This week in BFA

Sorry for the delay it has been a busy week. Let's start with last weekend. The Peace Corps had a COS party (close of service) for the group who will be leaving sometime in the next few months. We hosted the party for them on our roof-top. Yes it was loads of fun and you should have been here.

In my classes this week the conversation topic was education. Nearly every night without fail the conversation led to a discussion of marriage. There are three keys to shifting the conversation to marriage. Those keys are; girls, village, education. Girls in the villages (not Ouga) are normally finished with education by the age of 12-14, not because they are university graduates or even high school graduates, but because usually they are married off by this time.

Let me tell you about some of the rational behind the young marriage age. My favorite (not) is the girls are put into arranged (at times forced) marriage at this age because "they will become pregnant". Apparently pregnancy in some of the villages here is cause by girls turning 14 (at least that's the impression that I get). This represents a gigantic step in biological sciences everywhere.

Another reason for the termination of girl's education is because once a daughter is married she belongs/is the responsibility of her new husband/his parents. Public school tuition here ranges from around 20,000 cfa ($40) in large cities - 2,000 cfa ($4) in the villages per year. The new families often can't or won't shell out the 2,000 cfa for a daughter in-law's education in the villages. That sounds harsh but often times the families can only legitimately afford the education of the son. Go ahead and say it, "gosh we're lucky to live in a place where we can go to public school for free/relatively free".

In Ouga however, the views on education are much more "progressive". Girls here often finish high school (in French, college, pronounced Frenchly) and even manage to turn 15 without getting pregnant. My friend from Peace Corps lives in a village whose size I will classify as not quite tiny but slightly less than small. From that area there are two students who are at the University of Ougadougou. Not bad for a small place but not great considering I have four university students in my Thursday night class, and one in my Tuesday night class. That equals five university students that I teach three of whom are girls. Did I mention they all came from Ouga not the villages and they have managed to turn almost 18 years old without getting pregnant.

Please do not take any of this as an indictment on the education system here or of the social norms in the villages. Yes there is room for improvement but I will not make the suggestions rather I'll let you read what some of my students suggested as improvements. One suggestion was to eliminate school fees for girls, another to eliminate school fees for everyone. The need for improved infrastructure was sighted so that teachers can actually make it to the schools in the villages. Giving teachers a house in the village was floated as an idea because often the teachers do not show up to class. Two of my students cited the need for orphanages for the large number of parent less children living on the streets.

Those are suggestions from real people who, if ever implemented, would see the benefits. Please note that when I asked my students about how to change their education system they did not say that Burkina Faso needed to be a sparkling example of modern democracy in the world before we could fix education issues. Although one student did mention the need for protection against corruption in the classroom such as; teachers dating students and giving them high marks as a result. That's right, there's not really a line here, teachers can date students. Personally I'm not OK with that and for the record I am completely freaked out when my female students flirt with me and I avoid or promptly remove myself from any questionable situation (happily it does not happen often.

All in all it has been a big learning week. Why? you ask, because I did way more listening that talking this week, try it.

Peace,
Ben

Re-naming the Constellations

Sorry I know I've not written in for a bit but this should be worth it. For the most part I've just been hanging around town here in Ouga, we have had a long break that ends tomorrow (thank God). I managed to take a quick trip up north to visit some Peace Corps friends.

Adventure #1: taking public transportation long distance in Burkina Faso. It was necessary to take the bus up to Dori, about a 260KM trip, so roughly 4 hours. If you are on the bus and the person next to you needs you to hold something you hold it, goats, food, glasses, babies, whatever. Bus babies tend to pee on you, and no they don't wear diapers, so i was on my guard for bus babies. What I ended up with was some one's shopping, so just glasses for me this trip. The buses I took were pretty nice, it is however one of those things where the "service engine" light is constantly on but, naw forget it no reason to check on that it will just be back on next week. Every time the bus stops loads of folks run up to sell products like fried dough, eggs, veggies, fruit, you know whatever. Good times tho.

Adventure #2: getting off at the stop your friends told you to. Uh...oops, so I blew that one. My bus went from Ouga to Dori and no further, Kaits instructions to me were "get off at Sebba road"...issue, the bus does not stop at Sebba road you have to request that stop, so that's my bad. I ended up in the Dori Gare (station). Luckily I had my cell phone so I could call someone, oh right my cell phone wasn't working because that would be too easy. SO, white guy in the bus station is pretty much like walking into a room full of fat people with cake, everybody wants a piece. I asked how to get to Sebba road, the reply I got was, "Sebba's far away, there's a bush taxi in the morning", with a very cool poker face I acknowledged the situation while in my head i thought "OH CRAP!!" (substitute the word you think I really thought). I walked out of the station with some guy who wouldn't stop talking about whatever he wanted me to fund, I asked him where a phone was. No one tells you they walk you there, that's nice of them but it also doesn't get me a way from their sales pitch. Lucky me Kait called and said she was only three blocks away and I was rescued.

Adventure #3: eating home made gyros with the peace corps. Three new volunteers plus three veteran volunteers and there first Dori area team meeting equals, really really good food. Now then, three old volunteers plus three new volunteers plus Sahel rain/wind/dust storm equals fun sleeping arrangements and a scramble to catch all the stuff in the yard before it blows away. good times.

Adventure #4: I'm tired of this adventure labelling thing (it felt like a good idea)...any way I spent one night up in Dori then headed south to Bani to Kait's village. Very small place but home to some pretty famous mosques. The mosques were built by an imam who "thought highly of himself"...Built some smaller mosques on the hill, some didn't face mecca/most didn't...the imam wanted to start an alternate hajj to this place (it didn't catch on)...in the dry season the area is very desert like with little vegetation...it's in a geographical area called the Sahel...pretty much the Sarah expands and contracts with the dry and wet season, the areas that change (going green then very brown/red) are the Sahel...So right now, for my trip, it was very pretty.

With horizons of green hills and fields full of tall millet you would never know that in the next few months that area is going to look like Mars. Any way there was loads to learn on this trip. Most notably the local language fa-ful-day (that's not how you spell it) in Ouga it's Mooree. So here's your lesson for this instalment "fo-fo" is hey and thanks, very useful phrase.

So Kait's house is mud brink like the rest of Bani. Mud brick traps heat really well, so going in the house (two rooms) doesn't happen much, just to cook and maby change clothes. Kait has a hanger over her porch made mostly from millet stalk which provides a much better place to hide from the sun. That's basically the routine, cook do what work you've got, and escape the sun as often as you can.

So on we took one day to look around, see the mosques and the villages. The mosque recently finished it's large mud brick dome. More recently it fell down...again. Got to go out and climb some of the hills that ended up being a very relaxing 6 mile walking day through the hottest part of the day with not enough water. I loved it.

On our way we found a village Kait had not been to yet and when one of the local families they invited us in saying "hey you stupid white people don't you know it's really frick'n hot what are you doing walking around right now, come have a seat and rest with us" or something like that. That was a fun time, got to see how you sort out chaff from the millet, you use a woven thing that looks like a large coaster. Put some millet on top and then bounce it so the wind blows away some chaff while the millet falls toward you into a bowl...good times. Also on our way out I got to scare a little kid because he had never seen a white person before...I think he may have been three years old, old enough to run looking back over his shoulder with a constant scared whine that if we had ran after him would have surly turned into an all out scream. FUN TIMES!

At night we slept outside in the Kait's court yard on a large comfortable mattress with a mesh tent on top...very nice...The stars were incredible and for the first time ever I got to see the milky way, very cool...we also took the time to up-date the constellations because I decided that none of the current ones look like what they are called...so we came up with, straight line constellation, bubble letter S constellation, stick figure dog constellation, closed lap top constellation, open lap top constellation and many many other, you should try it out sometime.

In any case it was a lovely trip and a great way to see some of the country...I'll be making more trips don't you worry.

Peace,

Ben

Lucky

Apparently getting nearly 1/3 of the total year's rain fall in 10 hours is a bad thing. So if you didn't see on the news (which you most likely did not) Ouga got way to much rain the other day and we had some flooding issues. 5 people have been reported dead and 150,000 have lost their homes. There are two main roads near my house one to the north the other to the south. The one to the north got washed out in certain areas less than a mile from our house. The main/national/only hospital was flooded and they had to evacuate patience from the some of the wards.

All this took place roughly a mile from our house near the lake no damage here at the house however lucky us. One power supply station was flooded so there have been extra supply problem with electricity. We really only lost power for the day of the storm and part of the next day. Water pressure returned yesterday the storm was on Tuesday/Wednesday. We have been dodging rain since then just kind of waiting for more problems I guess. I'm pretty sure the storm that hit us will soon turn into hurricane Fred and if it doesn't then the east coast of the United States should consider it-self lucky as well.

In other news the bank is almost as much fun as the market. We have a "repose" I believe is the word we have been using here. That is a three hour nap-time from about 12-3. So at the bank come 2:30 there's a long line of people waiting to get in. Oh and the main bank we normally go to got flooded so all their customers were re-routed to the smaller bank around the corner, yay. If you happen to leave more than 4 inches of space between you and the person in-front of you in line, you will be immediately corrected by the 30 people behind you for not moving forward. I rather liked this bank however because I was not greeted at the front door by an AK-47, I'll take the crowd over the gun.

And finally my friend Azz's baby started walking on her own this weekend. That's all I got.

Peace,
Ben