Hey everybody look at me type!

...is the thought that usually goes through my head as many burkinabé businessmen look on in utter astonishment as I type in this internet café. While I rarely get more than 60 mew (is that the paws unit?) on this godless french keyboard they still think i'm pretty cool.

 

Anyways usually when I sit down to type one of these infernal posts I really don't have anything to type about. I think back over my week and few events seem to rise above the sea of banality. This is not the case this week! I have (at least in my mind) a most fascinating and singular story to tell.

 

As some of you know, roaches have been quite the plague of my peace corps experience thus far. I find them in my books, I pull them out of my pockets when looking for change, if I had cereal they would be in the cereal.... suffice it to say that they are (or rather were OMINOUS FORESHADOWING) a problem. 

The point after listing to the audio book form of mobey dick for about 3 hours I was seized by a kind of monomania. No longer would I suffer the roaches.

I knew that hunting the roaches individually would never work- they are individually hearty and far to crafty to be tracked one by one. I knew I had to render my vengeance on the source.

 While my latrine is kept rather tidy on its surface, it's dark heart harbors a festering writhing pile of ever-multiplying roaches. I knew that here and only here would it be possible to purge the lot of them collectively.

I opted to nuke the site from orbit as it was the only way to be sure. On my next visit to tougan I bought not one but TWO cans of 'rambo' insecticide with which I was to make manifest my hate. During the following day I worked quickly under the sunlight which the roaches so feared. I carefully blocked up every potential crevasse and hole on my latrine as to not allow and escape routes for the roaches. Then, with one and only one hole left uncovered I proceeded to empty both cans of insecticide into my latrine. As soon as they were dry I quickly covered up the hole making a fully sealed chamber of death, I then stepped back and waited. After about 3 minutes a faint rustling could be heard on the other side of the main cover. The rustling grew louder very slowly until suddenly as if hell itself was boiling over a swarm of acid covered roaches streamed out of the sides of the cover. I recoiled in horror as the tortured roaches ran desperately away from the latrine. While Rambo is evidently not the most expedient insecticide (it took a good chunk of these roaches 6 hours to die) it does get points for the amount of suffering it seems to render unto these vermin. Lying on their backs twitching until nightfall, the masses of roaches prayed to their gods for deliverance. I granted them none.

birthday and trimester 2

So trimester two got off to a pretty good start I have to say. For my birthday I got together with my friend zackaria to prepare perhaps the greatest meat roast off this decade. It started with the standard ingredients of mutton, onions and tomatoes and then on top of it I put some southwestern green-beans that I prepared separately. Each part was quite savory, but the totality of the feast was truly something more than the sum of it's parts. I then invited about 9 of my friends to take part in the meal's ingestion. By the end of it we were all quite sated- Not to mention my directeur fronted two cases of beer for the party which was quite the addition.

A part from that I've been a lot more ambitious with my schedule than last trimester. I've split 5ème into 10 groups for individual attention in addition to there allotted time. I've realized that If i want to give them a halfway decent take on the scientific method I have to add more hours to 5ème's schedule. A part from that, I've gone about the business of forming an art club at lanfiera where the kids will have a chance each Saturday to come and do a variety of art projects with me. The first week was origami and it was more of a preliminary thing, while this Saturday will be the first official meeting. We'll be working on drawing in general, and perceptive in particular. They love drawing straight lines with their rulers so I think this will be a natural progression for them.

Besides that I've also taken a little more ownership of what exactly I teach them. As the confidence with my french has improved (and I've acquired more tools) I'm now able to stray a little bit more from the prescribed lessons and teach them material I deem to be important. Obviously if I were teaching 3ème (an examination year) I wouldn't have much flexibility but as it stands I basically can do whatever I want.

The best christmas evvvaaaarrr

So presently I write from the glorious burkinabe capital of Ouagadougou, where I enjoy constant electronic stimulation and steak sandwiches. I'm here to take part in some rather boring training meant to reinvigorate my interest in teaching critical thinking and establishing secondary projects. Defiantly the highlight of this trip has been receiving the buildup of packages at the peace corps bureau. I think this might have been the first official time that my birthday and christmas were officially combined for one super holiday. The presents were magnificent. I got a wonderful mix of pragmatic and purely pleasurable gifts which included a nice collection of audio books and a french text from my mom along with some music and whatnot. My Aunt sent two boxes filled with the most wondrous treats and practical tools imaginable also. The eulbergs and woodbecks also sent things that were just beyond awesome, thus making this Christmas the best ever. I thought opening presents had lost some of their appeal from their childhood heyday, but this Christmas totally turned things around.
I might also add that in the typical Nick Rossi tradition I also bought a present for myself. I purchased le petit robert french dictionary, which is basically the foremost frenchy french dictionary that exists on this planet. I spent an insulting sum on it. As one method of comparison I could say that I could buy450 meals in village for the price of the dictionary (and if anything that's and understatement- If i bought medication for villagers with the money I probably could have saved someones life). But I could also say that it was cheaper than the lion's share of books I bought in college, and I'm sure I'll use it more so I have no regrets.

But yes again I must thank everyone that sent me things (im forgetting as I write this but I really do enjoy everything I got and I thank you for taking the time to send it) . I know that I'm supposed to be moving beyond consumerism, but American things are just so great- it just wonderful to have tools to do your job and fun things to enjoy your free time. I will also be giving a lot of this stuff to my community when I leave, so I can kinda justify it right? (no i can't).

In any case New Years at the big L was also a blast. I partied at the house of my prefect with the other functionaries in my village. I must say that no one at my site dances like the teacher crew (myself included). Some losers started going home at 2am but me and my bros stayed and danced until at least 5am. We are also more talented- I would like to add that. The food was also great- It was grilled mutton on a bed of vegetables which included tomatoes and green beans which recently came into season. Also the bread never ran out which is a rare thing at events like that.
I'm planning to pick up some good things here in ouaga to cook back at site. I think i might do something with apples as they can be found here (apple crisp or an apple tart perhaps).

Last night a group of peace corps folks prepared a Mexican feast here at the transit house where I currently reside. It was just beyond everything. It's funny that when Americans think about food they miss from the states they don't think of American food, they think of Mexican food.

Well in any case I'll be leaving again for village this saturday. I've got big plans for my classes, my extra-circulars and my personal studying so I'm quite ready to get back to it.

It's been far too long

So in my laziness I have neglected two compose a blog post for far too long. Quite a bit has happened since my last entry and I'll try to conjure up as many colourful anecdotes as I can to illustrate that.
First, I have had the pleasure of partaking in several totally awesome fetes over the past month. The first was thanksgiving which was just beyond everything. I decided to head over to Titao, a medium sized town about 45k from ohg where a glorious party was hosted by the Roses- the only married couple in our stage. About 10 other crackers where there from throughout the northern territories and a good time was had by all. While I suppose it was nice to chat in english and check up on the progress of my comrades, the real highlight was the food. On the day of thanksgiving proper I believe I tasted the suckling meats of beef, chicken and swine- In addition to seemingly endless supply of beer and sweet potatoes. On top of this, I actually got the chance to slaughter my own chicken and oversee all the meat preparation. I've whined about this before, but seeing the animal from living to prepared meats is somethings we don't do enough of in the states and I found it quite satisfying. Anyway all in all that fete was quite good.
The next party was Tabaski- the Muslim celebration in honor of Abraham. The deed that is honored in particular is when abraham was willing to slaughter his first born son because god commanded it, but in seeing his resolve, god granted abraham a goat to slaughter in place of his son. All the Muslims in my village take time on tabaski to slaughter goats and pass around the meat to the neighbors. I began the gorging in kassoum, a nearby village, where I tasted goat, cous-cous and fried plantains (the west african response to turky, mashed-potatoes and cranberry sauce). When I returned to the big L, I was greeted openly with the various component parts of goats and more rice than I could stomach. This was all fine and good but it turns out tabaski has somewhat of a price. For the next couple weeks I had about 6 groups of children coming to my house each week demanding "SANBAY-SANBAY" which literally means each year, but figuratively means give me something. After shelling out about 2000 cfa over the first week I ended up saying "feuille ti'n fe" to most of them (I have nothing). I also had to listen to one of my neighbors bitch and bitch about how I didn't give her anything the day of the party. I would take her remarks to heart except she also demands that every time I go to the marché i bring her back something. She's a wench.
After that was basically the wrap of the of the school year. I calculated the grades for the first trimester and most of my classes did tolerably well. 4ème did a little too hot, and 5ème didn't really preform to the Pasteur institute level that I demand from them. There will be a lot more experiments next semester so I hope my childs are ready to have their minds blown.
Finally, the most recent and most notable event I just finished. I am currently on my way back to site after a most amazing trip to Mali. I met up with a few of my northern comrades on Monday her in ouahigouya and picked up a couple of stray Benin peacecorps volunteers while we were at it. We decided to travel to Dogon Country which is the site of a absolutely magnificent spot to hike and a very interesting people- the dogon. Our guide named Oumar was a dogon that grew up in Endé , one of the towns we visited. The best way to see dogon country is decidedly on foot so with Oumars guidence we shaked our way through villages allong the dogon ridge, snaking our way up and down rocky terrain at about 15k per day. It was a much more touristy spot than most of BF (scratch that - any of BF) so we saw plenty of honkies along the way- which for us is a kind of attraction. It's bizar, but I and many other peace corps volunteers can be downright unwelcoming to European and American tourists. I don't really no why, after all I'm only about 6 months less green than they are, but we do like to be condescending towards fellow visiters. In any case the trip was amazing. The terrain and culture was just lovely and our guide was something of a carecter. He spoke english after a fashion, but it basically consisted of american idioms that he's picked up from previous tours. I don't think there was a morning that didn't start without Oumar belting out "it's fawking cowld!". He was also plenty knowlagable about the local traditions and magics. We toured many menstruation houses for women because at least according to him menstruation is like an extremely powerful antimagic, and shamans of yester year would sequester women to protect their magics. I think animism might be the opposite of empiricism.
The hiking was also really nice. I have to say at times the climbs rivaled the stairs of cirith ungol, and Oumar was quick to remind us of the visitors and even tour guides that had bought it on the dogon cliffs.
All told it was jut a great trip and the price of 150 us dollars is really hard to beat. I'll be heading to Ouaga pretty soon for a little bit of training after the final party of the season- newyears. Any way I'm running a little low on time so I guess I'll try to write again soon.

Bold American Prose

Once again I set myself down to write a blog post and every passing observation I have made during my week that I felt was worthy of note vanishes from my mind. So i'm left just typing words to that will hopefully coalesce into clever anecdotes. In any case Barack Obama just one and as far as I can tell the entire African continent is rejoicing. It became quite evident in the lead up to this election that the burkinabé view barack as one of their own- not an African american at all but a full blown son of kenya. I had an interesting chat with one of my gendarme friends about ethnicity and nationality. His whole premise was that beyond anything your nationality is dependent upon that of your father; where you were raised and what your behavior is like has little impact upon the essence of your national identity. In his words: it's all in the blood. It was an interesting idea to a child of an immigrant nation and I quickly brought up that (for arguments sake) that my grandfather came directly from Italy thus was my father american or italian? And in turn what was I? He quickly responded that due to this line of descendence I of course was Italian, not American. This was far from what I expected as I know he thinks of me as american and perhaps it was just a bit of burkinabé jocularity but I do think it speaks to the reason why the burkinabé (and perhaps much the rest of africa) relate to barack. He's proud of his heritage and any in the opinion of many burkinabé I've talked to he's African by blood.
In general I am quite amazed by the reaction over here surrounding the victory. In the words of the director of my school "this puts into evidence that the united states is the greatest democracy in the world". His words, not mine. Not to mention that essentially the only international news I get here is from the French perspective (the nation that perhaps criticizes the bush administration the most openly in Europe) and they have just been ridiculous with their praise for barack. On news report I watched was entitled "The end of anti-americanism". Another band of traveling French tourists was quite eager to buy me drinks of celebration in Tougan. It really does make you happy that this decision seems to have integrated us so well into the world community.
In other news I'm still cruising with the Jula. I've acquired another tutor, who is the servaente at my school. His name is Djiabati and he is quite the expert grammarian. I'm now pulling about 5 hours of private tutoring in Jula each week for the price of about 1 dollar per hour. I'm really excited to be learning the language for real. Salutations are nice but there is no substitute for a unbound conversation that doesn't follow any abstract pre-rehearsed dialogues.
I should also say that I've re-imagined myself as a baker here in Burkina. My hand crafted dutch oven and I have already produced three delicious cakes and I am planing and throwing together some banana bread when I get back to the big L. The only thing I'm in want of is some honest to god betty crocker frosting out of a can. So for all you people wanting to break the global frosting apartheid feel free to ship some this way to the developing world. I have completely abandoned recipes and now prefer to bake directly from the balls. That involves heavy handed use of cinnamon, eggs and whatever butter substitute I can track down around here. In any case gonna try to beat the sun going down so I'll catch you latter.

So I administered my first test about two weeks ago and I gotta say, all things considered it went pretty smoothly. I gave my 5ème and 6ème classes there first test on saturday morning (which is apprently the prefered time for test giving) with the help of my servante (the disciplinarian at my school). Between the two tests I generated about 200 exams to be graded. I really tried to make the questions as straightforward as possible to facilitate grading which is funny, because it seems as though simultaneously the students were trying to write as sloppily and indirect as possible to complicate my grading. There is a funny habit by all burkinabé students which is to dictate on the test the actions that they take. For instance on of my questions might be a standard true or false question, but instead of writing true or false next to the number 5 for instance they will write "I respond by true or false to the question that you have asked me on non-flowering plants. I respond: true" I'm actually going to add a bonus class to both 6ème and 5ème which will be entitled "how to answer questions on a test". Minimalism will be the word of the day. This bonus class will come in addition to the cell bio and evolution supplementary lectures that I'm adding to both classes. I've found the fact that the basic unit of biology and the fundamental theory of biology to be both alarmingly under-covered in the curriculum here.
In other news I'm on my way back from visiting my second closest neighbor, Andrea, in Yaba. She's a math teacher who's already been here for a year. Probably the highlight of my trip was the pecan pie that we crafted in her dutch oven. Stateside, I'm not that big of a fan of the pecan pie but here I probably could have eaten two of them. It was a glorious cake that was almost akin to a thick carrot cake in consistency and had a rich honey flavor. Also as a result of this trip, I'm pulling a total of 160k on bike over a 72 hour period which I'm pretty proud of.
In book news I've just finished perhaps my favorite book that i've ever read. It's called "all the pretty horses" and it's by Cormac McCarthy. Both in content and use of language I found it to be exceptional. It managed to be heroic and sentimental without being stupid which is quite the feat. On top of that it had wonderful descriptions of Texan and Mexican food that was quite appealing to my stomach. I also hit page 100 out of 1400 in the french biology text that I imported from france. I'm staying on track for my 30 page a week goal with it so I should get done before the end of time. I'm also reading don quixote in french which I guess is one step closer to spanish than english? In any case there is a lot to distract me from grading papers which might be my least favorite thing to do in the world.
In anycase I'm going to track down a big plate of liver and intestines that is sold down the street so till next time.

Approaching Habit

So I guess the school year has officially started. I gave my first couple of classes on Friday and they were quite underwhelming. I have at this point prepared about 2 weeks of classes and I was biting at the bit to get started into the swing of things. However, like most things in the BF the school year is slow to start and generally pretty relaxed. For instance, I was strongly advised by one of my fellow teachers not to give any factual information during the first week, and instead just have a formal chit-chat session with the students. I explained to them where I came from and why I'm here, and as far as I could tell they weren't listing to anything I was saying, they were just starring mouths agape thinking to themselves "oh my god look at that cracker". I have no fear that the novelty of my complexion will wear off fairly quickly and that this pleasant passivity will be soon replaced by the normal chaos of a burkinabé classroom. That said, I am looking forward to this next week when I get to add a little content to my lectures.

I was rather nervous leading up to this week as my homologue was not in town and I still was unaware of what my schedule would entail. However, once the whole teaching staff arrived in the big L (about 2 days before classes started) things unraveled quite well. I expressed my doubts surrounding 3ème and general concerns about the year to my homologue and the directeur and I wound up with a pretty light load. After a long talk with Koné my homologue I opted out of 3ème and they're actually getting an svt teacher from another school to trek out here 4 hours per week to give that class. Koné really put things in perspective before helping me make that decision. He explained that I should just stick to the simple task of improving my communication before
jumping into a class as hard as 3ème. He said to just take the countless hours that I would be devoting to that class and just throw them into learning french and just general communication. This will give me time to work on erasing some of those fossilized errors that seem to be so ingrained in my language.
Being an immigrant is hard and I think perhaps harder if you're expected to be some sort of town intellectual. After all, the job that I have is not only a well paying sought after occupation in burkina but also one that requires an education that is substantially beyond the reach of the average burkinabé. When they see me waltz in and begin teaching with only the most tenuous grasp of the french language its seems only natural that they would have their doubts. I may have said this before but I often times feel as though the average villager mistakes a grammatical error in french or Jula that I have committed as evidence of full blown incompetence. Undoubtedly I know many words and far more concepts that will be forever beyond the reach of the villagers without educations, but I still can't get over the fact that when I screw up a salutation or my french falters in general that I seem incapable of doing my job in their eyes.
That might seem a little melodramatic, I mean to tell you the truth I doubt anyone scrutinizes my language the way I do. I just hate to have a notion invalidated because I lack the tools to properly express it.

In other news my fellow teachers are awesome. Basically we're all 20 something males who love to drink beer and bullshit. They definitely are a breath of fresh air for me, as I was definantly in want of some other teachers both as solid french speakers to practice with and people to explain to me just how the whole school in BF thing went down. In all honesty they're really funny guys and Im looking forward to just hanging out with them. They are also great to practice french with and they don't hesitate to correct me when I make a glaring error. The english teacher here is completely hilarious- When he speaks in english to me he very much sounds like a drunken english man. The english part because thats the brand of english they study here and the drunken part because he basically throws paragraphs of indistinguishable syllables at me at a time. You can tell he's really well studied, but you can also tell that native english speakers to practice with are not very common around here. I've got my first tutoring session with him tomorrow and I'm quite excited about it. He and I are thinking about started and extracurricular english club where he would do crammer lessons and I would just talk.

I've included this picture of my house from the inside in case you were currious.