Its been a long time since I posted so I'll try to give a basic rundown of what has happened since then.

School Finished -

After a short third trimester filled with holidays, the school year finally ended. I'm not sure whether it went fast or took forever. The third trimester was probably the most difficult because it was so hot (well over 100 every day), because the students were ready to finish, because I was ready to finish, and because I was teaching reproduction to a couple of my classes. While it can occasionaly be entertaining, for the most part it is very difficult in the upper classes because they never stop laughing and giggling or asking ridiculous questions. Keeping order in the class was just a lot more difficult. Also, I finished up with the program for my troisieme class (the highest class that has to take an national exam to continue to high school). The biology program is very long and almost no one finishes on time. I had to print out the notes for the last subject (microbes and diseases) so that I could finish. I also had to kick out about half the class because they were too disruptive. I also had one particularly dramatic encounter with one student in that class in which I took his cahier (notebook) for the class. The student (Serge - I hate that name by the way) had a watch or a calculator or a cell phone with an alarm on it that went off during the class. Normally when something like this happens, I take whatever it is that made the noise and then if they 'demande pardon' (ask for forgiveness) I give it back to them the next day. This kid didn't want to give it up. I was having a bad day so I told him to give it up or not come back to my class. He didn't want to give it up, so as he was leaving I took the print-out I had just handed out that day with the notes for the rest of the class as well as his biology notebook. A word on the notebooks - they are the textbooks for the class. Most of my students do not have a biology textbook at all. When I teach the class, what I am doing is helping these kids to write a biology textbook and to explain it at the same time. The students are very possessive, rightly so, of these notebooks. But it was the only way I could really punish the student. I can't take points away from a troisieme student because it doesn't matter if he passes the class or not. If he passes the national exam, the grades during the school year do not matter at all.

Taking the notebook shocked the class and the student. After he finally left (after telling me forcefully that he wanted his notebook), I gave the notebook to the directrice of the school, fully expecting one of the other students to tell him that she has the notebook. Then all he would have to do would be to go talk to her to get the notebook back, although he would never come into my class again (i think he was also permanently kicked out of the math and the french class as well). He refused to take his notebook back. He decided he could do without it, solely for spite I'm sure. Good luck to him.

Also in school we have been giving the BEPC Blanc (the BEPC is the national exam, the BEPC Blanc is a practice exam, kinda like the PSAT). For the first one, 3 out of 77 students passed. For the second one, 4 students passed. This seems shocking, but it turns out the numbers were about the same last year when they had about 60 kids pass on the actual BEPC (thats with the second try; if you fail the first try but almost pass you can take a second exam only on math and french to try and pass; we only tested the first try in our tests; generally the BEPC Blance is harder than the actual BEPC). By comparison, all the other volunteers I've talked to never had more than one student to pass their BEPC Blancs. But they are all en brousse (in the bush). In the cities, where there are a lot of functionnaires (rich middle class people), a much higher percentage passes. We'll see. They took the test last week, hopefully I'll see a copy of it when I get back. The results should come back in about a week.

In addition to all that jazz, I got observed by an official from the ministry of education. They sent out a guy to observe all the biology teachers in the area and as I am the only biology teacher at my school, he observed me talk about bees to my 5eme biology class. He said he enjoyed the class and that I used a more interactive method of teaching than he normally sees, but he didn't really grade me as he would a burkinabe teacher since I'm not a burkinabe teacher. He did get a little miffed that I didn't follow exactly the official program for the class (i thought learning about insects was more important than learning about ferns, which they don't have in Burkina). But it went well.

The end of the year also saw the endless task of grading and filling in the gradebooks and then a little party at the end of the year for the teachers and the staff. Overall, we had a little more than half the kids pass the 6, 5, 4eme classes. Pretty standard. The results for the 3eme are to come.

My Parents Visited -

After stressing about coming here and getting sick, my parents did eventually take the plunge and visit glorious burkina faso (arguably the most unrecognized country around - burkina what?). They came for a short visit, arriving the 10th from a week in France and leaving the 14th. We spent two nights in my village and then a couple days in Ouaga before they left late the night of the 14th. As far as I can tell they really enjoyed their stay - i.e. they did not get sick. They got to meet most of the people I know in town (although they missed out on the air conditioner repair man) so that was good. Salif gave them a gift of a little wooden african man clothed in traditional fabric as well as adding a couple shirts later. We handed out photos to salif and to my colleagues at work. I got my dad a shirt made, although it didn't quite fit. Back in Ouaga, they got to meet most of the other volunteers from my group. They took them out to dinner at the hotel they were staying at - Hotel Libya, built by Qaddafi. Its the nicest hotel in the country. It was like being in america. All the volunteers were very appreciative. Then they purchased some souvenirs and antiques the last day at the artisans' village, thanks to the help of Tyeliah's expert negotiating skills. And then they left. Bonne route mom and dad and thanks for coming.

I got cleaned up -

I had my mid service medical exam after they left. I got a tuberculosis test, I got my teeth cleaned, I got checked for testicular cancer, and I gave three stool samples. So far so good, but I am still awaiting the results for my stool samples (judging by the fact that all the other volunteers have at least one type of gastr0-intestinal disease, I'll expect to hear that I have giardia or amoebas shortly). My dental cleaning was done by a burkinabe lady who had studied in Senegal and France (there are no dental schools in Burkina). She is probably the nicest dentist I have ever used. Not once did she criticize my dental hygiene or make a comment about the neccesity of flossing - a first in my dental history. It was so great to leave the office not feeling ashamed or defensive.

Anyways, thats about all for now. More to come later. I'm going to Ghana in about a week for a little over a week. It should be fun. I'll let you know. Later.

Tyler

at the six month point I wrote a post with a report card on my experience so far. I'm not going to do that this time. There is just no real way to quantify the experience and I'm not going to try. But before I get into my review of this most difficult and challenging year of my life, first general updates.

We just finished the second trimester at school. In general, more of the same. No big news on the teaching level. For the most part i feel like I've settled into it and it is becoming a bit routine which is both good and bad. Most of the time I feel entirely comfortable (psychologically, not physically - its ridiculously hot right now) in front of a class of 80 to a 125 kids from a vastly different culture teaching a subject I haven't studied since high school in a language I am still learning (I feel like I speak french now, although not fluently, not entirely comfortably - i compare it to trying to type with gloves on). So, not so bad for a years worth of work. The next trimester should be interesting as I will be teaching reproduction in three of the four classes and hopefully evolution in the other class. During the break I visited another volunteer - tyeliah - in bagaré (a tiny village that reminded me of my training village, bassi) and then my training group had a party in ouaga to celebrate a year in burkina (on the 16th) and then the group came down to my village for a couple nights. They got to see the pool and the monkeys in the hills so I think they were pleased. And now I am headed back into ouaga to do some work for school and then for another party celebrating the close of service for the other group of education volunteers.

So thats that.

Now, what the hell have I been doing here?

I like the blog, the idea of a blog, it gives me a good place to put up my thoughts, to organize them in some manner, more for me that for anybody else. But I procrastinate with it because it is not easy to organize anything here certainly not my thoughts and I have no easy way to put it ALL onto paper (really, a computer screen, a light matrix, or plasma for the big spenders). Anyways, enough emoting.

When I studied in China, I was walking in a park one day after having some tea (still the only place I ever drank tea) when I came around a corner and saw a little 2 year old boy pooing in the middle of the public park and then his father wiped him. And nobody seemed shocked. At that moment, I said to myself, 'nothing will ever shock me again.'

Obviously, I have had to revise that statement.

On Being Shocked:

I have been shocked in so many ways since I stepped off that plane a year ago. Here are just a few examples.

- the first entry on my ill-used diary - 'on my first night in burkina, the temperature is 100. Its midnight. This is just stupid.'

- my first taste of toh with my host family - imagine eating a crappy version of grits with your hands. You dip it into a sauce that usually has the consistency of snot. Its made of okra.

- I once asked my host family brother what his favorite food was, he said toh. I didn't know whether to be happy for him - he gets to eat his favorite food every night! - or incredibly sad - he has no idea about all the deliciousness out there. He's never eaten pizza! or tacos! or a hamburger!

- Bats flying out of latrine holes while you pee.

- Bulletproof potion. Everyone believes in it. The burkina army takes it. During the last training group, a villager was killed in one of the training villages because he drank a faulty potion and his friend shot him in the face. They went after the witch doctor. I know what your thinking, if the army is bulletproof, why aren't they the most powerful army ever. The response of a villager - 'they're not bombproof, stupid.'

- Daily seeing kids poo and pee on the side of the road . . . and having them wave at you while they do it.

- Being asked whether it is possible to sleep more than 8 hours a day (it just never would have occured to me to even think of that question)

- Holding down my best friend's wife for 45 minutes with 4 other grown men as she thrashed about and screamed in Moore. Medical explanation - meningytis. Real explanation - genies. I understand why.

- having a kid tell me that he is going to cry if I give him a zero on his test (he cheated). What really shocked me, my response - 'Start crying.'

- My best friend beginning a sentence, 'for exemple, when a man beats his wife . . .'

- a villager responding to my question about what happens in the next election when the president can't run again - 'Oh, he'll just change the law.'

- Seeing the driver of my bus replace the transmission on the side of the road

- Seeing the driver of my bus replace the drive shaft on the side of the road

- Osama shirts

- Faceless, veiled, women (its scary)

- Wallets with the american flag on one side and a bob marley symbol and a picture of saddam hussein on the other side (put in orders now)

- my neighbor, an educated, wealthy man using the teapot method

- Another teacher making the kids write 50 times: I am stupid. it was a volunteer!!!

- Being cold in 80 degree weather

- Burkinabes wearing parkas in 100 degree weather

- Being comfortable in 120 degree weather

Alright, thats all for that category, although I assure you there are more.

So I've been shocked. Is that what defines my experience? No, but it makes for a good story. So what is it then? How have I changed.

non serious ways

- I'm extremely well read: Tolstoy (War and Peace), Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse 5, Cats Cradle), Heller (Catch 22), Faulkner (Sound and the Fury, Light in August, As I lay Dying), Shakespeare ( more than halfway through the complete works), the Bible (almost a fourth of the way through), Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamozov), Nabokov (Pale Fire), Melville (Moby Dick - pretentiously enough, my new favorite book), Plato (i'm working on the Republic), a college biology textbook, Joyce (Ulysses), Camus (The Stranger, in french no less) and many more.

- I have probably lost several years from my life span

- I'm tanner

- I have a beard

- when I see a child peeing, I wave back

- I can type on a french keyboard

- I play spades

- I watch soccer

- I can make some killer banana bread

serious ways

- I'm more confident. I just travelled to a tiny african village i had never been to before, by myself with very little direction from anybody just to surprise someone who I wasn't even sure would be there. I feel like I can go anywhere now.

- I'm more patient. You have to be here where 'tout de suite' means in 45 minutes (in french it means right away. you always here a collective groan among the volunteers when the waiter says tout de suite)

- I'm more away of my skin color. In america it was not a part of my identity at all and I didn't understand why it had to be a part of the identity of black people. Now I understand that you don't have a choice. Someday, there will be a longer post on that.

- I'm more understanding of africa. We always hear about poverty and misery in america, but I can assure you, for the most part, the burkinabes (third least developed country in the world) are not miserable. In many ways, they are happier, more content, more accepting of their place in life than most people in america. It makes you wonder, would they say they were poor if we hadn't told them they were a hundred times?

How have I not changed?

I'm still tyler. I still like the cardinals. I'm still somewhat of a smartass. I'm still stubborn. I still like to laugh. I'm still competitive.

I knew there was a lot about me that would stay the same. But, there was one thing I was worried I would lose.

Hope.

From one of the many books I have read since I came here there was a quote about hope being the last, best thing to whisper out of pandora's box after all the plagues and chaos and misery. RFK has a quote about ripples of hope combining together to tear down the mightiest walls of oppression. Its something I take seriously and something that I had heard people who come face to face with Africa often lose.

Its still there. I can't tell you why. Whether its the faces of the few students who actually understand instead of memorize, or whether its the joyful cries of Too-Bah-Bou (dioula for whitey) I get from two little kids on my way to school (it feels like a cheer to me) or whether its my best friend, Salif, messaging me on his new cell phone (although the message was only this - ':' - he needs more practice) and inviting me to eat with him on holidays or for that matter any complete stranger on the bus inviting me to eat the little they have or whether its my french teacher at school inviting me to go to Niger with her or whether its just listening to the sounds of my town.

I don't know. But its still there. And for that I am grateful.

Alright, sorry i haven't been posting much lately. I've become detached from the internet so that even when I go into town I hardly spend any time online.

I don't have much time now but I do feel like i can tell one story that is pretty ridiculous.

During our second week of school we celebrated martin luther king day - and by celebrated I mean i went to school and taught while the people at the peace corps office in ouaga had the day off.

Anyways, every once and a while i just don't feel like teaching at all, and if I have my quatrieme class (they're my favorite) that day I don't teach but instead have an 'america day.' Basically, I talk a little bit about american history or culture. So on martin luther king day I thought I would talk about martin luther king and give a short history of black people in america. The class loved it. They always love america days. But what made this lesson particularly interesting was that they had just gotten english textbooks (no biology books yet) and in these textbooks there was a page about martin luther king and it had part of his famous dream speech on the page.

-monsieur, is this who you're talking about?

- yeah that's him. Thats the text of the speech he made in washington, one of the greatest speeches ever made.

- can you read it for us.

I decided to see if one of the kids would give it a shot first. my favorite student tried. I don't want to say that king would have been offended to hear his speech being delivered by this student, but I will say that his pronunciation was not quite up to the eloquent standard of the right reverend. I took over and read the speech, in dramatic fashion, to the kids. Its martin luther king day, I'm in the third poorest country in the world reading the I have a Dream speech to my class of african kids. And even though they don't understand what I am saying, they are rapt and they are cheering at all the right spots.

This is just too ridiculous.

i have now been in burkina for more than nine months, which is the longest I've ever spent out of america (this actually might not be true but its close enough). I can only describe the experience as surreal. America just seems too far away to exist and burkina generally does not make enough sense for me to believe in its physical reality either.

I have a few very good examples from my christmas trip to mali and from teaching and transport to show the surrealness of burkina in specific and africa in general. To get to mali (there were 4 of us going - Adam, adam's friend from college, malcolm and myself) we decided to take a bus that goes straight from ouaga to koro (a small malian town near the border where you get your guide). I had heard about the bus from another volunteer and I had read about it in the guidebook but just to be sure we of course called the bus station. 3 times. this is roughly how the calls went

- caller (myself twice, malcolm once): hi, do you guys have a bus that goes to koro?

- bus station guy: yes

- caller: what time does it leave?

- bsg: 10

click.

We called twice the day before and then once the morning of our departure. To be extra sure, i arrived at the station 45 minutes early. The conversation went something like this:

- me: i'd like a ticket to koro.

- bus station women: the bus left at 6.

- me : §#£$¤!!!

Although I have to say that I was not very surprised. One must expect things like this in africa. Eventually we did make it onto a bus for mali, if only a day late - something which worked out to our benefit in the end as we ran into a couple of other volunteers who were heading to mali as well so we saved some money on the guide. But getting into (and out of) mali raises the second problem: do we need a visa?

Apparently the answer to this question is no. We had heard that you could get a visa at the border and that is what we planned to do as it would save us from hanging around ouaga a couple of days while they processed the visas which is what the other two volunteers we ran into had done. they also paid 40 bucks for the visas as well. But we had also heard that a lot of times peace corps volunteers do not even need visas. Functionnaires (government employees and other salaried workers) in west africa don't use visas to travel around west africa. They just hand over their identity card and that is enough. Many volunteers think that our status as pseudo-functionnaires should entitle us to the same privileges as well. We didn't plan on it, but we were at least willing to give it a shot. At every checkpoint we just handed over our peace corps ids. It worked. They said nothing about visas on the trip there or on the trip back. In itself, not very surprising. What was surprising was that the same thing happened for adam’s friend from the states who was not able to hand over a peace corps id but had to hand over his visa-less passport. As Malcolm said, worst border security ever. Not that I’m complaining.

Anyways, before I continue with my examples of the unreality of Burkina I feel I should say a few words about what I was doing in mali. Right now we are on our Christmas/winter break so pretty much all of the teachers are travelling. Of my stage, 6 people went to Ghana, 1 person met her family in paris, another person went all the way to the states, one brave soldier stayed in village, and then the other three (my group) went to mali, specifically to a place in mali called Dogon Country. Dogon Country is the home of the Dogon people. What makes them really interesting to go see is that in the past, they lived on the side of a long cliff (the bandiagara escarpment as the guidebooks like to say). Think mesa verde in arizona (or maybe its new mexico, I don’t really know). Anyways, its supposed to be one of the top ten sites to see in west Africa but it is not an easy place to see especially for those of Limited Financial Means. The transport there is quite frustrating (the roads are no better in mali – mali ranks one spot ahead of Burkina on the UN human development index at 174 out of 177. Kudos to those of you who can guess the two countries behind Burkina. Here’s a hint, they’re both in west Africa). Once you arrive, you have to get a guide (conceivably, you could do the trek without a guide, but you would almost certainly get lost once you got on top of the plateau) and then at dogon country itself you have to hike with your bags between all the villages (again, if you are not Financially Challenged, you can get SUVs to do all the manual labor). In keeping with my desire to go more than a year without wearing shoes or socks, I hiked in flip-flops.

Really though, the hiking is not that bad and the scenery, especially once you get on top of the escarpment is amazing. That’s where I was for Christmas. I recommend it and I had no major complaints. Check out adam’s blog for pictures – http://adaminafrica.blogspot.com.

Alright, now for my third tale surreality. For my highest level class, the troisieme class, they learn about the human body and all the systems within. We had just finished going over the nervous system when I got a question I just never ever would have thought to ask. Never. I can honestly say it never once occurred to me in my life. And the question is not so crazy or out of this world like questions about dragons or bullet-proof potions. It was about something as simple as sleep. I had just finished telling the class that the average person needs 8 hours of sleep to function normally. Right after I said this, one of my students raised his hand and asked – Is it possible for a person to sleep more than 8 hours? I didn’t know how to respond. The question isn’t so weird but it just never would have occurred to me or anyone I know. Luckily, other people in the class reacted to the question as though it were ridiculous. Somebody commented on how babies sleep a lot and sick people. But then I got the question again, but slightly different – Monsieur, is it possible for a healthy adult to sleep more than eight hours? The question made me realize how wonderful air-conditioning is.

Further notes on the end of the trimester. Again, there are no computers at the school. We have to do all the grading and all the calculating by hand and then we have to manually enter the grades into a grade book. For 370 students. It is not an entertaining aspect of my job here. That’s all I’ll say about that.

My fourth and final anecdote is something that simply astounded me. When I was heading to ouaga, the bus from fada broke down about 15 minutes after we took off. This is run of the mill. I’d say that on at least a third of my trips, the bus/taxi brousse breaks down or experiences some other major delay. Usually the chauffeur (driver) and the other workers get off the bus with various Hammers and Wrenches and bang away until it starts to ‘work’ again. This time was no different than any other except that it seemed to be taking a little longer than normal and then they just stopped banging. I had seen this happen before when they had to take a moto into town to get another part to fix the transmission (something which really impressed me with their mechanical ability). This time however, after almost two hours, I saw a guy biking down the road with a drive shaft strapped onto the end of his bike. My immediate reaction, and I quote – ‘You have got to be joking!’ But they did it. They replaced the entire drive shaft on a greyhound size bus on the side of the road in under three hours. What most impressed me was not that they did it; but that they even tried it. I’ve worked at a mechanics shop before. This just does not get attempted in America. But it worked and we got to Ouaga. As my friend corey would say - mad props to bush mechanics (that means good job).

Anyways, I'm heading back to village for new years eve. Its Salif's birthday today and I got him a Ronaldo jersey (however I think the jersey has the wrong number on it; salif will still appreciate it). Then I am preparing for the new trimester which begins on the 5th although the other teachers won't arrive until after Tabasci (a muslim holiday on the 11th - the burkinabés celebrate all religious holidays). What will I be teaching next trimester? Plant growth, insects, metamorphic rocks, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the digestive, circulatory, respiratory, and excretory systems. Wish me luck.

Happy holidays.

Coming on the tales of my latest post about salif i don't want to continue with criticism so i'll start with a good story about him

- the most popular sport in the world -

Coming here, my sporting options have been quite limited. There is no basketball, baseball, hockey, and quite regrettably no american football. I have been forced to endure that sport that we americans have been religiously avoiding for the past century. My foray into what the rest of the world refers to as football (a blasphemous insult on the far more entertaining american version) began with the Europe champions league final last may which I miraculously watched in Bassi during my training. During the game Liverpool came back from a 3-0 deficit (virtually insurmountable, in real football terms think buffalo bills comeback versus the houston oilers only in a championship game) to beat AC Milan on penalty kicks in overtime. I talked to one of the other volunteers about it the next day and he said it was the greatest game of soccer he had ever seen, which was kind of upsetting because it would mean that it was all downhill from here. The first game I ever watched would be the best.

Nonetheless I continued to follow the sport especially since we were at the exciting time of world cup qualifications and I watched burkina play a few times as well (the locals got really excited when I cheered after burkina scored). And occasionally I would read up on the latest soccer news and inform salif about it which he seemed to appreciate.

Just during this past couple of weeks I arbitrarily chose a favorite player - Herman Crespo. He's an argentinian who plays for Chelsea (the best team in the English Premiership League) and who scored 2 goals for milan during that first game of soccer I watched. This pleased Salif to no end and now we constantly talk about the merits of crespo and ronaldo (salif's favorite player who is often regarded as the best player in the world). I generally make stuff up for these conversations as I know very little about it.

Now for something completely different. Salif has only one son who lives with him (the other lives with his old girlfriend far away) and that son is barely a year old. However, there are a group of little kids who hang around salif's shop (mostly other family members, probably relatives of salif's uncle who owns the place) and run errands for him (and occasionally me) and generally work at the shop as well. They all go to primary school but salif takes his own time to instill some education into them as well: mostly french and math. Here are his reasons. There are too many kids at the school. He wants them to get jobs that require an education (he once told me that he wanted his son to be a doctor or a teacher). He thinks that they are far behind. He thinks that it is wrong that they don't get hit in school anymore.

Back in the day, apparently primary school students were relentlessly beaten if they did poorly in school and salif and his friends have recounted to me tales of beatings. Salif thinks its impossible for the kids to learn if they don't get beaten. So he hits.

I had heard him talking about it before but I had never seen it till last week (i actually went to see him at the beginning of my sadly unsuccessful quest to find a turkey). The kids, boys and girls, were doing work on math and french on tiny little chalkboards made of wood. Salif would write a problem or a phrase or word in french and they would have to fill in the answer, the blank, or just read alound the words. He also has a big wooden chalkboard that he uses for bigger problems and for conjugation of verbs. Everytime they made a mistake he would give them a hard knock on the head and it clearly hurt. They're are strong believers in negative reinforcement in burkina. Some teachers read off the scores on all the tests when they hand them back just to embarrass the kids. And then they ridicule them. Which brings me to another topic.

- the perils of grading 500 papers

I just recently finished grading 500 papers for my classes (4 tests and 1 homework for the sixieme) and it is a hellish experience. What makes it so frustrating is that they don't read what they write down, especially in the lower grades. They try to regurgitate whatever I put on the board, and if they can't remember all the little connecting words they just leave them out or sometimes they use a word that sort of sounds like the other word but means something completely different. They don't read over their response and think about it and notice that it is utterly ridiculous. Which is why I get answers that define a cell as a petite sac that contains (contient) all other living organisms instead of constructs (construit) all other living organisms. Things like that are a huge problem in the lower 2 classes. The quatrieme and the troisieme however generally know french but they suffer from their own problems. The quatrieme refused to ask for explication of a confusingly worded problem with the result that only one person out of 80 got the questions from that section right. They told me later that it was forbidden for students to ask a question about the test in the burkinabe system. To which i quickly replied that I was not a burkinabe (they all laughed at that) and that they know what its like to have an american teacher as they already had one for 2 years. For the troisieme, a significant portion of the class makes no effort for the test because they know that their grade does not matter, only their grade on the BEPC (a test they have to pass to go on to the next level). Nothing I can do about that but I did tell them that if they didn't care to tell me and i would give them a 5 on the test (out of 20. they get grades out of 20 here and passing is 10) for saving me the trouble of grading their test. Anyways,

whatever.

Nothing else major to report. I've done some more reading lately and I highly recommend the book Pale Fire by Nabokov. Thanksgiving was good. A lot of hanging out with other volunteers, watching movies and just relaxing. No turkey though.

Happy thanksgiving.

I’ve finished my first month of school. Yayy…

I now am firmly convinced that 80 to 125 kids is too many. Who knew. Other than that, I really don’t have too much to report about teaching, but in the burkinabé tradition of coming up with something to say, even if you don’t need to, I have a few short anecdotes.

- perils of the rote learning system 1 – after I did a lesson on malaria I had my students in

my cinqieme class ask their parents how they thought you get malaria and what they do to manage it, what medicines if any they take. When the responses came back, they all said that malaria comes from the anopheles female mosquito and that you can take drugs like quinine and flouroquine to cure it. They had all wrote down exactly what I had written on the board. I don’t think one person wrote about the traditional medicine that they always use for the palu (French for malaria), which is boiled bark juice. Nor did anyone write about the dangers of overactive yam and milk consumption or evil spirits or the evils of itching which are the responses I usually get from the villagers when I ask about malaria. I chewed them out for it. I’m going try and do something like it again for aids in the hopes that it will turn out better. We’ll see.

- Perils of the rote learning system 2 – for my sixieme class (the lowest level I teach) we are studying flowering plants so for one class I told them all to bring in flowers and then I told them to draw a picture of their flower and identify all the parts that we had already been over. Almost all of them proceeded to draw the flower that I had put on the blackboard during class and then identify it. I went around class asking to see their flowers and when they pointed to their picture I explained that that was not a flower, that was a drawing of a flower. Where’s the flower. This happened at least 6 or 7 times. So instead they have it for homework now.

- Perils of games with 80 students – after finishing with the chapter on muscles for my troisieme class I decided to do a day of review with games and I put all the rows against each other. I had each team send a person to the board and then I would ask a question and then they had to return the chalk to me to signify that they were done. To make matters more difficult, I would hide around the room. Happily, they did become interested in the game, a little too interested and elbows were being thrown to prevent the return of chalk. I’ll have to come up with a new game soon, something less active perhaps.

In other news, this past week we had 2 holidays – All Saints Day and the end of Ramadan – the month of Muslim fasting. Burkina likes to celebrate the holidays of all religions. Ramadan was fun. Most days I would go over to Salif’s place to break the fast with a dried out date and several watermelons (my village is now loaded with watermelons. The first time I saw watermelon here, in july sometime, it was 500 cfa for a watermelon, roughly a dollar. Now they go for 50 cfa, ten cents). This past thursday was the fete (holiday) celebrating the end of Ramadan. I made some banana bread for salif and his friends to help celebrate and then headed over there with cary who was in town visiting for a couple days (she finds the pool to be good for her mental health). While there we had quite the conversation with salif about womens rights. It was very disheartening.

- Perils in womens rights – The discussion got started when I was describing what we in the west do during big holidays – namely big meals with all the family together. Salif explained that they do somewhat the same thing, except that the men eat in one group, the women in another group, and the kids in another. I asked why men and women don’t eat together. Salif told me it was against islam to do that. I remarked that it probably caused problems with the advancement of women’s rights if the dominate religion decrees the men and women must rest apart. Salif noted that men and women are not the same and I agreed but I said that did not mean that they did not deserve the same rights. Salif said that would be impossible and went on to explain the proper role of men and women. The conversation was frustrating to say the least, but more so because salif is my best burkinabé friend. I know I shouldn’t hold him to a higher standard but I do. We got on the subject of women making money and the horrors that come if a women were to make more money than men. He said that women lose their respect for men when they make money. I remarked that perhaps the problem is that the men do not respect the women and when the women attain some success they probably develop more respect for themselves which scares the men (I was even able to use rhyming words in my French discourse on this which made me very happy). Shortly after this, Salif began to dig himself quite the hole. He began, and I quote, “for example, when a man hits his wife …” I tried to stop him at this point but cary insisted that he go on as she was very curious how he was going to justify this. He went on to describe how if the women doesn’t respect her husband she will leave him after he beats her and then who is going to feed the kids. I entered ‘jamais’ phase simply repeating that it would never be justified to hit your wife and then quickly ended the conversation before salif could dig any deeper.

I try not to hold it against him because it is so ingrained into his culture and his religion. But it is disheartening, because it makes you realize how far away from the west you are, and how far Burkina has to go. And it is disheartening that this man, this friend who has helped me so much, who has been so understanding, who stopped wearing his osama bin laden shirt after I commented on it, who just minutes before had promised cary and I that he would get us blaise pagnes (presidential campaign goodies), holds opinions that I find appalling.

But at least we had a conversation. Who knows, maybe my presence and maybe conversations like these will slowly work on his prejudice until one day he has a family dinner with his wife.

if it works,

the first is of me and my host family in bassi, the second of my smallest class.

The first two weeks of school have passed and I have dominated. Not really, but I felt the need for some kind of emphatic statement. Anyways, to the rundown of events.

- School ‘started’ on the third. They have what they call the ‘appel’ on the first day, which means they call roll and they tell a bunch of people that show up that they are not on the list and cannot come back. I give out my schedule to each class and then I go home. My counterpart, M. Ouedraogo (think Mr. Smith), starts his math class. The other two teachers have yet to show up.

- Second day, I begin. I have 13 hours of teaching for the week. 5 on mon., 3 on tues., 4 on wed, and 1 on thurs. I introduce myself to the class, explain the basic structure of the course, give out my rules, and then have the students write their vital information down for me (name, age, birthplace, parents occupation) and one thing interesting about themselves. This is my first encounter with the perils of teaching in the rote learning based system. I wrote down my basic information on the board and then for each class I gave something different that was interesting about me. When I said I liked to play guitar, everybody gave me something they liked to do. When I said I had lived in Saudi Arabia, everybody told me about someplace they had lived. This type of thing will probably continue throughout my teaching experience.

- Third day, no school, its international teachers day.

- Fourth day, actual teaching. In general, uneventful. The two absent professors continue to insist on not showing up.

Alright, a quick rundown on the students. I have 125 kids in sixieme (which translates roughly into a type of seventh or sixth grade in the us system), 83 kids in cinqieme (seventh or eighth), 81 kids in quatrieme (eighth or ninth), and 79 kids in troisieme (ninth or tenth). The numbers are about par for the course for Burkina schools except for the troisieme class which is ridiculously larger than most classes of the level. As for the ages, in the sixieme they range from 11 to 15 and in the troisieme from 15 to 21. I was very happy to see that nobody was older than me. Most of their parents are farmers although I have a high percentage of functionnaire kids due to the dam and the good results of the school in exams last year. A little more than half of the kids are muslim with the rest generally being Christians although there are some animists as well. Most of the younger kids are of the Gulmanche ethnicity but in the upper levels they are about even with the Mossi.

Now as for the school. There are 4 classrooms a little larger than an average school classroom in the states. In the classrooms there is a chalkboard and about 5 rows of table bancs – skinny benches with desk tops attached to them. In the upper levels its two students to a desk, in the lower levels its 4 or 5 (they’re smaller anyway). There is also a desk and a chair for me. Then there is a building for the teachers. It has 4 offices (for the directrice, the econome, the secretary, and the surveillant – he’s the disciplinarian) and then a professors room – like a living room – and by the grace of god two bathrooms with flushing toilets although I usually have to bring my own toilet paper.

As for materials available for me from the school, as I said before there is a blackboard and there is chalk of many different colors. There are also an assortment of various rulers and other materials for drawing geometric figures on the board. And that’s it. Luckily I have been able to get some textbooks from the peace corps office and some lesson plans from former volunteers which are a great help.

For the classes, I teach flowering plants and human biology in sixieme, invertebrates and non-flowering plants in cinqieme, geology in quatrieme (although when I get tired of that I am just going to move to diseases) and human biology in troisieme.

The next week was full – no holidays. And the other teachers did arrive, thankfully. For me, the week passed largely uneventfully, which is good. I did some skits, I involved the students, drew a bunch of diagrams on the board, and answered questions. I thought it went well. A note on the teaching. We do not serve as teachers only in the explanatory sense. We also serve as textbook writers. Most of the kids do not have textbooks for most of the subjects. All they have are their pens and their notebooks in which they write down everything I put on the board. Their notebooks are their textbooks. So for the class, I write down a basic outline for the day, write important explanations and definitions on the board, draw epic diagrams, and then explain everything and then ask questions or have demonstrations to emphasize the explanation and eventually I’ll be doing homework, projects and some experiments to emphasize all that.

That’s all the time I have for right now, but up next, what do you do when people seriously ask you for new computers?

Alright, where was I?

We're in Banfora after an attempted screwing by our waiter. It soured us a little bit but a good day was coming up. We went to bed that night with the wonderful knowledge that we would be making our first trip to a mcdonalds in more than 5 months.

We arrived there just in time for a late brunch (also known as lunch). The first thing you notice upon entering the banfora mcdonalds is the lack of golden arches, ronald mcdonald, the sign announcing 'quadrillions served', and the odd appearance of donald duck.

Alright, its not a vrai mcdonalds, but its damn close enough. The hamburgers were delicious and the french toast (a volunteer taught them how to make french toast) was excellent as well. You easily get the best bang for your buck here.

(Another) Legal Disclaimer Notice

to any McDonalds corporate executives, please do not sue the burikina mcdonalds.

After lunch, we decided to head out to see one of the very few tourist attractions in Burkina - Banfora Falls (where you can get schistosomiasis if you go in the worry! Yay!). We called up a driver, discuted a price and then took the taxi to the falls.

Once again, i cannot emphasize the lack of quality roads - Banfora Falls is one of the most popular tourist sites in Burkina but that does not mean at all that it is in anyway easily accessible. To add to the horrible road conditions and the 20 year old taxi (I'm not sure if all the cars here are really old or if Burkina just ages things - i already look ten years older, but that could be just the beard) it started raining.

About a mile or so away from the falls, one of the most horrible sounds I've ever heard from an automobile showed up. As I far as I could tell, the car was dead. We got out, and helped push it out of the middle of the road (a certain someone did not help at all, he is the one taking the picture on adam's web site, and also the one towards whom I am directing my hidden obscene gesture). Once the car started moving we saw oil all over the ground along with unidentifiable pieces of metal. The car wasn't going anywhere.

A minute or two later, a couple of burkinabes came along on motos and gave the driver a moto so he could go into town and search out some help while we walked to the falls. The burkinabes are really nice that way.

The falls were beautiful. The water, was not clear, but I choose to blame that on the rainy season. We spent an hour or two hiking up the falls and I ended up getting away from the group because I wanted to go to the very top. When I hiked back down to find the rest of them, i noticed a certain apprehension on their faces. It turns out another medical site visit was being attempted, this time to my site. When they found out I was not there, the acting Country Director called the Bobo house to ask if they knew where I and Risa were, and if they didn't she was going to send out a missing persons alert which would not have been good. The volunteer in Bobo wisely told her that we were in bobo and that she would have us call her later that night. So then our next order of business was to get back to bobo. First we had to hitch a ride from a car of functionnaires that was leaving the falls, then we high-tailed it to the bus station and got a ticket for the next bus to bobo - which of course broke down half way into the trip - things are never easy here. By the time we got back to bobo it was too late to call Rose (the acting CD) so we had to call her early next morning. After the phone call (in which she explained to me that the new CD was coming in that night and it would ultimately be up to her what would happen to us) a peace corps driver took us back to Ouaga (which was nice cause it saved me 6 mille). When we got there, we explained our situation to Rose, and she explained to us that it could be grounds for admin seperation (which means being fired) but that it would be up to the CD. This did not sound like good news to us as the word on the street about the new CD was that she was not exactly in favor of taking vacation and that she was not reluctant to admin sep volunteers.

So then we played the waiting game until next monday when we would get to talk to the CD. There are worse places to play the waiting game than in Ouaga and I took advantage of my time there to watch some baseball and some preseason football at the American Embassy Rec Center.

On monday we met with the CD and explained our situation (Risa actually had good reasons whereas my reason was an extreme longing for pizza - i don't like lying). We had to sign a form acknowledging that we knew that repeated actions in this manner could result it admin seperation and we lost vacation days. Losing vacation days suck, but it could of been worse, I could have been sent to the greatest country on earth (its nice to put admin seperation in perspective that way).

So that was my interdit vacation to bobo and banfora and that was how my site almost became known as tyleroutofafrica. Not too exciting, but it had its moments and i did have the honor of giving the new CD her first chance for disciplinary action. The verdict is still out on her but it is pretty clear that she is strict.

Right now I'm in Ouaga. I've been here for IST (In-Service Training - we go over our first 3 months in village and then prepare ourselves for teaching) which was extended another week for some supplemental language training. Its been nice. I've watched movies, used the internet, and soaked up air-conditioning at the bureau and i've also engulfed an unhealthy amount of pizza.

In addition, on the 16th of Sept. we celebrated our 6 month anniversary in Burkina. Here's the 6 month report card

Health - Overall - B-/C+

Physical Health - C+ - I don't have malaria, I have yet to have a confirmed bowel disease (although I certainly have giardia), I have only thrown up 4 times, and there have even been entire weeks without diarrhea, all in all not bad.

Mental Health - B - Almost certainly a little bit crazy. Being in Africa still seems surreal to me because the experience is so far away from anything I have ever known.

Integration - B-

Personal Relationships - B - I have a one solid Burkinabe friend in Salif, and several others who I would trust, although I do not have a village family like other volunteers.

Cultural Knowledge - B- - I have started always giving things to other people with my right hand, even to toubabs (thats whities again) and I have picked up Burkinabe idiosyncracies like 'Ou Bien' or 'En tout cas' or 'Ahhhh Bon.' (i'll explain those on a later post), and I have even, though it pains me to say it, started to become accustomed to the west african pop music, however, there are many things I still do not understand (such as the courting process) and i do not eat toh, nor do I use the tea-pot method (which while helping my intergration grade would certainly have an dramatic inverse effect on my health grade)

Work - B

Teaching - A - I haven't actually done any of this other than practice school but i really do think that I will be a great teacher, and there is nothing wrong with being positive right now.

Secondary work - B - I serve as the Encyclopedia Americana in village which is a clear example of goal two of the the Peace Corps and I also have some ideas for secondary projects in the village.

Language - B- - My french is decent, my moore is non-existent, although I did buy a new book which I hope will help me learn.

Total Experience - A/F

The grade might seem confusing but it is impossible to quantify my experience here. I so want someone to come visit me because if you do not come, you will never be able to understand my experience, and you will never be able to understand me completely again. I was talking to the other volunteers this past couple weeks about how we would never be able to use 'ou bien' or 'en tout cas' with any degree of effectiveness in America. Here, everyone cracks up when we use it because they have all seen how the words show up in every other sentence out of a burkinabes mouth. Its an instant joke, and even with my explanation, you'll never understand it.

In all likelihood, you'll never have a 30 year old man calmly and seriously ask you if there are dragons somewhere in the world. You'll never have to learn how to react to the information that eating too many potatoes will give you malaria, you'll never have a best friend who got married to a 14 year old girl, you'll never stand alone in front of 125 kids and teach them in a language you barely know while they try to understand a language they barely know, you'll never have kids yell out 'Whitey!' at the top of their lungs in five different languages (le blanc, naysaara, toubaboo, ombompinoo, and i forget the fulfulde one) every day while their parents stand by and say nothing, you'll never spend the better part of a week over a hole in the ground, you'll never have to wonder 'i know they're always staring at me but are they always talking about me too?' This list could last forever, and I haven't even talked about the sheer indescribable heat or dust storms that will cover this country from january to march.

But you'll also never have a complete stranger sitting on the bus next to you offer you food even though they are almost certainly starving for it, and you'll never stand in front of 125 kids who come from a completely different culture and have them completely interested in what you say, and you'll never go fishing in africa, and you'll never learn about how lightning punishes robbers, and you'll never wonder if dragons really do exist, and you'll never truly appreciate a cold sachet (water comes in plastic bags in africa) of water, and you'll never chase monkeys on african hilltops or be chased yourself by wild boars, and you'll never have beautiful young children come up to you and bow to you as you walk in the street, and you'll never hear about the gris-gris your friend has that will make him irresistable to any women, and you'll never be able to tell him that it doesn't work on white women, and you'll never eat toh, not even once, and you'll never marvel at a baobab tree, and you'll never know.

Its indescribable. I'm glad I'm able to share something with you on this blog, but it will never bring true comprehension of a stranger in a strange land, of naysaara on the mossi plateau. I've had times where I've been completely at peace with the world and times where I've been ready to reach for the plane ticket home. Who knows, we'll see what the report card looks like after 6 months.

In other news, I got a cell phone - this seems strange but almost every functionnaire in africa has a cell phone. The number is 70-70-83-90 and again, that means to call me you'll have to dial 01122670708390 (at least I think that's right). I don't have reseau (a connection) in my village, but we are supposed to be getting it soon, and even if we don't, I can almost certainly climb a hill and get a connection. So, call me, or text message me.

I should start teaching in the next couple of weeks. I'll be teaching four classes of Biologie, 6e - 3e, which will add up too around 400 kids. I'll probably have around 15 hours of teaching. We'll see, but it shouldn't be too bad. I know I'll be in Fada on the 14th or 15th and I'll post again then if not tomorrow on my layover in fada. That's all for now, later.

Tyler

i was going to use the time between my transport to finish my post but as my normally 3 hour trip took 5 and a half hours due to technical difficulties, that post will have to wait, probably a couple of weeks. Anyways, there will be more.

its been a while since of posted. i hope you'll forgive me. i am in africa after all.

anyways, great things are afoot. not really great, but things have been afoot, now they are over. i've taken my first peace corps vacation. which is against the rules to do during my first three months, but more on that later.

- legal disclaimer notice -

if any peace corps staff/CD/APCD reads these blogs, please inform me and the other volunteers as soon as possible and please stop right now. I don't know what the rules are for self-incrimination-by-blog but i am curious and i imagine the issue will come up sometime very soon if it has not already. i think of it as therapeutic, ie, the blog is my psychologist, so you can't use this against me. Whatever.

Anyways, a little more than a week ago, i went off to ouaga (interdit - this means against the rules or forbidden) in the hopes of meeting up with some other volunteers from my stage (interdit) for a few days (more than two days - interdit) of relaxation. Sadly the original plans generally fell through so i took it upon myself to head to Bobo (interdit - are you noticing a theme here, its called foreshadowing), have a few burgers (interdit - not really, but come on, where are you going to find a burger while you're locked down in village) and hope that my presence in bobo would attract my fellow new volunteers like burkinabes to a white person juggling (substitute like flies to honey for the horrible simile if you don't understand, but trust me, they really do like to see juggling whiteys). The plan was a success. But it took some time.

I spent the better part of a day in bobo by myself, spent the night at a crappy hotel after 2 others were discovered full, was constantly accosted by faux types (generally burkinabes with dreadlocks who want to be your guide, show you something really cool like the sacred fish - they are not really cool if you were wondering - and generally try to haggle money out of you, they're awesome, not really, but the french seem to love them - more on the french later), tried to see a movie (hostage with bruce willis, sadly i was the only one at the movie theater and they decided not to show it), and gorged myself on hamburgers and pizza (it had been over 2 months since i had eaten either of those 2 scrumptious delicacies, almost certainly the longest drought in my life) - my stomach tends to expand here whenever there is a chance for good food.

Another note on my stomach which the more faint-hearted might want to skip over. Seriously, its going to be really gross, i'll let you know when its safe to read again, but i feel this is something that has to be said. (to see it, you'll have to do something incredibly complicated, like highlight the blank space, i do this to protect your fragile minds)

Anyways, before i came to burkina, i remember having a discussion with someone about the uncleaniliness of the food and resulting problems. i said something like, you have to expect get diarrhea every once and a while. This is what i learned from my experience in china. However here, the expectations should honestly be a little different. You have to expect to have diarrhea, and not just every once and a while. There is a certain level of diarrhea with which you become 'comfortable' after a while and that level is amazingly higher than you would expect (story-time - at the end of stage when we were talking about the differences between life in village and life in the states, medical care came up - one stagiaire noted that in the states, when you start seeing blood in your bowel movements - or you just start seeing blood in your bowel movements and nothing else - you go to hospital as soon as possible where as here, you give it a few days, you have the wait and see approach). For me, this wasn't a great problem during stage (props to my host mom) but only during village time and during vacation. Before i go out of town (usually just to fada for a day or two) my stomach and i usually have a little dialogue that goes something like this

stomach - where you going tyler? you going out?

me - yeah, i'm just going to fada for a day, nothing to get really worked up about.

stomach - oh ... so thats how its going to be ... you weren't even going to let me know?

me - stomach, please, just calm down, i promise, i'll get you some pizza as soon as i get to ouaga, just work with me here ... please?

stomach - ... ... ... i hope you're bringing some extra underwear ...

Its never a good discussion. But it does lead me horribly into my next topic which seriously you should skip. its not pretty.

Story-time - 1. this comes from a volunteer who recently left - "I went to school, came back, crapped my pants... that was tuesday." 2. this comes from a volunteer from my stage who had the diarrhea tri-fecta - giardia, amoebic dysentary, and ecoli all at once - "Giardia tricked me. I had just gone to the bathroom and then had a drink of water and not five minutes later i could feel a fart coming on and i thought, there's no way i have anything to worry about, i just went..." Sadly he was mistaken. Advice we've received by volunteers in the know - "Never bet on a fart," "Never fart with your pants down," and finally, "any volunteer who says they haven't crapped their pants is a fucking liar!" By the way, i haven't crapped my pants yet. Seriously. No for real.

I am however in the tiny minority. They never advertised this in any brochures. The slogan did not say - How far will you go ... before you soil yourself. But thats what i get for being in the diarrhea capital of the peace corps, which has to put it up there for diarrhea capital of the world. This is the legacy of the teapot method.

So anyways, i was in bobo. Color me unimpressed, at least while none of my friends were there. After the friends showed up, the faux types were easier to avoid and we had a lot of fun. On tuesday, we found out that one of the volunteers, risa, had been the unfortunate recipient of an unannounced medical site visit (the medical pcmo's come to check out your site to see if you can possibly live healthily there). They keenly noticed that she was not there and this suspicion of her absence was increased when the villagers told them that risa was in bobo. The consensus on this turn of events was - 'they already know that you're gone, why rush back' and not 'hey, rush back and pretend you had only left for a couple of days.' So we decided to go to banfora the next day because we heard they had waterfalls and a mcdonalds (more on that later).

So we went to banfora, which is another couple hours south west of bobo which made me somewhere in the area of 13 hours away from village (thats travel time, the waiting around time would be another 24 hours). That night, we went out to eat at the Calypso. I had a steak, it was delicious. But then the problem arrived.

This leads me to the first subject of my title - on becoming burkinabe.

I have no intention of becoming a burkinabe. My skin color, upbringing, affluence, and culture all would prevent it. No volunteers really have a desire to become burkinabe. We come here to help, to experience, to grow up, to put off the rest of our lives. We aren't here to save the world (while the vast vast majority of volunteers are liberal to extremely liberal, they are not tree hugging hippies who constantly cry about how all the africans are being oppressed by the evil west) and we are not here to be tourists.

Anecdote time (i got tired using story-time) - After dinner we were scrounging through the check trying to gather up all the money everyone owes (the experience is no different in africa - it seems as though everyone always says that they put in more than they owe yet we always end up with less than we need ...) when we come upon a discrepancy in the bill. We call over the waiter and discuss it with him and the problem is quickly identified. It seems that we were under the impression that we would be charged whatever was on the menu, whereas he seemed to be under the impression that he could charge us whatever he wanted without telling us (i won't get into the specifics but it involved two people explicitly ordering the small fish from among a small and a large fish but being charged for the conspicuously absent-from-the-menu medium fish). One of the extreme causes of stress in burkina, in africa i assume, for a volunteer, is not to get screwed - meaning, not to get treated like a tourist. This is not to say that we particularly object to tourists getting screwed (one volunteer tells this story - "a swiss ngo group came to my village to do some work and as there was no restaurant they asked my friend if his wife could prepare them some food. They asked me what price they should pay, and i didn't know what to say because i wanted my friend to make out all right so i just waited until they gave me a price (this is a common burkinabe practice). They said, how about 10 mille (roughly 20 dollars, a real price would be something like $4). I said yeah thats fine. My friend took the money, gave half of it to his wife for the food and the cooking and took the other half and got drunk. He bought me a beer"). But we are not tourists. The sad thing is, it is very hard to convincingly convey that fact. There's no special sign you can make, no secret signal with which all burkinabes will recognize your non-tourist status. I can't tatoo 'peace corps' on my head. And even when I explain what i do, what i am here for, it is incredibly hard for them to understand. Its not because they're stupid. Its for the same reason that it is incredibly hard for people in america to understand - Why on hell would these stupid whities leave the greatest country on earth to come here and live in the bush to do a few good deeds? When they do understand, they inevitably stop trying to screw you out of money and they do appreciate you.

But its rare that someone will understand. And when they don't understand, tempers flare and confusion arises. You don't have to be burkinabe, but you have to understand what would a burkinabe do (its my little motto to avoid frustration - wwbd). What would a burkinabe do in this situation? Would he think that he was getting screwed? Would he think that this is normal? It is not always clear. What seems logical and common sensical to us does not necessarily apply to the burkinabe mindset. I'm not a cultural relativist, i think that logic generally tends to hold across all cultures, and i think that people around the world tend to be a lot more similar than they are different, but sometimes, there are just things you don't know that every burkinabe knows. Another story - some friends of mine were in a bar at bobo. After a night of long drinking they got there bill only to discover it was twice as much as they expected (this was not run of the mill screwing a tourist). It turns out that drinks cost twice as much when you buy a drink inside a bar as when you buy one outside the bar (even though there is no problem with bringing the drink into the bar after you have bought it). It turns out, all burkinabes know this (it turns out one of the volunteers knew this too but he was too drunk to remember at the time) and after a frustrating discussion with the manager they had to accede because this is what a burkinabe would do. They weren't being treated like tourists.

I'm going to have to finish this post later, hopefully tomorrow, but i want to finish with my own story of trying to straddle that middle ground between being a tourist and consequently getting screwed, and being treated like a burkinabe. When i got to bobo, i tried to get into contact with steph (she's the nearest volunteer from my stage to bobo) but since she does not have a telecenter in her village and she does not have cell phone coverage i had to try to send a message by transport. I ended up walking probably about 5 kms to the bush taxi station that goes to Padema (her village) and when i find the driver i ask him if he can take a message for me. He consents, i write the message and start to hand it to him when he says we have to discuss the price. Now normally, it would cost nothing to send a message by transport, but i know that i am going to have to pay at least a little on account of my skin color and the general all around foreigness so i ask him what he wants. He says 500 cfa (roughly a $1). Immediately all the burkinabes that have gathered around to stare at the toubab (thats jula for whitey) start cracking up. Everyone except the chauffer (the driver) who appears to be dead serious about it. Everyone knows its ridiculous to pay that much. Everyone knows that i know its ridiculous to pay that much. I know what you're thinking though - but Tyler, its only a dollar - To which i reply, harshly i concede, Shut up, you have no idea what you are talking about. You cannot possibly comprehend the intense desire not to be screwed felt by the peace corps volunteer. I also say, hey, i only get paid $8 a day. But i don't get to upset, i can't, not with everyone laughing at the ballsiness of the chauffer. I reply with an offer of 50 cfa figuring that we'll discuter a little and i'll probably end up paying 100. The man holds his ground again with a straight face. I cannot say the same of his friends, all of whom know that a burkinabe would never pay more than 50 cfa to send a message. So with them all laughing around me i raise my price to 100 cfa and the man still stands firm. I was shocked. Normally the burkinabe always bargain. But not this guy. I finally raise it to 200 cfa, i tell him this is my final offer and that there is no way i am paying 500 to send this tiny little piece of paper when it only costs 1500 to send a regular sized person. Again he stands firm, so i employ the ultimate bargaining move. I walk away. I get about 6 steps away when someone calls me back (one of the laughing guys, the chauffer is still successfully keeping a straight face) and agrees to take the message for 200.

I don't tell this story to display my excellent bargaining skills (i really should have paid no more than 100) but more to express the little progress i have made. I may have paid a little more, i may not be a burkinabe, i'll never be a burkinabe, but i'm not a tourist.

Oh yeah, it turns out we were getting screwed by the waiter and it wasn't just something that every burkinabe knows.

later

Greetings from burkina. I’m in fada for the weekend decompressing from the past three weeks in village and searching out news of the world during my time on the dark side of the moon. Anyways, things are going well. I’ve had a couple visitors over the past few weeks (Cary, the volunteer from Matiakoali, the nearest volunteer from my stage, and Steve, my vsn rep). The visits were good. Cary and I hung out at the pool for the fourth of July and basically did a whole lot of nothing. Steve brought mail and packages (thanks everyone, especially erin for sending that behemoth of a package filled with food).

For the past few weeks I’ve been continuing with the reading and the hiking into the hills (I think I have been to most of them around kompienga) and the hanging out. Most days I go over to Salif’s boutique for a few hours. Salif has become by far my best friend here, and not just because he usually feeds me when I go over. For some reason it almost seems as though he’s the only person who approaches understanding of what it is like for the volunteers here. He’s upbeat and very talkative but at the same time he understands that sometimes you just don’t want to talk. Its nice.

As I said before, when ever I hang out at Salifs place I end up serving as the encyclopedia on all things western (an Encyclopedia Americana if you will). I’m going to use a couple of those conversations as the subject of my post for today. Sorry if it is crappy.

Alright, there’s another older guy who hangs out at salifs place as well who doesn’t speak that much French but has told salif that he is very interested in America and so whenever he comes over salif will ask a question for him and then translate the response. One day, salif asked me if everyone in America spoke English. Before I have explained to salif that there are people who speak every kind of language in the world in the big cities but that for the most part, everyone who lives in America, especially almost everyone who is an American citizen speaks English. He asked me again this time and again I responded that yes pretty much everyone speaks English. Then he asked me if even in the small cities they speak English.

And then I understood the confusion. French is the national language here. Naturally, most people do not speak French, especially in the small villages where the only speak the local language. When I was in Bassi I could probably count on my fingers and toes the number of people who spoke French well. This is a tribal culture. Africa is full of tribal cultures. You are defined by your tribe. Burkina is filled with the Mossi, the Jula (that’s the language, I’m not sure of the name of the ethnicity), the Gourma, the Fulani, the Peuhls (I think they are actually the same as the Fulani), and about 30 or 40 smaller groups. Each group has its own language and even within these ethnic groups the language varies greatly as any volunteer can tell you who has ever tried to learn the language from his or her villagers. There is a concept of being from a certain country, being part of a nation, being a citizen, but it is a new concept. At other times salif has asked me about my heritage and I explain to him that I am a European mutt like a lot of Americans but I also explained that heritage has very little importance in America (I was leaving the issue of skin color aside for the moment although I have gotten into it at other times). I explained that almost everyone’s ancestors are immigrants (I told him that most of the real natives are dead) and that when you move to America, you become an American. Salif thought it was a great idea. I thought it was an interesting view into the different concepts of identity in these two vastly different worlds.

Another day, another topic. This time it was the weather. Lately we have been getting a lot of rain and lightning. After one particularly heavy rain I was hanging out with salif and another friend (I hardly know the names of anyone here but this guy always tells me to shave my beard, I have a very grizzly beard by the way, because he says it makes me look like a peuhl and the mossi people hate the peuhls because they say the peuhls are violent, arrogant, bandits whose cows trample all over their fields – the mossi are the cultivators and the peuhls are the herders in Burkina) and the friend asked me if people in America are ever killed by the rain. I told him that if it floods people can die. Then salif asked me if we have lightning in America (again, you get a lot of questions about whether or not they have things like rice or corn in America). I told him of course and then he asked if people ever get killed by lightning. And I said yes. He said it happens here too but it is very mysterious. Lightning is used to punish thieves here. He explained to me that if the three of us were sleeping in a house with a thief the lightning could come in and take out the thief and kill him without even disturbing our sleep. He asked me if anything like that ever happens in the US. I told him about tornadoes that can take out one house on a block without disturbing the others. He said that sounded similar but then asked who causes it. I told him it was just bad luck. He said that over here, somebody makes it happen, a sorcerer with some sort of voodoo or gris gris.

Whenever we get into the realm of gris gris and magic I always end up surprised because it happens with everyone, no matter how educated here. I know I’m being culturally biased here and forgetting about belief in angels and things like that that exist in the west but whenever this happens I always get this feeling like I have just discovered that one of my good friends is a scientologist or something. I’m reminded of the time when one of our language teachers was discussing the old traditions that were being lost in modern times and he just casually mentioned rain-making. I had to consult with my fellow volunteers to make sure I had heard right but it is always a bit of shock to find out that even the very educated people here believe in things such as rain dances. You hear about this stuff before you come over, but it doesn’t seem real. I thought to myself, that stuff used to happen, but it doesn’t really happen anymore (this is what I thought about the teapot method before I got over here too). Expectations are no match for Africa. Oh well.

In other news, my desire for goodies from America grows greater everyday. I’m trying to reconcile my anger when I have people here ask me for things and my desire to ask for things from America, but I’ve decided to let this little bit of hypocrisy pass me by like so many others in Africa. Most important is just letters and emails. You have no idea how much those mean to volunteers here. Shortly down from that is sauce packets. If you send these though, be sure to look at what other ingredients are necessary and then remember that I am in Africa and I’m not going to be able to find brown sugar or anything like that. Next is books and magazines. Here are some more ideas – a college geology textbook (I’m going to teach this and I don’t know anything about it), pulp books and science fiction books including old Robert Jordan wheel of time books except for winters heart (I’ve read them all except for the prequel but I would read them again, especially the most recent one), this is crazy but books about law, specifically constitutional law (I find myself enthralled by constitutional law and especially epic supreme court cases and all the briefs, opinions, and arguments and analysis involved, this despite the fact that I really do not want to go to law school although it is probably bound to happen), the tao of pooh, man and superman, and the curious enlightment of professor caritat, and pretty much anything else. Finally a game boy advance and some games that will occupy a lot of time including Mario 3 and some golf game. That’s a joke (actually its joking on the square as al franken would say – send me a game boy, ha ha, but for real, send me a game boy – I fully intend to buy one if I go back to the states during my time here or to buy one from another volunteer here, there’s a few floating around). That’s about it. Please, just some write some letters.

Anyways, that’s about it for now. Again things are going good. Only one more month in village lockdown but I might be able to do some travelling during that time anyway. I’ve found instant oatmeal in fada so my culinary prayers have been answered. That’s all. Later.

On integration

I am settled. or as settled as im going to be in africa. i have become accustomed to my

village and while i havent exactly fallen into daily routines, i see them coming on the

horizon. That was step one. The idea behind our 3 month lockdown in village is that we

become settled, accustomed, and then we work on becoming integrated. Now what does that

mean? Mostly, living like a villager, and being accepted as a villager. How have I

progressed?

living like a villager

food

I think i receive decent marks here. i dont eat to, i dont think i ever will, but i often

eat benga, rice and sauce, a lot of bread, and pasta. While having cheese with my pasta is

clearly bourgeois, i think that can be excused. Also, i bought cereal in fada and sometimes

have corn flakes and fruit in the morning, another black mark. but i do drink bissap daily,

and i do eat street food. Which leads me directly to my next point.

health

i dont have malaria but like all villagers i am constantly battling diarrhea, almost

certainly a result of the street food and something which is not helped by my respites of

mac and cheese. On the malaria point i have another interesting story to relate, interesting

to me at least. Whenever i get sick, its happened about three times now (not including

diarrhea) and i tell people about it the immediate resonse is c'est le palu? Is it malaria? Often among friends back home whenever they get sick, i say something ridiculous like, its probably

cancer or herpes, or ebola. Of course when i say that im joking. Of course when the africans

say it, they are being entirely serious. Malaria is the common cold of tropîcal africa. But

even knowing that, i am shocked every time i hear it.

Entertainment

mixed marks here - for the black marks, i read. only functionaires read here, even if the

villageois could read, very likely they wouldnt. also i go to the pool occasionally. There

are never any africans there, not even functionaires. on the integration side, i often hang

out with salif at his boutique and serve as the encyclopedia for all things western

(yesterday, the topics were can you seed the clouds with rain, apparently the government

recently bought some cloud seeding technology from the koreans, but all the seeded clouds

floated south to togo ghana and cote divoire, and also how did arnold get to be governor of

california and the phonetics of the h sound in french where it doesnt exist and in english

where it does, so pretty varied) and i go to the movies with the locals (the movies involves

a hot shed packed with burkinabes and a tv hooked up to a video cd player which invariably

shows films from a repertoire that involves kung fu, chuck norris, van damme, and arnold. i

saw commando the other day. it was awesome. usually the movies are in french with either

french or english subtitles but sometimes they are in english, with chinese subtitles

because that is where everyone gets their bootleg movies. i know from experience. not that

the language really matters in these movies). I also stare at the wall which is a very

burkinabe thing to do. And i take walks which is neither good nor bad for integration

(sometimes the dog, the previous volunteers dog, comes with me and chases goats until i throw

rocks at him. its really funny when the goats are tied together. normally it wouldnt bother

me since i hate the goats here with a passion but it does seem to bother the goat owners).

The home

failure. i have electricty which is a point im sure the other volunteers will never let me

live down, but it is well worth it. I cannot express the gratitude i feel to electricity and

to the dam which provides it when i sleep under that glorious glorious half broken fan.

the language

middling marks. my french is decent, although not really improving, but ive put off studying

moore until i get settled. guess i better start.

Job

failure. but its not my fault here. teachers are functionaires in burkina, not members of

the community and invariably they are always dreaming of that glorious transfer which will

put them in ouaga or bobo. WHile on the topic of teaching, which i wont start doing until

october so i dont really have a job right now, i have an intense desire to relate a story

here. While i was doing my practice teaching in gourcy i was answering questions about

america from the students. One of the students asked, what can someone do for a job in

america if they dont speak english. Im sure you all know the first thought that popped into

my head but just in case you dont, here it is, verbatim - dont say taxi driver, dont say

taxi driver, dont say taxi driver. After i was able to push down that impulse, the next idea

was - they could be mexicans. wait, thats not a job. they could do what the mexicans do. So

i said they could be manual laborers, which they all seemed satisfied with and they were all

ready to get on the plane and begin doing landscaping or working in strawberry fields (i

apologize if i offended any mexicans, landscapers, or strawberry field workers. but not taxi

drivers, you know you cant speak english).

Being accepted as a community member

mixed, but mostly failing results. The locals are becoming accustomed to me, something that

was helped greatly by the previous volunteer. But i have slowly come to the realization that

has probably afflicted many a black man in the south and other parts of the white world. I

will never escape the color of my skin. no matter if i eat to, no matter if i speak fluent

moore, no matter if i use the teapot method. I will always be white in a society where there

are no white burkinabes, there are no white africans. I could write a very long article

about this and i probably will someday. But for now, i want to leave you with the words of

the children as a pass by, showing clearly that they see me as not a seperate distinct

person, but as one aspect of the continuous white behemoth - Hello Ms. Schenk!

i saw monkeys. very big ones. monday morning after discovering that i would not be

needed for the second tour of the bepc (the test to determine if the students can continue

to high school) i got on my bike and rode to the edge of one of the mountains. i have to say that in addition to all the other things that makes my village great,

the mountains are right up there at the top, perhaps even higher than the pool although im

sure im only saying that because its not the hot season. are they really mountains? ive

struggled with this question, mostly because im extremely bored, but ive come to decide

while they would be referred to as large hills in any normal country, in burkina with the

altitude of florida or louisiana, theyre mountains. the mountains surround the giant lake or

barrage if you speak french (they arent actually the same thing, but i dont really care) so

you cant actually see the lake without going over the mountains and you cant get to the lake

without going over the mountains or taking a really long bike ride. earlier i had climbed

one of the smaller mountains and i had seen the lake but not the dam so that was the main

goal of this sojourn, climb the tallest mountain, see the dam. i hadnt actually been

thinking of monkeys. i knew that people said that there were monkeys in the mountains, but i

wasnt sure if i actually believed them because people say alot of things here - your food

will be right out, we can make anything you want, i speak french, also see the fanta story

on the earlier post. I got to about the half way point on the mountain (keep in mind that there is no trail, this isnt america) and i sat down to drink some water and read some of my book. after a while a looked up and saw a cloud covered dark sky and i began to debate whether or not to

head down in case it was going to rain. At the same time i began hearing a noise which i

immediately described in my mind as that of a rabid donkey. I was pretty sure that there

were no donkeys on the mountain, much less rabid ones so i came to a conclusion that it must

be some type of wild boar. i briefly considered that it might be a monkey but i thought i

knew how monkeys sounded and they do not sound like that. of course, it was a monkey. but i couldnt see anything yet so i hiked up a little farther until i got to a clearing

where i was suprised to see an unsupervised herd of cows. apparently, in addition to all the

other crazy animals in africa, they have mountain cows. but then i looked up on the side of

the biggest mountain and saw what was clearly a monkey. and then another, and another, and

another, and so on. probably about 10 or 20. now when i heard about monkeys, i had expected

something small, no larger than a baboon. they dont have chimps or gorillas in burkina. I

dont know what type of monkey it was, but it was at least as large as a full grown

chimpanzee. Bigger. they were far away, and i couldnt see them well without my glasses (i

hadnt been expecting to see monkeys) and they were making horrible noises. For some reason, i decided not to follow the monkeys (they appeared to be on the move, i

dont think they got along with the mountain cows) but instead climb the mountain next to the

dam, an unfortunately monkeyless mountain. when i came down the monkeys were gone and my attempts to find them were thwarted by the mountain cows who gave me the evil eye whenever i got close. i did make it up the monkey mountain, but they had passed. BUt mark my words, i will find the monkeys again, oh yes, i will find them.

The story isnt over yet as i have yet to relate the reactions of the africans to my monkey

sightings. that night i talked to one of my students - bassirou, who hangs around a lot and

does a lot of chores for me but who also occasionally takes my food without asking - and i

told him about the monkeys. his immediate response was to ask if i was hunting them. Such is

the clash of cultures that exists in africa. to the western mind, at least to my mind

killing monkeys is monstrously wrong, second only to killing or raping humans. Im not

against hunting animals, indeed i often think fondly of killing a donkey or a goat or a

rooster but never had i even entertained the notion of hunting a monkey. But it happens

here. Apparently there are frequent battles between the big monkeys (it turns out there is

another species of smaller monkeys in the mountains as well) and the africans. the humans

throw bullets, the monkeys throw rocks, and eat goats and peanuts. I flirted with trying to

explain the western anathema to killing monkeys but realized that the only understandable

way to do it would be to state that monkeys are sacred animals to westerners. later, i was talking to the husband of my tailor (its very nice to be able to use that

expression - my tailor) and relating the monkeys to him. he again remarked on the rock

throwing nature of the big monkeys and how it was dangerous to be alone around them.

apparently they dont even flinch when you throw rocks at them. but them he asked if i had

been carrying a gris-gris, a talisman. If i had one i would surely be protected. as a matter

of fact, i do have one, a voodoo one from my cajun girlfriend, and i assured him that i

would carry it with me on any future monkey expedition. in turn he was assured that nothing

ill would come to pass. Such is africa. A lot more to come later.

Tyler Ruthven

CEG de Kompienga

BP 05, Pama

Province de la Kompienga

Burkina Faso, West Africa

Phone number – 40 77 65 16

Alright, theres my address and the telecenter where I can receive calls. I recommend a phone card, as you don’t want a 300 dollar bill like my parents received. And learn French. It comes in handy. Here are some phrases you can use

Est-ce que vous pouvez trouvez le blanc/ l’americain/ le volontaire du corps de la paix/ tyler Ruthven. S’il vous plait. Je veux parler avec lui.

Je veux parler avec l’americain s’il vous plait

After that, they will probably tell you to call back in fifteen to thirty minutes and then they will come and find me.

Consult your local french speaker for some more useful phrases.

As for letters or packages – I appreciate books (for a few I like, try Man and Superman by george Bernard shaw or The Curious Enlightenment of Professor Caritat or any Vonnegut book or any Phillip K Dick book except for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the Man in the High Castle. Also, books on science, particularly books by Richard Dawkins or books on History and World Affairs, or just cheap thriller fiction books, I will probably read anything right now). I also like sports articles, especially about the cardinals (I just bought a used cardinals shirt today in fada for a dollar) or the saints, but again, I will probably read anything. I also appreciate non sporting newspaper articles and magazines. Other good ideas, sauce packets, beef jerky, pretty much anything. And of course, letters in general. Anyways, I would be very happy to hear from anyone at all, and it costs less than a dollar to send me a letter.

If you desire to send humanitarian goods to help the needy Africans here, I must advise that you wait for now. I am going to be here for 2 years so theres no need to rush right now. And besides, we don’t know exactly what they need right now. There is a chance that in the future I will be soliciting donations to help build a new set of classrooms for the school here, but that will be quite a bit in the future. So wait for now, but don’t forget. Your time will come. Thanks.

In other news, I’m going to be spending the next few months trying not to go crazy because I basically have nothing to do but try and integrate into the community. There’s also a chance that school will get cancelled until after the elections in November which would give me even more time to not go crazy. Here are my ideas so far – learn how to cook, learn biology (that one’s especially important since I’m going to be teaching biology), swim, learn how to make a mango smoothie, learn moore, learn to speak French good, try not to forget how to speak English properly, find some village friends, read, swim, take apart bike and put it back together again, dispose of leftover parts, paint incredibly complex MC Escher paintings on my walls, paint over horrible depictions of MC Escher paintings on my walls, continue to not go crazy, get clothes made, climb the mountains around kompienga, befriend the monkey’s on the mountains, clean monkey feces from clothes (they like to throw that type of thing, or so I’ve heard), don’t get sick, go biking, visit town bigwigs, go to fada, have a pool party, and relax.

If you have some more ideas, let me know. I was going to write more about the swearing in ceremony, but there’s really not that much more to say. I’ll just recount this conversation I had with the bartender at the party on top the peace corps office later that night. I was not feeling well and as such was not drinking but searching for some water. Me – I’d like some water – Him – Beer? – Me – Water – Him – Fanta? – Me – Water – Him – Beer? I left after that. It was strangely similar to a conversation another volunteer – faux josh – had with a server in Yako . Josh – I’ll have a Fanta – Server – We don’t have fanta – J – What do you have – S – We have Fanta – J – Ok, I’ll have a fanta – S – We don’t have fanta. These things happen all the time here apparently.

Anyways, wish me luck in Kompienga. But save your prayers for the other volunteers. I hit the jackpot. Later.

Tyler

Alright, its been a long time since ive written here; but remember - IM IN AFRICA - anyways, since last time ive taught in burkina classrooms of about a hundred kids and ive become a vrai volunteer.

teaching

id just like to say, to allay any worries from the beginning, that im an awesome teacher. but i didnt always know that. so heres how the story begins

before i came to africa i almost got a job teaching act/sat classes with kaplan testing service. but i didnt pass the training phase because i wasnt a good enough teacher. at the time i passed it off as a result of not caring about the program and thinking that it was entirely worthless and a complete rip off - i still believe that now - because i believed that, i did not prepare at all. but it did worry me a little i will admit. fast forward to burkina

we start our program by doing what they call a micro teach - 30 minutes in front of a classroom introducing a topic, introducing yourself, and then taking questions about america. it went well, but i only had about 10 kids there. i was introducing negative numbers and i tried to use a thermometer example only to realize that they had never seen a thermometer before. even with that, it still went well. then in gourcy, i was supposed to teach about protozoa but i started throwing up and didnt teach that day. instead the next day i taught in front of the other volunteers about the anatomy of a flower. it was pretty horrible. at this point i get a little bit worried. but then i realize, hey, i actually need to prepare. so instead of just writing down some notes, i pretty much memorize my entire lesson plan and i go slower. on monday i teach in bassi to around eighty students. i started a little slow, but it all went well and i just continued to get better as the week went on. the thing about being completely prepared is that it gives me complete confidence in front of the class. i command the class. i have a presence - thats actually what the other volunteers said - and i have what has now become known as the voice - when i was teaching a class in gourcy one day, one of our language teachers was observing a volunteer in another classroom right next to mine and she said she could here almost everything i was saying. it booms. it controls. it inspires fear. im also, as luck would have it, a male, which greatly increases control of the classroom. in addition to that, i also have fun in class. i write skits that i act out with the students. i use the students to demonstrate earthworm locomotion. i blow up baloons to demonstrate malaria and the destruction of red blood cells - my 2 hour malaria class in gourcy was by far the highlight of my teaching, the volunteer and the burkinabe teacher observing me offered no critiques saying that the lesson was simply awesome - i try to have at least one activity in each class that makes at least some of the kids stand up. i enjoy it a lot.

and i think that I like that Im teaching in french even more than in english. its like i become a different person when im up there teaching. im no longer shy english speaking tyler, instead im the french speaking teacher who commands the classroom with an hagi like iron fist - the hagi is one of the bassi characters, picture an african warlord. its great, and i have no real worries about my ability to be a great teacher here. now i just have to learn biology so that i actually know what im talking about instead of just making stuff up when they ask me questions.

Swearing In

we just got sworn in as official volunteers on friday. it was at the american ambassadors house. i gave a speech in moore - the most commonly spoken local language here - it was on tv - and then i got interviewed by the press, twice. im famous. I was also wearing a crazy africa suit that i had just bought that morning at a store right outside our hotel. i think i will right more on this later, my time here is running out. tomorrow i head to my village where i will be staying for the next four months doing nothing until school starts - it could be even longer if they cancel school until after the elections. who knows. im going to try and remember to post my address at my site when im in fada tomorrow. later.

i suggest you check out http://adiminafrica.blogspot.com and http://inbfbf.blogspot.com . they are both better than mine, and the first one has pictures, including a few that ive taken;

as for me, i just recently managed to weasel out of the first day of practice school by cleverly throwing up multiple times in the morning; im a lot better now though, so no worries and we will be doing a lot more practice school in the coming weeks so i didnt miss much (and as it turns out, the prof had already taught the section he told me to prepare so perhaps the sickness was for the best)

i dont really have much for now (whenever i get online, i waste all my time trying to follow what has been happening to the cardinals or other sporting news) but i do want to say this; im going to have four months at my site before i begin teaching and for the first three of those months im not going to be able to leave my site; so, if you like getting letters from people on different continents who normally dont write letters, send me your address; im going to have to fill those months somehow

i suggest you check out http://adaminafrica.blogspot.com and http://inbfbf.blogspot.com . they are both better than mine, and the first one has pictures, including a few that ive taken;

as for me, i just recently managed to weasel out of the first day of practice school by cleverly throwing up multiple times in the morning; im a lot better now though, so no worries and we will be doing a lot more practice school in the coming weeks so i didnt miss much (and as it turns out, the prof had already taught the section he told me to prepare so perhaps the sickness was for the best)

i dont really have much for now (whenever i get online, i waste all my time trying to follow what has been happening to the cardinals or other sporting news) but i do want to say this; im going to have four months at my site before i begin teaching and for the first three of those months im not going to be able to leave my site; so, if you like getting letters from people on different continents who normally dont write letters, send me your address; im going to have to fill those months somehow

i never wanted to do the blog thing cause it always seemed a little narcissistic and ive always thought that i write better when i have a specific audience to write. but i really hate using these crappy french keyboards that make you shift just to use a period; screw that, its semicolons all the way from now on; you guys will have to learn to deal with one long run on sentence; anyway, i got back from my sojourn to kompienga a little more than a week ago and i cant wait to get back there; i dont think ill have much trouble with my first 4 months there what with having electricity and a pool; im planning on getting a blender and probably a refigerator and working on perfecting the mango smoothie; we'll see;

i dont think its possible to explain how necessary cold drinks are to my life and how much ive grown to appreciate them when they are often nothing more than a pipe dream; i hope i never lose this appreciation but im sure i will sometime in the future; i was telling the other volunteers here that i no longer really feel the changes in the temperature; the only way i can tell if it is hotter is if i look down on my shirt and see that it is soaked in sweat;

i have a haiku that i wrote that i think reflects my desire for all things cold here;

air conditioning

ice cream, milk shakes, and snowcones

refrigerator

i feel as though i could write many more haikus on the subject, but that would be retarded;

anyways, here is a list of things that kompienga has that almost no other peace corps site here has (at least for education volunteers); electricity, a pool, tennis courts, a basketball court, running water (although not in my house), toilets (at the school and the pool), ice, a liquor store, canned vegatables, cheese, a river, mountains (theyre hills really); there are probably some more things that i could add but you get the idea;

the only volunteers ask me if i feel like im not going to get the real peace corps experience; after i stop laughing and thinking of the pool i respond with a firm "i could care less"; when i thought about the prospect of getting this glorious site a few weeks ago, i wondered the same thing; but after i jumped in the pool (the biggest one in burkina by the way) all thoughts of that disappeared; there are certain things i like about the small village life that i have experienced in Bassi; everybody knowing your name, the town figures straight out of a mark twain book, the very villageois style of the life; but kompienga has a lot of that; im just going to be a lot more comfortable when i experience it; anyways, my time is about up; send me some mail, if you have the time that is

i demand (actually im just asking)

beef jerky

tabasco sauce

the ultimate hitchhhikers guide to the galaxy

scholarly books on the works of shakespeare

history books (american, english, european, and african, and big ones too)

textbooks (biology, advanced college level math, physics, chinese, advanced french, and economics)

later

This past thursday, we all found out where we would be spending the next two years of our lives. (insert drumroll here) Actually, i already gave you the name, not that that means anything to you. Kompienga is a town of about 8000 people located 30km from Togo and 45km from Benin. My school has 125 students in the 6eme class and around 70 to 80 in the other 3 classes, so that will be tough. And my nearest neighbor is about 3 hours away in the regional capital of Fada N`Gourma. Actually, i have been told that i have closer neighbors in Togo. Anyways, thats the bad. Here is the awesome part. THERES A POOL!!! which is ridiculously awesome. ill also have electricity at my house which is ironic since im the only one in my stage that didnt bring something that had to be plugged in. But i think im going to get a fridge.

Anyways, im on my way to see the village now with the volunteer im replacing and with my counterpart (he teaches math and physics at the school), so ill have to update later about what the village is really like. the end

last sunday i woke up at around 730 as usual in a pool of sweat, i had begun the night sleeping in my little courtyard outside on a mat but when the ants started biting i opted for sweat over stings. i took a bucket shower after waking and then ate a breakfast of yams and meat on the bone (meat is never boneless) with moon frère sayouba. then Sayouba and I went out for a walk in the area as yet unexplored behind my house. he took me to the dried up lake, the best spot for cell connection in the area and showed me all the trees. then we went back and i left to the village of mara for lunch where we had some peanut sauce and rice and some chicken, freshly killed as always.

i rode my new bike back to my house and began to pack up for the stay in gourcy; sayouba had already left for school in ouahigouya. i said goodbye to my family and rode to the cpl to meet with the volunteers. we played cards and waited until 3 for the 2 o clock bush taxi to arrive. it showed up right on time and piled our bikes right on top of the frame over the back of the 20 year old peugot truck. we hopped in and sat on the two benches inside and then took off.

after almost running into a pack of cows, we stopped about 8 km outside of gourcy to pick up and old man and his moto. as he was holding it onto the back of the truck, a turbillon (a cyclone or dust devil or dust tornado) with a diameter of about 50 feet rumbled into town and ran right over the spot we had vacated. it was unreal