Lab Repairs and Tests

Tim’s voyage to Ouaga with the server was successful. He was able to get to the technician without too many problems. He had to pay a 2000 cfa fee for transporting the server on the bus. The technology fees are sometimes a little outrageous. A bus ticket to Ouaga costs 3000 cfa. When he finally arrived in Ouaga, he waited around at the bus stop for an hour with the school's accountant waiting on the technician to show up. The technician never showed up, so Tim took a taxi to the repair. After a brief review of the server and talking to Tim the technician decided he needed to keep the server and run diagnostics on it. The accountant Okayed that. Once the technician figured out the issue with the server, they would call the school and get the work approved.

Tim had a pretty good time in Ouaga. He was able to hang out with a lot of PC buddies and have good food. Unfortunately, his voyage home was not the most pleasant time. Since he didn’t take his bike to Ouaga he had to use a taxi. He caught one at the main street and road to the bus station. The taxi man helped him get his bag out of the trunk and drove off. Tim went to purchase his bus ticket and found out that his wallet and phone had fallen out in the taxi. Damn. He explained what had happened and the nice ladies selling the tickets said no problem to just pay for the ticket in Boulsa. Tim borrowed someone’s phone at the station to call his and ask the taxi man to bring his stuff back, but no such luck. In the ten minutes it took Tim to do all of that, the taxi man or another passenger had found the phone and wallet and taken it. The phone was turned off and unreachable. As you can imagine Tim was not a happy camper. Luckily he only lost about 8000 cfa, which is about $15.


School for the past two weeks for me has been interesting. My seventh grade class had their first test two weekends ago. Sadly they did not heed my warning of them studying for the exam. Only 25 of the 115 students passed the exam. Most of the students that redoubled from last year passed my exam. The one who didn’t improved her grade by 6 points from last year. I found it pretty funny that after I gave the tests back, one of the redoublers, Moussa, told the students close to him “I told you you have to study for her tests.” The look on the rest of the students’ faces when Moussa said this was a look of disbelief especially when he pointed out that all the test questions were the same as the homework problems, just with different numbers. Hopefully now that they know how my tests are, they will study a little more/better for the next exam.

One week after I gave my seventh graders their test, I gave my sixth graders their first test. Good God I have never heard so many kids complain about a test in my live. This was before they had even taken the test. They did not like the idea that I was only giving them an hour long test. They were insistent that one hour was not a sufficient amount of time to complete the test. I asked them how they knew it wasn't long enough for the test. I asked if they had seen the test. One student said yes. I told them that was great and they would get a zero for cheating. Yeah that made the student retract their yes very quickly and the rest of the class just laughed at them. The day of the test finally arrived and all be a monkey's uncle, one hour was more than enough time for them to complete the test. Most of them completed it in 45 minutes. I told them one hour was plenty of time!


Aside from giving and grading tests, class has been continuing on as usual. I really enjoy my seventh graders. They are very calm and listen to what I say. On the other hand, my sixth graders are really trying to push me, but that's normal. I have two hours of tutoring a week for my kids. They seventh graders really take advantage of the extra help that they can get and the one on one time with me. My sixth graders are still not sure about the whole tutoring thing.

Last week I did have quite a surreal moment. I was chatting it up with the school's truancy officer and one of the new teachers at the school. The new teacher is a first year English teacher. He was complaining about how rowdy the kids are and how sometimes they don't listen to a thing he says. He had one kid put a small rock under his shoe and he would use his foot to scrape it across the cement floor whenever the teacher would begin to talk. I felt bad for the guy so I told him some of the battles I had to face last year. At the end of the how thing I look at the new teacher and told him “Du courage!” This just made me laugh because that's what I got told all last year.


Tim's server has returned from the technician and is working now so hopefully his lab will be open in a couple of weeks. The school had someone out this weekend to look at the AC in the lab. Now both of the air conditioners in the lab are up and working! Next step now is going to be getting Internet to the high school. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for us.

Tim's classes vary from being well behaved and fun to work with to they need beaten with stick to get them to shut up. He is giving his first test next week to all of his classes. That is going to be a lot of work to correct with over 600 students this year. He is going to try and make his tests harder this year to weed out a few more of his students so that he has class sizes that are manageable.


Our weekend in Ouaga was a blast. We did so much this weekend that we need a weekend from our weekend. Friday we got into Ouaga and talked with our holiday teammates for the competition on Saturday. We got plans worked out for the teams which was great. Tim and I relax a little that night and had a milkshake at the Rec Center.

Saturday was a whirlwind. At 9 a.m. We visited Seb's widow and gave our condolences >with several other SE volunteers. Afterwards a group of eight of us headed to SIAO. This is the international art fair. We were blown away by all the beautiful things that were for sale. We spent about 2 hours there and bought two carved chairs, a little hippo stone statue and a mud cloth painting. All and all a great shopping trip and best of all I didn’t have to carry a thing ;) After SIAO we headed back to TH to meet up with our respective teams and help prepare for the party. The party was a huge success! One of my favorite parts was Emily's turkey dress. The food was all wonderful and of course the company was great. Lots of fun memories were made this weekend.

School Time

We have survived our first two weeks of teaching. This year seems to be running a lot smoother for us. The administration is going out of their way to make sure that they are providing us with anything that will make our jobs easier. The Censeur even scheduled our classes so that we have three day weekends! Needless to say both Tim and I are feeling pretty good about our last year here as teachers.

I am teaching two classes of math this year: one sixth grade level and one seventh grade level. I’m still not sure how my two classes will behave this year. I have a sneaky suspicion that the sixth graders are going to be little hellions. As for my seventh graders, I am lucky that I have some repeaters from last year who can talk to the new one and tell them not to try stuff with me. It only ends with me getting mad and them getting reprimanded.

I have decided to continue on with my Peanut Gallery this year. It worked so well last year that I couldn’t think of any other affective way to get the daydreamers to pay attention. I have already had peanuts in both of my classes. One of my seventh graders was a little peeved at being called a peanut and having to sit on the floor in the front. He even had a talk with me after class because he hated it that much. After hearing his side of the story I told him this: If you do not like being a peanut you have two options. One you pay attention during my class and do not fall asleep. Two if you hate being a peanut I will simply send you to the school monitor and he can discipline you. Well needless to say now he is going to try very hard to pay attention during my class, but if he does not, he has said it is ok for me to put him in the peanut gallery. :)

The only other moderately entertaining story I have has to deal with my sixth graders and their homework. I assigned them all the homework problems at the end of the chapter on Thursday and told them they were due on Tuesday. They stared complaining that I had given them way too much homework. 11 homework problems is not too much homework. After about 5 minutes of their whining, I finally said enough! I told them that 11 homework problems was not too much homework, especially since it was due on Tuesday. I then told that if they wanted to continue to complain that I would make the homework due the next day, because then it would be too much homework. As you can imagine 90% of the class quieted down and the other 10% were quickly hushed by the others. Amazingly Tuesday when I collected the homework, only one kid had not completed the assignment.

Tim has seven classes again this year. His schedule is a lot nicer this year. The Censeur really worked on trying to condense Tim’s classes. Last year he would have an hour class then two hour break follow by another class. At least this year he will be able to do more of the secondary projects that he is interested in.

Thus far, Tim has only gotten into a few “battles” with his kids. He is having some trouble getting the kids to take his class and him seriously. They do not like to listen to him at all. This as you can imagine is a big problem, especially when you have 80+ students in your class. Tim has gotten the permission from the Censeur to make the kids do P.E. when they don’t listen to Tim or when they talk back to him. Tim is a little excited about the prospect of making the naughty kids do suicides or up/downs. He knows that after the first time he makes a class participate in his P.E. class, they will more than likely become model students for a few weeks.

Oh Tim is also going to play the Peanut Gallery game this year. Two of his eighth grade classes are my two seventh grade classes from last year. He broke out the game with then on Thursday because a student fell asleep. The students were a bit surprised that Tim plays that same game, but its also familiar. It should be pretty interesting to this year because over have the school will be participating in the peanut game. Its even better because some of the other teachers know about the game and they continue with the game by calling the kids peanuts.

Tim is still working on trying to repair the server. He replaced the motherboard, but now he thinks that BIOS needs to be flashed. Unfortunately the floppy diskette is corrupted and the A drive on the server no longer works. Tim is not at all happy about this new series of problems. He downloaded the BIOS and put it on a thumb drive, but the server is not able to boot from thumb drives. Now Tim is being forced lug the 30 lb server to Ouagadougou. This wouldn’t be such a big deal in most places, but here transport is not the nicest form of getting from one place to another. Tim will have to board a European castoff bus that will be completely packed with people; more people than there are seats. Then the bus will be overloaded with motorcycles, bicycles, furniture, house hold items, chickens, goats and sheep. Then the overloaded bus must traverse 56K of pothole ridden dirt road. Then its another two hours driving on a paved road and he will arrive in Ouaga. Then the fun really begins as he will have to negotiate for a taxi to take him to the transit house. I imagine the negotiation will be a lot harder than usual since he will be traveling with a big computer. Good Luck Tim!


Surreal is doing very well. In all honesty, she is a little pistol. She loves to play games, especially when it is bedtime. She goes to school in the afternoons when I offer math tutoring. The students are very intrigued by our “American” style dog. They find it very hard to believe that she is actually a Burkinabe dog. They love to watch her do tricks. The administration at the school just love to say high to her and shake her paw.

As far as the weather goes its still not too bad out. The temperature hasn't really been too hot at all. Of course we still break sweats when we bike anywhere. Compared to last year the temperature seems a lot cooler. I don't know if we have just adapted to the weather better than we think or if it is cooler this year.

One thing that has been a little weird is that it is still raining here. Last year all the rains had stopped by the first week of September. This year we are still getting some showers. Its nice though because the temperature drops so much when it does rain.

The dog days of Summer

Summer blog 2

Tim's Time at Training
It's been a couple of months since we got back to BF and things have been pretty busy for me and slow for Becky. After flying in I headed out to work training for the new volunteers. There are almost 80 new trainees and we were moving to Koudougou. It is one the largest towns in BF about an hour south of Ouaga. Unfortunately most of the trainers and staff had never spent time there. It was hectic trying to find the stores that the trainees were asking for. After about a week, we had a list of a few restaurants, a couple of grocery stores, and an internet café for everyone to go to. Training itself was pretty busy. The trainees just started model school and were stressing out over having to teach in French. I had to teach a couple of classes as a demonstration, then they started teaching. They were doing a good job and it was interesting to see how they started and where the took the classes. They would sometimes teach a lesson I would have never thought of or thought wasn't practical, but it worked and their classes seemed to understand the ideas they were trying to get across. I also planned a couple of other technical sessions on IT setups/options and a session on Positive Deviance.

The work hasn't been too hard it is just difficult to get back into the habit of working from 8 to 5. The new trainees are a good group through and I can't wait for them to swear-in. There are 22 new teachers, 7 of which are IT teachers. The group is much different than our group last year. Most of their experience is in end-user things like Excel, graphic design, and such. There are also 4 women in this group. Quite a bit different than our group of all guys who have been working in tech rooms trying to fix broken things.

Becky was there for the last two weeks of training. All of the trainees were getting pretty excited about being done with training. It was very interesting being on the other side of training and watching them. It brought back some good memories of the last weeks, particularly Becky's last language test. During her last interview, she spent most of her time trying to explain Harry Potter to someone who has never heard of the story and has drastically different ideas about magic/wizards. It must have turned out OK because she passed her LPI. She spent time talking with the people who hadn't made language level trying to calm their fears. She gave them the same advice that we got last year, that you'll learn a lot more in the month that you're in site by yourself, and that it comes a lot easier when you're in site because you have to speak French all the time and there isn't an American buffer.

We had our mid-service conference in the middle of August. It was basically a glorified doctor's visit with a one day meeting where we got to talk about our “feelings” on our service thus far and what we hope for the next year. Becky got reelected to the VAC, the student council for volunteers. It was nice to get to see everyone again. It was the first time that we had seen everyone since January.

After mid-service, we went to a tree planting in Dori. It was a bit of a hassle for Becky and her friend Lorena because they were in charge of recruiting volunteers. Getting hold of 80ish volunteers is not easy. We are notorious for not answering our phones and refusing to commit to anything. The tree planting went better than expected, but was still an event that happened in BF, interesting to say the least. Buses getting stuck, another trying to tip over, pee breaks every 45 minutes if not sooner, and planting almost 20,000 trees. Overall opinion of tree planting: SUCCESS.

Swearing in was a great time this year. The ceremony was at the new American Embassy. The First Lady of BF came and gave a speech. The Embassy is beautiful and the refreshment after were wonderful. Even the weather cooperated and was wonderful.

Becky just had her 25th birthday. It was the best one she has had in the last couple of years. It started raining in the morning and then stayed cool the rest of the day. We both went and got out our hoodies since it was only 75 degrees out. We got to use our new camp oven and I made a stuffing pot pie thing and we had a bottle of wine. Becky was Queen of the Computer for the day so I suffered through Cougar Town, True Blood, and Julie & Julia. She got phone calls from both parents which was nice. Now she has all the scuttle on both families. She is such a gossip hound. :P

NB Thanks Matt for fulfilling Becky's B-day wish.

Summer Update

Hello everyone

Its been a while since we last blogged so there is a lot to catch you up on.

May was the last month for regular classes. Our school wanted grades turned in by the 15 which the kids loved. Tim helped an English teacher at out school with the last month of class. He got to listen to their final projects. The students were given topics in the beginning of the year to research and write a final paper on in English. Tim had quite a few students visiting our house because they needed help translating their papers.

In the beginning there was some confusion on the students parts because they thought that if they wrote the paper in French Tim would translate it all into English. He broke their hearts when he would send them home and make them work on translating it. Translating the papers was quite interesting to be sure. There were times when both of us would be working on translating one sentence because it used an idiomatic phrase. The students didn't quite understand why a translation just can't be word for word. Tim explained to them about fluidity and that word for word translation doesn't have that. They seemed to understand that idea but didn't know exactly how to execute it in English.

I also helped one group translate there paper. Lets just say I was completely floored when they handed me print-offs from the Internet and had circled paragraphs and numbered them for order. When I question them what was this, they said well this is our paper. Here is the first paragraph then the second is on this article and so on. I was dumbfounded and didn't know how to explain to a bunch of sophomores that you can't do that. Trying to explain academic integrity was an interesting feat. They didn't understand that they couldn't use whatever article they found off the internet as their own. They told me that they had found it so it was their work. It was a long day explaining to them that they couldn't do that. I was able to get them to redo their introduction and first paragraph correctly with original writing, paraphrasing and quotes. When those two rewrites took them 3 hours to complete they told me that they were done with my way of writing because it took way to long. So they returned to their direct translation for their paper.


As for my class, well it was pretty interesting to say the least. After I gave the class a final exam, which only a third of all the kids passed, we had a game week. I brought in a bunch of activities for the kids: word search, suduko, geometry bingo, Izzy, I Spy jigsaw puzzle. The kids had a blast. They all really loved bingo. It took them a few times to caught on, but once they learned that if they got a bingo they won a sticker and got to be a caller, the game was on :)

During the last couple of days for class, I would go into class and have a general chatting session. The kids really got into this. They started asking really interesting questions. One student wanted to know how agriculture worked in the U.S. They couldn't believe the way we do ours versus their way. Here everyone does subsistence farming. They also got really interested in the way the U.S. Government works. Congress was really an interesting subject to then and the process that is used to get a new law in the U.S. They also loved learning about the interesting things that some of our Presidents did. Of course Barak Obama is still their favorite, but they also really liked Abe Lincoln too. They thought George Washington was a pretty interesting guy too, but they think his hair is funny.


At the end of the school year, there is a teacher party. Ours started at 7 a.m. With a soccer match. Tim participated in the match. He didn't do half bad either. He was instructed to attack the ball and not the person. Tim just apologized and said that he was used to American football not European football. The game ended with Tim's team wining. He was pretty stoked about wining his first soccer game in Africa.

After the match, all the teachers went to the orphanage in Boulsa. Every teacher had donated 1000cfa to buy soap for the kids. After everyone gave money, we were able to buy 2 entire boxes full of soap for the orphanage. As you can imagine they were very grateful. We received a tour of the orphanage. It was a pretty surreal experience for me seeing an African orphanage. I can't really explain what made it so unreal. It was like I was watching a movie back in the U.S., but I was there. When you watch a movie that depicts a third world orphanage, they do a pretty good job of it. The metal cribs all in a row was probably the most striking thing I saw there. It was a really good experience to go and see the orphanage and meet the people who run it.

After the orphanage, all the teachers and spouses went to the school for lunch. While all the women, including me, were busy preparing the lunch, all the men were having tea and playing games. Cooking lunch with the Burkinabé women was pretty interesting. They got pretty rowdy and started joking around which made the time pass pretty quickly. They of course all made fun of me for how I cut up onions and tomatoes. They tried to imitate my cutting style, but that just ended up with them cutting themselves. The riz gras was finally ready to serve around 2 and boy were the guys excited to have something to eat.

After lunch everyone went home to sleep and get ready for the big party that night. We were told the party started at 8 so we showed up at 8. Everyone else kinda
trickled in for the party. I believe our principal finally got there a little before 10! Dinner wasn't served until midnight. We were not informed of this late dinner so we were both famished and exhausted by the time the food got there. We quickly ate our food, took a spin around the dance floor and called it a night. WOW! It was a long day :)


After school was finished, Tim spent most of his free time studying for his CCNA exam. As for me, I was lazy and relaxed. I read a couple of good books and hung out. Tim and I took a mini vacation May 28-30 in Ouaga. We used this time to just relax in an a/c room and watch a couple of movies. We also did some souvenir shopping.
May 31-June 5 we were up north for training of trainers. Both Tim and I are so excited to be trainers for the new volunteers that are here. We had a blast at the training event. A lot of our friends are trainers too so that made for an awesome time.

When we got back to site, it was a whirlwind. I was so busy getting everything prepared for our vacation home. There was so much to do and I had only 5 days to do it before I had to be back in Ouaga for VAC. Luckily Tim and I got everything done that we need done for the trip just in time. I headed to Ouaga and Tim followed me 1 days later.


June 15 was an exciting day. Tim, Emma and I were on the same plane. Once we got on the plane it was like stepping forward in time 50 years. The trip home was absolutely amazing. We ran pretty much none-stop the entire time we were home. Tim played a lot of golf. We did some shopping. We ate a ton of food. Each of our families had reunions, so it was great to get to see so many people. We got to visit with friends too. I had a couple of bridal showers to go to too. Oh we also participated in a golf outing on our 2 year anniversary. Tim won the bull's eye trophy and I won woman’s longest drive. Tim also got his CCNA certification! Going home was wonderful. Its pretty hard being several thousand miles away, but coming home made everything worth it.


Now we are back in country and continuing on with our second year. Tim is currently helping out at stage and I'm in site. He's having to work hard each day from 7:30-5:30. Me on the other hand, I am whiling away the time in village. I have been busy reading books (3 thus far), cross stitching (just finished the second bib), taking Surreal for lots of walks (trying to get her leash trained), and visiting with all our friends. They really love hearing about everything we did back home. They are particularly interested in golf and how that all works.

Well until next time. We miss you all and hope everything is going well.

Congratulations to Chance & Mary C.
Brian & JoJo
Curtis & Julie

It Rained!

Everything has been going pretty good lately. The hot season finally broke last week when it rained for the first time this year. It was wonderful. At night the temp got down around 80 and the daytime high was only in the mid 90s. We have been living it up with cold water and good nights of sleep. It is nice to go through a day and not sweat the entire time. With the rains it has started to green up around here. Our moringa trees have started to get much more bushy. The Burkinabe are worrying about malaria because of the rains.


The school year is winding down and everyone is getting excited about that. Becky just finished giving her final exam to her classes. I think that everyone involved is pretty happy to have finished the year. Now she is getting ready to start game week.

I have had a couple of meetings about my lab. The first was with the professors. The meeting started off with them bitching for an hour about not getting paid enough, which is not usual but stupid considering they are some of the best paid people in Burkina. When we got around to the lab, they were being about as unhelpful as possible, but they were demanding to use my room to calculate their grades. After coming up with every excuse they could think of for not wanting to help me, they said they would wait and see what the parent's association would say at their meeting. I was not surprised but still pissed.

The meeting with the parents was quite the adventure. I was the only professor that was there, along with the school administration. There were about 30 parents who ranged in age from late 20s to early 60s. Of course, the administration had to sit in front on the teaching platform, but then they made me sit up there with them. Not exactly where I wanted to be. So front and center of the parents, I try to act like I'm paying attention while the whole meeting is conducted in Moore. Watching the Censeur and Proviseur try to explain computers in Moore in hilarious. There is absolutely no vocabulary for it and the words they were using just made me want to laugh. Afterward everyone came over to my lab to take a look around and saw where the problems were and why I was asking for help. I turned on a computer and wrote a couple of sentences in Moore and that thoroughly impressed them. After the meeting finished, Censeur told me that the parents had agreed to help out by having every student pay a 1000cfa technology fee. That is 2 beers at the bar or a beer and a plate of rice and sauce with some change left over. It was nice to finally get some help from the community.

After the meetings I left for a training in Ouahigouya, where we had are stage. The training was over a method of influencing a community to solve it's own problems, called positive deviance. Basically it means that in every community there are individuals or groups of individuals who are more successful with the same resources. The training described how to get the community to decide which problems it wanted to address and then how to find the people who were successful in spite of the problem. To practice we visited 3 communities, and were trying to increase the rate of girls enrollment at school. It was an interesting exercise if not the most effective because of time restraints.

We have started to have some clothes made here by the local tailors. For Becky it has been interesting to say the least. Her tailor is either extremely busy or forgetful or a little of both. Becky will drop off some cloth to be made into a shirt or skirt and the tailor will say to come back in a week. Week passes and she goes back; “Not finished, come back tomorrow” Next day still not done and Becky gives her a couple days during which the tailor decides to go to Ouaga for vacation for a week. This is how the getting your clothes game is played in B.F. After she finally came came back it took another two weeks to finally get everything, and only one of the things fit, so back to the tailor is was. There is no just going to the mall in search of what you want. (Becky swears her tailor likes to play hide and seek with her)

Surreal has been doing good, but I think that she might be a little racist. She doesn't like it when Burkinabe come over to the house and will go hide under the bed. When our PCMO visited she didn't come out for the entire two hours that he was at the house, not even for treats!! Otherwise she has been doing good. Becky says she's getting too pudgy and doesn't like it when she flops in her lap. Surreal has been pulling guard duty until about 4am then she starts trying to sneak into bed with us. Some days this works much better than others. (N.B. She isn't allowed in bed) We're finding out that she takes after Desi in being a bed-hog.

Smooth Sailing

Hello everyone

We both hope that you all had a wonderful week. We had a pretty nice week here in Boulsa. The temperature on average here all week was around 113oF. Most of the time we really don't notice the heat anymore. The only time we really do “feel” the heat is when there is no wind and the air just hangs. That is about the time that Tim and I will be sitting in the house reading a book and just sweating buckets. Its also the same time that we start to reminisce about Illinois winters. We miss ice so much now. We used to be able to it in village, but with the hot season in full swing, we are lucky to by cold water now. You just got to love African spring time :)


School News:

Tim has unofficially received his confirmation from Censeur that his lab is not getting any money from the school to fix the a/c. This means that Tim is completely done with his IT teaching. Now he is having to find something else to fill his time. He is trying to get the ok from the school to help the 3éme and terminal students study for there oral exams in English. It makes since to us that having your students practice speaking English with native speakers is a huge benefit to the students, but by doing that we might be stepping on the English professor's toes.

Otherwise Tim has been filling his days studying for his CCNA. He only has four chapters left to study out of one book and then he has another 1000 or so page book that he wants to read before we come home. I have never seen him study so much in my life. He is studying as much as I did in college. There have been a couple of times when he has studied for 4-5 hours at a time and I have had to ask him, “Who are you and what have you done with my husband?” His response is to smile and say that he really wants to get certified.

School went really well for me this week.
Both of my classes were absolute angels. I gave each class a little speech for their first day of the new trimester. It pretty much told them that they only have two more chapters in the book. They have one more regular exam and then the final exam. I also told them that if everyone was really well behaved for the next three weeks that they would have a huge surprise after the final exams. They all seemed really excited by this news. I have planned two full weeks of math and critical thinking games for the kids. I'm also planning on giving them bonus points if they all work in earnest on the games for the two weeks.

Funny story time: Four days out of the week, I have one class for two hours a day. Some days, especially around 10, the kids get pretty tired. This whole year, when the kids get that way I make everyone stand up and dance with me. I did this one Wednesday for about 5 minutes. The students absolutely love this and think that I am completely insane. Anyway, when I was getting finished and told them to all sit down, half the class said, “What about walking like an Egyptian.” I could not believe my kids. They all love that move. So of course I obliged them and we all walked like Egyptians. If another professor was to ever walk by my class when we are dancing, there are going to be ton of questions.



Surreal has been pretty cute this week. She has this fetish with digging massive holes in our courtyard. Tim decided to fill them all in one afternoon and during that same night, Surreal dug them all back out and dug a new one too. When we saw this the next morning we both just laughed. We have joke that the holes are booby traps for the thieves. We have also come home and found her toys and our cannery bottles in these holes.
Other than her digging, she has been up to the usually stuff. She chases flies all around the house. She absolutely refuses to come out from under our bed between 1 p.m. and 3-4 p.m. She has the opinion that repo is not only for humans, but her as well. She and I also have squirt bottle fights every night. She loves getting squirted with water. If she hears use using it without her, she sprints into the house and gets right in our faces.

Whiling away our vacation

HAPPY EASTER!!!

Good morning everyone. We hope that you were all good boys and girls this year and the Easter Bunny came and visited you last night :)

Things are going pretty good here. We have been enjoying our two weeks off from school. Well, Tim has had a bit more time off from school. It looks like he is most likely is done for the rest of the school year too. He is on the fence about liking the free time and not having anything to break up his day. I can understand that completely. These past 5 days have gone by so slowly. I have been rather lazy though. I have been trying to grade my last test over break, but its not easy to motivate yourself when you know that you don’t have school again until April 6. Thus it has taken almost 3 weeks to grade tests that normally take me only two or three days to grade.

One of our greatest accomplishments this break has been giving Surreal Pig. This is her new favoritest toy ever. She is rarely seen without him. She carries him around most of the day, it is pretty cute, but then again we are a little bias. She even tries to take him outside when we are not looking. We installed a doggie door for her in our screen door. To do this we cut a hole in the screen and sewed pagne on each side of the hole to keep bugs out. Surreal wasn’t to sure about it when we fist introduced her to it. We had to bribe her with treats on each side until she got used to going in and out of the doggie door. Now she loves that door. She likes being able to come in during the night and try and me to play with her. She is too cute ;)

Well on different note, March passed with no rain in the East. Now the Burkinabe are worried that this means drought year. We are not really sure what that means for the people here in Boulsa. Everybody farms and there is no irrigation system. We aren’t sure how many people rely solely on farming. Everybody here just hopes to get a little bit of rain soon.

Well that’s all we have for right now. Hopefully the next blog will have some interesting school stories. Have a Happy Easter!

Road Trip

Hi everyone

Well not a whole lot has changed these past two weeks. We have been on Easter break for a week now, which is amazing. Tim and I have spent the entire last week just lazing about. We have caught up on some of the movies that were sent over to us. We are going to start watching West Wing this coming week :)
Tim and I took a little trip two weekends ago. We biked 40k to Dave's site and stayed a night there. We got to watch a soccer game between the teachers and kids at the school. It was a really interesting game. There was a man running around the field flicking a camel tail for good luck. It was so funny for us to see that, but weird at the same time. The man truly believes that flicking the tail at the field will send good gri-gri to the game. That night we make some pasta and sauteed veggie sauce by flashlight. That was such an interesting experience. The next morning we left Dave's and took our first bush taxi to Emma's site. The bush taxi was fun, but we got so dirty from it. There was a ton of dust in the air that weekend because of the wind. The sky was literally a haze of dust. Thus when we were riding in the bush taxi and they think it is better to keep the windows open to allow the dust to flow through the car, we were filthy by the end of the hour ride. It was really fun though. Emma's site is big. We were so impressed by everything we saw there. She even has a paved road in her village! The next day the three of us took a bush taxi to Kaya. This city is amazing. They have a leather market there. We are definitely going to have to visit there one more time before coming home. I really want one of their leather purses. Later that afternoon, we caught transport out to Mike's site. 10 other PCVs visited Mike's to kick back and chill. We went to a bar and had beer and chicken. The night at Mike's was absolute craziness, but it was fun too. The next morning, Tim and I headed back to Kaya and decided that we didn't want to wait four hour for transport so we started biking home. Along the way back home we stopped in at Rob's site and visited him for a half hour. We biked 40 of the 90k back to our village. It was a lot of fun and the road was so pretty. Tim did take in a little too much sun so he was a little sick later that night, but he was better the next morning.

Refraction Period

March 13, 2010
Hey there

Well this blog is not such a downer to be sure. Things have gotten a lot better in village. Tim and I are back into the swing of TIA. Sometimes it is very hard for us to live our lives here in Africa because we are Americans and the way of life is so completely different. Just to reassure everyone that yes we have our ups and downs and our descents to the Earth’s core, we value all the experiences we have had here.
Tim got to spend an extra week in Ouaga two weeks ago. He is undergoing some tests for a toe that has gone numb. More than likely he has a pinched nerve somewhere, but he needs to get some more tests done.
Tim is also acting as the liaison in-between the IT committee and bureau. He is really excited about getting to work closer with the administration. The IT committee is really doing an awesome job to develop a website for the BF volunteers. They have a public side up and working for everyone to look at. Burkina Public website They are also working on the background stuff for the volunteers. It gives them a chance to save their work and then it gets passed on for future volunteers to look at and use.
As of right now Becky is done with second trimester. Her kids are finally starting to behave again. The Vice Principal was pretty rough on them, but now they are starting to stop being rude. I think that a lot of the troubles that we were having had to do with the heat. The kids hate being in class and we aren’t much better at times. Now that it has heated up, I’ve had to close my lab. My computers were getting really hot and I was starting to worry that they would burn up. I have been telling the school that they needed to have the air conditioning fixed but they don’t want to spend the money to maintain the lab. It is really frustrating when you want to help, but they are fighting you every step of the way. So now I’m just hanging out and working on other projects around the house. Becky and I have been working on a way to make charcoal from field waste, biochar. We are hoping to get people to stop using wood charcoal. Thus far we have been able to get the charcoal made. Now we are working on a formula for how to compress the charcoal into briquettes. This is the hard part of the process. We need to thank Ryan Smith and Leslie Coleman for the idea and doing a lot of the work while they were PCVs in the Gambia.

The Descent

15 Feb 2010
Hello everyone

February was a pretty hectic month for both Tim and I. School is now near the end of the second trimester so everyone is super busy. The kids have been something this past month, and I’m not sure what that something is.
Most of the family knows that I had a rough month teaching in Feb. The kids were just being horrible. They were not respecting me or the other students in the class. Many of them were being super disruptive during class. They refused to listen to anything that I said during class etc… Well I found out what my limit was one morning and I literally walked out of class and had to go take a break. I went to the teacher’s room to just take a moment to try and collect myself and the kids followed me there. They were demanding forgiveness for upsetting me. Oh it was so not what I needed. I finally had to explain to them that I am an American and right now I am so frustrated with the class that they just need to give me time to sit and calm down. That worked, thank god. After that, the other teacher sitting in the room greeted me and asked me how my day was going. So the wrong question to ask… I told him exactly how my day was going. By the end of my venting session I was looking into the face of one terrified Burkinabé. His only comment was ‘Wow, you Americans like to talk about your feelings.’ After that I went and talked with the Vice Principal of the school and laid out everything that had been going on in front of him. I told him there is no way I can continue to teach here with them acting like this. Having kids laugh at you for punishing them is not a helpful way to manage a classroom. I do give props to the man he completely understood everything I told him and my feelings on it. He told me that Peter, the volunteer before us, had many of the same problems, but the second year is much easier. He told me that he would go and talk to my two classes.
The day kept on getting worse after school too. I stopped by Tim’s room and told him that I need to get away for site. Luckily we had planned a trip to Ouaga that weekend. He was supportive of my need to go to Ouaga. After that I went to the marché. That was where things hit bottom. My best friend in village was being absolutely obnoxious. She wouldn’t lay off on how Tim and I are going to need to take her to the States with us because it would look good if we were friends and I didn’t do that. She continued on how we need to obtain the visa and passport for her and buy the plane tickets. I tried to tell her its not possible blah blah blah. We are volunteers thus we do not earn a salary. She was not satisfied with any of those answers. Then she invited me to a fete that was going on that weekend. I politely declined saying that Tim and I were going to Ouaga. She demanded to know why. I explained that I really need to have a nice long conversation with my family and it was easier to do that in Ouaga. Well was the wrong answer because then she started telling me that I was such a baby and needed my mother to suck on boob… I tried to tell her to stop, but she wouldn’t listen and then the other veggie ladies started to join in and I finally had to just walk away.
On the way home I started to lose it. Once I turned the corner that lead to our house I just started crying. I cried for over three hours that day it was horrible. Tim and Surreal were super helpful and supportive.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t stop here either. That afternoon, I went back to school to “help” Tim and to just get away from our neighborhood kids. Well Tim had finally hit his limit too. His kids are also super disrespectful and refuse to listen to him. He walked 3 kids over to the Vice Principal’s office and had a chat. One kid did run away on the walk over to the office.
Thank god Tim and I left for Ouaga the next morning. We were both very much in need of a break. Tim participated in a softball tournament that weekend. The PC team did really well. They almost one a trophy! Check out the pictures
The break from village was really nice. After that, I did much better dealing my classes.

Ghana Anyone

Our trip to Ghana was quite the experience. Transport was interesting to say the least. We left Ouagadougou at 8 in the morning. Its was 20 hours in a bus until we reached Accra. It wasn't the worst transport we've taken but definitely wasn't very fun. When we finally got into Accra we hopped a taxi over to the airport to pick up the family. The airport was pretty nice for a smaller airport and there was a pretty good Chinese Restaurant there. As the parents arrived we called the hotel and they sent a shuttle to pick us up. Lambadi Beach Hotel was pretty amazing. The landscaping was gorgeous tropical rainforest. There was a good sized pool to swim in and then we had direct access to the beach. The beach was beautiful if crowded. Having private access was nice and hard at the same time. Once you left the private area there were venders everywhere trying to selling you things. That isn't so bad but the fact that they mark the price up 4 or 5 times the real price, then won't budge on their price. Becky and I are used to discussing prices to a reasonable level but this was ridiculous and really annoying. Once you got by the venders and into the water, it was pretty fun. The water was perfect and the surf wasn't too heavy. We tried to body surf a little and it was fun. Becky had some extra friendly Ghanians wanting to teach her how to swim until she told them she was married to me. Getting a town of Accra was OK, nothing too horribly interesting. The Makola Market was fun to go to and we found so really nice cloth there. When we went to the Cultural Center we were swarmed before we even got out of the car. The venders there were assholes and completely ridiculous. We gave up trying to shop there after about 20 minutes. To finish the tour out we had a great lunch at an American style sports bars called Chaps. Speaking of food, the breakfast buffet at the hotel was to die for. It was like a real American breakfast buffet. There was eggs, bacon, two kinds of sausage, and the best fresh fruit I've ever had. Becky and I ate till we were nearly sick. It was fabulous.

After 3 days in paradise, we had to take transport back. The way down wasn't pleasant but not unpleasant. On the way back the driver stopped every hour to hour and a half for something. Then when we stopped to get gas, he took and hour and a half and then had only filled one of the tanks. So he let half of us on then had to circle around for my gas then back for the rest of the passengers. It was so bad that the Africans were staring to get pissed at him.

As we finally got in, the parents and I hopped a cab to the local transport and just got on a bus out to Boulsa. So after 26+ hours of travel we spent another 4 hours getting to Boulsa. We were exhausted when we got in. The parents seemed to enjoy site quite a bit. They were interested in meeting all the people that we work with and seeing where we usually go. The lycee was abandoned because of Christmas break, but I showed them my room and one of Becky's. After a whirlwind tour there we headed back to Ouagadougou for another couple of days and me supposed to be going to In-Service Training.

I didn't make all that much of training, but Becky was able to catch me up in about 5 minutes. We went out to Artisan Village and spent a lot of time and money, and found some pretty cool stuff. We got to eat at some pretty good food. Chris, Dad and I went golfing at the Ouagadougou Country Club. It was pretty entertaining. We had two caddies for our clubs and AstroTurf. Then a guy for smoothing out the oiled-sand greens. Then our taxi driver and his wing man carried our drinks. The hazards were either painted or you didn't get to use AstroTurf, plus the occasional livestock wandering across the fairway.

The last day of vacation was spent tracking down souvenirs for everyone. It was fun and stressful at the same time. Then we hung out at the airport for a couple of hours before the flight buying random stuff and talking with a RPVC about his business in BF.

Second Trimester (Like a Tornado in a trailer park)

January 25, 2010
Hi everyone

Well getting back into the swing of things here has been more than a little crazy. Being away from site for three weeks and then coming back, well you have to pacify a lot of people. The Burkinabè are somewhat touchy when they think that you have been ignoring them. To get back into their good graces, well that requires sitting at the marché for several hours and telling them every detail of your trip. Oh and don't forget to buy everyone something to drink. You really have to love the way things operate here.

School is getting more and more interesting every day. I started off the second semester by giving my kids an hour long lecture on the importance of an education. Good Lord, I am so tired of trying to explain to the why they should want to be educated. I told them not only does it get you a better job in life which means more money and a healthier family, but it is the one thing in life that no one can steal from you. That impressed them to some extent, but not a whole lot. Nope what impressed them about being educated was me going off and telling them all of these random facts about every subject I could think of. The kids had a lot of fun asking me about anything they could think of and hearing what I new about each thing. Now the only down side is my students now think I am somewhat of a freak. They are thoroughly impressed that any one person could know so much information and the fact that I'm a girl as well! Yep I have officially blown the minds of 180 kids here in Boulsa :) Now lets just see if this can get them to be even slightly motivated to learn something.

Tim is having a lot of fun trying to teach his students to type. I must admit that it is a little funny to watch them type. Imagine trying to teach someone who has never used/seen a computer before how to type. Oh it is beautiful. Tim is constantly having to run and answer questions because the thing isn't thinging:) Yes they really do say that in French. He does have his students a little worried since one of their tests for the semester is a typing test. They have to have a typing speed of 20 words a minute to advance to the next trimester.

I have discovered just how flexible I am here. I was suppose to give a test to my class today, but the censeur had left town with my tests locked in his office. No problem though, I was at school 40 minutes before my first class so I would have plenty of time to talk with the proviseur and have him open the office for me. After waiting for 40 minutes for him to finish with a phone call, I had to go to class without talking to him. I did however explain my situation to the secretary and she was going to talk with him when he got off the phone. After my class, I ran back to get my tests since I was giving it right after the 25 minute break. Well that didn't really work out so well because proviseur had went into town. Thus I sat in the secretary's office for 40 minutes watching a documentary in French on the Apocalypse of 2012. I finally abandoned the thought of giving my test today and headed to class 15 minutes late. My class cheered when I told them that I had to move the test to Saturday morning. Tim was really impressed by how I handled the situation especially with my type A personality. Then again, that is a huge part of life here; being as flexible as possible.

Surreal is getting to be quite large now. She is approximately 20lbs now! She is super cute and more than willing to crawl up in anyone's lap if she is allowed. She is starting to leave things alone like a good doggy should too. We have even started to take her to school with us in the afternoons. The kids think that she is absolutely amazing. They had no idea that dogs could be trained to do things. They told Tim and I it was impossible for dogs to learn anything. When we showed them that Surreal could sit, shake, lay down and stay on command, they were completely baffled. Surreal is really turning into one of our best assets over here. Whenever we have a rough day, we just come home and play with her and she can get us smiling again. I can't wait for everyone to meet her next year.

Oh last week, I proved that once again I am most definitely a Turnquist. Coming home from school, I hit a washed out area in the road and flipped over my bike. Nothing too serious, just some road rash on my elbow and knee and of course bruises. Being a klutz is so not fun over here. I do have the kids at school telling me how pretty my scabs are and they are being sincere.

I'm back now too

It's been a whhile since I last wrote a blog. Things have been going pretty good with me thus far. I gave two tests this trimester to my classes. That was interesting because I wrote the tests to be very easy. The first one was just labeling multiple choice and labeling pictures that I had given them during class then completely reviewed the class before the test. I had some kids that did really well, but there were some who earned a 20% or so. My second test I made quite a bit harder because to continue my class you needed to get a passing average, and 500+ students is a little much for me to handle. The students didn't let me down and continued to be idiots. I wrote 4 versions of the same test and mixed them, so that when they tried cheating the questions were different. The made grading them harder but my entertaining cause I could definitely see who was cheating by their answers. My classes otherwise have been very hit of miss. My younger students tend to not pay attention, and follow the shiny objects. They piss me off cause everyone tries to come to the lab for every lesson. I have 23 computers and 90 students in most of my classes. That doesn't work. I made lab groups for them and they completely ignored those and tried to fight their way in. One of the classes was actually fight so much that they broke the door handle. I was not amused.

The house is coming along great. Becky finished the mural and it looks awesome. That was a lot more work than we had planned it to be. The garden was coming along well then Surreal decided to dig it up. We are going to try again by planting in basins and putting them up on tables. Hopefully that will keep her out of them. Plus we built a fence around where we want the garden to go next time.

Surreal is getting huge now. She loves playing with the neighbor dogs and ends up running off quite a bit. Not a big deal though, we just leave the door open enough for her to come back in and eventually she does. She loves playing tug of war but hasn't quite got the tug part down yet. We are teaching her to fetch and she likes chasing the balls and bringing them back.

Story time with Tim and why he's not allowed to come to Ouaga alone anymore. I came to Ouaga in December to watch some football with a couple of the other guys and to relax at the end of the trimester. Getting to Ouaga was no big deal and I relaxed at the Transit House for most of the day. I put my stuff on a bed knowing that I had reserved a spot a couple of weeks earlier. Fast forward to getting to Rec center where we can watch the games. We cram 7 people into a taxi about the size of my Saturn. Along the way we nearly caused a moto accident cause a lady was staring at us instead of the road. We arrive and get good food, good games, and find some other good people working in BF. Afterward our group is now 10 people and we are trying to find a couple of cabs to take us home. the search isn't going to well, when a plain white panel vans pulls over and offers us a ride. He tells us that white people shouldn't be walking at night. I'm not hte one talking to the guy and can't see him at all and I'm that if I look closely enough at this van I can find FREE CANDY written somewhere on the side. We climb in anyway and there are no seats, just the empty rear. Come to find out, the guys is from Canada helping out here and knows exactly where our house is cause we're kinda a big deal. I get to relax at the TH until midnight when the guard calls me over to ask some people to leave and then tells me that I need to leave too. Not Cool its midnight, I don't have another room and I know that I reserved a spot and that I was at the house way before some others who are getting to stay. Doesn't matter, I still have to leave with 4 other people. One of the other volunteers takes pity on us to try and find a place to sleep for the night. The first place we try is already full and the second option we are told is the same way. After wandering about a mile is find a hotel with a couple of rooms open at 1am. So much for a good nights sleep.

The next morning, I decide to stop off at the office to check my mail and use the internet. Walking down the main road, I have to dodge a rampaging donkey cart. Then on the side street, I'm nearly trampled by a horse that got lose and was trying to make a break for it. Later in the day I applied to my visa to Ghana for the trip with my parents. That went surprisingly well and they told me to come back the next day to pick it up. When I went back to pick it up the next day, there was a small group of us who were picking up visas and one guy who was applying. The visa cost 15000 cfa, but he only had 10000 with him. Not a big thing and one of the other people of going to let him borrow another 10000, but the embassy somehow doesn't keep change of any kind. We check around and I see that I have exactly 5000 in my wallet between small bills and change. I give him that and we head off. We were having a hard time getting a single cab for all of us, so when a taxi with a couple of spots open appeared the other guy and I jumped in. After 10 seconds I asked if he had any money cause I didn't. After 20 seconds we jumped back out cause neither of us had and I'm sure the driver thought that we were insane.
The rest of the trip goes pretty smoothly. On transport back to sight we nearly hit a donkey on three different occasions. Avoiding a donkey involves slamming the brakes a hard as you can on a bus with no seat belts or shocks. Not the greatest time. And this is why I don't get to come to Ouaga alone anymore.

Sorry no pics but we'll put a bunch up the next time we come to Ouaga.

We're Back!

Hi everyone

No Tim and I are not dead. We have just been busy with the end of the first trimester and Tim's family coming over to see us. Well we have also been I suppose a little lazy too. Have no fear though, you are in for a very long update. What have we been up to for the last two months?

School for Becky:

Ok so school for me has been pretty interesting. Last blog, we wrote about my first exam. Well as most of you already know, it was rather brutal. One class had 29 students pass the exam and 20 in the other. Lets just say that I went through quite a few pens while I was correcting there tests. Most of you can imagine how I felt, having 49 kids out of 180 pass is not stellar. My opinion is that the kids just didn't study. I had a nice chat with each class and I told them that I have no idea how they all didn't pass the exam. I explained that every question on the exam was a homework problem with different numbers. Some of the questions I didn't even change the numbers. Sigh...

After the first exam, I started our first section of geometry. I was hoping that the kids would be really good at geometry since algebra really isn't their thing. Teaching geometry is very interesting here. I teach straight out of the book, but I do not always agree with how the book presents certain concepts. I usually only teach what is in the book, but there are some concepts that are extremely difficult for the kids to understand, so I have started incorporating my own way of explaining different concepts. I will admit that the kids think I am exceptionally bizarre. One of my favorite sections this time was trying to explain the different types of symmetry. Most of you can probably recall your teachers doing the whole manipulation of you hands to see the different types of symmetry. I did that same activity with my kids and wow, they went nuts. I have never experienced anything like it. First the kids look at you like you are some alien creature and then one of the kids finally sees what you are showing them and get all excited and explain it to their neighbor. After that, the race is on, all the kids are manipulating their hands and their neighbors to get all the types of symmetry.

I gave my second exam at the beginning of December. I had a lot of fun creating the exam. I got to draw a few images and I used African animals on the name the type of symmetry section. The kids laughed when they saw the animals on the test. I was informed however that my lion was sick because he had spots. I laughed to myself and thought poor cheetah, he is going to have a complex with some of the kids thinking he is a lion. Well grading the second test was a treat. One class, I had 24 pass and the other class I had 48 pass. This did not make me extremely happy. I do not understand the differences in the classes. The class that only had 24 pass is the class that I teach second. Thus in theory, they should get better scores because I have worked out all the rough spots in my teaching. Oh what to do, what to do. I am so proud of my 5eme C, having half of the kids pass is amazing. Now I just need to keep those kids motivated and get the others motivated as well. Wish me luck :)

One thing I have learned in my three months of teaching is that pattern recognition is something that these kids can not do. This has certainly made teaching math very challenging. I am hoping to finish the book early this year. I have already gotten through seven chapters and there are 19 in the book. I want to have a few weeks at the end of the year were the kids do nothing by puzzles and brain teasers. I really think that if I can get them to develop even a little pattern recognition, their life will be a hundred times easier.

Oh I almost forgot! I now have a peanut gallery in my room. Ok let me explain. I have trouble with kids not paying attention to the lecture. They will just start staring off into space and I can't get them back. I also have the kids who put their heads down on top of the desk. That is a very dangerous thing for them to do since they love to sleep. I also have the kids who will fall asleep while sitting up. Thus I have three different types of offenders that I just didn't know how to deal with. I really didn't want to kick them out of my class. That only hurts them more; the kids are devastated by getting minus five points on the test every time they are kicked out. I was getting rather frustrated with the kids too. One day while teaching and about 15 kids were not paying attention in one way or another, I had a stroke of genius: the peanut gallery. I explained to the kids what the peanut gallery was in America. They laughed and I told then that if they didn't pay attention to the class they were a peanut and would have to sit in the peanut gallery. The kids were not to sure about this. They new it wasn't a good thing to be in the peanut gallery, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing either. When I tell a kid to sit in the peanut gallery, they have to sit in the front of the room on the floor and take all their notes there too. This helps me to know that they are taking notes and I can make them pay attention by asking all sorts of questions to them. There are some rules to the peanut gallery. The peanuts can only talk with other peanuts and not to the other students. Their name is changed to peanut for the entire day as well.

I have had to add a few other things to the peanut gallery game too. I have had a peanut try to run away to its seat and so I told him he was a mouse. A mouse certainly couldn't sit with peanuts, so he got his own spot on the other side of the room. That same day, I had a peanut who could not stay awake, so she became a mouse too. Well, I could very well watch those two kids while I taught, so I made another student a tiger to guard the mice. If the mice misbehaved again the tiger was to inform me and I would kick them out of class. Oh yeah :) Well this game has gotten quite fun some days. I have had a monkey and an ostrich in the game too. Now the whole school knows about the game and when kids are walking outside and see the peanuts they will yell “Peanut! Peanut!”
Slightly unorthodox....possibly. Highly entertaining....definitely.