Saturday, January 29, 2011

hot hot heat!

The heat is coming! The wind is here! The blinding dusty wind that smacks your face like a blowdrier on full blast! It's nice to feel the change of seasons. For some reason it seems like it's energizing me.

Energied! And it's not too cold to take bucket baths anymore, so I hope to not ever get as gross as I have very recently been! Cold season over? But what about my warm fleece blanket?

I like my village and my kids and my Caludia's family. My schedule is fairly full and weekends feel like weekends. And I'm looking into getting a little boat made for me to take out on the lake here. I think that'll make me happy.

Good almost-February to you.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Whatcha doin' prunie? Stewin? Mmmmm?

I just took a bath in the med unit of our bureau in Ouagadougou. I had an offical errand to run in the big city (getting money out for Denise's scholarship...yay!) and had just been thinking about the fact that my last bath was in the States, and sort of lamenting that I wouldn't be able to take another until my return. I'm rul durty, I've been noticing. The cold season makes it very very difficult to bathe and so I have been caked in dirt and kind of smelly.


But then I realized...I could take a bath in Ouaga! So I came in, hopped a taxi, got Denise's scholarship money (yay!), and picked up soap on my way to the bureau.


Before feet:



After bathwater:





I don't know what's grosser...how much dirt came off my body or how much DIDN'T. I did some serious scrubbing!


Fortunately I am a very good Girl Scout and left no trail. If you are the next in the bathroom in the med unit, you will find it clean as can be (with a nice bar of soap for you to use if you'd like as well).

Friday, January 21, 2011

Things I have been doing lately

Hello hello! I have myself an internet key plugged into my laptop USB style, and am sitting in the office of the administration building at my school, hoping to be inspired to write a blog entry worth reading. I had a busy morning this morning, and grabbed a sachet (little plastic bag) of baobab fruit juice ("twega" with a super nasally "twe" is how you say it in Moore...I'm not sure how it's actually spelled) and a fish sandwich (super garlicy and oily fish paste spread into a skinny piece of village bread) from some lady street vendors on my way from the high school to my school where I am now. Figured if I had some food in my belly I could come here, get my work done, and then just blah blah blah on the internet 'til the time for my next obligation.

A month has passed since last I've written, and what a full month it's been. To save you all the suspense, I am feeling a lot better about being here than I was before my super-necessary vacation. I think that a break from all of the ridiculous little bits of ...stuff... that I have to put up with every day did my psyche good.

I had a blast spending the days leading up to Christmas and Christmas itself with Thomas and his brother Justin who had come to visit. Christmas in Lioudougou was great...lots of giving candy to kids (very Halloween-like) and me running around like a madwoman making pancakes for everyone and giving them out (pancakes were a hit when I shared 'em a while ago, and they were a hit on Christmas too...not without stress, though. Holidays). The day AFTER Christmas is actually the big party day for the folks of my region here, whereupon people sing and dance from dusk 'til dawn. I was really anticipating to that...I'd been a part of it last year when I lived up in the castle and was looking forward to being there now that I actually live here and know the ladies and gents and teenagers and kids. Unfortunately, my neighbors slightly less than one year old baby died that morning, out of the blue suddenly. Ridiculously terrible, right? No carefree party for our neighborhood this year. Instead, Thomas and Justin and I went over to my friend Claudia's courtyard where we passed the time chatting with her kids and the various young guests that were there while Claudia sat by laughing at particularly funny things or making comments about the chatter she heard. I think that it was nice for her to have a full yard that night...her husband passed away very very recently (did I write about that?) so this Christmas was not, I imagine, the most joyous for her.

I have a deep and true familial love for Claudia and her seven children. I passed along some Christmas presents from my parents to her just the other day. Aren't my mom and dad great, sending over Christmas presents for the family that has been so kind as to adopt me over here in little Lioudougou?

Vacation in Togo was...well, it was quite the adventure getting down there, that's for sure, but it was nice and relaxing after we finally arrived. It relaxed and refreshed me so that I am now able to better face my days. Which is good, because there are a lot of them left here and they are relatively full.

Remember that thing I said about wanting to help out Sister Elisabeth with her classes when she is unable to be there? Well, it's happening! Felicitations to me. I've led her two Tuesday classes twice so far. The first time the girls drew pictures of where they wanted to be in 6 months and in 10 years, and then we talked about short term and long term goals and how to decide upon/plan for them. The week after that we talked about peer pressure and strategies for resisting it, and they role played some situations, including one that had to do with SEX which they were pretty much all really excited to talk about. I feel like I've built a good little foundation and can go in a few different directions with them now...we can talk about decision making and weighing the pros and cons of our choices, figuring out personal values, strategies for communicating our feelings and opinions, sex and all sorts of stuff that goes along with that.

I'm a GEE volunteer! Who knew?

Another thing I've got going on, as always, is computer class. My 5eme girls are currently working on typing personal letters to the people of their choice, and a great number of them are writing to students at my old middle school in the States. Typing skills, English skills, describing yourself skills, asking questions skills, learning that there are other people in the world skills...so many skills. A ridiculous amount of planning, but lots of skills.

Lots and lots of time goes into planning my computer classes. It almost seems like it would be less work if I had class more often because things could carry over easier. I'm in the midst of figuring out when and how to give my 6eme and mixed class kids their first test, and how to grade this letter thing that I'm doing with 5eme. There are also of course the inherent difficulties of being a teacher. ...and the added lovely difficulties of being a teacher here, where critical thinking is not high on the priority list. Unfortunately for my students, I am not going to immediately explain to them how to do something that they've already done before and could figure out if they took a minute to think about it. Unfortunately for me, I get asked how to do things that they've already done before and could figure out if they took a minute to think about it ALL THE TIME.

Teaching here will perhaps be a good thing to have done. It is not always my favorite thing to be doing.

Which leads me to something else I am doing, at least for today. Thomas is in the big ol' capital for a IT Committee meeting this weekend, and I am filling in for him in his two English classes substitute teacher style (a system that, surprising or not, does not exist in Burkina). So I went in this morning and taught the little boogers the days of the week and the months of the year, and harassed them a bunch by making them "stand up," "jump," "turn around," "sing," "sit down," "be quiet" every so often. It was pretty fun, and I've got another of his classes in about an hour. Mostly I'm just happy to help out someone who's always helping me out.

I am continuing to help out with baby weighings and vaccinations Mondays and Fridays at the CSPS (health center), though I doubt anything further will come out of my relationship with the place. It's starting to get too late for new big projects to take place, and no real internal push is happening among the staff there. So that's fine. Aside from the sexual harassment and continuous annoying questions I have to endure from the staff, it's not so bad. I actually have things to do when I'm there and so if I can suffer through the initial arrival part of the morning it ends up working out alright. Except for sometimes. The absolute and total lack of respect that certain CSPS men show for the mothers who sit waiting for their babies to be vaccinated drives me to the edge of my patience. And it's treated like a joke. And the women take it because here there isn't the expectation that your doctors should respect you, should explain things to you, should pay attention to your individual needs. The women come, they sit, they wait for EVER sometimes, and then they are hurried through like animals and told brusquely to go home. I take every opportunity I can to tell them what good mothers they are for bringing their children in, I agree that they have been waiting a long time when one of them tentatively mentions it, I make goofy faces at their babies, I clarify respectfully when they have maybe come in too soon for a certain vaccination and are told without explanation to come back next week.

Some of the CSPS people are really good. They work with the resources they have, and they do their job the best they can. Sometimes though...we seem to forget that the essence of being a "civil servant" is doing a job that is FOR the people. Not just for you.

Ha...so that's that. Still going on with my test typing and proctoring, and I stop in during homework hours from time to time. My Thursday study group has been slow to start back up, but will get rolling again. My cuisinaire girls and I still meet at least once a week to work on writing and reading skills. ...and one of them came back! She had been taken away again by her father, and I don't know where she went or why or how she came back but she's back, and because I feel secure in my place here and comfortable stepping over lines that I tried not to cross initially, I'm gonna ask her all about it. ...and what else. Extra study/typing time for my computer class kids who are struggling will happen soon, next weekend I think. I'm going into Ouaga to take out the money that has been donated to Denise's scholarship fund this weekend (yay!). While I'm there, my boyfriend (yeah I said it) and I are gonna go out on a little date to celebrate the anniversary of one of our several relationship milestones (you can take the girl out of the gay but you can't take the gay out of the girl).

So yes...life's ok. It's not always full of things I necessarily want to be doing, but it's good to have things to do. I'm happy to be at a point where I am thinking about what I will be doing next. I'll save speculations and such of that nature for another day.