Strawberry Fields Forever

It's strawberry season, just in time for the beginning of hot season! Despite the fact that hot season is not supposed to start until March, the heat has already begun creeping in. So I'll be sleeping outside again soon. The past few weeks have been pretty good; Tougouri is beginning to feel like my home away from home. The second week in January was a little rough, coming back to village after spending more than 3 weeks with Americans, speaking English. So being alone in village was a little hard, especially because I had an ear infection, which meant that I couldn't hear out of one year. A lot of people asked me if something had happened to my French, but no, I just couldn't hear anything! But since then, life in village has gotten much better and I'm feeling readjusted already. I started my second trimester January 10th and feel as if it's almost over already. I've given 3 tests and have 3 more to give before the end of the trimester in March. I've been playing football with some kids in my village almost every afternoon since school started up again. I am pretty darn awful, but everyone wants to pass "Madam" the ball whether I'm on their team or not. I'm starting a girl's club next week, during which we'll talk about all sorts of things from HIV/AIDS to self-respect to decision making to the importance of staying in school. We'll see how it goes. That's about it for now...more to come soon!

Happy New Year

My first trimester has successfully finished, after a 7-hour final meeting. Shortly afterwards I left for Ouaga for a wonderful Christmas dinner with 13 other volunteers. Then I spent a some time backpacking in Mali. We spent the first few days hiking along the plains next to the cliffs. Then we hiked up the cliffs and spent a few days hiking from village to village along the top of the plateau. My New Year's was spent looking out at the plains of Mali under a full moon, a most memorable New Years. Last week I was in Ouaga for in-service training and now I'm ready to go back to site and get back to teaching!

our adventure continues

and we're off

typical Mali house with a ladder to sleep on the roof

baobab trees

houses up in the cliffs

sitting on the edge of the plateau

just walking

watching the sun set on 2009

riding a camel

we made it to the dunes!

The Masques of Tougouri

Sunday December 6, 2009

On my run this evening, I ran into (literally) a large crowd of people on the outskirts of Tougouri that turned out to be a funeral party for an elder of Tougouri. Because the man who died was an elder, the fete was complete with masques, drums, and lots of music and dancing. With some asking around, I found that the masques can represent animals, ancestors, and spirits. When one puts on a mask, he (always a male) is no longer responsible for his actions and takes on the character of the masque. The masques I saw today resembled a cross between Chewbacca of Star Wars and Klu Klux Klan outfits; the masques wore a brown shaggy bodysuit that stretched high above the wearers’ heads in the shape of a cone. Their faces were covered with masks that appeared to be made of wood or bone and one had shiny disks covering his face. Each masque carried a stick and would every so often break from dancing and run after an unlucky victim to hit them with the stick, which subsequently sent the crowd scattering in all directions every few minutes. I must admit I myself was a little scared of the masques, which my students who were present found very amusing. Nevertheless I stayed at the edge of the crowd, not wanting to get really close to the masques. I wish I could have taken a picture, because my description does not do the scene true justice, however, I was on a run and did not have a camera on me and also don’t think it would have been culturally appropriate to take pictures. However, I can safely say that I would never ever have encountered masques and drums while on a run in the U.S.

Four days later…after having several nightmarish dreams about masques while listening to the drums beat through the night, I am ready for the fete to be over and the masques to be put away until the spring, where they will be brought out to give thanks and ask for rains for the new planting season.

L.D.T.: Lycee Departemental de Tougouri

L.D.T.

Sign for the new library we just got, thanks to the Canadians.

Soccer field

The trimester is almost over (already!) so I’ve decided to have another blog entry with more information about my school. I teach at a lycee, the equivalent of a high school in the U.S., but have grades 6e to Terminal (equivalent of 6^th to 12^th grade). In Burkina, secondary education volunteers teach either at a lycee, like me, or at a CEG (College d’Ensignement General). A CEG is equivalent to a U.S. middle school with 6e to 3e (6^th to 9^th grade). One reason Tougouri has a lycee rather than just a CEG is because it is a departmental head and services 42 smaller villages. (Side note: Burkina is divided into 13 regions, 45 provinces, 350 departments, and 8000 villages. Tougouri is the head of one of the 350 departments). Despite servicing so many villages, there are only about 300 students in 6e and the numbers decrease as students age, with only 20 students in terminal. Despite the fact that school is mandatory to the age of 16, according to the government, the percentage of people who actually attend secondary school until 16 is very small, about 10%.

Because so many people do not attend school, Burkina’s literacy rate is only about 13%, favoring men at 18% and women at only 8%. Only about 1/3 of Burkina’s 7 year olds (average age to start school) actually attend primary school. The government wants 60% completion rates by 2010, but I doubt that is going to happen. Schooling, for the most part, is not free, although some new pilot schools have been established that are free. Parents do not want to spend money on schooling and some even see schooling as a threat to traditional values. For example, it costs around 25/30,000 CFA to attend L.D.T. for one year for one child, which is a lot of money given that the majority of the population lives off of less than 1000 CFA/day (equivalent of less than $2US). Another problem is finding spots for all the students. L.D.T. only has 315 places for students in 6e coming from 42 villages. Also, since many of these villages are rather far away, students have to either walk/bike several kilometers each way or find a place to live in Tougouri, which of course costs money. Some students find other families to live with during the school year, and a few lucky ones live at an NGO sponsored house in Tougouri.

Burkina has several national exams: after primary school, after 3e, and a third (the BAC) after terminal. Students need to pass these exams in order to continue on to the next grade leve. Also, students need to pass their individual classes. Grades are based out of 20 and students need to get an average of a 10 to continue and a 7 to redouble. Often students who do not pass will redouble the grade, but they can only redouble once per grade at any one school. Students who really want to try again, and have the money, can redouble again at a different school if they cannot pass twice.

The majority of jobs here do not require a high school diploma (or passing the BAC). As more than 80% of the population lives in rural areas, many people are farmers. A small percentage of the population are functionaries (civil servants: policemen, doctors, teachers, etc.). However, even to get a job as a functionaire one does not need to have finished secondary school, all one needs is to have passed the national exam after 3e (equivalent of 9^th grade). To teach at the secondary school level, one does need to have passed the BAC, but 4 years of university is not necessary. There are different levels of seconardary education teachers (with different pay scales of course) that require different amounts of schooling at university or training for teachers. After finishing school, functionaries are required to serve one year for “free”; they get paid about 30,000CFA/month ($60US) when normally they would be making 100,000+/month ($200US). Comparatively, this a lot of money to what most of the population lives off of, but 30,000CFA is not a lot to a functionaire who is more educated that most so usually wants to buy better food, medicine, etc., which means spending more money. Additionally it is hard to get teachers to work in small villages because they’ve all been to the city and like life with electricity and running water (as do I). So teachers end up spending a few years at most in village before requesting to be moved to a city, even though village is where they are needed most, which is why I am here!

Now, about my December. Winter break starts the 23^rd with the conseil de classe (final trimester meeting to discuss progess of students). However, I cannot give a test after the 9^th because I need to calculate averages and give ranks. Fortunately, I have my computer (with a good battery!!!) to do this. At the beginning of the trimester, when assigning dates for tests, I did not know exactly when the semester ended, so I’ve had to do some rearranging recently with test dates so they all fall before the 9^th. But it all got figured out, as I’ve found all things do, just sometimes takes some time. Some teachers talk as if they are going to stop teaching after the 9^th, but I am definitely continuing on, because what else would I do?

A Few Photographs

Siad: my favorite little boy ever!

I think he's going to be walking soon!

My 4e class

girls at Thanksgiving

Cooking stuffing

Chicken being grilled

Ryan holding the chickens before they were killed...and eaten

On a taxi brousse eating brochettes, what could be better?

Times in Tougouri

chicken on my pepper plants

"Sahel apples" I've recently found at site

It's so hot even the candles are melting...and it's not even hot season!

Tuesday November 10, 2009
Why, when writing guide books, do the authors only mention the rare animals one might encounter only at a reserve or park when visiting a country? There is no mention of the animals one sees on a daily basis. And here, in Burkina, one sees (and hears) many animals everyday. Not only are there cats running around (as mentioned in an earlier blog) but there are dogs, donkeys, goats, chickens, and a variety of other farm-type animals. Now the donkeys here do not do much running around, as they are either pulling a cart or shackled so they cannot get away. I really don’t like seeing people throw rocks at shackled donkeys to go faster, because obviously they can’t- they are shackled! Also, someone lied about the braying noise donkeys make or maybe donkeys just make different noises in Africa. When they bray, they sound (and look) as if someone is yanking out their vocal cords. It is a very unpleasant noise, but other than that donkeys here are very mild mannered. Chickens, on the other hand, I do not like. I particularly detest the chickens in my courtyard. At first there was only one, who had its nest in my shower area and pooped on my porch. I must admit that I stole some of its eggs and ate them, but wasn’t fast enough in taking all of them, so now there are chicks running around. The chicks are so cute for about a day and then they also started pooping on my porch. I guess I should be glad that they do eat insects, but recently they have decided to site right where I planted some new pepper plants. And because I am not always at home to shoo them away, I now have no more pepper plants. I’m just glad I don’t also have goats or cows in my courtyard to eat what plants the chickens decide to not sit on. Also, the roosters are constantly crowing, whether it’s 10am or 10pm. I think their internal clocks are messed up, especially when they start going off at 2am, when it’s definitely not dawn yet and I still want to get a few hours of sleep!

African Cats

Wednesday November 4, 2009

Normally when one says “African cats” they are referring to large predator animals such as the lion, cheetah, or lynx. These animals do live in Burkina, though not as many as in the savanna of eastern or southern Africa. However, when I say “African cats” I am not referring to the lion, but to the house cat, which is much more common here. And I seem to have bad luck with these African cats. First off, Eloise (my cat) had kittens in September, one of which I gave to another volunteer, Kait, and the other I gave to a student here in Tougouri. However, this second kitten did not want to leave its home, my house. Even after giving it to the student, it kept returning to my house, somehow knowing where it came from, and would meow all night long, waking up the whole courtyard. During one of these times in the middle of the night, I spent 30 minutes chasing it around the courtyard by moonlight trying to catch it. Once I caught it, I put it inside my house thinking that it was hungry and would be quite once inside. But no, it just continued to meow and almost seemed to get louder if that was at all possible. So the next day I had a student bring it out in the bush far away so it wouldn’t come back and disrupt sleeping in the middle of the night. I might be uncaring to just have it sent away like that, but at least I didn’t give it to someone to eat. And it turns out that that student just brought it to his village 12km away. So one problem solved!

Now I’m having another problem with another cat. I think Eloise is in heat and her “boyfriend” knows it, because this strange other cat has been showing up at all hours this week, trying to approach Eloise. I woke up last night to a loud hissing near my head, which turned out to be this other cat hissing at Eloise. So I wake up and hiss back at this cat and it leaves me alone, at least for the time being. Then later this morning I got home from teaching and the strange cat is in my house! It had figured out how to use the window flaps Eloise uses to get in and out of the house. This will not do. As I come it, this other cat gets scared, as it should, and goes to leave my house by the flaps, in the process breaking a ceramic mug I had just bought. I’m just hoping this cat will not show up again tonight or more might get broken than just a mug!