French toast and banana bread

Great things happened this week!

I got my first package and it was amazing. It’s funny to think that receiving a Science Illustrated magazine, a book, and some gum and mints would make my week. There aren’t any magazines here that I have seen so far, and the local newspapers are very basic and are not put together the same way as they are in the US or Europe. The amount of TV you watch here depends on your host family, and at my place we end up watching a lot of local news and soap operas from Cote D’Ivoire. What I’m getting at is that the type of media and advertisements that we are exposed to differs enormously from what we usually see and hear back home. I think that is why the magazine feels so foreign but in a good way. The English scientific articles are intellectually stimulating and the pictures are like nothing you ever see here. The most we get is black and white photos in the newspaper, somewhat plain billboard ads for cell phone companies, and whatever you can catch on TV. Usually I am complaining about the media we are bombarded with in the US, although I am usually referring to the repetitive TV ads that play at loud volume and mess with your subconscious. In resumé, send me mail! It doesn’t have to be fancy or big or whatever, just something from the outside world!

In other news, Model Schoolstarted this week. It is the beginning of our practice and training as real teachers in Burkinabé schools. We are all teaching at the Lycée Yamwaya here in Ouahigouya, and the students sign up and pay a small fee to attend “vacation school”. There are 4 grade levels (6ieme through 3ieme) and we use the same syllabus as they would during the year. The students benefit from vacation school because it either gives them an advantage over other students that will be in their upcoming grade, or they get extra practice if they are redoing a year that they failed. This year, we introduced IT for the first time, so students are also looking forward to learning how to use computers. Unless their parents have a computer, spent money to go to the cybercafés or paid for a computer use workshop, they have never used one before. No IT curriculum exists yet in Burkina Faso, and the ministry of education would like that we start to create one. This means that we are starting the whole IT program from scratch, with students who have never touched a computer before. It is exciting to be such an integral part of what could become a very important tool in their education. It is also a tough job because we have little in terms of resources. We recently received a bunch of stuff from Peace Corps Gambia’s IT program, which will help a great deal in long and short term lesson planning, although it is all in English and needs to be in French for us. I will be teaching 3ieme, and I can’t tell if it is a difficult age group or not. They are around 15 and 16 years old, although there are students who entered school early or redoubled a year, and are hence at an age when they like to screw around. However, 3ieme is also a year that ends in an exam that determines whether or not you continue on to the next cycle of education. 6ieme through 3ieme is the first cycle, and 2onde through Terminale is the second cycle, which ends in the Baccalaureate exam before University becomes a possibility. For this reason, the students also have extra motivation becomes if they don’t do well and have already redoubled once during the first cycle, their education ends there. A minor problem put a temporary hold on the IT classes at model school, more specifically the lack of a functioning computer lab means that we can only do visual presentations of what is to come. Like I said, so far it has been unpredictable and challenging being a part of the first IT program in Burkina Faso.

Today we held group cooking sessions where we were split up into groups of 5 or 6 and we were given some money to buy ingredients and cook whatever we wanted. It was with our medical officer, and was supposed to demonstrate that we had learned how to prepare and cook food in the most hygienic manner possible, and that we were able to use the equipment and material available here. We decided to make a fruit salad, cook scrambled eggs, make French toast with home made syrup and bake banana bread. In my opinion we got the most out of our money and were able to make a delicious feast that reminded us of home, gave us breakfast at lunch time, and filled us all up. It was pretty amazing, especially the French toast and banana bread. I even got the left over home made syrup, although I have no idea what I’m going to use it on.

We held another ultimate Frisbee game on Tuesday after school, and although there wasn’t a huge turn out on either the American or the Burkinabé fronts, we had a great game, got lots of exercise, and found out that the kids in my neighborhood have started practicing in the mornings and want to get enough people together to make teams and play some sort of tournament. There are a significant number of locals interested and they learn so fast that I think it is entirely feasible. One thing I want to look into is getting a Frisbee maker to sponsor some Frisbees to send here so that they would have some equipment to use. So far we have one Frisbee that an old volunteer left with my host family, and another trainee let some kids borrow hers. I find it really cool that the kids here became so interested in Frisbee after they saw us play a game. The popular games in town here are soccer and marbles for the younger kids, and some people play volleyball on a team although it is much less common than soccer. I think it introduces not only a new sport but a new way of playing in which you run but you also use your hands and arms to throw something as opposed to always kicking a ball. That may be why they become so quickly interested, as well as never having seen a Frisbee before. I showed them my disc golf Frisbees today and blew their minds. Those discs go a lot farther than the regular Frisbee and they were really impressed at how far they can actually fly, especially after they give it a shot and can’t seem to get it farther than 20 meters. It is really fun teaching and playing with people who are so eager to learn something new, and reminds me of the attitude the kids have when it comes to computers and the internet.

That’s all for now, I’d also like to mention that according to the International Meteor Organization website there should be the climax of a meteor shower this weekend, Sunday through Tuesday night. It coincides with the new moon so the skies won’t be disturbed by moonlight, so if the weather permits I suggest you get out of densely populated areas and away from light pollution to watch lots of shooting stars. In theory, any of the nights between Sunday and Tuesday should provide a good show as the maxima for two different meteor showers fall on the 27th and the 29th of July, respectively. As the IMO says, clear skies!

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