Sad news

My kitten passed away last night. Two days ago Bug and I were walking in my courtyard and he fell over suddenly thrashing and then going completely limp. I really thought at that time that he was dying. He recovered a little bit, but was moving really slow yesterday. My homologue suggested a veterinarian close by and I took him. Not exactly like veterinarians in the US. Bug was given vitamins and dewormer. I took him with me to a review session with my students and he slept the whole time. Well things progressively got worse last night and Bug died at 10:07 pm. I think he was gone long before that and I don’t think he suffered too much.

It’s amazing how attached I was to him after just a month. I'm really going to miss you Bug!

Important football news

This is shaping up to be a difficult season to be away from the US.

Besides missing pumpkin pies, I'm having to take the backseat on election news and believe it or not no one here cares about football, American football that is.

Luckily I just stumbled on fantastic article that mixes both football and politics:

ESPN article

Anyone who would choose Drew Brees to be on his team gets my vote!

Oh yeah ... Go Broncos!

Wish I had an "I Voted" sticker...

... because I just did! Unbelievably, my South Dakotan ballot made it to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and then eventually into my hands. I filled it out this morning and sent it off to Ouaga, where it will be shipped to the US via DHL. How exciting is that?

In other news:

• it rained again two nights ago!
• the kitten Bug/Lemac is thriving (despite getting run over by my bike, being stepped on and dilocating a shoulder climbing the screen door)
• school is in full swing now, so my free time has evaporated
• I went out to the fields Sunday morning with a family to see what harvesting peanuts is like. Analysis: hard, hot, really hot work. It's amazing how hard people work here, I know I couldn't do it!
• Right now I really wish I could bake a pumpkin pie. Fall here just isn't the same, no pretty orange pumpkins and there's watermelon everywhere. To top it off even the oranges here aren't orange, they're green!

Monkey Business! (and it’s Raining!!)

Remarkably Burkina Faso doesn’t have much wildlife (larger than a breadbox) to speak of. When Americans think of Africa the first thing that comes to mind are vast savannahs loaded with elephants, zebras, antelopes, buffalo, hippos, crocodiles ... you know. There really isn’t that much space for wildlife here with all the people. Burkina Faso is about the size of Colorado and has over 12 million inhabitants quite a few of which are spread all over the country practicing subsistence farming. Wildlife?

Animal lover that I am, I’ve been contenting myself with the little things here. Such as domestic animals, cats, insects, reptiles and in the future birds. Burkina has an amazing number of birds and they are beautiful! (Attention all birdwatchers: come to Burkina Faso. It’s in the western part of Africa) The most common tiny birds here are these finch-like red ones. Well the males are red and the females are a less spectacular brown. These little birds make me so happy and they’re always paired up, just like mallard ducks. Just a warning though, my bird post may be awhile off yet. Birds are fast and my camera is not. I’m currently wooing some of the little red ones with bread and water, so we’ll see.

Even though there aren’t many wild animal here (à l’exception des chameaux sauvages), I still keep my eyes open. For example one of the alimentations (kind of like a mom and pop food store) sells packages of “biscuits de pain de singe.” Immediately one thinks that the little biscuits might have monkey in them (singe = monkey). Aha, some trace of a wild animal! Unfortunately “pain de singe” (monkey bread) is only fruit from the baobab tree.



But then something extraordinary occurred on Sunday. I heard knock at my courtyard door, which I typically ignore if it sounds even remotely like it may be a kid. This knock sounded different though and it was associated with some scuffling noises too. So I looked out my window and there was a monkey looking over my courtyard door at me! (Note to future visitors: if you want me to open my door bring a monkey.) One of the students from my lycée, who lives in my neighborhood, brought by his pet(?) monkey, named Boubou, to show me. Still not sure what type of monkey he is, something was lost in the language translation I think. Boubou was the size of a small labrador retriever and had the coolest tail I’ve ever seen. I must admit though that I was very nervous. Give me a moose, an elk or even a bear and I probably would have been less startled.

Boubou

at least I had water to offer since I was about to do laundry

The (and it’s Raining!!) part: the month of October was hyped up to be very hot and dry. Well Mother Nature has had other ideas. Last night it actually rained ALL night! Today feels almost like a fall day in Seattle. For the past couple of days we’ve actually had some nice cloud coverage too, however before that it was a little hot. I don’t have a thermometer so I don’t know how hot. Now that the rainy season is finished (or is it? hmmm) the heat is much more manageable since the air is dry. Very similar to the American Southwest, if only I could find some green chilies...

Yay for monkeys and dry heat!

First week of classes

One week down and not enough time left this school year to cover what needs/should be covered. Is this what teaching always feels like? :)

Well this first week was exactly what I imagined life would be like when I signed up for the Peace Corps. It was rewarding and challenging in so many ways.

The week started off well enough although I was extremely run down and tired. First the kitten and I had worked out a routine of sorts. Whenever I was home I would feed him reconstituted powdered milk from a small Ziploc bag with a hole in the corner (thanks Dad and Bobbie!) He’s also decided that he likes using the Great Outdoors for his bathroom duties. So no worries on his account! Also I still need to find a name for him even though I’m trying hard not to get attached. On the table are: Bug (I call everything bug, probably because of my first car), Lemac (camel backwards – a leading favorite) and Mousse (what all Burkinabè call cats, remember pets don’t really exist here).

With non-existent kitten worries I started teaching on Monday morning (Oct. 6) with an hour each of my two Physics/Chemistry classes. I’ve started with vectors and motion in my 2nd PC class and organic chemistry in my 1ère class. All went well and my courage was strengthened for two hours of 5ème math the next day. Unlike my PC classes, the math class is composed of a lot of younger students. I still don’t have the exact numbers, but “a lot” means there are 80 students in my 5ème class as compared to 60 in my 2nd and maybe about 45 the 1ère class. My first math class went extremely well since I gave the students a “test” (not graded) over material from the previous year. Two fold purpose for this: 1. check the students level of understanding/retention and 2. while they were busy working on the problems I was able to walk around the room and observe them. Most startling though was that not one student complained as I started writing the problems on the board! They just got out their notebooks and started working. It’s really hard to imagine that happening in the US.

Wednesday was math for two hours followed by a one hour break and then two hours of 2nd PC... and it went great. I was really nervous about starting physics right away, but no problems. Even though it’s not my subject, the material is straightforward and at a physics level that evenI can handle while still working on the language I’m teaching in! One of my greatest worries was not being able to ask and answer questions because of my limited french vocab. Last week I found out, much to my relief, that I have nothing to worry about. My french is surprisingly better than I thought and I’m even able to make jokes in class (to be fair they’re probably really, really, really bad jokes). I was also able to change my lesson plans during the lesson to explain or clarify when needed. Even better was when the students challenged my calculations (physics) and I was able to work through it with them to locate the problem: using the calculator incorrectly. (Some errors don’t care about cultural differences – we’re all the same with regards to technology.)

Now we’re on to Thursday. I had four hours of PC that morning starting at 7am. No big surprise, they went well. :) What didn’t go well was my health. Since the beginning of the week I hadn’t been feeling like my perky self, so much so that I called one of our PCMOs (peace corps medical officer). On Wednesday all the test results were in and I had a bacterial infection. Luckily our other PCMO was going to be in my town on Thursday and was bringing my antibiotics along. So after class I went in search of antibiotics. It ended up being perfect timing since that afternoon I started getting the achy fever feeling.

Now it’s Friday, or more specifically 1am Friday morning. I was awakened to the strange sensation of feeling cold. I was extremely confused by being cold since it’s warm enough here I don’t sleep with covers! It’s amazing how lovely a fever chill can be in a warm climate, ignoring all the other symptoms of course. So I stayed awake for an hour justifying to myself that it was alright if I didn’t teach that day. There’s a teacher shortage here and that means no substitute teachers. The dilemma was that if I didn’t teach then no one else was going to. In the end I called in sick and the fever left late in the afternoon.

Basically I spent the weekend recovering and am now 1000% better, perky one might say. And, yes this is what I thought teaching for Peace Corps might be like, and I’m positive that the students are worth it.

A (Very Brief) History & Other News

I’m living in Yatenga province, home of the Mossi kingdom of Yatenga. The Mossi are the most influential ethnic group in Burkina Faso. Exploring Mossi history is going to be fun because it’s so fantastic. The US was founded by Pilgrims and a bunch of white guys at assemblies. They can’t possibly compare to the founder of the Mossi kingdom: a warrior princess named Yennenga! How cool is that? Much more on this in the future. I promise it is very exciting and explains why almost everyone here has the family name Ouédraogo (stallion in Mooré).

Currently I’m involved in preparing lesson plans for my classes. We just had our start of the school year teacher meeting at my lycée and classes will truly start next week. It’s really nice to have a job again.

Also Amy just dropped off my new kitten. Evidently his mother disappeared and his siblings were all killed, poor kitten. I’m struggling to figure out what to do with him. It’s not like home where I could by kitten formula and I have no supply of towels! I just fed the little guy powdered milk and that went alright.

On an equally sad note, my host family's kittens were stolen. No Bruit or Gros anymore.
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