Overall I am happy that things are wrapping up here and I'll be coming home soon. At this point though I now understand why some volunteers choose to extend their service a third year. Everything becomes so much easier the second year (except the insane heat!).
Here are some of the events and happenings since my last post in February.
Potato Festival in Titao
The Ouahigouya area is known for potatoes. We were literally over flowing with them in March! To celebrate the farmers and the potatoes the city of Titao has a Potato Festival. The festival includes a lot of speeches and stalls upon stalls of potatoes.
Making Soap
This year I did my very best to incorporate experiments and "real worl" applications in my physics/chemistry classes. The most interesting was a soap competition in my 1ère class. In this class we started organic chemistry and the last subject covered is saponification (the reaction for making soap). So I divided my class in half; forming two "teams" of 35 students. The students chose the soap recipe and then I bought the supplies in Ouaga at Faso Chimie (see below). I also made them write lab reports. Unfortunately, quite a few of the cheated by copying each other or plagiarizing books/internet. My last act as a teacher was giving out around 15 zeroes for cheating.
Outside the store - perfume bottles
Chemical storage
dyes
plastic bags filled with buerre de karité (shea butter)
Recipe used:
- 1 kg NaOH
- 2 liters palm oil; 2 liters shea butter; 2 liters coco oil
- ~ 200 g sodium carbonate
- 250 ml sodium silicate
- perfume
Both groups used the same recipe, but their results were different. The first group didn't stir the soap well enough and as a result there were little white spots of sodium carbonate in the soap.
mixing the soap
pouring the soap in a mold
cutting the soap
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