Disclaimer

The post below contains a riskay picture. However it is an everyday occurence in Burkina. I was also going to post some pictures of my house, but my camera is dead. Thanksgiving in Burkina was awesome. We killed a pig, turkey, and several chickens. Killing the pig was a very traumatic experience, but afterwards, it was very tasty.

Thanksgiving in Randomland

I am currently sitting in the wonderful air condition Peace Corps office in Ouaga enjoying an oreo and listening to American music on a friends iPod. In my mind I am in America right now. For Thanksgiving I will be attending a dessert party at the ambassador's house. I am a pretty important person if you didnt know. I have exausted all of my energy on the internet already, so I dont think that I have enough steam to relate the goings on since the last post. In a nutshell, I am still alive and kicking in the rocking city of Matiacoali. Most of my students passed the test and a few of them with actual good grades. I have about two full weeks of teaching left, and then I am done with the first trimester. We are in the works of planning our Christmas in Ghana, but since I will be going to an English speaking country, how bad can it be? I have recently come to terms with one of the problems that I previously thought Burkina had a problem with, the trash problem. The problem, as I saw it, was that there were no dumpsters and no trash collection program, but then I realized that this was not needed. In Burkina, instead of dumpsters, they have goats. If you are inexperienced with the awe inspiring wonder that is the goat, allow me to educate you. Goats eat everything, whether it be food scraps, or like in the cartoons, old tin cans. For this reason, I think that the trash collection program in Burkina is actually better than that of America. There is no need to take the trash out to the dumpster when the "dumpster" has the ability to come to the trash. Burkina has herds and herds of mobile "dumpsters", and I am going to make it my secondary project to improve this program by increasing the number of "dumpsters".

small child

small child

chillin'

me and child

Rachael, neighbor, cookin' some to









My church

Brain Explosion

I feel as if I have been out of touch with the world for so long! I have now officially been teaching for over a month, which leaves only a little over a month until Christmas break. I love the Burkina school system. I seem to have gotten into the swing of the whole teaching thing, but I still find it difficult to look forward to going to school each day. I am sure that will come with time, I am just tired of waiting for everything to get better. It is happening to slow and all at different times. I need to find Burkina Faso's fast forward button, or even better, its easy button. On the plus side, I think that the french language and I have reconcilled our differences. I am still having some trouble with the whole conversation aspect (Burkinabè talk really fast), but in the classroom I pretty much rule.

Surprisingly, my favorite class to teach is English. There isnt really a book for the class, so at first I was really worried, but now it is awesome. I think this is due to the fact that I just so happen to be a fluent genius in the English language. I know all there is to know, unlike in other subjects when I am afraid there is some piece of information that I have forgotten. One of my students came to my house to ask if I had a book with the conjugation of all English verbs, and I happily responded that I did not, and that all of the knowledge was in my head. Outside of class, I am slowly introducing my own English slang to the kids that live in my neighborhood. My greetings with some of them consist of "Yo yo, what up!", and "What up G!". It is awesome. After two years I will have taught them to say all kinds of sweet stuff. It is fabeled that another volunteer, in an undisclosed location, taught kids in his village that curse words were English greetings. I dont plan to do anything like that, but it is funny.

SIDE NOTE: This French keyboard is meking me angry. Why cant keyboards be universal? It just took me forever to find the question mark! It is stupid!

I gave my first tests this week in both of my science classes and my one english class. On the upside, I only played review games in all of my classes, but on the immediate downward slope, I now have about 300 tests to grade. If I had been thinking about this number as I was writting the tests I might have made them a little bit easier for my sake so that the 300 tests wouldnt haunt me in my vivid larium dreams every night. My only hope is that my students in Mati do better on my tests than my students did during model school.

I joined to Peace Corps for many reasons. Contrary to popular belief, these reasons did not include not being able to fart with confidence, sustaining myself on rice and Hardee's ketchup packets alone, or even the daily fixing of a flat tire on my bike because apparently all of Burkina's vegetation has an armor of ever resistant thorns that litter the ground. One of the reasons that I did have, however, was to see if I could survive with out one of my best friends that we all know and love. His friends know him as Sam, but you might knoz him better as Mr. Electricity. I have survived thus far, but I do miss him. Looking around in village, people have found ways to survive without it. Instead of children zoning out in front of the television, they are thoroughly entertained with the rigorous activity of playing with for example, my trash... or really anyones trash for that matter. Whether it be a plastic bag, tin can, or piece of string, they will find a game to play, or a way to annoy me with it. For an hour straight, to my dismay, a kid played with my watch because if a button is held down it beeps once every ten seconds or so. This apparently was the coolest thing in Burkina since those whistles, because he was entertained beyond belief. I have however found a way to put these electrically deprived children to good use. I previously wrote of the fly problem that is plaguing Burkina, and that fact holds true for Maticoali. For a while, I toyed with the notion of finding a carnivorous plant like a venus fly trap that I could place around my house, but then another thought came to my mind. I had recently purchased a fly swatter in Ouaga, but the fly swatter, unlike the plant, required some sort of human intervention "effort" to produce the desired results, and I, being the lazy person that I am, saw this as its immediate failure. Then, as usual, my mind drifted to the topic of child labor, and an idea came to me. It oddly came in the form of some type of math equation, and looked something like this:

constantly present children + 100 cfa fly swatter = game * happy me
Now I know this sounds crazy, but I tried to balance this equation and solve for happy me, and it worked. It was like I was Tom Sawyer, and my fly swatter was my paint brush. I called a few of them into my house, showed them how much fun I was having, and the next thing I knew it was a hit. I probably have a kid once a day come over to play this game. This realization opens the door to numerous possibilities. Next thing on the agenda is turning doing the dishes and writting my lesson plans into a game. Soon, I will have even less to do, if that is possible. It will be excellent... or maybe I should rethink this plan. With absolutely nothing to do, I would go crazier than I already have.

Speaking of free time on my hands, it seems that Harry Potter has taken over my life, and he has brought all of his literary friends with him. To fill my television void, I have taken up the lost art of reading. Perhaps you have heard of this mysterious practice that was used as a form of entertainment before the existance of television. I know it is hard to believe that life even existed before television, but yes it is true. I have become obsessed, and I cant stop. I guess the first step is admitting I have a problem. To track my progress with this addiction, I have added a section to my blog of the books I have read. I am well past merely a social reader and am clearly addicted.

Back to the subject of child labor, a bat flew into my tiny hobbit house and a small child came to my rescue. The bat was flying around, and I, not being a hobbit, had to crawl on the ground so that it didnt fly into my face. I dont think I have ever been in such close proximity with a bat in my life, and this being the day before Halloween, I wasnt going to take any chances. I called a neighbor kid over, who brought along his trusty stick, and I hid in my mosquito net. I figure that if it is resistant to mosquitos, it must also do the same to bats, but I doubt if it protects against undead vampires. I will have to check the label next time. Long story short, no help from the kid, I used my super power, that I thought was only good at killing roaches while I slept, to vanquish the bat, which I can do while awake. (I attempted to use the roach power by the light of day, but with no noticable result.)

After that, Halloween came and went in Africa with little to no excitement the day of. On a side/sad note, thinking back on all of my past Halloweens, it is hard to remember one that I did not spend in the walls of a Missouri Wal-Mart. I have spent my last 6 there. I realize this because the first thing I think of when I think of Halloween is the bucket/shopping cart full o' candy left for the door greeters to hand out to he unfortunate kids that are, like me, forced to spend their halloween in the wonderful world that is Wal-Mart. I zould spend my whole shift digging to the bottom looking for all the good candy and leaving all of the peanut butter flavored taffy for the kids. I gave my soul to Wal-Mart, and the least they can do is give all the good candy to me to fill my soul-less void and not waste it on the children. I dont know if I have ever gotten that sould back since I quit. If not, I am sure it is going to cost an arm and a leg to ship it to Africa.

My favorite thing about Matiacoali is the people. The adults are all very nice and understanding, and when the kids arent asking for candy they are pretty good to. There is a man in the market who speaks French and Morè, and it seems that he has taken it on as his personal mission to teach me Morè. At first I avoided him because he refuses to speak anything but Morè, and I dont know enough to say anything but that I dont speak it. This was really annoying, but I knew I couldnt avoid him for two years, so I started walking by him every now and then and speaking in the few Morè words that I knew, and after a week or so I could understand the conversation. It seems to actually be working, and now I look forward to talking to him. There are so many languages in my head though, that I often get confused and have to take a minute to think about it.

One of the biggest changes that I have seen in myself since beginning this is my food preferences. In the US vegetables were my sworn enemy. I didnt like them, and from what I heard from my allies, potato and corn, the werent all too pleased with me either. Since I have been here, I guess because my body is so deprived of bodily nutrients, I eat any and all vegetables. When I found out the major crop of Burkina was onions, I was horrified. Now, I cant get enough. It makes me question if all of those burgers at Booches in CoMo would have been better, if that is possible, if I had veered from my normal path of only ketchup and mustard.

I am out of time. I hoped to post pictures, but I will try to do that later.

School, Solitude, and Sanity

It has been so long since I last blogged that I am having trouble figuring out how to start it. I am sitting in the Peace Corps office in Ougadougou with some other volunteers and sharing stories about our first couple weeks of school so far, and everyone’s experience has been different and interesting. School started officially in the country on the first of October, but for most of the schools it starts a few weeks later because school starts about the same time as the harvest for all of the villages. In Matiacoali, school started on October 2, and surprisingly a majority of the students were there. The education program in Burkina is currently going through some type of reform process and the CEG in Matiacoali is on of the pilot schools testing out the program for the first year. I am still a little fuzzy on the whole idea of this reform process. Unlike in the states there is no taxation in Burkina so the students have to pay each year to attend school. In small villages this is really hard because most of the families don’t have a lot of spare money that they can invest into the education of their children. This means that a lot of the children are uneducated and work with the family instead of attending school. To remedy this problem, because education is very important, is trying to lower that cost of attending school to increase the number of students. This year, at the pilot schools, 6eme the equivalent of 6th grade is free, and 5eme, 4eme, and 3eme, the three levels above are half price. This is awesome, but I am not quite sure why this needs to be tested in pilot schools.

I feel that I am teaching different subjects each week, but I think that it is finally settled that I am teaching 6eme SVT (biology), 5eme English, and 4eme SVT. They are all working out decently well. My 6 class has 131 students and about 14 inches of space between the front desks and the chalkboard. I taught a lot of 6 during model school and I am used to the subject so the 131 students don’t even phase me. My other class of biology is another story. The subject is geology, which I don’t find either particularly interesting or particularly useful. The entire first part of the three part book is about identifying rocks, and what would happen if you put a rock on glass, and is the rock permeable to water, and what happens when the rock is exposed to hear. Who cares? I don’t, and if I don’t find the subject interesting or useful, how am I supposed to expect my students to? Finally English, English books do not exist for levels 6 or 5 classes in Burkina Faso, so I guess that the teachers are just supposed to make up what they learn in the class. I know English, so this should be easy, but it is proving to be more of a challenge than previously expected. I think that in my grammar class in the 6th grade I sailed through with an average of a C, and that is pretty pathetic. All of the grammar is in my brain somehow, but I don’t know how to explain it. I am slowly getting better and I don’t think it will be a problem, but right now it is difficult.

Other stuff has happened, but I am running out of time. So real quick….

I am rocking probably about a solid 1.6 on the poop scale, and by solid I mean semi-solid.

I think that in the package race the parents are winning with sending me books for class and food, Zack is a close second with sending me the best food so far (the chocolate peanut butter and Dairy Queen honey mustard), the grandparents with priceless ketchup, and then friends. What is the deal? I leave the United States for 5 months so far and you forget about your good friend Caleb.
Note: These rankings are not final and can still and will be adjusted for the remainder of my stay in Burkina Faso

I live in perpetual Halloween town in my village. The children believe that I am a never ending supply of sugar and free things that I would be more than happy to give them, but that is just not the case.

I have found several look/act alikes in village. I have found a young version of Seth Snowden, and also a version of Flo from Wal-Mart, only this version is not nice and does not call me by the nickname of “boo”.

Andy McMurtrey would be quite the attraction here as he is currently in the states. With out realizing it I perform with my hands the act that after observing Andy, and after practicing with Ashli for many months, where it sounds like they are farting, and it is pretty much the coolest thing in village. I am dragged by children to their houses to show their families this and they are just amazed. I can only imagine how impressed they would be with that squid and finger thing.

That is pretty much all that I can remember at the moment. I need to start writing these things down as they occur so that I remember them when I finally get to a computer. Also, I have taken lots of pictures in village, but I forgot my jump drive at my house in village, so the next time.

Pictures

Storm is a brewin'! This is the veiw from my porch.

Children in my village along the road next to my house. I gave my camera to my neighbor the other day and he took it around town and took pictures. It actually was probably a stupid idea, but my camera found its way back to me.

The children on my porch very excited about recieving the pens that little did they know were of no use to them.

What a happy african family! My host parents and I after the swear in ceremony. The last thing that I said to them was that I was going to learn french at some point in these next two years and then I would come back and we could actually have a conversation

Matiakoali sign on the way in from Fada with one of its many spellings

The path through the fields of corn. Not the best picture, but I have gotten lost many a time in the corn maze that is my village

Whistles, the roosters of Matiakoali

I have been at site now for three weeks and some change, but it feels for like three years. Not to give the impression that I am not enjoying myself. I am, but that is also the problem. All there is is myself. There are other people in the village, but they are either out in the fields working, or on the middle of the day repose shen everyone just takes a nap from 12-3. The nap part I dont mind. I am a huge fan of the nap. I actually think that sleeping is one of my all time favorite activities. I comes in at #3, #2 being eating tasty food (hard to do here), and #1 being speaking my mother tongue of American (also a bit difficult), so I settle for #3 and enjoy a nice mid-day nap.

On a related note, I am almost positive that by the end of my 2 years of Peace Corps service that I will be crazy, that is if I am not there already. Whether this be due to the fact that I am on Larium, which if you look up on Wikipedia you will see has an extensive list of side effects, or due to the fact that I have always been a little crazy and Africa is just pushing me over the edge. I often catch myself talking to myself and I dont even realize that I am doing it, but I cant stop. The other day, I went on a bike ride, and about halfway through I realized I was talking, but I couldnt stop. One possible explanation is that, foolishly, I did not bring enough water and I was becoming delirious from dehydration, or that I didnt put on sunscreen anywhere but my arms and neck and I was developing the sun sickness. Now that I think about it, maybe I am not going crazy, maybe I am just stupid. However, another point for the crazy side, I am becoming the person who keeps everything and has trouble throwing things away. It is difficult for me to throw away cans, toilet paper tubes, strips of cloth, strings, plastic bags, and the list goes on. I went for a walk and on the side of the path was part of an old t-shirt. I found myself wondering, "Hmm... what can I use that for?", the correct answer is nothing, you can accomplish nothing with it. It is trash. Some part of me wanted it for that rainy day when I have that part of old t-shirt and find some awesome use for it. But I left it there and against my better judgement kept walking. That is personal growth.

Whistles...... Why whistles? Somehow, by some act of evil, every small child, every child recieved whistles in my village. The would just walk around constantly blowing the whistle seeming never to stop to take a breath. It was as if the evil itself, and not the small child was blowing the whistle for them with its never ending putrid wind. At first I thought it was merely and isolated incident, and only a few children possessed these satanic whistles. I tried to figure out what I could trade these kids for their whistles so they would stop annoying me, but I feared the price would be my soul. As I was walking to the market to find some candy that would be approximately the same value as a soul, I realized that it was not just a few kids with whistles, they had multiplied as if overnight and now every kid had a whistle. It was like that movie that I always think is called "Children of the Corn", but really it is called something else. It is the movie where all of the children have white hair and are evil, if you know that movie, that is what it was like. Anyway, I dont know if it was some type of cruel joke played by an NGO, but it seems that over the past few days interest in the whistles has been lost, hopefully banished forever into some nether region.

The Larium, on top of that whole crazy thing, is turning me into an insomniac. I have had so really whacked out dreams either about violence or just about being back in highschool and talking to people I probably have said two words to my entire life. I woke up one night at 2am and found a huge african roach on my mosquito net. Roaches dont bother me, except for the fact that they live in my latrine and this is probably where this one came from, so I flicked it outside. Going back to bed, another one crawled across my foot, so again I flicked it outside and finally got back to sleep. I woke up again when my internal african alarm clock went off at 5am. I dont even think that 5am exists in the US, that is unless it is your birthday and you are trying to stay up as late as possible the next morning so that it will remain your birthday. If you are unaware of the rule, it states that it remains a persons birthday from the time they wake up on the day until the time they go to bed. Therefore, if I were to be able to stay awake from the morning of June 10 to the night of June 11, my birthday would last for 2 days. That defies all laws of space and time... well maybe just time... anyway, the point is that I woke up at 5am. I got out of my protective bug bubble that is my mosquito net to find my house riddled with dead roach bodies, 10 in all. What could have made tham all die? I quickly checked the gas to see if it was on, but no, I dont know what could have caused it. Roaches can survive a nuclear holocaust, but they can not survive one night in my bedroom. Do I really stink that bad? I guess I should be thankful that my super power is that all roaches die in my presence. I wonder if in order for my power to work, I must be asleep...hmm. I will test this theory and let everyone know.

I have tried to fill all of my free time with the study of french, but my brain can only take so much. The french verb demander, means to ask, but when you say it, it sounds like the english word demand. I have trouble realizing this and get annoyed when anyone says it. For example, in class when a studen wants to leave class to go to the bathroom, or something like that, they say Je demande...., which basically translates to can I do something, bit I hear I demand that you let me do this!, and I immediately say no. In my mind I think, "if they had just asked me, I would have said yes, but demanding like that, never". A little bit later, I remember what it really means but by then the moment is gone. I also hear this constantly as I am walking through village as little kids ask me for presents. I always respond with, "No, I have no present". Some kids in the familys courtyard that I live in came into my house the other day and asked my for a gift, so thinking quickly, I remember that I still had that big bag of pens I brought with me that because of the heat in Africa dont work. I gave them those and they got so excited. This makes me think that I could put to good use all of the random crap that I have been saving. What little kid would not be excited, and love a peice of string and a TP tube?

Lastly, it is a well known fact that I have an emense love and obsession with the union of honey mustard and chicken. Well, I attempted to duplicate this phenomenon african style with rice, chicken flavoring, honey, and dijon mustard. At first, the result was a tasty treat, but I believe this was simply bacause I was very hungry, because after that it became very gross. I am not going to give up on this though. I will find a way to have african honey mustard chicken delight and market it to the masses. This bring me to the list of

THINGS I CAN NEVER GET ENOUGH OF FROM THE USA

• Sauce mixes and seasonings (cheese, taco, etc.)
• Peanut butter that Zack sent, the chocolate and white chocolate, and also other types of PB
• Beef jerky
• Bars (cliff, protein, power, granola, nutragrain, etc.)
• Meat (tuna, chicken, etc.)
• Free sauce packets from restaurants (any and all, jelly, soy sauce, mustard, *honey mustard*)

NOTE: If an item does not appear on this list, this doesnt mean that it will not be happily recieved and put to good use.

Tomorrow I am going in to Ouaga and I will post some pictures

Village Life and les choses comme ça

Life has been a lot less hectic since the end of training, swearing in, and moving to a tiny village in the far east of Burkina Faso. Swear-in, I believe, was a good time had by all. The ambassador came and gave a speech, and several volunteers gave speeches in the local languages of their various regions, and there was really good food and music. Contrary to popular belief, I was allowed to swear in, and then in turn move to village, and let me tell you village life is quite different than living in Ouahigouya and having class in America land. It is still the rainy season, so all of the villagers are still out in the fields cultivating, and none of the other secondary school teachers have come to village yet. Most of them live in Ouaga when school is not in session. I now am the only American in my village of Matiakouali,(which I am not really sure how to spell because on every sign and map it is spelled differently) which forces me to speak french which for me is both a good and a bad thing. The fact that I am forced to practice is what is good about it, but man do I miss the english language. The other day I met the English teacher at the primary school in Mati and spoke English with him for some time and it was great. Without that conversation, I think that for the first week I probably would have spoken for a total of 5 minutes. Be that as it may, everyday I talk a walk around the village and at least say hello to people in French, but the only problem is that most of the people, at least most of the older villagers, do not speak French, they speak Gulmancema. Since I was so low in my French level I only had two hours worth of class in the local language, so I am stuck with French. They just smile and laugh at me, and then say something back to me in Gulmancema and I respond with the one word that I know, which is rarely every correct. Peace Corps has an awesome program where they will pay for tutoring in the local language or french, so I am going to try to find a tutor in the local language pretty soon and probably also in french.

On one of my walks in the village the other day, I met one of the few old women in the village that spoke french. I am going to refer to her as old woman because several times when she told me her name she said it was la vieille, which in french just translates to the old woman. I guess, at least in this woman's case, once a person reaches a certain age they lose their name and are just refered to as being old. Anyway, I had gotten lost in the fields of corn and milet that are riddled throughout the village, and she was going to help me find my way home. She was a very nice old lady and couldnt believe that I had come to the east and couldnt speak Gulmancema. Instead of taking me back to my house, she ended up taking me back to hers where I met her entire family. It was very interesting to meet them and discover that anly the kids from about 10-16 spoke french. I stayed there for a time and taught the old lady english words for things and she taught me Gulmancema for the same things.

Yet another disclamer: The following story involves bodily functions so if you are offended by these actions do not read on.

The other day I had an every orifice day. For those of you questioning it is basically what it sounds like. Lets start with a mad lib and you can decide what it was.... While I was vomiting, I also __(verb)__ ed and __(verb)__ed and ruined my one and only pair of jeans. Now I know that this sounds like a pretty awesome day and it should be accompanied by balloons, people shouting "Happy every orifice day!", and perhaps even a clown, but this is not the case. Every orifice day is a sad occasion that, at least for me, was followed not by cake, but by me feeling like I was going to die for the rest of the day. I feel fine now though.

There is supposed to be dial up internet in my village somewhere, but I have yet to find it. When I do find it, I will porobably start to post more, but this is probably going to be the last post for a month or so. However, I am still alive unless you hear otherwise.

Host Family Goodbye

Swear in. I took my final language test yesterday, and I passed on to swear in level. I am now an intermediate high. I dont really have much today to say besides the fact that I leave to the isolation that is my village on Sunday, and cant travel out of my region for 3 months, so I dont know how often I will be able to update/email.

Tuesday was the last night that all of the secondary education volunteers spent with their host families, and I wasnt really sure how mine was going to go. It has been a little weird the last couple of weeks because I still have problems speaking the french. Anyways, it turned out to be really great, and I am going to miss my host family. I bought them some presents at the marchè and some stuff from American, and they ended up getting me a sweet Burkinabè shirt. The weird thing was that they hired a photographer and he took pictures of me handing them a box with my gift in it and them handing me a shirt. For dinner we had probably the best food I have had since I have lived in Ouahigouya, fried chicken. Other stuff happened, but I am really tired right now.

I Hate Couscous!!!!

Couscous.....why? Before I came to Africa, I had no idea what this substance known as couscous was, and I wish that were still the case. I am sure everyone knows what couscous is and I just had a sheltered life in Missouri, but for those of you like me who are couscous illiterate, couscous is a grain that is similar to rice, except for the fact that it is horrible. There are pretty much four foods that are widely available for human consumption in Burkina Faso. The list consists of pasta, rice, to, and couscous ranked in order of awesomeness. Everytime couscous is placed in front of me, according to onlookers, I make a face that describes just how upset at the fact that I am about to eat couscous. About a month ago, we went to a fancy hotel restaurant in Ouahigouya that you had to make reservations at the day before, so I figured it would be pretty fancy, and it was. The first course was salad, which sounds pretty boring, but there isnt a whole lot of salad in the country of Burkina, or at least salad that wont give you some type of tropical disease. In the next courses we got a pizza-ish thing, some type of eggplant, and these fried dough mystery balls, all of which were good. I was thinking to myself, "self, if all of this food has come so far, and we are still waiting for the main course, the main course is going to be awesome!" A huge tray was brought out and on this tray was a huge pile of.......... couscous. Seriously, I mean seriously what kind of a main course is that. Couscous runs rampant in Africa. You can get it anywhere and everywhere, but why at a "nice" restaurant is the main course couscous? I am pretty sure that is all of the ranting that I have about couscous, but be warned.

Model school ended this week, and only 11 out of 39 of my students passed. I have been assured though that that is good in Burkinabé standards. We had a ceremony yesterday where we gave the top three guys and girls of each class prizes of textbooks, notebooks, and other school supplies. Before each class could get their prizes, they had to choose a representative to lip sync a song for the teachers and all of the other students. I thought it was very odd, but apparently it is a natural occurence here. The performers would also dance whilst siging and pull us up out of the audience to dance with them. This is a picture of Julia, another soon to be volunteer, doin a little dance. All in all, it turned out very well. Model school was a useful experience, but I am very glad that it is over.

I took my final language test today. I only have to go up one more level to see if I go to site in a week or spend two weeks in Ouaga boning up on my French. I dont think that I did very well though, but I will find out tomorrow. Swear in is a week from today!

Saving Momma E

First thing is first, today is my brother Zacks birthday, so I would like to tell him to have a Happy Day O' Birth!

Here is just a picture of myself to prove that I am still alive. Yaneth on the left, another trainee, and Sara a volunteer that is going home in a few weeks.

The one thing that I dislike about Africa so far, besides the heat of course, is that there is trash everywhere. Africa, or at least Burkina Faso is without any sort of trash collection program, so trash is everywhere. The common practice is to make a pile of your trash outside of your courtyard on the street and then every now and again set it ablaze. This would be an alright idea if the set it ablaze everytime someone added trash to the pile, because children look at these piles of trash as playgrounds. I have heard from other volunteers that they have stopped throwing out their trash and started throwing it down their latrines. This is a pretty good idea, and I will probably adopt it. When I went on my site visit and was checking out my house, I took a glance down the latrine and saw a lot more trash than feces from the previous volunteer. Currently, however, I have two boxes of trash sitting in my room at my house. I fear, and know that I have let it accumulate far too long to send it down to the depths of the latrine, so I am stuck with it. I am also sad to admit that I have thrown trash on the ground, but not before looking for a trash bin to place it in, only realizing that I was in Africa, and such a place does not exist.

Drinks. When you order a drink here that is not a soda or a beer, it comes in not a bottle or a can, but in a sac. Water, juice, milk, and everything else is drank from a sac. I found this very odd at first, but it is actually quite convenient. You just tear off one of the corners and drink yourself a sac of liquid. Speaking of milk two sentences ago, I found a place in Ouahigouya to buy cold cows milk. It is the best thing ever. I joked with everyone that I was going to have to find myself a skim milk cow somewhere in Africa, and believe me I did look, but this will do just as well.

Teaching should be in my blood in theory. I mean really, my mom is a teacher, one of my grandmothers is a teacher, and practically half of my highschool graduating class are teachers. I think somehow though, I got skipped. I think it is something like to story of my Uncle Larry, who out of a large number of sibblings, eight or something, he is the youngest and only baldish one. When I was younger, I decided that this was due to the fact that all off the hair in the family was used up on the children that came before him. My teaching skills, I believe, have the same problem. All the teaching power was given to my grandma, mom, and friends in highschool, and I was left with little to no skill. Anyway, the moral of this story is that another week of model school is now nearing completion. For Sarah, model school is something similar to summer school in the states that the peace corps uses to train us. I started this week with a new class and new subject. I am teaching Geology, which I dont think I have ever had a class in in my entire life, to 4eme class, which is similar to 8th grade. The kids think it is funny to ask me what words mean in french, and watch me struggle through trying to define it off of the top of my head..... in french. I am not even sure if I know what these words mean in English, let alone French. This happened the first two days, and everyday I went home and wanted to die. Today, however, I went in prepared. I defined everyword that they could try to ask me the definition of and also came up with french synnonymes, and to get them back for making me feel stupid I gave them a pop quiz. After today I feel much better and am excited to give them a test on Monday, then Tuesday is the last day of model school, and hopefully I didnt screw these kids up too much for the real school year.

The Poop Scale

When I came to Africa, I was told that everyone talks about their poop experiences. I doubted this, but come to find out it is true. Poop has become a regular topic of lunch-time discussion. Thus a poop scale has been developed that most of you might find gross, so grandma, if you are reading this you might want to skip this part. I wont go into graphic detail, but everyone knows the difference between a number one and a number two. The offical poop scale has a range from one, being pure liquid (most common), to three, which is when there is nothing coming out. With the help of this scale, one can now just go up to someone and say "Man, I had a 1.3 last night." and everyone will know what that means. I hope that I have enlightened you all. This scale however can only be used in Africa, so dont try this at home. On a side story loosely related to the scale, another trainee.... lets call her Stanley, came here and in the first three weeks did not poop once. That is what we call a number three.

On a happier note, I have gotten so many packages in the past couple weeks, I dont know if I am going to be able to transport it all with me across the country. I have recieved numerous from my partents, and I also have recieved some from Grandma Mary, bro Zack, and the Lawson crew. Thanks for everything. There was one day that I got four packages at once, I think it was pretty much the best day of my life.

I went to a concert last weekend. Thats right, I am in Africa and I went to a concert. It was an interesting experience. The band I think is called Seika Seika, or maybe that is just the name of one of their songs. I am not really sure, but it was cool. It was supposed to start at 4pm, which I thought was very early/hot for a concert to start, but then it actually started at about 7pm, which makes sense in Africa time. Aparently I am told by the other volunteers that if you want to set up a meeting with a Brukinabé, you have to say that the meeting starts an hour before it actually does so that they will make it there on time.

Model school is going better, I guess. I gave both of my classes tests on Wednesday, and I thought they were both relatively easy, but apparently not. The day before in my sixieme class we played Jeopardy to review. It was a lot of fun, but trying to explain the rules of Jeopardy in French is a little difficult. Once they got the hang of it they seemed like they new everything. I had a bag of jolly ranchers in my bag for prizes for the winning team, and that turned out to be a bad idea. I started handing them out, and it was like a bomb went off. Kids were standing on desks screaming that someone stole their piece or that they didnt get a piece, so I just started kind of throwing candy around the room. Then I had probably the stupidest idea in the history of teaching, I thought to myself, I will just give the bag to a kid and he will rip it open and everyone can grab.... wow it sounds even worse when I type it out. So I did, and they all pounced on this kid and people got hurt and it was just a mess. To resolve the situation, I took the candy back and ran away. The next day when they took their tests, it was a different story. The class average out of 20 was a 4.05. I am blamming it on the fact that it is summer and it is not real school. My cinqieme class did a lot better. I think the average was about a 14.

Pictures, ETs, mouches, and faux types

This is a picture of my school that I will be teaching at for the next two years. It has only one room for each grade level, and I think only about 4 other teachers besides me.

On a sadder note, trainees from our training group are dropping like flies. Yesterday we lost one of the married couples, which brings our early termination total to a whopping 5. From what I hear, that is the worst it has been in a while.

So there is a serious problem in this country with the amount of flies present at all times. There is no escape from them but the solitude of your mosquito net. At restaurants, the rub down the tables with petroto try to keep them off, but I think that they have built up some type of immunity to it. So we have developed a game to play to not only help control the mouche population but also to keep ourselves intertained. Mouche is the french word for fly, and I have a problem with speaking in franglish. Anyway, the goal of the game is to catch as many flies in the time that we are at the restaurant. You start off with either a glass or a bottle with a little liquid in the bottom, then you catch the fly and swirl it around until it is trapped in the liquid. I know this game, now that it is out on the internet, is going to sweep the nation, and by the time I get home little kids will be playing it in the streets. If only I could patent it in Africa. Dang!

In a related story, I have now taught two days for two full hours total in Model School. It is gone pretty well. Yesterday I had a big problem with kids participating in the lecture, so today I had this speech written out about how if they didnt participate, that the class would never end and so on, but it was like they were a whole new class today. It was actually fun, I mean how much fun can you really have when you are lecturing about pollinisation and fertilization in flowers. A lot, that is how much. Tomorrow we are going to discuss what happens after pollinisation. I dont want to keep you on the edges of your seats, so I will tell you, the flower turns into a fruit.

Wall of pringles anyone? This is the coolest thing I have ever seen. In Ougadougou, there is an Americanized grocery store, were you can find anything you ever dreamed of, such as a wall of pringles. This was not just any wall of pringles, by the way, this wall contained pringles that I had no idea even existed. They had this Greek Cheese and Rosemary flavor and on the was Bacon flavored, and several others.

In Burkina the only type of cheese that you can get is Laughing Cow, which personally I dont really consider cheese, but at this store they have a surplus of cheeses. Moral of the story, this grocery store is awesome and I will frequent it every time I am in Ouaga.

Faux Type - (n) 1. Literally translated as false type.

2. In Burkina, someone who pretends to be your friend with hopes of gaining someting, monetary or otherwise, in the process.

Ouga is full of faux types. We were just walking down the street on our way to eat, and they would follow us the entire way. The would start the conversation by saying something is English like "My american friend", or "Peace Corp friend", and then they would try to sell you something and not leave you alone until you got to your destination. I think one night some guy was trying to sell me pot, but I cant be too sure because a majority of it was in French. He just kept saying things about the police and it being ok, so I just started yelling at him in english to leave me alone, and he finally did. Aparrently the only way to really get them to leave you alone is to confuse them and tell them you dont speak any language they ask you about, and then they get frustrated and leave.

Model School

So model school started this week, and so far I have only had to teach for 30 minutes, but next week that is going to change to me teaching an hour each day. So far I have given a lesson on stems and trunks of trees/plants. It is pretty exciting. On monday I will be giving my hour lecture on the parts of a flower. Model school is making me feel a lot more confident in my teaching/French speaking abilities, but I still have a long way to go.

Speaking of French speaking, I passed my second language test! Everyone passes them, so that is not really the exciting part, the exciting part is that I am no longer a novice low, you can now refer to me as Caleb the Intermediate Low. The class that I am in right now has six people in it and already in the first week I feel like I have increased my vocabulary a lot.

Other than that my life this week has been really quite boring. The cat at my host familys house had two kittens, which kind of freaked me out because the momma cat is the scroniest kitten looking cat I have ever seen. My mom told me to put up a wish list of stuff that I would like people to send me if they felt so inclined, but I dont really have a list. However, if anyone does feel the need to send some tasty treats, an interesting book, or anything you can imagine poor bored Caleb would enjoy in the hot desolate place that is Africa I wont send it back.

I can only fit so many languages in my head!!!

Have you ever asked yourself the question, "Self, I wonder how many languages I can learn at the same time before I go crazy and start to forget english?" Well, ask no more. For me the answer is three. I am currently in the process of learning French, which I will be teaching in, Mooré, which is the local language in the middle of the country, and Gulmancema, which is the local language of the east where I will be living. I fear that by the time I leave Africa I will no longer be able to form a complete sentence in English, and that I will speak some type of bizarre form of frENGLoréCEMA and nobody will know what I am saying.

This past week I went to visit my site in the beautiful, lush green village of Matiakouali. As part of a learning exercise, the Peace Corps had us take public transport for the first time since we have been in country. Leaving Ouahigouya was no problem, because we all left as a group and some members of our group speak fluent French. When I was on my own, however, that is another story. We hung out in Ouaga for two days and I pretty much forgot that I was in Africa. Ouaga is a sizable city, with everything a person who has been in Africa for a month could want. I enjoyed some chili fries at the embassy, and the restaurants around town serve pizza, ice cream, and cheeseburgers. It was awesome! We also stayed in a hotel with a pool, air conditioning, and running water that was conected to something that I think I remember was called a shower in the states. I met my counterpart in Ouaga, another teacher that teaches at my school, and someone must have been reading my diary because he speaks english. After being spoiled by the wonders of Ouaga, I went with my counterpart to go visit the place I will be living for the next two years.

Matiakouali is a pretty nice place from what I saw of it. It took from 7AM to 5PM to get there, via bus and bush taxi, so I didnt have much time to see the sites. I did have time to see my house though. I have a small two room house in a courtyard that the village preacher and his family live in.... I think he was the preacher. I also have pets already. I have two of the tiniest, malnurished kittens I have ever seen, and also I have a family of bats that live in my roof. I havent given the kittens, or bats for that matter, names yet, but soon. Just outside my/my familys courtyard is a huge field full of mango trees. I am so excited for mango season in village. My school is small, and currently has no science teacher, so it looks like I am going to be teaching sixieme, cinqieme, and quatrieme SVT and maybe cinqieme english. As we were touring the school, we ran into some french people who had been living in Matiakouali for a month. Most of them spoke english, so I got to talk to them about the students and the problems they were having and just about the village in general and everything they said was positive. They however left the next day and went back to France.

The next day I went and checked out Fada, my regional capital, and met up with a peace corps voluteer who lived next to Fada. We rode our bikes 20 km to here village and spent the night there so that I could see how a real PCV lived. It was really cool and I learned a lot of stuff about living at a site in country. Then I came back to Ouhigouya and I can now not wait for training to be over.

So my computer just locked up and I thought that I had lost this entire wonderful blog entry, but the wonderful website that is blogger.com saves your blog as you type for people like me. I was trying to post some photos and I think that is what locked it up so that will have to wait for another day.

So apparently I can only post one picture per message, so there will be a few posts for today.

So this was our 4th of July Party. It was quite the spectacle. All of the kids in the village wanted to watch us do everything.

Also apparently I am not the brightest crayon in the box because you can post more than one picture per message you just have to be smarter than the computer to do it.

Novice-Lows Representin`!!! These are the two other members of the novice-low language group. As you can see by the looks on their faces, as usual, we have no idea what is going on. On the left is Marty, and on the right is Chris who is one of the "marrieds" of the group. Today we had a language test so hopefully we will no longer be known as the novice lows. I have my goals set high for some novice-mid action. I have to be at Intermediate-high in two months. We will see if that happens.

On a different note, I have a cold. Who gets a cold in Africa? Everyone else gets E Coli, which dont get me wrong I dont want, but I didnt have to leave America to get a cold. I got colds all the time there.

This post is going to be short so that I can post some pictures. Nothing much to report, I will be taking public transport for the first time tomorrow and I am really excited. Other than that the only other thing was that.... Oh yeah, I hit an old lady in the marché with my bike. No problem though, she got scared and ran off into the crowd, so I just kept going.

Here is a picture of Burkina Faso, and where all of the trainees in my group will be placed. I am the one on the very far right all alone. Sad times.

Peace Corps: The only government agency that works on the 4th

Today I found out where I am going to be spening the next two years of my life. I am going to be living in the town of Matiakoali in the southeast part of the country. The Peace Corps gave me a sheet about it and here is what it says:
You are going to Mahiakoali located on the paved road past Fada, your regional capitol. In beautiful Fada you will find internet, a post office, supermarchés, and excellent restaurants. Keeping you company will be your amazing host family from which the last volunteer was very sad to leave. This year your school, led by a fantastic director, had two sixieme classes and one class each of quatrieme and ciqieme with students numbering 372 total. Enviable conveniences include regular transportation and celtel reception. You will also have two GEE volunteers as neighbors.
I am excited because this means I will be in the southern portion of the country and hopefully there will be some green. I dont know how I feel about living with a host family just due to the fact that I dont really know what that means. I am not sure if that means we just share a courtyard and I have my own house, or if I just have a room like I do now. I guess I will find out when I get there. In my training group I am the furthest one east, and my closest neighbor, from my training group, is about 200ish km from me. Fada, the regional capitol is about 120 km from me, and that is where the internet is so I dont know how often I will have access to that. In the travel book it says something about plains of wildlife, and I am right next to some big wildlife reserves. I am also really close to my dream country of Togo. I want to go to Togo. I guess after I go to Togo I wont be able to say that phrase anymore. That will be sad. We visit our sites next week, so I will be able to see exactly where I am living and see my school and whatnot. I was told by my country director that my school is one of the few with a lab in it, so that means that I will be abl to do some totally sweet science experiments, so if any of you know any cool experiments that a 6th grader learning about vertibrates and flowering plants would like, send them my way.
On another note, you all will be happy to know that the mispronunciation of Stica reins supreme from continent to continent. Not only the mispronunciation, but the exact same pronunciation. It took me a while to decide whether or not I was going to use the same tactic I used in college, just allowing them to mispronounce it, or actually correct them. I have decided that I am going to be known to my students as Monsieur Stica, and to my friends as Caleb Stitsee. Also, my first name does not translate into the French language. It is also hard to pronounce, so I have to introduce myself as Cahlib. If while infront of my language teacher I try to introduce myself by me actual name, he corrects me. Oh well.
I was going to post some pictures, but I went to the cheaper computer lab which apparently also means it is slower.

New blogg

So livejournal is making me mad and confusing me, so I am going to try this one out and see how it works.