N bua gwani

I recently got back from a trip back to America for my brother's wedding to his lovely new wife Christina Damman, and by recently I mean about a month and a half ago which is recently in Africa time. It was a wonderful wedding and I wish them all the best and would like to thank my parents and grandparents for allowing me the opportunity to come home and be a part of it. I would also like to say that I had limited time when I was home and if I didn't see you or call you it has no bearing on our friendship. This means you Jim Schulte. Now that I am back in Africa and I have started teaching again for my second year, I have been trying to decide whether or not the trip back to America was a good thing for me personally. On one side it was good because it let me know that America is still there after a little over a year and that it probably will still be there in 8 more months when I am finished with my service, but on the other hand it let me know that America is still there, and America is a pretty awesome place where I would like to live one day. But that day can wait 8 more months.

This school year has so far been shaping up pretty well. Two new classrooms are in the process of being built and have been for several months, so we have had to have classes on Saturdays until they are finished. They just got finished this week and we start having classes in them tomorrow. I teach three classes of English and only one of Biology. The English classes are going pretty well, we sing a lot and it took about three days for them to be able to sing the alphabet song. The one class of Biology, however, is the dreaded rock class that I don't even care about. This year however I have divided the class into groups and given them rocks and they are in charge of presenting their rock to the class. So far it has been going really well and I don't know why I didn't do this last year.

Something else that I should have done last year is learn the local language of Gulmantchema. I did try this summer while I was cultivating with my neighbors, but trying to learn and African language by yourself is not the easiest thing to do, and lets face it I am pretty lazy. Well, people in my village have recently started giving me a hard time about not being able to understand or speak to them in the language of the village. Several conversations end with them mentioning how well previous volunteers were able to speak it. I don't think that most of them realize that I had to learn French in three months in order to be able to teach their children and that there is only so much space in my brain for languages, but I am trying. I have started carrying around a little notebook and anytime someone talks about how I don't know what they are saying, I whip out my notebook and say teach me something. It has worked out and filled in some spare time. I can now say, but not spell, I want to sleep (N bua gwani) and 1000 cfa (kobilie).

Since I got back from America I have been in serious need of some beano, if you know what I mean. It was a constant everyday thing, and I will not lie to you my friend, they did not smell like roses regardless of what you have heard. I tried to find the source of this disturbance and wrote it off to the fact that I have lately been eating beans for nearly every meal if not every meal since my neighbors gave my a huge bag since I helped them plant. Then I started to realize that the occurences occured at roughly the same time everyday and roughly about an hour after I took my multivitamin. Upon closer examination I read that in three pills, the daily dose, there is 833% of your daily value of Vitamin C, the cause of the issue. There is also 3333% of your daily value of thiamine. That is 33 days worth of thiamine in one day. Who needs that?

The week after I got back there was a big hubub in my village. Everyone was getting ready for a visit from the Prime Minister of Burkina Faso for international fight the poverty day. It was going to be awesome. The Prime minister in the tiny village of Matiacoali. The big day came and the village turned out in droves. I don't think I had ever seen that many of my village in one spot and they were excited. Ten o'clock rolls around and the Prime Minister is supposed to arrive soon. 11 o'clock rolls around, 11:30 and a fancy car pulls in. Someone gets out, but not the Prime Minister. The ceremony starts without the Prime Minister. A woman goes up to talk but she's not the Prime Minister. Where is the Prime Minister? He decided not to come. A few weeks later the Minister of the Environment is supposed to come and have a meeting with some of the local farmers. He doesn't show up. Last week, there was an announcement throughout the village on Saturday night and in all of the churches Sunday morning that a Minister would be arriving the following day and we should prepare a warm reception for him. He didn't show up. My villagers are more and more upset each time a government official claims to be coming to visit our village and then instead of calling and telling someone, just not showing up.

I have posted a link to a picasa web site that my dad made with some of my pictures.