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Writing this blog is a constant battle for me to escape the locutions of a college kid on study abroad and actually speak frankly. It's rather difficult to be candid, but I do try.


I'm going to skip detailing how much easier this year has been from linguistic and cultural stand point. Even if it's not always evident you really do acquire skills being here. I should mention that on the flip side, my growing comfort with the language and growing accustom to the environment has led me to act rather cavalier at certain moments. I express boldly my disbelief in black magic, and my lack of respect for the local offices of Chef and Prefet (I respect the people, just not the positions they fill). There are plenty of people in the United States that believe in magic (de facto) and respect the office of the presidency, and I would scorn them roundly for this given the chance. The difference is, in time gone by I never would have rebuked a burkinabé for the same beliefs. I should note that I'm not an asshole about it- but if someone tells me that there are traditional healers that cure AIDS with shay butter, I candidly say I do not believe it. I recognize that I could be wrong- I really do, I just seem to have lost my ability to keep a subtle tongue.


In better news, I'm at least 8 times the teacher I was last year. I am moving along at a much faster pace than last year and I feel like the kids understand more besides. The 6ème class was split in two, which is a welcome change from the 140 student nightmare of last year. I will hopefully be doing some planting projects with them at the end of the year as the rainy season approaches and right now we're working on scientific logic. 5ème is better than 6ème last year but they're still pretty squirrelly and discipline eats up a good chunk of every class. I ended up kicking 4/5 of the class out last time because their grades were so bad on a recent test. I've started giving them an updated version of the chapter on "la démarche scientifique" (the scientific method) that I gave last year. The content is trimmed down in some places (not so anal about the difference between une hypothèse and une prédiction) and beefed up in others (added the lectures on the difference between induction and deduction and tons of exercises on how to apply scientific logic to everyday questions). If I can get them to actually study there lessons it should work out. For 4ème I'm actually not even using my own lesson plans this year. I happened upon the notebook of a PCV in 2002-2004 and it is in all honestly phenomenal. Frankly, I know nothing of geology and having an expertly crafted book as a reference really helps. It's not even the authors French that amazes me, it's their ability to somehow take the archaic, convoluted and sometimes asinine burkinabé program and create comprehensible lessons while at the same time introducing enough totally novel content as to make 4ème SVT a truly dynamic course. In 4ème I’ve also decided to give only pop-quizzes, no tests. You can imagine how the students felt about this. Then finally 3ème which is definitely the challenge course for me. The students themselves are much older (with perhaps one third of them being my seniors) and about half of them being redoublants (which is to say this is at least their second time in 3ème). In addition all of they are extremely prideful of the fact that they have arrived at the last step of the CEG thus have ego's that are completely out of control. The result is a class that is extremely critical combined with a program that is fairly complicated. The objective of course is to prepare them sufficiently so that they succeed on the BEPC (which is a way of saying succeed in life, because almost all jobs require this test). Thankfully I do have the advantage of possessing at least some background knowledge in the subject.


Besides that, I recently celebrated Tabaski in Lanfiera which was pretty amazing. Chez le director, I ate a delicious medley of grilled chicken and green beans. It brought tears to my eyes. At the home of Masa tché (the chef), we ate endless mutton. And then of course I prepared food at my house with the aid of my sons (pictured). It was garlic mutton with soup and bread. I think we actually prepared better food than our king.


Speaking of kings, I have corranated myself. I demanded that the classes 6ème through 4ème begin treating me with exceptional politeness, and as such have to address me as either "votre excellence" (your Excellency) "votre altess" (your highness) or the most frequently used "masa ba" which is the Jula word of "great king" or "lord" and is also the word that Christians use for Jesus. It's just so satisfying to hear a kid respond emphatically "Oui, Masaba" to a question. They have all become my squires.


I just recently heard that travel is outlawed to Niger right now for peace corps volunteers. I find this vexing as I was planning on going there for christmas break. We'll see how that plays out.

Tu bronches sur cet imparfait du subjonctif!

I'm approaching the half way mark of September, and the abrupt realization that school will be arriving precipitously and along with it the end of my international playboy approach to Peace Corps that has defined this summer. Soon my days of burning through cash dancing 'en boîte' in ouaga will grind to a halt and be replaced by grade calculation and bandit fustigation. It's bizarre how I looked forward to the school year starting up for the past 3 months but now that I stand on the precipice I feel hesitant.

I definitely can't say I've accomplished everything I wanted to this summer, but I have used these last few weeks to amass the resources necessary to be effective in this coming year. I acquired a good set of resources for 3ème SVT including past lesson plans of other volunteers and practice question from old BEPC's (the test for which I am preparing the students). In addition to that, if god favors me I shall have my peace corps partnership library budget finished before the end of September (wasn't it august before?). I've got all of the vendors that I need to talk to lined up, it's just a mater of implementation now. As someone once said "all we need now is a little energon, and a lot of luck"


I do think I've gotten better at Julakan this summer too. Not as much as I would like, but every little bit helps. I also have learned how to say a number of colourful phrases such as:


N bi na n ka juguw kan tigèn Allah togo ra=


I'm going to slit the throats of (can also mean butcher) my enemies in the name of God.


N b'a fé ka ni sunguruba ni songo teremi=


I want to discuss the price of this prostitute.


Also some insults:

I fa foro! =

Your father's cock!


Apparently that is insulting. If I heard that in English I would just be confused.


I would also like to think that my French has gotten better this summer. With my trip to Gaul, and also the extra reading time I've definitely acquired a bigger vocabulary. I've also perfected throwing down absolutely nasty subjunctive phrases -eg. "je cherche quelqu’un avec qui je puisse parler facilement" (you best believe you use the subjunctive there!). I don't know if I ever gave my book review of "La Nausée" by JPS but in any case it was awesome. After finishing it I just walked around for the next week thinking "MY LIFE IS ABSURD". I'm currently reading "La Chute" and it’s distinctly a little trickier, but I bought a reading guide for it at a library in downtown Ouaga which should allow me to unravel the internal irony. I'm still making flash cards like a maniac- their number has to be in the thousands.


I may have had a personal lifetime high recently. When helping my new neighbours in tougan settle in, I went to a Flobi concert. For those of you unfamiliar with Burkinabé artists, Flobi is a youthful musician that was catapulted to fame after the public discovered him on "Faso Acadamie", the Burkinabé equivalent of American Idol. When gathered around the stage awaiting the concert, we had the unfortunate (or soon to be show fortunate) occasion to be overtaken by quite a wrathful storm at the moment of his arrival. Being a good natured chap, he still put on the show despite the fact that seemingly 200 people crowded under the hanger of his stage in order to escape the storm. This reduced his available dancing zone (or as I would say performance space) to only about one meter squared. For those of you at home this is NOT SUFFICIANT to effectively execute a burkinabé booty dance. The plus was I was only centimetres away from his majesty the whole night. This culminated in a moment of complete rapture when the man himself (YES, i mean FLOBI!) in seeing my obvious enjoyment at the spectacle, pulled me out of the crowd to dance with him. I rocked my whiteness with complete abandon and everyone seemed to enjoy it, above all my mates in Tougan.


Finally, I've recently begun a pretty substantial bike trip. It's between Ouaga and the Big L, a total of about 350k. I'm stopped in Ouahigouya currently where I get to hang out with my host family and live it up per usual. Yesterday I was in Yako and tomorrow I'll be in Tougan with the aforementioned new neighbours. They're pretty neat folks, and as a married couple it's already clear that their experience will be vastly different that mine. Not worse or better, just very different.


Anyways, sorry I couldn't really find any pictures that corresponded to this blog post. I know just text can make your eyes bleed. I’ll make the next post spicier.

Lassitude gives way to adventure seeking

Since my return from France life has been more or less moving at a snails pace here in burkina. A common complaint amongst the teachers here is that there is nothing to to during the summer because our job is done for the moment just as everyone else (read: the cultivators who take advantage of seasonal rains) are just starting to get busy. As I've mentioned before, you try to fill this time with secondary projects or you can be like me and just sit around and memorize passages from voltaire and La fontaine.

In all seriousness though I've felt like I've been spinning my wheels quite a bit with my secondary projects. While the ultimate responsibility of course lies with me and my ability to do work, I'm still at a loss for what I could be doing differently. People really don't seem that motivated and also the lack of Internet (or really any kinda communication) in the Big L makes discussing book prices with ouga retailers a logistical nightmare. As a result I've been spending a ton of time here in Ouaga just to fill the time and attempt to apply myself, but it seems that despite that I have very little to show for my efforts. I know my principle job is assured, so I can always fall back on that, but honestly how lame would it be to have nothing to show for a 4 month summer vacation?

(the adventure begins! cracker pictured= Nick Rossi)

Fortunately, I have been able to take advantage of some of this free time to tour the country more. A friend of mine named Adeline invited me to a reunion of her entire ethnic group in the south west of Burkina Faso towards near Banfora. I just got back from it and in retrospect, it was a pretty amazing trip to say the least. First up, the environment of the Banfora region by comparison with the north is just fantastic. Unlike the north, the southwest does not resemble and overcooked pancake. In the mornings, I could just stare endlessly at the green seas of sugar cane that were bordered by red rock cliffs coated with dark green vines. This panorama was rendered all the more beautiful by ghostly waterfalls of mist that poured over the cliffs and collected around the sugarcane below. This region is also blessed this time of year with a stable blanket of clouds which serves to keep the temperature around 70 and eliminate the oppressive burkinabe sun. Did I mention this is also the region that furnishes burkina with mangoes and palm wine? It really is heaven on earth.

We also did tons of fun things on the trip. Between soccer matches and languid chats over dolo, I got a chance to see my first authentic Animist ritual performed. It was a communication with the dead in which rites were performed while sacrificing a chicken. The maternal grandmother of Adeline was more or less leading the ceremony and she did so by demanding her deceased mother for benedictions before partially decapitating a chicken which would used as a medium for the response. Apparently the benedictions were delivered, as after struggling for quite a while to re-attach its head the chicken settled on its back (a good thing).

Each night was spent dancing until dawn to both live music (balafon/djembe) and standard Burkina club hits blasting over amps turned up to 11. As I was the only white person at this reunion of about 300 people I developed my usual crowd of observers during the dancing. Apparently watching me dance is very interesting. While I did feel awkward about it when I first got to burkina, at this point I just live it up and show off all my nutso American moves.

Another cool thing we got to do is wander around in the sugarcane fields. I felt pretty incompetent when I attempted to eat the sugarcane though. Ripping bark off with your teeth is one of those things I feel that westerners naturally suck at. I just handed my branch to Adeline and in a matter of seconds she tore through the outside. It was slightly disconcerting to watch, much like when burkinabe open bottles with their teeth, but I tend to think i'm just being a white dandy about the whole thing and these things probably don't do any real damage.

(Our bus got stuck in the mud for a bit so we hung out on a bridge and ate sugarcane- Adeline is to the left, the white person is me, and in the center was Adeline's super grim, laconic friend who after 4 days of me forcing the conversation's progress, asked if I was french :/ )

The main event of the whole trip ended up being a rendez-vous at the Banfora Cascades. While the are no Niagara falls, it was quite the party that we ended up having there. The cascades are a series of pretty cool waterfalls that overlook all of the Banfora basin. I had a pretty cool time just chatting people up and lounging by the water. Even if the water itself was super sketch and probably gave me hepatitis it was totally worth it. It's crazy how much you miss bodies of water when you live in a country like burkina.

(My surrogate brother fro the trip is to the left- he's called Roje. Note: it doesn't seem that burkinabe get the rule that your supposed to look like you're having a good time in pictures- I try to make up for it by having a SUPER GOOD TIME)

Anyways, that was more or less my trip. I'll be returning to the Big L shortly to really begin 3eme lesson planning (yes, i'm not avoiding it this year). Hopefully I'll be back in ouga in early September to compile some critical thinking exercises for SVT.

Kofe ke-

Back in Burkina/France Retrospective

So I've been back in Burkina for about a week and a half at this point. I have to say that my trip to france was just about everything I could have ever wanted in a vaccation. From the fantastic food and the phenominal art, France was a welcome repsite from the asetic gauntlet of life in Burkina. There were culture shocks of course, but I probably would have freeked out a lot more had I gone to back to the United States.

I have to say that the highlights of the trip were probably the food, the art and seeing my folks. My top art gallery of the trip must have been le centre de george pompidou in paris. I simply adore modern art and while we got a ton of great exposure all through France, I have to say that I found the work at george pompidou to be the most striking. Other than that, the food item of the trip would have had to have been Camenbert (and other cheeses). I ate some kind of cheese with every meal which was deeply satisfying. The wines were also great- even if you were like me and refused to pay more than 3 euro for a bottle.

The french in france was plesently similar to that of burkina with the exception of a local expressions and no local language words mixed in. Also I must note that after I got over the initial shock of the fact that nobody would return my salutations, I found that everyone in France (even the parisians) could be very nice. They really can't rival burkinabé hospitallity but in comparison to the denizens of the US they were quite pleasent.

Burkina has been pretty good to me since I returned. My closest neighbor, a third-year volunteer named Brian McCoy, got married in Ouahigoya. A good time was had by all and I was the first one to start dancing after the married couple of course. I was bold enough to attempt to bike to OHG despite the fact that the rainy season had begun. At Kiembara, 50k outside OHG, I was slapped with the wrath of posiedon. I huddled in some guys house for about 3 hours until a bus came by that could ferry me the rest of the way.

Since my return I've been principly occuping myself with studying Djula and French and working on a couple of secondary projects. I've really amped up things on the Djula front and I hope to have a few days this summer where I speak nothing but it. French has gotten a boost too since my library has undergone a massive augmentation thanks to the trip to france. Currently reading, La Nausée by Sartre. As far as secondary projects go, things could be going smoother. The distance from Ouaga is one barrier for me in getting things accomplished efficiently, but the far greater problem is the apathy in my community. No idea of how things are going to wrap up yet.

An unfortunate turn of events also just took place. The battery on my Ipod died and not 4 days later I found out that the neck on my mandolin is snapping due to the the climate change. As a result, In one fell swoop I was deprived of all music at site and will be so until my Ipod completes it's epic 4 month voyage to and back from the states. I'm considering just going to Ouaga and buying a guitar as I already am starting to lose my mind. It's funny how attached to my ipod I was. You would think that going into the bush would make you less materialistic, but in the end I desired my ipod more strongly that I have ever desired any object ever before in my life. That said it will probably do me some good to be without out it at least for a bit.

Anyways per usual this post leaves a lot to be desired (orthographie not the least of which) but it keeps marching on-

Arrival in France

So while I deal with some apartment shenanigans, I've got some time to kill writing a blog post. Anyway, France has been a nice mixture crazy fun and just plain crazy. It's been evident to me from the start that France is a nation out of its mind. I say this honoring the fact that I hail from the most insane nation on the globe: the united states. Simply in lieu of "America's Next Top Model" and the French have chosen luis vuitton. That aside, France has been great. The most glaring difference between here and Burkina is cool weather. My first 5 minutes after my arrival at Charles de Gaule marked the longest I had gone without sweating in about 4 months. I was actually quite chilly the other day on my walk to the Sacré Coeur. Besides that, France has been a nonstop visual delight since my arrival. When I landed at CDG I actually felt like I had been catapulted about 200 years into the future. The stainless steel glass structures of the airport were a welcome departure from the mud brick, thatched roofed house of Burkina. I say this with love in my heart, but Burkina is not a pretty place. The burkinabé people are physically beautiful and their culture is a paragon of hospitality and warmth, but it would be quite the kind lie to say the country they live in is anything but ugly. Honestly I had forgotten just how rich countries in the developed world are. I walked through a cemetery on my first day in Paris and it was remarkable how just about every sepulcher was more elaborately ornate and all together pleasing to the eyes than any given building in Burkina. When a nation can houses its less than outstanding dead people in dwellings more elaborate than the kings of another country, you know there is a wealth disparity.
Another thing I might note is the culture shock. Parisians and the denizens of my community are quite different. That's not to say that Parisians seem to fit the stereotype of being overly pretentious, arrogant elitists- They just seem 'modern'. They listen to their ipods on the metro, they don't say high to people on the street.... they live highly individualistic, private lives. As a tick from my time in Burkina I can't pass someone on the street without saying hi to them (even if it's 10 people in 30 seconds) and yet no one seems to seems to say high to me back. Well I shouldn't say no one- The black people say hi to me back. I can only imagine that this is due to the fact that many of them are probably immigrants or decedents of immigrants from west africa and thus carry on some of the cultural traits of that region. I've actually chatted up quite a few of them and met a few Ivorians, Sénégalese and even a Burkinabé.

Its funny that while I met a couple Americans at the hostel, I definitely feel like I related more to the west Africans I chatted up. Maybe Its just because I'm at a different point in my life than many of the Americans I met- maybe it's because the idea of "OH SHIT BRO EURO TRIP WE'RE GONNA GET TANKED" doesn't really appeal to me. Anyways this was kind of a hurried blog post but I've got a phone call to make. more updates soon with a picture dump.

Of caterpillars and closing ceremonies

The end of my first school year and with it first year hear in burkina is quickly approaching. I must say it doesn't feel like a full year has past. During our in service training at the beginning of our term I recall some elder PCV warning me about boredom in village. I must say that in no way have I found this to be true. Not only do the months go by quickly, but each day always seems to come up a couple hours short.

I must say that I have far from mastered every aspect of burkinabé culture. I continue to make the occasional misstep and the actual rule that I violated remains recondite. For instance when explaining to someone that I went and bought some tigankouro (it's like rice and beans) for myself during lunch, on of my friends burst out "you went and bought it yourself! you didn't send a kid to get it for you?" and I responded "yes... is that bad?" he in turn responded "of course it is" as if I had done the most unnatural thing in the world.

On the other hand, I've definitely come a long way on the road to becoming a veritable burkinabé villager. I dedicate a solid couple of hours each day just to saying high to people, and my recent success in Djula/dafine has allowed me to communicate with more people than ever before. On of the things that has amazed me most about language learning is how variable your day to day performance can be. While it should be noted that I have no proclivity for language acquisition, and as such some of this inconsistency could be explained by that. However it remains quite bazaar that there are days when I can executed phrases which employ the figurative use of complex vocabulary, and other days I can't even seem to manage the pronunciation on the simplest benediction. Even with french there are days I talk like a hybrid of La Fontaine and Zola and other days when I feel like i just started speaking french.
In other news I recently acquired a predilection for Caterpillars. When I was in bobo I picked some up and have taken to preparing them for myself and my friends. Most of my neighbors don't care that much for my american dishes, the have applauded my preparation of caterpillars as some of the best they have tasted. The picture tagged is of one of my good mates, Seydou, chowing down on a recent preparation.

My art club is reaching its final performance as well. On the docket we have about an hour long one act, a couple dance pieces, a piece of poetry, and a couple songs. To be perfectly blunt this whole process my end in disaster, but I still think it should be fun for the kids.

I'm all registered for the GRE and wrapping up the affairs for my trip to Paris as well. While I do love my community, it will be nice to get out for a bit.

Lessons in ebullience

I'm winding down on the home stretch (mixed metaphors what?) of my first year here in Burkina Faso and while once again I find myself unable to articulate much of my experience here, suffice it to say that I still find the world around me worthy of the highest, most poetic adulation, even if I am incapable of expressing it.

We here in the Big L just celebrated quite the Fete- but this time it was a Christian one. As I may have mentioned before the Big L is approximately 4000 percent mulsim, so I ended up going to a nearby village to party the Paques (or easter as it is called in cracker speak). It ended up hitting two catholic masses- one on the eve, the other the morning of- both of which were entirely in Djulakan. While my Djula definitely has come a long way since my arrival, I still have a very hard time sorting through the content of things like sermons or other complex topics. I was quite reticent at the event as I didn't want to draw too much attention to myself (being the single white person there made this nigh impossible but I still tried). I don't like being scolded for not going to church every Sunday and Christians in general and burkinabé-christians in particular are quick to do that. It should be noted that Burkina is the kind of place where a Muslim will fulminate a christian for not going to church, not because he's doing some disservice to god, but rather because he is withdrawing from the community. I, who am a total misanthrope and hermit by burkinabé standards, try in vain to set aside a good chunk of each day to doing things by myself. Anyways, attempting to obviate being sucked into another time demanding community was my reason for being reserved at the fete. I realize that I sound quite asocial, and I am, but I do spend about 90 percent of my waking hours either working or chatting with people. It's pretty clear that if I want to preserve what time I have left to myself I have to be quite aggressive in pursuing it.
Any way besides the masses were quite fun. I learned a couple new djula phrases and rather enjoyed the periodic paeans of the the melodically challenged but rhythmically godlike church musical group. Listening to the sermon and getting about every 5th word reminded me of the fact that all Islamic prayer gatherings are exclusively in Arabic (god's language) which very few villagers speak. On top of that, music is strictly forbidden anywhere near mosques. All in all, I think being Muslim is a pretty tough job.
In the post mass, me and my fellow teachers had quite a feast of spaghetti and fish along with a never-ending supply of dolo. Quite good.
I gave my fellow teacher a lesson in greek phrases including those used around Easter and got an equivalent lecture in Djula.

Shortly after Easter, I negotiated another party. We recently got another addition to the crack squad of savy, motivated functionaries at the Big L CEG. He's supposedly here to manage the funds of our school but as far as i'm concerned he's really just a narc sent by the government to spy on us. First of all, if you're educated and you are pro government in burkina that you are obviously on their pay role. None of my fellow frontier teachers have much love for the burkinabé government- its wanton prodigality and hypocritical rehtoric is quite the turn off. And as for myself, I am quickly becoming a supernova of disenchantment fueled populist political outrage, and due to that, I have know love of governments, foreign or domestic.
Despite all of this, in the traditional burkinabé fashion he was given a hearty welcome. And I, grasping for any reason at all to have a party, found out that his birthday was fast approaching and procured hearty cuts of lamb and 2 bottles of wine with all deliberate dispatch. Like any party that Nick Rossi is behind, this one knew not dearth nor want. Everyone left feeling quite satisfied.

The end of my first school year and my trip to France are both coming up very quickly. I'm so excited so see the home of Camus (ok maybe not algeria) and Sartre. Not to mention, to be in a country where you can find cheese outside the capital.