Model School Winds to a Close

So I'm only about 2 hours away from giving my last test in model school. I've been teaching 3émé for the last 2 weeks and I have to say it has been a awesome- the material has been interesting, the kids have been engaged and I have begun to relax into the cadence of teaching in Burkina. Its actually kinda bittersweet that stage as a whole is finishing up. On the one hand I can't wait to get to site and on the other I had grown accustom to the pace of stage. It will be extremely exciting to be the only white/English speaker for 30km but I also might miss a couple of the crackers I have met here. So it goes as they say. Regardless, the next couple weeks are sure to be entertaining. We've got some model school closing ceremony shenanigans on Friday and after that just a weekend of parties until our squad heads back to Ouaga for our pre-site departure wrap-up and swearing in ceremony. I've ordered a burkinabé outfit to wear to the official stuff (it's really more of just a shirt, and an extremely campy one at that- It was made out of a religious print that has little picture of Jesus with sheep on it; to western eyes a good deal of burkinabé mens clothing looks more than a little ridiculous so instead of fighting it I decided to design an outfit that was completely over the top).

I've also ordered a table and chair to be delivered to my site. I have decided that all I need to feel happy in this world is a well built table, a chair at the appropriate height in relation to that table, and a text book. Throw in some free wieghts and running shoes (which by the way I have already begun designing a bush-weight room for my site) and I would be in ecstasy. I have begun working through the 7éme edition of Biologie by Campbell and it is just fantastic. There is something just too satisfying about working through a college biology book in french (I feel like it is the perfect fusion of scientific and linguistic intellectual endeavor).

I am also trying to form a general idea about what secondary projects I want to work on at my site. I'm set up to teach all 4 grades of SVT (science de la vie et de la terre) so that will run me about 20-25 hours of class time a week depending on how many extra classes I demand out of my students. I would also love to continue the girls club that Babet started. This seemed to be a great thing that the community really got behind. It might be kinda hard for me to continue it à cause de my Y chromosome, but I figure if I team up with another one of the female functionnaires (well educated government employee) I might be able to pull it off. I might also just warp it into a youth club with a female empowerment bent. The idea that I am most behind however is starting a music club at my site. As far as I know, no other volunteer has done something like that in burkina faso and given my irrational interest in creative expression in general and music in particular I am really excited about it. Musical instruments are very hard to come by in the poorer parts of this nation and I think an enterprise like this would play to my strengths in a way that a girls club or a forestry program would not. Despite the lack of available resources for music here, the love of music is simply overwhelming. I have yet to see a burkinabé not start singing and dancing as soon as live music starts. I think it would be a beautiful thing to start a music program over here at 1/20th the cost of an equivalent program stateside. I might also add that I have yet to see a female musician here so having a focus on female empowerment through music would be awesome.

I'm in the process of sorting through grants now and Im going to talk to some venders in Ouaga when I go down there to see if I can ballpark instrument costs here. I'm thinking at this point I want to get a couple djembe, a couple other local instruments and some really durable training instruments for the masses - perhaps 20 some recorders or equivalent wind instruments. All of that should not run me more than 600 American- the price of any one piece of percussion equipment that any American high school band possesses.

By the way, I'm going to try to spend more time working on these blog posts in two aspects. I have a profound understanding of my limitations as both a writer and a photographer so try not to expect to much out of these post, but hopefully through my efforts I will be able to improve their content (albeit slightly) over the next couple of years.
à la prochaine