Slaying the September Sorrows

I have not really been doing all that much, other than relaxing, reading, napping, and getting to know people and Tougouri. Although there are no English speakers here, I believe that my French has deteriorated a little bit in the past few weeks. Because almost none of the functionaries are here yet and most of the village people only speak local languages, I have not been able to use my French all that much. However, my Moore has definitely improved! So, I have begun doing exercises out of a French workbook to continue learning French. Also, JZ, the Burkina PC language coordinator visited me yesterday and he said I was on the right track with French, I just have to go out and talk to people.

September 15^th was the first school administrative meeting of the year. So my Proviseur (principal), Censeur (Vice Principal), Interdit (Bursar), and Surveillant (in charge of discipline) all arrived in Tougouri on the 14^th. Not quite understanding that the meeting was only for the administration and not the teachers, I showed up at 8am on the 15^th ready for a meeting, only to find out more than an hour later (after waiting for the Proviseur to arrive) that I could go home. However, I did talk to the Proviseur about my teaching schedule and it sounds like I will be teaching SVT (biology/geology) and possibly mathematics. However, nothing can be finalized until the other teachers arrive, which may not be until very close to October 1^st, which is the first day of school. So I cannot lesson plan yet, which I had planned on doing during September, but I guess I should be valuing my time off. Because I know that once school starts, I will be very busy lesson planning and working on my French. However, I am ready for school to start, or at least have a planned schedule. I am glad that I am an education volunteer with a regular schedule, because it would be very hard for me to construct my own schedule, such as volunteers in other sectors in Burkina do. I say this now, before school actually starts though, I might have a change of heart…But at the moment, I am ready for a schedule again, perhaps not the grueling schedule of stage, but something more moderate to fill my days.

Thanks to my parents, I recently received a shortwave radio in the mail for my birthday. So now I am no longer disconnected from the rest of the world. Being in village feels a little bit like my short stint at sea, when I sailed from Massachusetts to Trinidad in 6 weeks, with no form of direct communication to the outside world. (We still did hear that the Red Sox won the world series). Many things could happen and I would not know about it. Of course now that everyone has cell phones, word does spread a lot faster than it did only 5 years ago, and the Peace Corps does keep its volunteers well informed of any sort of security issue (such as flooding a few weeks ago). So I am not completely cut off. But sometimes it does feel like it. And that is when I text a friend. Oh the joys of cell phones…Now all I need is electricity and running water and I could be in America!

And now a few pictures

My "toilet"

Bedroom, with newly painted yellow walls. What you cannot see is that only 2 of the walls got painted, because I ran out of paint. Also there is a nice white strip at the top of the walls because I could not reach the top.

Cooking corner

Living/dining room

My humble abode

My courtyard, with my house on the right

Eloise and her kittens