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.