Hi Everyone, So the server went down and lost a dozen or so of my blog entries. I may have extra copies of some that I can repost...working on it...or I might just switch to blogspot. I'll let you know. [View Full Entry]

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In early July I took a four-day trip to Mali with Omar, Christine, Will, and Rhadika. From Ouaga we took a bus north to Ouahigouya, where we piled into a van-sized bush taxi headed to Koro, Mali. North of Ouahigouya the paved road gave way to dirt and the landscape became progressively drier, the vegetation more sparse. The three boarder checkpoints consisted of small cement buildings and/or thatch shade huts along 20 km of road that may belong to Burkina or Mali. For more than a half hour of travel time the stamps in our passports indicated that we had [View Full Entry]

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!!GREAT ACHIEVEMENT!! I’ve now spent a full year in West Africa without a single case of amoebic dysentery, giardia, E. coli, or malaria! Hooray for my immune system. I’m back in Ouaga for mid-service training. Sitting through sessions at the PC office is not too exciting but I’m enjoying the air conditioning and free food. I had a couple of trainees come to Satiri for their site visit. Julia and Garrett will be the new teachers in Siby (near Boromo) and Sabou. They have been in Burkina for a couple of months now and finally got a break from training [View Full Entry]

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Satiri has been pretty empty for the past couple of weeks since most of its population heads out to the fields each morning. A rainstorm or two finally came, but the last week has been dry and farmers are still complaining about the lack of rain. I biked out into the bush one morning to see my neighbor’s fields. Tidiane’s family has about 15 hectares, mostly of cotton, corn, and peanuts. The cotton is sold each year to the huge monopoly Sofitex for ever more disappointing prices. The corn and peanuts will feed the family in my courtyard for the next [View Full Entry]

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CREEPY CRAWLIES One problem with living in a house made of mud is that bugs live in mud. When I moved into my house the walls had been newly finished with a smooth layer of mud/cement mixture. The bricks underneath are made from a dried mixture of mud, cow dung, and clay or termite mound. So my walls were smooth to begin with, but it wasn’t long before bugs started to burrowing out of them, leaving small holes with piles of dirt on the floor below. Ants don’t seem to have much trouble tunneling into my house. Neither do mice. [View Full Entry]

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Southern Burkina is still holding out for rain. Now and then the wind picks up, dust swirls in the air, and a mass of dark clouds forms in the distance. Then the clouds blow past us and it gets sunny and hot again. Village farmers who normally start planting in mid-May are still waiting for enough rain to soften the ground. In Bobo one weekend I experienced my first dust storm. The wind picked up as if it were about to rain one afternoon, swirling fiercely through the city. People rushed out of the streets as the wind lifted dust [View Full Entry]

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Did I do a lousy job of explaining something? Did I use a word that I’ve forgotten is not English? Let me know what you want to read about! [View Full Entry]

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Middle school in Burkina goes from 7th to 10th grade. At the end of the 10th grade, students have to pass a national exam to get into high school, or lycée. There is no lycée in the village, so making it to high school means you get to move to the city. If a student fails the exam but is close to passing, he or she can repeat the 10th grade and try again the next year. If his or her score is too low, he or she is finished with school for good. The math and science tests for [View Full Entry]

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So I went into Ouaga last weekend and I had written out a whole blog update, then I forgot it in the village. So sorry for the delay and the back-dated entry. CDP got the most votes in the elections and now have a majority in the national assembly. Not sure what that means for the country exactly. Still hot here. People keep telling me that the rainy season starts in mid-May and then it gets cooler. It’s mid-May. I’m still waiting for rain. I biked in to Bobo this morning with my neighbor, and a little section of the [View Full Entry]

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For the last month I’ve been back in Satiri teaching. It’s still hot, but it must be getting a little better because I’ve been able to sleep at night. We’ve even gotten a little rain! After just a couple of showers, everything became instantly greener. The harmattan dust was rinsed from green leaves, mangoes ripened to yellow-orange fruit, and the flamboyant tree on the corner bloomed with hundreds of small red flowers. The villagers call these the “mango rains:” a little drizzle every week or two, just to rinse the dust off the mangoes. In a fe [View Full Entry]

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