I admit I’ve been extremely unproductive for the last several months, but this week I finally started teaching again. I have 6ième (7th grade) and 4ième (9th grade) math classes for the last third of the year. There are 107 students in my 7th grade class and 55-60 in my 9th grade class. The school is similar to those in Guinea - a mud/cement building with one room for each grade level. Each classroom has one cement wall pained to be a chalkboard, and rows of wooden benches and tables for the students. The tables are each meant to be [View Full Entry]

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I arrived in the village at the end of the second trimester of the school year, just in time for spring break. Three weeks with nothing to do? Might as well visit some other cities. I spent a weekend in Banfora, a city in the wetter, greener south. I joined a group of volunteers who crammed into a nice hotel room where there was a pool. Oh, sweet escape from the heat. Three of us took a bike ride to a waterfall about 15 km out of town. The falls were beautiful but too rocky and schistosomiasis-infested to swim under [View Full Entry]

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After a week of rushed training in Ouaga I was sent off to my new site, Satiri, a village 45 km north of Bobo-Dioulasso. My Guinea friends were off to their villages as well - Dr. Jen near Kaya in the North, and Will to Sidéradougou in the South. Will and I stopped for a night in Bobo and had a few hours to buy everything that we would need to move into empty houses. The next morning I was taken by PC car north on a dusty dirt road that is “soon to be paved.” Eventually the road forks, [View Full Entry]

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I've heard great things about the mail system in Burkina: packages usually get here in a month, letters arrive in two or three weeks! In Guinea it took three months to never to get a package. Here's my new mailing address: Rose Corps de la Paix Américain B.P. 1065 Bobo-Dioulasso Burkina Faso West Africa There are even cell phones that work here! My number is (011 226) 76279349 International text messages are pretty cheap. I'll respond if you text me. [View Full Entry]

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I found out on Tuesday around 4 pm that I would be leaving Mali at 6 am on Wednesday, headed for Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. We were taken to a bus station where we boarded a Greyhound-style-but-crappier bus that left nearly on time. The seats were small (five to a row where a Greyhound would have four) but we were each guaranteed our own seat and the bus was not overloaded. As it got later it got sunnier and hotter and the Burkinabe don’t seem to like to open their windows. The bus stopped about every half hour, making what should have [View Full Entry]

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Since I got my assignment in Burkina last Friday, I spent Monday and Tuesday in Bamako trying to get medical clearance to transfer. I had to get a physical, some shots, a dental checkup, and lab work to test me for everything under the sun. Being one of thirty or so volunteers doing all of this through one doctor, I spent most of my time waiting around. The dental cleaning was a particularly interesting experience. We were referred to a Lebanese dentist working in Bamako, who was surprised to see ten of us arrive at his office needing checkups immediately. [View Full Entry]

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I was finally able to upload a few [url=http://www2.snapfish.com/shareereg/p=750251172440665443/l=229527612/g=88920323/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB/pns/share/p=750251172440665443/l=229527612/g=88920323/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB]photos ! Sadly I did not take enough of my village (pulling out a camera draws way too much attention, and I thought I'd have lots of time) But enjoy what's there and let me know if you have trouble viewing them. [View Full Entry]

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So after waiting a painfully long time, I am very happy to have three transfer options! They are teaching positions in Burkina the Gambia in West Africa and in Lesotho in South Africa. I have very little time to make a decision and not much specific information about the assignments. So I did my best to research each place and to talk to people who had served there. Here are some of the details on each. (Info courtesy of the BBC, UNAIDS, fgmnetwork.org, my friends, and my friends’ friends.) Burkina Faso: Full name: Burkina Faso Population: 12.8 million (v [View Full Entry]

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Burkina! Tough call between there and Lesotho, and mostly it came down to the fact that I had to just pick one. In Burkina I can continue to learn French and the teaching will be similar to what I did in Guinea, therefore my training is more applicable there. Also in the southern hemisphere (Lesotho) the school year has just started. Since I need to be home my the summer of '08, I'd have to either leave in the middle of the school year or come home a few months early with nothing to do. Being in Burkina also means being [View Full Entry]

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It's been about a week and a half since we found out that we cannot go back to Guinea, and since then it's been chaos trying to process all of us going home or transferring. I applied for transfers and temporary assignments, but there really was not much available. I'm hoping to find out by Wednesday. In the meantime I've been trying to find things to do so I don't go crazy. One day a lady who's husband works for the Embassy had us over to watch the Grammys. They lived in a beautiful house with a pool and made us [View Full Entry]

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