February Blog

February has been a pretty fantastic and exciting month here in Burkina Faso. As usual, things are going really well here. The nights are still really cool and comfortable. Needless to say that the hot season has yet to arrive, but I have faith that it is nipping right at our heels.

School has been going really well for me. My students are really becoming very interactive in my classes. I honestly believe that some of them are really starting to like school. Then again I have started to bribe my classes with different things each week if they are well behaved and complete their homework. This is not at all a good thing to be teaching my students, but at this point I honestly just want to them to actively participate in my classes—do their homework.

One of the bribes that I used to get them to complete their homework was an entire 2 hour open room discussion on the U.S. along with a book that I have of Illinois. I had one of the best times in a very long time just chatting with my two classes. They of course were fascinated by the U.S. and everything that we do. We did a lot of comparing between the U.S. and B.F. The students that this was the greatest thing ever since they could better distinguish the similarities and differences between the two. They were super excited to learn about how we do farming in the U.S. When I showed then the book on Illinois and the saw the fields, they were completely blown away that one farmer had a field that large and then even more astounded when I told them that farmers have more than just the one field. It was really a refreshing look on the U.S. seeing things through their eyes. Oh by the way they thing that white tailed deer are one of the coolest animals ever.

Tim had to shut down his lab the last week of February because the heat during the day is too much for the type of computers in his lab. He has talked with the administration and put a little pressure on them to fix the A/C in the lab. I am still amazed that by tying into the electricity in the computer lab for the new building they sent a surge through it and burned up both A/Cs.

Our Country Director, Shannon, came for a site visit the 16th. She walked with us and got to see some of what Boulsa has to offer. She visited the school with the Principal, Tim and myself. She was very impressed by how clean Boulsa is compared to many other places. The community here does a fair job of picking up the used black sachets. Shannon also got to meet with the Vice Principal of the school and the money man. They all of course loved Shannon and loved even more the chance to talk about their school and all the wonderful things that the school has to offer to the kids.

In the afternoon, we accompanied Shannon to a 50th anniversary tour celebration in
Namtenga. This is site where Mike, a former volunteer and president of Friends of Burkina Faso, served out his two years. During his service here, he was part of a well digging stage. He and many of his friends were charged with the job of digging wells in villages that needed them. Mike said that he was able to dig around 25 wells in his two years of service. That is quite a good number to have completed in 2 years and even better; one of the wells still has water in it 30 years later.

The celebration in his village was an amazing sight to behold. The energy in that village and the love that they have for all things Peace Corps was a HUGE boost to all of our morals. They had a welcome party which was practically the entire village there to greet all the volunteers and Shannon. They had masked dancers performing for us. The kids made American and Burkina flags and sang a song for us. There was a different group of men who played instruments and danced as well. We also got to visit the women’s traditional weaving center. They make some of the most beautiful cloth I have ever seen in my life.

The day after Shannon’s site visit, Tim and I traveled to Ouaga for the SOFANWET tournament. This is a small international softball tournament held every year in Ouaga. Peace Corps had a team and we played 3 games. Unfortunately, we did not win a single game, but we had a great time playing. Tim pitched two of the three games and he was a pretty good hitter. Me, well, I got onto base several times, and I had a good hit down 3rd that the baseman caught. It was a great weekend to just be us. We do not get the luxury of just being Americans and blending in very often, so this was a heaven sent. Many of us attended the banquet dinner following the tournament. Some of us participated in the raffle. David won four different items, Michael won a necklace and I won a vase and a 24 pack of Heineken which was shared with my teammates. Good job team Peace Corps!

The end of the month was passed in Kaya with our other volunteers working on Camp Glow. The camp is really coming together. The kids are going to have such a great time at this camp and they will learn so many important things that will help them with the rest of their lives.

January Blog

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the long delay in posting an updated blog. We have been experiencing some difficulties with our Internet key in Boulsa and we are just busy. Whenever we find a free moment to post the blog the Internet key decides it does not want to work. Luckily we finally got the Christmas Blog and the January Blog up :)

January has been pretty good for both of us. We are both rather busy with school. Tim is busy teaching the students how to type on a computer. These students hunt and peck all the time. I am relatively certain that any five year-old in the US could type faster than these kids. After two weeks of using the typing program the students started whining that this was boring and they wanted to continue on to something else. Tim really did not want move on to something else because the students had not learned what they needed to learn. I told him to have them cover their hands and type without looking. Tim thought that was a pretty great idea. Now every day of class, the students have to type the following sentence at least five times: The quick brown fox jumped over the very lazy dog. Needless to say the students are not particularly thrilled to have their hands covered up while they are typing. It’s actually quite comical to watch them try and slouch down in their seats far enough to look at the keyboard.

As for me, I am busy teaching my sixth graders how to calculate the area and parameter or a circle, round numbers, compare two numbers and the basics of fractions. The circle was a breeze. They all memorize the formulas by the next class period. Rounding numbers was a little tricky for then in the beginning. They had a hard time remembering the rule of 5 or greater and you round up, but after a blackboard filled of examples, they finally got it. Comparing numbers was one the best lessons I have ever given. I explained how < and > were the mouth of a crocodile and every crocodile would rather eat more food than less. Of course I did a couple of great demonstrations for the students were I turned some of them into birds and one student into a crocodile. The “crocodile” had to choose the group of “birds” it wanted to eat. All of my students think I am insane now, but I bet you they will never forget how to compare numbers.

My seventh graders have been busy learning how to draw and calculate the volume of cylinders and prisms, multiplying positive and negative numbers, factorization and development, and exponents. They had some trouble learning how to draw perspective drawings of prisms, but after a week of practice, they were back on track. The multiplication was really straightforward for them once they memorized the rules. Factorization and development was one of the easiest chapters for them. I was able to complete the entire chapter with them in 2 hours and that included 30 minutes of exercises. Our current chapter is the exponents. There was some confusion in the beginning between the difference of doubling a number and squaring a number. After a little explaining and several examples everyone caught on. They love figuring out scientific notation.

Tim went to the IT meeting at the end of January. The committee got a lot of things completed. If you would like to check out the website for PCBF it is maintained by the IT committee. Peace Corps Burkina Website. I had a VAC meeting the last weekend of January. The meeting went very well. We were able to get several accomplished with our meeting. We also held elections at the meeting. I am the new President for VAC. Emma is the new Vice President. Althea is the new Secretary.
Tim and I are trying to schedule town meeting for Boulsa to inform them about Camp Glow. Our school’s Secretary is our counterpart for this project. She is going to help us do everything for this camp. We will post more information about Camp Glow soon.

All and all life is going pretty good here in village. We are starting into a very busy time. We have Friends of Burkina Faso in country right now. A site visit from our Country Director as well as our APCD scheduled for next week and March. Tim and I are playing in a softball tournament one weekend. Then we have a meeting for Camp Glow another weekend. I have another VAC meeting. Tim is trying to get another IT meeting scheduled and we have the end of the second trimmest at the end of March as well as our Close of Service Conference. WOW! Talk about being busy. We still have to find time to give exams during all of this as well!

Pictures to come in 2 weeks and February Blog!

December Blog

*Sorry for the delay in posting blogs. The Internet has been a little unreliable.

The first trimester of school is officially finished and we are glad to have reached Christmas break. We have been busy grading the last of our tests and checking with student s that we wrote down their grades correctly. I have had a half of my student ask for exceptions since they didn’t reach the required 50% to continue in my class. It was ridiculous. I gave them a chance for extra credit every Friday for a month and only about 10 took it. All you needed to do was watched a movie and write a little summary of it. So, there are no exceptions, pardons, or extra points in my class. Becky’s students seemed to get the idea that they needed to study. One Friday, there were more than 40 students from Becky’s classes that wanted to watch the movie. Unfortunately I had to turn a few away because I ran out of space in my lab. I hope that the movie night is that popular again, because it is nice to see success.
We just got through Christmas, which was fun and hard at the same time. We missed home a lot, but the people in Boulsa were great. A couple of our neighbors gave us chickens to cook. There was one that was ready to be cooked and another that was still alive. The live one was a bit of an adventure. Becky was the one who answered the door and as soon as the neighbor left, she started to yell for me to come and grab it. Of course neither of us knows how clean a chicken, so Mr. Rooster got to relax outside for a night while we waited to ask Nathanial to clean him for us. He ended up tasting pretty good.

Christmas in village was interesting. Everyone gets dressed up for Church then go visit their neighbors. The kids were very cute in their Christmas best. The girls had on matching dress and the boys were wearing three piece suits. The town was very busy and there have been a couple of huge market days.
We spent a couple of busy days in Ouaga trying to get work done for the Peace Corps. I don’t know how successful it was but we did try. I have spent the last two weeks fighting a never ending battle with my lab. Most people would have thrown in the towel by now as a plea for mercy. Hopefully things will smooth out soon or I think that Becky may put me down.

New Years in village was uneventful other than having to listen to the neighborhood bars blast music the entire night. I thought that going to bed at 1 was ok, but not here. When I got up at 5am they were still going strong.

This year’s cold season has been much cooler than last year. At night it is getting down to the low 70’s and we are cuddled together under our blanket. During the day it is only getting to the mid 80’s and is wonderful. Taking a shower is interesting. The water may be warm but then we are freezing right afterward. It seems like the cold season might last longer than last years as well. By now it was starting to heat back up. Hopefully this hot season won’t be as bad as last years, but on the bright side, there is A/C in my lab now.

School is starting back up now and we are looking forward to the second trimester. Becky has a test scheduled for next week and I am looking forward to teaching practicals so that the kids will stop complaining about theory. Typing practice here we come.

Our trip to Egypt is all planned out and we are getting excited for the trip. It will be nice to get to see the ancient wonders and to have something other than rice and sauce be reliably on the menu.

We’re starting to look forward to our COS (close of service). It is nice to think about home but the time here has flown by. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were just getting to Boulsa and starting to teach. We still have a lot of stuff that we would like to get done before we head home. But with only 4 months of teaching left it really puts into perspective how much time we have left.

Surreal has been doing well. She seems to think that it gets cold at night, so decides to climb in bed with us. This is a nightly battle since she tries to take up the center half of the bed with Becky and me on either side of her. We thought sleeping in bed with Desi was bad. Surreal has taken bed hog to a whole new level.
Hope you all had a great holiday season and can’t wait to spend it with you next year.

Pictures to come later--2 weeks