Q&A

Thursday 22 March 2007

In the US I am known for my never-ending questions. If I was in the US, what questions would I ask my friend in Burkina?

What is your living situation like?

I live in a tiny 2 room house full of sand and dust with an aluminum roof. It’s smaller than most of your garages. Can a car even fit into mine?

My latrine shares a wall with my house and has no roof. I wonder how that will be during the rainy season. I have a front porch, sand as the floor, enclosed and roofed by straw mats surprisingly private, a place to sleep in the heat. I write by kerosene lamp and have a couple of girls fetch water 2 football fields away from a wheel pump well. My house is empty except for a desk. I basically live in my porch. It’s too hot inside.

I don’t cook. There are too may food vendors: rice, black-eye peas and spaghetti ($0.20), corn toe (solid form of grits), fish and sauce ($0.20), bread and 1/3 cup of sweetened condensed milk and a spoonful of instant coffee, the rest water ($0.20), cabbage, lamb, rice, and spaghetti ($0.20), a huge plate of goat or lamp ($1).

Are you lonely?

No way. There is a ton of socializing here. Lots of people speak French. In the mornings, I have coffee and talk with students. In the afternoon I walk around town talking to whomever. Kids and students come visit especially girls. In the evenings, I eat with a family and drink green tea with a group of men.

How’s school and teaching?

Well I arrived during the last week of the 2nd trimester. Teachers were calculating grades and having the kids recheck the math.

My first impression is that it is a well-run school. The facilities are new provided by PLAN. They have 10 classrooms, a library, an administration building, a teacher’s room, a kitchen where the cafeteria lady cooks over wood, and nice homes for the teachers who are brought in by the government.

During the last week of the 2nd trimester, the students organized a football tournament, a traditional clothing pageant, a carnival, and a dance. I got to judge the pageant based on costume and a 5 minute speech on a theme like HIV/AIDS, child labor, excision, scholarisation of girls.

We are now on 2 weeks of vacation and I’ll finish the month and a half of the last trimester teaching 10 hours a week of math to 7th and 8th graders, class sizes of 80-100. That will be a challenge. I also haven’t done any geometry since 11th grade. I guess it’s good that I have a PhD, a badge of a self-learner.

Do you see any differences between your village in Guinea and your village in Burkina?

First off the village in Burkina has a Catholic church, a Protestant one and a mosque. It has pork running around as well as donkeys. It has cell phone coverage, cold beer, homemade millet beer, and cold cokes.

Another big difference is I see a lot of kids with big bellies which is something I never saw in my village in Guinea.

Here it is flat with sand, shrubs, and cliffs, kind of reminds me of Colorado.

I can’t get fruit in my Burkina village, but I can get cabbage.

There are cultural differences too, but I’m too new to comment on them.

I am very happy in my new home. I do daily 20-30 km bike rides and did a 60 km ride today. I am hoping to do the 80-90 km to Ouaga soon.

My house isn’t furnished yet. It feels more like a large walk-in closet. But this village feels like home. I have a daily routine, people to talk to, girls to teach how to make friendship bracelets, kids who come over to play. It is a community not a house that makes a home. I’ve never been a Martha Stewart. Who cares if my windows have curtains? I can be happy living outside on a cot as long as there are people who come to visit, people to cook for, people to share my huge bag of salted cashews with.