february winding down

So presently i'm in ouahigoya where i'm typing up a quarterly report about my work at the big L. Apparently peace corps washington needs to keep tabs on me to make sure I don't abandon my classes for arms dealing or drug trafficking. The report is full of some rather fun questions like "are you a) very well integrated b)somewhat integrated etc". I totally understand why they have to do it but all in all it does seem silly.

The upshot is I actually have quite a bit to write down on this report as more and more things have been coalescing on the work front. My art club is starting to take off in a manner of speaking. It seems to simultaneously be completely out of control and also quite a bit of fun (a suitable summery for all my school associated activities). We are narrowing down to sketches to be performed and we have also composed some poetry together. I was a little slow on the ball with regards to national womens day (march 8th) and unfortunately our performance will not be ready by then. I'm thinking if we wrap it up towards the end of the 3rd trimester we can throw a pretty off the chain party for the school. I would like to incorporate as many branches of art as possible while keeping theater at the core (it seems to be what they feel the most comfortable creating on their own).

The art club is pretty fun but I have also set my sights on a few more practical objectives. First and foremost I have decided that before I leave BF my site will have a proper library. The rate at which students devour my books that I lend out is really only a taste of what dire need for resources there is in my community. The bulk of my students seem to be in the same position as I am with regards to french level and yet they have none of my resources for improvement. I've started working on a grant with the help of my director that would bring together both funds from within and without a the community (it's called peacecorps partnership and is a pretty common avenue for projects like mine). I'm hoping to have the grant done before the end of the school year so i can work on it over the summer.

I've also received a small grant to buy some musical instruments for my school. It's not a whole lot but it should be enough to buy a couple djembé and a balafon which is an increase of infinity percent of the the musical resources of my school.

Hopefully the upshot of all of this is my site will get a little bit out of me being a volunteer. Learning french and djula and studying are, at their core, selfish activities and while it's important for my sanity to devote some time to those things each day, I hope to do a lot more 'volunteer work' over the next year.