12 times, that's every 2 hours

I've been a little sick the past two days. Let's just say that yesterday I went to the restroom 12 times which averages out to once every two hours, and it wasn't cause I was drinking a lot of water. Andy said something similar happened to him in Ghana and after at time number 8 he could do nothing but laugh. Number 8 wasn't funny for me and neither were #'s 9 through 11, 12 was kind of funny. Any way just one more thing to love about being abroad. I'm not looking forward to getting home and having to let my stomach readjust once again.

I did get to do something fun however. Tuesday night the Peace Corps had their swearing in ceremony at the US ambassador's house (currently vacant). Our group was invited so two of us went as representatives. We've managed to make some friends with some of the volunteers who are entering their second year of service so it was fun to watch them interact with the new group. The cheese quesidillas were very good. We went out dancing afterwards, funny thing about going dancing on a Tuesday night, we were literally the only people in the club. The DJ perceiving that we were a large group of Americans treated us to a 5 or 6 song Michael Jackson tribute to start the night (exactly what we all wanted).

I will not be moving to the Niger boarder in Fada in October. The group wants to find another way to staff that position without splitting up the team we have here in Ouga. Hopefully the will be other opportunities to get around the country to see what my local friend Siddo calls "real Burkina". I could be down in Bobo next week with my friend from World Food Program.

Went to the big central market on Monday. While fun, next time I go I'd like to be able to walk around without attracting an 8 person entourage. Normally a following would be a good thing, but in this case it's just annoying. Seeing as how (mistakenly) white=money everyone wants you to come look at their shop and buy their crap (That one and my next few sentences may be considered insensitive, I don't care you try living here).

So the following crowds in on you starts grabbing you trying to pull you to their shop and apparently never hear the word no. Now I'm sorry but every day someone wants me to buy something from them 1. I don't have the money, 2. If I did have the money I still wouldn't buy it. 3. I'm wearing a pair of sandals why would I buy the one's your trying to sell me? 4. The Burkina soccer jersey I'm wearing only cost 3000cfa, why on earth would I pay 6000cfa for the one you're offering?

Best way to get the Burkiabe to leave you alone when they're trying to sell you something is to joke with them. Hard to do when 6 of them are literally pulling you in different directions and not gently I might add, the kind of tug that gets you hit or yelled at in the States. However the guy with the sandals made the mistake of following us to the taxi. So as he made a finial attempt to sell me the flip-flops he was holding I took mine off and tried to sell them to him. Aside from being far too over stimulating the market was fun.

Sad news about the international school that's located just around the corner from our house; the milkshakes are not as good as the ones from the embassy. I know what you're thinking that's awful news and I couldn't agree more. Good news the United Methodist Church General Board of Discipleship is doing an event in September in the Ivory Coast, I'm going to try and make my way down if the money works out, yay! Those of you who are, good luck starting back with classes.

Peace,
Ben

CHUCK

No there's attention grabbing way to stat this post. We've managed however to make new friends. Turns out the Peace Corps transit house for Burkina Faso is a few blocks away from our house. We ran into a few of them at a restaurant the Friday night. They come and go taking some breaks here from their assigned villages. It's nice to hear their takes on what life is like here. Most have been here longer than we have, although a new batch are sworn in tomorrow night (I'll be there and let you know how it goes).

Any way one new friend's name is Brad but his friend Greg told me it was Chuck so after fifteen minutes of calling him Chuck, then switching to Bryan I finally arrived at Brad. His village is down in the south and he has been gracious in sharing some knowledge with us. It is really good hear some of the local customs explained in better detail that just my brain trying to piece things together is very useful. It's even better to hear that even the peace corps workers have plenty of time when they get board. I think at some point I will have to take some of these guys up on their offers to come out to the villages for a few days when I've got another break.

Other than that things are starting to move into routine mode. May not be the best thing but it's good for motivating me to want to work again. Dealing with the feeling of uselessness during this time off is eating at me. There is plenty of time spent trying to convince myself that the teaching I'm doing (when I'm doing it) is useful, sadly the benefits are not immediately visible, so I'll pray for patience and after 10 years what we're doing should hopefully show up in changes for the better. I envy doctors and people who distribute food, mostly anything where impact is immediately visible, even the trash donkey driver. But that was a lesson learned years ago and something we all need to work on. Almost nothing any of us do will be immediately visible and I think our culture needs a lesson in moving away from instant gratification.

On a lighter note, mango milkshakes are the bomb and the International School Recreation center serves a good breakfast and even has bacon. Our papaya tree has some good looking fruit on it and hopefully soon we will have fresh papaya form the back yard. I'll try and do something interesting in the next few days and then tell you all about it.

peace,
Ben

World at my fingertips

Have some more pictures please.

However I do want to share something that I've been thinking about today.

So today Collins (housemate and old friend) and I went to play a little soccer/football just to get out of the house and get a bit of exercise. Can't really walk down the street here with a soccer ball in your hand without drawing attention. Anyway we made our way to the field near our house. We picked up a small following of street kids. Let's pause here for a vocabulary and culture lesson.

Street kids; kids ranging from young to not as young. Street kids come in wide verities from the street kid who begs for money using a tomato paste can tide to a rope, to the street kids who rummage through trash on the street looking for glass or anything worth some money or food whatever. Some street kids are not legitimate street kids, some have just been sent out by their parents to beg money during the time they would normally be in school, don't be fooled by imitators. (like it really matters, they're frick'n hungry and i can't do anything for them but the take off your finger trick and play some soccer)

Ok so, yeah get pumped we're going to play some soccer with some street kids. Time for some feel good central. Heck yeh let's go! Right you wish, if you thought this would be the thing I find to make me feel useful you're dreaming. There is the distinct possibility that we did provide some joy for these kids for roughly 45 minutes. However I couldn't help but notice that there trash bags full of stuff they would later undoubtedly be selling for some sort of food were sitting on the side of the field. I also couldn't help but notice that our ball kept going into the ditch.

Have I told you about the ditch? If not here's another lesson, the ditch runs all over town, some areas it has an open top others it's covered. It acts primarily as a ditch, which means it also acts as a toilet for, well street kids and anyone else who needs to pee while standing near it. It also acts as a trash can because of all the trash on the street that gets washed into the ditch.

Anyway point is this, yes soccer with the street kids was loads of fun and hopefully it was the same for them. Now imagine telling the kids you have to leave, sorry kids back to the trash piles with you I've got other things to do that don't involve the ditch. What's that we have some water and you're thirsty? Well sure you can have some. Here's where I turned into what I love to hate.

Kids get the water bottle and they fight over it, bigger kids get bigger amounts of water. Pushing ensues and of course I don't like that. So I take control of the water bottle (see if you can follow the metaphor). Each kid will have water so long as I am in control, and as long as I'm in control there will be pushing or fighting. Never mind how you've operated your entire lives and how you will continue to operate when I'm not looking. I'm here now so things will be different and I WILL FEEL GOOD ABOUT MYSELF (not). So I took the water bottle and had the kids stop pushing and poured a little bit into each of their mouths, fairly evenly I might add until we had used all the water and all had something to drink (even the smallest kid). Now how should I feel?

Can't really explain to a street kid that there's no need to fight over what is most likely the only clean water you will see all day. Can't really explain to a street kid that there's plenty of water, shoot I even take a shower almost everyday, sometimes twice and most likely as soon as I'm done playing with you. And who would want to? No, can't change a street kid's reality just because mine is different and I know better. Oh well, hope you had fun playing soccer for 45 minutes.

It's no problem to go out and play soccer with the kids, I do really enjoy it and it's nice to see them smile for a change. I just didn't like the fact that i turned into a first world power controlling the resource and rationing it out. It's just up setting to see the world's political/economic situation played out on the small scale with my hands doing the dealing.

Peace,

Ben

Is that the same cow?

Yesterday (Monday), Siddo took me on an adventure. We left Ouga and headed north. There's a large lake on the north side of Ouga, I had never seen it before yesterday. We traveled about 30 minutes north on the moto, so my lower extremities had been shaken to within an inch of their life. We were heading to a place with stone carvings, a place where loads of artist come from around the world to just make some sculptures for this museum/sculpture garden/person's farm.

On our way in we were greeted by a small heard of cattle that took up the whole road and were moving in the opposite direction. So on our small moto we sat while all the cows passed by us, there was a last minute mounting attempt off our starboard side (not trying to mount us thankfully but I'm still glad i had my helmet on.

We got to the place, I don't know what I was expecting but I'm close to giving up expecting anything. Pretty much there are loads of sculptures and you tour yourself around to look at them all. Along the way you dodge cows, chickens and goats. First thing we came to was a large stone banana. Very nice, then there were loads of carved faces in the rocks, then we turned down a path that went to Ihavenoideawhere. So as we guessed our way through the exhibit we came across a large carved sea turtle, so i took a moment to do my rendition of "Finding Nemo".

So we left sculpture place, after running into our friend the white cow one more time. On our way out we passed back through the heard of cows and i spotted small hill, so we went to climb it. From on that hill I saw some big rocks and junk and body of water. And what do we do when we see large rocks? That's right we climb them. So after i climbed over these large rocks to get on top of the biggest one, I realized there was a much easier way to get up there that didn't involve more than walking, but whatever it was fun for me. On top of the largest rock there was about a 30 or so foot drop down into some water. I checked the depth by tossing a large rock into the water. It's deep enough I thought. "Siddo I wanna jump" he convinced me not to by saying things like "No, no, you shouldn't". Very convincing Siddo I didn't get to jump, I'm tired of things like the threat of disease stopping me from having fun, so what if I'd get some crazy large worm in the bottom of my foot we could take it out. Any way after scaring and being scared by some unreasonably large birds we left.

So then it was off to the Zoo/collection of animals at the president's house. If you're a PETA person I don't recommend going you will only find fault. However if you are a person who likes to look at animals very closely and understand that rich people in Africa have loads of money and often buy themselves some animals, I recommend going.

There were giraffes, one Zebra, some cow/buffalo things from South Africa, I have no idea the best I could do was get the french name for stuff then immediately forget that because a camel or something would come out of no where and scare me. I saw a giraffe, a zebra, an animal with horns, another animal with horns that was shy, a frick'n tiger that was about 2 feet away from me, some baboons, a 7 meter python, large tortus having sex, loudly and for an impressive amount of time in the African heat, saw some small elephants, and got to feed a gigantic hippopotamus. It was a full day. Hippos are fricking scary epically when you've got it's hand by it's mouth which could easily fit half of you inside it. Oh it was fun, but the lions wouldn't come out into the heat of the day, smart lion.

I know what you're thinking, must have been crowed, probably couldn't get to the glass to see anything good. Oh no, there was a grand total of 5 of us taking this tour and the only thing between me and that tiger was a small fence, same goes for the hippo, they python, baboons, crocodiles, and hiding lions. I got to scratch a hyena, and feed one of those horned animals not to mention the hippo, that's right, he was a hungry hungry hippo. All in all a good outing.

Later I went to my friend Azedeen's house to work on some English with him. Then he took me to this restaurant, one of the nicest restaurants I've ever been in. It is called Godavan, it has four themed rooms and off the chain food and through the roof prices. Turns out the manager is one of the guys that played in the tennis tournament last week. Fun times. Well that's an up date.

Peace

Ben

Demain, Je ne fais rien

So we have some of our Students, group shot (they didn't know i was standing there) the bottom is from the tennis tournament, and NÖel who headed back to Mali today.

Yay, the first section of school is over. I have three weeks off coming up which means mostly sleeping in a little and then being board most of the day if I don't get out of the house. However good news for me, I've found the tennis community. There's a group who plays at the US Embassy on Mondays and Fridays, consisting of now three Americans, an Aussie, a Frenchman, and a Burkinabé. Even better news, there is a small snack bar at the American Embassy Recreation center, they have, tacos and MILKSHAKES!!!!!!!!! What more can an abroad American ask for other than mutilated ice cream and Mexican food, NOTHING I say nothing.

I feel like I'm finally getting settled in a bit. Making some friends who have nothing to do with the school which is SUCH a blessing. There are some baptist missionary types who live near us, I play tennis with Charlie and his son Caleb. They even gave me a ride home, wasn't that nice of them. I think I'll spend most of my time off playing tennis and paling around with the Frenchman and the Cuban who work for the World Food Program.

Today I ate foot. I mean I ate toe. I mean I ate tô, pronounced toe and fairly odd like eating a foot. Imagine if you will, cafeteria mashed potatoes that have sat out too long, that's what it looked like. Imagine if you will the movement of jello, cause that's how it moved, trust me I most likely spent close to 15 minutes just playing with it in the bowl, it was very exciting (jiggly, jiggly, jiggly). Now then for the texture, uh...I'm going to stick with old cafeteria mashed potatoes only hotter. Don't you think for a second we ate it plain either, Gladiss cooked us up a new sauce today, new meaning it wasn't some variation of a red sauce, this one was green, with loads of spinach and beans? and some beef. I thought the whole thing was flippin delicious, but my house mates did not completely share that sentiment.

Got a letter from the Wesley Seminary crew this week. A letter of letters, they were all wonderful thank you all for the encouragement. Some need special mention however, Andrew Greenwood's wonderful boost of confidence through what must be the absolute epitome of an Andrew statement, "Remember when we went to 2 Amys and couldn't figure out the check? I know you'll do great in Africa." Thanks for that Andrew. From other people worth mentioning, "If you see a camel spit on it for me"..."we are [donkey's]"(edited for content) yes that's very true...I really appreciate all the cursing in the letters that's lovely glad some of you still know how. After I finished editing all the letters I went back and enjoyed them...and yes I know my blogs aren't perfect either.

I'm excited because the Premier League starts tomorrow in England. Sido and I and perhaps some of the other teachers are going to head to down-town to watch the match. Sadly NÖel has gone back to Mali, so no more adventures until we can meet again. Most of the school day consisted of dancing and sinning and watching Elf.

In the spirit of the John Wesley quote that I read the other day from Charles Yrigoyen's "Holiness of Heart & Life" I may look to see if there's extra work I can do with my down time with some of the groups. Quote is "if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike", this was in a letter he wrote to a Roman Catholic. As I push forward I think this will be more true everyday. So long as we avoid letting our focus slip from love to difference the long stretch of this year will be very productive.

peace,

Ben

HOW DO YOU MISS THAT!!!!!

right so...by God's good grace and stroke of luck, I happened to be playing tennis, pretty much in a parking lot with some locals...the court was too small there were no service lines, but whatever it was tennis...one of the guys there is connected with SONABEL the electric company...He is the one that invited me to play in a tennis tournament Saturday night.

Happily I do not have my own racket so I had to borrow one when I arrived at the tournament. Next stumbling block, it was a doubles tournament and I don't have a partner here. No problem they just gave me a random one. Cool, mine turned out to be from Lebanon. Now then the rules.

This was no ordinary tournament, this was a vicious best of four games wild African battle. So you would play no more than four games for your set, and you need only one set to advance. If it ends 2 games to 2 then you play a tie break.

First round, my partner introduces himself by saying, "I'm not very good". Wonderful. We won our first round 7-4 in a tie break. Now then there were loads of teams there should have been at least three rounds. Oh no, there were just two, so our second round match was the championship match, and I really don't understand the math on that one...Also the team that we played in the finial was not a team that played in the first round...it was two guys that both played in the first round but they didn't play together.

Any way, this match ended 2-2 so we entered a tie break. We were down match point at 6-4 with me returning serve, which I did beautifully and won us a point. We were now down 6-5 with me serving, which I did beautifully. I hit a lovely kick serve to our Cuban opponent's back hand which he immediately popped up in the air just as I wanted. The ball, came floating down slowly toward my partner standing at the net. If Santa Clause himself had dropped this ball off it couldn't have been a bigger gift. My partner lined-up, wound-up, and hit the ball roughly as hard as he could toward the open court behind the net player and out of reach of the Cuban. One problem, he hit it too high and it sailed out by roughly a mile costing us the match. BOO! I say, boo.

Sadly we had to settle for the second place prize, a white ball cap with the SONABEL logo on it, rather than the grand prize of a white ball cap with the SONABEL logo on it.

Oh well. The president of the club invited me back to play anytime I want and he said he would let me know when the next tournament would be. Maybe it will be a singles tournament. The first thing they said to me was "nice court right?" To which I replied "uh...yeah? it's lovely" and it was just trust me, compared to my parking lot tennis the day before it was lovely.

Main thing to remember here, finding tennis in Africa, big big plus.
peace,
Ben

call me, Dr., Nurse, EMT, PA,or maybe just slightly worried Ben

Yes i just wrote on here last night, i understand that. However, this needed to be said today. Around 12 o'clock three of our students decided it would be fun to have asthma attacks and pass out. The first one was in my class while she was working on a unite check point. The kids said, "Mr. Ben, she's knocked out" or some version of that in french. Well good I thought let's get her inside, so we half drag her unconscious body into the hall way to try and cool her off. It's loads of fun (not) watching a teenage girl struggle to breath on the floor while you don't have a clue what's going on and are trying to figure out what's going on by speaking your second and not mastered language. So with the help of other students i hear that she has asthma, well good we know what were dealing with. I get my teammate who has asthma for advise. Right so we get her inhaler and force a few pumps down her hoping she's breathing enough to get the medicine into her system. So as I sat on the floor with my hand under the girls neck to open her breathing passage, thanks CPR class from at least three years ago, and wondered if she was going to wake up i paused to say a quick prayer in between checking for breathing and a pulse. Not relay my idea of fun but to be honest it did make school much more interesting today.

So she woke up after maybe one more pump from the inhaler. Good that's taken care of I went back to my class to watch them finish their little test. So about 15 minutes later mayby, one of our students, John, came running into my class with a not so calm look on his face. So I'm thinking the same girl has passed back out, right no good. So i follow John to a different room than the one I put the first girl in to cool off. So girl number two, also down on the ground breathing irregularly and unconscious. Great, so let the Inquisition begin, does this girl have asthma? Reply: we don't know...then Reply: yes...well where's her inhaler? she doesn't have one...they give me a random...My thought process, if she's about to die I'll give it to her, but otherwise I'm not thinking that's a good idea...then turns out she does have an inhaler...wonderful.

So at this point this girl is convulsing a bit, that's no good...So act number two of trying to get a pump of medication into some half dead person's mouth, sort of...so ok, we get a puff into her mouth, she starts to open her eyes but they aren't focusing at all, just moving all over the place...eventually they focus, good news and she starts to wake up...i deposet her in the air conditioned room as well.

About 10 minutes later, Sido, comes into my room with a concerned look on his face...wonderful I ask is there another one...he says, "yes" this time downstairs...great so i run down for girl number three...also passed out, so back to holding the back of her neck so her air way will be open...this one comes around pretty quickly...praise Jesus

So three crises averted...got to play tennis this afternoon at a small play ground...the court wasn't real (way to short, and asphalt), neither was the competition...however there was some guy there who I suppose is big in Burkina Faso Tennis...also not very good...but in any case he saw me play and gave me an invitation to play in a tournament tomorrow night hosted by this big electric company Sonabel...so good stuff tomorrow night i get to play in a invitation tennis tournament...wooo...dear any nurses or doctors reading if you have suggestions for how to deal better with passed out asthmatics please let me know.
peace
Ben

Dear every teacher ever

Dear Every Teacher Every,
Your out of your mind...perhaps it would be better if i were at home or something like that...but it's been 4 weeks of classes and i am tired...I'm really not sure how you put up with it...maybe a nice hot bath, oh wait nope that's not going to happen...maybe night out in the city, nope that's not gonna work either...I'm enjoying teaching, yes it is fun and i think I'm doing pretty well at...next week is the last week of intensive, meaning we get a break after next Friday...yay for breaks, so pretty much thanks every teacher ever for putting up with your students day in and day out
love Ben

now then Independence day was Wednesday...i know what you're thinking, Independence day for Burkina Faso is Aug. 4th, i mean that is the name of the stadium and everything...very true, however for some reason we celebrate it on the 5th, whatever...in any case it was a day off from school, i mostly slept...we did walk the three miles to the center of town to have a tonic water, then we came back woowhoo...that was loads of fun

my students have taken to the ridiculous, rather than answer questions about the drees code for this country, my boys just pick the most offensive/sexist answer and go with that...yes women should have to cover their heads, no women should not wear pants at the office, no women should not wear shorts in the street...apparently that's funny, i didn't really get it, maybe I'm not meant to teach middle school...i do feel slightly trapped because i teach out of our book...at time i can interject a conversation into the mix, that goes well with the older class, but my younger class just wants to be "funny"...if Elaina Ramsey were here her hand would have fallen off by now from slapping people (we double the finial consonant because it is a monosyllable word with a short vowel sound)

don't get me wrong, I've not entered the get me out of this country phase yet, just the get me out of this house/school phase...i think during the break we may try and swing a trip to the Ivory Coast, which means surfing YAY!!!, if i have the funds to do so...the break time will be welcomed in any case...on the brighter side of things, the shower broke, oh wait that's bad...uh, the gym at the end of the street is a far cry from home but works well...figuring out Kilo.s and Lbs. has been loads of fun (not)...reading has reclaimed the top spot on the recreation index, that is when i don't have a massive head ache.

let's end with something good here, Collins got here this Tuesday morning at 2:30 am...Myself pastor Zongo and Lazar went to pick her up from the airport...you'd think there would only be one ridiculously early flight per night, you'd be wrong, we went on the first sound of an air plane landing, we were off by a half hour...so Zongo Lazar and I hung out in front of the airport...until Zongo said something like "Hey I'm a pastor, and this white guy over here is an unpaid English teacher from the United States" at which point the guard looked at me with very puzzled mumbled something in french that i think was a question directed toward me, to which i responded " " (smile)...at which point she let us through security so we could wait inside at the baggage claim...Zongo to me "what's she look like?" me "she's white"...Zongo "oh, is that her? is that her?" me "no, no"...to be honest i didn't see her till she walked through the landing check point, past the control officer people and waved at me, but any way she's here and that's all that matters...that and Zongo owes me 4000 CFA
peace
Ben