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Sunday, October 7, 2012

Yippee ki-yay


Life is all about balance. Work and play, exercise and rest, speaking French and speaking English…Well, it’s the same about life at site.

Spend too long at site and your productivity drops a little because you get a little tired of village life, or no one is around to work with you because their all in the fields, or because you run out of ideas for projects and you just can’t think of anything.

However if you don’t spend enough time at site people there might think you left, might have forgotten about projects you were doing, might have forgotten that they were supposed to do something for you- or all of the above.

It might sound hard to believe but after a hiatus from site, it’s actually really nice to be back. Everybody knows you, your house is there (hopefully), and after spending time with volunteers (or away) you’re ready to accomplish something.

And this was most definitely the case with me. Call it a “game on” mantra, or a “yippee ki-yay” type thing. But I was definitely ready to get stuff done.

My first two days back at site included a lot of music and a lot of cleaning. Because I wasn’t there to fight the good fight- termites had succeeded in sealing my doors to their frames and starting to make a go at the walls. Luckily me and my can of insecticide (technology) shifted the balance of that particular skirmish. All in all, the results of me being away from site weren’t that bad. Just some dust to sweep out, some laundry to wash, and some buckets to bleach.

There was also some difficulty in getting to my house because the weeds, herbs, millet, a bit of corn, all blocked the way down my path because, well, I hadn’t been there in a while to weed it (or to encourage others to weed it). Luckily, the COGES president (and my moore tutor) came by that afternoon with a really sharp machete and took care of it. Along with a pretty amusing anecdote: in rainy season people have to tether their animals so they don’t ruin all of the crops. But, they have to have food around so that they don’t get hungry. Well, some enterprising child saw I wasn’t there and left his bull in my courtyard so he could eat the weeds and such, and because there was a wall, he wouldn’t be able to get out. My neighbor saw this kid and apparently said, “Hey! Get out of Andre’s courtyard! If Ablasse (my moore tutor) sees you there, oh boy is he gonna be pissed.” I thought it was funny and pretty creative on behalf of the child.

He also introduced me to the most interesting mossi proverb I’ve heard so far. Translating it, it goes a little like this, “If somebody leaves, you shouldn’t clean his courtyard when he’s gone because you never know when he’s going to come back, but when he does come back, you have to go over and clean their courtyard.” It really does make a lot of sense as far as proverbs go. Why clean someone’s courtyard if you have to go back and do it every day because they haven’t come back yet? Or, why do it if all the weeds are just going to grow back and then look like you didn’t do anything at all? Although, I especially liked the part about their being a responsibility to helping your neighbor make their courtyard tidy when they returned.

Going back to work was much as I had left it- though quite busier with a higher incidence of malaria. All the nurses had (basically) the same reaction, “Andre! You’re back. Boy, it’s not been easy without you!” Not the best thing ever but, it meant that I most definitely wasn’t bored those first few days.

In short, it was awesome to be back at site- with the desire to see my friends, some ideas for projects, a lot of motivation, and a “game on” mantra. 

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Science Camp


The first week in September I participated in a Science Camp that was held in Koudougou and was organized by Peace Corps volunteers. And yes, I do realize that I’ve fallen a little behind on blogging. The camp had a focus on the scientific method, creative thinking, and problem solving.

Now, why might volunteers want to do this? The education system in Burkina Faso is based around copying (from the board or dictation) and memorization. It’s very “know-what” oriented. The other skills such as “know-how”, “know-who”, and “know-why” aren’t emphasized at all. This makes it hard to take an example and extend it to other situations in life such as doubling a recipe.

My role in science camp was a bit hard to define. First of all, I was the community liason. It was my job to know where to go to get certain things, it was my job to talk to people and make them like us, and it was my job to get things that other people wanted.

I also taught the Astronomy classes at the camp. Unfortunately most of the nights were cloudy and rainy but, one of the nights we were able to get a hold of a telescope and spent an hour and a half staring at stars with 40 kids. Someone asked a question about the apocalypse, someone asked if you could really slingshot around the sun to attempt time travel (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), and if going through a black hole really meant that you would go back in time. We also talked about the North Star, the importance of stars, and being able to navigate by them, why the moon changes frequently, and what makes a celestial object a celestial object (planet vs. star, star vs moon, planet vs star, etc).

And last, but not least, I worked with a nurse to take care of the sick and injured kids at the camp. I was also able to use this opportunity to teach the kids about health things like what a pulse is, how to take it, and the same thing with temperature and how a thermometer works, etc. Very interesting time.
For the camp, volunteers and their homologues planned sessions around: chemistry, physics, biology- anything that involved being able to touch, feel, see, hear, and above all think critically about. The kids were then tasked to plan their own science fair. Another volunteer and I helped with a group of kids who wanted to examine water under a microscope. They examined filtered water, pump water, and regular water from a barrage to see which had the greatest quantity of microbes and bacteria in it. Luckily, I had scooped some seriously gross barrage water and the bacteria was everywhere! And the kids said, “people drink that?” Which, was super cool because now the kids know what lives in barrage water and how there is so much less bacteria, microbes, etc in pump water and filtered water (what PCVs drink).

The camp culminated in a science fair where all the groups presented their experiments and their findings, along with how they used the scientific method along the way.

It was interesting to see how Burkinabe kids reacted to a new way of learning- because the reception was so overwhelmingly positive. It was the same with the Burkinabe teachers reacting to a new way of teaching- most received the information and skills in a positive manner and really wanted to try it at their own skills with different experiments to help explain different concepts.

Hopefully, the science camp will continue to be a part of the summer activities for Peace Corps volunteers.  

Parking


Parking is a hassle, finding a space, making sure your car can fit into the space, and then making sure it’s reasonably secure so that no one will double park you or park too close to your car. Invariably one of these fails and you end up getting into the driver’s seat through the passenger door or something equally inconvenient.

How could it be worse, you ask? Well not finding a parking spot could be an issue. But, I think that having to pay for parking takes the cake. Parking meters, parking attendants, those little automatic parking scanners that act sort of like a Fast Pass all help make sure that nobody forgets that parking is no longer free.
One of the things I never considered when coming to Burkina Faso was parking. I figured well I’m going to be on a bike, in Burkina Faso- who would charge for parking there? Oh boy was I wrong.

As it turns out, parking attendant is one of the most popular jobs in Burkina Faso. You show up at a building, and somebody takes your bike, and gives you a piece of paper, then “protects your bike”. This usually involves sitting on a bench, drinking tea, and chatting. Then when you leave you have to give the guy 50 FCFA (10 cents) for guarding your bike. There is no choice because even if you don’t give the guy your bike he will STILL charge you for the parking. But, all in all, you do what you have to do, and when you get back you know your bike is going to be there. It’s not too big a deal unless you don’t have change; in which case, it becomes a huge issue.

What gets me is that the attendants also want to be paid for the work when they’re not there. When I was working at the American Language Center, this exact situation happened to a friend and I. We had gone to a bakery to get breakfast one day and since we had been going there for a while we knew the parking guy. He wasn’t there so we just left our bikes, walked inside, ate breakfast, and when we came out we grabbed our bikes the parking guy comes running up and told us to pay him for the parking. We explained that he was not there so we shouldn’t have to pay for the parking, and yes we knew he wasn’t there because the entire front of the bakery was made out of glass. So he told us all about how he had something happen at his house and he couldn’t get there on time, etc. We didn’t want to feel like jerks so we paid him- told him that if it happened again we wouldn’t pay him (because why would you expect to get paid for a job you didn’t do?) and we continued on our way.

A couple days later the same thing happened. He asked us to pay him, we explained the situation to him again, and we reiterated that if it happened again we wouldn’t pay. We strongly considered not paying but part of the Peace Corps mission is to prove that Americans are cool, awesome, benevolent and we thought to squabble about 20 cents would be a little ridiculous.

A few days later we went back to the bakery and the same thing happened. Again. This time, however, he came running up, saw who it was and just said, “See you tomorrow, right?” He then explained to us that he wasn’t there to do the work so he didn’t really expect to get paid, but he thought it was really nice how we talked to him each day and that tomorrow he would be there on time. And he was.

It was pretty awesome seeing that much behavior change within the span of four weeks. If only all my planned projects went that well.