about three feet long who was just finishing laying her eggs. After she had finished and buried the nest, we flipped her over, tagged her, then watched her use the moon’s reflection to guide herself back to the ocean. Absolutely beautiful. And what’s more, Disney and Pixar got it right! Turtles don’t age like other animals and can live well over 100 years!

The village we stayed in is right on the ocean, so its main livelihood is fishing. Each morning before sunrise, the men begin with a line of guys about 100m long on shore holding one end of a gigantic fishing net. A boat pulls the other end of the net over a kilometer into the ocean. About midmorning the boat circles back to the shore, forming a U with the net, and the men begin the laborious task of hauling in the catch. I had watched them fish for several days, and one day I joined in. You hold onto the net and walk backwards up the beach, pulling the net with you. When you get to the end of the beach, you go back to the water and pick up the next segment of net. Let me tell you, that thing is heavy. This is not your ordinary Lake Harriet fishing net. After a couple of hours hauling in the net, the fisherman had their reward: maybe one small fish each.

A few days after Christmas (which we celebrated by feasting at one of the local resorts and watching “It’s A Wonderful Life”), the whole group packed up and headed for Busua, a beach village in the West. We arrived at our guesthouse and were sorely disappointed; they weren’t on the beach, didn’t have running water, and had electricity in only one room. Not exactly what we were hoping for. Luckily we decided to check out our other options and found a great little place right on the beach. Despite its ironic name, The Alaska Inn boasted comfortable cottages, a well-stocked bar, immediate beach access, and a tasty (though painfully slow) restaurant- all for less than $10 per night! We were sold. We spent the next three or four days bumming around the beach and town. Our hotel had boogie boards; the hotel across the street rented kayacks; there was even a surf shop down the beach…and they had BURRITOS! My first burrito since San Francisco. Talk about paradise.

For New Year’s Eve we showered (a notable event for 11 vacationing Peace Corps volunteers), got all dressed up, and had dinner at the REALLY nice resort next door. The food was good, but the atmosphere was a bit snotty; I kid you not they put us in the back corner, out of the main dining area, with no light. The rising tide almost swept away our dinner. Whatever. We ditched the formalities and spent midnight at the Surf Shop, being entertained by Mr. Ghana and Wonder Boy, a street performing duo. Beer and cheesy entertainment is more our style anyways.

A small group of five of us managed to tear ourselves away from the beach to add an educational aspect to the vacation. We started by touring the slave castles in Elmina and Cape Coast. Originally built in the 15th and 17th centuries and used by the Portuguese, Dutch, British and Swedish, both castles have recently been restored by the Ghanaian Historical Society and are completely beautiful. Whitewashed walls. Ancient cannons. Blue skies. Palm trees. Ocean. You could almost forget the heinous acts committed within the walls. Almost. Slaves were taken to the castles from throughout Ghana and West Africa. They were branded and forced to live in dungeons about the size of my living room with hundreds of others. They had little light, food, or water, and disease was rampant. When someone died, they were usually left in the room with everyone else. There were no sewage holes, so the captives lived in lakes 18 inches deep of their own excrement. The “lucky” ones who survived were shackled and brought to boats where they were literally stacked on top of each other like pieces of paper for a couple months’ journey to Europe or the Americas. My mind can’t even fathom the evil that people are capable of inflicting on one another. And this went on for five hundred years.

Leaving the coast, our small group headed up to Kakum National Park. Megan has a friend of a friend living in the village near Kakum’s entrance. We took a cab to the village and asked for directions to his house once we got there. No problem. The first kid we saw jumped into our taxi, on my lap, and took us to the house. I love Africa. We spent the night at “Papa G’s”, and in the morning his son, a Park Ranger, took us into the rainforest. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from our tour guide- he showed up at the house right on time a couple of hours before sunrise decked out in a dark green t-shirt and pants, combat boots…and a semi-automatic rifle. For the lions? Elephants? Angry villagers? My apprehensions were soon abated, and our guide gave us a fantastic personal tour. The park’s signature attraction is a canopy walk- a series of rope bridges connecting six platforms in the trees 30-40 meters above the forest floor. Amazing. Though the only mammalian wildlife we saw were a few monkeys from quite a distance (the elephants generally stay away from parts of the park frequented by tourists), the serenity of the sunrise from above the forest floor made the whole trip worthwhile. It really made me realize what a drastic affect humans can have on wildlife; one road passes through the park, and even at that early hour with little traffic, every car sounded like a freight train disrupting the stillness of the forest morning. No wonder the elephants stay away.

After meeting up with the rest of the group in Busua, we headed up to Kumasi to begin our journey home. And what a journey. Three members of our group ran away from an angry taxi driver…and his 40 friends…threatening police and jail to jump into a moving van as we left Takoradi. In Kumasi, we rolled up to our gorgeous hotel ($10 per person) well after dark. The rooms had air conditioning; the bathrooms had floor mats; and the TV had cable. Royalty. The next morning I went over to the bus station to get tickets for our group of 11; once again we got lucky as there were exactly 11 seats left on the bus that evening.

With the whole day to bum around Kumasi, me and three others decided to visit some museums. Kumasi is the capital of the ancient Ashanti kingdom, and the Ghana has put a lot of time and effort into preserving artifacts and buildings important to their history. We visited the Prempeh II Jubilee Museum; it was disappointingly small (about the size of my Burkinabe house), but had some really interesting artifacts. I also found out that my Ashanti name- based on my birthday- is Kofi…like one of the most famous modern Ashantis, Kofi Anon. The Ashanti Palace was built by the British in 1925 as a “welcome home/we’re sorry” present for Prempeh I, who had previously been kidnapped and forced into slavery. The Palace now houses paintings of Ashanti royalty, their war weaponry, ceremonial relics, and furniture. It was a little like touring the house who had been on vacation for the past 30 years, but cool nonetheless. The highlight of the tour was without question our tour guide’s blatant disrespect for Museum Rule #1: don’t touch anything. He kept rubbing his hands on the paintings, playing with the swords, and swinging around the medals of recognition. At one point a painting resting against a wall actually slid down and crashed to the floor. My art history major friend practically had a heart attack, but the guide barely noticed.

Interesting museum practices aside, I love Ghana. The food is delicious: thick bread, fried rice, “red-red” (spicy beans and rice), fresh fish, and grilled chicken. I could have eaten forever. Almost as importantly, transport in the country is a little slice of Heaven. Through all our trouncing about the country, our total transport wait time was less than 30 minutes. Tro-tros (mini-van taxis) run nonstop on all the major roads, so whenever you want to go anywhere, you just head to a tro-tro stop (or stick out your arm as one passes by) and hop on. The tro-tros and taxis were clean, had most of their parts, and didn’t try to rip us off too badly. Our bus ride home was even air-conditioned.

The trip was an overwhelming success, an outcome I have to admit I was a bit skeptical of in the beginning. Traveling with 11 people made for more than one “hold your breath and hope this works” moment, but everything turned out great. Ghana itself is fantastic. Aside from the obvious (the beach), or maybe because of the obvious (the beach), the country has a lot going for it. Their democratically elected officials are putting money towards education, infrastructure, and historical preservation. Accra smells like the inside of my latrine (environmental standards are lacking), but we had no problems finding our way around or getting things done. Most of the villages we passed through had electricity, and even small things like advertising and village name signs pointed towards progress. The country is one big die hard soccer fan, and appropriately, they are hosting the African Cup of Nations later this month. Most importantly, Ghana seems to be modernizing in a way that is sensitive to its historical background and generally healthy for the population. It may seem surprising to talk about a developing nation in such glowing terms, but Ghana is definitely moving up in the world.

Whew, done. Now get back to work Mimi.

Zach's 2007 Year In Review

As the year comes to an end, here’s a list of some of my best and worst of the past 365 days or so. Enjoy.

Best movie: Top Gun…even better with wine and cheese.

Best music venue: Preservation Hall, New Orleans

Best sandwich: Softshell crab at Jazz Fest

Best Sunday San Francisco afternoon fun: Frisbee then Golden Gate Park drum circle.

Best Bay Area discovery that I wish I had discovered sooner: Fruitvale

Best picture: Abercrombie and Fitch at Bay to Breakers

Best last weekend in a city…EVER: Bar hopping with coworkers; skydiving with the gang; live music, burgers, and beer at Hotel Utah; Bay to Breakers with all of San Francisco.

Dizziest moment: Up-and-down swirly swings with Nick and Chelsea in the Cub Foods parking lot, Apple Valley, MN.

Most used Africa purchase: Buck knife - every night in the kitchen

Biggest waste of suitcase space: a three month supply of toiletries. Peace Corps recommended that we bring a three month supply of toiletries. In retrospect…we’re going to be here for two years. If there’s something you can’t find in the first three weeks that you can’t live without, it’s probably time to think about going home.

Biggest mistake: Not filling my iPod before coming to Burkina.

Funniest host family moment: Playing Frisbee with my host siblings.

Biggest rainstorm: 14 solid hours

Hardest thing to miss: Chelsea’s first day in Madison.

Best worst last words: “I know it’s a bad idea; that’s why we have to do it.” -Julia

Longest unintentional bike ride: 140km, 10 hours…see above

Best teaching moment: I couldn’t think of a mnemonic device in French for the order of mathematical operations (parenthesis, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction). I told the kids the first thing that popped into my head: “We’re in luck! PMDAS is my mom’s name!” She was an instant celebrity.

Favorite student: The girl in that back who is always smiling but never has any idea what’s going on.

Biggest oops: Asking the wrong lady to do my laundry. (Not as bad as it sounds, but embarrassing nonetheless.)

Best market find: Green onions. Well, they were exciting the first week. Now there are mountains of them everywhere.

Longest bush taxi ride: 3 hours “late” (whatever that means), minivan, 200km, 6 hours, minimum of 17-25 people…with a few on top.

Comeback of the year: Brett Favre.

Happy holidays and here’s to a healthy 2008! Miss you guys. Love, Zach

International HIV/AIDS Awareness Day: Curing my Type A Personality One Unexpected Holiday at a Time

Happy World HIV/AIDS Day! (I’m not sure if “happy” is the right word, but you know what I mean.) If you didn’t know it, December 1 is World AIDS Day. Find out more.

Though Burkina participates in the WAD awareness programs, we also had a national awareness day last week. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has not hit Burkina with nearly the strength it has in other countries (official infection rates here are less than 5% compared to 30-40% for some countries), but its obvious potency and global importance is enough of a reason for a second day of campaigning.

Thursday morning a doctor (his official title is Major…I’m not sure if that means he’s a doctor or health official or what) from our village medical clinic spoke to the students and staff at my school. Before he arrived, the students placed benches in the shade of a large tree and arranged a table from which he could speak. “That’s nice,” I though. “He and some of the students will be able to sit in the shade.” Wrong. He and ALL 500 students were in the shade. To be fair, it was a big tree, and we had the benefit of long, pre-noon shadows, but still… By the end of his speech the rising sun had significantly decreased the area covered by the tree’s shade; consequently, the students were either sitting on top of each other in the shade or miserable in the sun. (And remember, this is the cold season.)

The content of the major’s speech was very informative. He talked about the history of the epidemic, a little biology, methods of transmission, and methods of prevention. I’m not sure how effective the biology portion was; the kids have never used a microscope to view a cell, and most- except for possibly the oldest- probably really don’t understand what a cell is, let alone the immune system. But the information was good. The thing that struck me the most, however, was the audience reaction to his “prevention” spiel. I expected giggles when he discussed condoms; there isn’t a seventh grader in the world who can discuss safer sex with a straight face. But it shocked me to hear bold laughter - from students and staff alike - when he mentioned abstinence. Great. so we’re all old enough to have sex, but we’re not old enough to talk about doing it safely. That’s a dangerous combo in my book. Whatever little credibility I used to give to abstinence programs, especially abstinence only programs, decreased by about 99.9% in that two minutes. Let’s spend our time talking about how to buy (I found out you CAN buy them in village), store (keep them out of the Burkinabe heat), and use condoms.

The other interesting aspect of the morning was the wide difference in knowledge levels of the adults (teachers). The spectrum ranged from an inquiry about the microbiological differences between HIV and malaria to “Why should we support rich European and American companies by buying their condoms?” Keep talking; the message has not reached everyone.

The only negative aspect of Thursday’s day of no school was that I didn’t find out about it until Monday night. So much for the test I had planned for Thursday afternoon. Next available time? A full week later. Which is difficult because a week after that is the last day of classes. Aye. We probably have as many random holidays in the US (especially for school kids) as they do in Burkina; the only difference is that we have a calendar. The Burkinabe like to keep their holidays secret as long as possible. It’s a fun game, but one that has given my uber-Type A, planning-centric style a sick stomach more than once. Not anymore. I’ve now resolved to leave the house each morning saying “If we have class today, this is what we’re going to do.” It may not be the way I’d choose to live my life, but it works wonders on the stress levels. Besides, I tell myself, every surprise holiday is a new opportunity to re-organize the rest of the trimester.

T-minus five days to my six-month in-country mark. How am I going to celebrate? A luke-cool beer from my village buvette. Cheers!

Snippets

It’s been a while since I last updated my blog. Here are a few snippets of my life the past few weeks.

-I went to Bobo for the first time in the middle of October. It was wonderful. It has all of the conveniences of Ouaga (grocery store, internet, good restaurants…) with much less of the crowded polluted big city feel. The only difficulty was getting there and back: I took a bush taxi (small mini van) with anywhere from 17 to 25 other people hanging out windows or sitting on the roof or each others’ laps. (The range is necessary because we stopped about every 3km to pick up or drop off passengers…for you metrically-challenged people, that’s about once every mile and a half…which is why the trip took six hours.) Bobo deserves more of a description, so I’ll write more the next time I go.

-I got a refrigerator! …and a girl delivered it on her head. …ok, so to be accurate, the refrigerator is a small clay pot. But buried in moist sand, it keeps my drinking water refreshingly cool. Ask chemist Chelsea how it works.

-Towards the end of the fourth week of school, the last of our teachers arrived to complete the staff. There are six full time teachers, including me, plus the director, secretary, vice principal, accountant, and groundskeeper. All in all, it’s a pretty big staff.

We had our “back to school” staff meeting at that time and discussed such important things as the discipline policies, the school calendar, and the number of tests required in each class per trimester. You might be thinking that all those things would have been nice to know before school started…flexibility is very important here.

Interestingly, we did not discuss the random holidays that pop up every two or so weeks; I guess those are regularly kept secret until a day or two before they happen. It’s more fun that way. Also, I found out that the fall trimester ends December 7; this allows for two weeks of grade calculations before Christmas. “Two weeks!?” says you.

“300-500 students per teacher and no computer,” says I. Finally, the spring trimester is only seven weeks long. Bonus: we got chicken and beer after the meeting.

-I gave my firsts tests last week. The sixth grade average was 60%, and the seventh graders got about 40%. The seventh graders were rightly disappointed, but the sixth graders were thrilled. Like I said earlier, the system here is based on the French system that believes in showing students the areas in which they can improve. 50% is passing, so the sixth graders were happy…almost all of them. I gave three cheaters zeros. That’s the rule. And when you copy the only kid in class who draws a four-sided figure on the triangle question, then match his answers word for word on the rest of the test, it makes my job really easy.

-For the most part the kids are great though. The sixth graders fly out of their chairs when I ask for volunteers to do a problem on the board. They especially like correcting their classmates’ errors.

They also like goofing around, and it’s sometimes hard for me to resist cracking a smile at some of their antics. But sometimes discipline is easy: like when I send you to the vice principal to get a tardy slip and you don’t come back for an hour and a half. Give me a break kid.

-One of the things that has really struck me the past month is the noticeable lack of an outlet for student creativity in school. The kids meticulously copy notes from the blackboard so carefully that they use rulers to underline key words and start a new page if they make a mistake. There are no fun projects, music classes, or art classes. One of the ways I want to remedy this is by starting a math/science club after our holiday break. I say math/science but what I really want is math/science undertows with an emphasis on fun and games: Soduku, brain teasers, star-gazing, and Cribbage…that kind of thing. If you have any good ideas, please let me know.

-Another thing you can help with: Send me postcards if you go on any cool vacations. The history/geography teacher invited me to talk to one of his classes last week. They are learning about North America, and he wanted me to talk about the big American cities. The kids were floored to find out that everyone has electricity, people ride to work in underground trains, and buildings can reach the clouds. If you visit or live in any major American cities or other points of interest that they would have heard of (I’m thinking New York, Chicago, LA, Washington DC, the mountains, the beach, someplace with snow…), send me a postcard. Traveling internationally? London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Tokoyo…send me a postcard. If it’s a really good picture I’ll pay you back with a beer the next time I see you. Sorry, the kids probably won’t recognize pictures from your trip to visit Grandma in Hodunk, Nebraska. But I always love getting mail, so send away anyways. Thanks!

-I’ve started sleeping outside again. It’s probably not completely necessary since the weather hasn’t been too hot recently. Don’t ask me what that translates to in degrees- my perceptions are all screwed up. I go to bed wearing only a pair of shorts and wake up twice every night: once to pull on a t-shirt, knit socks, and a sleeping bag; and once to shoo away the donkeys that like to make a rukus in the front yard around 3:30am.

I think that’s just about it for now. Happy Thanksgiving! How ’bout them Packers?!

Pencils, Notebooks, Protractors...Rocks, Sticks and Machetes

The school year has gotten off to a pretty good start. Despite Monday’s unexpected holiday, I think all of my classes will be ready for their first test in two weeks as planned. I’m teaching two classes each of sixth and seventh grade math. Both classes are about equivalent to their American counterparts: the sixth graders are learning about lines and angles; and the seventh graders are learning central symmetry. The Burkinabe school system puts algebra and geometry subjects in each grade, so the next unit in each class will be algebra-oriented. The sixth graders are especially fun; they are excited to be in middle school and are receptive to my sometimes foreign teaching methods- I borrowed an idea from a PCV friend and used a tent pole to demonstrate lines, rays, and segments. The seventh graders are a little more set in their ways and, like American seventh graders, have acquired the “cool kid” attitude that must be a universal phenomenon.

Last weekend was host to two big holidays. My Muslim-savvy readers know that Ramadan was last Saturday. (I know embarrassingly little about Islam, so if someone wants to learn me some stuff, that’d be great.) As far as I know, Ramadan marks the end of the daytime fasting period. How do people celebrate? With a feast, of course! Preparations began just after sunset on Friday and lasted literally all night. You know it’s important when every house in village uses their car battery electricity to blast radios all night. Quite the festive atmosphere! My neighbors killed a few chickens and roasted them over a small fire in the yard. Even more so than when alive, dead Burkinabe chickens make their American brethren look like steroid-enhanced gigantic super freaks. Or maybe the American birds are just well-fed. The biggest difference I noticed between Ramadan Saturday and a regular Saturday is that everyone was all dressed up: women in brightly colored pagnes, men wearing full-length traditional outfits…even the kids looked nice. Saturday afternoon my neighbors shared some of their feast with me: rice and couscous with peanut sauce and…chicken. Delicious!

The other holiday last weekend wasn’t so much a traditional holiday as a political celebration. Monday marked the 20th anniversary of Blaise Compaore’s presidency. The occasion warranted the day off from school…which I found out when I arrived to teach my first class at 7am. Thing is, the students were all there too. Why not just have class? I guess I’m not the only one without a school year calendar. The day also gave me the opportunity to talk American politics with several of my neighbors and coworkers. Most of them were shocked to find out that not only do I not like President Bush, I didn’t even vote for him. (Sorry to disappoint you, Grandma.) Their response: “But he’s the President. Why didn’t you vote for him?” They were even more surprised to find out that very few Americans like him or approve of his presidency. “If no one likes him, how is he President?” Good question.

A couple of other notable differences between Burkinabe and American school and life. The students spent their first few physical education classes clearing the fields behind the school. Since the rainy season is over, all the overgrown grass back there was dead and needed to be cleared so they could have a soccer field. Imagine my surprise when I walked out of my math class to see the eighth graders in the fields with their hoes, axes, and machetes. “Don’t forget your machetes for PE class tomorrow, kids.” If I had a dime for every time I heard that in an American middle school…

When I got home from class yesterday morning, there was a gang of 20 or 25 men standing around with sticks and rocks a few houses down. “Uh-oh,” I thought. “Somebody’s in trouble.” My gut instinct told me to run inside, but my curiosity got the better of me. I hesitated for a few seconds and was amply rewarded: in no time the group started hurling their rocks and sticks, and two pigs came squirting out of the crowd. Yup, I had stumbled across a hunting party. Though I knew the likely outcome, I couldn’t rightly let the party get away without seeing more. I ran inside and changed out of my work clothes (’cuz who knew what was going to happen). Jumped on my bike and took off after the crowd. They chased these poor pigs all around town, squealin’ and hollerin’ the whole way. The men were shouting strategy commands, and women and children helped when they could; they didn’t get too close though and ducked into doorways whenever the gang came into their yard. For my part, I stayed a decent distance away- close enough to see the action, but not so close as to get pelted by a stray stick if one of the pigs should take off in my direction. By and by they cornered one of the pigs. I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say that a few sticks and rocks to the head later and that pig was ready for the fire.

I later got the scoop from one of my friends. As I’d noticed, people pretty much let their animals roam freely about the village. When someone wants to eat their livestock, they hire a group of men to go find it and kill it. Cows are the easiest because they barely move; goats and pigs require a small herd of men. The going rate for such a hunting party? About one dollar. (What would you do for one American dollar?)

...a Little More Action Please

Life has a certain charm when you live in a small African village and have nothing to do. I spent the month of September going on bike rides, reading books, and watching the shadows move on my front porch (I threw myself a party the day the sun moved far enough south to shade my porch the entire afternoon). Though it might sound a little dull, I had actually started getting used to this life. I enjoyed people watching and knowing that the most stressful part of my day was deciding whether to eat rice or couscous for lunch. That said, I was very excited this week when school started.

School technically starts at 7am, and though I had been warned ad nauseam about the school year getting off to a slow start, I showed up Monday morning promptly at 6:30. Right. The director rolled in a little after 8:00. Most of the students who were going to show up had showed up by then, so the vice principal started taking attendance at 8:30. One by one, he called the names of every student in every class. When their name was called, each student walked from the courtyard into their classroom. Then the VP read the next name. This thrilling process took about three hours. Luckily I realized about an hour into the ordeal that my presence was neither necessary nor required. So I left.

After observing the rigor of the first day, I showed up Tuesday mentally prepared to not spend any time in front of students. Much to my surprise, the director asked me if I was ready to go. “Hell yeah!” said I…in French. He took me to my first class and introduced me to the students, a class of about 80 sixth graders. In my opening spiel I mentioned that I had gone to school in California; no one recognized the state until I mentioned that the popular TV show 24 is set there. Then the faces lit up. Terrorist-fighting Jack Bauer is about as popular here as riding donkeys. Since most of the students don’t have text books, I spent the first class going over the program for the year. Yup, I spent half an hour writing out the table of contents from their math book. Very exciting. Then we went over classroom rules and grading. Nothing to crazy.

I actually got to teach on the second day of class. I started right in on the first chapter of sixth grade math. To my surprise and delight, the lesson actually went really well. I think the kids mostly understood my French, and they more or less paid attention. Something tells me that will change. I have two classes each of 6th and 7th grade math. The 7th grade classes are reasonably small; there are about 45 kids in each section. The 6th grade classes are more typical of Burkinabe sizes- each section has about 90 kids. Yup. 90 sixth graders and me. One of the classes meets every Monday and Wednesday from 3-5pm; can’t wait for the hot season. With the four classes I have 20 hours of teaching per week. Add in lesson planning, grading, and French practice, and I think I’m actually going to be doing quite a bit of work, especially this first year. I guess the shadows on my front porch will have to go on without me.