March 24, 2013
After getting back from the Horse Festival, I had school to worry
about. It was almost the end of the second trimester, so I had to finish correcting the stacks of tests lying inside my
house and start calculating final grades.
I also had a final test to give – one last chance for the kids to prove
that I shouldn’t give them a zero. Much
to my surprise, when I showed up to school on Thursday morning, ready to give
their test, I was informed that there was no school: it was Traditional
Day. The students dressed up in their
culture or ethnic group’s traditional outfits.
There was dancing and skits and modeling and loud music. I was able to upload a bunch of pictures and
explanations onto my facebook, so check that out for more about Traditional Day
at the CEG. 
I spent the whole week and weekend following the horse festival inside
my house (or rather, outside my house, under my hangar) correcting tests and
quizzes. Things I should have done
sooner, but didn’t. Things that I just
left sit on a stack on my table all trimester instead of correcting them right
away. Procrastination, at its best (or
worse, depending on how you look at it).
This resulted in me being very anti-social all week. Wake up early, chug some water cuz it’s hot
out and my body gets dehydrated during the night, correct some tests, wash my
dishes, correct some more, go buy some yogurt to eat for lunch, continue
correcting, read a chapter of my book to give my mind a break for numbers,
correct tests, take a 10-minute power nap, record grades, play with my dog,
enter grades in computer, send a child to buy me some rice for supper, correct
quizzes by flashlight, pass out inside my tent from exhaustion, start all over
in the morning. Correcting is never fun,
but it’s especially daunting when you have 120 copies for each assignment/test
you give. Multiply this by my two
classes and also the 3-5 things I decided to grade for each class, and all of a
sudden I have over 1,000 pieces of paper to look at; 1,000 scores to write in
my grade book; 1,000 numbers to type into my computer.
It didn’t help that most the tests/quizzes I corrected were awful. There were very few good notes (scores). So many zeros. But I don’t care. Honestly, if they don’t answer any questions
on the test, that makes it significantly easier for me to correct, so I prefer
that kids either do well, or get a zero.
None of this in-between crap where they scribble a bunch of gibberish to
make it look like they tried, but only end up earning one, maybe two points
total because they didn’t actually try.
I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about giving students bad grades this
trimester. Also, I admit that I
thoroughly enjoyed handing back their graded tests to them on the last day of
the trimester and seeing their reactions.
Watching their expressions as they realized that I was not joking about
giving bad (but deserved) grades or taking away points for misbehavior was priceless. So many students tried to plead with me. They followed me to my house, asking to that
I add a bonus point. Could they wash my
dishes? Did I want them to water my
garden every day? Whatever I want,
they’ll do it, as long as I change their grade.
“No, I don’t do that. Sorry.
Your grade is your grade. I’m not
changing it. You’ll just have to work
harder next trimester.” I even had
some students start to cry about their math grade. It was wonderful. Hehehe.
An additional part of my duties as a professeur de
mathématique is to calculate the overall grade of each student in my
“homeroom” class. This means we find the
average of their math grade, science, French, English, physical education,
history, etc. All subject grades are out
of 20, but some classes are weighted more heavily than math (for example, math
has a coefficient of 5 while English is only 3). So first the grade out of 20 is multiplied by
its coefficient, then all these scores are added up and the average is
found. This final average ends up being
a score out of 20. Example:
Subject Coefficent Score Coeff.
x Score
Math 5 11 55
Science 3 8.5 25.5
French 5 4 20
English 3 15 45
History 3 9.5 28.5
Phy. Ed. 2 6 12
Total: 21 --- 216 Absences: 0
216/21 = 10.28 So, this kid’s
overall average, kind of like a GPA, is 10.28. He passes. Also, this is pretty much exactly what their
report cards look like. I need to
remember to take a picture of their bulletins (report cards) this next
trimester.
Because all grades are recorded by hand into a big notebook, all grades
are also calculated by hand. To ensure
grades are correctly calculated, they are done in public in front of the whole
class. I call the student’s name, “Drabo
Issaka” and read off all Issaka’s scores to add up (“55, 25.5, 20, 45, etc.”)
while another student looks over my shoulder to verify that I’m saying the
correct numbers and don’t skip any scores.
Next to me will be 3 or 4 students with calculators adding up the
numbers I call out, although every student is supposed to be doing this at
his/her desk (right. that never happens.).
If the calculator-students all find the same total (i.e. “216”) then
they divide by the total number of coefficients (21) and tell me the average
(“10.28”). We also factor in unexcused
absences, if the student has any, taking off 0.25 of a point every time they
were marked absent. I write the total
and the average into the individual’s report card with a blue pen, and then we do
it all over with the next student. We
have to do this for each and every student. By hand. And it never fails that about 1 in every 10
calculations gets messed up, causing us to start over for that student’s grade:
“Madame, I found 298 but his calculator got 234.” “Urgh, on recommence” (We
start again). My hand never fails to
cramp up by about half-way through, and since my homeroom class is Sixième
(the youngest kids in the CEG, like 7th graders), they screw up a
lot and it takes us FOREVER. This trimester,
it took us over 3 hours to calculate everyone’s grades. Plus, after the individual grade averages are
found, we need to rank each student and write on their reports cards if they
are number 1 in the class, or 58th, or 118th….. Then find the average of the class; then how
many boys passed compared to how many girls; then the average of the boys
versus the average of the girls…. All this stuff that would take 5 minutes by
computer but I have to do it by hand and spend hours doing it. I tried using my computer to do overall
grades once – it was awful, trying to type in each student’s math score, French
score, history, etc. Plus, the students
don’t like not being able to hear everyone’s grades, nor do they like not being
there when it’s being calculated (grades aren’t private here). And if I’m going to use my computer, I need
to be alone with electricity. Which
means not at the CEG and not with 100 kids surrounding me trying to see the
screen. So sadly, it is almost easier to
do grades by hand.
After calculating my sixième class’s final grades and ranking them, one
little boy in particular made me feel really guilty. He came to me all alone at my house, asking
what his grade was. I told him that I
didn’t remember off the top of my head, but I could look it up when I went to
school that afternoon. “Madame, I calculated that my grade should be
11.3 but my friends said they saw you wrote it was only a 5.” Students need at least 10 out of 20. Fifty percent. That’s passing.
I told the boy, “Well, if you found your grade to be 11.3, then that’s
probably correct. Don’t worry.” He wrote down his name for me (I’m a bad
teacher and don’t know most of my students’ names, first or last.) and later
that day, I checked. Sure enough, poor
Ousmane did not have 11.3 like he thought.
No, it wasn’t as awful as a 5, but it was still less than 10, less than
passing: 8.9. I wrote down his grades
for each class, and later in the evening, Ousmane came back to my house. I gave him the bad news, and he started to cry. This little 12-year-old boy, my student, was
dressed in dirty clothes that were far too big for him, just sobbing away in
front of me. Then he started begging.
Boy: Please Madame. Please help.
I need a 10. My father will beat
me if he sees this.
Me: Well…….8.9 isn’t that far away from 10. You did better than almost half the students
in your class. I don’t think your father
will be too upset.
Boy: Yes, yes he will. I didn’t get a 10. If I don’t pass this year, he won’t pay for
me to go to school next year. I need to
pass. I need a 10. Please, he’ll be so angry.
Me: I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.
Boy: Calculate again, please? Maybe you didn’t add correctly. I found 11.3 when I did it myself.
We added up his scores with my calculator and found his grade to be
unchanged: 8.9. This just made him cry
even more. I did feel bad for this
kid. Clearly he cared, was trying to
talk to me about it, and didn’t even have that bad of grades compared to a lot
of kids. There’s nothing worse than just
missing the mark. If you pass, you pass;
it doesn’t really matter what your grade was, it was above 10 and that’s all
that matters. And if you fail, you
fail. You probably knew you had it
coming and weren’t surprised to see scores of 0, 1, 3, etc. But to be close to 10, scores between 8 and
9.99? That’s rough. You probably put forth a lot of effort, but
just couldn’t quite swing enough points to pass. If you have 9.99, tough luck. It’s not 10, so you fail. I did sympathize with this kid, but like I
said, there was nothing I could do. He
left my house crying like a baby.
Somehow, I did get everything done for school that week and could
breathe again. And what a better way to
finish the end of the school year than by eating cake?!?!
March 20 was Aza’s birthday, so I made her a chocolate cake with
homemade chocolate frosting and invited chez moi (to my house) that
evening. (Aza is a nurse at the local
clinic.) Molly joined us, bringing
sprinkles and tubes of colored, writable frosting. Aza was so cute, showing up to my house with
cold cokes and a yummy salad, topped with potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, sweet
corn – rarities in our part of Burkina Faso.
Aza LOVED her cake, and she got a kick out of decorating her cake
herself, putting on sprinkles and writing “Happy Birthday” in English.
“This is my first ever birthday cake.
I’m celebrating like an American tonight! You girls are too good to
me. Vous allez me gâter. (You’re going
to spoil me.)”
Molly and I sang “Happy Birthday” to Aza in English, and then she blew
out all her candles in one breath! She
only had 3 candles on her cake, but still.
She blew them all out! We had
pre-explained the American traditions of making a wish, as well as that the
number of candles still lit after your breath is the number of boyfriends you
have. She thought that was hilarious and
said she would be sure to blow all her candles out on the first try – she
didn’t need ANY boyfriends. Amen,
sista! Molly and I fully agree with Aza
in that men are basically unnecessary… you don’t find too many Burkinabe women
who are confident enough to admit such a thing.
In fact, Aza was celebrating turning 30! Thirty years old, and not married, no kids,
no boyfriend, but college educated and very successful. Very atypical of females in West Africa. As in practically unheard of. Sure, in America, it’s kinda weird for
someone to be 30 with no kids or boyfriend, but it’s not that uncommon. In Burkina, a normal village girl would be
shunned if she reached the age of 23 and still didn’t have kids or wasn’t
married. Most women have at least 3 kids
with one on the way by the time they’re 23 here!
Aza, Molly, and I ate so much cake! I’ll admit, it was some of the best chocolate
cake I’d made in Burkina so far. I used
Hershey’s baking cocoa sent to me from America and used my mom’s chocolate cake
recipe. So good! I was very proud of myself. If only I had some cold white milk to drink
alongside my cake….or to make mush cake with.
Mhmm. In fear that I’d eat all
the remaining cake myself as a midnight snack, I sent the rest home with
Aza. She was delighted and looked
forward to letting her other friends and neighbors have a bite of “American
birthday cake.”
The day after Aza’s birthday, Molly and I made tofu! This was an experiment. We had both observed others making tofu
before, but neither of us had truly gone through the process ourselves. Molly had a plastic bag of soybeans in her
house that had been sitting under her bed for months (unless the rats had
gotten to it – she hadn’t looked at in awhile), so it was time we tried this
tofu thing out.
Molly had brought the soybeans to my house when she came for Aza’s
birthday, so after Molly and Aza left that night, I set aside half of the
soybeans for later use, in hopes that we’d be successful and want to make tofu
again in the near future. I then picked
through the remaining 3 kilograms I had left in the bucket. Soybeans, like any crop, are very dirty and
need to be cleaned before consumption.
In America, machines can do this effortlessly as the beans are being
harvested. In Burkina, harvesting is
still done by hand, so a lot of small rocks and dirt and dead bugs end up in
the soybeans. By hand and flashlight, I
picked all the gunk out. Then I filled
the bucket with water and let the beans soak overnight.
 |
| picking dirt and rocks out of the beans |
 |
| the water-swelled beans after soaking overnight |
By morning the beans were much softer and had swelled in size
drastically. I took the beans over to my
neighbors’ house and Batoma got straight to work draining the beans and then
crushing the beans into a paste. This
was a difficult and lengthy process, and had I realized it beforehand, I would
have only used 1 kilo of beans, not 3.
First the beans were put in the big wooden mortar/pestle and some girls
pounded away at that. Then the crushed
up beans were put spoonful by spoonful onto a cement slab and Batoma rolled a
wooden rolling pin over it, turning the textured mush into a very homogenous
paste.
 |
| Batoma and Barkissa getting ready to help. Barkissa is wearing a dress that my tailor made for me. Obviously he didn't do a good job measuring, as the dress fits a 9-year-old....and not a me. |
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| Crushing the beans. |
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| A neighbor came to see what we were doing. I love how she can balance everything on her head, no problem. |
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| I tried to help for awhile. I wasn't very good at it, so they took the wood away from me after about 10 minutes. |
It took my neighbors over 4 hours to finish making the paste. Normally, the best way to do this step is to
put the soaked beans into a wet mill. A
wet mill makes things like peanut butter, whereas a dry mill is for making
flour. But, as there is no wet mill
located even remotely near my village (they cost too much), we had to do it by
hand. I wish there had been a wet mill. It’s so much more efficient and less painful
on the hands.
 |
| These two both worked for hours, making the bean paste. |
Once the paste was ready, it was put into a huge bowl, and 5 liters of
water for every kilo of beans was added in.
This was all mixed together, it dissolved/soaked for about 10 minutes,
and then it was strained. The liquid, or
rather, soymilk, was put into one container, and the leftover mush particles
into another bucket.
 |
| Straining: The bean mush and water is in the blue/yellow tub. It's poured into the strainer that Batoma is holding, the milk draining into the red tub. The leftover mush in the strainer is dumped into the green bowl. |
When finished, the process was repeated: a bunch of water of mixed in
with the mush, then strained. When
finished, the same thing was repeated yet again. But by this time, the milk being strained is
clearer in color and not so white. That
means that most the nutrients and good stuff has been dissolved out of the bean
mush, and the mush that remains is basically worthless. You feed that to chickens.
 |
| Remaining mush; fed to chickens. |
Our entire gigantic bowl was filled with milk, and it looked so
good! (It doesn’t taste that good –
needs to be cold and have some vanilla and sugar added to it before you drink
it.)
 |
| Soy milk!!! |
But we weren’t done yet. All of the liquid was poured through a thin
sheet to catch any remaining particles or bean mush remnants. This liquid was then heated over a fire for
about 20 minutes to kill germs. At this point,
if you want soymilk, you remove the liquid from the heat. We took out a few scoops to drink as milk,
excited to add sugar, cocoa powder, and mint to it. Unfortunately, it must have been overheated
because it started to curdle….no milk for us.
We were sad.
The milk in the marmite continued to boil, and it was time for the coagulation
(i.e. curdling, tofu clumping, etc.). We
added tamarind juice to aide in the curdling, though vinegar works as
well. Immediately the milk started to
separate, with white clumps (the curds) floating to the top and a yellowish
liquid (the whey) remaining. 
The curds
were strained out, put into a white cloth, and pressed to remove all excess
liquid. This was the tofu! 
The yellow liquid is kinda flavorless, but
some people like it and sell it as juice.
They might also add some citron and sugar to make it have more
flavor.
For all the milk that you start with, you don’t actually end up with
that much tofu. It’s a decent amount,
but not a huge quantity. The tofu should
rest in the white cloth with weights pressing out the water for at least an
hour or two. After that, you cut it up
and prepare it however you wish. We
deep-fried our chunks; however, I’ve also eaten grilled tofu and tofu marinated
in a spicy tomato sauce. I always forget
how flavorless tofu is, and that you really need to doctor it up and give it a
flavor if you want it to taste good.
That’s also the beauty about tofu.
Whether you want garlic, soy sauce, tomato, chicken bouillon cubes, or
onion in the tofu, it’ll work and it’ll taste good! Just don’t forget to add
lots of salt!
Normally flavors are added after the tofu has set and is cut into
cubes, as a marinade or sauce to cover the tofu, but Molly and I experimented
with adding salt, chicken bouillon, garlic, and onion directly into our tofu
right after straining it, mixing it all around, and then letting that rest in
the white cloth.
 |
| deep-fried tofu |
It seems to have worked
and the flavors mixed in quite well.
After deep-frying the cubes, we came to the consensus that they almost
tasted like flavorless chicken nuggets.
And I don’t mean that in a bad way.
They were quite tasty! I went
back to my house and dipped my nuggets in some mayo and mustard, and honestly
thought I was eating McNuggets! (I’ve never actually eaten chicken nuggets
from McDonald’s …. But this is how I imagine they would taste…)
So, tofu-making was a success, but also a lot of work. It took us the whole day. And by us, I of course mean my neighbors,
because Molly and I didn’t’ do much except watch them work our soybeans. But, as a sign of appreciation, they got to
eat most of the tofu (or sell it, if they so desired).
Tofu is great for several key reasons.
Firstly, it doesn’t require refrigeration. It can last 2-3 days, stored properly,
without a fridge (unlike meat, which quickly spoils and needs to be used within
hours of killing the animal, especially if there is no fridge). Secondly, it’s a cheap source of
protein. Animal protein is hard to find
and very expensive in Burkina, and many children are malnourished due to a lack
of protein in their diets. Tofu has
recently become more known in Burkina, and in the bigger cities, it isn’t
uncommon to come across someone selling tofu brochettes. But past the bigger cities, very few people
even know what soybeans are and what you can do with them. Besides not having a wet mill to crush the
beans, that’s another difficulty about tofu: people don’t know that soybeans
exist. Everyone grows corn. No one grows soybeans. Corn has no nutrients. Soybeans are loaded with proteins. In fact, soybean flour is a great additive to
make nutrient-enriched porridge for infants and young children. Introducing tofu to our villages is a
wonderful way to not only improve nutrition, but to also expand crop markets. While it will take some time for soybeans to
catch on (people to desire the tofu product, farmers to grow the beans, etc.),
I have no doubt that in 5-10 years, you will be able to see fields of soybeans
in most villages and be able to buy tofu brochettes at any local bar or
restaurant.
Since Molly and I still have a bunch of unused beans, we’re going to
try the flour method next. We’ve heard
rumors that dry-milling the beans into a course flour works just as well, and
should this prove true, it will be an important development for anyone who
doesn’t have access to a wet mill!
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