Hot, Hot, Hot! & The Shack School

March 23, 2013

Hot, Hot, Hot!

After my adventure to Ouahigouya at the end of February, I got back to village and didn’t do anything too exciting, besides give some math quizzes and then spend every day from noon to 3pm lying on the cement floor in my house fanning myself and dumping water on my face every 10 minutes in an attempt to combat the suffocating heat.  You know it’s bad when you actually think it’s a relatively “cool” day because you’re not sweating profusely, only to find that the temperature (inside the “cool” house) is higher than the number of when we’re supposed to call our Peace Corps doctors if we have a fever (102.5 degrees Farenheit).  Most days, my house is around 104 or 105 degrees, and if you step outside, you will honestly feel as if your skin is being touched against a hot pan or is 2 inches away from the flames of a blazing fire.  The sun hurts.  Even if you’re in the shade.  

My dog and cat, Sabari and Kamikaze, haven’t been doing too well with the heat either.  They, like me, spend all afternoon inside my house, passed out on the cement floor, panting.  In fact, Sabari refuses to go outside.  She will stay in my house ALL day, until about 5pm, and then she’s up all night wandering around outside with the other neighborhood dogs.  A few days ago, I had to run some errands, so I told Sabari, “Out,” but she just looked at me and then closed her eyes again.  I had to actually drag her by her collar out the door, and as soon as I let go, she ran right back into the far corner of the house.  So I left her there inside and locked the door.  A few hours later I came back, opened my door, and expected Sabari to burst out.  But she was sound asleep.  She woke up briefly in order to look at me, and then put her head back down and went back to sleep, with absolutely no interest of going outside yet.  Kamikazee, I realized, was also still in the house, keeping Sabari company (i.e. gnawing on the dog’s ears), and even though Sabari still isn’t happy about having a cat around the house, she tolerates him (usually), and sometimes they even nap together (aww, animal love!). 

Kamikazee continues to catch rodents in my house, and his favorite pastime is to catch a mouse and kinda kill it, but only cause enough damage so that the mouse can’t run away and is still alive.  Then Kamikazee will play with the mouse for at least an hour.  He’ll pounce on it, let it crawl away, pounce again, drag it around, bite it, throw it, carry it to my bed (eww), climb onto the kitchen counter and then drop it to the floor, etc.  It’s gross and I’ve tried to get Kamikazee outside with the semi-dead creatures, but I have had no success thus far.  So instead, I get to enjoy minute animal remains and blood stains on my floor, as Kamikazee takes his time slowly killing the mouse, and then eating its brains.

The Shack School

March 6th found Molly and I biking out in the heat of the day to visit Zephrin’s school.  Zephrin is Molly’s counterpart who is working closely with us on the library project.  He’s a primary school teacher at New Oure, or whatever the village is called – it’s complicated.  Apparently there’s the village of Oure, but it’s on an island (surrounded by the river water) and the government has been trying to relocate the people for years now, since every year it floods and there’s lots of problems and they’re kinda isolated and people can’t easily get to the village unless they have a boat…

Anyways, slowly throughout the past couple years the village has started to relocate on the mainland, and so now there’s “New Oure” and it’s on our side of the river, just a few kilometers from my village.  As the village is new-ish, it’s still in the process of getting organized and developing a school.  Last year marked the first year New Oure’s kids didn’t need to travel all the way to my village for school.   They built a hangar with a straw roof and straw walls, and this hangar is the kindergarten and first grade “classroom.”  Anyone older than that must still journey out of the village every day for school, but at least now the youngest children don’t need to make the trek, and hopefully next year, another hangar will be built to house second grade.  And the year after that, third grade, and maybe someday, they’ll actually have a real school building as opposed to a straw shack.  But until then, the straw shack will do. 

Our journey out to New Oure took place at about 2:30pm (heat of the day), and Molly and I rode our bikes there, following Zephrin on his moto.  Along the way, we encountered some awesome sights, like lines of banana and papaya trees and the fields bursting with onions, red tomatoes, cabbages, and more.  We also happened to spot a huge TORNADO, just a kilometer or two from us, roaring across the land.  Not a real tornado, mind you, though I’m not really sure why it couldn’t be called a tornado, besides the fact that “they” say tornadoes don’t happen here.  Sure, it was made “only” of swirling red dust, but it was also huge and reached up to the sky and traveled across the land.  It was a sight, and I’d definitely call the swirling dust turbine a real tornado…but whatever.  It disappeared back up into the sky after a couple minutes, and apparently no damage was done, except for a lot of the trash that’s normally strewn across the ground being relocated into another patch of land or caught in a tree, and for a lot of houses and freshly strung laundry being really really dusty.

The heat was a killer even though we weren’t even biking that far, and I almost thought I was going to pass out or at least be severely sunburned.   When we finally arrived, I immediately downed my water in one gulp and cursed myself for not having planned better and brought more than a half liter bottle of water.  But, ca va aller.  I figured I’d just grab some water from the local well if I got thirsty enough.  It might give me a parasite or diarrhea, but that’s better than suffering from dehydration…. 

Zephrin had wanted us to visit his school for quite some time now, and I wanted to see it too.  While most schools in Burkina aren’t very “nice” (in comparison to American schools), they are at least real buildings with a large chalkboard across the front of the room…not straw shacks, like in New Oure.  I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but I was simultaneously both shocked and not surprised in the least when I finally saw Zephrin’s school.   But, Zephrin makes do of his straw shack situation.  His 40 six to eight-year-olds speak next to no French (not unusual for village kids) and his classroom supplies consist of a small portable chalkboard along with a desk and chair for himself.  The kids sit at wooden benches/tables, but many aren’t well-built and so they’re falling apart.

When Molly and I entered the classroom, all the little boys and girls immediately stood up and chanted in unison, “Bonsoir Madames!”  I’m sure they had been practicing saying that for weeks in preparation for our visit.  They all looked so excited and scared and confused.  For some of them, it was probably their first time ever seeing a white person, and to be honest, I’d probably be scared after seeing a pasty white person splotched with sunburn like myself, too.  We introduced ourselves to the class, and after every couple of words they would respond with essentially a verbal grunt to show that they were listening and following what we were saying, though I’m sure most have had no clue what we were actually saying…

Me: My name is Madame Elizabeth.

Kids: mmhhmm

Me:  I live in Lanfiera.

Kids: uhhhuh

Me: I teach math at the middle school.

Kids: eyyy

The kids were thrilled to sing a song Zephrin had taught them for us, and though it sounded awful, we enjoyed them sharing it with us.  Molly and I then tried to implement some activities of our own.  First we sang “Funga Alafiya” (an echo song) which was mildly successful, and then we did the shakes, which is a movement activity that requires doing fist pumps or leg kicks while simultaneously counting to eight….and that failed miserably.  It turns out that these 6-8 years old can’t count to huit (eight) yet.  In fact, they couldn’t even get past quatre (four).  I understand that being taught things in a language you don’t understand – a language that is not your mother tongue – is very difficult and takes time to adjust.  However, these kids have been in school for 6 months now.  You would think they’d at least be able to handle counting aloud in francais to eight, if not 10 or 15.  But they can’t.  Most of them have managed to memorize the sounds/words of numbers 1-4, but I’m pretty sure they don’t actually understand what they’re saying, i.e. that saying trois means THREE, or that if you hold up two crayons and ask how many, that you would respond with deux.   They just don’t get it.  No wonder why school is so challenging for them, particularly once they pass elementary school:  they miss out on the very basic foundations of their education, because they spend those first 2-3 years just trying to figure out what the heck is going on and what their teacher is saying.  Consequently, they spend the rest of their lives trying to catch up…

Things like this might cause you to blame the teacher for not being effective, and while in some cases, yes, you should hold the teacher responsible for his students’ failure, I also realize that the problem goes so much deeper than the teacher.  It’s the entire system here, from parenting skills and preschool-readiness, to teacher training and classroom pedagogy, to a language barrier.  Very complicated issues indeed, and not easily resolved.  I think Zephrin is a great teacher; he’s very motivated and clearly cares about his students.  It’s not his fault he’s stuck in the Burkina Faso school system without resources or adequate training to help him better reach these kids while speaking in a foreign tongue…

So, the shakes didn’t work out so well with the class, but they loved it anyways.  We actually ended up just practicing counting 1-5, and they liked that too.  It’s probably cuz we’re white.  Seriously.  Something about strange looking foreigners is really attention grabbing and the kids focus all their energy into trying to participate as best they can. 

After that, we broke out our box of crayons and stack of white paper.  Each child received a half sheet of white paper and exactly 2 crayons.  We’ve learned in Burkina that you can NEVER just give children a box of crayons.  They will fight each other til the death over the colors, not share, break things, hit, etc.  Politeness doesn’t exist when a free-for-all is present, such as setting out a box of crayons.  Also, they will try to steal the materials.  Thus, if each child got 2 crayons, at the end of class, each child needs to give back 2 crayons.  It’s as simple as thought, and it prevents a lot of problems, even if it takes a bit of time to hand each child his crayons and then go around to pick them all up again. 

The class was tres content (very happy) to see us unveil the huge 96 pack of Crayola colors and the white paper.  It was such a treat for them and they all had the hugest grins I’ve ever seen.   Even if the Crayola crayons we gave them were melting. Seriously. It was so hot that the crayons were soft and moldable, like clay.  







We didn’t give them any specific instructions on what to draw, since we knew they probably wouldn’t understand anyways, and furthermore, the kids probably have next to no skills in drawing.  So, we gave them no guidance or stipulations, and just let them go at it.  Results ranged from kids who had stick figures in front of what looked like the family mud hut, all drawn in blue, to kids who had a variety of squiggles and other organic forms, each in a different color.  All in all, most drawings were comparable to the artwork of a toddler in America: unrecognizable shapes that are supposedly houses, people consisting only of some lines with no eyes or smiling faces, uncontrolled lines running off the paper.
 I loved walking around and asking kids what they drew; the responses were priceless.




Me: What did you draw here?
Kid: It's my mom and our donkey and a fish.
Me: That's great!  
**really, all I see is a bunch of random squiggles on the paper

Molly: What's that? Is that you?
Kid: No, it's a circle.

Molly: Oh….

Zephrin had to write all the kids' names on their paper for them, because they haven't yet learned how to write their names...

At the end of the afternoon, around 5pm, it was time to say good-bye and go home. Zephrin had to go around and write each child's name on his/her paper, because they haven't yet learned how to write their names...  When we left, all the kids continued to follow Molly and me as we went into the village and greeted the village elders and other important people.

The journey back to our village was much cooler at 5pm, compared to earlier that afternoon, and we allowed ourselves to stop and take in the scenic views: seas of onion fields with beautiful flowering onion tops, banana trees, villagers biking back home from the fields....

I finally got back just before sunset, and having spent all afternoon “playing” with little kids, I now had to get my own work done: packing for La Festival des Chevaux (Horse Festival).  I was about to take an epic adventure, and I wasn’t the least bit prepared…

**If you're interested in more pictures and descriptions, check out my facebook.  I was able to upload most of my pictures from my day at the shack school!