artastic

To finish off this round of posts, I just wanted to mention that I've started a little project that I've had as an idea for the past couple of months. I'm attempting to photograph the paintings used in advertising here in Burkina. There are pretty standard ones, as for coiffeurs/coiffeuses (hairdressers) who want to show the kind of work they do. And then there are some that are just unequivocally weird and fabulous, like this one that I think is advertising a tree cutting company? I hope? Not quite sure why rabbits are involved....
I only started a couple of days ago, so prepare yourselves for excitingness to come.

as promised

Pictures from last August (ps, Burkinabe do not think it's cool to smile in pictures.):

Euro, Malika, and Alima

Fatao (he was NOT happy that I was leaving them)

Another post! Aren't you excited.
Last week, while in Ouahigouya, I got to visit my host family!! Euro (Ousmane), Alima, Fatao, and Malika are doing Very well. Malika is getting over malaria (or "pallu" here, which may actually be a number of maladies, but they just call it all malaria) but she's bigger than last year and after a while got used to having me there again. She even smiled at one point! That's quite an unusual occurrence with Burkinabe babies, usually they cry when they see a white person (amazingly entertaining for the mothers and observers, less entertaining for me.) And Fatao is hardly any bigger. I told him how big he was getting (lie), and Alima was like ha, nope, he's the same size. But he's still super cute and awesome. And my host dad is going to take the BAC this June!! He's an elementary school teacher, which only requires that you pass 10th grade and then do teacher training, but the BAC (from the French system) is MUCH harder and a huge accomplishment. I so hope he passes- he's great.

This has nothing to do with anything, I just thought it was cool. This is a student of mine who broke his arm, and this is how they splinted it.

summer

Quick post- I'll write more later, probably. No, definitely.
I am back in Burkina after going to Americaland to surprise my friend before her wedding. It was AMAZING: the wedding, seeing people, and eating everything I've been craving for the past year. I think, literally, everything. And then some.
Like I've been telling people, I haven't had any culture shock going and coming back and I think it's just because my mind can't process the idea of both of these incredibly disparate worlds existing. So I was in America mode, and now I'm back in Burkina mode. Maybe there'll be some problems when I go back to village. We'll see.
I just came back from a week of training and session-planning for the new group of volunteers coming this summer, since I'll be one of the trainers (basically for the month of July.) The first round of trainees comes in this week; they're the Secondary Education sector and therefore have two weeks more training than any of the other sectors. Arrival: Wednesday. There have been no new volunteers for an entire year (my group is still the most recent) and I have to say, we're all pretty excited about new people. So... welcome, new trainees!!! Good luck with staging and the first bit of time in country. I promise it'll be okay.

dry season

The following is a demonstration of how skewed my view of the world is right now. I went for a bike ride to my lake the other day and took a few photos. I thought: these are nice, look- there's water! and grass! and animals! What a pretty area! Example:



Then I actually looked at the pictures, and realized that the cows are starving, the grass is mostly mud, and so is the water. You can hardly even see the other shore because of all the dust in the air. So to give myself a little reality check (and to give you all one too, albeit in the other direction) I thought I'd do a little before-and-after photo montage.

my courtyard in October

last week: sandstorm!!


before: trees with leaves


after: not so much


before


after


this one's good- same shot, before...


and... after!


So, as you can see, Burkina in the dry season is... less than picturesque. My world is not super pretty right now. Looking at my pictures from the fall I can't BELIEVE I used to think Burkina was kind of scrubby and sad. I realize now that it was GORGEOUS. Now, on the other hand....

So you can possibly get some sense of my excitement when I tell you that it rained last night!!!! We had a huge windstorm a few days ago that bent all the metal telephone poles to the ground and blew off half the sheet-metal roofs in town, but that only came with a few drops of rain. Last night we got the wind again, but this time it poured for about an hour, then it calmed down into a steady rain until stopping early this morning. It was 78 degrees in my house and I put on a flannel shirt. I am currently wearing my hair down, and there are no signs of prickly heat. I might just survive this hot season.

yup, pretty nice

togo à go-go

Togo!! I went there for our spring break (whoo!) with a group of seven other volunteers, and we spent the entire five days on the beach. It was amazing. Completely un-Peace Corps; we did nothing constructive except teaching the hotel guys how to play beer pong, which is obviously the second goal of the Peace Corps: teaching about American culture. We're putting that in our quarterly reports.
So we swam, and ate, and... yeah, that's about it. Which was perfect. I know I should go sightseeing, and explore, and have adventures, but I'm pretty okay with a legit vacation once in a while with good people in a beautiful place. Pictures to come, maybe next weekend.
And now, back to reality. Or whatever version of reality it is that I live here. School starts again next week, and the trimester is only about six weeks long. That means that I have 54 hours of class left this year, over the course of which I have to write, review for, administer, grade, hand back and do in-class corrections for six tests. Plus actually teach. Teacher challenge!! Not looking forward to all that.